Lifeboat Foundation

The first international case of listeriosis linked to an outbreak in Spain that has sickened almost 200 people and killed two is being investigated by British public health officials.

The outbreak has been traced to contaminated chilled pork products under the brand “La Mechá” made by Magrudis, based in Seville. The potential infection is in a man from England who ate the product in Seville in mid-August. He was treated at a hospital in France before returning to the United Kingdom.

A Public Health England spokeswoman told Food Safety News the agency does not disclose patient details so she was not able to provide information on the age of the man or where in England he lives.

Small-scale soft continuum robots capable of active steering and navigation in a remotely controllable manner hold great promise in diverse areas, particularly in medical applications. Existing continuum robots, however, are often limited to millimeter or centimeter scales due to miniaturization challenges inherent in conventional actuation mechanisms, such as pulling mechanical wires, inflating pneumatic or hydraulic chambers, or embedding rigid magnets for manipulation. In addition, the friction experienced by the continuum robots during navigation poses another challenge for their applications. Here, we present a submillimeter-scale, self-lubricating soft continuum robot with omnidirectional steering and navigating capabilities based on magnetic actuation, which are enabled by programming ferromagnetic domains in its soft body while growing hydrogel skin on its surface. The robot’s body, composed of a homogeneous continuum of a soft polymer matrix with uniformly dispersed ferromagnetic microparticles, can be miniaturized below a few hundreds of micrometers in diameter, and the hydrogel skin reduces the friction by more than 10 times. We demonstrate the capability of navigating through complex and constrained environments, such as a tortuous cerebrovascular phantom with multiple aneurysms. We further demonstrate additional functionalities, such as steerable laser delivery through a functional core incorporated in the robot’s body. Given their compact, self-contained actuation and intuitive manipulation, our ferromagnetic soft continuum robots may open avenues to minimally invasive robotic surgery for previously inaccessible lesions, thereby addressing challenges and unmet needs in healthcare.

Small-scale soft continuum robots capable of navigating through complex and constrained environments hold promise for medical applications (1–3) across the human body (Fig. 1A). Several continuum robot concepts have been commercialized so far, offering a range of therapeutic and diagnostic procedures that are safer for patients owing to their minimally invasive nature (4–6). Surgeons benefit from remotely controlled continuum robots, which allow them to work away from the radiation source required for real-time imaging during operations (5, 6).

Despite these advantages, existing continuum robots are often limited to relatively large scales due to miniaturization challenges inherent in their conventional actuation mechanisms, such as pulling mechanical wires or controlling embedded rigid magnets for manipulation. Tendon-driven continuum robots (7–10) with antagonistic pairs of wires are difficult to scale down to submillimeter diameters due to increasing complexities in the fabrication process as the components become smaller (11–13). The miniaturization challenges have rendered even the most advanced form of commercialized continuum robots, mostly for cardiac and peripheral interventions (14), unsuited for neurosurgical applications due to the considerably smaller and more tortuous vascular structures. Magnetically steerable continuum robots (15–19) have also remained at large scale because of the finite size of the embedded magnets required to generate deflection under applied magnetic fields.

Synthetic biological circuits are promising tools for developing sophisticated systems for medical, industrial, and environmental applications. So far, circuit implementations commonly rely on gene expression regulation for information processing using digital logic. Here, we present a different approach for biological computation through metabolic circuits designed by computer-aided tools, implemented in both whole-cell and cell-free systems. We first combine metabolic transducers to build an analog adder, a device that sums up the concentrations of multiple input metabolites. Next, we build a weighted adder where the contributions of the different metabolites to the sum can be adjusted. Using a computational model fitted on experimental data, we finally implement two four-input perceptrons for desired binary classification of metabolite combinations by applying model-predicted weights to the metabolic perceptron. The perceptron-mediated neural computing introduced here lays the groundwork for more advanced metabolic circuits for rapid and scalable multiplex sensing.

