Additional outpatient therapies which are readily accessible will be essential to reduce COVID-19 illness progression in high risk individuals. Especially as the virus continues to mutate with greater transmissibility despite increased global vaccination.
Use of NONS in patients recently infected with SARS-CoV-2 accelerates nasal virus clearance.
Funding provided by Glenmark Pharmaceuticals Limited. Study medication provided by SaNOtize.
A U.S. House Intelligence Committee member cautioned that bioweapons using a target’s DNA to kill only that individual are being created. US Representative Jason Crow of Colorado spoke on Friday at the Aspen Security Forum and cautioned Americans not to be too careless about sharing their DNA with private firms due to the impending arrival of the new type of weapon. “You can target a biological weapon that will kill that person or take them off the battlefield or make them inoperable,” Crow said. “You can take someone’s DNA, you know, take their medical profile,” he added.
Given the prevalence of DNA testing services, where customers voluntarily share their genetic mapping with companies to learn more about their ancestry and health, the congressman said it is concerning that these weapons are being developed. Although 23andMe has maintained time and time again that it does not sell its customers’ private information, it is one of many DNA companies that have done so when asked by the police.
As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, US Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa claimed that the US’s adversaries may deploy such DNA bioweapons to attack food supply on a large scale. Ernst forewarned that specific animals relied upon by civilians, armies, or towns could be the target of biological weapons, resulting in scarcity and food poverty and weakening populations.
Antoine Galand, Director of Technology, GraphWear
Nanotechnology was once the stuff of science fiction, but today the concept of creating devices and machines that are several thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair is a well-established fact. The rise of nanotechnology has already transformed industries ranging from consumer electronics to textile manufacturing and cosmetics by unlocking new materials and processes at the nanoscale. The device you’re reading this on, for example, is only possible because of techniques adopted in the semiconductor industry that enable us to pattern silicon and metals to create the microscopic circuits and switches that are at the heart of modern computers.
One of the most promising applications of our newfound ability to manipulate individual atoms and molecules is in healthcare, where the ability of doctors to treat disease has been hamstrung by relatively blunt “macro” solutions. The human body is a remarkably complex system where, fundamentally, nanoscale processes occurring inside cells are what determine whether we are sick or healthy. If we’re ever going to cure diseases like diabetes, cancer or Alzheimer’s, we need technologies that work at their scale. Although medical nanotechnologies are relatively new, they’re already impacting the way we diagnose, treat and prevent a broad range of diseases.
Ask medieval historian Michael McCormick what year was the worst to be alive, and he’s got an answer: “536.” Not 1,349, when the Black Death wiped out half of Europe. Not 1918, when the flu killed 50 million to 100 million people, mostly young adults. But 536. In Europe, “It was the beginning of one of the worst periods to be alive, if not the worst year,” says McCormick, a historian and archaeologist who chairs the Harvard University Initiative for the Science of the Human Past.
A mysterious fog plunged Europe, the Middle East, and parts of Asia into darkness, day and night—for 18 months. “For the sun gave forth its light without brightness, like the moon, during the whole year,” wrote Byzantine historian Procopius. Temperatures in the summer of 536 fell 1.5°C to 2.5°C, initiating the coldest decade in the past 2,300 years. Snow fell that summer in China; crops failed; people starved. The Irish chronicles record “a failure of bread from the years 536–539.” Then, in 541, bubonic plague struck the Roman port of Pelusium, in Egypt. What came to be called the Plague of Justinian spread rapidly, wiping out one-third to one-half of the population of the eastern Roman Empire and hastening its collapse, McCormick says.
Historians have long known that the middle of the sixth century was a dark hour in what used to be called the Dark Ages, but the source of the mysterious clouds has long been a puzzle. Now, an ultraprecise analysis of ice from a Swiss glacier by a team led by McCormick and glaciologist Paul Mayewski at the Climate Change Institute of The University of Maine (UM) in Orono has fingered a culprit. At a workshop at Harvard this week, the team reported that a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in Iceland spewed ash across the Northern Hemisphere early in 536. Two other massive eruptions followed, in 540 and 547. The repeated blows, followed by plague, plunged Europe into economic stagnation that lasted until 640, when another signal in the ice—a spike in airborne lead—marks a resurgence of silver mining, as the team reports in this week.
Correction & clarification: A prior version of this story contained inaccurate information. Pancreatic cancer is poised to pass colon cancer as the second deadliest tumor type.
Barbara Brigham was having a very bad 2020.
Her 97-year-old mother, whom she’d cared for years, died in January. Her husband, who’d suffered the ill effects of Agent Orange since his tours of duty in Vietnam, died of cancer in June. In September, she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which has a five-year survival rate of only around 10%.
Circa 2019
This study assessed the safety and efficacy of deep tissue laser therapy on the management of pain, functionality, systemic inflammation, and overall quality of life of older adults with painful diabetic peripheral neuropathy.
The effects of deep tissue laser therapy (DTLT) were assessed in a randomized, double-masked, sham-controlled, interventional trial. Forty participants were randomized (1:1) to receive either DTLT or sham laser therapy (SLT). In addition to the standard-of-care treatment, participants received either DTLT or SLT twice weekly for 4 weeks and then once weekly for 8 weeks (a 12-week intervention period). The two treatments were identical, except that laser emission was disabled during SLT. Assessments for pain, functionality, serum levels of inflammatory biomarkers, and quality of life (QOL) were performed at baseline and after the 12-week intervention period. The results from the two treatments were compared using ANOVA in a pre-test-post-test design.
All participants randomized to the DTLT group and 85% (17 of 20) of participants randomized to the SLT group completed the trial. No significant differences in baseline characteristics between the groups were observed. After the 12-week intervention period, pain levels significantly decreased in both groups and were significantly lower in the DTLT group than in the SLT group. The Timed Up and Go test times (assessing functionality) were significantly improved in both groups and were 16% shorter in the DTLT group than in the SLT group. Serum levels of IL-6 decreased significantly in both groups. Additionally, serum levels of MCP-1 decreased significantly in the DTLT group but not in the SLT group. Patients’ quality of life improved significantly in the DTLT group but not in the SLT group.
Posted in biotech/medical
Clijsen, R., Brunner, A., Barbero, M., Clarys, P. & Taeymans, J. Effects of low-level laser therapy on pain in patients with musculoskeletal disorders: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Eur J Phys Rehabil Med. 53, 603–610 (2017).
Molecular computing is a promising area of study aimed at using biological molecules to create programmable devices. This idea was first introduced in the mid-1990s and has since been realized by several computer scientists and physicists worldwide.
Researchers at East China Normal University and Shanghai Jiao Tong University have recently developed molecular convolutional neural networks (CNNs) based on synthetic DNA regulatory circuits. Their approach, introduced in a paper published in Nature Machine Intelligence, overcomes some of the challenges typically encountered when creating efficient artificial neural networks based on molecular components.
“The intersection of computer science and molecular biology is a fertile ground for new and exciting science, especially the design of intelligent systems is a longstanding goal for scientists,” Hao Pei, one of the researchers who carried out the study, told TechXplore. “Compared to the brain, the scale and computing power of developed DNA neural networks are severely limited, due to the network size limitations. The primary objective of our work was to scale up the computing power of DNA circuits by introducing a suitable neural network model for DNA molecular systems.”
Hey it’s Han from WrySci-HX discussing the crispr drug exa-cel that could receive approval by next year! More below ↓↓↓
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