Lifeboat Foundation

From repairing deadly brain bleeds to tackling tumors with precise chemotherapy, micro/nano-robots (MNRs) are a promising, up-and-coming tool that have the power to substantially advance health care. However, this tool still has difficulty navigating within the human body—a limitation that has prevented it from entering clinical trials.

Mathematical models are crucial to the optimal design and navigation of MNRs, but the current models are inadequate. Now, new, promising research from the University of Saskatchewan (USask) may allow MNRs to overcome the limitations that previously prevented their widespread use.

USask College of Engineering professor Dr. Chris Zhang (Ph. D.) and two Ph.D. students (Lujia Ding, N.N Hu) along with two USask alumni (Dr. Bing Zhang (Ph. D.), Dr. R. Y. Yin (Ph. D.)) are the first team to develop a highly accurate mathematical model that optimizes the design of MNRs which improves their navigation, allowing them to travel efficiently through the bloodstream. Their work was recently published in Nature Communications.

Here’s how our bioacoustic foundation model, Health Acoustic Representations (HeAR), may help improve health outcomes for people across India.

We might like to think of ourselves as autonomous entities but, in reality, we’re more like walking ecosystems, teeming with bacteria, viruses, and other microbes. It turns out that differences in these microbes might be as crucial to evolution and natural variation as genetic mutations are.

This novel perspective was discussed in a recent publication by Seth Bordenstein, director of Penn State’s One Health Microbiome Center, who is a professor of biology and entomology and holds the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Endowed Chair in Microbiome Sciences.

He, along with 21 colleagues from around the globe, collectively known as the Holobiont Biology Network, propose that understanding the relationships between microbes and their hosts will lead to a more profound understanding of biological variation.

Can weight loss leave a lasting imprint on our fat cells?

Losing weight is often touted as a cornerstone of better health, particularly for people dealing with obesity and its associated health risks.

Anyone who has ever tried to get rid of a few extra kilos knows the frustration: the weight drops initially, only to be back within a matter of weeks—the yo-yo effect has struck. Researchers at ETH Zurich have now been able to show that this is all down to epigenetics.

Continue reading “Fat cells have epigenetics-based memory: Researchers discover mechanism behind weight loss yo-yo effect” »

The idea here is that we can momentarily counteract through movement. It’s compelling.

Over the past decades, electronics and biomedical engineers have developed increasingly sophisticated biosensors, devices that can pick up biological signals from human users. These sensors, which are generally embedded in wearable or implantable technologies, often do not perform as well in settings where users are moving a lot, such as within a vehicle.

Researchers at the National University of Singapore and Tsinghua University have recently developed a new sensor that can pick up and track biological signals, such as the heartbeat and respiration, without being in contact with the body of users. This sensor, presented in a paper published in Nature Electronics, could be used to pick up the cardiopulmonary signals of humans while they are in dynamic and closed environments, such as a plane cabin, a moving car or a bus.

“Monitoring drivers’ alertness or stress is essential for road safety,” Xi Tian, co-author of the paper, told Tech Xplore. “Existing sensors designed to measure physiological markers of fatigue, such as heart rate and respiration, face challenges in moving vehicles due to the unpredictable vibrational noise. To overcome these challenges, our research focused on developing an automotive biosensor capable of non-contact and reliable health monitoring in dynamic environments.”

Researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and their collaborators have discovered a new way in which RAS genes, which are commonly mutated in cancer, may drive tumor growth beyond their well-known role in signaling at the cell surface.

Mutant RAS, they found, helps to kick off a series of events involving the transport of specific nuclear proteins that lead to uncontrolled tumor growth, according to a study published November 11, 2024, in Nature Cancer.

RAS genes are the second most frequently mutated genes in cancer, and mutant RAS proteins are key drivers of some of the deadliest cancers, including nearly all pancreatic cancers, half of colorectal cancers, and one-third of lung cancers.

Microorganisms—bacteria, viruses and other tiny life forms—may drive biological variation in visible life as much, if not more, than genetic mutations, creating new lineages and even new species of animals and plants, according to Seth Bordenstein, director of Penn State’s One Health Microbiome Center, professor of biology and entomology, and the Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Endowed Chair in Microbiome Sciences.

Bordenstein and 21 other scientists from around the world published a paper in Science, summarizing research that they said drives a deeper understanding of biological variation by uniting life’s seen and unseen realms.

Continue reading “Q&A: Holobiont biology, a new concept for exploring how microbiome shapes evolution of visible life” »

Artificial intelligence holds the potential to bring a commercial and economic rebirth for the United States and its allies. Yet the U.S. Congress is getting skittish. Its leaders are reportedly negotiating a lame-duck bill to regulate the AI industry.

As officials push and prod on the new technology, they should exercise caution.