This expansion and contraction of aluminum particles generates great mechanical stress, which can cause electrical contacts to disconnect.
#Unexpected Discovery Offers Insight into Mechanisms of Asthma, Other Diseases A new study from the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public health reveals an unexpected discovery In people with asthma,
The findings could also have important ramifications for research in other areas, notably cancer, where the same kinds of cells play a major role.
But the study showed that, in asthma, the opposite is true. The physics of biologythe researchers decided to look at the detailed shape and movement of cells from the asthmatic airway because, according to Fredberg,
and the fact that no one knows what causes asthma, which afflicts more than 300 million people worldwide it made sense to look at the shape and movement of epithelial cells,
which many scientists think play a key role in the disease. The study included lead authors Jin-Ah Park and Jae Hun Kim, research scientists in the Department of Environmental Health who study asthma,
and Jeffrey M. Drazen, a pulmonologist and professor in the department, who studies echanotransductionin asthma how the bronchial constriction of asthma might trigger cell changes in the epithelium.
The study also included mathematical physicists James Butler, senior lecturer on physiology in the Department of Environmental Health
whether asthma causes the cells to unjam, or the unjamming of the cells causes asthma. t a very big question to figure out why this particular cell shape
and movement is said happening Park. e know that asthma is related to genes, environment, and the interaction between the two,
but asthma remains poorly understood. hatever the reason, knowing more about how these cells jam
and unjam is said important Fredberg, because epithelial cells play a prominent role not just in asthma,
but in all processes involving cell growth and movement, including organ development, wound healing, and, importantly, cancer.
The findings open the door to new possibilities for developing drugs to fight asthma as well as other diseases
and to new research questions. rying to define how cells behave, how they exert forces on each other,
When the material did fracture, the researchers found it far more likely for this to happen at the eight-member rings,
Possible stem cell therapies often are limited by low survival of transplanted stem cells and the lack of precise control over their differentiation into the cell types needed to repair
Stem cell therapies have potential for repairing many tissues and bones, or even for replacing organs.
the Berlin-Brandenburg School for Regenerative Therapies; the Harvard College Research Program; and NSF Graduate Research, Einstein Visiting, Harvard College PRISE, Herchel-Smith and Pechet Family Fund Fellowships e
#New Protein-Based Sensor Detects Viral Infection, Kills Cancer cells Biological engineers from MIT have designed a modular system of proteins that can detect a particular DNA sequence in a cell
says James Collins, the Termeer Professor of Medical Engineering and Science in MIT Department of Biological engineering and Institute of Medical Engineering and Science (IMES).
Engineers Build Protein-Based Sensor to Detect Viral Infection At left, cells glow red to indicate that the detection system has been delivered successfully.
To achieve this, the researchers could program the system to produce proteins that alert immune cells to fight the infection,
a professor of biotechnology and bioengineering at The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich, described this experiment as an legant proof of conceptthat could lead to greatly improved treatments for viral infection. entinel designer cells engineered with the DNA sense
This would represent a quantum leap in antiviral therapy, says Fussenegger, who was involved not in the study.
While treating diseases using this system is likely many years away, it could be used much sooner as a research tool,
#Bioadhesive Nanoparticles Help Protect Your Skin From the Sun Dermatologists from Yale university have developed a new sunscreen made with bioadhesive nanoparticles that doesn penetrate the skin,
Most commercial sunblocks are good at preventing sunburn, but they can go below the skin surface
the researchers tested their sunblock against direct ultraviolet rays and their ability to cause sunburn.
the researchersformulation protected equally well against sunburn. They also looked at an indirect and much less studied effect of UV LIGHT.
said co-author Michael Girardi, a professor of dermatology at Yale Medical school. n fact, the indirect damage was worse
and Julia Lewis, from the Department of Dermatology. Saltzman and Girardi are affiliated with the Yale Cancer Center
#Neurologists Speed up Connectome Analysis by More than 10-Fold Unraveling the connectivity maps between nerve cells in brains is a huge scientific endeavor called connectomics.
The main limitation to mapping large parts of the brain is the analysis of the data obtained with electron microscopes.
thanks to findings published today by Professor Gilbert Bernier of the University of Montreal and its affiliated Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital.
