Biomagnetic Particles Meeting 2019 in Telluride, Colorado, USA

Frontiers in Biomagnetic Nanoparticles that will be held August 5-7 in beautiful Telluride, Colorado, USA is now accepting abstracts.  The program already includes 6 confirmed invited speakers, spanning Physics, Chemistry, Biology, Engineering and Medicine. 
There will be a number of travel scholarships to students and postdocs in need, by providing housing and registration for the meeting. To apply for the scholarships please send your application to abstracts@magneticnanoparticle.com.  The application packet must be a single pdf file containing a) Statement of need (please keep less than 300 words), b) Letter of recommendation from research advisor, c) Abstract (please see abstract guidelines). Deadline for applying for these grants is March 1, 2019.

Check out further meeting information at https://www.magneticnanoparticle.com/.

Important Dates: Abstract Submissions: March 1, 2019; Registration Deadline: May 1, 2019

Magnetic Particle Imaging Conference in New York - March 17-19, 2019

Peter Caravan from the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Department of Radiology, Massachusetts General Hospital, USA. With his keynote speech "MPI: The Future of Biomedical Molecular Imaging?” he shows how Magnetic Particle Imaging relates to existing modalities. Find the keynote abstract here: Sunday, March 17, 2019, 17:30 - 18:00 at Farkas Auditorium, NYU Langone Health.

Following topics of MPI will be presented at the conference: Medical, pre-clinical, and non-medical applications - Coil and field generator design - Data acquisition and signal pre-processing - Signal generation, amplification and filter design - Magnetic field simulation and system modeling - Magnetic particle spectroscopy (MPS) - Molecular imaging - Nanoparticle development - Particle physics and simulations - Reconstruction methods - Sequences, acquisition protocols and spatial coding - Scanner geometries and system design. More information can be found in the tentative program.

Novel Characterization Technique for Superparamagnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles

Our colleagues from the University of Twente (The Netherlands) and TU Braunschweig (Germany) just published an interesting article about how to characterize magnetic nanoparticles for use in biological environments. For example, SPIONs are used as a tracer material in sentinel node biopsies. The latter is a procedure to analyze if cancer cells have spread to lymph nodes, helping to personalize patient care. To predict SPION behavior in vivo, the superparamagnetic quantifier (SPaQ), a new device to measure the dynamic magnetization curve of SPIONs can be useful and is described in this study.

The magnetization curve was measured for two types of SPIONs: Resovist and SHP-25, using 3 techniques: Vibrating Sample Magnetometry (VSM), Magnetic Particle Spectroscopy (MPS), and our new SPaQ. Furthermore, AC susceptibility (ACS) measurements were performed as part of the evaluation of the 3 techniques. SPaQ and VSM results were found to be similar. Measurement results were nearly identical in both directions, indicating minor hysteresis. However, in MPS measurements, a clear hysteresis loop was observed. Furthermore, the ACS measurements showed a pronounced Brownian maximum, indicating an optimal response for an AC frequency below 10 kHz for both particle systems. Both the SPaQ and MPS were found to be superior to VSM since measurements are faster, can be performed at room temperature, and are particularly sensitive to particle dynamics. The main difference between the SPaQ and MPS lies in the excitation sequence. The SPaQ combines an alternating magnetic field that has a low amplitude with a gradual DC offset, whereas MPS uses only an alternating field that has a large amplitude.

Overall, both the SPaQ and MPS are highly suited to improve understanding SPION behavior! Check the paper out here.

International Conference on Fine Particle Magnetism (ICFPM) to Take Place in Gijon (Spain)

Since 1991 the International Conference on Fine Particle Magnetism (ICFPM) is a series of conferences aimed at providing an international forum for discussion of the physics of magnetic nano- and micro-particles, their fundamental properties and underlying phenomena, developments in methods for their preparation and characterization, and their applications.

ICFPM 2019 will be held in Gijon (Spain) on 27-31 May 2019. We will mark this 10th edition with special invited talks and celebratory events.

Join us at https://icfpm2019.org/

15th International Conference on Magnetic Fluids - ICMF 2019

Since 1979 an International Conference on Magnetic Fluids is held every three years. This conference brings together the international scientific community involved in magnetic fluid science, at large, from liquid dispersions to more complex fluids such as magnetorheological fluids, ferrogels, ferronematics, ferropolymers, biocolloidal systems…. The last two conferences were held in New Delhi (India) January 7-11, 2013 and in Ekaterinburg (Russia) July 4-8, 2016.

Next ICMF 15th will take place at Sorbonne University in Paris (France) July 8-12, 2019. The conference will highlight synthesis and properties of innovative magnetic materials with a special emphasis on societal applications in the domain of energy, environment and biomedical. Check this link for more details.

Spintronics meets Neuromorphics - from the Spin Phenomena Interdisciplinary Center

The SPICE’s website (http://www.spice.uni-mainz.de/) disseminates the tutorials and talks of the Spin Phenomena Interdisciplinary Center (SPICE) workshops. You can find their materials at the SPICE website the links of the talks of the workshops “Spintronics meets Neuromorphics" and the “Ultrafast Spintronics”.

They also announce their all upcoming workshops that you may want to attend, planned activities, and to propose your own workshop. Further ways of keeping up-to-date are the SPICE YouTube channel or Facebook.

Smallest Magnetic Steerable Catheter in the World

In cooperation with their EPFL colleagues, ETH Zurich researchers working under Brad Nelson, Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems, have now developed a catheter with a magnetic head. Rather than being steered manually, it is operated from a computer via an external magnetic field. This enables the front part of the catheter to be bent in any direction with the highest level of precision. "As a result, the new catheter can be steered through more complex blood vessels better than a conventional catheter," says Christophe Chautems, a doctoral student in Nelson's group. Since the magnetic catheter does not require a pull wire, it can be made much thinner. The scientists have thus developed the smallest ever steerable catheter.

Check out the videos for more information or their recently published article.

Research in Ultralow Magnetic Fields

There is a very special workshop forthcoming about 'Today's Noise Tomorrow's Signal'. The workshop will take place from February 13-15, 2019 in Berlin at the Physikalisch Technische Bundesanstalt and adresses research in ultralow magnetic fields.

For further details, please see this link: https://www.ptb.de/tnts2019/home/