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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 1631

Jan 18, 2020

Functional brain architecture is associated with the rate of tau accumulation in Alzheimer’s disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Tau accumulation is associated with disease progression in Alzheimer’s disease. Here the authors use resting state fMRI and tau-PET to demonstrate that baseline connectivity in Alzheimer’s disease is associated with tau spreading.

Jan 18, 2020

7 rules to reduce your risk of Alzheimer’s and keep your brain healthy

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

This article is reprinted by permission from NextAvenue.org.

During the last Alzheimer’s disease support meeting I attended at my mother’s assisted living center, I sheepishly asked if anyone else was worried about their own risk for the disease.

A lot of hands went up.

Jan 18, 2020

Diabetic Smart Contact Lenses Developed by South Korean Research Team

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing

POHANG, South Korea, Jan. 15, 2020 — A research team from Pohang University of Science and Technology in South Korea (POSTECH) developed technology that allows diagnosis of diabetes and treatment of diabetic retinopathy by wearing smart light-emitting diode (LED) contact lenses.

Jan 18, 2020

Meet the xenobot: world’s first living, self-healing robots created from frog stem cells

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, robotics/AI

Scientists have created the world’s first living, self-healing robots using stem cells from frogs.

Named xenobots after the African clawed frog (Xenopus laevis) from which they take their stem cells, the machines are less than a millimeter (0.04 inches) wide — small enough to travel inside human bodies. They can walk and swim, survive for weeks without food and work together in groups.

These are “entirely new life-forms,” said the University of Vermont, which conducted the research with Tufts University.

Jan 17, 2020

Concerns over new virus from China prompt rare airport screenings for some travelers

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The virus is from the same family as MERS and SARS, which caused deadly international outbreaks.

Jan 17, 2020

Belgian brain doctor awarded for easing coma survivors’ return

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Not all patients who fall into a coma return, and when they do it can mark a moment of joy for their loved ones—but their troubles are rarely over.

Often, brain damage leaves them paralysed or unable to communicate.

Belgian neurologist Steven Laureys has dedicated himself to the question of how to improve the lives of the formerly comatose, and of their families.

Jan 17, 2020

Antiaging Treatments that are Closest to FDA Approval

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, life extension

There are a few dozen antiaging rejuvenation treatments that are progressing through pre-clinical and clinical trials.

Lifespan.io is tracking the antiaging rejuvenation treatments on a rejuvenation roadmap.

Two treatments are in phase 3 clinical trial.

Jan 17, 2020

The CIA’s Secret Quest For Mind Control: Torture, LSD And A ‘Poisoner In Chief’

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

‘Poisoner In Chief’ Details The CIA’s Secret Quest For Mind Control Journalist Stephen Kinzer reveals how CIA chemist Sidney Gottlieb worked in the 1950s and early ’60s to develop mind control drugs and deadly toxins that could be used against enemies.

Jan 17, 2020

Common foods can help ‘landscape’ the jungle of our gut microbiome

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Researchers at San Diego State University have found a new way to harness food as medicine, which has far reaching implications to control harmful microbes in our gut while balancing microbial diversity by fostering the growth of beneficial bacteria.

Foods we eat commonly affect our gut microbiota. New research shows they do so by triggering the production of bacteriophage—viruses that infect and replicate inside bacteria. Compounds in these foods have an antimicrobial effect which causes the phage to replicate.

The researchers began by identifying which foods were antimicrobial, then analyzed them before narrowing it down to a shortlist. When examining growth curves of bacteria, they observed that while bacteria multiply over time, eventually their numbers plateau. However, if phages are activated, then bacterial growth stops altogether and their numbers drop dramatically until they’re depleted.

Jan 17, 2020

Microscopy technique reveals cells’ 3D ultrastructure in new detail

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Inside a cell, tentacled vesicles shuttle cargo for sorting. DNA rearranges in the nucleus as stem cells differentiate into neurons. Neighboring neurons cling to one another through a web-like interface. And a new microscopy technique shows it all, in exquisite detail.

The technique, called cryo-SR/EM, melds images captured from and super-resolution light microscopes, resulting in brilliant, clear detailed views of the inside of —in 3D.

For years, scientists have probed the microscopic world inside cells, developing new tools to view these basic units of life. But each tool comes with a tradeoff. Light microscopy makes it simple to identify specific cellular structures by tagging them with easy-to-see fluorescent molecules. With the development of super-resolution (SR) , these structures can be viewed with even greater clarity. But fluorescence can reveal only a few of the more than 10,000 proteins in a cell at a given time, making it difficult to understand how these few relate to everything else. Electron microscopy (EM), on the other hand, reveals all cellular structures in high-resolution pictures—but delineating one feature from all others by EM alone can be difficult because the space inside of cells is so crowded.