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Category: biotech/medical – Page 36

Wearable ultrasound patch boosts REM sleep without drugs or surgery

REM sleep disruptions have been associated with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Current approaches to sleep problems, including medication and behavioral therapy, may cause side effects or may not directly address the underlying factors that interfere with REM sleep.

Future Trials for Insomnia, Depression and PTSD

The team plans to conduct larger studies to verify the initial results and evaluate whether NEUSLeeP could help people with PTSD, depression and chronic insomnia. The researchers also see potential uses in home sleep monitoring, neuroscience research and personalized sleep treatments.

A Florida diver, after more than 20,000 dives, built an underwater nursery that grew 25,000 threatened corals for dying reefs

Along Florida’s barrier reef, the only living coral barrier reef in the United States and the third largest barrier reef system in the world, marine scientists and coastal communities have witnessed decades of severe ecological collapse. Widespread coral bleaching, rising sea surface temperatures, ocean acidification, and infectious conditions such as stony coral tissue loss disease have drastically reduced historic living coral cover across the Florida Keys.

Drug temporarily reverses autism-like brain changes in adult mice within hours

A new mouse study led by UCLA Health suggests that inflammation during pregnancy can trigger autism-like changes in offspring, but those brain and behavioral effects may be rapidly, though temporarily, reversible in adulthood with a single dose of the immunosuppressive drug rapamycin.

Even mild inflammation during midpregnancy has been shown to result in autism-like symptoms in offspring, abnormal brain growth, seizures and heightened sensitivity to everyday sensory input that persist into adulthood.

In the study published in the journal Nature Communications, UCLA researchers found that a single dose of rapamycin significantly improved brain signaling and behavioral symptoms in these offspring within about two hours, too short a time to correct underlying physical brain changes caused by maternal inflammation.

Researchers Find a Way To Make Pancreatic Cancer Visible to the Immune System

A combination treatment exposed hidden pancreatic cancer cells to the immune system, reduced their spread, and helped mice live longer.

Researchers at the University of Minnesota Medical School have uncovered one reason pancreatic cancer is so difficult for the immune system to recognize and attack. The discovery points to a potential way to make immunotherapy more effective against a disease that has historically resisted many immune-based treatments.

The findings, published in Science Immunology, show that some pancreatic cancer cells can avoid destruction by shutting down the molecular system that normally reveals them to immune cells. Once these cells become harder to detect, they are more likely to survive, spread, and establish tumors elsewhere in the body.

Repurposing deep-Earth tools in the hunt for practical superconductors

If scientists could find a material that acts as a superconductor—that is, one that transmits energy with zero resistance—at normal pressures and relatively high temperatures, it would open up a vast number of possibilities. These include medical imaging, quantum computing and numerous other fields. So, yes, it would be a big deal.

“Right now, almost 50% of the energy in transmission is just heat in copper wires,” said Shomeek Mukhopadhyay. “If you can transmit electricity through wires without dissipating energy, that’s a huge economic benefit. I would say it’s equivalent to having thermonuclear fusion.”

Mukhopadhyay, a research scientist in Chemical & Environmental Engineering, is on the third floor of the Kline Geology Laboratory. Nearby, Natalia Nevskaya, a postdoctoral associate in Earth & Planetary Sciences, prepares a massive device called the Kawai multi-anvil press.

An elegant modification doubles the range of low-noise ‘white lasers’ in a single fiber

Supercontinuum light sources—often called “white lasers” because they emit a broad, continuous rainbow of colors—are essential tools for everything from advanced medical imaging to environmental gas detection. However, researchers have historically faced a frustrating trade-off: A broad spectrum comes at the expense of high fluctuations, which has effectively limited their use.

Now, a research team at DTU Electro has found an elegant way to bypass this limitation.

In a newly published study in Optica, the team demonstrated how to double the usable wavelength range of an ultra-low-noise supercontinuum laser. Their system successfully spans from 0.86 to 2.90 micrometers, nearly doubling the spectral range previously achieved by comparable low-noise systems while maintaining an astonishingly stable noise level.

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