The combination of graphene nanoribbons made with a process developed at Rice University and a common polymer could someday be of critical importance to healing damaged spinal cords in people, according to Rice chemist James Tour.
[...] "We've developed a way to add water-solubilizing polymer chains to the edges of our nanoribbons that preserves their conductivity while rendering them soluble, and we're just now starting to see the potential for this in biomedical applications," he said. He added that ribbonized graphene structures allow for much smaller amounts to be used while preserving a conductive pathway that bridges the damaged spinal cords.
Tour said only 1 percent of Texas-PEG consists of nanoribbons, but that's enough to form a conductive scaffold through which the spinal cord can reconnect.
Texas-PEG succeeded in restoring function in a rodent with a severed spinal cord in a procedure performed at Konkuk University in South Korea by co-authors Bae Hwan Lee and C-Yoon Kim. Tour said the material reliably allowed motor and sensory neuronal signals to cross the gap 24 hours after complete transection of the spinal cord and almost perfect motor control recovery after two weeks.
The graphene nano-ribbons provide a conducting scaffold that allow spinal cords to reconnect.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday September 20 2016, @10:33PM
Obama can promise the troops their injuries will be repaired when they get shot in the spine, and the VA can refuse to treat them after they get shot in the spine. Obama wins!
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @01:39AM
I believe this was reported as enabling the human body transplant.
.http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/dog-with-nearly-completely-severed.html
(Score: 3, Interesting) by JNCF on Wednesday September 21 2016, @03:49AM
Here's a terrifying future: the doctors don't find any magic bullet anti-aging pill, but they can put your head on a younger body for the right price. The Chinese prison industrial complex has booming business while rich elites from around the world buy young verile bodies with genetically-modified germlines. Their generations begin to be measured in centuries, and most mentally deteriorate into madness or incompetency long before their brains give out fully. The poor folks just die "young."
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 21 2016, @03:32PM
Fixed link:
http://www.nextbigfuture.com/2016/09/dog-with-nearly-completely-severed.html [nextbigfuture.com]