The transplanted photoreceptors migrated naturally within the retina of their host. one transplant represents a therapeutic solution for retinal pathologies caused by the degeneration of photoreceptor cells,
offering hope that treatments may be developed for currently non-curable degenerative diseases, like Stargardt disease and ARMD. esearchers have been trying to achieve this kind of trial for years,
he said. hanks to our simple and effective approach, any laboratory in the world will now be able to create masses of photoreceptors.
ARMD is in fact the greatest cause of blindness in people over the age of 50
But in order to undertake a complete therapy, we need neuronal tissue that links all RPE cells to the cones.
In 2001, he launched his laboratory at Maisonneuve-Rosemont Hospital and immediately isolated the molecule.
Beyond the clinical applications, Professor Bernier findings could enable the modelling of human retinal degenerative diseases through the use of induced pluripotent stem cells,
offering the possibility of directly testing potential avenues for therapy on the patient own tissues e
#A Light-Reflecting Balloon Catheter Repairs the Heart without Surgery Harvard-affiliated researchers have designed a specialized catheter for fixing holes in the heart by using a biodegradable adhesive and patch.
The team reported in the journal Science Translational Medicine that the catheter has been used successfully in animal studies to help close holes without requiring open-heart surgery.
Pedro del Nido, chief of cardiac surgery at Boston Children Hospital, the William E. Ladd Professor of Child Surgery at Harvard Medical school,
and the Karp Lab at Brigham and Women Hospital, which is affiliated a Harvard hospital, as is Boston Children.
While medical devices that remain in the body may be jostled out of place or fail to cover the hole as the body grows,
As the glue cures, pressure from the positioning balloons on either side of the patch help secure it in place.
when it is needed no longer. his really is a completely new platform for closing wounds or holes anywhere in the body,
which can lead to better understanding of neurological conditions
#A Computer That Can Sniff out Septic Shock Dr. David Hagar treats dozens of patients each day at the intensive care unit at John Hopkins Hospital in Maryland.
One of his patients was almost perfectly healthy except for having low blood pressure. Within four hours, the patient died of septic shock.
which is the third level of sepsis, is difficult to predict. Sepsis is a severe immune system response triggered by an infection.
If untreated inflammation spreads throughout the body and can clot vessels. This blocks the blood flow to organs which can cause failure.
an alert was sent to a doctor who could then take action when the sepsis was relatively easy to counteract.
The study found that TREWSCORE identified 61 percent of the septic shock patients before one of its competitors,
000 people in the United states develop severe sepsis and septic shock each year; for 40 percent of them, the condition is ultimately fatal,
Part of the difficulty is that there may be systematic bias in the medical information recorded. For instance, a patient who is treated successfully will appear as low-risk in the electronic health records
This computer system can be tailored to many different medical conditions including acute lung injury, pneumonia, and post-rehabilitation illnesses like neuropathy. e are at a very exciting time,
says Saria. ore and more data is being collected on the electronic health records, and now our algorithms are reaching a point where they can be a real aid to clinicians. t
#3-D Printing Software Turns Heart Scans into Surgical Models A new 3-D printing system can transform medical scans of a patient heart into a physical models that help
plan surgeries. The efficient system relies on a computer algorithm that requires just a pinch of human guidance to figure out a patient heart structure from MRI scans.
and the Boston Children Hospital, can correctly identify an individual heart anatomical structures by following the lead of a human expert who interprets a small patch equivalent to just one-ninth of the area of each cross section, according to an MIT press release.
The group worked with high-precision MRI scans developed by Medhi Moghari, a physicist at Boston Children Hospital.
The researchers plan to report on their system at the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention in October.
Seven cardiac surgeons at Boston Children Hospital will also test the usefulness of 3-D printed heart models in a clinical study this fall.
They will draw up surgical plans for 10 patients who have undergone already surgery at Boston Children hospital
and compare the plans with the documented surgeries that were performed. Such surgical plans will either be based on physical 3-D printed models or virtual 3-D models, with the models based on either human expertise or the computer software.
Virtual models of hearts have already proven their worth in basic research. But separate clinical trials aim to test how a personalized computer model for each individual patient could improve medical care,
as previously reported by Natalia Trayanova for IEEE Spectrum. The MIT and Boston Children Hospital research represents yet another promising step forward in this area
#Reseachers Create First Integrated Circularly Polarized Light detector on a Silicon chip What do you get when you combine some biomimicry, metamaterials and nanowires?
which in one chirality alleviates morning sickness in pregnant women and in the other causes birth defects.
in a press release. ortable detectors could be used to determine drug chirality in hospitals and in the field. n research published in the journal Nature Communications,
genetic disorders are the leading cause of death. But pediatricians typically can scan an infant entire genome
and analyze the entire genome of a critically ill infant to find a diagnosis that can significantly alter the course of treatment.
