A four-year-old boy with a life-threatening immune disease is now living a normal life thanks to a pioneering gene therapy trial.
Eisa Hussain, who suffers from a severe form of leukocyte adhesion deficiency 1 (LAD-1), can now play football and attend school – milestones his family once thought impossible.
LAD-1 cripples the immune system, leaving children vulnerable to infections. Without treatment, the most severe cases are often fatal before the age of two.
A new jab which allows cancer patients to be treated with just one injection is set to be rolled out by the NHS for 15 different types of the disease.
Patients will be able to receive the immunotherapy in a vaccine, called nivolumab, in a treatment that will take just 15 minutes rather than spending an hour on an IV drip.
Around 1,200 patients a month will receive it for 15 different types of cancer, including skin, bladder and oesophageal cancer as England becomes the first country in Europe to offer it.
Japanese scientists have created all-organic solar cells made of carbon-based materials with a record efficiency of 8.7% for this type of cell.
It is noted that the amount of solar energy that reaches the Earth every day is 10 times higher than all the existing needs of humanity. Over the past 6 years, there has been a rapid development of cells for solar panels. However, there are still a number of challenges to their widespread use, including high production costs, efficiency, and environmental impact.
Silicon is currently the most widely used material in solar cells. However, such cells often also contain potentially hazardous materials that are difficult to dispose of in an environmentally friendly manner.
Although lumber does show promise as a renewable alternative to structural materials such as steel and concrete, it still tends to be a bit weaker than those substances. Scientists have now set about addressing that shortcoming, by strengthening wood with added iron.
Led by Asst. Prof. Vivian Merk, a team of researchers at Florida Atlantic University (FAU) started out with cubes of untreated red oak hardwood. Red oak – along with hardwoods like maple, cherry and walnut – is an example of what’s known as ring-porous wood. In a nutshell, this means that it utilizes large ring-shaped internal vessels to draw water up from the tree’s roots to its leaves.
The scientists proceeded to mix ferric nitrate with potassium hydroxide, creating a hard iron oxide mineral called nanocrystalline ferrihydrite, which occurs naturally in soil and water. Utilizing a vacuum impregnation process, nanoparticles of that ferrihydrite were drawn into the wood and deposited inside of its individual cell walls.
NVIDIA’s AI Blueprint combines Black Forest Labs’ FLUX.1-dev as an NVIDIA NIM microservice, ComfyUI and Blender in a prebuilt workflow optimized for RTX AI PCs.
The UK’s grid operator is investigating unexplained shifts in electricity frequency on Sunday
Power in Spain and Portugal has been mostly restored after a mass blackout paralysed most of the Iberian Peninsula.
Just over 92 per cent of Spain’s power is back, REE, the country’s electricity operator said early on Tuesday, and around 80 per cent of customers in Portugal are reported to have electricity.
Spain has declared a state of emergency in what is believed to be Europe’s largest power cut.
Posted in biotech/medical, health | Leave a Comment on Periodic dietary restriction of animal products induces metabolic reprogramming in humans with effects on cardiometabolic health
Scientists led by Dr Claire Durrant (UK DRI at Edinburgh) have used living human brain tissue to show for the first time how a toxic form of a protein linked to Alzheimer’s can stick to and damage synapses, the connections between brain cells.
Fish are masters of coordinated motion. Schools of fish have no leader, yet individuals manage to stay in formation, avoid collisions, and respond with liquid flexibility to changes in their environment. Reproducing this combination of robustness and flexibility has been a long-standing challenge for human-engineered systems like robots.
