Greek Community of Alexandria

Tag: Science

  • Egyptian researchers turn shrimp shells into biodegradable plastic

    Egyptian researchers turn shrimp shells into biodegradable plastic

    Researchers at Egypt’s Nile University are developing a way to turn dried shrimp shells that would otherwise be thrown away into thin films of biodegradable plastic they hope will be used to make eco-friendly grocery bags and packaging.

    Six months into their two-year project, the research team has managed to create a thin, clear prototype using chitosan, a material found in the shells of many crustaceans.

    “If commercialised, this could really help us decrease our waste… and it could help us improve our food exports because the plastic has antimicrobial and antibacterial properties,” Irene Samy, a professor overseeing the project, told Reuters.

    The researchers buy unwanted shrimp shells from restaurants, supermarkets and local fishermen at cheap prices.

    Using shrimp shells is more sustainable because it could replace synthetic materials used in plastics and cut the amount of biowaste produced by the Egyptian food industry, Samy said.

    The shells are cleaned, chemically treated, ground and dissolved into a solution that dries into thin films of plastic, a technique the team says has potential for large-scale industrial production.

    “Egypt imports around 3,500 tonnes of shrimp, which produce 1,000 tonnes of shells as waste… Instead of throwing the shells away, we can make biodegradable plastic bags,” Hani Chbib, a researcher on the project, told Reuters.

    The project is a collaboration between the Nile University team of four and another research group at the University of Nottingham in Britain, where Samy conducted her post-doctoral research and first started experimenting with the idea.

    The team has only produced small samples and the project is not yet ready to go into commercial production but the team is working hard to develop properties that would allow the material to go into widespread use.

    “We are continuing to work on enhancing its properties, like thermal stability and durability,” Samy said.

    (www.reuters.com)

  • Crete becomes the Silicon-Island of high technology R&D

    Crete becomes the Silicon-Island of high technology R&D

    ΓενικάOn the 30th of June 2016, KALEAO Ltd, a high-tech start-up company based in Cambridge, UK, inaugurated their new development centre within the FORTH – Foundation for Research and Technology – Hellas research centre in Crete.

    FORTH (in Greek: ITE) is one of the largest research centers in Greece with modern facilities, highly qualified personnel, and a reputation as a top-level research foundation worldwide. KALEAO helps FORTH to grow as a key European research centre and attraction pole for high-tech corporate development. KALEAO designs and manufactures advanced computer systems and delivers solutions based on its innovative approach to web-scale computing.  Last week, KALEAO unveiled KMAX, their new commercial product, offering a true converged rack mountable hardware platform and software computing appliance.

    The inauguration officially sealed the FORTH – KALEAO collaboration towards a joint research lab on low power computing and shows a clear indication of the growing international high-tech involvement in Crete, Greece. FORTH started collaborating with the founders of KALEAO in EuroServer, a research project part of the EU’s FP7 programme.   FORTH, as a partner of the project, designed various hardware prototypes of key importance for the project, including significant operating system software components.

    Professor Constantine Stephanidis, Director of FORTH’s Institute of Computer Science (ICS-FORTH), stated: “At ICS-FORTH, we strongly believe that one of the key factors for the future growth of the Greek economy is innovation in the high technology sectors and we have been working diligently for more than three decades for the advancement of science and technology in the ICT field, placing equal emphasis in basic and applied research, and aiming to bring the research results into the real economy of Greece – and Europe.  FORTH plays a central role in the science and technology ecosystem of Crete. The island is the home of several academic and research institutions of the highest international standing, and is the host of high-tech developments that are based on three pillars: outstanding academic performance, capacity for excellent research, and propensity for industrial innovation.  ICS-FORTH has always been working within the boundaries of this triangle, and I am personally very proud, as its Director, for the outcome of our unwithering contributions and active support in establishing, at international level, licensing agreements with industry, the transfer to industry of the intellectual property rights – thus monetizing research results, and the startup of a number of high tech companies that have their research and engineering basis operating in Crete – with this latest and most prominent addition of KALEAO. Our systematic approach in this direction has created several visible positive effects on the local Research and Technological Development ecosystem and is also contributing towards preventing, and ultimately reversing, the ‘brain drain’ trend in our field”.

