Lifeboat Foundation

What drove David Sengeh to create a more comfortable prosthetic limb? He grew up in Sierra Leone, and too many of the people he loves are missing limbs after the brutal civil war there. When he noticed that people who had prosthetics weren’t actually wearing them, he set out to discover why — and to solve the problem with his team from the MIT Media Lab.

TEDTalks is a daily video podcast of the best talks and performances from the TED Conference, where the world’s leading thinkers and doers give the talk of their lives in 18 minutes (or less). Look for talks on Technology, Entertainment and Design — plus science, business, global issues, the arts and much more.

Continue reading “David Sengeh: The sore problem of prosthetic limbs” »

Research is edging us closer to a cure for type 1 diabetes, with encapsulated insulin producing cells that could last for years — ending daily injections

Over 400,000 in the UK alone live with type 1 diabetes, and daily injections are far from a ‘cure’ for the condition. Although these have saved millions worldwide, they’re inaccurate in comparison to the body’s own finely tuned insulin producing cells. This leads to progressive damage and complications.

The wonders of cell therapy

Continue reading “Breakthrough Diabetes Cell Therapy Could Be A Game Changer” »

No more spilled soup or coffee.

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Cancer is a mysterious disease for many reasons. Chief among the unknowns are how and why tumors form.

Two University of Iowa studies offer key insights by recording in real time, and in 3-D, the movements of cancerous human breast tissue cells. It’s believed to be the first time cancer cells’ motion and accretion into tumors has been continuously tracked. (See accompanying videos.)

The team discovered that cancerous cells actively recruit healthy cells into tumors by extending a cable of sorts to grab their neighbors—both cancerous and healthy—and reel them in. Moreover, the Iowa researchers report that as little as five percent of cancerous cells are needed to form the tumors, a ratio that heretofore had been unknown.

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An international team of researchers has developed a new algorithm that could one day help scientists reprogram cells to plug any kind of gap in the human body. The computer code model, called Mogrify, is designed to make the process of creating pluripotent stem cells much quicker and more straightforward than ever before.

A pluripotent stem cell is one that has the potential to become any type of specialised cell in the body: eye tissue, or a neural cell, or cells to build a heart. In theory, that would open up the potential for doctors to regrow limbs, make organs to order, and patch up the human body in all kinds of ways that aren’t currently possible.

It was Japanese researcher Shinya Yamanaka who first reprogrammed cells in this way back in 2007 — it later earned him a Nobel Prize — but Yamanaka’s work involved a lot of labourious trial and error, and the process he followed is not an easy one to reproduce. Mogrify aims to compute the required set of factors to change cells instead, and it’s passed its early tests with flying colours.

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As recently as 50 years ago, psychiatry lacked a scientific foundation, the medical community considered mental illness a disorder of the mind, and mental patients were literally written off as “sick in the head.” A fortunate turn in progress has yielded today’s modern imaging devices, which allow neuroscientists and psychiatrists to examine the brain of an individual suffering from a mental disorder and provide the best treatment options. In a recent interview, Columbia University Psychiatry Chair Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman stated that new research into understanding the mind is growing at an accelerated pace.

(iStock)

Lieberman noted that, just as Galileo couldn’t prove heliocentrism until he had a telescope, psychiatry lacked the technological sophistication, tools, and instruments necessary to get an understanding of the brain until the 1950s. It wasn’t until the advent of psychopharmacology and neuroimaging, he said, that researchers could look inside the so-called black box that is the brain.

“(It began with) the CAT scan, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) systems, positron emission tomography (PET scans) and then molecular genetics. Most recently, the burgeoning discipline of neuroscience and all of the methods within, beginning with molecular biology and progressing to optogenetics, this capacity has given researchers the ability to deconstruct the brain, understand its integral components, its mechanisms of action and how they underpin mental function and behavior,” Lieberman said. “The momentum that has built is almost like Moore’s law with computer chips, (and) you see this increasing power occurring with exponential sort of growth.”

Continue reading “How Technology Changes the Way We Diagnose and Treat Mental Illness” »

The things we need to know for the 2016 robotic experience — robot clusters, manufacturing & logistics, food & healthcare, A3 Mexico Coming Soon and robotics integration.

Bold predictions for Collaboration, Connectivity and Convergence rang in 2015. One industry insider even called them prescient. Looking back a year later, we see the five-year forecast materializing faster than expected.

Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT) is more than a buzzword. With drones taking to the skies and autonomous robots navigating our warehouses, local eateries, hotels, hospitals, and stores, and soon our roadways – the differences between industrial, collaborative, and service robots continue to blur. No longer are robots reserved for multinational conglomerates or the rich eccentric with a sweet tooth for high-tech toys. SMEs and your average homeowner can now join the party. Sensors, software, and hardware are getting smarter and cheaper. We’re democratizing robotics for the masses.

Continue reading “2016 – The Year of Robot Democratization?” »

My new story: The FDA (Food and Drug Administration) is holding medicine back and limiting your lifespan as we enter the Transhumanist age. There are options.

The FDA is holding America back as we enter the transhumanist age.

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Further progress with telomeres by Maria Blasco which clearly demonstrates the link between telomeres and aging and why they are a primary “clock”.

“These findings suggest that it is the ability of different species to maintain telomeres rather than average telomere length per se that may be determinant of species longevity”

So if we maintain telomeres (either directly or by repairing the cause of that damage) as many biologically immortal creatures do could we expect to see life extension? So far in animals tested that answer is yes! Its not the only thing that needs to be addressed to combat aging but it looks like an important one.

Continue reading “F1000Research Article: Telomeres and telomerase as therapeutic targets to prevent and treat age-related diseases” »