A bioengineer highlights the potential of low-intensity ultrasound for multiple uses, from enhanced drug delivery to the brain to combating cancer
Category: biotech/medical – Page 397
Brain Implant ‘Streams’ a Paralyzed Woman’s Thoughts as If She’s Speaking in Near Real Time
The system, which also synthesizes her voice, takes no more than a second to translate thoughts to speech.
Programmable pixels could advance infrared light applications
Without the ability to control infrared light waves, autonomous vehicles wouldn’t be able to quickly map their environment and keep “eyes” on the cars and pedestrians around them; augmented reality couldn’t display realistic 3D displays; doctors would lose an important tool for early cancer detection. Dynamic light control allows for upgrades to many existing systems, but complexities associated with fabricating programmable thermal devices hinder availability.
A new active metasurface, the electrically-programmable graphene field effect transistor (Gr-FET), from the labs of Sheng Shen and Xu Zhang in Carnegie Mellon University’s College of Engineering, enables the control of mid-infrared states across a wide range of wavelengths, directions, and polarizations. This enhanced control enables advancements in applications ranging from infrared camouflage to personalized health monitoring.
“For the first time, our active metasurface devices exhibited the monolithic integration of the rapidly modulated temperature, addressable pixelated imaging, and resonant infrared spectrum,” said Xiu Liu, postdoctoral associate in mechanical engineering and lead author of the paper published in Nature Communications. “This breakthrough will be of great interest to a wide range of infrared photonics, materials science, biophysics, and thermal engineering audiences.”
A breakthrough moment: Researchers discover new class of antibiotics
The last time a new class of antibiotics reached the market was nearly three decades ago—but that could soon change, thanks to a discovery by researchers at McMaster University.
A team led by researcher Gerry Wright has identified a strong candidate to challenge even some of the most drug-resistant bacteria on the planet: a new molecule called lariocidin. The findings were published in the journal Nature on March 26, 2025.
The discovery of the all-new class of antibiotics responds to a critical need for new antimicrobial medicines, as bacteria and other microorganisms evolve new ways to withstand existing drugs. This phenomenon is called antimicrobial resistance—or AMR—and it’s one of the top global public health threats, according to the World Health Organization.
Critical blood defense receptor CD163 mapped for first time
CD163 might not be the most exciting name in the world, but behind it lies one of the body’s most important defense receptors, which steps in when red blood cells break down and release harmful hemoglobin. Now, researchers at Aarhus University are the first in the world to have mapped how CD163 functions. The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.
When infections such as malaria take hold in the body, red blood cells can be severely affected and risk breaking down. When that happens, hemoglobin is released into the bloodstream, potentially causing oxidative damage.
The damage occurs because cells are exposed to reactive oxygen molecules, which form in the bloodstream when oxygen comes into contact with free hemoglobin. If the body is exposed to excessive oxidative damage, it can cause blood vessel damage, kidney failure, inflammation, blood clots and cell death in vital organs.
Quantum fiber optics in the brain enhance processing, may protect against degenerative diseases
The effects of quantum mechanics—the laws of physics that apply at exceedingly small scales—are extremely sensitive to disturbances. This is why quantum computers must be held at temperatures colder than outer space, and only very, very small objects, such as atoms and molecules, generally display quantum properties.
By quantum standards, biological systems are quite hostile environments: they’re warm and chaotic, and even their fundamental components—such as cells—are considered very large.
But a group of theoretical and experimental researchers has discovered a distinctly quantum effect in biology that survives these difficult conditions and may also present a way for the brain to protect itself from degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s.
Abstract: An innovative enabling whole-body PET imaging across several types of malignant tumors!
Lei Xia et al. report on a B7H3-targeting radiotracer for PET imaging of various malignant tumors and for non-invasive screening of B7H3 expression:
The figure shows dynamic PET imaging of selected organs using the radiolabled 68Ga-B7H3-BCH probe.
1Key laboratory of Carcinogenesis and Translational Research (Ministry of Education), Beijing Key Laboratory of Research, Investigation and Evaluation of Radiopharmaceuticals, NMPA Key Laboratory for Research and Evaluation of Radiopharmaceuticals (National Medical Products Administration), Department of Nuclear Medicine, Peking University Cancer Hospital and Institute, Beijing, China and.
2Key Laboratory of Carcinogenesis and Translational Research (Ministry of Education, Beijing), Department of Pathology, Peking University Cancer Hospital and Institute, Beijing, China.
3Department of Nuclear Medicine, Affiliated Hospital of Zunyi Medical University, Zunyi, Guizhou, China.
US: Brain-to-speech breakthrough helps paralyzed people talk again
The key to this development is an AI-powered streaming method. By decoding brain signals directly from the motor cortex – the brain’s speech control center – the AI synthesizes audible speech almost instantly.
“Our streaming approach brings the same rapid speech decoding capacity of devices like Alexa and Siri to neuroprostheses,” said Gopala Anumanchipalli, co-principal investigator of the study.
Anumanchipalli added, “Using a similar type of algorithm, we found that we could decode neural data and, for the first time, enable near-synchronous voice streaming. The result is more naturalistic, fluent speech synthesis.”