How your Brain Works and How to Train it

Five Design Tools for Embracing the Human Condition

by Ori Takemura

You may have heard the term Human Condition in various contexts. Broadly, it is a vague and all-inclusive notion about being human.

Right now we are at the precipice of yet another period of transformation, a period that will give birth to new products with new interfaces, new interactions and a new behavior around them. I think it is a perfect time to talk about a design tool-set for the human condition. Not design for mobile, not design for wearables and not UIs for IoT, but rather a holistic tool-set for designing products that are to be used by humans  — a reminder of what design is and what it takes to design products for each of us.

Dissecting the human condition.

You may have heard the term Human Condition in various contexts. Broadly, it is a vague and all-inclusive notion about being human. If we, however, want to arrive at a design tool-set, I suggest we work on those aspects of being human that affect and are affected by the interactions with the world. First such aspect is the perception of reality.

1. Perception of reality and thus — needs.

One take on the perception of reality is to think of a web page that gets rendered on your computer:

• That page is from the internet but is not the internet itself;
• That page may look very different on the computers of other people, but for you what you see on your computer = the internet.
• Everything that you see on that browser window would be exactly how the internet is in your perception, even if your provider blocked certain photos or changed some text.

This is important because where a problem solving approach may find no problems, our ‘browser window’ may render needs and pains that only exist in our subjective reality.

Renowned Japanese designer Masayuki Kurokawa puts it this way: ‘Tokyo is not something seen from a bird’s eye view. Tokyo is what someone in Tokyo sees from where he stands now. All of Tokyo is concentrated into that small portion of Tokyo.’

We usually think that design answers problems, like medicine addresses pain. That statement is only true if we understand that problems and pain are to be found inside individual perceptions of reality and not based on the external signals or data. The biggest challenge here is to work with the real users of your product yet rely on observation and not on what they say.

The first tool for designers is thus a simple mirror that doubles as a magnifying glass, allowing a designer to examine themselves in critical detail. A designer should look inside true, subjective needs of a future user, and the best way is to do that is to start with you. When designing products that are not meant for oneself, conducting interviews and working with real users, rather than generating artificial personas, is the way to go. What we want to focus on is a self-expression of a user’s needs throughout their interactions, but remember that users may have a hard time communicating their perceived needs.

Examples

It is easier to understand perceived needs if we take a look at some products that have well pronounced design choices around them. I chose Instagram and Ello. Both are targeted at a creative crowd. As a creative myself, I can testify that the perceived need for publicity and outreach is very real and that getting even an illusion of it via design is a gratifying experience.

Ello on the left, and Instagram on the right. (circa 2016)

ELLO has an interesting design around following other users. On the top of each post there are two calls to action — a Star and a Plus. You can follow a user and add them to your Favorites list by clicking a Star, or choosing to just follow by clicking Plus. Now here is the gratification trick used in this design — the user does not know if you are actually paying attention to his/her posts, you are counted as a follower whether you added them to your favorites or simply followed. One can follow hundreds of users and only read ten favorite ones — the UI, unlike Twitter, allow you to switch clearly between everyone you follow and your favorites. When Ello launched, users whom you just followed without adding to favorites were called ‘Noise’; you could add a person into your Noise list and still be counted as if you followed them.

Instagram is playing a slightly different game with its design - first it lets everyone be creative and generate content out of nothing, and then it focuses on ‘likes’. ‘Likes’ can be given by a well elaborated call to action — the only button-like UI element, or simply by tapping on the content itself. That second design choice allows for browsing without even paying attention to what you see, and encourages quickly liking the content. This is effectively saying— ‘I saw you’ve posted something, cool :)’, but this action does not detail what you saw or why it was cool; often one cannot even recall what they saw on Instagram or how many likes they gave in any given day. On the other side of this interaction is a gratified content creator, and their perceived need is being addressed via design alone.

Those are examples of UX design that works well, but not necessarily good product design.

It is important to understand that a good design does not need to address the perceived need itself, but rather WHY that perceived need is occurring. This is where a magnifying glass and a mirror come in handy as we need to look for meaningful solutions for real people and not ideas that simply fit or gratify.

Behance and Flickr also address the same needs as Ello and Instagram while allowing for real community interactions and professional growth. Minecraft is also worth mentioning as a game that lets everyone create content and be engaged, but it is also an educational world simulation that teaches players about various systems derived from the real world.

