Diverse gut microbiomes protect against pathogens by blocking nutrient access, according to a new Science study. The findings highlight why microbiome diversity is important to human health.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 679
Targeted MRI detects chronic liver disease
Chronic liver diseases such as hepatitis, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma are a major cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Fibrosis—the thickening and scarring of connective tissue—plays a major role in these liver diseases but detection of fibrosis is limited to biopsy, which suffers from limitations including the risk of complications, sampling only a tiny fraction of the liver, and an inability to serially monitor disease progression due to its invasive nature.
To provide better diagnosis and treatment of chronic liver diseases, researchers are working to use non-invasive magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to detect and quantify liver fibrosis throughout the entire organ, which would enable earlier detection and the ability to monitor disease progression as well as the effects of treatment over time.
Adapting MRI for detecting chronic conditions such as fibrosis involves the development of tissue-specific MRI contrast agents that target diseased tissue such as the collagen that accumulates in fibrotic liver. To develop such agents, researchers have been challenged to design and synthesize compounds that must find and bind the tissue target, provide a strong signal under MRI, and rapidly clear from the system to minimize any toxicity.
Immune Cells Hold the Key to Biological Aging
Summary: Scientists are using epigenetic clocks to reveal our biological age, a true marker of health.
A new study delves into the immune system’s role in understanding and improving the accuracy of these clocks. Their innovative approach sheds light on the relationship between immune cell composition and biological age, with a focus on the balance between naïve and memory immune cells.
This research has significant implications for aging insights, health interventions, and targeted cancer treatments.
Using AI to Identify High Risk Patients With Asthma and COPD
YSM researchers are using deeplearning AI models to improve detection of patients at risk for multiple hospitalizations due to asthma and COPD.
Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) are two of the most common lung diseases worldwide, and exacerbation of these conditions can negatively impact health and increase health care costs. A new study shows that deep learning, a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that uses large amounts of data to process information, can improve detection of patients with these diseases who are at increased risk for multiple hospitalizations.
The study was published Dec. 13, 2023, in the journal Respiratory Research.
In the study, researchers identified electronic health record (EHR) characteristics of severe asthma and COPD exacerbations. They then evaluated four machine learning models and one deep learning model in predicting hospital readmissions using EHR data. The researchers found that multilayer perceptron, a deep learning method, had the best performance.
Soft microrobots with super-compliant picoforce springs as onboard sensors and actuators
The integration of mechanical memory in the form of springs has for hundreds of years proven to be a key enabling technology for mechanical devices (such as clocks), achieving advanced functionality through complex autonomous movements. Currently, the integration of springs in silicon-based microtechnology has opened the world of planar mass-producible mechatronic devices from which we all benefit, via air-bag sensors for example.
For a new generation of minimally and even non-invasive biomedical applications however, mobile devices that can safely interact mechanically with cells must be achieved at much smaller scales (10 microns) and with much softer forces (pico Newton scale, i.e., lifting weights less than one millionth of a mg) and in customized three-dimensional shapes.
Researchers at the Chemnitz University of Technology, the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Leibniz IFW Dresden, in a recent publication in Nature Nanotechnology, have demonstrated that controllable springs can be integrated at arbitrary chosen locations within soft three-dimensional structures using confocal photolithographic manufacturing (with nanoscale precision) of a novel magnetically active material in the form of a photoresist impregnated with customizable densities of magnetic nanoparticles.
Human brain cells hooked up to a chip can do speech recognition
Scientists have grown a tiny brain-like organoid out of human stem cells, hooked it up to a computer, and demonstrated its potential as a kind of organic machine learning chip, showing it can quickly pick up speech recognition and math predictions.
Clusters of brain cells grown in the lab have shown potential as a new type of hybrid bio-computer.
Scientists Have Been Studying Your Pee and They Finally Have Answers
Until now, scientists somehow didn’t know exactly what made pee yellow.
But that just may have finally changed. In a new study published in the journal Nature Microbiology, a multidisciplinary group of scientists out of the University of Maryland reported on their findings about a middleman enzyme called bilirubin reductase, which had long evaded researchers as they tried to figure out which precise compounds resulted in urine’s distinct yellow hue.
To be clear, as Healthline reports, scientists had known for more than 125 years that on a high level, urine gets its color from the disposal of old red blood cells as they degrade in our livers.
New Dangerous Cyberattacks Target AI Systems
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עברית (Hebrew)
A new report by Computer scientists from the National Institute of Standards and Technology presents new kinds of cyberattacks that can “poison” AI systems.
AI systems are being integrated into more and more aspects of our lives, from driving vehicles to helping doctors diagnose illnesses to interacting with customers as online chatbots. To perform these tasks the models are trained on vast amounts of data, which in turn helps the AI predict how to respond in a given situation.
Sinai unveils targeted DNA enrichment method for microbiome research
Who knew tweezers could get an upgrade? Check out how a smart ‘tweezer’ machine is changing the game by selectively harvesting beneficial bacteria in our latest article!
Researchers introduce mEnrich-seq, a game-changing approach in microbiome investigation. See how it detects elusive microbes like Akkermansia muciniphila.
Stanford Hypnosis Integrated with Functional Connectivity-targeted Transcranial Stimulation (SHIFT): a preregistered randomized controlled trial
Investigators present findings from a double-blind randomized controlled trial of personalized stimulation of the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex using transcranial magnetic stimulation to increase hypnotizability in a sample of patients with fibromyalgia syndrome.