#Minimally Invasive Robotic Surgical Tool Feels For Tumors, Study Tumors often look identical to healthy nearby tissue,
but they tend to feel different. Surgeons often use their fingers to feel the size and shape of
what to be resected, but palpation is essentially impossible when relying on minimally invasive access.
A team of researchers from Canadian Surgical Technologies & Advanced Robotics (CSTAR) and Western University developed a robotic arm compatible with the Da vinci robotic surgical system that can sense how hard
The device was an entry into the Surgical Robot Challenge 2015 recently hosted by Imperial College London.
Michigan State university Study Researchers at Michigan State university were part of a team to discover a new natural defense against HIV infection.
"Antiretroviral treatments are not vaccines; they simply keep HIV in check in low levels in the body.
that comprise similar building blocks of the host the pathogens are trying to infect. On the surface of the envelope, there are viral glycoproteins, known as Env spikes,
leading viruses to binding sites that allow infections to spread at the molecular level. They serve as a key of sorts that gives viruses entry into the host to begin spreading.
which future natural therapies can be developed. More than 1. 2 million people in the United states have HIV.
In China, doctors diagnosed 104,000 new cases of HIV/AIDS in 2014. The number of infections is rising,
though overall the country still has a low rate of infection. Currently, there is no cure for HIV-1;
once patients have it, they have it for life. While there are antiretroviral therapies available, they can only prolong life,
albeit dramatically, but they cannot cure the disease. Current drug treatments have to be taken for a lifetime,
which causes side effects and many other issues, Zheng said.""We see a way to treat this disease by helping the body protect itself,
"he said.""That's why we continue to move our research forward, seemingly slowly at times,
because finding a cure will take years. We feel that's it's important enough, on a worldwide scale,
to dedicate our work to fighting this disease
#Twin Study Suggests Genetic Factors Contribute To Insomnia In Adults, Virginia Commonwealth University Reveals DARIEN,
IL-A new study of twins suggests that insomnia in adults is explained partially by genetic factors,
and this heritability is higher in females than in males. Results show that the genetic influences on insomnia symptoms in adults were substantial and largely stable over time while differing significantly by sex.
In the longitudinal model, the estimated heritability of insomnia was 59 percent for females and 38 percent for males."
"This study indicates that genes may play a larger role in the development of insomnia symptoms for women than for men,
providing some of the first formal evidence for sex differences in an adult sample, "said first author Mackenzie Lind, a doctoral candidate at the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond."
"Given the evidence for sex differences, it may be useful to specifically target females for sleep interventions."
"Study results are published in the September issue of the journal Sleep. According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, transient insomnia symptoms occur in 30 to 35 percent of the population.
Chronic insomnia, which occurs at least three times per week for at least three months, affects about 10 percent of adults.
Insomnia is more common in women than men and involves difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep
-or regularly waking up earlier than desired-despite an adequate opportunity for sleep. The VCU research team led by Lind and senior author Ananda B. Amstadter, Phd
analyzed data from the Virginia Adult Twin Studies of Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders, a large twin data set of approximately 7, 500 participants collected by Dr. Kenneth S
Insomnia symptoms were evaluated via self-report questionnaire at two non-overlapping time points. According to the authors, this is the first study to examine the genetic and environmental influences on insomnia symptoms in adults in a longitudinal, representative twin sample.
The authors also noted that in addition to the substantial heritability estimates, unique environmental factors continue to account for a large amount of variance in insomnia symptoms s
#Self-propelled Powder To Stop Bleeding Created, University of British columbia Researchers UBC researchers have created the first self-propelled particles capable of delivering coagulants against the flow of blood to treat severe bleeding,
a potentially huge advancement in trauma care. leeding is the number one killer of young people,
and maternal death from postpartum hemorrhage can be as high as one in 50 births in low resource settings so these are extreme problems,
Traditional methods of halting severe bleeding are not very effective when the blood loss originates inside the body like the uterus,
but the issue is that it hard to push these therapies against severe blood flow,
gas-generating calcium carbonate micro-particles that can be applied in powder form to stop critical bleeding.
and transport it through wounds and deep into the damaged tissue. After studying and modeling the movement of the particles in vitro,
the particles proved highly effective in stopping the bleeding. While much more rigorous testing and development is needed to bring the agent to market
from sinus operations to treating combat wounds. he area wee really focusing on is postpartum hemorrhage:
and clinical data to help predict the effects of disease on brain anatomy. In experiments, they trained a machine-learning system on MRI data from patients with neurodegenerative diseases
and found that supplementing that training with other patient information improved the system predictions. In the cases of patients with drastic changes in brain anatomy, the additional data cut the predictionserror rate in half,
and by Mert Sabuncu, an assistant professor of radiology at Massachusetts General Hospital, who was a postdoc in Golland group.
