Plant stem cells could be fruitful source of low-cost cancer druga popular cancer drug could be produced cheaply
Scientists and engineers behind the development say the drug treatment currently used on lung, ovarian, breast,
head and neck cancer could become cheaper and more widely available. The study was carried out by the University of Edinburgh and the Unhwa Biotech company in Korea.
which can be manipulated to produce large amounts of the active compound would effectively create an abundant supply of the drug.
Scientists behind the project have cultured also stem cells from other plants with medical applications, indicating that the technique could be used to manufacture other important pharmaceuticals besides paclitaxel.
The study was published in Nature Biotechnology and supported by the Biotechnology and Biological sciences Research Council and the Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council.
"Plants are a rich source of medicine around one in four drugs in use today is derived from plants.
clean and safe way to harness the healing power of plants, potentially helping to treat cancer,
Transportation The industrial world addiction to cars is costly and will become more so. The U s. uses roughly 21 million barrels of oil per day.
Public transportation is cited often as a cure for oil addiction. In the United states, rise of disabled elderly Americans will strain public transportation systems.
but with fewer human casualties. In the unmanned vehicle invasion scenario, oethe UAVS do the initial strike;
Futurist Fixes 1. The Food Pill. In the future, we may see a type of pill for replacing food,
but experts say it likely would not be a simple compound of chemicals. A pill-sized food replacement system would have to be extremely complex because of the sheer difficulty of the task it was being asked to perform
more complex than any simple chemical reaction could be. The most viable solution, according to many futurists, would be a nanorobot food replacement system.
Dr. Robert Freitas, author of the Nanomedicine series and senior research fellow at the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing, has described several potential food replacement technologies that are somewhat pill-like.
The key difference, however, is that instead of containing drug compounds, the capsules would contain thousands of microscopic robots called nanorobots.
These would be in the range of a billionth of a meter in size so they could easily fit into a large capsule,
Freitas has two other nanobot solutions. oenutribots floating through the bloodstream would allow people to eat virtually anything, a big fatty steak for instance,
A nanobot Dr. Freitas calls a oelipovore would act like a microscopic cosmetic surgeon, sucking fat cells out of your body and giving off heat,
In the January-February 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST magazine, Freitas lays out his ideas for improving human health through nanotechnology. 2. Better Design.
With sections focusing on food, water, shelter, health and sanitation, energy and transportation, and education, oedesign for the Other 90%focused on problem solving for the vast majority of the world people who survive under the poverty level
Vestergaard-Frandsen Disease Control Textiles, www. vestergaard-frandsen. com or www. lifestraw. com. Check it outline:
Health The U s. spends more money on healthcare than any other nation. We spend a higher proportion of GDP (roughly 15)
Futurist Fixes 1. Telemedicine and Robotic Surgery. As originally covered in the FUTURIST: Allison Okamura of the Johns hopkins university Department of Mechanical engineering says the real potential of robotic surgery
or rather computer-enhanced surgery is to reduce the impact of surgeries (make them less invasive,
less costly) and improve patients health. Haptic systems are a particularly promising area of research in the field of robotics.
Haptics involve making robotic surgical instruments more sensitive to human touch and, reciprocally, allowing robot tools to convey sensory tactile data to the doctors who wield them.
Okamura and her team have developed a haptic system that helps doctors view how much pressure their robotic instruments are applying to a given area.
This sort of research will enable surgeons to better perform minimally invasive surgeries. Surgical robots can also photograph,
survey and collect data in ways that humans cannot and give surgeons a better sense of how the operation went,
after the fact. oewhen you do assisted robot surgery, you re already tracking the tools that are inside the patient,
says Okamura. oeyou can have force-sensors and other ways of examining force, and then you re acquiring data at the same time that you re doing the procedure,
so you can be getting even more information that can be used for diagnosis or in scheduling postop appointments.
You can model tissue health based on the data you acquired during operation by the robot.
The hope is that it will also improve our knowledge about how the patient is doing.
This type of technology may play a role in future telesurgeries. A Hawaiian heart doctor named Benjamin Berg dictated a complicated surgery over an Internet feed for a Guam man located 3, 500 miles away.
Berg monitored every move and heartbeat of the patient via sensors embedded in the catheter that had been inserted into the patient heart.
Faster Internet speeds will allow doctors to monitor their patients around the clock in their patients homes.
The Renaissance Computing Institute in North carolina has developed an Outpatient Health Monitoring System (OHMS) for patients with chronic conditions such as asthma.
The device uses wireless sensors to constantly monitor patients and check environmental factors in the patients home
like the presence of allergens, pollution, or humidity. It like getting a remote checkup from your doctor all the time. 2. Genome Specific Cures.
A few years ago, the notion of cancer treatment that was specific to a person genome was seen as a fantasy.
But, as geneticist and open-source medicine evangelist Andrew Hessel wrote in the January-February 2010 issue of THE FUTURIST, oethanks to rapidly moving technologies like synthetic biology,
the prospects are very different today. This is a powerful new genetic engineering technology founded on DNA synthesis that amounts to writing software for cells.
