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Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,992

Conducting polymer tattoo electrodes in clinical electro- and magneto-encephalography

Temporary tattoo electrodes are the most recent development in the field of cutaneous sensors. They have successfully demonstrated their performances in the monitoring of various electrophysiological signals on the skin. These epidermal electronic devices offer a conformal and imperceptible contact with the wearer while enabling good quality recordings over time. Evaluations of brain activity in clinical practice face multiple limitations, where such electrodes can provide realistic technological solutions and increase diagnostics efficiency. Here we present the performance of inkjet-printed conducting polymer tattoo electrodes in clinical electroencephalography and their compatibility with magnetoencephalography. The working mechanism of these dry sensors is investigated through the modeling of the skin/electrode impedance for better understanding of the biosignals transduction at this interface. Furthermore, a custom-made skin phantom platform demonstrates the feasibility of high-density recordings, which are essential in localizing neuropathological activities. These evaluations provide valuable input for the successful application of these ultrathin electronic tattoos sensors in multimodal brain monitoring and diagnosis.

WHO reports most coronavirus cases in one day as total number nears 5 million

More than 100,000 coronavirus cases have been reported to the World Health Organization in the last 24 hours, “the most in a single day since the outbreak began,” director-general Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said at a news conference Wednesday.

“We still have a long way to go in this pandemic,” he said. “In the last 24 hours, there have been 106,000 cases reported to WHO — the most in a single day since the outbreak began.”

Tedros added that almost “two-thirds of these cases were reported in just four countries,” although he did not specify where the cases had been recorded.

Stem Cell Therapy for Cerebral Palsy

Circa 2019

Cerebral palsy is a condition that results from injuries or abnormalities of the brain, usually in the womb but occurring any time during 2 years after birth. It affects brain and nervous system functions such as thinking, seeing, hearing, learning and movement.

Common causes are hypoxia (low oxygen levels), head injury, maternal infections such as rubella, brain bleeding, brain infection, and severe jaundice. Types of CP include: ataxic, hypotonic, spastic, dyskinetic, and mixed.

Mesenchymal stem cells from umbilical cord are considered to be universal donor cells because they are not immediately recognized as foreign. The cells home to damaged tissue and are known to secrete molecules called trophic factors.

Regulation Too Often Shackles the Hands of Innovators

After biomedical scientists demonstrated that they could make dangerous viruses like influenza even more dangerous, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) implemented a three-year moratorium on funding such research. But a couple of months ago, in December, the moratorium was lifted, and a tight set of rules were put in its place, such as a mandate for oversight panels.

The prospect of engineering a deadly pandemic virus in a laboratory suggests that only a fool would wish away government regulation entirely.

However, as a whole, regulation has done more harm than good in the arena of scientific innovation. The reason is that the sort of person who thinks like a bureaucratic regulator isn’t the sort of person who thinks like a scientist. The sad fact of the matter is that those most interested in the regulatory process tend to be motivated by politics and ideology rather than scientific inquiry and technological progress.

Details released of a huge offshore wind turbine that can power 18,000 homes per year

As technology has developed over the last few years, the size of wind turbines has increased.

Last December, for example, Dutch utility Eneco started to purchase power produced by the prototype of GE Renewable Energy’s Haliade-X 12 MW wind turbine. That turbine has a capacity of 12 MW, a height of 260 meters and a blade length of 107 meters.

The announcement of Siemens Gamesa’s new turbine plans comes against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, which is impacting renewable energy companies around the world.

An artificial intelligence system reveals liquiritin inhibits SARS-CoV-2

The pandemic COVID-19 has spread to all over the world and greatly threatens safety and health of people. COVID-19 is highly infectious and with high mortality rate. As no effective antiviral treatment is currently available, new drugs are urgently needed. We employed transcriptional analysis to uncover potential antiviral drugs from natural products or FDA approved drugs. We found liquiritin significantly inhibit replication of SARS-CoV-2 in Vero E6 cells with EC50 = 2.39 μM. Mechanistically, we found liquiritin exerts anti-viral function by mimicking type I interferon. Upregulated genes induced by liquiritin are enriched in GO categories including type I interferon signaling pathway, negative regulation of viral genome replication and etc. In toxicity experiment, no death was observed when treated at dose of 300 mg/kg for a week in ICR mice. All the organ indexes but liver and serum biochemical indexes were normal after treatment. Liquiritin is abundant in licorice tablet (~0.2% by mass), a traditional Chinese medicine. Together, we recommend liquiritin as a competitive candidate for treating COVID-19. We also expect liquiritin to have a broad and potent antiviral function to other viral pathogens, like HBV, HIV and etc.

The authors have declared no competing interest.

Forget Exercise—These Mice Got Ripped With Gene Therapy

A gene therapy trial performed on mice may foreshadow yet another way to hack fitness. In a study done by a team at Washington University in St. Louis’ medical school, mice quickly built muscle mass and reduced obesity after receiving the therapy, even while eating a diet high in fat and not exercising. The results were published last week in a paper in Science Advances.

The gene targeted was FST, which is responsible for making a protein called follistatin. In humans and most other mammals, follistatin helps grow muscle and control metabolism by blocking a protein called myostatin, which acts to restrain muscle growth and ensure muscles don’t get too big.

The researchers injected eight-week-old mice with a virus carrying a healthy FST gene (gene therapy involves adding healthy copies of a gene to cells, usually using a virus as a deliveryman).

Over a period of 18 weeks, or about 4 months, the team observed that the muscle mass of the treated mice more than doubled, as did their strength level. They also experienced reduced damage related to osteoarthritis, less inflammation in their joints, and had healthier hearts and blood vessels than mice that didn’t receive the gene therapy —even though all the mice ate the same high-fat diet and did the same amount of exercise.