Facial paralysis suffered by thousands of Britons is being treated by pioneering NHS specialists with virtual-reality computer game-style technology.
The therapy could be used to help patients who find it too traumatic to look at their own ‘changed’ reflections after the paralysis.
The virtual-reality (VR) goggles encourage sufferers to carry out the regular facial exercises needed to regain muscle function – with the wearer watching an avatar’s face doing the exercises rather than their own.
Increasing the level of autophagy might be the key to effective treatment of heart disease.
Today we will be looking at a new study that is attempting to treat atherosclerosis, one of the biggest age-related killers globally. As we age, our risk of developing atherosclerosis rises along with related conditions, such as hypertension.
We will be taking a look at new research that has reversed atherosclerosis in mice and is on the road to clinical trials in the future. Before we do that, let’s talk a little bit about how the disease develops and how macrophages work.
What is Atherosclerosis?
Atherosclerosis is an age-related disease where toxic, oxidized cholesterol deposits in the blood stream causes inflammation in the artery wall. This causes macrophages to swarm to the toxic cholesterol deposits, and become either M1 inflammatory or M2 healing cell types depending on the signals there.
As embedded intelligence is finding its way into ever more areas of our lives, fields ranging from autonomous driving to personalized medicine are generating huge amounts of data. But just as the flood of data is reaching massive proportions, the ability of computer chips to process it into useful information is stalling.
Now, researchers at Stanford University and MIT have built a new chip to overcome this hurdle. The results are published today in the journal Nature, by lead author Max Shulaker, an assistant professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. Shulaker began the work as a PhD student alongside H.-S. Philip Wong and his advisor Subhasish Mitra, professors of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford. The team also included professors Roger Howe and Krishna Saraswat, also from Stanford.
Computers today comprise different chips cobbled together. There is a chip for computing and a separate chip for data storage, and the connections between the two are limited. As applications analyze increasingly massive volumes of data, the limited rate at which data can be moved between different chips is creating a critical communication “bottleneck.” And with limited real estate on the chip, there is not enough room to place them side-by-side, even as they have been miniaturized (a phenomenon known as Moore’s Law).
A new approach to treating diabetes sees gene therapy altering other cells in the pancreas so they produce insulin to replace the beta cells that are attacked by the immune system.
Progress has been made towards a potential solution to type 1 diabetes. The novel approach seeks to cure type 1 diabetes and to allow type 2 diabetics to stop using insulin shots by altering other cells in the pancreas so they produce insulin.
The research team based at UT Health San Antonio have found a way to increase the types of pancreatic cells that secrete insulin. The team are now moving towards starting clinical trials in the next three year but they are first testing the approach in larger sized animals, these studies are believed to cost an estimated $5 million.
These studies will pave the way for an application to the FDA for Investigational New Drug (IND) approval which will hopefully see the new therapy moving into clinical trials and ultimately to the people who need it.
An article discussing the benefits of rejuvenation for your friends and family.
Rejuvenation biotechnologies would bring significant benefits to individuals, but these benefits would indirectly extend to their families and friends too. The ways they can benefit from the rejuvenation of others might be not so obvious, so let’s have a look at them together.
Nearly everyone knows how terrible it is to lose people dear to you. Maybe your grandparents died when you were a child, and that might have been your first encounter with death, at an age when you still couldn’t properly comprehend it. Maybe it happened suddenly, or maybe your grandparents have suffered for long before passing away. Eventually, the moment comes when you start thinking that the same fate awaits your parents, your siblings, your friends. Rejuvenation would spare you seeing your elderly relatives and friends wilt away, suffer and die, because none of that would happen to them. Of course, rejuvenation would spare this pain to your friends and relatives too. Your children and grandchildren would never have to see you become sicker and sicker as you age, and would never—in principle—have to bury you. Today, being 80 means you often have to attend the funeral of a dear friend who passed away. People who have been important parts of your life just keep dying.
