Lifeboat Foundation

Surgically removing tumors from sensitive areas, such as the head and neck, poses significant challenges. The goal during surgery is to take out the cancerous tissue while saving as much healthy tissue as possible. This balance is crucial because leaving behind too much cancerous tissue can lead to the cancer’s return or spread. Doing a resection that has precise margins—specifically, a 5mm margin of healthy tissue—is essential but difficult. This margin, roughly the size of a pencil eraser, ensures that all cancerous cells are removed while minimizing damage. Tumors often have clear horizontal edges but unclear vertical boundaries, making depth assessment challenging despite careful pre-surgical planning. Surgeons can mark the horizontal borders but have limited ability to determine the appropriate depth for removal due to the inability to see beyond the surface. Additionally, surgeons face obstacles like fatigue and visual limitations, which can affect their performance. Now, a new robotic system has been designed to perform tumor removal from the tongue with precision levels that could match or surpass those of human surgeons.

The Autonomous System for Tumor Resection (ASTR) designed by researchers at Johns Hopkins (Baltimore, MD, USA) translates human guidance into robotic precision. This system builds upon the technology from their Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR), which previously conducted the first fully autonomous laparoscopic surgery to connect the two intestinal ends. ASTR, an advanced dual-arm, vision-guided robotic system, is specifically designed for tissue removal in contrast to STAR’s focus on tissue connection. In tests using pig tongue tissue, the team demonstrated ASTR’s ability to accurately remove a tumor and the required 5mm of surrounding healthy tissue. After focusing on tongue tumors due to their accessibility and relevance to experimental surgery, the team now plans to extend ASTR’s application to internal organs like the kidney, which are more challenging to access.

As the solar system’s planets rove around the sun, sometimes a few will appear to line up in the sky. But have all eight planets ever truly aligned?

The answer depends on how generous you are with the definition of “align” for the solar system’s planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Researchers at UCL and UCLH have successfully completed the first trial of a therapy designed to restore hearing loss. The REGAIN trial, the results of which were published in Nature Communications, was the first study of a treatment aimed at restoring lost hearing, focusing on a drug with the technical name gamma-secretase inhibitor LY3056480.

The researchers found that while the therapy did not restore hearing across the group of adults with mild to moderate hearing loss, a deeper analysis of the data showed changes in various hearing tests in some patients, suggesting the drug has some activity in the inner ear.

These so-called efficacy signals call for further development of LY3056480—using the learnings from this trial.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20240320/Study-highlights-…idism.aspx Frontiers

In a recent study published in Frontiers in Nutrition, researchers explored the association between the microbial community of the gut and hypothyroidism.

Study: Cross-talk between the gut microbiota and hypothyroidism: a bidirectional two-sample Mendelian randomization study. Image Credit: sdecoret/Shutterstock.com.

Continue reading “Study highlights causal associations between gut microbes and hypothyroidism” »

As the world inches ever closer to mind-reading technology, some scientists are calling to legally enshrine the right to keep our thoughts to ourselves.

In interviews with Undark, neuroscientists — including those who are working to make these so-called brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) happen — revealed their concerns about the devices.

In one particularly telling exchange, a pair of researchers from the University of Texas at Austin who’ve successfully created a BCI that can rudimentarily translate brain waves into text described how it felt to realize their device was actually reading their thoughts.

Nvidia on Monday announced a new generation of artificial intelligence chips and software for running AI models.

From abstract-looking cloud formations to roars of snow machines on ski slopes, the transformation of liquid water into solid ice touches many facets of life. Water’s freezing point is generally accepted to be 32 degrees Fahrenheit. But that is due to ice nucleation—impurities in everyday water raise its freezing point to this temperature. Now, researchers unveil a theoretical model that shows how specific structural details on surfaces can influence water’s freezing point.

Mike Dougherty American Heart Association Epidemiology and Prevention|Lifestyle and Cardiometabolic Health Scientific Sessions 2024, Abstract P192.

03/19/24 Editor’s note:

Private space company Sierra Space has blown up its first full-scale inflatable space habitat, dubbed the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) — and it was all part of the plan.

The balloon-like contraption, which measured just over 20 feet tall, held a third of the volume of the International Space Station once fully inflated. During a recent test, engineers at the Colorado-based company kept pumping it with air, reaching a whopping 77 psi — well above NASA’s recommended level of 60.8 psi — before it exploded in spectacular fashion.

Continue reading “Full-Scale Prototype Space Habitat Explodes Under Pressure” »