Though we often take it for granted, access to safe drinking water is a major problem in many parts of the world—especially in the wake of a natural disaster. Now, researchers have succesfully tested a new, lightweight, and—most importantly—cheap gel that sucks up water, kills bacteria in seconds, and returns the water in a perfectly drinkable form with nothing more than a squeeze.
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Locked-in syndrome, where a person with a fully functioning brain is trapped in a completely paralyzed body, is one of neurology’s most vexing (and terrifying) problems. Physicians and researchers have struggled for years to establish an objective way to determine level of consciousness that doesn’t require patients to express themselves through some form of muscle movement. New research could hold the solution, with a technique that directly quantifies brain activity by measuring the its response to a magnetic coil.
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It was only a matter of time before smartphones made the transition from communication device to full blown Star Trek tricorder. And with the development of Peek (an acronym for Portable Eye Examination Kit), that transition is nearly complete.
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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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The odds of suffering an intracerebral (IC) hemorrhage during your lifetime (1 in 50) are almost as terrifying as the as the chances are that it will kill you (4 in 10) if it does happen. IC hemorrhages (and the edemas, or clots, they produce) account for 11 percent of all strokes, and are far more likely to severely disable you than the effects of a lesser ischemic stroke. But this clot-busting device might just turn the odds in your favor.
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Prescription pharmaceuticals tend to have some pretty weird and wonderful names: Bremabecestat, Vepoloxamer, Nexbolizumab, Orilotimod. They sound more like characters from sci-fi films than something you’d want to ingest. So where the hell do they come from?
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Coming fresh on the heels of the news that scientists are successfully 3D printing live, working, mini human kidneys, a new report in Nature is giving another burst of hope to the future of organ transplants. For the very first time, a research team has been able to grow human heart tissue that beats totally autonomously in its petri dish home.
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For the first time ever, scientists are successfully 3D printing actual, living human kidneys. Like the human livers printed in the past
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If you’re in the market for a replacement ear, how about one of these wonderful little 3D printed ones?
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While 31-year-old Henrietta Lacks laid in a hospital bed, dying of cervical cancer, doctors took two samples of the tumor cells growing inside her. 62 years later, those cells are still growing and have served as the foundation for countless experiments, including vaccine development and drug safety trials. Problem is, Henrietta Lacks had no idea this had happened, and neither did her family until 1973, when a scientist called to ask for blood samples from her children as part of a genetic experiment. For the last 40 years not much has changed, researchers have continued to cultivate millions, if not billions or trillions, Mrs. Lacks’ cells, while her family has sought information, a portion of the proceeds and, most importantly, control over her genetic legacy. Now, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), has returned control of the cell line to her descendants, including granddaughter Jeri Lack Whye.
The primary impetus was the family’s privacy. One scientist managed to generate a rather full report of personal information about Lacks and her family after just a few minutes with some of her endlessly reproducing cells. This prompted the NIH to work out an agreement with her family that gives them partial control over the cell line. When companies request access to the genome, which is stored on NIH servers, the family will be consulted and asked for their consent before the data is delivered. There will be no financial compensation for the decades of profit made by medical institutions off their genetic heritage, but at least they’ll have some say in whether just who can go poking around in the family genes.
Photo courtesy of The Henrietta Lacks Foundation
Via: The Verge
Source: Reuters, New York Times
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