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Researchers in the Oregon State University College of Engineering have developed a handheld sensor that tests perspiration for cortisol and provides results in eight minutes, a key advance in monitoring a hormone whose levels are a marker for many illnesses including various cancers.

Findings were published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces. The material and sensing mechanism in the new device could be easily engineered to detect other specific hormones, the researchers say—for example, progesterone, a key marker for women’s reproductive health and pregnancy outcomes.

“We took inspiration from the natural enzymes used in blood glucose meters sold at pharmacies,” said Larry Cheng, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science. “In glucose meters, specific enzymes are applied to an electrode, where they can capture and react with glucose molecules to generate an electrical signal for detection. However, finding natural enzymes for cortisol detection is not straightforward, and natural enzymes are prone to instability and have a short lifespan.”

Physicists at Delft University of Technology have built a new technology on a microchip by combining two Nobel Prize-winning techniques for the first time. This microchip could measure distances in materials at high precision—for example, underwater or for medical imaging.

Because the technology uses sound vibrations instead of light, it is useful for high-precision position measurements in opaque materials. The instrument could lead to new techniques to monitor the Earth’s climate and human health. The work is now published in Nature Communications.

The microchip mainly consists of a thin ceramic sheet that is shaped like a trampoline. This trampoline is patterned with holes to enhance its interaction with lasers and has a thickness about 1,000 times smaller than the thickness of a hair. As a former Ph.D. candidate in Richard Norte’s lab, Matthijs de Jong studied the small trampolines to figure out what would happen if they pointed a simple laser beam at them.

Studying Our Ocean’s History To Understanding Its Future — Dr. Emily Osborne, PhD, Ocean Chemistry & Ecosystems Division, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA)

Dr Emily Osborne, Ph.D. (https://www.aoml.noaa.gov/people/emily-osborne/) is a Research Scientist, in the Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems Division, at the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.

Continue reading “Dr. Emily Osborne Ph.D. — Research Scientist — Ocean Chemistry and Ecosystems Division — NOAA/AOML” »

This process of harvesting energy from rain is new.

Researchers in Italy have engineered an artificial leaf that can be embedded within plants to create electricity from raindrops or wind. It functions extremely well under rainy or windy conditions to light up LED lights and power itself, according to a report by IEEE Spectrum.

Fabian Meder, a researcher studying bioinspired soft robotics at the Italian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Genoa, Italy, told the science news outlet that the system could be practical for agricultural applications and remote environmental monitoring in order to observe plant health or monitor climate conditions.

Continue reading “Artificial leaf can produce 40 volts of electricity from wind or rain” »

ST… PAUL, Minn. (AP) — Minnesota regulators said Thursday they’re monitoring the cleanup of a leak of 400,000 gallons of radioactive water from Xcel Energy’s Monticello nuclear power plant, and the company said there’s no danger to the public.

“Xcel Energy took swift action to contain the leak to the plant site, which poses no health and safety risk to the local community or the environment,” the Minneapolis-based utility said in a statement.

While Xcel reported the leak of water containing tritium to state and federal authorities in late November, the spill had not been made public before Thursday. State officials said they waited to get more information before going public with it.

(NewsNation) — Studies have shown that Alzheimer’s may become the defining disease of the baby boomer generation.

According to The Alzheimer’s Association, the number of people age 65 and over living with Alzheimer’s now is nearly 7 million. That number is expected to rise to over 13 million by 2050.

Physician and best-selling author Dr. Ian Smith says it’s not known exactly what causes Alzheimer’s.

Health — operanewsapp.

A new paper published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research describes how generative models such as DALL-E 2, a novel deep learning model for text-to-image generation, could represent a promising future tool for image generation, augmentation, and manipulation in health care. Do generative models have sufficient medical domain knowledge to provide accurate and useful results? Dr. Lisa C Adams and colleagues explore this topic in their latest viewpoint titled “What Does DALL-E 2 Know About Radiology?”

First introduced by OpenAI in April 2022, DALL-E 2 is an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that has gained popularity for generating novel photorealistic images or artwork based on textual input. DALL-E 2’s generative capabilities are powerful, as it has been trained on billions of existing text-image pairs off the internet.

To understand whether these capabilities can be transferred to the medical domain to create or augment data, researchers from Germany and the United States examined DALL-E 2’s radiological knowledge in creating and manipulating X-ray, computed tomography (CT), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and ultrasound images.

Northwestern Medicine scientists have uncovered a mechanism by which exercise activates metabolic benefits in the body, according to a new study published in Cell Metabolism.

It’s well known that exercise elicits many health benefits. However, how this is accomplished is not yet well understood. During exercise, autophagy, the body’s cellular recycling system that allows old or damaged cellular structures to be broken down, is activated in both contracting muscles and various non-contracting organs, such as the liver.

In the study, investigators performed proteomic analyses on the blood of mice before and after exercise. They identified a protein secreted from contracting muscle, FN1, which significantly increased in the plasma and serum of mice after exercise.