The math problem dates back to Sanskrit scrolls, but has only just been exposed by nanotechnology researchers. According to the ancient text we have been missing a version of the famous "packing problem," and its new guise could have big implications on the medical industry as well as computer science and construction industries.

The mathematical equation is called the ‘filing problem’, and it seeks out the best way of filling an object with a particular shape. Contrary to the traditional ‘packing problem’, the discs can overlap. It also differs from the ‘covering problem’, in that the disks can't extend beyond the triangle's boundaries.

Sharon Glotzer, U-M professor of chemical engineering said: "Besides introducing the problem, we also provided a solution in two dimensions.” This is what makes it applicable to treating tumours using fewer shots with radiation beams or speeding up the manufacturing of silicon chips for microprocessors.

Carolyn Phillips explains that the key to finding a solution in any dimension is to find the shape’s skeleton. Ms Phillips is a postdoctoral fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, and said:"Every shape you want to fill has a backbone that goes through the centre of the shape, like a spine.”

The researchers have had their paper published in Physical Review Letters, where they report the rules for how to find the ideal size and spacing of the discs that fill a shape.  They hope that this research will help them create an algorithm that can take the desired shape and the number of discs, or the shape and percentage of the area to be filled, and spit out the best pattern to fill it.

The algorithm is likely to be most suited to nanotechnology, but in biology and medicine, researchers often need models for complex shapes, such as those of proteins.

Miss Phillips said:"You don't want to model every single one of the thousands of atoms that make up this protein.
“You want a minimal model that gives the shape, allowing the proteins to interact in a lock-and-key way, as they do in nature."

The chemistry professor exclaimed that science is cool again after performing a series of wonderful and weird chemical reactions to audiences at this year's Science World at Wembley. He is currently on a mission to produce educational games designed to engage players in subjects and get them to learn through play.

Dr Hal is becoming quite a regular at Science World, and told reporters that he thoroughly enjoys the event every year. He said after this year's event: "It's been a brilliant day for us. We've been doing the science we really like doing to an appreciative audience of science connoisseurs and had a lot of fun doing it. They had a lot of fun too – we've been doing it for about seven years now and I think it really just adds to the event. There's science, there's commerce – everything's going on."

He also commented on the range of people attending the event, saying that he had met people on the day from all warps of the scientific spectrum. The event is designed for scientists, researchers, doctors to discover new products and network with other people within the industry. But it isn’t all commerce, there is also entertainment and educational events booked each year that give aspiring scientists a chance to get in touch with where the industry is at.

It is becoming an increasingly important event in the calendar, as more and more people start to engage with the sciences. Dr Hal said celebrity speakers such as Dr Brian Cox are helping to bring the sciences into the public realm, making it an interesting and engaging industry to work in.

He said: "There is a resurgence of science – it's cool to be a scientist now, and I think it went through a phase when it wasn't that cool."

Parkinson's disease is still a condition researchers know relatively little about.

A UK charity has recently commissioned a study of 3,000 people in order find out more about the disease, initiating one of the biggest studies ever into its causes.

However, neuroscientists from the University of California Los Angeles have jump-started the research, with new findings that have used molecular tweezers which can block protein aggregation, prevent toxicity and reverse aggregates without interfering with normal brain function.

Bronstein, professor of neurology at UC, said: “Its normal function is not well understood, but it may play a role in aiding communications between neurons. 

“The trick then is to prevent the α-syn protein aggregates and their toxicity without destroying the α-syn’s normal function, along with other healthy areas of the brain.”

Along with colleagues, Dr Bronstein has developed a C-shaped compound which they use as a molecular tweezer. These function by wrapping around chains of lysine called CLR01. The CLR01 blocks the formation of clumps and can even break up existing aggregates, without causing toxicity to the brain.

“The most surprising aspect of the work is that despite the ability of the compound to bind to many proteins, it did not show toxicity or side effects to normal functioning brain cells,” Dr Bronstein added.

Bronstein's team also used the tweezers in a transgenic zebrafish model for Parkinson’s disease. They added CLR01 and used a fluorescent protein to track the tweezer’s effect on aggregations. The results showed positive outcomes for the role of CLR01, preventing a-syn from aggregating, which is a big step in curing the disease.

Additionally, preventing toxicity and the break-up of existing aggregates opens many doors for researchers, who are likely to benefit from the large-scale study being conducted in the UK.

Dr Donald Grosset, a neurologist at Glasgow University, believes the study will lead to better diagnostics and treatment practices. The brain condition affects almost 130,000 people in the UK, and charity Parkinson's UK is currently looking for 3,000 volunteers with the condition and their siblings to participate in the study.

Parkinson’s UK is funding the research, with the group saying it will spend over £1.6 million in attempt to find a cure. The money will also fund researchers in looking for quicker and more efficient ways to diagnose the disease, by identifying markers in the blood which could be used to create a simple diagnostic test.

Dr Kieran Breen said: “Finding a cure for Parkinson's is like building a gigantic jigsaw, but we still have a number of the pieces missing.”

Research funded by The Medical Research Council (MRC) has found that a targeted ultrasound treatment could reduce the risk of impotence and incontinence, which are associated with current treatments. The 41-patient study has been published in the journal Lancet Oncology.

Treatment for patients with prostate cancer usually involves surgery or radiotherapy, which requires the whole prostate gland to be treated. The danger of this is that it could damage tissue around the gland, which causes side-effects such as urinary incontinence and impotence.

However, doctors at University College Hospital in London proposed that more targeted treatment could be more beneficial. The researchers have carried out the first trial using high-intensity focused ultrasound (HIFU), which targets the small patches of cancer cells on the prostate.

