Functional adrenal glands have been grown in the lab by coaxing a type of stem cell to develop in a certain way by constantly tweaking the mix of chemicals they are bathed in.
Category: biotech/medical – Page 1,187
Liquid Metal Stretchy Circuits, Built With Sound
A team in Korea has used sound waves to connect tiny droplets of liquid metals inside a polymer casing. The novel technique is a way to make tough, highly conductive circuits that can be flexed and stretched to five times their original size.
Making stretchable electronics for skin-based sensors and implantable medical devices requires materials that can conduct electricity like metals but deform like rubber. Conventional metals don’t cut it for this use. To make elastic conductors, researchers have looked at conductive polymers and composites of metals and polymers. But these materials lose their conductivity after being stretched and released a few times.
Liquid metals, alloys that stay liquid at room temperature, are a more promising option. Gallium-based liquid metals, typically alloys of gallium and indium, have caught the most attention because of their low toxicity and high electrical and heat conductivity. They are also tough because of an oxide skin that forms on their surface, and they stick well to various substrates.
Amazon debuts a fully autonomous warehouse robot
You can’t discuss fulfillment robots without mentioning Amazon. Over the past decade, the retail juggernaut has become the 800-pound gorilla in the category, courtesy of several key acquisitions and seemingly endless resources. And while warehouse robotics and automation have been accelerated amid the pandemic and resulting employment crunch, Amazon Robotics has been driving these categories for years now.
This week at its annual Re: Mars conference in Las Vegas, the company celebrated a decade of its robotics division, which was effectively born with its acquisition of Kiva Systems. Over the course of its life, Amazon Robotics has deployed more than 520,000 robotic drive units, across its fulfillment and sort centers. From the outside, it’s been a tremendous success in the company’s push toward same-and next-day package delivery, and its driven the competition to look for their own third-party robotics solutions, bolstering startups like Locus, Fetch and Berkshire Grey.
Is the brain a quantum computer? A remarkable pair of studies suggests so
Using modified MRI machines, physicists may have found quantum entanglement between the heart and brain If someone were to (theoretically) throw a wrench at your head, you might be able to catch it just in time to avoid a concussion. But how? Typically, for split-second reactions, we do not consciously decide to catch.
Alzheimer’s breakthrough could be ‘beginning of the end’: drug study
Alzheimer’s disease could soon be a distant memory.
A revolutionary new Alzheimer’s drug named lecanemab could mark a major breakthrough in the decades-long battle against the neurological disorder, according to eye-opening Phase 3 trials. The potentially game-changing dry runs transpired in May 2021, but the results were only published Tuesday in the New England Journal of Medicine.
“This first step is the hardest; I truly believe it represents the beginning of the end,” said Professor John Hardy, group leader at UK Dementia Research Institute at the University College London, describing the promising findings.
Sexual-lineage-specific DNA methylation regulates meiosis in Arabidopsis
Year 2017 This is essentially the mechanism for plant immortality.
RNA-directed DNA methylation (RdDM) activity in the Arabidopsis thaliana male sexual lineage that regulates gene expression in meiocytes. Loss of sexual-lineage-specific RdDM causes mis-splicing of the MPS1 gene (also known as PRD2), thereby disrupting meiosis. Our results establish a regulatory paradigm in which de novo methylation creates a cell-lineage-specific epigenetic signature that controls gene expression and contributes to cellular function in flowering plants.
Researchers use AI to assess patients’ vocals after surgery on the larynx
Artificial intelligence would be used to detect changes in the vocals of each patient after a laryngectomy.
Researchers from Kaunas University of Technology Faculty of Informatics (KTU IF) and Lithuanian University of Health Sciences (LSMU) in Lithuania have created a new substitute voice evaluation index that can detect pathologies in patients’ voices more quickly and efficiently. Voice pathologies include a variety of disorders such as growths on the vocal cords, spasms, swelling or paralysis in the vocal cords.
AI could be used to determine changes in voice after laryngectomy.
Laryngectomy is a surgery that requires the removal of the larynx.
Simarik/iStock.
“For some, the voice changes only slightly, while for others, it can be a life-changing situation. Imagine calling someone on the phone, emergency services, police, etc. – and the one you’re calling does not understand anything. Or even not hear you – as the phone’s noise removal system will cut it out,” said Dr. Rytis Maskeliunas, professor with the Department of Multimedia Engineering, Faculty of Informatics and chief researcher at Kaunas University of Technology Faculty of Informatics.
Google licenses its AI tool for breast cancer screening to a medical firm
It is the first ever commercial partnership between Google Health and the medical company iCAD.
Google recently announced that it licensed its AI research prototype to a medical company called iCAD. The AI research model can be used for breast cancer screening. iCAD is a company that creates innovative medical equipment for cancer detection.
ICAD made the announcement about the collaboration yesterday, Nov. 28, on its website.
It is the first time ever that Google Health has licensed this specific artificial intelligence technology in a commercial partnership for breast cancer screening and personalized risk assessment of the disease, to iCAD.
ChooChin/iStock iCAD made the announcement about the collaboration yesterday, Nov. 28, on its website.
Scientists developed a non-surgical treatment model for carpal tunnel syndrome
The treatment does not require anesthesia or hospitalization.
A novel non-surgical treatment method could mark an end to the sufferings of carpal tunnel syndrome patients, according to a study that will be presented today at the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America (RSNA).
Carpal tunnel syndrome is a nerve entrapment neuropathy that is caused by pressure on the median nerve and tendons inside the carpal tunnel. Its symptoms, which may include tingling, numbness, or weakness in the fingers or hand, can affect one’s daily life negatively due to a loss of proprioception.
How tardigrades come back from the dead
Year 2017 Basically the tardigrade is the most promising set of genes on any creature due to many types of survival genes like going years without food or even genes for radiation resistance which could be used in crispr to augment human genes.
Tardigrades — aka water bears or moss piglets — are perhaps the most resilient creatures on the planet, able to survive complete dehydration, space vacuum and being frozen. However, only recently have scientists begun to unravel the genes that underpin the tardigrade’s biological superpowers. “They’re 0.2mm to 1mm in length and despite being so small they are able to do all these things we cannot,” says Mark Blaxter, a biologist at the University of Edinburgh who has been studying tardigrades for 20 years. “In their DNA, they hold a cornucopia of secrets.”
With Kazurahu Arakawa, from the University of Keio, Japan, Blaxter recently analysed the first true tardigrade genome. The results, published today in the open access journal PLOS Biology, are a first step towards explaining the genetics underpinning the tardigrade’s extraordinary resilience and to pinpoint its place within the evolutionary tree of life. We spoke to Blaxter about his new research and his fascination for this remarkable little animal.
**WIRED:**How come we are only now able to analyse the tardigrade’s true genomes?