The researchers are presenting the paper at the International Conference on Medical Image Computing and Computer Assisted Intervention this week.
which is based at Brigham and Women Hospital in Boston and funded by the National institutes of health. Common denominator In their experiments, the researchers used data from the Alzheimer Disease Neuroimaging Initiative, a longitudinal study on neurodegenerative disease that includes MRI scans of the same subjects taken months and years apart.
Each scan is represented as a three-dimensional model consisting of millions of tiny cubes or oxels, the 3-D equivalent of image pixels.
and those displaying evidence of either Alzheimer disease or mild cognitive impairment, and one in which they trained it only on data from healthy subjects.
The brains of healthy subjects and subjects in the early stages of neurodegenerative disease change little over time,
But they instead used it to predict what the brains of Alzheimer patients would have looked like had they not been disfigured by disease.
a professor of radiology at Harvard Medical school and director of the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital. ut the fact that it did did as well as it is encouraging. here are lots of ways these tools could be beneficial to the research community,
Some promising experimental Alzheimer drugs require early determination of how the disease is likely to progress,
Rosen says. f machine-learning tools can help avoid the need for PET scans in evaluating patients early in the disease course,
Gut Lining In Dogs-Findings can lead to gut replacement therapy in people with intestinal deficiencies.
Working with gut stem cells from humans and mice, scientists from the Johns Hopkins Children's Center and the University of Pittsburgh have grown successfully healthy intestine atop a 3-D scaffold made of a substance used in surgical sutures.
bring researchers closer to creating an implantable intestine as replacement therapy for a range of devastating disorders-including infections, cancer and trauma-that result in loss or death of gut tissue.
Chief among them is a condition that affects 12 percent of premature newborns, called necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC),
The tube-shaped scaffold, designed several years ago in collaboration with Cornell University researchers and composed of biodegradable material similar to that used in surgical sutures
"says principal investigator David Hackam, M d.,Ph d.,the Johns Hopkins Children's Center's surgeon-in-chief,
researchers took stem cells from the colons of babies undergoing intestinal surgeries and from mice,
Doing so further amplified the growth and differentiation of new gut cells, specifically the growth of Paneth cells responsible for production of infection-fighting proteins that guard against intestinal infections
Hackam says, a finding that highlights the therapeutic potential of certain probiotics for NEC. Next,
and stimulated the growth of new blood vessels around the implant. That observation, researchers say, affirmed the ability of the 3-D intestine to spur the growth of new tissue not only in lab dishes,
the dogs underwent periodic colonoscopies and intestinal biopsies. Strikingly, the guts of dogs with implanted intestines healed completely within eight weeks.
By contrast, dogs that didn't get intestinal implants experienced continued inflammation and scarring of their guts."
"says study author Stephen Badylak, D. V. M.,Ph d.,M d.,professor of surgery and deputy director of the Mcgowan Institute for Regenerative medicine at the University of Pittsburgh."
The work was funded by a Hartwell Biomedical Collaborative Research Award with additional support from National institutes of health grants R01gm078238 and RO1DK08752 2
the result is a potentially fatal arrhythmia. Now, a team of researchers from Oxford and Stony Brook universities has found a way to precisely control these waves-using light.
'When there is scar tissue in the heart or fibrosis, this can cause part of the wave to slow down.
This ideal therapy has remained in the realm of science fiction until now.''The team stresses that there are significant hurdles before this could offer new treatments-a key issue is being able to alter the heart to be light-sensitised
However, as gene therapy moves into the clinic and with miniaturization of optical devices, use of this all-optical technology may become possible.
Griffith University Study Griffith University researchers have opened a new avenue to advance a therapy to repair the paralysed spinal cord.
which cells are transplanted into the injury site, "says research supervisor Dr James St john, from Griffith's Eskitis Institute for Drug Discovery.
"In Australia, more than 12,000 people live with spinal cord paralysis and there is at least one new occurrence every day,
."Although rehabilitation medicine has resulted in reductions in mortality, the current outcome for patients is permanent paralysis, with an overall cost to the community of $2 billion a year."