2. Perception of value & function.

Let’s go back to our metaphor of rendering a web page for a human perceiving a reality. Imagine that your service provider, computer software or government filter some words and pictures out, and some are replaced with others.

This is exactly how an individual imprinted perception filter works, filtering out and changing the data we receive in accordance to one’s perceived reality. Some of these filters are imprinted into our perception by parents, church, school, and we add some during the course of our lives. Unlike cognitive biases (that’s part 3) imprinted filters are not how the human brain works, they are how we ‘teach’ ourselves to see things, their meanings and values.

JUICY SALIF — Philippe Starck for Alessi

In his book ‘Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things’, Don Norman chooses a juicer by Philippe Stark that is terrible at its utilitarian function of juicing and yet absolutely wonderful at functions and values that are perception driven, such as being a conversation starter or a home decor sculpture, or even a memory provoking gift. This is a great example of how certain values can be purely perceptional, yet still get imprinted into one’s mind thus make an object functional.

Infinity Piece by Becomb, “Movement: This piece contains no movement. It is not a watch.”

“Movement: This piece contains no movement. It is not a watch.”

I personally like to show the Infinity Piece by Becomb when touching on value and function perception. This is a watch that does not show time, does not have hands or sensors, yet works very well as a wearable object. I would even argue that Infinity Piece is a better wearable than the Apple Watch or any of the currently available Google Wear watches. I am a strong believer in smart wearables, and designed my fair share, like the KeiKei / Uni Watch, however we have yet to see or design a new meaningful wearable that would address the human condition of today.

There are many ways a product or a category can get a subjective value imprinted towards them, however there is one notion that is particularly interesting for designers to explore, especially in the context of making new interactions or designing new product categories, and that notion is Qualia. When you experience something for the first time in your life, a taste of a certain wine, a first kiss, or an amazing view from an airplane and you consciously understand your experience — then you are consuming a qualia. Human brain is hardwired to seek new qualia. That is the reason we travel, try new food and participate in various activities.

The famous Japanese brain scientist Kenichiro Mogi wrote: ‘The qualia of the Grand Canyon cannot be experienced unless you actually go there. It cannot be felt otherwise. People travel in pursuit of such qualia...The yearning for new qualia, for fresh, unknown qualia, is in everybody’s hearts. This is the universal desire for qualia shared by all human beings.’.

Even without touching on the subject of Virtual Reality I would argue that digital products could be filled with qualia.

Producing Qualia in the interface or functions allows us to imprint perceived value and brand the interaction, making this an extremely powerful differentiator for companies and products.

Here is our tool for the perception of value — a journey map. A ‘One day / week / month in life’ and where the product you are designing would have its place. A Journey map requires a real human from the first tool (the mirror), as one should be cautious of making journey maps for artificial personas.

3. Perception of quality.

The human mind is subjected to what is usually called ‘perception biases’. Similar to optical illusions, these are characteristics that are perceived regardless of their presence in the product — a more expensive bottle of water tastes better even if both bottles are filled from a tap in a back room.

The human mind also perceives things that are viscerally pleasing and polished as better performing: there is a direct correlation between how something looks and how its working performance would be appreciated. In studies where the same product was disguised as two different ones, and one was given more attention to visual design, respondents always claim that the better looking product worked better and even performed its functions faster. The success of Apple versus PC and iOS versus Android has a lot to do with this perception.

Android device (left)  shows an error message when an app crashes while iOS (right) pretends that everything is perfectly fine.

iOS for instance never tells a user that a certain app has crashed, providing a design language that viscerally suggests reliability. But do apps really not crash on iOS? Were other phones inferior in performance when Apple released the iPhone? Of course, iOS apps do crash and the iPhone was no miracle—it was merely designed to feel like one. The first iPhone during its first months on the market was not even a smartphone: there was no ecosystem in place. There was no app store and not even an SDK, a flaw that Steve Jobs sold as a feature. Consumer perception was very well manipulated by design, and because we now know that there is no objective reality, the perceived characteristics of speed and reliability actually became real in each and every subjective bubble.

