Lifeboat Foundation

A group of international researchers has uncovered evidence of a super rare genetic condition that gives men an extra X chromosome, reporting the oldest clinical case of Klinefelter syndrome to date.

The evidence comes from a 1,000-year-old skeleton from Portugal.

Klinefelter syndrome is a rare genetic condition where individuals are born with an extra copy of the X chromosome, occurring in approximately one in 1,000 genetic-male births.

In a report this week from the science journal SciTechDaily, we learn of a scientific breakthrough that it clearly intended to be exciting and startling, but potentially worrisome as well. Scientists at the University of Cambridge have created a series of “model embryos” that include a functioning brain, a beating heart, and the foundation for all of the other bodily organs you would expect.

As telemedicine has grown more popular, so have devices that allow people to measure their vital signs from home and transmit the results by computer to their doctors. Yet in many cases, obtaining accurate remote readings for people of color has proved a persistent challenge.

Take remote heart rate measurements, for example, which rely on a camera sensing subtle changes in the color of a patient’s face caused by fluctuations in the flow of blood beneath their skin. These devices, part of an emerging class of remote technologies, consistently have trouble reading color changes in people with darker skin tones, said Achuta Kadambi, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering.

Kadambi and his team have now developed a remote diagnostic technique that overcomes this implicit bias against darker skin while also making heart rate readings more accurate for patients across the full range of skin tones. Their secret? Combining the light-based measurements of a camera with radio-based measurements from radar.

The tool can identify symptoms of dengue, malaria, leptospirosis, and scrub typhus.

The study investigates both statistical and machine learning approaches. WHO has categorized dengue as a “neglected tropical disease.”

A prediction tool based on multi-nominal regression analysis and a machine learning algorithm was developed.

Continue reading “AI could revolutionize healthcare but can we trust it?” »

Biomedical researchers working with lambs got promising results from an experiment designed to prevent the health problems associated with premature births.

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Continue reading “Artificial womb possibility” »

Over the next decade teams will digitize DNA of the 1.8 million named species on Earth.

We have arrived at Aldous Huxleys Brave new world.

Scientists from the University of Cambridge have created model embryos from mouse stem cells that form a brain, a beating heart, and the foundations of all the other organs of the body. It represents a new avenue for recreating the first stages of life.

The team of researchers, led by Professor Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, developed the embryo model without eggs or sperm. Instead, they used stem cells – the body’s master cells, which can develop into almost any cell type in the body.

Continue reading “Scientists Grow ‘Synthetic’ Embryo With Brain and Beating Heart — Without Eggs or Sperm” »

They boost each other and block side effects? (In mice)

Rapamycin and metformin are viewed by many as the two most promising anti-aging drugs, but now scientists have found that these drugs can work hand in hand and show combined benefits, boosting each other’s effectiveness and blocking side effects — or at least that’s what we’ve seen in mice.

Continue reading “Metformin & Rapamycin Show Combined Benefits in New Study” »

By studying how electric organs arose in different lineages of fish, scientists gain new insights into a long-standing question of evolutionary biology.