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Archive for the ‘biotech/medical’ category: Page 1801

Jan 25, 2020

To Help IBD Symptoms, Target Your Microbiome with These Foods

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food

People with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) are often confused about which foods may ease symptoms and which ones may make them worse. Based on medical research, there’s no single plan that definitively offers relief. But a recent study on a new diet called the IBD-AID diet has shown that it may help.

The diet focuses on correcting gut bacteria balance with probiotic and prebiotic foods.

Jan 25, 2020

Blue-Light Therapy Helps Heal the Brain

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, neuroscience

Early morning exposure to blue wavelength light can help heal the brain following mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI), new research suggests.

Results of a small, randomized controlled trial showed blue-light therapy improved brain structure and function, cognition, and sleep in this patient population.

“We found that blue-light therapy improved patients’ daytime sleepiness,” study investigator William D. ‘Scott’ Killgore, PhD, told Medscape Medical News. “So those who got the blue light were less sleepy 6 weeks later than they had been at baseline.”

Jan 25, 2020

Overcoming human challenges with transhumanism

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, cyborgs, education, ethics, life extension, neuroscience, transhumanism

Sometimes, being human involves tragedy: unexpected accidents can alter a person’s future, permanently changing how they need to approach their daily lives. Those with traumatic brain injuries suffer long-term mental and physical challenges, such as trouble with their working memory span, which can play a significant role in their education and longevity. However, if used properly, transhuman aids such as prosthetic limbs can provide solutions to human challenges.

Transhumanism, in a nutshell, is the idea that people can use technology to overcome biological limitations. Just as how we use rational means to improve our life experiences and the world around us, we can use such means to improve ourselves as organisms. It is simply a concept, not a tangible characterization of some futuristic cyborg.

There is reasonable fear that using such technologies would be tampering with nature. This is true. However, whether something is good or bad cannot be decided simply by asking whether or not it is natural. Plenty of natural things are horrible, such as diseases and parasites, where our moral interest is to intervene and improve these conditions. The question to ask is not whether the technology is natural, but rather, what are the various possible consequences that would arise from it, both desirable and undesirable, and the likelihood of each. People who are concerned that our species will stray too far away from what it means to be a ‘natural human’ forget how far we have already evolved as a species.

Jan 25, 2020

AI Helps Spot Dental Fraud

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, robotics/AI

Artificial-intelligence startup Pearl Inc. is using machine learning to analyze dental imagery, helping insurers pinpoint whether the same X-ray was used for more than one patient and whether a procedure was necessary.

The West Hollywood, Calif., company said its system has found thousands of cases in which dentists have used the same X-rays or other images to bill insurers for multiple patients.

Jan 25, 2020

Have researchers finally found a cancer cure?

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

New immunology research has discovered the cure to cancer was possibly within us all along.

Jan 24, 2020

Unexpected new component discovered circulating in bloodstream

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Researchers at the Montpellier Cancer Research Institute (IRCM) have discovered a new component in blood that has never been detected there before. Mitochondria are normally found inside cells, but the team has now discovered them floating around on their own in the bloodstream.

Often referred to as the power houses of cells, mitochondria are organelles that play a key role in metabolizing energy and cell signaling. Occasionally they are found outside of cells, but usually only as fragments within platelets.

But after a seven-year study, an IRCM team has now found complete and fully-functioning mitochondria in blood plasma, contained inside highly-stable structures. Using electron microscopy, the researchers analyzed plasma samples from about 100 people, and found up to 3.7 million of these mitochondria-containing structures per milliliter of plasma.

Jan 24, 2020

With Wuhan virus genetic code in hand, scientists begin work on a vaccine

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, genetics, health

CHICAGO/LONDON (Reuters) — When a newly organized vaccine research group at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) met for the first time this week, its members had expected to be able to ease into their work. But their mandate is to conduct human trials for emerging health threats — and their first assignment came at shocking speed.

Jan 24, 2020

Chinese ‘nurse’ claims corpses of coronavirus victims are left lying on hospital floor

Posted by in category: biotech/medical

Corpses of coronavirus victims are being left unattended in a corridor of a hospital flooded with patients in Wuhan as the Chinese city is ravaged by the deadly infection, it has been revealed.

The chilling scene, captured by a woman who claims to be a nurse, was posted on the country’s social media network today but quickly censored.

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Jan 24, 2020

After criticism, federal officials to revisit policy for reviewing risky virus experiments

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, policy

Closed-door reviews of risks and benefits of studies should be made public, some scientists say.

Jan 24, 2020

Pandemic simulation exercise spotlights massive preparedness gap

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, food, health, security, sustainability, terrorism

Circa 2019 Event 201, hosted by the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, envisions a fast-spreading coronavirus with a devastating impact.

Back in 2001, it was a smallpox outbreak, set off by terrorists in U.S. shopping malls. This fall, it was a SARS-like virus, germinating quietly among pig farms in Brazil before spreading to every country in the world. With each fictional pandemic Johns Hopkins experts have designed, the takeaway lesson is the same: We are nowhere near prepared.

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