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Category: health – Page 12

How does the armored tiling on shark and ray cartilage maintain a continuous covering as the animals’ skeletons expand during growth?

This is a question that has perplexed Professor Mason Dean, a in the Department of Infectious Diseases and Public Health at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK) since he was in graduate school.

An expert in , structure and function in vertebrate animals, but with a particular focus on (and affection for) sharks and rays, Professor Dean says he was curious about how nature keeps complex surfaces covered while organs and animals are growing, and their surfaces are changing.

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Snap a photo of your meal, and artificial intelligence instantly tells you its calorie count, fat content, and nutritional value—no more food diaries or guesswork.

This futuristic scenario is now much closer to reality, thanks to an AI system developed by NYU Tandon School of Engineering researchers that promises a new tool for the millions of people who want to manage their weight, diabetes and other diet-related health conditions.

The technology, detailed in a paper presented at the 6th IEEE International Conference on Mobile Computing and Sustainable Informatics, uses advanced deep-learning algorithms to recognize food items in images and calculate their nutritional content, including calories, protein, carbohydrates and fat.

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Brain implants hold immense promise for restoring function in patients with paralysis, epilepsy and other neurological disorders. But a team of researchers at Case Western Reserve University has discovered that bacteria can invade the brain after a medical device is implanted, contributing to inflammation and reducing the device’s long-term effectiveness.

The research, published in Nature Communications, could improve the long-term success of brain implants now that a target has been identified to address.

“Understanding the role of bacteria in implant performance and brain health could revolutionize how these devices are designed and maintained,” said Jeff Capadona, Case Western Reserve’s vice provost for innovation, the Donnell Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering and senior research career scientist at the Louis Stokes Cleveland VA Medical Center.

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Science, Policy And Advocacy For Impactful And Sustainable Health Ecosystems — Dr. Catharine Young, Ph.D. — fmr. Assistant Director of Cancer Moonshot Policy and International Engagement, White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP)

Dr. Catharine Young, Ph.D. recently served as Assistant Director of Cancer Moonshot Policy and International Engagement at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (https://www.whitehouse.gov/ostp/) where she served at OSTP to advance the Cancer Moonshot (https://www.cancer.gov/research/key-i… with a mission to decrease the number of cancer deaths by 50% over the next 25 years.

Dr. Young’s varied career has spanned a variety of sectors including academia, non-profit, biotech, and foreign government, all with a focus on advancing science.

Dr. Young previously served as Executive Director of the SHEPHERD Foundation, where she championed rare cancer research and drove critical policy changes. Her work has also included fostering interdisciplinary collaborations and advancing the use of AI, data sharing, and clinical trial reform to accelerate cancer breakthroughs.

Dr. Young’s leadership in diplomacy and innovation includes roles such as Senior Director of Science Policy at the Biden Cancer Initiative and Senior Science and Innovation Policy Advisor at the British Embassy, where she facilitated international agreements to enhance research collaborations.

Continue reading “Dr. Catharine Young, Ph.D. — Science, Policy And Advocacy For Impactful Health Ecosystems” | >

Convergent engagement of neural and computational sciences and technologies are reciprocally enabling rapid developments in current and near-future military and intelligence operations. In this podcast, Prof. James Giordano of Georgetown University will provide an overview of how these scientific and technological fields can be — and are being — leveraged for non-kinetic and kinetic what has become known as cognitive warfare; and will describe key issues in this rapidly evolving operational domain.

James Giordano PhD, is the Pellegrino Center Professor in the Departments of Neurology and Biochemistry; Chief of the Neuroethics Studies Program; Co-director of the Project in Brain Sciences and Global Health Law and Policy; and Chair of the Subprogram in Military Medical Ethics at Georgetown University Medical Center, Washington DC. Professor Giordano is Senior Bioethicist of the Defense Medical Ethics Center, and Adjunct Professor of Psychiatry at the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences; Distinguished Stockdale Fellow in Science, Technology, and Ethics at the United States Naval Academy; Senior Science Advisory Fellow of the SMA Branch, Joint Staff, Pentagon; Non-resident Fellow of the Simon Center for the Military Ethic at the US Military Academy, West Point; Distinguished Visiting Professor of Biomedical Sciences, Health Promotions, and Ethics at the Coburg University of Applied Sciences, Coburg, GER; Chair Emeritus of the Neuroethics Project of the IEEE Brain Initiative; and serves as Director of the Institute for Biodefense Research, a federally funded Washington DC think tank dedicated to addressing emerging issues at the intersection of science, technology and national defense. He previously served as Donovan Group Senior Fellow, US Special Operations Command; member of the Neuroethics, Legal, and Social Issues Advisory Panel of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA); and Task Leader of the Working Group on Dual-Use of the EU-Human Brain Project. Prof. Giordano is the author of over 350 peer-reviewed publications, 9 books and 50governmental reports on science, technology, and biosecurity, and is an elected member of the European Academy of Science and Arts, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine (UK), and a Fulbright Professorial Fellow. A former US Naval officer, he was winged as an aerospace physiologist, and served with the US Navy and Marine Corps.