In a new study published in Genome Medicine, pediatricians explained how hardware and software specialized for genetic analysis can provide such fast and lifesaving information.
Lead researcher Stephen Kingsmore, a pediatrician and genomics expert at Children Mercy Hospital in Kansas city, explains that doctors typically run targeted genetic tests for specific diseases
looking for disease-causing mutations. But with more than 8000 possible genetic diseases, such tests eren really relevant to clinical care, he tells IEEE Spectrum.
Whole-genome sequencing is a different matter entirely. These scans check for mutations at each of the 3. 2 billion locations on the human genome.
That cheap enough to make economic sense in medical emergencies, like those encountered in a neonatal intensive care unit.
After that, Kingsmore team used in-house software to search through the mutations for those associated with a disease that matched the baby symptoms.
These programs an almost make an instant diagnosis, says Kingsmore, noting that Children Mercy is going to make its software packages available as freeware by the end of the year.
and diagnosed a genetic disease in 20 of those babies. In 13 cases, the doctors dramatically changed their treatment plans.
For example, a baby with liver failure received the proper surgeries and pharmaceutical treatments based on the accurate diagnosis of a rare genetic disorder,
and is now a healthy 2-year-old. In other cases, the genome scan allowed doctors to rule out diseases,
which Kingsmore says can be equally valuable. octor always worry: id I miss something that was treatable??
But if a certain disease-associated mutation isn found, doctors needn give justin-case treatments.
The DRAGEN processor delivered its critical speed gains to the hospital servers thanks to its architecture,
every infant born in the developed world will have sequenced its genome in the hospital.?It just a matter of time before clinical genomics will be with us everywhere,
Automating medicine to this degree, from genome sequencing to diagnosis, doesn alarm Kingsmore. In fact, he thinks it will be necessary
if we want to make use of today best genetic technologies: f wee going to scale this,
treat cancer, strengthen polymers, sterilize medical devices, and even to make diamonds green and pearls black.
A key accelerator parameter is the acceleration gradient, the energy (measured in mega electron volts, Mev) gained per meter of travel.
When the terahertz pulse reflects off the left wall (around the injection pinhole) it catches the electrons,
#The device is intended for use in remote laboratory settings to diagnose various types of cancers and nervous system disorders, such as Alzheimer,
as well as detect drug resistance in infectious diseases. To use the camera it is necessary to first isolate
The team is currently using the tool to etect the presence of malaria-related drug resistance. g
a company that develops interactive 3d software and media with a medical focus, to develop an Oculus Rift version of the game.
This includes issues that are common in both developed and emerging markets from E coli and Salmonella to SARS and even the norovirus.
medical devices and Internet of things devices anything that doesn require massive amounts of electricity. It will be launching on Kickstarter in one month for $99,
who previously spent ten years researching digital health and holding clinical trials at Columbia University Medical center.
Through a disease management and doctor communication platform, Microhealth is attempting to crowdsource the management of rare, chronic conditions, starting with hemophilia.
The updates are shared with the patient doctor who can use the data to regulate dosage
If a patient with hemophilia gets a cut, he won stop bleeding until he intravenously injects enough of this protein.
And treatment is incredibly expensive around $300, 000 per patient per year, Miguel says. sually patients will infuse all of the time
Currently, 10 percent of hemophilia patients in the U s. nearly 3, 000 people) are using Microhealth,
and right now doctors don know that. y simply prompting patients to log the exact amount of medication that theye injecting,
doctors can personalize treatment to match the metabolism and the daily activity of each patient.
Doctors can also request pictures and additional information from patients, who often live hundreds of miles from hemophilia treatment centers,
And hemophilia is just the first chronic disease that the company will tackle. The team has started already working with rheumatoid arthritis patients,
and plan to launch versions of the app for multiple sclerosis and high cholesterol patients in the future. magine a patient has cancer,
and only so much time to live, so choosing the right medication is saving his life,
In 1880, Dr. Henry Faulds, a Scottish surgeon, published a paper on how fingerprints can be used for identification.
