Drinking tea is associated with 24% reduced non-cardiovascular mortality, reveals a study of 131,000 people presented at the European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress by Professor Nicolas Danchin from France.
The study included 131,401 people aged 18 to 95 years who had a health check up at the Paris IPC Preventive Medicine Center between January 2001 and December 2008. During a mean 3–5 years follow-up,… read more
A new batteryless cardiac pacemaker controlled by a self-winding wristwatch mechanism that is powered by heart motion has been developed by researchers in the Cardiovascular Engineering Group at ARTORG, University of Bern, Switzerland.
The device was presented at European Society of Cardiology (ESC) Congress 2014 by Adrian Zurbuchen a PhD candidate.
“Batteries are a limiting factor in today’s… read more
Researchers at UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center and other institutions have created biocompatible multitasking nanoparticles that could be used as contrast agents to light up tumors for MRI and PET scans or deliver chemo and other therapies to destroy tumors. The study was published online in Nature Communications.
“These are amazingly useful particles,” noted co-first author Yuanpei Li, a research faculty member in the Lam laboratory. “As… read more
DARPA’s new Electrical Prescriptions (ElectRx) (pronounced “electrics”) program aims to develop new high-precision, minimally invasive technologies for modulating nerve circuits to restore and maintain human health, initiated in support of the President’s brain initiative.
“The technology DARPA plans to develop through the ElectRx program could fundamentally change the manner in which doctors diagnose, monitor and treat injury and illness,” said Doug Weber, DARPA program manager. “Instead of relying only… read more
Humanoid robots could help autistic children practice imitation behavior, according to USC Viterbi School of Engineering researchers, based on a new study.
They examined how children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) react to humanoid robots that provide “graded cueing” — an occupational therapy technique that shapes behavior by providing increasingly specific cues, or prompts, to help a person learn new or lost skills.
An imitation game… read more
Northwestern Medicine researchers have discovered that using high-frequency repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to indirectly stimulate the hippocampus portion of the brain (which is involved in forming memories) improves long-term memory.
The discovery opens up interesting new possibilities for treating memory impairments caused by conditions such as stroke, early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, traumatic brain injury, and cardiac arrest — along with the memory problems… read more
DARPA has created the Atoms to Product (A2P) program to develop enhanced technologies for assembling atomic-scale components and integrate them into materials and systems from nanoscale up to product scale — in ways that preserve and exploit distinctive nanoscale properties.
The new program also seeks to develop revolutionary miniaturization and assembly methods that would work at scales 100,000 times smaller than current state-of-the-art technology.
Many common… read more
The research group of Arun K. Sharma*, PhD has developed a system for patients with urinary bladder dysfunction that may protect them against an inflammatory reaction** resulting from tissue regeneration, which can negatively impact tissue growth, development and function.
The researchers treated a highly pro-inflammatory biologic scaffold with anti-inflammatory peptide amphiphiles (AIF-PAs). (Self-assembling peptide amphiphiles, or PAs, are biocompatible and biodegradable nanomaterials used in a wide range of… read more
A research team has developed a device that could be used to detect the extremely rare tumor cells that circulate in cancer patients’ blood, helping doctors predict whether a tumor is going to spread.
Developed by researchers from MIT, Pennsylvania State University, and Carnegie Mellon University, the dime-sized device separates out tumor cells from white blood cells by exposing the cells to sound… read more
Computational biologists at Baylor College of Medicine and analytics experts at IBM research are developing a powerful new tool called the Knowledge Integration Toolkit (KnIT) that promises to help research scientists deal with the more than 50 million scientific papers available in public databases — with a new one publishing nearly every 30 seconds.
The goal: allow researchers pursuing new scientific studies to mine all available medical… read more
Stanford bioengineers have hacked the DNA of yeast, reprograming these simple cells to make opioid-based medicines* via a sophisticated extension of the basic brewing process that makes beer.
Led by Associate Professor of Bioengineering Christina Smolke, the Stanford team has already spent a decade genetically engineering yeast cells to reproduce the biochemistry of poppies, with the ultimate goal of producing opium-based medicines, from start to… read more
Children and adolescents with autism have a surplus of synapses in the brain, and this excess is due to a slowdown in a normal brain “pruning” process during development, according to a study by neuroscientists at Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC).
Because synapses are the points where neurons connect and communicate with each other, the excessive synapses may have profound effects on how the brain functions. The… read more
Scientists have for the first time grown a complex, fully functional organ from scratch in a living animal by transplanting cells that were originally created in a laboratory to form a replacement thymus*, a vital organ of the immune system.
The advance could in the future aid the development of “lab-grown” replacement organs.
Researchers from the MRC Centre for Regenerative Medicine, at the University of… read more
Michigan State University researchers have developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to see through the window.
It is called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator (TLSC) and can be used on buildings, cell phones, and any other device that has a clear surface.
Research in the production of energy from solar cells placed around… read more
Robo Brain is currently downloading and processing about 1 billion images, 120,000 YouTube videos, and 100 million how-to documents and appliance manuals, all being translated and stored in a robot-friendly format.
The reason: to serve as helpers in our homes, offices and factories, robots will need to understand how the world works and how the humans around them behave.
Robotics researchers like Ashutosh Saxena,… read more