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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,597

How high-tech toilets could soon be tracking your every movement

The bathroom is arguably the last bastion of privacy, but soon a new high-tech lavatory could be tracking your every movement.

Researchers at the European Space Agency (ESA) and MIT have teamed up with sanitation specialists to create the ‘FitLoo’ which screens human waste for early signs of disease.

Data gathered by the sensors in the toilet bowl could be beamed to the users mobile phone so they can see how their health is changing or even directly to the GP so they could keep a remote eye on patients.

A Bold New Strategy for Stopping the Rise of Superbugs

Over the past 90 years, scientists have discovered hundreds of antibiotics—microbe-killing drugs that have brought many pernicious diseases to heel. But every time researchers identify a new drug, bacteria inevitably evolve to resist it within a matter of years. We thrust; they parry. Now, with the flow of new antibiotics having dried up for decades, our stalemated duel with infectious bacteria threatens to end in outright defeat. Superbugs are ascendant around the world, including those that resist all commonly used drugs.

Scientists have pinpointed a molecule that accelerates the evolution of drug-resistant microbes. Now they’re trying to find a way to block it.

Human images from world’s first total-body scanner unveiled

EXPLORER, the world’s first medical imaging scanner that can capture a 3D picture of the whole human body at once, has produced its first scans.

The brainchild of UC Davis scientists Simon Cherry and Ramsey Badawi, EXPLORER is a combined (PET) and X-ray computed tomography (CT) that can image the entire body at the same time. Because the machine captures radiation far more efficiently than other scanners, EXPLORER can produce an image in as little as one second and, over time, produce movies that can track specially tagged drugs as they move around the entire body.

The developers expect the technology will have countless applications, from improving diagnostics to tracking disease progression to researching new drug therapies.

Next generation of biotech food heading for grocery stores

WASHINGTON (AP) — The next generation of biotech food is headed for the grocery aisles, and first up may be salad dressings or granola bars made with soybean oil genetically tweaked to be good for your heart.

By early next year, the first foods from plants or animals that had their DNA “edited” are expected to begin selling. It’s a different technology than today’s controversial “genetically modified” foods, more like faster breeding that promises to boost nutrition, spur crop growth, and make farm animals hardier and fruits and vegetables last longer.

The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has declared gene editing one of the breakthroughs needed to improve food production so the world can feed billions more people amid a changing climate. Yet governments are wrestling with how to regulate this powerful new tool. And after years of confusion and rancor, will shoppers accept gene-edited foods or view them as GMOs in disguise?