Another example is  UBER. Uber started as a luxury brand using only black limousines, without any low-cost options such as UberX. Luxury was also communicated in the logotype and the app design. So what changed when Uber started to compete with traditional taxis and offered UberX? Unsurprisingly, nothing has changed - now users get Uber’s perceived qualities but at a competitive price. Every time someone summons an UberX they get a perceived quality of a limo service even though it may be delivered in a fairly old and at times not entirely reliable car. It is highly likely that for some, Uber had managed to brand a qualia—the experience of riding a limo that is now forever linked with the brand.

By understanding the perception of quality we can derive another tool — a design language, a tone, transitions and visceral elements of our future product combined with the brand and pricing strategy can amplify certain qualities and even communicate non-existent ones.

4. The state of FLOW.

Our mood or how we feel at every given moment greatly influences our performance, creativity and the energy we have. There are ways to influence the mood and promote certain states of mind. One state of mind referred to as Flow is of biggest interest to us.

When in the state of flow one is at their pinnacle of energy and engagement level, concentrated and focused, yet not stressed or burned out after. This state is great for education, work and office environments, sports and lifestyle management, which is why we as designers have to examine it very closely when creating any products or experiences.

To create a state of Flow we need to perfectly balance several components:

1. Learning curve: rules have to be clear and easy to understand, and rules introduced later should rely on previous experiences and established foundations.
2. Challenge: it has to be challenging enough to progress but not unbearably hard or boringly easy, the challenge curve should have accidental depressions and surprises.
3. Sense of progress: there should be a visually clear and constant communication of accumulated progress.
4. Reward: rewards that vary in size or amount, and reoccur during the process of interaction are known to be the best to maintain the state of flow.
5. Finally, Failure should be communicated in a fun way, and be perceived as a learning experience.

A careful reader may have recognized that all five components are usually present in a very familiar product — games. Our fourth tool is thus a gamification technique. One should remember that this tool is optional, and does not fit every product category; not every app or activity should be turned into a game to drive retention or excite users. An awareness of exploiting design and its consequences bring us to the final part.

5. Longevity & Mortality.

I strongly believe that every designer has to remember one very peculiar fact about human nature— humans have a limited lifespan, and time is their most important resource. This simple calculation is a good example: imagine you have designed an app or a game that takes around 15 minutes of a user’s time in the morning and in the evening, and gives nothing meaningful back. In just one month the app would have taken 15 hours away from the user. Factor in 9 hours of sleep and that brings it to a full day, time that someone could have spent reading a book, playing with their children or freeing time for something else later. We one full day by designing for retention, by designing for perceived relief of perceived pains and so on. Good design decisions for bad products are neither ethical nor professional. There is little difference between drawing cute cigarette packaging or selling meth to kids and making a free to play game that takes hours of one’s life that just exploits instant gratification.

Which is why the final tool everyone needs when designing for humans is  a strong moral compass.

The five tools we have arrived at are not the only ones a designer would need, there are many more wonderful techniques and observations to apply when designing for the human condition; however, these five tools will provide a good starting point for any designer.

• Illustrations by Ori.

Thanks to Andy Pratt & Danien Chee

Портрет

В мадридском музее Прадо, в одном из залов, скромно в уголке висит портрет молодого монаха. Удивительно современное лицо.

Лет пять-шесть назад, рассматривая работы Эль Греко я обратил внимание на этот портрет и захотел узнать, кто же этот молодой мужчина.
Им оказался ученик Эль Греко, художник, монах-доминиканец тринитарий.
Что это за тринитарий такой?

Стал рыть дальше и оказалось, что это католический нищенствующий монашеский орден, основанный в 1198 году для выкупа христиан из мусульманского плена. Девизом ордена стала фраза Gloria Tibi Trinitas et captivis libertas (Слава Тебе Троица, а пленным - свобода).
Этих монахов народ прозвал "братьями ослов" или "ослиным орденом", поскольку им было запрещено ездить на лошадях (видели, конечно, изображения монаха на осле).
Тринитариям запрещалось вкушать мясо и рыбу и владеть какой-либо собственностью. Выполняя свою основную задачу, за 437 лет орден выкупил из мусульманского плена 30732 (!) невольника. Средства для выкупа тринитарии, главным образом, добывали сбором милостыни. Нередки были случаи, когда тринитарии отдавали себя самих (!) в рабство за освобождение пленников.

