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Category: health – Page 479

A practical solution to mass-producing low-cost nanoparticles

Nanoparticles form in a 3-D-printed microfluidic channel. Each droplet shown here is about 250 micrometers in diameter, and contains billions of platinum nanoparticles. (credit: Richard Brutchey and Noah Malmstadt/USC)

USC researchers have created an automated method of manufacturing nanoparticles that may transform the process from an expensive, painstaking, batch-by-batch process by a technician in a chemistry lab, mixing up a batch of chemicals by hand in traditional lab flasks and beakers.

Consider, for example, gold nanoparticles. Their ability to slip through the cell’s membrane makes them ideal delivery devices for medications to healthy cells, or fatal doses of radiation to cancer cells. But the price of gold nanoparticles at $80,000 per gram, compared to about $50 for pure raw gold goes.

Unprecedented scientific report says decline of pollinators a threat to food security

Around the world, the animals that pollinate our food crops — more than 20,000 species of bees, butterflies, bats and many others — are the subject of growing attention. An increasing number of pollinator species are thought to be in decline, threatened by a variety of mostly human pressures, and their struggles could pose significant risks for global food security and public health.

Until now, most assessments of pollinator health have been conducted on a regional basis, focusing on certain countries or parts of the world. But this week, a United Nations organization has released the first-ever global assessment of pollinators, highlighting their importance for worldwide food and nutrition, describing the threats they currently face and outlining strategies to protect them.

The report, which was released Friday by the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), has been in the works since the summer of 2014. The research team consisted of more than 70 experts, who drew on the most up-to-date global pollinator science, as well as local and indigenous knowledge, to complete the assessment.

These are the technologies that can help achieve the cancer moonshot

Nice — Liquid biopsies, AI therapy, silico trials, precision surgery.

Negotiations and collaborations are launching now to decide which research trends and areas deserve the most support. Only disruptive innovations will be able to transform the status quo in cancer, leading patients to get more personalized and faster cancer care, while letting physicians do their job more effectively. Here are the technologies and trends that could help achieve the cancer moonshot.

Prevention and diagnosis

Cancer diagnosis must be early and accurate. Many cancer types cannot be detected early enough at the moment, while others are detected in time, but treated too severely. This notion requires not only great healthcare facilities and new diagnosis technologies, but also the proactivity of patients.

Health care is about to get smarter: The artificial intelligence boom

I still see AI as a supportive solution to handle more standardized operations still requiring oversight by people. As long as hacking exist the level of allowing systems to own and manage processes without people oversight is not going to happen until hacking is resolved.

It is predicted that the use of AI in health care will grow tenfold in the next five years, and not all of the medical applications will be for doctors. The technology is accelerating drug discovery, increasing compliance and even tracking changes in markers of ‘youthfulness,’ empowering people to better manage their own health.

The brain starts to give up its secrets

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.’’

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