The German start-up company ELiSE creates the DNA of a technical part. Based on the DNA, automated design processes are used to find the best solution which considers all predefined constraints and which is produced by additive manufacturing. Meet ELiSE at ESA’s Start-ups Zone powered by ESA space solutions at IAC 2018.
I don’t remember what it feels like to live without pain. At 15, I began feeling aching, stabbing, and burning sensations in my lower back and down my legs. Swallowing a few Aleve didn’t help—in fact, nothing did. If I sit or stand for any period of time, or lift something heavy or fall, I pay for it, sometimes for weeks or months. I’ve slept on the kitchen linoleum, because the carpet felt too soft to stand.
For 17 years, I went to doctor after doctor, undergoing scans, physical therapy, and just about every “alternative” treatment that promised relief. Despite some amazing doctors and the expensive tests at their disposal, they could never see anything wrong, so I never got a diagnosis.
That is, until a couple of years ago, when a routine CAT scan finally caught a structural problem with my spine. Because of that, I qualified to have a spinal cord stimulator, an electronic device used to treat chronic pain, implanted into my back. Although I was scared to go under the knife, I was more than willing to become a cyborg in order to find even partial relief. And this type of therapy might also be able to help some of the 100 million Americans who suffer from chronic pain.
Researchers don’t know much about whether people who aren’t diabetic should avoid having glucose spikes after meals, or whether, by contrast, average glucose levels are more important — things that need to be studied, he said.
“They’re right to be asking it. I don’t have data to give guidance on how to interpret it,” Bergenstal said. “I think they’re right to say it can’t be bad if I keep my blood sugars more stable. It’s a reasonable assumption, but we don’t have the data for it.”
It’s generally accepted that non-diabetics are better able to regulate their glucose levels. A higher than normal level, meanwhile, indicates prediabetes. But a new study out of Stanford University in late July that used CGMs on 57 participants, including diabetics and non-diabetics, had a surprising finding.
ATLANTA—A molecule produced during fasting or calorie restriction has anti-aging effects on the vascular system, which could reduce the occurrence and severity of human diseases related to blood vessels, such as cardiovascular disease, according to a study led by Georgia State University.
“As people become older, they are more susceptible to disease, like cancer, cardiovascular disease and Alzheimer’s disease,” said Dr. Ming-Hui Zou, senior author of the study, director of the Center for Molecular and Translational Medicine at Georgia State and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Molecular Medicine. “Age is the most important so-called risk factor for human disease. How to actually delay aging is a major pathway to reducing the incident and severity of human disease.
”The most important part of aging is vascular aging. When people become older, the vessels that supply different organs are the most sensitive and more subject to aging damage, so studying vascular aging is very important. This study is focused on vascular aging, and in old age, what kind of changes happen and how to prevent vascular aging.”
Today, we are going to take a look at the topic of NAD+, its precursor, nicotinamide mononucleotide, and the debate surrounding the ability of these molecules to pass through the cell membrane.
NAD+ is critical for cellular function
Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is a redox cofactor, but it is also a critical signaling molecule that regulates cell function and survival in response to environmental changes such as nutrient intake and cellular damage. Age-related changes to the level of NAD+ in the cell impacts mitochondrial function, nutrient sensing and metabolism, redox reactions, circadian rhythm, immune and inflammatory responses, DNA repair, cell division, protein-to-protein signaling, chromatin, and epigenetics.
Why the spike? For years, doctors doled out antibiotics willy-nilly. Even today, up to half of all prescribed antibiotics are unnecessary or used ineffectively.
Whenever antibiotics are used, some mutant bacteria survive. But the more an antibiotic is used, the more rapidly bacteria become resistant, reducing the effectiveness of the drug.
New treatments for superbugs are needed, but there have been no major novel antibiotic developments since the 1960s. That’s largely because pharmaceutical companies are abandoning antibiotic research. It’s time-consuming and expensive to bring a new drug to market — it takes about ten years and $2.9 billion, on average. So companies develop drugs that will make as much money as possible. Since drugs for chronic diseases make people life-long subscribers, and antibiotics are “one and done,” developers opt to make the former. Moreover, growing antibiotic resistance reduces the effective lifespan of new drugs, further limiting profits.
An interesting article in Forbes on GDF11, anti-aging drugs and companies:
For an example of how hard it is to develop an anti-aging medicine, check this out. It’s some of the coolest and creepiest science to have been published in major academic journals. But is it ready to form the basis of a pharmaceutical company?
A detailed analysis of Alzheimer’s disease.
Alzheimer’s disease was first discovered in 1907 in a 51 year old woman by the German physician Alzheimer. One of the first changes noticed was an eruption of jealous feelings towards her husband. It wasn’t long before symptoms of rapid memory impairment were observed. The impairments prevented her from finding her way out of her home, She hid herself, she would drag objects to and fro, and occasionally screamed because she believed people were out to kill her.
When she was institutionalized her gestures would show a complete helplessness. As common in most Alzheimer’s patients, she was disoriented as to time and place. At times she would state that she didn’t understand anything, felt confused, and totally lost. When the doctor came in to see her she would consider it as an official visit and would apologize for not having finished her work. Other times she would be terrified and start to yell that the doctor wanted to operate on her. Other times she would send him away in complete indignation uttering phrases indicating that she was afraid that the doctor wanted to damage her woman’s honor. At times she would become completely delirious, dragging her blankets and to and fro, calling for her husband and daughter, and seeming to experience auditory hallucinations. She would often scream for hours and hours in a horrible voice. Mental regression advanced quite steadily. After four and a half years of illness the patient finally died.
Alzheimer performed a postmortem examination of the woman’s brain. He paid special attention to changes in the “neurofibrils,” fibers in the cytoplasm of a nerve axon — elements of the cytoskeleton that can be stained by a silver solution.
