Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,126

Cybathlon: The Cybathlon is a multi-sport event

The is a multi-sport event, an international competition in which people with physical disabilities compete against each other to complete everyday tasks using state-of-the-art technical assistance Systems (“pilots”). Besides the actual competition, the offers a platform to drive forward research on assistance systems for everyday use, and to promote dialogue with the public.

The first organised by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETH Zurich) took place in the Swiss Arena in Kloten north of Zurich in Switzerland on 8 October 2016 and was the first international competition of this kind.[1][2][3] 66 pilots from 25 nations competed in front of a stadium with approximately 4600 spectators.

The next takes place on 13–14 November 2020 in a new format at the teams’ home base instead of in the Swiss Arena in Kloten, Zurich as it had been planned[4]. This is due to the COVID-19 pandemic which requires measures such as social distancing to be adhered. Termed the “Global Edition”, teams will set up their infrastructure for the competition at their home base and capture their races on video instead of competing physically next to each other in Zurich. officials will supervise the pilots which will start individually [5].

Pfizer says coronavirus vaccine study shows mostly mild-to-moderate side effects

Pfizer Inc said on Tuesday participants were showing mild-to-moderate side effects when given either the company’s experimental coronavirus vaccine or a placebo in an ongoing late-stage study.

(Reuters) — Pfizer Inc PFE.N said on Tuesday participants were showing mostly mild-to-moderate side effects when given either the company’s experimental coronavirus vaccine or a placebo in an ongoing late-stage study.

The company said in a presentation to investors that side effects included fatigue, headache, chills and muscle pain. Some participants in the trial also developed fevers — including a few high fevers. The data is blinded, meaning Pfizer does not know which patients received the vaccine or a placebo.

Kathrin Jansen, Pfizer’s head of vaccine research and development, stressed that the independent data monitoring committee “has access to unblinded data so they would notify us if they have any safety concerns and have not done so to date.”

Twist on CRISPR Gene Editing Treats Adult-Onset Muscular Dystrophy in Mice

Myotonic dystrophy type I is the most common type of adult-onset muscular dystrophy. People with the condition inherit repeated DNA segments that lead to the toxic buildup of repetitive RNA, the messenger that carries a gene’s recipe to the cell’s protein-making machinery. As a result, people born with myotonic dystrophy experience progressive muscle wasting and weakness and a wide variety of other debilitating symptoms.

CRISPR-Cas9 is a technique increasingly used in efforts to correct the genetic (DNA) defects that cause a variety of diseases. A few years ago, University of California San Diego School of Medicine researchers redirected the technique to instead modify RNA in a method they call RNA-targeting Cas9 (RCas9).

In a new study, publishing September 14, 2020 in Nature Biomedical Engineering, the team demonstrates that one dose of RCas9 gene therapy can chew up toxic RNA and almost completely reverse symptoms in a mouse model of myotonic dystrophy.

Revolutionary Solid-state Batteries Will Create a $6 Billion Market in 2030

BOSTON, July 27, 2020 /PRNewswire/ — Solid-state batteries keep on attracting tremendous attention and investment with the maturing technologies and closeness to mass production. Even with the influence of COVID-19, the potential market size is expected to grow to over $6 billion by 2030, according to IDTechEx’s report “Solid-State and Polymer Batteries 2020–2030: Technology, Patents, Forecasts, Players.”

Chinese virologist posts report claiming COVID-19 was made in Wuhan lab

A Chinese virologist who has alleged that COVID-19 was human-made in a lab in China released a report on Monday that she says backs up her explosive claim.

Dr. Li-Meng Yan, a former researcher at the Hong Kong School of Public Health, posted a paper on the open-access repository website Zenote, that she claims shows how SARS-CoV-2 could be “conveniently created” in a laboratory setting in six months.

The paper, co-authored with two others, is titled “Unusual Features of the SARS-CoV-2 Genome Suggesting Sophisticated Laboratory Modification Rather Than Natural Evolution and Delineation of Its Probable Synthetic Route.”

The human story of how ventilators came to breathe for us

Medical Ethics and “Futility” (Note: Listen here function)

We breathe about 12 to 20 times a minute, without having to think. Inhale: and air flows through the mouth and nose, into the trachea. The bronchi stem out like a wishbone, and keep branching, dividing and dividing, and finally feeding out into the tiny air sacs of alveoli. Capillaries – blood vessels thinner than hairs – twine around each alveolus. Both the air sac and the blood vessel are tiny, delicate, one cell thick: portals where blood (the atmosphere of the body) meets air (atmosphere of the world). Oxygen passes from air to blood; carbon dioxide, from blood to air. Then, the exhale pushes that carbon dioxide back out the mouth and nose. Capillaries channel newly oxygenated blood back to the heart. That oxygen fuels the body. That’s why we breathe.

Today, these basics of human respiration and metabolism feel obvious – and ventilators, the machines that breathe for sick people, do, too. We have so many medical devices, so of course we’d need, and have, machines that help us to breathe. But there’s a strange, and deeply human, story behind how we learned to breathe for each other. It starts long ago, when we didn’t understand breathing at all. When the body’s failure to breathe was incomprehensible, incurable, and fatal. When we had no way of knowing how badly we needed ventilators to keep people alive through those moments of vulnerability, lest those moments be their last.

Medical TV shows have accustomed us to the sight of doctors moving quickly to keep the sickest patients alive – but that link between hurry and success hasn’t always existed. Up to 100-odd years ago, for most of human history, when doctors had a dying patient, they rushed to do what they knew, but the patient died anyway. It doesn’t matter if you hurry or move slowly if your ‘cures’ don’t work. Ventilation, the linchpin of critical care medicine, changed that. Doctors could save some of the dying. That new technology helped bring medicine from hopes and crossed fingers to saving lives.

Dr. Brian Kennedy — Preventive Medicine in an Aging Society

At our first online conference, Ending Age-Related Diseases 2020, Dr. Brian Kennedy of the National University of Singapore discussed the aging population of Singapore, the need for comprehensive healthcare, alpha-ketoglutarate and its effects against frailty in mice, ongoing trials of ketoglutarate in humans, spermidine against obesity, the role of biomarkers, and the importance of keeping people well rather than simply treating them when they are sick.

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