И вот самое интересное: в 1580 году они выкупили из алжирского плена Сервантеса, после чего тот вернулся в Испанию и написал "Дон Кихот". Получается, что читая "Дон Кихот" мы обязаны этим монахам-тринитариям.
Вот такая ниточка протянулась от Эль Греко к Сервантесу.

Nanoparticles beat back atherosclerosis

NANO VARIETY Nanoparticles can repair blood vessel damage, break up plaques, stop immune molecules from overreacting and even respond to the pressure of plaque-narrowed vessels in animal studies. 

Scientists are designing tiny “missiles” to find and destroy waxy plaques in blood vessels

BY 

SARAH C.P. WILLIAMS

Careening through the bloodstream, a single nanoparticle is dwarfed by red blood cells whizzing by that are 100 times larger. But when specially designed nanoparticles bump into an atherosclerotic plaque — a fatty clog narrowing a blood vessel — the tiny particles can play an outsized role. They can cling to the plaque and begin to break it down, clearing the path for those big blood cells to flow more easily and calming the angry inflammation in the vicinity.

By finding and busting apart plaques in the arteries, nanoparticles may offer a new, non-surgical way to reduce a patient’s risk for heart attack and stroke.

Nanoparticles measure less than 100 nanometers across — a thousandth the thickness of a dollar bill. Despite being tiny, they can be engineered to haul a mix of molecules — such as tags that make them stick to a plaque, drugs that block inflammation or dyes that let scientists track their movements. Over the last two decades, scientists have exploited these strategies to fight cancer, designing nanoparticles that deliver drugs (SN Online: 1/3/14) or dyes for imaging deep into the core of a tumor. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved a few dozen cancer-focused nanomedicines.

Drugs, dyes and targeting molecules can be arranged on the perimeter or inside of a nanoparticle (illustration shows one that mimics HDL).

S. MARRACHE AND S. DHAR/PNAS 2013

Now researchers have begun engineering nanoparticles to target cardiovascular disease, which kills even more people each year than cancer. Nanosized compounds have been built that can sweep into clogged arteries to shrink the plaques that threaten to block blood flow. Some nanoparticles home in on the plaques by binding to immune cells in the area, some do so by mimicking natural cholesterol molecules and others search for collagen exposed in damaged vessel walls. Once at the location of a plaque, either the nanoparticles themselves or a piggybacked drug can do the cleanup work.

The aim of all these approaches is to prevent strokes and heart attacks in people with cardiovascular disease, either before surgery becomes necessary or after surgery to prevent a second event. Today, cardiovascular nanoparticles are still far from pharmacy shelves. Most have not reached safety testing in patients. But in mice, rats and pigs, nanodrugs have slowed the growth of the plaques that build up on vessel walls, and in some cases have been able to shrink or clear them.

“I think the effect we can have with these nanoparticles on cardiovascular disease is even more pronounced and direct than what we’ve seen in cancer,” says Prabhas Moghe, a biomedical engineer at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J.

Biological blockades

Every minute, more than a gallon of blood pumps through the human heart, pushing through miles of blood vessels to deliver oxygen and nutrients to organs and extremities. In a healthy person, the trip is as smooth as a drive on a freshly paved highway. But in the more than 10 percent of U.S. adults who have cardiovascular disease, the route might be more like a pothole-filled road squeezed by Jersey barriers.

Waxy globs, or plaques, of fat and cholesterol line the blood vessels, thickening and hardening the walls, impeding blood flow. As fat builds up inside the vessels, it also leaks into the vessel walls, swelling them and signaling the body to send immune cells to the area. The congregation of immune cells aggravates the blockage, the way emergency vehicles surrounding the site of a multi-car pileup further slow traffic on a highway.

“The inflammation and the accumulation of fat in the walls of the blood vessel sort of feed off each other and exacerbate each other,” Moghe says.
If the plaques grow large enough, or pieces chip off and travel to smaller vessels, they can block a vessel. If oxygen-filled blood can’t reach the brain or heart, a stroke or heart attack results.

The drugs most often prescribed to prevent or treat atherosclerosis — plaque buildup on the inner walls of the arteries — are statins (SN: 5/5/12, p. 30). This class of drugs, available since 1987, slows the growth of the fatty plaques by lowering the amount of cholesterol circulating in the blood. But taking statins is akin to limiting the number of cars on a damaged road rather than repairing potholes, some argue. And the drugs can boost a person’s risk of diabetes and liver damage. In many cases, patients don’t begin taking statins until they already have severe atherosclerosis, and the drugs do little to reverse the buildup of plaques that already exist.