"In light of the overwhelming impact of spinal cord injury, new therapeutic interventions for drug discovery and cell therapy are needed urgently."
"The transplantation of the specialised cell type from the olfactory (sense of smell) system is a promising approach to spinal cord repair."
thus demonstrating this therapy can work, "says Mr Vadivelu.""What is needed now is to make the transplantation therapy more effective and suitable for patients with a range of different spinal cord injuries."
"The new method enables transplanted cells to survive and better integrate into the injury site.
In turn, this will help the spinal cord to regenerate more effectively.""Liquid marbles are a remarkably simply way to culture cells in 3d,
"Burnes probably didn't think they could be used to help develop a therapy for spinal cord repair,
An abnormally high or low white blood count, for instance, might indicate a bone marrow pathology or AIDS.
The rupturing of white blood cells might be the sign of an underlying microbial or viral infection.
Strangely shaped cells often indicate cancer. While this old, simple technique may seem a quaint throwback in the age of high-technology health care tools like genetic sequencing
flow cytometry and fluorescent tagging, the high cost and infrastructure requirements of these techniques largely limit them to laboratory settings something point-of-care diagnostics aims to fix.
Her research today involves translating molecular imaging research to point-of-care diagnostics describes the fluorescence microscope system this week in a paper published in Biomedical Optics Express, from The Optical Society.
and Genistein, the compound found in soybean which has been suggested to play a role in prevention of steroid-hormone related cancers, particularly breast cancer.
The tomatoes themselves could potentially become the source of increased nutritional or medicinal benefit. Professor Cathie Martin said:"
Our work will be of interest to different research areas including fundamental research on plants, plant/microbe engineering, medicinal plant natural products,
"Medicinal plants with high value are often difficult to grow and manage, and need very long cultivation times to produce the desired compounds.
Our research provides a fantastic platform to quickly produce these valuable medicinal compounds in tomatoes.
which are the major groups of medicinal compounds from plants
#3-D Pancreatic cancer Organoid May Help Predict Clinical Responses, Nature Medicine Publishes 3-D pancreatic cancer organoid may help predict clinical responses,
personalize treatments. Clonally derived organoids could be used to ID patient-specific sensitivities to novel therapeutics.
The development of a new method to grow three-dimensional organoid cultures of pancreatic tumors directly from patients'surgical tissue offers a promising opportunity for testing targeted therapies
and drug responses and personalizing treatments in a rapid, cost-effective manner. The findings are reported currently in the Advance Online issue of the journal Nature Medicine."
"These 3d organoids are, essentially, 'mini tumors'in a culture dish,"explains the study's corresponding author Senthil Muthuswamy, Phd, Director of the Cell biology Program in the Cancer Research Institute at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center
(BIDMC) and Visiting professor at Harvard Medical school.""The organoids have the same properties or traits that are seen in the patient tumor from which they came and,
therefore, can serve as an innovative platform for both cancer research and for cancer treatment."
"Scientists have been growing cells in 3d culture for decades. These models are used to help understand various biological processes such as tissue development and cancer growth,
and Muthuswamy's laboratory has spent the past 15 years growing normal and cancer-derived cells from human breast tissue as 3d organoids.
This new paper provides an innovative new direction for this technology.""We have developed now a new methodology to grow human pancreatic tumor cells from surgical tissues
and have demonstrated that these tumor organoids recreate both morphology and biology of the cancer tissue in the patient,
"says Muthuswamy, who conducted this research while at the University of Toronto. The research team also demonstrated that these clonally derived organoids could be used to identify patient-specific sensitivities to novel therapeutic agents."
"From a research point of view, this organoid approach now provides us with a'live'biobank of tissue for discovery
and validation of new drugs and targets and modeling resistance to therapy,"says Muthuswamy.""By using a cohort of patient samples from
which we can screen for drugs and mutations, we can begin to understand why some patients respond to a treatment
And from a clinical point of view, this approach could help assist patients and their oncologists in making treatment decisions.""
""Pancreatic cancer is a terrible disease, "said Pier Paolo Pandolfi, MD, Phd, Director of the BIDMC Cancer Center."
"Patients diagnosed with locally advanced or metastatic pancreatic cancer have a survival rate of less than three percent.
These new pancreatic progenitor organoids and tumor organoids can be used to model pancreatic cancer and for drug screening to identify precision therapy strategies
#New lab-on-chip device promises faster TB diagnosis Singapore: US researchers have developed a new low-cost lab-on-a-chip device to aid analysis of sputum from patients with pulmonary diseases such as tuberculosis and asthma.