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Iodine is a crucial element in various industries, but it is one of the least abundant nonmetallic elements on Earth. Although seawater holds around 70% of the world’s iodine reserves, its low concentrations—approximately 60 ppb—make extraction challenging. Additionally, radioactive iodine, which is released during nuclear accidents, presents significant long-term risks to marine ecosystems and human health. Therefore, there is an urgent need for effective strategies to both extract iodine from seawater and address radioactive iodine pollution.

Now, a team at Hainan University has developed a supramolecular organic (SOF) for iodine capture from . This framework has demonstrated the ability to remove 79% of iodine pollution in a simulated contaminated environment. In natural seawater, it achieves an ultrahigh iodine adsorption capacity of 46 mg g−1 within a 20-day extraction period. The research is published in the journal Research.

“The sustainable extraction of iodine from seawater is not only vital to meet the increasing global demand but also essential for mitigating the ecological risks posed by pollution,” said senior author Ning Wang. “Innovative materials can contribute to the field by enhancing the selectivity and capacity for iodine extraction from seawater. Our findings showcase an effective strategy for fabricating multi-dimensional 3D SOF materials and also present a promising material for iodine capture from seawater.”

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A team of medical researchers and engineers at Google Research has developed a way to use the front-facing camera on a smartphone to monitor a patient’s heart rate. The team has published a paper on the technology on the arXiv preprint server.

Tracking a patient’s over time can reveal clues about their cardiovascular health. The most important measurement is resting heart rate (RHR)—people with an above-normal rate are at a higher risk of heart disease and/or stroke. Persistently high rates, the researchers note, can signal a serious problem.

Over the past several years, personal health device makers have developed wearable external heart monitors, such as necklaces or smartwatches. But these devices are expensive. The researchers have found a cheaper alternative—a deep-learning system that analyzes video from the front-facing camera of a smartphone. The system is called PHRM.

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Central sensitization: analysis by physio meets science.

Neurophysiological Mechanism of Central Sensitization in the Spinal Cord following Surgery:

▶️ Central sensitization was first described by Woolf in 1983 (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/6656869/) as a form of long-term adaptive neuroplasticity that amplifies the transmission of nociceptive information by affecting spinal cord neurons and is believed to be a principal neurophysiological mechanism with regard to pain persistence.

▶️ Peripheral nociception can trigger a prolonged increase in the excitability of dorsal root ganglia (DRG) neurons, which transmit nociceptive signals to the spinal cord, resulting in central sensitization.

▶️ This condition involves heightened responsiveness of spinal neurons, driven by signaling molecules like adenosine triphosphate (ATP) and neurotransmitters such as glutamate (Glu) and substance P (SP).

▶️ These molecules activate specific receptors on spinal neurons, including purinergic receptor 2 (P2-R), N-methyl-D-aspartate receptor (NMDAR), α-amino-3-hydroxy-5-methyl-4-isoxazolepropionic acid receptor (AMPAR), and neurokinin 1 receptor (NK1R).

▶️ The activation of these receptors sets off a cascade of intracellular pathways involving enzymes like calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII), protein kinase C (PKC), protein kinase A (PKA), mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR), phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K), and extracellular signal-regulated kinases 1/2 (ERK1/2), all of which amplify the transmission of nociceptive signals to the brain.

Continue reading “Mechanisms of chronic postsurgical pain” | >

Each year, according to the National Institutes of Health (NIH), millions of people in the U.S. are affected by spinal cord and traumatic brain injuries, along with neuro-developmental and degenerative diseases such as ADHD, autism, cerebral palsy, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and Parkinson’s disease.

Assistant Professor Pabitra Sahoo, of Rutgers University-Newark’s Department of Biological Sciences, has made it his life’s work to understand how our neurological system becomes damaged by these injuries and conditions, and when and how neurons in our central and peripheral nervous systems regenerate and heal.

Recently, Sahoo and his RU-N research team made a breakthrough, using a peptide to help nerve cells in both the peripheral and central nervous systems regenerate. They published their findings in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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