“Heart disease is still the number one killer in the U.S.,” says endocrinologist and biochemist Ira Tabas of Columbia University Medical Center. “So clearly this approach isn’t working.” Nanoparticles that can do what statins haven’t been able to — shrink existing atherosclerotic plaques and eliminate the accompanying inflammation — could change that, Tabas and others say.
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Going places 

To treat atherosclerotic plaques with nano­particles, researchers have devised a variety of ways to send circulating particles directly to the fatty clogs. In each approach below, a molecule that’s part of the nanoparticle binds to a molecule in or near the plaques.

a | Administration of high-density lipoprotein to patients 2 weeks after an acute coronary syndrome leads to coronary plaque regression, shown with representative cross-sectional intravascular ultrasound images of matched arterial segments at baseline (left) and follow-up (right). The graph represents the correlation between the change in external elastic membrane (EEM) volume and the change in plaque volume. There was a concomitant reduction in the EEM volume but no change in the lumen size after 2 weeks. b | The effect of systemic silencing of apolipoprotein B (APOB) mRNA in non-human primates is shown. The graph on the left shows apolipoprotein B (APOB) mRNA levels quantified relative to glyceraldehydes-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GAPDH) mRNA in biopsy samples from the liver of four non-human primates per group, which are individually numbered (A1–C4), 2 days after treatment with stable nucleic acid lipid particles (SNALPs) encapsulating APOB-specific small interfering RNA (siAPOB2). Data are mean values for each animal. The percentage values above the groups reflect the mean values of the percentage reduction in APOB mRNA compared to saline treatment. The graph on the right shows serial plasma samples of low-density lipoprotein (LDL) obtained from non-human primates treated with saline or liposome-encapsulated small interfering RNA. Asterisks indicate clinical significance compared with the saline-treated group. c | In-stent restenosis is reduced in rabbit iliac artery stents after liposomal alendronate (LA) injection, which is administered concurrently with stent implantation. d | A schematic is shown, illustrating the self-assembly of lipids and a drug-conjugated polymer (left), which results in a hybrid nanoparticle with a slow drug-eluting polymer core and a lipid corona (middle), which is subsequently functionalized with peptide ligands (right). This nanoparticle platform can potentially be used to target injured vasculature for the prevention of in-stent restenosis. PEG, polyethylene glycol.

Sources: M.E. Lobatto et al/Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 2011; N. Korin et al/Science 2012

Illustrations: Nicolle Rager Fuller

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Macrophage magnet

To make nanoparticles congregate at the dangerous plaques, researchers need to identify something that makes the blockage stand out from the rest of the body. The crowds of immune cells near plaques act as a signpost that a plaque exists.

Many of the immune cells involved in atherosclerosis are macrophages, white blood cells that gulp pathogens, dead cells or debris in the body. At the site of a plaque, macrophages become swollen with fats and transform into what are called “foam cells” because of their foamy appearance. As they digest fats, foam cells send out chemical signals to recruit more inflammation-causing cells and molecules to the area. Because they’re so intimately involved in the formation of plaques, macrophages and foam cells are a prime target for nanoparticles.

Moghe’s group has designed nanoparticles that bind to molecules on the surface of macrophages, preventing them from gobbling fats and becoming foam cells. The researchers made the nanoparticles specifically target a subtype of macrophage that’s involved in atherosclerosis, not the macro-phages that might respond to other injuries in the body. When nanoparticles were injected into mice with narrowed arteries, the blockages decreased by 37 percent, Moghe’s group reported last year in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Others are using cholesterol-like molecules as nanoparticle taxis to carry drugs to plaques and subdue the immune reaction. Statins aim to lower the form of cholesterol called low-density lipoprotein, which earned the name “bad cholesterol” for accumulating in plaques. High-density lipoprotein, or “good cholesterol,” shuttles LDL away from these clogs to the liver, where it can be broken down. HDL also prevents macro-phages from turning into foam cells and producing inflammatory molecules. So Shanta Dhar, a chemist at the University of Georgia in Athens, developed nanoparticles that mimic HDL. She presented the work in March in San Diego at a meeting of the American Chemical Society.