The study published in the journal Lab on a Chip elaborated that the new method will help in easing diagnosis for patients and aid in early detection and speedy recovery.
With this device, all biospecimens are contained safely in a single disposable component. The system can be operated easily by a nurse with a touch of a few buttons.
The patient could even operate the device at home said the study. Lead researcher, Mr Tony Jun Huang, professor at the Pennsylvania State university, said,
"This is the first on-chip sputum liquefier anyone has developed so far. The device will aid in accurate diagnosis
and provide alternate treatment approaches for patients with pulmonary diseases.""""Current analysis method has said several disadvantages
the team, "Human specimens can be contagious, and sputum analysis requires handling of specimens in several discrete machines.
In addition, the council is worried that Europe G. M. O. phobia may slam the door on new technologies.
because cassava crops were wiped out by brown-streak disease. That was particularly painful because in neighboring Uganda
"Attacks by Iranian hackers have targeted the military, oil and gas, energy and utilities, transportation, airlines, airports, hospitals and aerospace industries, among others,
which is meant to identify everything in wheat's DNA sequences that can trigger a reaction in people suffering from celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder in
The only known treatment for celiac disease is a gluten free diet free of any foods that contain wheat, rye, and barley."
Though celiac disease is four to five times more common now than 50 years ago, only about 1 per cent of the world's population is believed to suffer from it,
Understanding the causes of celiac disease and gluten intolerance is the goal of a lot of research around the world;
Some focuses on human diagnosis and treatment, and others have identified about 20 of the protein fragments in wheat that causes celiac reactions.
An expert on celiac disease who reviewed Miller's plan online worries that it may prove"too simplistic,
Armin Alaedini, assistant professor of medical sciences at Columbia University and a researcher at the New york-based school's Celiac disease Center, said the project may end up with a less toxic wheat product that isn't completely safe for all celiac disease patients."
The medical advisory board for the Celiac disease Foundation, a nonprofit based in Woodland Hills, California, could not reach a consensus on the viability of Miller's research.
Her son had been sick his entire life before being diagnosed with celiac disease at age 15, Geller said,
If these research efforts can keep celiac disease in the public eye, more doctors will be aware of it and more federal research dollars may flow,
she said. Many people with the disease would like to"eat actual wheat, with the properties of wheat that make the bread nice and fluffy,
"she said.""The idea of having a variety of wheat that they could eat that has those wonderful wheat-like properties would certainly be very interesting for them
which had assumed long that antibiotics would always be available to cure bacterial illness. The scientific community hopes to be able to develop a new range of antibiotics to replace those that are increasingly losing their ability to work against infections like tuberculosis.
A research team led by Markus Aebi Professor of Mycology at ETH Zurich (The swiss Federal Institute of technology in Zurich), believes it may have found the answer.
a class of small proteins produced by numerous organisms to counter disease-causing microorganisms. In fact, the human body produces defensins in the skin
and mucous membranes to protect itself against infections. Patent pending To yield larger amounts of the antibiotic,
because it kills pathogens such as Listeria, a type of bacteria that can cause severe food poisoning."
while antibiotics used in medicine by humans have developed resistance in just 70 years. The team has registered copsin for patent approval l
#Ubisoft offers new video game it says can treat lazy eye The Montreal-based gaming company Ubisoft has developed a video game it says could be used to treat amblyopia, also known as lazy eye.
Amblyopia is a condition in children where vision in one eye does not develop properly.
The company says it's the first video game based on a patented method for the treatment of amblyopia.
Ga.-based company that develops therapies for eye diseases. Game meant to be said engaging Ferland the game involves controlling moles on the tablet screen.
and Drug Administration in the United states to market this therapy. The company says it will look to receive approval from Health Canada once Dig Rush has been approved by the FDA g
#Superfast blood tests devised in Montreal could revolutionize diagnosing A simple and fast chemical process developed by scientists in Montreal could allow family doctors to one day use equipment as straightforward and cheap as a diabetic's blood sugar tests to diagnose a range of diseases
The technique could give rise to a proliferation of new so-called point-of-care medical tests blood tests that can be performed in the field, possibly even by patients themselves,
they'll send you to a clinic. A couple vials of blood will have to be analyzed by a technician with specialized techniques,
but it could be useful for doctors treating autoimmune diseases, or for using the eshha technique to detect things like how much of a chemotherapy drug a patient is metabolizing
and one quick test would be enough to screen for almost every sexually transmitted disease within minutes, at a doctor's office.
