Lifeboat Foundation

Scientists from EPFL and the University of Lausanne have used a chip that was originally designed for environmental science to study the properties of biocement formation. This material has the potential to replace traditional cement binders in certain civil engineering applications.

The chip is the size of a credit card and its surface is engraved with a flow channel measuring one meter from end to end that is as thick as a human hair. Researchers can inject a solution into one end of the channel and, with the help of time-lapse microscopy, observe the solution’s behavior over several hours. Medical scientists have used similar chips for health care applications, such as to examine how arteries get clogged or how a drug spreads into the bloodstream, while environmental engineers have applied them to the study of biofilms and contaminants in drinking water.

Now, a team of civil engineers at EPFL’s Laboratory of Soil Mechanics (LMS), together with scientists from the Faculty of Geosciences and Environment at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), have repurposed the chip to understand complex transport-reaction phenomena involved in the formation of new kinds of biocement.

Duke University biomedical engineers have demonstrated the most effective pancreatic cancer treatment yet recorded in mouse models. While most mouse trials consider just stopping growth to be a success, the new treatment fully eliminated tumors in 80% of mice across many model types, including those considered to be the most difficult to treat.

The approach combines traditional chemotherapy drugs with a new method for irradiating the tumor. The treatment implants radioactive iodine-131 directly into the tumor inside a gel-like depot that protects healthy tissue and is absorbed by the body once the radiation fades, as opposed to administering radiation from an external beam that passes through healthy tissue.

The study was recently published in the journal Nature Biomedical Engineering.

A recent study from Umeå University in Sweden found that hereditary traits and factors such as obesity, education, and personality could play a role in tooth decay and gum disease. Tooth decay and periodontitis, also known as gum disease, are among the most common diseases around the world.

New technology will allow for custom made skin transplants and possibly make bones and organs, too.

The use of smartphones has become an increasingly popular behaviour in people’s lives. However, an increased number of people find it difficult to minimise the use of smartphones, leading to the emergence of smartphone-addictive behaviours (Panova and Carbonell, 2018; Busch and McCarthy, 2021). In particular, the rapid spread of coronavirus disease 2019 around the world has led to a dramatic increase in the number of smartphone addicts due to home isolation (Caponnetto et al., 2021). Smartphone addiction is an emerging behavioural addiction, which refers to excessive dependence on and abuse of smartphones by individuals (Kwon et al., 2013; Billieux et al., 2015). Notably, smartphone addiction has been reported to have negative impacts on individuals’ cognitive functions, such as attention (Choi et al., 2021; Lee et al., 2021), perception (Dong et al., 2014) and memory (Hartanto and Yang, 2016; Tanil et al., 2020). Nevertheless, the influence of smartphone addiction on individuals’ advanced cognition is still unclear. Smartphone addiction may impair flexible cognitive processes (Dong et al., 2014), such as those that contribute to creative cognition. However, to our knowledge, the influence of smartphone addiction on creative cognition has not been explored.

Given the negative effects and high incidence of smartphone addiction (Zou et al., 2021), it is essential to uncover the underlying mechanisms, especially the neural mechanisms, by which smartphone addiction affects creative cognition. Creative cognition is defined as the ability to generate original and useful products (Sternberg and Lubart, 1999). It is a core cognitive element that allows for daily flexible problem solving and the generation of new ideas. The main components of creative cognition are (i) overcoming the semantic constraints of existing knowledge, which involves goal-directed behaviour through cognitive control, and (ii) building unusual associations to expand the existing structure of knowledge, which involves the spontaneous and unconstrained generation of novel associations (Ward et al., 1997; Abraham, 2014; Marron and Faust, 2019).

According to the problematic mobile phone use model (Billieux et al., 2015), the lack of planning or reduced cognitive control is a crucial contributor to smartphone addiction behaviour. Previous studies have also indicated that impaired cognitive control is a prominent feature of smartphone addicts, characterised by an inability to focus on task-related information and an inability to suppress dominant, automatic responses (Van Deursen et al., 2015; Li et al., 2021). In fact, previous studies have emphasised the contribution of cognitive control to the generation of creative ideas (Beaty et al., 2016; Benedek and Fink, 2019). During creative idea generation, known ideas are often initially retrieved, which acts as a source of interference allowing the retrieval process to focus on familiar and dominant ideas (Abraham, 2014). In this context, cognitive control is needed to drive the retrieval process of novel and remote information.

Immune checkpoints are a normal part of the immune system. Their function is to prevent an immune response from being so powerful that it destroys healthy cells in the body. Immunotherapy drugs called immune checkpoint inhibitors, such as Keytruda and Opdivo, work by unleashing the immune system’s T cells to attack tumor cells. Their introduction a decade ago marked a major advance in cancer therapy. However, only 10% to 30% of treated patients experience long-term improvement.

Now, scientists at Albert Einstein College of Medicine describe findings that could bolster the effectiveness of immune-checkpoint therapy in a study published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation (JCI) on November 15.

Continue reading “Promising New Cancer Therapy Developed by Albert Einstein College of Medicine” »

According to Johns Hopkins Medicine scientists, a recent study with obese mice adds to evidence that specialized channel proteins are potential therapeutic targets for sleep apnea and other unusually slow breathing disorders in obese individuals.

The protein, a cation channel known as TRPM7, is located in carotid bodies, minute sensory organs in the neck that sense changes in oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, as well as certain hormones such as leptin, in the bloodstream. TRPM7 proteins aid in the transport and regulation of positively charged molecules into and out of the cells of the carotid bodies.

Lenise Kim, Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins Medicine and the leader of the current study, expands on earlier results from the lab that indicated TRPM7 had a role in the development of high blood pressure in mice.

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS SF) – At a conference Wednesday afternoon, a UCSF researcher presented the results of a two-year study that found strong evidence that the risk factors for dementia can be reduced up to 30% with a modified lifestyle.

Dr. Kristine Yaffe, a professor of Psychiatry, Neurology, and Epidemiology, presented her findings from a two-year randomized pilot study of nearly 200 older adults at the annual Clinical Trials on Alzheimer’s Disease conference in San Francisco.

She told KPIX 5 that it’s still a complex puzzle as to why some people get Alzheimer’s Disease and others don’t. That’s why her team of researchers joined forces with some colleagues at Kaiser Washington in Seattle and proceeded with the two-year study.

Antibiotics are not enough in the war against pathogens.

Every year more than 40 million people in the U.S. suffer from foodborne illnesses caused by bacteria, viruses, and various other types of pathogens. Food contamination is often underestimated, but it is responsible for 420,000 deaths annually. This number represents more people than the entire population of Iceland.

Urfinguss/iStock.

Continue reading “Spraying an army of bacteria-eating viruses can save us from food poisoning” »