Lifeboat Foundation

A new wearable device turns the touch of a finger into a source of power for small electronics and sensors. Engineers at the University of California San Diego developed a thin, flexible strip that can be worn on a fingertip and generate small amounts of electricity when a person’s finger sweats or presses on it.

What’s special about this sweat-fueled device is that it generates power even while the wearer is asleep or sitting still. This is potentially a big deal for the field of wearables because researchers have now figured out how to harness the energy that can be extracted from human sweat even when a person is not moving.

Continue reading “Calling All Couch Potatoes: This Finger Wrap Can Let You Power Electronics While You Sleep” »

Paper referenced in the video:

Diet and Botanical Supplementation: Combination Therapy for Healthspan Improvement?
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/32924860/

The formula for launching a machine learning company in health care looks something like this: Build a model, test it on historical patient data in a computer lab, and then start selling it to hospitals nationwide.

Suchi Saria, director of the machine learning and health care lab at Johns Hopkins University, is taking a different approach. Her company, Bayesian Health, is coming out of stealth mode on Monday by publishing a prospective study on how one of its lead products — an early warning system for sepsis — impacted the care of current patients in real hospitals.

To develop its drug, Vir “deliberately isolated an antibody that binds to a part of the virus that is very difficult for the virus to mutate,” he said. That piece of the virus is “conserved, not only in all the variants, but in SARS-1… and in a whole family of coronaviruses.”

Vir knew the variant onslaught was coming, said the company’s executive vice president of research and chief scientific officer, Herbert “Skip” Virgin, M.D., Ph.D. So far, added Scangos, its premise of targeting a conserved site to maintain efficacy against mutations “seems to be holding true.”

Sotrovimab “appears to retain activity against variants of concern” like alpha, beta, gamma, epsilon and iota, the National Institutes of Health noted in recently updated COVID-19 treatment guidelines. Last week, GSK and Vir provided data suggesting that delta also belongs to that list. Updated lab experiment data posted on the preprint repository bioRxiv showed sotrovimab’s activity against 14 variants including the troubling delta variant—which first surfaced in India and appears to spread more rapidly than the already-speedy alpha—was very similar to that against the original SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Continue reading “GSK and Vir, navigating early antibody pitfalls, tout delta variant-busting data for latecomer sotrovimab” »

Scientists are only just discovering the enormous impact of our gut health – and how it could hold the key to everything from tackling obesity to overcoming anxiety and boosting immunity by Rebecca Seal.

Safe and readily available water is important for public health, whether it is used for drinking, domestic use, food production, or recreational purposes. Despite the vast quantity of water on Earth, just 2.5% of it is freshwater, and an estimated 785 million people lack a clean source of drinking water. Desalination of seawater could be a vital technology to meet the world’s drinking water needs.

Now, Korean engineers have developed a new desalination technique that takes just minutes to make seawater drinkable. They used a new nanofiber membrane distillation process that could desalinate water with 99.99% efficiency. Engineers believe that commercializing such technology could help humankind cope with the shortage of fresh drinking water in the future.

Amongst the most challenging issues in membrane distillation is membrane wetting that causes the pollution of permeate, reduction in vapor production, and finally, reduction in the performance of the membrane. If a membrane exhibits wetting during membrane distillation operation, the membrane must be replaced.

A previous study led by Lee found losing just 16 minutes of sleep could impact job performance. Her previous findings also show that minor sleep loss can decrease daily mindfulness, which is a critical recourse for managing stress and maintaining healthy routines.

Summary: Three consecutive nights of sleep loss can have a negative impact on both mental and physical health. Sleep deprivation can lead to an increase in anger, frustration, and anxiety. Additionally, those who experienced sleep loss reported a change in physical wellbeing, including gastrointestinal and respiratory problems.

Source: USF

Continue reading “How a Series of Sleep Loss Impacts Mental and Physical Wellbeing” »

This mapping of aetiological sources of cross-disorder overlap can guide future research aiming to identify specific mechanisms contributing to risk of physical conditions in people with ADHD, which could ultimately inform preventive and lifestyle intervention efforts. Our findings highlight the importance of assessing the presence of physical conditions in patients with ADHD.

Swedish Research Council; Swedish Brain Foundation; Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life, and Welfare; Stockholm County Council; StratNeuro; EU Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme; National Institute of Mental Health.

Cyber incidents are an ongoing and substantial threat. Find out how The National Guard is working to deter, disrupt and defeat malicious cyber activity.

ARLINGTON, Va. – The National Guard plays a critical role in defending computer networks and mitigating cyber-attacks that occur almost daily, said Guard senior leaders during a roundtable discussion Tuesday.

“Cyber incidents are an ongoing and substantial threat,” said Army Gen. Daniel Hokanson, chief of the National Guard Bureau. “In 2021 alone, America’s power plants, food supply, water supply, health care, law enforcement, and defense sectors have all come under attack.”

Continue reading “Cyber Shield enhances partnerships as cyber threats continue” »