Hashim Ahmed, a urological surgeon at the trust who led the study, says the results, 12 months after treatment, are very encouraging. He said: "We've shown in this study that focal therapy – by targeting the individual areas of cancer – can avoid the collateral damage. We've shown that nine in ten men had no impotence and none of the men in the study had incontinence of urine."

Evidence on cancer control has also shown positive results, but Mr Ahmed highlighted that the test would need to be carried out on a larger scale in order to make firm conclusions.

The early indications suggest that the new technique could transform the way we treat prostate cancer. It is cost-effective and has clear medical advantages. Robert Page was a patient on the trial and said: "The outcome was very good.

"I was very pleased with the treatment and very happy with the lack of side-effects, particularly when I contrast that with what might have been the case if I'd had one of the other, alternative, treatments."

CT scans can save lives and are certainly a viable way of detecting lung cancer. However, recent evidence has shown that they might not be the most effective devices for diagnostics in this area. As a result, scientists have been looking for more effective ways to make a diagnosis.

One of the most popular methods that has been highlighted by researchers is using a CT-guided transthoracic fine needle aspiration. New research that has been presented in the International Association for the Study of Lung Cancer's (IASLC) Journal of Thoracic Oncology has found that this highly sensitive technique might be the best way to diagnose pulmonary nodules.

This is based on evidence from 170 patients which was collected between January 2002 and December 2004. The participants all had initial benign results, however, 18 of the patients who had the fine needle aspiration (FNA) turned out to have cancer. This meant that the FNA biopsy presented a false negative. The authors of the study explain that "false negatives tended to occur in larger lesions".

They "speculate that the portion of the lesion with malignant cells was likely part of a larger consolidation, making it difficult to distinguish the primary lesion from surrounding atelectasis or inflammation".

There are several other reasons for false negatives, many of which highlight the need for further research into this area. Imaging adjustments that were made for each needle pass during the biopsy could be another reason, as well as the expertise of the radiologist using the technique. "While both radiologists were experienced with CT FNA, the operator with the lower incidence of false negatives had more years of experience with the procedure and performed more biopsies overall."

The researchers concluded that patients with benign FNA biopsies should have repeat imaging for at least two years following the procedure to observe if there is any growth. Despite that, FNA seems to be a way patients can avoid unnecessary surgery and still achieve a diagnosis.

The new development may make it possible for scientists to become the football scouts of the future, predicting how well a footballer will evolve based on this science. The function was thought to be somewhat of a mystery in the past, but the new research suggests that there is scientific rationale behind what they call 'executive functions'.

Experts often cite three key components that make a football star. The first is a good physical ability, the second is ball sense, and the third is what Simon Cowell would call 'the X Factor'. This is the game intelligence which manifests in those who can read the play and be in the right place at the right time.

Until now, this was thought to be as ambiguous as ball skills and physical ability, but Karolinska Institutet scientists believe that there is genuine science behind the concept, which can be read and interpreted.

Cognitive scientists would refer to it as executive functions, which encompass the ability to be immediately creative, to be able to see new solutions to problems, to change tactics rapidly and to revise previous behaviour that has proved not to work.

Dr Predrag Petrovic at the Department of Clinical Neuroscience said: "Our brains have specific systems that process information in just this manner, and we have validated methods within cognitive research to measure how well the executive functions work in an individual."

The scientists observed players from Allsvenskan (the highest Swedish league) and in Division 1 (the league under Allsvenskan), with a total of 57 elite players observed all together. They also used control subjects of non-professionals, and found that the best performing subjects on executive functions ranked in accordance to their professional tier.

What really goes on at the Large Hadron Collider?  Will we visit Mars in the near future?

And what is the latest news of the infamous Higgs boson – the so called ‘God Particle’?

We are in for a real treat at Science World 2012, where our keynote speaker Professor Brian Cox will shed light on this awe-inspiring area of particle physics and take a closer look at what makes our Universe tick.

Here is a sneak preview of some of the subjects up for discussion…

Higgs boson 'may have been glimpsed' - BBC interview with Professor Brian Cox - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16164213

Don’t miss this opportunity to learn about some of the most significant scientific advances of our time.

Science World will take place on 19 April at Wembley Stadium and is FREE to attend.  Register now »

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The study, involving Stanford University School of Medicine researchers, found that ruxolitinib blocks the JAK2 tyrosine kinase protein that is both mutated and unusually active in 50 to 60 per cent of myelofibrosis patients.
In advanced stages, patients with myelofibrosis suffer from worsening blood counts, spleen enlargement and other sporadic symptoms such as fever, night sweats and muscle and bone pains. These symptoms were found to be reduced when patients were given ruxolitinib.

Myelofibrosis is one of the many myeloproliferative neoplasm (MPN) diseases. These are characterized by the overproduction of red blood cells, platelets or white blood cells by the patient’s bone marrow. This overproduction can lead to scarring within the bone marrow, thus decreasing the bone marrow’s blood-making ability.

Jason Gotlib, an associate professor of medicine who managed the Stanford University School of Medicine researchers who participated in the trial, said: “Ruxolitinib doesn’t cure the disease, but the degree of benefit is clinically meaningful and substantial and allows many patients to re-engage in their daily activities.”

Throughout event day (that’s 19 April by the way!) there will be heaps of prizes up for grabs.

We will be inviting visitors to simply CONNECT.  Easy peasy.

Just tweet us @science_world.  Remember to include the hashtag #SW2012 so that everyone can keep up to date with the Science World shenanigans.

With more and more of our customers using social media and the growing popularity of the Fisher Scientific iPhone app, there seemed like no better way to get the party started.

Not on twitter?  Don’t panic…  There will be plenty of competitions, promotions and freebies throughout the exhibition.  Keep a close eye on the exhibitor’s page to see what’s on offer – news will be updated regularly.  Good luck!

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