“HDL is our body’s natural cholesterol-removing nanomaterial,” she says. In animal tests, the HDL-based nanoparticle can bind to free-floating macro-phages circulating in the blood, just as HDL does, and follow them to a plaque, she explains. The nanoparticles can also bind to macrophages already glommed on to a plaque, and, mimicking the activities of natural HDL, carry the cells away.

Plaque buster

Willem Mulder, a nanomedicine researcher at the University of Amsterdam and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York City, has also designed HDL-mimicking nanoparticles. His particles deliver statins that make a beeline for macrophages and plaques, letting him administer the drug at lower-than-usual doses. He was inspired by earlier studies that showed how extremely high doses of statins, given to mice, could lower LDL levels while also packing anti-inflammatory properties. Of course, in humans, such high doses would probably cause liver or kidney damage. Mulder’s solution: tack the statins to a nanoparticle to send them, missile-like, to the plaques. That way, a low dose of the drug could achieve the high concentration needed at the site of the atherosclerosis.

Mice fed high-fat diets had arteries clogged with yellow, fatty plaques. Animals treated with an anti-inflammatory nanoparticle had more effective plaque clearing (bottom) than did mice given a version of the nanoparticle without the drug (top).

G. FREDMAN ET AL/SCI. TRANSL. MED. 2015

“We’re exploiting the inherent targeting properties of HDL,” he says. “And it works well with statins, which are small molecules.”

In 2014 in Nature Communications, Mulder’s group reported that plaque-filled arteries in mice given the nanoparticlewere 16 percent more open than arteries in mice with no treatment, and 12 percent more open than in mice given a systemic statin. More work is needed to show whether these modest gains would translate to a reduced risk of heart attacks and strokes.

Others are using plaque-targeting nanoparticles to deliver anti-inflammatory drugs similar to methotrexate, which is used as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. The side effects of drugs like this, given systemically, are generally severe: vomiting, hair loss and “brain fog,” to name a few.

“If someone with rheumatoid arthritis comes into your office completely crippled, it’s worth all the side effects to put them on an anti-inflammatory drug,” Tabas says. “But imagine someone with some risk factors for heart disease who feels great. They’re not going to put up with these side effects.”

Tabas thinks certain anti-inflammatories could be perfect candidates to tack on to nanoparticles because they would make possible lower doses with fewer side effects. He’s awaiting the results of two large clinical trials testing non–nano-versions of the anti-inflammatory drugs methotrexate and anti-IL1 beta. It remains to be seen whether they’re effective at clearing plaques and how severe the side effects are. If the drugs are effective, even with some side effects, Tabas says, it will give weight to his approach: activating the same pathways using targeted nanoparticles.

Tabas attaches his nanoparticles to a small section of a protein called annexin A1, which is involved in the same inflammatory pathway that many anti-inflammatory drugs target. His hope is that delivered only to an atherosclerotic plaque, the drug won’t have the host of side effects that other immune blockers have.

Destination: vessel wall

The inflamed vessel wall around an atherosclerotic plaque goes through several changes in addition to the accumulation of belligerent immune molecules. As vessel walls are stretched and inflamed, the structural protein collagen, meant to keep the vessels taut and tubular, becomes exposed the way the threads of a tire begin to appear as it wears down. Scientists are using the exposed collagen to their advantage. Nanoparticles with a tag recognizing the collagen end up at plaques. But it’s not as easy as affixing a GPS destination to the particles, says vascular surgeon Melina Kibbe of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“It took us over a year of trying to find the right targeting [molecule] that would work,” Kibbe says. Her nanoparticle combines a collagen-binding protein with nitric oxide, a molecule that stimulates the growth of new cells at wounds. To maximize the surface area of the drug that contacts the vessel wall, Kibbe’s team arranged the molecules in a line, forming a nanofiber, rather than a sphere. As the fiber is swept through the bloodstream, it binds to exposed collagen, anchoring the nitric oxide in place to spur healing of the artery.

Kibbe and colleagues added fluorescent tags to the nanofibers and showed that the fibers congregated at injured spots on mouse arteries within an hour of injection. The tagged particles remained there for three days and the treated vessels ended up 41 percent more open, the researchers reported in the March Antioxidants & Redox Signaling.

