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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,831

I do love and believe in the benefits of 3D printing; however, as a technologist and concerned informed citizen I do worry about this technology getting the hands of drug lords, terrorists, and other criminals. With Medical 3D printing; illegal drug manufacturing can change overnight and expanded to new levels of mass production. Also, illegal weapon production can be enhanced as well with 3D printing.

At this point, law enforcement in 1st and 2nd world countries are going to face harder times than they ever have in the recent past and before. 3D Printing and AI are truly going to take an already difficult situation for government and their law enforcement teams extremely tough in the coming 3 to 5 years; and hope they and tech come together to figure out a good go forward plan to ensure right benefits are received and progress not slowed down while keeping everyone safe.

Materialise incorporates more than 25 years of 3D printing experience into a range of software solutions and 3D printing services, which together form the backbone of the 3D printing industry. Materialise’s open and flexible solutions enable players in a wide variety of industries, including healthcare, automotive, aerospace, art and design, and consumer goods, to build innovative 3D printing applications that aim to make the world a better and healthier place.

Fried Vancraen, CEO of Materialise – recently called upon industry stakeholders to come to an agreement for a common standard for measuring the clinical, economical and patient benefits of medical 3D printing.

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Don’t tell Forbes; but I believe it is too late given that 3D Printing has already been available to be purchased for some time now. In 2012, for $15K or even $32K you could get a 3D Printer why several jewelry houses had them to mass produce custom jewelry, etc. based on your online order request.

I am just amazing that we haven’t seen mass production of drugs, and other weapons and black market items developed by Cartels, and other criminals.

It’s only a matter of time until 3D printing begins to revolutionize how things are made — the technology, for example, is already being used to produce airplane parts and medical devices. The 3D printing market is projected to jump from $1.6 billion in 2015 to $13.4 billion 2018, per research firm Gartner.

3Dprinting

“The next industrial revolution will be 3D printing,” said Cynthia Slubowski, vice president and head of manufacturing and wholesale trade distribution at Zurich North America. “But what’s really interesting is not so much the 3D printer, but the materials they’re using to print these different products, like bio-medicines. That’s where we’re seeing huge advances. But with those types of materials comes risk.”

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We could see commercials for the “Spotless Mind” someday and in various releases. However, why stop there?

Recently, scientists did find the gene that ties serial and mass murders together as a cause for their evil deeds and CRISPR could someday eliminate these people from existing which is a great thing. However, what happens if folks in power believe everyone in Europe and the US cannot have any religious belief and/ or values in order (in their own belief) to keep everyone equal; so they use this technolgy to eradicate how people believe or view the world. Just imagine; like John Lennon’s “Imagine”.

Jim Carrey’s role as shy and morose Joel Barish in “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind” is deeply memorable in the context of his predominantly comedic repertoire of movie roles. And context is everything when it comes to recollection of memories. Though the kind of memory erasing technologies showcased in Eternal Sunshine may be too farfetched to ever become reality, scientists have nonetheless managed to make astounding progress in understanding and manipulating memories.

The most recent of these was the result of a joint study done in the US led by researchers at Dartmouth College, which also included scientists at Princeton, Bard College and the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. The researchers focused mainly on the contexts of our memories and how alterations made to these contexts can actually change our memories or even make us forget them. Using a specially designed brain mapping technology called “functional magnetic resonance imaging” (fMRI) the scientists constantly tracked thoughts related to memory contexts in the brains of the volunteer participants in the study.

Groups of participants were given two lists of random words to study while images of nature and scenery were shown to them. When they were told to forget the words, their brain scans revealed that participants were actually “flushing out” scenery-related brain activity. In contrast, there was no similar brain activity when they were asked to remember the words instead.

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CRISPR to take bio- and dirty-bombs to new levels.
Great; however, QC needs to be front and center on this; or, I see a bunch of funding spent on research that will be render useless by the time it goes to market due to the progress in QC.

I truly feel bad for the labs who are having to tests for bio- and dirty-bomb material. Really a dangerous job.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is looking for research proposals to develop a system that would enable the government and law enforcement to identify the actual individual behind a cyber attack.

The Enhanced Attribution Program proposal is looking to create the technology that would allow not only the collection of data that could pinpoint the perpetrator, but do so in a way that would not put at risk the sources and methods used to find the person or group. From DARPA’s perspective the need for this is quite straightforward.

“Malicious actors in cyberspace currently operate with little fear of being caught due to the fact that it is extremely difficult, in some cases perhaps even impossible, to reliably and confidently attribute actions in cyberspace to individuals,” DARPA wrote in the 43-page proposal.

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Garage startup (credit: Chase Dittmer)

By Director of UWA Centre for Software Practice, University of Western Australia

Pharmaceutical companies typically develop new drugs with thousands of staff and budgets that run into the billions of dollars. One estimate puts the cost of bringing a new drug to market at $2.6 billion with others suggesting that it could be double that cost at $5 billion.

One man, Professor Atul Butte, director of the University of California Institute of Computational Health Sciences, believes that like other Silicon Valley startups, almost anyone can bring a drug to market from their garage with just a computer, the internet, and freely available data.

In a talk given at the Science on the Swan conference held in Perth this week, Professor Butte outlined the process for an audience of local and international scientists and medics.

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Japanese scientists have reported the first successful skin-to-eye stem cell transplant in humans, where stem cells derived from a patient’s skin were transplanted into her eye to partially restore lost vision.

The patient, a 70-year-old woman diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) – the leading cause of vision impairment in older people – received the experimental treatment back in 2014 as part of a pilot study. Now, closing in on two years after the transplant took place, the scientists are sharing the results.

The researchers took a small piece of skin from her arm (4 mm in diameter) and modified its cells, effectively reprogramming them into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC).

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Something so simple and finally done to help so many.

Beautiful

Researchers at the University of California said the new system dramatically improves the ability of people with limited sight to read books, menus, newspapers and emails.

The camera is not limited to text: its makers said it can also recognise faces and products.

The research paper ‘Evaluation of a Portable Artificial Vision Device among Patients with Low Vision’ has been published in the US journal JAMA Ophthalmology.

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Nice

A study providing new information about neuropathic pain afflicting some 90 percent of cancer patients who have had nerve damage caused by tumors, surgery, chemotherapy or radiation indicates gene therapy as a possible treatment.

The study in rats showed transfer of a gene known as KCC2 into the spinal canal restored chloride levels gone awry after nerve injury. Results from the research at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, were published in the May 5 online issue of Cell Reports.

The results also could have implications for treatment of chronic pain due to diabetic neuropathy and spinal cord injury since neuropathic pain caused by these conditions is associated with reduced KCC2 activity.

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