    To the declaration of FORTH, Professor John Goodacre, co-founder and CSO of KALEAO, added: “We are very happy with our development centre in Crete and with our collaboration with FORTH, since these yielded the design of key components of our flagship solution KMAX.  With the increasing research agenda of the Computer Architecture and VLSI Systems (CARV) Laboratory at FORTH and the new KALEAO development centre in the Science and Technology Park of Crete (STEP-C), we expect to see an increasing collaboration between FORTH and industry, collaboration that creates new exciting academic and job opportunities in silicon high-technology in this beautiful Greek island – The new “Silicon-Island’’.

    (www.greeknewsagenda.gr)

  • First MS treatment to bear Greek signature

    First MS treatment to bear Greek signature

    ΓενικάThe release of the first Greek-patented therapy against multiple sclerosis (MS) is only a matter of time.

    A long-term and costly venture by a group of four medical researchers, in collaboration with the University of Patras and VIANEX SA, the largest Greek pharmaceutical company in Greece and founded by the Giannakopoulos family, seems to be bearing fruit.

    Yiannis Matsoukas, professor of chemistry at the University of Patras, and his team obtained the first world patent for a ground-breaking therapeutic, which could treat hundreds of thousands of people suffering from MS.

    MS is an autoimmune, demyelinating disease of the central nervous system, for which numerous treatment options have been made available to patients; however, these options need to be improved as they remained elusive and limited.

    Dr Matsoukas, along with Maria Katsara, George Deraos and acclaimed Greek Australian researcher Vasso Apostolopoulos, have reviewed the current drugs and therapeutic approaches available to MS patients, pre-clinical trial interventions and recent animal model studies.

    The team have confirmed the discovery of a ‘trigger’, as well as possible blockers, in order to develop a new MS treatment that will stop the disease from progressing.

    “My collaboration with Professor Matsoukas has been ongoing since 1999,” Melbourne-based medical researcher Vasso Apostolopoulos tells Neos Kosmos.

    “Dr Matsoukas was interested in working on MS by using the same method I developed for cancer vaccination; something I have been working on for over 20 years. So the chemists have created a formula based on it.”

    Professor Apostolopoulos stresses that this new patent for MS is not a vaccine, but an immunotherapeutic method.

    “Vaccines are meant to prevent disease. This method basically stops it from progressing,” she explains.

    “All the evidence we’ve had so far in animal models and pre-clinical studies have shown that it intercepts Multiple Sclerosis.”

    Meanwhile, the research, will move to Melbourne, under the guidance of Professor Apostolopoulos, where the formula is being modified to be made suitable for humans.

    “The funding has been secured. We are finally reaching a point where we can recruit patients to get tested once we get approved by ethics and get all the paperwork out of the way,” the professor says.

    “We are hoping to do so in approximately nine months, thanks to VIANEX.”

    Dimitris Giannakopoulos, Vice President and deputy CEO of VIANEX SA has confirmed that the promising treatment will be made available to patients as soon as the human testing study is complete.

    “We wouldn’t have progressed so far with our project if it wasn’t for the Giannakopoulos family’s support,” Apostolopoulos adds.

    “The fact that this research started from Greece, that there’s a Greek company involved and innovative things are happening during these hard times for our country is of great importance.”

    (neoskosmos.com)

  • Beware of Greeks building smart cars

    Beware of Greeks building smart cars

    ΠάρθιμοςGeorge Parthimos presents his plan for an innovation centre linking Melbourne and Detroit, to develop applications for internet-connected vehicles.

    Read more at neoskosmos.com