Lifeboat Foundation

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego developed a new technology that uses an oscillating electric field to easily and quickly isolate drug-delivery nanoparticles from blood. The technology could serve as a general tool to separate and recover nanoparticles from other complex fluids for medical, environmental, and industrial applications.

Nanoparticles, which are generally one thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair, are difficult to separate from plasma, the liquid component of blood, due to their small size and low density. Traditional methods to remove nanoparticles from plasma samples typically involve diluting the plasma, adding a high concentration sugar solution to the plasma and spinning it in a centrifuge, or attaching a targeting agent to the surface of the nanoparticles. These methods either alter the normal behavior of the nanoparticles or cannot be applied to some of the most common nanoparticle types.

“This is the first example of isolating a wide range of nanoparticles out of plasma with a minimum amount of manipulation,” said Stuart Ibsen, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of NanoEngineering at UC San Diego and first author of the study published October in the journal Small. “We’ve designed a very versatile technique that can be used to recover nanoparticles in a lot of different processes.”

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Interesting look at the future of human augmentation.

To celebrate the launch of critically acclaimed video game DEUS EX: HUMAN REVOLUTION, Square Enix has commissioned filmmaker Rob Spence aka Eyeborg (a self proclaimed cyborg who lost an eye replaced it with a wireless video camera) to investigate prosthetics, cybernetics and human augmentation.

Continue reading “Deus Ex: The Eyeborg Documentary” »

Gene editing has incredible potential and could give us an unprecedented control of the biological world. The newest addition CRISPR offers unprecedented speed and ease, but there have been questions over its accuracy and reliability. New data hints we can relax a little; it’s safer than we thought.

A brief overview of CRISPR

CRISPR has made gene editing big news in very little time. While it may not be the most accurate method, the system is customisable, cheap and fast and has clear advantages over its predecessors. The system is essentially made of two parts: an enzyme called Cas9 which snips the target DNA sequence, and a guiding sequence made up of RNA which binds to a matching DNA sequence. The system also needs a small 3 letter sequence called PAM, which is required next to the site for Cas9 to cut. Together these can accurately target a specific sequence in the genome, allowing you to make tiny changes or insert a new sequence by hijacking the cell’s own repair systems.

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This tech is designed to be an alternative to a kidney transplant or dialysis. It completely mimics the functions of the kidneys.

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A team of researchers have created a surgically implantable, artificial kidney. The new device has silicon features and functions on nanotechnology. The new artificial kidney performs all the functions of a typical human kidney and it replaces the need for traditional dialysis and kidney transplants among patients. (Photo : Twitter/xprize )

Researchers recently presented a study that could lead to the development of a surgically implantable, artificial kidney, which is built with nanotechnology. This new study could lead to the development of an alternative artificial kidney for people on dialysis, with end stage renal disease (ESRD), along with persons on waiting lists for kidney transplants.

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New findings out of Duke University will allow medical researchers to act like computer programmers except with genetic code rather than digital.

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For some people the idea of being operated on by a robot might sound horrifying, particularly if there isn’t even a doctor in the room to check that everything is running smoothly. Surgery is in any case a risky business that few would undertake willingly if it wasn’t absolutely necessary, and it seems unlikely that the spectacle of an enormous machine with mechanical arms attached to surgical scalpels would reassure anyone about having to undergo an operation. However, the use of robotic surgery has spread rapidly in recent years and for some types of operations it is becoming the standard. While there is a lot of controversy surrounding the topic, many doctors see surgical robots as a vital tool to provide better medical care and lower the risks associated with surgery.

History of robotic surgery

The roots of robotic surgery go back to the mid-1980s, when a robotic surgical arm was first used to perform a neurosurgical biopsy. Two years later, the first robot-assisted laparoscopic (i.e. keyhole) operation was conducted, a cholecystectomy. The following years saw continued advances in the area of robotic surgery, which was used for a growing range of surgical procedures. One of the earliest robotic surgical systems to enter into general use was the ROBODOC system, which came on the market in the early 1990s and allowed surgeons conducting hip replacements to mill the femur with more precision that would have been conventionally possible.

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Today’s particle accelerators are massive machines, but physicists have been working on shrinking them down to tabletop scales for years. The Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation just awarded a $13.5 million grant to Stanford University to develop a working “accelerator on a chip” the size of a shoebox over the next five years.

The international collaboration will build on prior experiments by physicists at SLAC/Stanford and Germany’s Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen-Nuremberg. If successful, the prototype could usher in a new generation of compact particle accelerators that could fit on a laboratory bench, with potential applications in medical therapies, x-ray imaging, and even security scanner technologies.

The idea is to “do for particle accelerators what the microchip industry did for computers,” SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory physicist Joel England told Gizmodo. Computers used to fill entire rooms back when they relied on bulky vacuum tube technology. The invention of the transistor and subsequent development of the microchip made it possible to shrink computers down to laptop and cell phone scales. England envisions a day when we might be able to build a handheld particle accelerator, although “there’d be radiation issues, so you probably wouldn’t want to hold one in your hand.”

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You’ve got the Lamborghini and the Learjet, the houses and quite possibly the palaces; Erdem designs your dresses and you’ve got heaps of diamonds. What next? Well, adornment can only take you so far: what good is that Lech heli-skiing pad when your knees are shot? What’s the point in building a multibillion-pound business when you’re unwittingly courting a heart attack? As technology evolves ever more rapidly, ultra high net worth individuals are turning their attention inward, investigating how to stall the ageing process, and spending serious money to load their dice against death.

Across the road from Harrods sits Omniya clinic, a calm, contemporary white space amid the hustle of Knightsbridge. At street level it is a luxuriously reimagined pharmacy, whose curated selection includes recent launches from Hollywood’s favourite ‘cosmeceutical’ brands Zo Skin Health and Dr Levy. ‘I wanted to create a place that brings the newest advancements in medical and regenerative health to London,’ says co-founder Danyal Kader, a former lawyer, radiant with bien-être. He was so depressed by the difficulty of finding the best medical treatment for his father, who suffers from a heart condition, that he decided to create his own one-stop conduit to wellness. ‘We optimise the lives our clients can lead, body, mind and soul.’ To this end, he has brought together a team of leading specialists who analyse the health of their clients in the most minute and sophisticated detail — a kind of space-age human MOT.

One of these is cellular ageing specialist Dr Mark Bonar. As his title suggests, Bonar is passionate about the very specific degradations that happen in the cells of the body as we age — and still more excited about the new ways he can use to slow such deterioration. Consider, for example, telomeres. ‘Telomeres are the caps on the ends of our DNA,’ Bonar explains. ‘A bit like the plastic on the end of a shoe lace, they prevent the ends from fraying. By measuring their length in the lab we can determine how well the body is ageing’ — for instance, if at 30, you show the wear and tear you’d expect in a 40-year-old. ‘The length can also inform you about your risk of various kinds of disease such as breast or bowel cancer.’

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