It the ideal technical foundation for open-source biotechnology. Moreover synthetic biology drops the cost of doing bioengineering by several orders of magnitude.
Small proteins, antibodies, and viruses were amenable to the technology and within reach of a startup.
According to Hessel, individualized drugs could lower the cost of drug development across the entire spectrum of the development chain.
Only very small-scale manufacturing capability is necessary. Lab testing is simplified. And clinical trials are reduced to a single person:
No large phased trials are necessary, so there no ambiguity about who will be treated, and every patient can be profiled rigorously.
This shaves money and years off development. Moreover, with the client fully informed and integral to all aspects of development and testing,
The electronic output could also be used to gauge a tree's health.""It's not exactly established where these voltages come from.
When you go to the doctor, the first thing that they measure is your pulse. We don't really have something similar for trees
Tehran plans accordingly further medical experiments that will ultimately lead to a treatment for stroke patients.
With the cloning of animals advances in medical research are connected, including the production of antibodies against various diseases,
Isfahani said
Startup Says It Can Make Ethanol for $1 a Gallon, and Without Corna biofuel startup in Illinois can make ethanol from just about anything organic for less than $1 per gallon,
increase the risk of diseases and put farmers out of business. The humane society ads disagreed,
Sharing Sweets, Mango Mania, Healthy Snackingchicago, May 8, 2012/PRNEWSWIRE/--Fun fruits and shared sweets, foreign flavors and healthy snacks are emerging as the 2012 trends to meet the ever-evolving appetites
Mango Mania A new generation of tropical fruit flavors is appearing on store shelves with mango leading the way.
The top growing snack item is nutritional health bars *and many new snacks provide a variety of health advantages.
Whether gluten-free, all-natural, made from whole grains, or including B vitamins and antioxidants, there's no doubt consumers can find a snack packing the healthy punch they want
To Prevent Plastic Pollution David Edwards once came up with a method for delivering drugs inside porous wiffle balls of inhalable insulin (Idea#3). He wrote two textbooks (Ideas#1 and#2),
More than a decade after publishing a study in Science and selling a promising idea for an inhaled drug delivery system, Edwards,
a biomedical engineer at Harvard, realized that his idea remained just an idea thanks in large part to the whims of the pharmaceutical market. oein a world where things are changing so rapidly, Ã la Facebook,
Alternative method for farmsan antibacterial product manufactured by a Malaysian company has become a reliable substitute for antibiotics for many farmers in China.
THE imminent ban on antibiotics in agricultural and livestock farming has prompted Chinese farmers to use other alternatives to ensure the safety of their produce and poultry.
Farmers have gradually found solutions for antibiotic growth promoters which have been used widely in the industry for a long time.
Interestingly, the antibacterial Orgacids product manufactured by Malaysia homegrown Sunzen Biotech Bhd has quickly become a reliable substitute for many farmers in Shandong
we used 100%antibiotics in our animal feed for the chickens. But now, we have reduced it to only 30%and mixed the feed with others like Orgacids
probiotics, acidifiers and other green products in animal feed as part of their efforts to phase out the harmful antibiotics. oeafter using Orgacids and probiotics,
whose family runs a pig farm in Yantai in Shandong said he was happy with the results yielded using Orgacids as they managed to save about 4%on the volume of feed for the pigs. oewe have reduced the use of antibiotics
and other medication to kill germs by 40%.%Previously, our pigs took six months to grow but now with Orgacids,
Sunzen Lifesciences research and development director Dr P. C. Kok said Orgacids could be added to animal feed
It is unlike antibiotics where you have to stop using it during the withdrawal period to let the body system clear. oethe recommended dose is 1. 5kg of Orgacids to a tonne of animal feed.
Dr Kok said Orgacids was proven to be able to kill bacteria like Salmonella, E coli and Vancomycin-Resistant Enterococcus in the livestock digestive system. oesalmonella will be cured within two to three weeks after the chicken is fed with Orgacids
and the ammonia level of its faeces will drop within three days, he added
Device that harvests water from thin air wins the James Dyson Awardyoung Melbourne-based inventor Edward Linacre has won the 2011 James Dyson Award,
The Airdrop design also features an LCD screen displaying water levels, pressure strength, solar battery life and system health.
Dr. Mark Post, a vascular biologist at the University of Maastricht in The netherlands is one of a handful of scientists around the world working on the problem of cultivating meat artificially in a laboratory.
Speaking to the Reuters news agency, Dr. Post estimates that, if he succeeds, his first burger will cost a staggering $345, 000,
He probably based it on the work of Dr. Alexis Carrel, a French surgeon and biologist working in New york city in the first half of the 20th century.
There at the Rockefeller Institute of Medical Research, Dr. Carrel conducted a unique experiment when in 1912 he cultivated tissues from an embryo chicken heart.
By constantly bathing it in a nutrient solution Dr. Carrel was able to keep the heart tissue alive and growing until 1942,
when it died after a lab assistant forgot to feed it. The"chicken heart"(actually, just a bit of tissue suspended on silk gauze) was Carrel's best known project
These abundant smart devices, Dr. Lazowska added, will oeinteract intelligently with people and with the physical world.
