As a PhD candidate who works with noble metal nanoparticles on a daily basis, I have some issues with their work.
1. How do they plan to get the particles to "naturally" accumulate in tumors without some sort of surface coating; specifically one incorporating some sort of tumor sensing molecule?
2. If the nanoparticle is coated with some other molecule, do they still expect "low-energy" electrons to punch through without trouble? How low is "low-energy" anyway? In my experience, when dodecanethiol is attached to a nanoparticle surface (which is very common as a generic molecule for the synthesis work) 200 KeV electrons have no problem punching through, but this coating is much less transparent to a 40-80 KeV electron beam.
3. How well do these particles absorb x-rays anyway? The surface plasmon resonance peak (i.e. the wavelength of EM radiation that it preferentially absorbs) typically occurs in the 300-800 nm range for these (noble metal) nanoparticles. If there isn't a great absorption peak here, how much adjacent tissue are we cooking?
It just seems preliminary to elevate this to "treatment" status when the article really doesn't do much to inspire confidence in the work.
I work for an IT helpdesk at a large public university and we see students come through all the time with these programs. Realistically though, the installation vector we see the most is not the installation of programs from random websites; the majority get them from clicking a link to watch a movie (still in theaters) online or even through certain ads in Facebook. These programs have simply gotten extremely clever at tricking the end user.
When I played Oblivion on my roommates XBox 360, I started out following the story for a while, but after completing several quests I got bored and made it my personal undertaking to steal all the silver longswords from all the guards in the Imperial City and pile them by one of the gates. It became especially amusing when you would anger a guard in the city, as none of them had anything left to beat you down with but their two fists.
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As a PhD candidate who works with noble metal nanoparticles on a daily basis, I have some issues with their work.
1. How do they plan to get the particles to "naturally" accumulate in tumors without some sort of surface coating; specifically one incorporating some sort of tumor sensing molecule?
2. If the nanoparticle is coated with some other molecule, do they still expect "low-energy" electrons to punch through without trouble? How low is "low-energy" anyway? In my experience, when dodecanethiol is attached to a nanoparticle surface (which is very common as a generic molecule for the synthesis work) 200 KeV electrons have no problem punching through, but this coating is much less transparent to a 40-80 KeV electron beam.
3. How well do these particles absorb x-rays anyway? The surface plasmon resonance peak (i.e. the wavelength of EM radiation that it preferentially absorbs) typically occurs in the 300-800 nm range for these (noble metal) nanoparticles. If there isn't a great absorption peak here, how much adjacent tissue are we cooking?
It just seems preliminary to elevate this to "treatment" status when the article really doesn't do much to inspire confidence in the work.
I work for an IT helpdesk at a large public university and we see students come through all the time with these programs. Realistically though, the installation vector we see the most is not the installation of programs from random websites; the majority get them from clicking a link to watch a movie (still in theaters) online or even through certain ads in Facebook. These programs have simply gotten extremely clever at tricking the end user.
When I played Oblivion on my roommates XBox 360, I started out following the story for a while, but after completing several quests I got bored and made it my personal undertaking to steal all the silver longswords from all the guards in the Imperial City and pile them by one of the gates. It became especially amusing when you would anger a guard in the city, as none of them had anything left to beat you down with but their two fists.