Gomez Andonaegui found that the price fluctuated so much that it was major stress in running his business.
Juan M. Banda, a biomedical informatics researcher at Stanford, has created a tool that helps patients
and doctors search through pharmaceutical research, sourced from eight NIH-and FDA-approved medical databases,
while youe still taking those antibiotics you were prescribed last week for your sinus infection. The hack is potentially a lot more useful for patients with serious conditions who are taking multiple prescription drugs for an extended period of time.
Banda says he hopes to automate some of this in the future to make it easier for patients to interact with medical research. y hope is to make this bigger
#Cells that regenerate liver without cancer risk NEW YORK: Scientists have discovered new type of cells which are an important part of liver regeneration.
and grow without causing cancer, which tends to be a risk with rapid cell division.""Hybrid hepatocytes represent not only the most effective way to repair a diseased liver,
They then exposed healthy mice to three known cancer-causing pathways and watched the hybrid hepatocytes closely.
Liver cancer never originated from these cells s
#Cells in mice restore liver damage without cancer risk In a breakthrough discovery, medical researchers have discovered a type of cell in mice
which restores liver damage without the risk of cancer. The researchers have also found the similar cells in human.
When healthy liver cells are depleted by long-term exposure to toxic chemicals, the newly discovered cells,
known as hybrid hepatocytes, generate new tissue more efficiently than normal liver cells. In the study, the researchers studied liver function in mice following long-term exposure to carbon tetrachloride, a chemical commonly associated with Superfund sites.
and then exposed healthy mice to three known cancer-causing pathways and watched the hybrid hepatocytes closely.
The researchers noticed that liver cancer never originated from these cells. Lead author Michael Karin of the University of California said that the hybrid hepatocytes represented not only the most effective way to repair a diseased liver,
A first of its kind device that transforms paralysis victims'breath into words has been developed by researchers,
#Scientists identify protein that will help treatment of arthritis Scientists have identified a protein that regulates the severity of tissue damage caused by rheumatoid arthritis.
C5orf30, regulates the severity of tissue damage caused by rheumatoid arthritis (RA), an autoimmune disease that causes pain, inflammation, stiffness and damage to the joints of the feet, hips, knees, and hands.
Although there is no cure for RA new effective drugs are increasingly available to treat the disease
and prevent deformed joints. To conduct the research, scientists from University college Dublin and the University of Sheffield,
analyzed DNA samples and biopsy samples from joints of over 1, 000 Rheumatoid arthritis patients in the UK and Ireland."
or personalised medicine,"said Gerry Wilson from the University college Dublin's School of medicine and Medical science in Ireland,
and its significance in human health and disease,"said co-author Munitta Muthana from the University of Sheffield.
One of the biggest difficulties with treating rheumatoid arthritis is early diagnosis. With early diagnosis and aggressive treatment,
The team identified novel factors that might be used in reprogramming cells into so-called pluripotent stem cells for possible treatment of a range of diseases including infertility.
#More effective drugs for diabetes in the offing Scientists have found a new way to lower blood sugar levels by reducing glucose production in the liver,
paving the way for more effective drugs for type 2 diabetes. Some treatments for type 2 diabetes make the body more sensitive to insulin,
the hormone that lowers blood sugar. But new research at Washington University School of medicine in St louis suggests a different strategy:
They did so by shutting down a liver protein involved in making glucose, an approach that may work in patients with type 2 diabetes."
"We think this strategy could lead to more effective drugs for type 2 diabetes, "said principal investigator Brian N Finck, associate professor of medicine in the Division of Geriatrics and Nutritional Science."
"A drug that shuts down glucose production has the potential to help millions of people affected by the most common form of diabetes,
"said Finck. Finck worked with researchers at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical centre and the biopharmaceutical company Metabolic Solutions Development Co. The company is involved in clinical trials that are evaluating the drug compound MSDC-0602 as a treatment for diabetes.
The new study demonstrates that the compound works, at least in part, by inhibiting a protein that's key to glucose production in the liver.
The research team, led by first author Kyle S Mccommis a postdoctoral research scholar, cut sugar production in liver cells by inhibiting a key protein involved in transporting pyruvate, a building block of glucose, from the bloodstream into the energy factories of liver cells, called mitochondria.