Just imagine what types of treatments, human enhancements, and other disorders could be solved with this technique. No more invasive GBM surgeries, Dystonia is finally treated and no longer a problem as well as other diseases and disorders that are located in areas like the basal ganglia area of the brain.

By Chris Stokel-Walker

A tiny robotic worm can wiggle its way through a model brain. It could eventually be used to make brain surgeries less invasive.

Continue reading “Worm robot could wiggle its way through arteries in the brain” »

During his year in space, Scott Kelly was zapped relentlessly by radiation — the equivalent of 10 chest X-rays a day for more than 11 months starting in March of 2015. The onslaught damaged the astronaut’s DNA and affected his immune system while raising his risk for cancer. And Kelly was aboard the International Space Station, whose tight orbit around Earth lies within the magnetic field that surrounds our planet and blocks the most damaging forms of radiation.

Astronauts who travel to Mars or other destinations in deep space will leave Earth’s protective cocoon for months or years at a time. And a new NASA-funded study suggests that chronic exposure to radiation could harm astronauts’ minds as well as their bodies — potentially affecting space flyers’ moods and even their ability to think.

That could be a big deal.

One of the most difficult challenges in treating the brain cancer glioblastoma is that few drugs can pass through the blood-brain barrier. Scientists at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles have developed a system to circumvent this hurdle—one that combines a powerful immuno-oncology drug with a polymer-based delivery vehicle that can cross the blood-brain barrier.

The researchers showed that this “nano-immunotherapy” treatment crossed the blood-brain barrier in mouse models of glioblastoma, and that it stopped tumor cells from multiplying. They published their findings in the journal Nature Communications.

The Cedars-Sinai team used the polymer scaffold to deliver two types of immune checkpoint inhibitors, blocking either CTLA-4 or PD-1. When injected into the bloodstream of mice, the drugs quickly infiltrated brain tumors, but not healthy brain tissue, the researchers reported.

She’s now leading her own $39m Longevity Fund that supports entrepreneurs developing therapies for age-related diseases.

Born in New Zealand, Deming was home-schooled by her parents but as a child taught herself calculus, probability and statistics as well as French literature and history.

After her grandmother Bertie developed neuro-muscular problems in her 70s and 80s, she decided to dedicate her life to combating the ageing process.

The rise of cryptocurrency is changing the philanthropic world by causing the redistribution of wealth from old money to visionary innovators and early tech adopters. The new crypto rich invest their donations by supporting scientific research in groundbreaking fields that may one day enable humanity to cure aging, reverse death and completely change the relationship between work and income.

Also Read: How Does a Country Do an ICO? They Call It QE

Examining the record of donations made by the crypto rich reveals a pattern of support for goals that others may feel belong in the pages of science fiction novels. Having benefited greatly from recognizing the potential of peer to peer electronic cash earlier than the masses, it is no surprise that they have great optimism in the power of technology to radically change our lives for the better.

Scientists have produced and tested, in mice, a vaccine that protects against a worrisome superbug: a hypervirulent form of the bacteria Klebsiella pneumoniae. And they’ve done so by genetically manipulating a harmless form of E. coli, report researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and VaxNewMo, a St. Louis-based startup.

Klebsiella pneumoniae causes a variety of infections including rare but life-threatening liver, respiratory tract, bloodstream and other infections. Little is known about how exactly people become infected, and the bacteria are unusually adept at acquiring resistance to antibiotics. The prototype vaccine, details of which are published online Aug. 27 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, may offer a way to protect people against a lethal infection that is hard to prevent and treat.

“For a long time, Klebsiella was primarily an issue in the hospital setting, so even though drug resistance was a real problem in treating these infections, the impact on the public was limited,” said co-author David A. Rosen, MD, Ph.D., an assistant professor of pediatrics and of molecular microbiology at Washington University. “But now we’re seeing Klebsiella strains that are virulent enough to cause death or severe disease in healthy people in the community. And in the past five years, the really resistant bugs and the really virulent bugs have begun to merge so we’re beginning to see drug-resistant, hypervirulent strains. And that’s very scary.”