The doctor could then immediately notify the patient and prescribe medication right away if any of the results came back positive."
After that, they're also aiming to detect antibodies for syphilis and herpes. One of the big advantages of their method is its cost:
The electrodes used to detect the electrical current can be had for five to 10 cents each,
#Paralyzed man walks again using brain-computer link A brain-to-computer technology that can translate thoughts into leg movements has enabled a man paralyzed from the waist down by a spinal cord injury to become the first such patient to walk without the use of robotics,
doctors in California reported on Wednesday. The slow, halting first steps of the 28-year-old paraplegic were documented in a preliminary study published in The british-based Journal of Neuroengineering and Rehabilitation,
along with a Youtube video. The feat was accomplished using a system allowing the brain to bypass the injured spinal cord
and spinal injury victims regain some mobility. Dr. An Do, a study co-author, said clinical applications were many years away.
brain-controlled walking after a complete spinal cord injury,"said biomedical engineer Zoran Nenadic, who led the research. 3. 6 metres The steps taken a year ago by the experiment's subject,
so that it takes away that need for your medical knowledge, "he said. The 24/7 device monitors a user's blood pressure, heart rate, blood oxygen levels
if someone will have a heart attack. Nguyen's concern for his mother's heart condition inspired him to create the device.
and St michael's Hospital to refine the tool and hope to see it around the world d
#Cancer Patient Receives 3d printed Titanium Ribs & Sternum 3d printing continues to profoundly affect the modern world.
The latest incredible feat involves a 54 year old Spanish man suffering from a chest wall sarcoma a type of cancerous tumour.
something that the doctors and surgeons involved felt was handled best by this new technology. Traditionally
they would use titanium plate implants, but these often loosen over time, increasing the risk of complications down the road.
Despite the complexity to this part of the chest, Csiro Australia, in conjunction with Anatomics, stepped up to the challenge and developed exactly what the doctors ordered.
This surgery was the first of its kind, but thanks to its success it raises the bar of possibility in the ongoing relationship between 3d printing
Researchers believe the results could lead to new ways of using the hormone to treat psychological problems such as stress and speech disorders.
Professor John Aplin, a specialist in reproductive medicine at Manchester University who also took part in the study,
'It could be that these trigger settings in the embryo that affect the risk of obesity or diabetes in life.'
of which are known to play a role in protecting cells against infections. The placenta absorbs these molecules
'Sleep clinics prescribe thousands of audio based techniques daily and millions of us use audio to relax each day.
and is used to diagnose epilepsy and sleep disorders. Kokoon's app gives detailed feedback based on the nightly EEG readings to help you improve your quality of kip, according to Antos.
The hollow particles also offer impact protection to the syntactic foam because each shell acts like an energy absorber during its fracture.
And the results may be useful in creating better memory storage systems for computers or medical sensors.
#Brain training app that could help schizophrenia sufferers live a normal life A new brain training app developed to help improve the memory of people with schizophrenia could save taxpayers thousands of pounds,
which found that schizophrenia patients who played the game regularly for a month were four times better at remembering these kinds of things than non-players.
Schizophrenia is estimated to cost £13. 1billion per year in total in the UK. The long-term mental health condition can cause a range of symptoms including hallucinations and delusions.
But current medications to treat these symptoms cause debilitating side effects including poor memory, which can stop sufferers being able to work or study.
and is aimed at people who suffer with poor episodic memory-one of the main side effects of schizophrenia drugs.
who had been given a diagnosis of schizophrenia, to either the cognitive training group or a control group at random.
which scientists say is important as lack of motivation is another common aspect of schizophrenia.
of the Department of Psychiatry, said:''We need a way of treating the cognitive symptoms of schizophrenia, such as problems with episodic memory,
but slow progress is being made towards developing a drug treatment.''So this proof-of-concept study is important
'Professor Peter Jones, also from the Department of Psychiatry, added:''These are promising results and suggest that there may be the potential to use game apps to not only improve a patient's episodic memory,
used in conjunction with medication and current psychological therapies, this could help people with schizophrenia minimise the impact of their illness on everyday life.'
'The researchers say even small improvements in cognitive functions could help patients transition to independent living and working.
Overtext Web Module V3.0 Alpha
Copyright Semantic-Knowledge, 1994-2011