In addition to diabetes, the researchers also think that interfering with pyruvate transport may help patients with nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, a condition common in people with obesity y
Such a molecular profile could be useful for distinguishing people at earlier risk of age-related diseases.
This could improve upon the use of chronological age and complement traditional indicators of disease, such as blood pressure.
and should be able to transform the way that'age'is used to make medical decisions.
The researchers demonstrated that patients diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease had altered an'healthy ageing'RNA signature in their blood,
and therefore a lower healthy age gene score, suggesting significant association with the disease. Timmons added that this is the first blood test of its kind that has shown that the same set of molecules are regulated in both the blood
and the brain regions associated with dementia and it can help contribute to a dementia diagnosis. He noted that this also provides strong evidence that dementia in humans could be called a type of'accelerated ageing
'or'failure to activate the healthy ageing program.''The authors say that their'healthy age gene score'could be integrated to help decide which middle-aged subjects could be offered entry into a preventative clinical trial many years before the clinical expression of Alzheimer's.
single-cell embryos obtained from fertility clinics. They wanted to edit the gene responsible for B-thalassemia, a fatal blood disorder.
CRISPR (pronounced like`crisper')has swept through the scientific world in the last few years and is poised now for commercial use.
"Another pioneer, Feng Zhang of Broad Institute, has founded a company called Editas Medicine for using CRISPR in therapeutics.
Its CEO Katrine Bosley said they are working to translate the promise of CRISPRCAS9 genome editing technology into a new class of medicines to treat serious, genetically driven diseases."
and we are working to apply it to treat a broad range of diseases at the genetic level where patients don't have good therapeutic options."
Scientists have developed a breakthrough lab-on-chip device that can substantially reduce the cost of sophisticated lab tests for medical disorders and diseases such as HIV,
Lyme disease and syphilis. The new device uses miniaturised channels and valves to replace"benchtop"assays-tests that require large samples of blood
and clinics everywhere,"said Mehdi Ghodbane, who earned his doctorate in biomedical engineering at Rutgers University.
Until now, animal research on central nervous system disorders, such as spinal cord injury and Parkinson's disease, has been limited because researchers could not extract sufficient cerebrospinal fluid to perform conventional assays."
The discovery could also lead to more comprehensive research on autoimmune joint diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis through animal studies.
Proteins called broadly neutralising antibodies (bnabs) are a promising key to the prevention of infection by HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
The bnabs have been found in blood samples from some HIV patients whose immune systems can naturally control the infection.
even as it takes on different conformations during infection-making it easier to detect and neutralise the viruses in an infected patient.
In 2013, invasive MRSA infections were estimated responsible for an 9, 937 deaths in the US, researchers said.
Although current infection rates are declining, the majority of these deaths, about 8, 150, were associated with inpatient stays in health care facilities, according to the Active Bacterial Core surveillance report by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in US.
The discovery shows that the potential new antibiotics are unlike contemporary antibiotics because they contain iridium,
which is important for delivery of antibiotics to where they are needed to fight infections in the body.
The study was published in the journal Medicinal Chemistry Communications s
#A super computer that knows if you're going to die NEW YORK: A super computer developed in the US can predict the likelihood of a person's death with almost 100 per cent accuracy,
The machine, installed at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical centre, draws on the data of more than 250,000 people collected over a period of 30 years to make speedy diagnoses,
The machine's ability to speedy disease recognition could potentially save lives as well as predict patients'imminent demise, the report added."
This artificial intelligence is really about the augmenting of doctors'ability to take care of patients,"Steve Horng,
a doctor at the hospital, was quoted as telling BBC. Patients at the hospital are linked up to the super computer
which collects and analyses data about their condition every three minutes, measuring everything from oxygen levels to blood pressure to give doctors"everything we need to know about a patient".
"When the computer says no, doctors can"predict with 96 per cent confidence "when patients may die."
"If the computer says you're going to die, you probably will die in the next 30 days,
Paralysed for more than a deca de due to a spinal cord injury, the man could even identify which me chanical finger was being gently to uched,
The new method-which uses the same type of waves used in medical sonograms-may have advantages over the light-based approach-known as optogenetics-particularly
when it comes to adapting the technology to human therapeutics. In optogenetics, researchers add light-sensitive channel proteins to neurons they wish to study.
"When we make the leap into therapies for humans, I think we have shot a better with noninvasive sonogenetics approaches than with optogenetics,
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