Toggle light / dark theme

The OriHime-D can also be used by people involved in childcare, nursing care or other activities that prevent them from leaving home or a certain location.


A cafe with an all-robot staff controlled by paralyzed people has opened in Tokyo.

The cafe, called Dawn ver.β, held its ribbon cutting ceremony on Nov. 26.

Hundreds of children with cancer are resorting to inferior treatment because of a failure to open two flagship specialist centres, experts have warned.

NHS officials have admitted that no patient has yet received state-of-the-art proton beam therapy (PBT) at either its new London or Manchester sites, despite a Government pledge to be treating 1,500 a year by 2018.

Leading oncologists have called for transparency after two promised opening dates at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust were missed this year and the deadline quietly pushed back.

Read more

NANJING — Chinese researchers have developed a new evaluating model using medical imaging to help painlessly evaluate tumor progression in patients.

Doctors usually use the biological characteristics of tumors to observe the progress and response to treatment, such as if there are gene mutations or malignant features. Previous studies have shown that identifying the biological characteristics may contribute to better treatment and may increase survival rates.

Traditional methods to get tumor tissue include surgery and puncture, which are invasive, painful and costly.

Read more

Researchers have identified over 6,000 antibiotic resistance genes found in bacteria that inhabit the human gut, which is home to trillions of micro-organisms, mainly bacteria.

“Most gut bacteria live in a harmless relationship with the human host. However, the gut is also home to bacteria that can cause infections in hospitalised patients,” said one of the researchers Willem van Schaik, Professor at the University of Birmingham.

“Unfortunately, these bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics and we need to understand the processes that contribute to this development,” he added.

Read more

Biotechnology
Genome editing through CRISPR-Cas systems has the potential to correct genetic mutations that occur in diseased cells, such as cancer cells. However, the ability to selectively activate CRISPR-Cas systems in diseased cells is important to ensure that gene editing only occurs where it is wanted. Zhu et al. developed a system whereby gene editing could be activated by a magnetic field, thus allowing spatial control. The use of nanomagnets in their system also improved transduction into target cells in tumor-bearing mouse models. This approach could potentially allow the translation of CRISPR-Cas systems into therapeutic agents.

Nat. Biomed. Eng. 10.1038/s41551-018‑0318-7 (2018).

Read more

In theory, a universal flu vaccine would work if it contained parts of the virus that remained the same from year to year, the so-called conserved epitopes that make the pathogen less viable if they change. But no one has yet found the viral pieces capable of stimulating an immune response that stops most flu viruses afflicting humans.


A rapidly changing virus and a complex immune response stymie developers.

Read more

From blizzards on top of Mount Everest to the extreme cold of the Arctic to the scorching heat of the Sahara deserts, researchers can now recreate the Earth’s most extreme climates and conditions — all in one place.

The research infrastructure, terraXcube, which opened to the public in Bolzano, South Tryol, Italy, on November 30, can simulate the world’s most extreme climate and weather conditions. It can recreate environmental factors such as air pressure, air humidity, and solar radiation individually or in combination, enabling researchers to investigate how the human body reacts to various extreme climatic conditions.

Read more