Help start a revolution in heathcare!
Sign onto our new letter of support and let your Senator know — the time is NOW to fund the first ever FDA approved research to target ALL the diseases of aging at once.
http://tame.healthspanpolicy.org/
Please help spread the word by sharing.
Great progress by Institute of the McGill University Health Centre has study astrocytes (the star shape brain cells) which play fundamental roles in nearly all aspects of brain function, could be adjusted by neurons in response to injury and disease.
A research team, led by the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) in Montreal, has broken new ground in our understanding of the complex functioning of the brain. The research, which is published in the current issue of the journal Science, demonstrates that brain cells, known as astrocytes, which play fundamental roles in nearly all aspects of brain function, could be adjusted by neurons in response to injury and disease. The discovery, which shows that the brain has a far greater ability to adapt and respond to changes than previously believed, could have significant implications on epilepsy, movement disorders, and psychiatric and neurodegenerative disease.
Astrocytes are star-shaped cells in our brain that surround brain neurons, and neural circuits, protecting them from injury and enabling them to function properly – in essence, one of their main roles is to ‘baby-sit’ neurons. Our brain contains billions of cells, each of which need to communicate between each other in order to function properly. This communication is highly dependent on the behaviour of astrocytes. Until now, the mechanisms that create and maintain differences among astrocytes, and allow them to fulfill specialized roles, has remained poorly understood.
“It was believed that astrocytes acquired their properties during the development of the brain and then they were hardwired in their roles,” says senior study’s author Dr. Keith Murai, director of the Centre for Research in Neuroscience at the RI-MUHC, associate professor of the Department of Neurology and Neurosurgery at McGill University. “We have now discovered that astrocytes are actually incredibly flexible and potentially modifiable, which enables them to improve brain function or restore lost potential caused by disease.’’
For decades, India has relied on female sterilization as its primary mode of contraception, funding about four million tubal ligations every year, more than any other country. This year, the government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi will take a major step toward modernizing that system, introducing injectable contraceptives free of charge in government facilities. The World Health Organization recommends their use without restriction for women of childbearing age.
New birth control options have long been advocated by international organizations, among them the United States Agency for International Development and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. They say Indian women — often worn out, anemic and at higher risk of death because they bear children young and often — urgently need methods to delay or space pregnancies.
At Vanderbilt University scientists are building an artificial kidney that they envision will one day will be a standard of care over dialysis. The device consists of a silicon nanotechnology filter chip and embedded living kidney cells that would work together to mimic the functionality of a healthy kidney. The end result is expected to be about the size of a natural kidney, small enough to be implantable and powered by the body’s own blood flow.
The filter component has tiny pores that can be individually shaped to perform a specific task. These filters would sit in a series, each one performing a different filtration step. Between the filter slices there would be living kidney cells that perform tasks that the man made components are not very good at, including reabsorption of nutrients and getting rid of accumulated waste.
Here’s video with Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Dr. William Fissell, the lead scientist on the research:
One thing that will remain with tech for many years is jobs in cyber security — even with the layer of security that Quantum technology brings in the next 10 years; there is always a migration and retirement state that can (depending on the business and systems involved) could go on for years after Quantum platforms and networks are installed.
Then in December, aided and abetted by a Republican-controlled Congress, he eradicated those minor restrictions and replaced mindless austerity with clueless profligacy.
It proposes lifting the limits entirely from 2018. “It adheres to last year’s bipartisan budget agreement, it drives down the deficit, and includes smart savigs on health care, immigration and tax reform”.
Even with the increased taxes, Obama’s budget projects sharply higher deficits in coming years, totaling $9.8 trillion over the next decade.
Posted in business, computing, health, robotics/AI
Big Blue is cool again according to investors.
NEW YORK: Here’s a vexing question for artificial mega-brain Watson: Why is IBM stock surging? Big Blue’s market value rose about $6 billion after the computer giant agreed on Thursday to buy Truven Health Analytics for $2.6 billion. Giving IBM’s artificial-intelligence platform more data to chew on is useful, but investors’ glee over an opaque addition to an enigmatic business effort is confusing.
Big Blue’s top line has been shrinking steadily for nearly four years. In the fourth quarter of 2015, all major divisions had declining sales, with overall revenue falling 8.5 percent compared with the same period a year earlier. Clients need less of IBM’s hardware, and its software and consulting businesses are faltering in competition with rivals’ cloud-based versions.
The upshot is a falling share price. It has dropped about 25 percent in the past four years, while the S&P 500 has risen about 40 percent.
Like the idea of using Google to vote online for the best airline, steamed dumpling or health app?
What about using Google to vote for governor or president? That seems to be Google’s plan.
The search giant received a U.S. patent for a voting user interface (VUI). The interface would appear along with search results and would allow the user to vote for one or more contestants competing in a campaign.
