Lifeboat Foundation: Safeguarding Humanity
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Category: health – Page 145

Revolutionizing the process of heart monitoring, researchers have developed a wearable e-tattoo that provides continuous heart monitoring outside of a clinical setting.

A team of researchers from The University of Texas at Austin has created a flexible and wearable medical device that could transform the fight against heart disease. This device called an electronic tattoo or e-tattoo, can be attached to the chest to continuously monitor the heart outside of clinical settings.

The e-tattoo is wireless and mobile, as it has small active circuits and sensors linked by stretchable interconnections. The device weighs just 2.5 grams and can be worn comfortably with a medical dressing.

University of Texas.

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The protective effects of vaccines have particularly been highlighted during the recent COVID-19 pandemic. Countries able to offer the vaccine demonstrate lowered infection rates and have kick-started the recovery of their economies.

The COVID-19 pandemic has also highlighted the need to proactively develop medical countermeasures to novel pathogens, in addition to advancing supply and manufacturing capacities to meet global demands.

Investing in vaccine manufacturing has both economic and societal benefits, in addition to protecting human health and limiting infection spread.

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Over the past 100 million years, mammals have adapted to nearly every environment on Earth. Scientists with the Zoonomia Project have been cataloging the diversity in mammalian genomes by comparing DNA sequences from 240 species that exist today, from the aardvark and the African savanna elephant to the yellow-spotted rock hyrax and the zebu.

This week, in several papers in a special issue of Science, the Zoonomia team has demonstrated how can not only shed light on how certain species achieve extraordinary feats, but also help scientists better understand the parts of our genome that are functional and how they might influence health and disease.

In the new studies, the researchers identified regions of the genomes, sometimes just single letters of DNA, that are most conserved, or unchanged, across mammalian species and millions of years of evolution—regions that are likely biologically important. They also found part of the genetic basis for uncommon mammalian traits such as the ability to hibernate or sniff out faint scents from miles away. And they pinpointed species that may be particularly susceptible to extinction, as well as genetic variants that are more likely to play causal roles in rare and common human diseases.

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A team of researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory has developed a new scientific tool called Polybot that combines artificial intelligence with robotics. This tool is set to revolutionize polymer electronics research by speeding up the discovery process of materials with multiple applications, from wearable biomedical devices to better batteries, according to a release.

Polymer electronics are the future of flexible electronics. They are efficient and sustainable, used to monitor health and treat certain diseases, among other things. However, the current methods used to prepare these polymers for electronics can take years of intense labor. To achieve targeted performance, there are an overwhelming number of potential tweaks, from spiking the fabrication recipe with different formulations to varying the processing conditions.

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Kurzweil says NO, on AI pause non sense.

By Ray Kurzweil April 2023

Regarding the Open Letter to “pause” research on AI “more powerful than GPT-4,” this criterion is too vague to be practical. And the proposal faces a serious coordination problem: those that agree to a pause may fall far behind corporations or nations that disagree. There are tremendous benefits to advancing AI in critical fields such as medicine and health, education, pursuit of renewable energy sources to replace fossil fuels, and scores of other fields. I didn’t sign, because I believe we can address the signers’ safety concerns in a more tailored way that doesn’t compromise these vital lines of research.

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(NEXSTAR) – A deadly fungus spreading in more than half of U.S. states is so concerning in part because of the way it has evolved to be resistant to both antimicrobial cleaning products and anti-fungal drugs, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently warned.

The fungus, Candida auris or C. auris, has mainly spread in health care settings, like hospitals and nursing homes. Counterintuitively, because hospitals are disinfected so frequently, they can be the birthplace of bacteria or fungus that are resistant to cleaning products and to treatments.

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Functional movement/conversion disorder (FMD), part of the spectrum of Functional Neurological Disorder (FND), is a neuropsychiatric condition marked by a range of neurological symptoms, including tremors, muscular spasms and cognitive difficulties. Despite being the second-most common cause of referrals to neurology outpatient clinics after headache, scientists have struggled to pin down the disorder’s root cause. Female sex and a history of childhood trauma are factors associated with higher risk of developing FMD, but it’s been unclear why.

A new study from investigators of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, in collaboration with researchers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, demonstrated that FMD is characterized by epigenetic changes, and that women and childhood abuse survivors with FMD have different epigenetic profiles linked to this condition. Their study, which examined the genomes of over 100 individuals and was recently published in Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, is the first to demonstrate the occurrence of epigenetic changes in FMD.

“This study finally takes FMD out of a cloud of confusion and provides a neuroscientifically grounded explanation for why childhood trauma and female sex are associated with this disorder,” said lead author Primavera A. Spagnolo, MD, Ph.D., scientific director of the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology and assistant professor of psychiatry at HMS.

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