One is a smart hospital room, equipped with three small cameras, mounted inconspicuously on the ceiling.
and after touching patients lapses that contribute significantly to hospital-acquired infections. Computer vision software can analyze facial expressions for signs of severe pain, the onset of delirium or other hints of distress,
and send an electronic alert to a nearby nurse. Last month, G. E. announced that it was opening a new global software center in Northern California
and would hire 400 engineers there to write code to accelerate the commercial development of intelligent machines. oeour role is to build the software that enables us to do this industrial Internet,
Dr Mark Post, head of physiology at Maastricht University, plans to unveil a complete burger produced at a cost of more than £200, 000 this October.
Dr. David Edwards, a professor at Harvard, is working on it. After creating Breathable Foods and an energy capsule,
Detecting a bacterial breast infection called mastitis, and measuring fat, protein and lactose levels allow the farmer to monitor the quality of their milk.
An automated brush system not only cleans the cows and cuts down on milk contamination but through tactile stimulation will trigger the hormone oxytocin that stimulates milk production.
and more time managing the health of their heard as a whole from their smartphone. The growing popularity of the platform is a testament to its cost-effectiveness.
said Dr. Beth Stevens, senior vice president, Disney Corporate Citizenship, Environment and Conservation. Disney sought input from stakeholders throughout the supply chain and from the environmental community in the formulation of its paper policy.
These welfare problems are not just the multiple stresses that animals are exposed to during the export process
the threat of catastrophic disease outbreaks in monocultures, an insatiable demand for nitrogen fertilizer, pesticide-resistant bugs and herbicide-resistant superweeds,
and a new generation of crops designed to be drenched in toxic chemicals.''We have to figure out this fusion of industrial and organic.
Therapy wasn needed t often. Having different crops with different life cycles made it harder for weeds to grow.
According to Hickok Cole submission, oeworker productivity increases due to a focus on the health and well-being of employees.
and fitness centers to oeattractors-or unique building amenities-like fabrication labs, shared data centers or stadium-sized recreational facilities that can be shared by tenants
on the ground floor, with a diverse mix of uses such as restaurants, studios, galleries, gyms, theatres, supermarkets, places of worship, medical facilities and community spaces,
Fast food link to asthma, eczemaeating fast food three times a week may lead to asthma and eczema in children, say researchers who have looked at global disease and dietary patterns.
Data from more than 500,000 children in more than 50 countries suggests poor diet may be to blame for rising levels of these allergy-related conditions.
Those who ate fast food, such as take-away burgers, risked severe asthma, eczema and itchy, watery eyes.
Eating plenty of fruit appears to be protective, Thorax journal reports. Fast food often contains high levels of saturated-and trans-fatty acids
or more weekly servings of fast food had increased a 39 risk of severe asthma. Six-and seven-year-olds had increased a 27 risk.
Eating three or more portions of fruit a week cut the risk of severe asthma, eczema and rhinoconjunctivitis by between 11%and 14%.
"If the associations between fast foods and the symptom prevalence of asthma, rhinoconjunctivitis and eczema is causal,
then the findings have major public health significance owing to the rising consumption of fast foods globally."
"Generally, people with asthma do not have to follow a special diet. In some cases, certain foods, such as cow's milk, eggs, fish, shellfish, yeast products, nuts,
Malayka Rahman of Asthma UK, said research suggests that a person's diet may contribute to their risk of developing asthma
and vegetables have a beneficial effect on asthma therefore Asthma UK advises people with asthma to eat a healthy,
balanced diet including five portions of fruit or vegetables every day, fish more than twice a week, and pulses more than once a week
Celebrating its grand opening in Bedford Park, Ill. on Friday, Farmedhere utilizes a soil-free,
and medicine might lead to an increase or loss of biodiversity. The framing paper for the conference was oehow will synthetic biology
industrial compounds, high-value compounds, plastics, chemical synthesis, etc. â human health: medical drugs and devices, over-the-counter medicine, clinical therapies, etc.
This field has taken on a life of its own due to economic incentives: In 2010, U s. revenues from genetically modified systems reached over $300 billion,
genetically modified drugs (i e.,, oebiologics) at $75 billion; genetically modified seeds and crops at $110 billion;
livestock which produce medications or biological substances such as spider-silk; and an optimal source of biofuel.
For our health, we may see new ways to target infectious diseases and cancer, develop vaccines
and cell therapies, enable regenerative medicine, or make cancer cells self-destruct. The potential seems limitless.
The paper bioethical discussion was on target for including this key paragraph: Synthetic life delivers private benefits.
The Guardian covered the conference by focusing on a recent lab achievement to produce the antimalarial drug, artemisinin
Along with that loss may come the loss of the plant diversity and a new, less desirable oemonotherapy drug.
Critics say the new drug production method is potentially damaging, entirely unnecessary, and causes harm by taking away the livelihood of poor farmers.
The Guardian goes on to say that similar stories will soon be told for vanilla farmers, patchouli farmers, rubber producers, coconut farmers and saffron growers.
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