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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,432

Fasting for 72 Hours Can Reboot the Entire Immune System, Research Shows

Anybody can cook, even if it’s only a fried egg – but not just anyone has the discipline to fast. This ancient practice of abstaining from eating for a day, or sometimes even a week or more has a history of curing a whole host of health problems, but even a brief fast can completely re-boot your immune system.

This practice isn’t without criticism by modern nutritionists and unbelievers, but research implies that when the body is hungry in short spurts, it can kick-start stem cells into producing new white blood cells.

White blood cells, also known as leukocytes, are the cells which the immune system uses to fight against foreign invaders like viruses and bad bacteria.

Meet the 8 Tech Titans Investing in Synthetic Biology

“DNA is like a computer program but far, far more advanced than any software ever created.” Bill Gates wrote this in 1995, long before synthetic biology – a scientific discipline focused on reading, writing, and editing DNA – was being harnessed to program living cells. Today, the cost to order a custom DNA sequence has fallen faster than Moore’s law; perhaps that’s why the Microsoft founder is turning a significant part of his attention, and wallet, towards this exciting field.

Bill Gates is not the only tech founder billionaire that sees a parallel between bits and biology, either. Many other tech founders – the same people that made their money programming 1s and 0s – are now investing in biotech founders poised to make their own fortunes by programming A’s, T’s, G’s and C’s.

The industry has raised more than $12.3B in the last 10 years and last year, 98 synthetic biology companies collectively raised $3.8 billion, compared to just under $400 million total invested less than a decade ago. Synthetic biology companies are disrupting nearly every industry, from agriculture to medicine to cell-based meats. Engineered microorganisms are even being used to produce more sustainable fabrics and manufacture biofuels from recycled carbon emissions.

Scientists Develop Gel That Can Regrow Tooth Enamel

Lifeb.

Once tooth enamel breaks or wears away it’s over – it doesn’t grow back. That’s why dentists have to plug in the gaps with artificial fillings. But now, a team of scientists from China’s Zhejiang University and Jiujiang Research Institute says it has finally figured out how to regrow tooth enamel, a development that could totally upend dental care. The team developed a gel that has been found to help mouse teeth regrow enamel within 48 hours. The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

parts of the tooth
What exactly is enamel and why can’t it regrow? It is a mineralized substance with a highly complicated structure that covers the surface of teeth. The structure is made up of enamel rods interwoven with inter-rods in a fish scale pattern which makes it the hardest tissue in the human body. It is initially formed biologically but once mature it becomes acellular, meaning it becomes devoid of the ability to self-repair. This is why cavities (tooth decay) are one of the most prevalent chronic diseases in humans.

Enamel is so complex that its structure has yet to be duplicated correctly artificially. Resins, ceramics and amalgam fillings can mend the problem but they are not a forever fix. The fact that they are made of foreign materials means they can’t achieve a permanent repair. The new gel made by the Chinese scientists is different because it is made of the same material as enamel. It is made by mixing calcium and phosphate ions – both minerals which are found in enamel – with the chemical called triethylamine in an alcohol solution.

The first observation of a stable torus of fluid’s resonance frequencies

A team of researchers at Laroche Laboratory, Université Paris Diderot and Université de Lyon has recently collected the first measurements of the resonance frequencies of a stable torus of fluid. The method they used to collect these observations, outlined in a paper published in Physical Review Letters, could enable the modeling of a variety of large-scale structures that transiently arise in vortex rings.

Vortex rings are torus-shaped vortexes that can appear in both liquids and gases in a variety of settings. In nature, there are several examples of these vortex rings, including underwater bubble rings produced by divers or dolphins, smoke rings, and blood rings in the human heart.

“Although it has been shown that the dynamics of a vortex ring are dominated by large-scale structures at its periphery, the mechanisms governing their appearance are not well understood, reflecting to a large extent the experimental difficulties in generating a stable liquid torus under well-controlled conditions,” Eric Falcon, one of the researchers who carried out the recent study, told Phys.org. “It is in this context that we wanted to make a fluid ring stable.”

World’s First Surviving Septuplets

Many of us would love to have a baby, some of us even two or three. But what about having seven of them? It might sound manageable, but now think about having all seven of them at the same time. In the age of medical innovation, fertility treatment has aided many women in getting pregnant. This is the story of a couple who couldn’t have a baby, and then had seven. The years have passed, and now those little septuplets are young adults, making them the oldest surviving septuplets. What a journey it has been for the McCaughey family.

It seems natural to have a baby, and recently it has become natural to take advantage of medical innovation to help you get there. In the case of women who can’t fall pregnant, there are some different methods of getting there. Fertility treatment isn’t uncommon and it is practiced in many countries across the globe. Even though it is an accepted method in many places, there are those that aren’t in favor of it. Some religious groups believe that it is against God’s will to interfere with the natural course of creating life. Their claim is that if God wants to give life he will, and if it is not meant to be then it will not materialize.

Artificial Intelligence Detects Heart Failure From One Heartbeat With 100% Accuracy

Amazing 100% I hope it is real and next we can detect more diseases easier and more accurate.

Doctors can detect heart failure from a single heartbeat with 100% accuracy using a new artificial intelligence-driven neural network.

That’s according to a recent study published in Biomedical Signal Processing and Control Journal, which explores how emerging technology can improve existing methods of detecting congestive heart failure.

Led by researchers at the Universities of Surrey, Warwick and Florence, it shows that AI can quickly and accurately identify CHF by analyzing one electrocardiogram (ECG) heartbeat.

New health monitors are flexible, transparent and graphene enabled

New technological devices are prioritizing non-invasive tracking of vital signs, not only for fitness monitoring, but also for the prevention of common health problems such as heart failure, hypertension and stress-related complications, among others. Wearables based on optical detection mechanisms are proving an invaluable approach for reporting on our bodies inner workings and have experienced a large penetration into the consumer market in recent years. Current wearable technologies, based on non-flexible components, do not deliver the desired accuracy and can only monitor a limited number of vital signs. To tackle this problem, conformable non-invasive optical-based sensors that can measure a broader set of vital signs are at the top of the end-users’ wish list.

In a recent study published in Science Advances, ICFO researchers have demonstrated a new class of flexible and transparent devices that are conformable to the skin and can provide continuous and accurate measurements of multiple human vital signs. These devices can measure heart rate, respiration rate and blood pulse oxygenation, as well as exposure to UV radiation from the sun. While the device measures the different parameters, the read-out is visualized and stored on a mobile phone interface connected to the wearable via Bluetooth. In addition, the device can operate battery-free since it is charged wirelessly through the phone.

“It was very important for us to demonstrate the wide range of potential applications for our advanced light sensing technology through the creation of various prototypes, including the flexible and transparent bracelet, the health patch integrated on a mobile phone and the UV monitoring patch for sun exposure. They have shown to be versatile and efficient due to these unique features,” reports Dr. Emre Ozan Polat, first author of this publication.

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