Lifeboat Foundation

We could modify plants to grow in a day with the genetic dna mechanisms we find in bamboo.

Bamboo plant.

Circa 2009

The researchers expect to have a working prototype of the product in four years. “We are just at the beginning of this project,” Wang said. “During the first two years, our primary focus will be on the sensor systems. Integrating enzyme logic onto electrodes that can read biomarker inputs from the body will be one of our first major challenges.”

“Achieving the goal of the program is estimated to take nearly a decade,” Chrisey said.

Continue reading “Hospital on a chip” »

‘’Baykar says the Akinci, Turkish for “raider,” can attack targets in the air and on the ground, and operate alongside fighter jets, flying higher and staying in the air longer than Turkey’s existing pilotless planes. The drones will carry a range of missiles developed by Turkey’s Roketsan.’’

Hospitals in U.S. South Run Low on Oxygen Amid Covid, Storm.

Continue reading “Turkey to Add More Advanced Drone to Fleet That Has Swung Wars” »

Proteins can communicate through DNA, conducting a long-distance dialogue that serves as a kind of genetic “switch,” according to Weizmann Institute of Science researchers. They found that the binding of proteins to one site of a DNA molecule can physically affect another binding site at a distant location, and that this “peer effect” activates certain genes. This effect had previously been observed in artificial systems, but the Weizmann study is the first to show it takes place in the DNA of living organisms.

A team headed by Dr. Hagen Hofmann of the Chemical and Structural Biology Department made this discovery while studying a peculiar phenomenon in the soil bacteria Bacillus subtilis. A small minority of these bacteria demonstrate a unique skill: an ability to enrich their genomes by taking up bacterial gene segments scattered in the soil around them. This ability depends on a protein called ComK, a transcription factor, which binds to the DNA to activate the genes that make the scavenging possible. However, it was unknown how exactly this activation works.

TOKYO, Aug 28 (Reuters) — Two people died after receiving Moderna Inc (MRNA.O) COVID-19 vaccine shots that were among lots later suspended following the discovery of contaminants, Japan’s health ministry said on Saturday.

The men in their 30s died this month within days of receiving their second Moderna doses, the ministry said in a release. Each had a shot from one of three manufacturing lots suspended on Thursday. The causes of death are being investigated.

Ultrasound imaging techniques have proved to be highly valuable tools for diagnosing a variety of health conditions, including peripheral artery disease (PAD). PAD, one of the most common diseases among the elderly, entails the blocking or narrowing of peripheral blood vessels, which limits the supply of blood to specific areas of the body.

Ultrasound imaging methods are among the most popular means of diagnosing PAD, due to their many advantageous characteristics. In fact, unlike other imaging methods, such as computed tomography angiography and magnetic resonance angiography, ultrasound imaging is non-invasive, low-cost and radiation-free.

Most existing ultrasound imaging techniques are designed to capture two-dimensional images in real time. While this can be helpful in some cases, their inability to collect three-dimensional information reduces the reliability of the data they gather, increasing their sensitivity to variations in how individual physicians used a given technique.

Almost a third of working Americans are in some form of medical debt, with nearly a quarter of those with an outstanding balance owing $10,000 or more. Many Americans feel anxious about health care costs and are depleting their own savings to pay the bills, or avoiding going to the doctor due to the cost, and in some cases, as in the case of William Osman, embarking on bizarre projects to highlight the issue.

The YouTuber and engineer, who is known for his bizarre projects that combine engineering and entertainment, posted a video last week outlining how a recent hospital visit requiring X-rays resulted in a staggering $69,210.32 bill.

Continue reading “Engineer Builds His Own X-Ray After Hospital Charges Him $69K” »

A new hydrogel could help improve the treatment of damaged cartilage in knees and other joints. The unique properties of the gel, which provides a scaffold for cartilage cells to grow on, allow it to be implanted via keyhole surgery.

“We will start human trials soon,” says Qiuning Lin at the Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China.

An international research team with participants from several universities including the FAU has proposed a standardized registry for artificial intelligence (AI) work in biomedicine to improve the reproducibility of results and create trust in the use of AI algorithms in biomedical research and, in the future, in everyday clinical practice. The scientists presented their proposal in the journal Nature Methods.

In the last decades, new technologies have made it possible to develop a wide variety of systems that can generate huge amounts of biomedical data, for example in cancer research. At the same time, completely new possibilities have developed for examining and evaluating this data using artificial intelligence methods. AI algorithms in intensive care units, e.g., can predict circulatory failure at an early stage based on large amounts of data from several monitoring systems by processing a lot of complex information from different sources at the same time, which is far beyond human capabilities.

This great potential of AI systems leads to an unmanageable number of biomedical AI applications. Unfortunately, the corresponding reports and publications do not always adhere to best practices or provide only incomplete information about the algorithms used or the origin of the data. This makes assessment and comprehensive comparisons of AI models difficult. The decisions of AIs are not always comprehensible to humans and results are seldomly fully reproducible. This situation is untenable, especially in clinical research, where trust in AI models and transparent research reports are crucial to increase the acceptance of AI algorithms and to develop improved AI methods for basic biomedical research.