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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 2528

Oct 15, 2016

There’s Such a Thing as Too Much Neuroscience

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, neuroscience

In mental health research, clinical studies deserve more funding.

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Oct 15, 2016

A possible explanation for why male mice tolerate stress better than females

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

The nerves we feel before a stressful event—like speaking in public, for example—are normally kept in check by a complex system of circuits in our brain. Now, scientists at Rockefeller University have identified a key molecule within this circuitry that is responsible for relieving anxiety. Intriguingly, it doesn’t appear to reduce anxiety in female mice, only in males.

“This is unusual, because the particular cell type involved here is the same in the male and female brain—same in number, same in appearance,” says Nathaniel Heintz, head of the Laboratory of Molecular Biology and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator. “It’s a rare case where a single cell type is activated by the same stimulus but yields two different behaviors in each gender.”

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Oct 15, 2016

NASA’s new bleeding-edge gauze might save astronauts lives

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, space travel

We are seeing lot of inventions being made prior to the upcoming Mars missions. However, you don’t have to be into science-fiction to understand that NASA still needs to get a grip on many technical hurdles before our astronauts can put their boots on the red planet safely.

Yes, [Mark Watney](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3659388/) has become quite a Martian but real humans need more to survive and especially have to consider the *less obvious* things like how to deal with injuries that far away from mother Earth. That can be overlooked, but certainly is important.

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Oct 14, 2016

Scientists have created a drug that replicates the health benefits of exercise

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Researchers have made the breakthrough of couch potatoes’ dreams with a new drug that mimics some of the most important effects of exercise. Scientists from Deakin University in Melbourne published their findings in Cell Reports earlier this week, showing that overweight mice who were given the drug no longer showed signs of cardiovascular disease.

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Oct 14, 2016

Rare group of children are IMMUNE to AIDS, scientists reveal

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

A rare group of children is immune to AIDS, scientists believe.

The 170 boys and girls in South Africa are known as ‘non-progressors’.

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Oct 14, 2016

A new treatment appears to have erased HIV from a patient’s blood

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

The first of 50 patients to complete a trial for a new HIV treatment in the UK is showing no signs of the virus in his blood.

The initial signs are very promising, but it’s too soon to say it’s a cure just yet: the HIV may return, doctors warn, and the presence of anti-HIV drugs in the man’s body mean it’s difficult to tell whether traces of the virus are actually gone for good.

That said, the team behind the trial – run by five British universities and the UK’s National Health Service – says we could be on the brink of defeating HIV (human immunodeficiency virus) for real.

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Oct 14, 2016

Engineering a Better Body and the End of Disease

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, computing, engineering, health, mobile phones, neuroscience, policy

There are two kinds of people in Washington, DC, says entrepreneur Dean Kamen. There are the policy experts, whom he calls cynics. And there are the scientists, whom he deems optimists.

Kamen, speaking at the White House Frontiers Conference at the University of Pittsburgh, places himself in the latter camp. Unlike policy wonks and politicians who see diseases like Alzheimer’s or ALS as unstoppable scourges, Kamen points out that previously terrifying diseases were all toppled by medical innovation. The plague, polio, smallpox — all were civilization-threatening epidemics until experimental scientists discovered new ways to combat them.

If that sounds like the kind of disruption that the tech industry has unleashed across the rest of the world, that’s no accident. Kamen, the founder of DEKA, a medical R&D company, says that the same trends that have empowered our computers and phones and communication networks will soon power a revolution in health care. He says that medical innovation follows a predictable cycle. First we feel powerless before a disease. Then we seek ways of treating it. Then we attempt to cure it.

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Oct 14, 2016

Yes, Robots Really Are Going To Take Your Job And End The American Dream

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, economics, robotics/AI

The American Dream is ending, and its automated software and hardware technology that’s ending it.


Now that machines can diagnose cancer, trade stocks, and write symphonies, they’re not just going to make humans more efficient as they have in the past—they are replacing them entirely and wrecking the economy along the way.

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Oct 14, 2016

Brain Implant Allows Paralyzed Man to Feel Objects With a Prosthetic Limb

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, robotics/AI

Researchers from the University of Pittsburgh and UPMC have developed a system that’s enabling a man with quadriplegia to experience the sensation of touch through a robotic arm that he controls with his brain.

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Oct 14, 2016

This Monkey is Controlling a Wheelchair With its Mind

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Researchers have developed a wireless brain interface that allows monkeys to control the movements of a robotic wheelchair using their thoughts alone. The breakthrough suggests that similar interfaces could allow severely paralyzed individuals to navigate all sorts of robotic devices with their minds.

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