Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 2574
Aug 19, 2016
Bionic Woman: Humans+
Posted by Albert Sanchez in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, transhumanism
Motherboard visits a woman using one of the most advanced prosthetic limbs in the world—one that can touch and feel like a flesh-and-blood hand. Full video: http://bit.ly/2b6JS9W
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SENS RB2016 Conference is now live streaming come along and join them now and get the latest news! They are streaming for the next 3 days for those interesting in rejuvenation biotechnology.
All presentations at the Rejuvenation Biotechnology Conference 2016 will be available to watch online via live streaming. There will be three separate streams, covering consecutive sections of the conference.
To access the streams bookmark the following links and tune in during the times specified:
Aug 19, 2016
Accelerating early disease detection with nanobiotechnology
Posted by Klaus Baldauf in categories: biotech/medical, computing, health
Imagine this scenario: Annual physical examinations are supplemented by an affordable home diagnostic chip, allowing you to regularly monitor your baseline health with just a simple urine sample. Though outwardly you appear to be in good health, the device reveals a fluctuation in your biomarker profile, indicating the possible emergence of early stage cancer development or presence of a virus.
Diagnostic devices like a home pregnancy test have been around since the 1970s. It revolutionized a woman’s ability to find out if she was pregnant without having to wait for a doctor’s appointment to confirm her suspicions. The test relies on detecting a hormone, human chorionic gonadotropin, present in urine. But could detecting cancer, or a deadly virus, from a similar kind of sample and device be as simple and non-invasive?
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Aug 18, 2016
Beam My DNA Up to Space, Scotty! New Project Aims to ‘Immortalize’ Humanity
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: biotech/medical, space travel
A new spin on DNA in space.
A new crowdfunding project could see humanity immortalized in space. Voices of Humanity, has one key goal and that is to help everyone on planet Earth to engage directly in space exploration.
The Voices of Humanity project is led by Professor Philip Lubin from Orlando University has developed the idea in the hope it will help them to develop a first generation laser-driven small spacecraft as part of NASA’s program to explore interstellar flight.
Continue reading “Beam My DNA Up to Space, Scotty! New Project Aims to ‘Immortalize’ Humanity” »
Aug 18, 2016
Wake Forest Researchers Successfully Implant Living, Functional 3D Printed Human Tissue Into Animals
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: 3D printing, biotech/medical, life extension
“Researchers Successfully Implant Living, Functional 3D Printed Human Tissue Into Animals”
My question is “why?”
The news has been full of stories about new advancements in 3D printed tissue. Companies such as Organovo and research institutions such as the University of California San Diego are leading the charge in the development of 3D printed, functional human tissue, particularly liver tissue. So far, printed tissue is being used mostly for pharmaceutical drug testing, but everyone in the 3D printing biosphere professes the ultimate goal of eventually producing whole, fully functional human organs that can be transplanted into patients. Most experts agree that it will happen; it’s just a matter of when.
Aug 18, 2016
Exclusive: Controversial US scientist creates deadly new flu strain for pandemic research
Posted by Jeremy Lichtman in categories: biotech/medical, genetics
The article overplays the alarmist tone a bit, but this is still an idiotic experiment.
If I understand correctly (the reporter didn’t explain it properly), he mutated the virus multiple times, until it no longer matches existing antibodies (i.e. somebody exposed would still become resistant — if they survived — and it is still possible to create new antiviral drugs that can target it); i.e. it is dangerous, but not invincible.
Given how long it takes to make new vaccinations for flue strains (and the cost of distributing them globally), this is still deeply irresponsible.
Aug 18, 2016
Will Uber’s Fleet of Self-Driving Cars Save Lives?
Posted by Dan Kummer in categories: biotech/medical, health, robotics/AI, transportation
Researchers estimate that driverless cars could, by midcentury, reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90 percent. Which means that, using the number of fatalities in 2013 as a baseline, self-driving cars could save 29,447 lives a year. In the United States alone, that’s nearly 300,000 fatalities prevented over the course of a decade, and 1.5 million lives saved in a half-century. For context: Anti-smoking efforts saved 8 million lives in the United States over a 50-year period.
The life-saving estimates for driverless cars are on par with the efficacy of modern vaccines, which save 42,000 lives for each U.S. birth cohort, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
Globally, there are about 1.2 million traffic fatalities annually, according to the World Health Organization. Which means driverless cars are poised to save 10 million lives per decade—and 50 million lives around the world in half a century.
Continue reading “Will Uber’s Fleet of Self-Driving Cars Save Lives?” »
Aug 18, 2016
EPJ Nonlinear Biomedical Physics
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: biotech/medical, physics
EPJ — Nonlinear Biomedical Physics is an open access journal, published under the brand SpringerOpen, dedicated to the application of nonlinear dynamics and integrative systems science to the quantitative modeling and understanding of how structure and function as well as dysfunctions and diseases emerge in complex biomedical matter and processes. Coverage is focused on the application-driven development of theoretical, experimental and computational techniques, including relevant methodologies, instrumentation and related advanced technology.
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Aug 18, 2016
Modifying a living genome with genetic equivalent of ‘search and replace’
Posted by Karen Hurst in categories: bioengineering, biotech/medical, genetics
Researchers including George Church have made further progress on the path to fully rewriting the genome of living bacteria. Such a recoded organism, once available, could feature functionality not seen in nature. It could also make the bacteria cultivated in pharmaceutical and other industries immune to viruses, saving billions of dollars of losses due to viral contamination. Finally, the altered genetic information in such an organism wouldn’t be able to contaminate natural cells because of the code’s limitations outside the lab, researchers say, so its creation could stop laboratory engineered organisms from genetically contaminating wildlife. In the DNA of living organisms, the same amino acid can be encoded by multiple codons — DNA “words” of three nucleotide letters. Here, building on previous work that demonstrated it was possible to use the genetic equivalent of “search and replace” in Escherichia coli to substitute a single codon with an alternative, Nili Ostrov, Church and colleagues explored the feasibility of replacing multiple codons, genome-wide. The researchers attempted to reduce the number of codons in the E. coli code from 64 to 57 by exploring how to eradicate more than 60,000 instances of seven different codons. They systematically replaced all 62,214 instances of these seven codons with alternatives. In the recoded E.coli segments that the researchers assembled and tested, 63% of all instances of the seven codons were replaced, the researchers say, and most of the genes impacted by underlying amino acid changes were expressed normally. Though they did not achieve a fully operational 57-codon E. coli, “a functionally altered genome of this scale has not yet been explored,” the authors write. Their results provide critical insights into the next step in the genome rewriting arena — creating a fully recoded organism.
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