Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
Toggle light / dark theme

Blog

Category: biotech/medical – Page 7

Supersized quantum sensors make faint photons easier to catch

Our everyday life is flooded with photons, the quantum building blocks of light. For cutting-edge technology, from quantum computing to deep-tissue imaging, detecting every single photon counts.

“Photons carry information,” said Kristen Parzuchowski, a postdoctoral researcher at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. “Whenever a photon comes into your measurement system, you need to be able to detect it.”

Photons can transmit data in quantum networks or across deep-space communication links. Catching and analyzing photons lets scientists build biomedical images and search the universe for dark matter.

Deuterium enables chip waveguides to generate broadband light from infrared pulses

A research team from Singapore, led by Associate Professor Dawn Tan of the Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD) and Dr. Luo Xianshu, head of the Silicon Photonics Department at the A*STAR Institute of Microelectronics (A*STAR IME), has developed a low-loss silicon nitride waveguide that generates broadband light on a chip. By replacing hydrogen with its heavier isotope, deuterium, the team fabricated the low-loss SiN waveguide on an 8-inch wafer using a low-temperature process, demonstrating its potential for large-scale manufacturing and integration with CMOS-compatible semiconductor processes.

Published in Optics Express, the paper “Octave-spanning supercontinuum generation in a wafer-scale, low loss deuterated silicon nitride waveguide” demonstrates a chip-scale waveguide that stretches infrared laser pulses into a spectrum running from visible red to deep into the infrared.

Lasers are prized for their color purity because they emit light in a single color, but many of the most demanding technologies require a beam that spans an enormous sweep of the spectrum at once. This so-called supercontinuum light underpins high-resolution medical imaging, precision measurement and the frequency combs that keep optical clocks ticking without error.

Common medications may change your gut for years

Common medications may reshape the gut microbiome long after the last dose is taken. In a study of more than 2,500 people, researchers found lasting microbial changes linked not only to antibiotics, but also to antidepressants, beta-blockers, acid-reducing drugs, and benzodiazepines. Some effects were still detectable years later, suggesting past medication use may strongly influence the gut bacteria people carry today.

Lung cancer patient became tumourfree after treatment with selenite

A patient with advanced, treatment-resistant lung cancer became tumour-free after treatment with the selenium compound selenite. This is shown in a new study from Karolinska University Hospital and Karolinska Institutet published in the journal Oncology and Therapy as a case report. The findings may contribute to increased knowledge about selenite as a possible cancer treatment.

Psychedelic exposure during adolescence disrupts a brain circuit linked to lasting social avoidance in rats

Psychedelics, drugs that alter people’s perceptions, mood and thoughts, have recently shown promise for the treatment of some psychiatric disorders. Yet many psychedelic drugs remain controlled substances in most countries worldwide.

Despite these restrictions, national surveys suggest that millions of people use psychedelics in the United States. Moreover, many people reported that they first used these substances in adolescence, the sensitive developmental stage between childhood and adulthood, when brain circuits are still maturing.

Researchers at Ningbo University and its affiliated hospitals recently studied rats to better understand how repeated exposure to the psychedelic compound 25C-NBOMe during adolescence could influence brain activity and social behavior in adulthood.

Myeloproliferative Neoplasms

Classic myeloproliferative neoplasms, including essential thrombocythemia, polycythemia vera, and primary myelofibrosis, are chronic, clonal hematopoietic stem-cell disorders. These disorders are driven by gain-of-function mutations in the genes Janus kinase 2 (JAK2), calreticulin (CALR), or the thrombopoietin receptor (MPL) that activate cytokine signaling. These mutations arise decades before clinical disease develops and confer a clonal advantage that is further shaped by comutations in epigenetic, splicing, or signaling genes. Inflammation enhances clonal dominance, favoring the development of myelofibrosis and thrombotic complications. Disease evolution may culminate in secondary acute myeloid leukemia, which has a poor prognosis.

Study suggests 40Hz sensory stimulation may benefit some Alzheimer’s patients for years

A new research paper documents the outcomes of five volunteers who continued to receive 40Hz light and sound stimulation for around two years after participating in an MIT early-stage clinical study of the potential Alzheimer’s disease (AD) therapy. The results show that for the three participants with late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, several measures of cognition remained significantly higher than comparable Alzheimer’s patients in national databases. Moreover, in the two late-onset volunteers who donated plasma samples, levels of Alzheimer’s biomarker tau proteins were significantly decreased.

The three volunteers who experienced these benefits were all female. The two other participants, each of whom were males with early-onset forms of the disease, did not exhibit significant benefits after two years. The dataset, while small, represents the longest-term test so far of the safe, noninvasive treatment method (called GENUS, for gamma entrainment using sensory stimuli), which is also being evaluated in a nationwide clinical trial run by MIT-spinoff company Cognito Therapeutics.

“This pilot study assessed the long-term effects of daily 40Hz multimodal GENUS in patients with mild AD,” the authors wrote in an open-access paper in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. “We found that daily 40Hz audiovisual stimulation over 2 years is safe, feasible, and may slow cognitive decline and biomarker progression, especially in late-onset AD patients.”

Mitochondrial Transplantation Rejuvenates Immune Cells

Join us on Patreon! / michaellustgartenphd.

Support Colwyn’s studies: https://give.stanford.edu/fund?kwoDCF…

Discount Links/Affiliates:
Blood testing (where I get the majority of my labs, for those who blood test with Quest): https://www.ultalabtests.com/partners…

Blood Testing Essentials (Biological Age, CVD-Risk, Kidney Health and Function):
PhenoAge (Biological Age): https://www.ultalabtests.com/partners…

Measure the Bortz biological clock biomarkers: https://www.ultalabtests.com/partners…

/* */