Fighting cancer is getting very 22nd century with the introduction of a new technique from researchers at the University of Georgia. The science of it gets a little bit complicated, but suffice it to say it’s pretty futuristic. Lasers and nanoparticles are involved.
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I guess you can say that it is a common assumption that men tend not to like to discuss about their health with others, perhaps because there is a macho persona to protect. What is discussed even more rarely would be the health status of the family jewels, as that seems to be a no-no, even among my mates. The U.K.’s Male Cancer Awareness Campaign hopes to change such a mindset and have guys to start to talk about testicular cancer, simply because this is a disease that can be cured should it be caught early enough. In an effort to advocate cancer awareness, the group decided to work with Irish actor Chris O’Dowd in an Indiegogo campaign, in order to raise adequate money for ‘SkyBalls’. The name itself sounds like something out of a South Park episode, where it is actually a hot air balloon that has been shaped like testicles as you can see in the video above.
I am quite sure that the scrotum-shaped balloon would no doubt be the ‘ultimate awareness tool,’ where it is tipped to last for a good 10 years, providing the opportunity for folks to start talking about testicular cancer. This balloon itself costs £100,000, and it will come with the #CheckYourBalls hashtag so that men are encouraged to spare more thought to their scrotal health, and hopefully, to talk about it with other men and make the subject less awkward to approach. Certainly beats the other stuff that fly in the sky which we talked about previously.
Like It , +1 , Tweet It , Pin It | SkyBalls See ‘Giant Testicles’ Floating In The Air original content from Ubergizmo. 
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Testicular cancer used to be a brutal condition with a low survival rate, but that’s all changed in recent years thanks to improved treatment. While just over half of patients survived a half century ago, today 96 percent of men who contract the disease are cured.
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Diabetics might appreciate high-tech glucose sensors when they’re available, but the option for other advanced treatments is certainly intriguing. Take, for example, this new method developed by North Carolina State University researchers that uses injectable sponge to control blood sugar levels. No, it’s not the same sponge you use to clean at home — the material is made out of a substance taken from crab and shrimp shells called chitosan. This spongy material forms a matrix that’s approximately 250 micrometers in diameter, where a rise in blood sugar causes a reaction in the pores that leads to the drug’s release.
Fighting diabetes is but one of the things this miraculous sponge can be used for; developed further, it could even “intelligently” release anticancer drugs whenever the chitosan reacts to tumors or cancer cells in close proximity. Seems like medical technology is getting smarter with each passing day.
Source: North Carolina State University
Here’s one for the medical journals: researchers at London’s Imperial College have created a high-tech scalpel that can differentiate between cancerous and non-cancerous tissue as it cuts. The team calls it the iKnife (intelligent knife), and by analyzing vapors created during electrosurgical dissection in real time, it takes only seconds to distinguish healthy flesh from affected tissue. The device’s inventor, Zoltan Takats, says it has the potential to speed up cancer surgery considerably, as current analysis techniques performed mid-operation can take up to 30 minutes. It could also prevent follow-up surgeries prompted by undetected cancer cells. Unfortunately, the iKnife still has to go through more tests before we can add it to our arsenal of weapons against cancer — until then, we’ll just have to make do with run-of-the-mill electrosurgical knives.
[Image credit: Markus]
Via: Reuters, The Telegraph
Source: Science Translational Medicine
Cancer surgery is invariably difficult, in part, because doctors have always had a hard time determining exactly where the healthy tissue ends and the tumor begins. Not anymore. A new "intelligent knife" can actually sniff out the cancer cells during an operation and keep the doctor on track.
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Have you heard about these newfangled X-ray machines? We should put ’em in everything! We should literally use them to X-ray people’s feet to fit them for shoes. It sounds like a retro-parody cartoon, but it’s not. It’s what actually happened in the 1940s.
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We’ve known for awhile that certain illnesses can have a very, er, special smell for the olfactory-inclined
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Cancer sucks. There’s no cure (yet) – only prevention – and no one’s exempt from either getting it now or in the future. Every year, men and women, young and old, fall ill to the dreaded Big ‘C’. It’s a painful and difficult process for everyone, but probably more so for kids who might not completely understand what’s happening.
So to make things better, even just a little bit, the A.C. Camargo Cancer Center in São Paulo, Brazil teamed up with Warner Bros. to give their children’s cancer center a new look.
The theme? Superheroes. Chemotherapy has been rebranded as ‘superformula’ to fight against one of the biggest villains against humanity. IV bags are tucked into colorful Justice League-themed boxes to make them look cooler, and special comic books are handed out depicting how Justice League characters lost but then gained their powers after undergoing similar treatments as the young patients.
(The) experience went far beyond the covers by also providing a new look to the entire Children’s Ward: the game room was turned into the Hall of Justice, corridors and doors were decorated in the same theme, and the exterior acquired an exclusive entrance for these little heroes… As any good cancer doctor will tell you, the most important step in fighting the disease is believing in a cure.
Belief breeds hope, and hope breeds strength. With a fighting spirit, cancer can be beaten, just like every other villain out there.
[via Geekologie]
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