Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 2519
Sep 25, 2015
A new class of anti-obesity compounds with potential anti-diabetic properties
Posted by Sean Brazell in category: biotech/medical
Prevalence of Self-Reported Obesity Among U.S. Adults by State and Territory, BRFSS, 2014 (credit: Behavorial Risk Factor Surveillance System/CDC)
A molecule known as MnTBAP has rapidly reversed obesity in mice and could be effective for humans in the future, according to researchers from Skidmore College and the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Sep 25, 2015
Watch: Paralysed man walks again via brain waves rerouted to his legs
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in categories: biotech/medical, computing, neuroscience
A paraplegic man who was paralysed for five years has walked again on his own two feet, thanks to a new kind of brain-computer interface that can reroute his thoughts to his legs, bypassing his spinal cord entirely.
The anonymous man, who experiences complete paralysis in both legs due to a severe spinal cord injury (SCI), is the first such patient to demonstrate that brain-controlled overground walking after paraplegia due to SCI is feasible.
Continue reading “Watch: Paralysed man walks again via brain waves rerouted to his legs” »
Sep 25, 2015
Lab-grown kidneys shown to be fully functional in animal recipients
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: biotech/medical
The past few years have been marked by the proliferation of lab-grown organs, including limbs, livers, skin, heart tissue, and yep, even penises. But piecing together an organ, cell-by-cell, in a way that resembles the real thing is only half the challenge — you’ve actually got to make it work as part of several incredibly complex systems in a living, breathing organism. And that’s where most attempts fall flat.
But researchers in Japan have managed to grow fully functioning kidneys in the lab, and when transplanted into pigs and rats, they filtered out urine just like a natural kidney. Built using stem cells that had been extracted and then incubated in the animal recipients, the kidneys point to the possibility of lab-grown kidneys for humans in the future.
Led by Takashi Yokoo from the Jikei University School of Medicine in Tokyo, the team figured out how to overcome a challenge they’d faced previously with these lab-grown kidneys: they were good at processing urine, but instead of passing it into the natural ureter, they ballooned dangerously under the pressure.
Sep 24, 2015
Stephen Hawking speaks with virtually no muscular movement
Posted by Philip Raymond in categories: astronomy, biotech/medical, cosmology, gravity, physics, singularity, space, thought controlled
Next January Stephen Hawking will be 74 years old. He has lived much longer than most individuals with his debilitating condition. In addition to being an unquestionably gifted cosmologist, he has invited controversy by supporting the pro-Palestinian, Israel-BDS boycott and warning about the dangers of alien invaders who tap into our interstellar greetings
Antisemitism, notwithstanding, this man is a mental giant. He is Leonardo. He is Einstein. Like them, his discoveries and theories will echo for generations beyond his life on earth. He is that genius.
Forty years ago, when Stephen Hawking still had mobility, he delivered a paper on a mystery regarding information-loss for entities that cross the event boundary of a black hole.
In the mid 1970s, Astronomers were just discovering black holes and tossing about various theories about the event horizon and its effect on the surrounding space-time. Many individuals still considered black holes to be theoretical. Hawking’s analysis of the information paradox seemed extremely esoteric. Yet, last month (Aug 2015) , at Sweeden’s KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Hawking presented a possible solution to the paradox that he sparked.
Continue reading “Stephen Hawking speaks with virtually no muscular movement” »
Sep 24, 2015
Nobel Prize Predictions See Honors for Gene Editing Technology
Posted by Aleksandar Vukovic in category: biotech/medical
By Julie Steenhuysen.
(Reuters) — Scientists behind the discovery of a technology called CRISPR-Cas9 that allows researchers to edit virtually any gene they target are among the top contenders for Nobel prizes next month, according to an annual analysis by Thomson Reuters.
The predictions announced on Thursday come from the Intellectual Property & Science unit of Thomson Reuters (which also owns the Reuters news service). Since 2002, it has accurately identified 37 scientists who went on to become Nobel laureates, although not necessarily in the year in which they were named.
Sep 24, 2015
Brain-computer link enables paralyzed California man to walk
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: biotech/medical, computing, engineering, information science, neuroscience, robotics/AI
By Steve Gorman LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralyzed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics, doctors in Southern California reported on Wednesday. The slow, halting first steps of the 28-year-old paraplegic were documented in a preliminary study published in the British-based Journal of NeuroEngineering and Rehabilitation, along with a YouTube video. The feat was accomplished using a system allowing the brain to bypass the injured spinal cord and instead send messages through a computer algorithm to electrodes placed around the patient’s knees to trigger controlled leg muscle movements.
Sep 24, 2015
Losing Your Mind? Great Thinkers on the Brain
Posted by Johnny Boston in categories: biological, biotech/medical, cryonics, neuroscience, philosophy, science, theory
Aristotle is frequently regarded as one of the greatest thinkers of antiquity. So why didn’t he think much of his brain?
In this brief history of the brain, the GPA explores what the great minds of the past thought about thought. And we discover that questions that seem to have obvious answers today were anything but self-evident for the individuals that first tackled them. And that conversely, sometimes the facts which we simply accept to be true can be blinding, preventing us from making deeper discoveries about our our world and ourselves.
Sep 23, 2015
DNA-guided 3-D printing of human tissue
Posted by Sean Brazell in categories: 3D printing, biotech/medical
Reconstituting epithelial (skin) microtissues with programmed size, shape, composition, spatial heterogeneity, and embedding extracellular matrix. Scheme and images of fully embedded aggregates of human luminal and myoepithelial cells. (credit: Michael E Todhunter et al./Nature Methods)
A new technique developed by UCSF scientists for building organoids (tiny models of human tissues) more precisely turns human cells into the biological equivalent of LEGO bricks. Called DNA Programmed Assembly of Cells (DPAC), it allows researchers in hours to create arrays of thousands of custom-designed organoids, such as models of human mammary glands containing several hundred cells each.
Sep 23, 2015
Researchers grow kidneys and urinary pathways that work in live animals
Posted by Shailesh Prasad in category: biotech/medical
(Medical Xpress)—A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Japan has succeeded in growing kidneys from stem cells that worked as they were supposed to after being transplanted into rats and pigs. The team outlines their work and results in a paper they have had published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Researchers have met with success in the past, using human stem cells to grow organs, in this case kidneys, unfortunately, the kidneys that have been grown have all developed without a urinary pathway—the means by which urine makes its way out of the kidney and to a tube that connects with the bladder. Such kidneys experience hydronephrosis, where they bloat with urine. In this new effort, the researchers found a way to grow both a kidney and a pathway and an initial bladder, all of which successfully replicated the work normally done by natural organs for a period of time.
The team used the organogenic niche method to grow kidneys using rat stem cells, which when tested, were able to produce urine. Next, they grew a urinary pathway, which was in effect, a type of drainage tube. Then, they grew a blabber that would be compatible with the drainage tube. With all the parts, grown, the kidney was placed inside a rat, then the pathway was added, followed by the bladder they’d grown—the new bladder was then connected to the rat’s native bladder. After sewing up the rat, they found the whole system worked. The team then repeated what they had done with a much larger animal, one much closer in size to humans—a pig—and found the same results.
