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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 1184

May 26, 2021

You can live to 150? Scientists create app that shows human lifespan could nearly double

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, mobile phones, robotics/AI

An iPhone app that estimates biological aging discovered that life expectancy has the capacity to be almost double the current norm.


GEYLANG, Singapore — Have you made any plans for the 22nd century yet? A new study finds you might want to think about it because it’s possible for humans to live to see their 150th birthday!

Scientists in Singapore have developed an iPhone app that accurately estimates biological aging. It discovered that life expectancy has the capacity to be almost double the current norm. The findings are based on blood samples from hundreds of thousands of people in the United States and United Kingdom.

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May 26, 2021

Google Strikes Deal With Hospital Chain to Develop Healthcare Algorithms

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, information science

Google and national hospital chain HCA will work to develop algorithms to help improve operating efficiency, monitor patients and guide doctors’ decisions.

May 26, 2021

Doctors Restored a Blind Man’s Vision

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

The protein that lets algae respond to light also partially restored a man’s eyesight.

May 26, 2021

Universal coronavirus vaccine is highly effective in monkeys

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

😃


Researchers developed a “pan-coronavirus” vaccine, designed to protect against many different strains of coronaviruses known to infect humans and bats.

May 25, 2021

Strange robotic thumb can impact how the hand is represented in the brain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI

UCL researchers have created a strange robotic “third thumb” that attaches to the hand and adds a large extra digit on the opposite side of the hand from the thumb. Researchers found that using the robotic thumb can impact how the hand is represented in the brain. For the research, scientists trained people to use an extra robotic thumb and found they could effectively carry out dexterous tasks such as building a tower of blocks using a single hand with two thumbs.

Researchers said that participants trained to use the extra thumb increasingly felt like it was part of their body. Initially, the Third Thumb was part of a project seeking to reframe the way people view prosthetics from replacing a lost function to becoming an extension of the human body. UCL Professor Tamar Makin says body augmentation is a growing field aimed at extending the physical abilities of humans.

May 25, 2021

The Inspiration4 astronauts are training hard for their private launch on a SpaceX rocket

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, space travel

Four private astronauts have been strapped into a centrifuge, climbing mountains and learning how to fly a spacecraft ahead of their flight to space — the first-ever crewed space mission without any “professional astronauts” on board.

The crew is preparing to launch this upcoming September as part of the Inspiration4 mission aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft. The mission, privately chartered by billionaire Jared Isaacman to support St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, recruited three crew members in addition to Isaacman for the trip which will fly around the Earth for several days. The crew includes Isaacman, St. Jude physician’s assistant and childhood bone cancer survivor Hayley Arcenaux, data engineer Chris Sembroski and geoscientist, science communicator and artist Sian Proctor.

May 25, 2021

Surprising Discovery Could Lead to New Treatments for Strokes and Cardiac Arrest

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Researchers identify a mechanism that could lead to new treatments for brain injuries caused by oxygen deprivation.

In a surprising discovery, researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) identified a mechanism that protects the brain from the effects of hypoxia, a potentially lethal deprivation of oxygen. This serendipitous finding, which they report in Nature Communications, could aid in the development of therapies for strokes, as well as brain injury that can result from cardiac arrest, among other conditions.

However, this study began with a very different objective, explains senior author Fumito Ichinose, MD, PhD, an attending physician in the Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine at MGH, and principal investigator in the Anesthesia Center for Critical Care Research. One area of focus for Ichinose and his team is developing techniques for inducing suspended animation, that is, putting a human’s vital functions on temporary hold, with the ability to “reawaken” them later. This state of being would be similar to what bears and other animals experience during hibernation. Ichinose believes that the ability to safely induce suspended animation could have valuable medical applications, such as pausing the life processes of a patient with an incurable disease until an effective therapy is found. It could also allow humans to travel long distances in space (which has frequently been depicted in science fiction).

May 25, 2021

Samsung Develops a Very Fast 512GB DDR5 Memory Module

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, finance, robotics/AI, supercomputing

2 sticks of RAM giving you 1TB of memory will be the norm soon.


While consumers today typically use computers with 8GB or 16GB of DDR4 RAM inside, Samsung is pushing ahead with the next generation of memory modules. Its latest stick of RAM is a 512GB DDR5 module running at 7200Mbps.

The new module will be used in servers performing “the most extreme compute-hungry, high-bandwidth workloads.” That means supercomputers, artificial intelligence, and machine learning. It was made possible thanks to advanced HKMG technology, which Samsung adopted back in 2018 for its GDDR6 memory. Basically, HKMG replaces the insulator layer in DRAM structures. The high dielectric material contained in the layer reduces current leakage and therefore allows higher performance. At the same time, Samsung managed to reduce power usage in the new module by 13%.

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May 25, 2021

Honeybee venom kills aggressive breast cancer cells

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

For thousands of years, humans have used honey, propolis, and venom from the European honeybee Apis mellifera as medicines.

More recently, scientists have discovered that honeybee venom and its active component, melittin, are toxic to a wide range of tumors — including melanoma, lung, ovarian, and pancreatic cancers — in laboratory tests.

Melittin is the molecule that creates the painful sensation of a bee’s sting. Scientists do not fully understand how it kills cancer cells, however.

May 25, 2021

Morphing computer chip repels hundreds of professional DARPA hackers

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cybercrime/malcode

Engineers have designed a computer processor that thwarts hackers by randomly changing its microarchitecture every few milliseconds. Known as Morpheus, the puzzling processor has now aced its first major tests, repelling hundreds of professional hackers in a DARPA security challenge.

In 2017, DARPA backed the University of Michigan’s Morpheus project with US$3.6 million in funding, and now the novel processor has been put to the test. Over four months in 2020, DARPA ran a bug bounty program called Finding Exploits to Thwart Tampering (FETT), pitting 525 professional security researchers against Morpheus and a range of other processors.

The goal of the program was to test new hardware-based security systems, which could protect data no matter how vulnerable the underlying software was. Morpheus was mocked up to resemble a medical database, complete with software vulnerabilities – and yet, not a single attack made it through its defenses.