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Histotripsy: Destroying cancer tumors with sound waves

“The future of medicine is the medicine of frequencies.” – Albert Einstein.

Imagine a future where cancerous tumors inside the body could be destroyed using only sound waves. Well… the future is now. And it’s called histotripsy.

Histotripsy is a non-invasive process that uses sound waves to completely eliminate cancer tumors. Like radiation therapy, doctors point an ultrasound device at your tumor and “zap it.” But unlike radiotherapy, there is no cancer-causing radiation or heat involved, tumors can be destroyed in one treatment, there is minimal damage to surrounding tissue, a low rate of complications, faster recovery time, and it has been shown to activate immune cells to identify and target any remaining cancer cells in the body.

Your Immune Cells are what they Eat

Salk scientists establish novel Link between cell nutrition and identity, say targeting nutrient-dependent activity could improve immunotherapies.

The decision between scrambled eggs or an apple for breakfast probably won’t make or break your day. However, for your cells, a decision between similar microscopic nutrients could determine their entire identity. If and how nutrient preference impacts cell identity has been a longstanding mystery for scientists—until a team of Salk Institute immunologists revealed a novel framework for the complicated relationship between nutrition and cell identity.

The findings were published in Science on December 12, 2024.

EV charging infrastructure isn’t just for road trippers

That means digging all the trenching and building out all the electrical distribution equipment on site, if not all the chargers, with a microgrid that’s capable of working as well in the future with 12 MW of power as it does with just 4 MW.

“I think this is the same challenge that all of these large sites are facing—it takes an extremely long time to get the power from the utility. Meanwhile, you don’t need it immediately. So how do you create this sort of staged future-proof solution where you’re not having to open the roads multiple times? You want one construction phase and you want that site to support the future demand,” Putignano said.

For fleets that need their own private charging infrastructure, there are other things to think about, too. Energy management solutions are as important here—microgrids as well as battery storage and battery-buffered chargers will play an important role, for example. But not every energy management solution is charger-agnostic, and the collapse of charger manufacturers like Juicebox and Tritium highlight the perils of being stuck in a walled garden belonging to a dead company.

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