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E.S.M. BAHNSON ET AL/ANTIOXIDANTS & REDOX SIGNALING 2016

Tabas also uses a collagen-binding protein, but his is organized in a more spherical shape to get his anti-inflammatory drugs to atherosclerotic plaques. In mice, the particles stayed in the plaques up to five days after treatment, shrinking the plaque by more than a third, his team reported in Science Translational Medicine in 2015. By comparison, some circulating statins last less than a day in the blood.

Rather than targeting proteins or immune cells, scientists at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering have designed nanoparticles that are activated by the physical squeeze that comes with being swept through a narrowed artery. When the shear force around them increases, a cue that a plaque is present, the nanoparticles release their payload: a clot-dissolving drug called tissue plasminogen activator. The researchers reported late last year in Stroke that the nanoparticle, coupled with a stentlike device placed in the artery, increased the survival rate to more than 80 percent in mice that normally die of a clot entering their lungs.

Pathway to patients

Nanoparticles currently in development for cardio-vascular disease are still in animal testing. While no one has seen major side effects or toxicity in the animal trials so far, it remains a concern with a class of medicines that is so new.
“We sometimes get so wrapped up in exuding only the good stuff about nanomedicine that we forget we also have to look at the side effects,” Dhar says.

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Clearing vessels

Various plaque-targeting nanoparticles have been shown to be effective at lowering the levels of LDL in the blood of nonhuman primates (left, graph) and at keeping rabbits’ blood vessels open after a stent is inserted (right). The approach used in rabbits is now in early patient testing.

H.D. DANENBURG ET AL/CIRCULATION 2003

Source: M.E. Lobatto et al/Nat. Rev. Drug Discov. 2011

Another challenge for atherosclerosis drugs is determining who would benefit from treatment. Kibbe imagines her particles being used first in patients with severe atherosclerosis who receive stents or other invasive procedures to clear their plaques. The procedures are intended to help, she says, “but they actually are so traumatic that they cause injury to the vessel wall.” Due in part to this renewed buildup in the arteries, people who have had one heart attack are at higher risk for a second. Even among people who have a permanent stent put in, which is designed to keep part of an artery clear, up to 20 percent become reblocked. Giving these patients nanoparticle-based drugs could keep them healthy, Kibbe says.

Taken to the next level, nanomedicines “certainly might be able to prevent plaques,” she adds. Tabas imagines his nanoparticles given as a once-a-month injection, but that’s speculation.

Moving to test nanoparticles as a preventive — in the huge percentage of the population at risk for athero-sclerosis — is probably a long way off, Mulder says. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, around half of all adult Americans have one of the top risk factors for cardiovascular disease.

“I really don’t foresee that you would start preventively treating patients who don’t have symptoms with nanoparticles,” Mulder says. “But to take a person who’s hospitalized after a heart attack and stick a needle in their arm and infuse nanoparticles, that’s not hard.”

Once a few drugs have been validated as working in clinical trials, researchers expect progress to speed up, since the drug cargo on a nanoparticle engineered to target a plaque could easily be switched out for other drugs. Designing the particles, says Moghe, “is almost like building with pieces of Lego.”

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This article appears in the June 11, 2016, issue of Science News with the headline, "Nano for the heart."

Citations

W. De Jong and P. Borm. Drug delivery and nanoparticles: Applications and hazards. International Journal of Nanomedicine. Vol. 3, June 2008, p. 133.
W. Mulder et al. Imaging and Nanomedicine in Inflammatory Atherosclerosis. Science Translational Medicine. Vol. 6, June 4, 2014, p. 239sr1. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.3005101.
M. O’Brien et al. Reduced cardiotoxicity and comparable efficacy in a phase III trial of pegylated liposomal doxorubicin HCl (CAELYX/Doxil) versus conventional doxorubicin for first-line treatment of metastatic breast cancer. Annals of Oncology. Vol. 15, 2004, p. 440. doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdh097.
R. Wang et al. Nanomedicine in Action: An Overview of Cancer Nanomedicine on the Market and in Clinical Trials. Journal of Nanomaterials. Volume 2013, 2013, p. 1. doi: 10.1155/2013/629681.
E. Bahnson et al. Targeted Nitric Oxide Delivery by Supramolecular Nanofibers for the Prevention of Restenosis After Arterial Injury. Antioxiants & Redox Signaling. Vol. 24, March 10, 2016, p. 401. doi: 10.1089/ars.2015.6363.
D. Lewis et al. Sugar-based amphiphilic nanoparticles arrest atherosclerosis in vivo. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Vol. 112, March 3, 2015, p. 2693. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1424594112.
R. Duivenvoorden et al. A statin-loaded reconstituted high-density lipoprotein nanoparticle inhibits atherosclerotic plaque inflammation. Nature Communications. Vol. 5, January 20, 2014, p. 1. doi: 10.1038/ncomms4065.
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G. Fredman et al. Targeted nanoparticles containing the proresolving peptide Ac2-26 protect against advanced atherosclerosis in hypercholesterolemic mice. Science Translational Medicine. Vol. 7, February 15, 2015, p. 275ra20. doi: 10.1126/scitranslmed.aaa1065.

https://tinyurl.com/5t3wtsjt 

Китаец Ли Сяофэнг (Li Syaofeng) даёт вторую жизнь фарфору

Китаец Ли Сяофэнг (Li Syaofeng) даёт вторую жизнь фарфору. Он создаёт свои потрясающие платья из черепков посуды сразу трех династий. Но самое  замечательное, эту одежду вполне можно примерить!

Ли родился в 1965 г. в городе Hubei. В 2002 году он закончил аспирантуру при Центральной Академии изящных искусств в Пекине и так и остался жить и творить в этом городе.

В своих работах Ли остаётся верен китайской культуре, пытаясь совместить современную одежду и древние китайские традиции.

Процесс создания одежды из фарфора невероятно трудоёмкий.

На современных китайских блошиных рынках вы можете без труда и без особых трат купить ящиками битый фарфор китайских династий.  Но очень много времени у художника уходит на обработку и сортировку старинных осколков.

   

В студии у Ли полно ящиков с побитыми тарелками и чашками, обнаруженными на древних археологических раскопках (а весь Пекин, по его словам, - огромная стройка, вывернувшая целые пласты с археологическими древностями).

Каждая фарфоровая частица сортируется по возрасту, цвету, дате, форме прежде, чем она будет использована для создания очередного наряда.

Художник исполизует в  работе осколки фарфоровой посуды китайских императоров династии Сун (420-479 гг.), Юань (1279-1368 гг.), Мин (1368-1644 гг.) и династии Цин (1644-1911 гг.)

Процесс - сложный. Сначала скульптор рисует схематически идею, затем создает проволочный каркас и приваривает к нему тщательно подобранные по цвету и форме черепки.

Это всё ещё эскиз. Затем шьётся кожаная основа, старинные фарфоровые осколки вручную полируются, в углах сверлятся маленькие дырочки и всё соединяется серебряной проволокой.

Дизайнер часто использует в работе традиционные китайские силуэты и китайскую военную форму.

Его работы не похожи на любые другие и в арт-индустрии и в индустрии моды.

Впервые столь необычный наряд был представлен на Азиатской Ярмарке Современного Искусства в Нью-Йорке, где его сразу же купили за 85 000 $. Пара из Венгрии приобрела свадебные наряды, решив сделать свою свадьбу особенной.

В 2010 г. Lacoste (а бренд с 2006 каждый год заказывает известным дизайнерам специальную серию своих рубашек-поло для проекта Holiday Collector’s) обратился к Ли.

По заказу известного бренда  были изготовлены женская и мужская рубашка поло. На  создание каждой футболки ушло около 3 месяцев кропотливого труда.

Скульптор сфотографировал каждый подобраный фрагмент (251 для мужского поло и 304 для женского) и сделал принты. Всего выпущено 2000 таких рубашек в шелковых мешочках с красной печатью LACOSTE-XIAOFENG .

А для выставочных образцов пришлось отлить копии черепков, т. к. в Китае запрещён экспорт древних артефактов.

Так же на показе Alexander Mcqueen a/w 2011 можно было наблюдать платья и аксессуары, выполненные Li Xiaofeng

И всё же основная задача этих произведений - не стать одеждой, а, прежде всего, передать философский смысл бренности всего сущего, а также того, что любой конец - начало нового. Так куколка становится бабочкой, а разбитая посуда - объектом модного искусства.