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Archive for the ‘health’ category: Page 276

May 11, 2019

Reboot ethics governance in China

Posted by in categories: ethics, genetics, governance, government, health

In the months since, China’s scientists and regulators have been going through a period of soul-searching. We, our colleagues and our government agencies, such as the Ministry of Science and Technology and the National Health Commission, have reflected on what the incident says about the culture and regulation of research in China. We’ve also thought about what long-term strategies need to be put in place to strengthen the nation’s governance of science and ethics.


The shocking announcement of genetically modified babies creates an opportunity to overhaul the nation’s science, argue Ruipeng Lei and colleagues.

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May 9, 2019

Early biomarkers of psychosis

Posted by in category: health

Dialogues Clin Neurosci. 2005;7:17–29.

Freedman R, Ross R, Leonard S, Myles-Worsley M, Adams CE, Waldo M, Tregellas J, Martin L, Olincy A, Tanabe J, Kisley MA, Hunter S, Stevens KE.

1Department of Psychiatry C-268–71, University of Colorado Health Sciences Center, Denver, CO 80262, USA. Robert. [email protected]

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May 9, 2019

Brain over body: Hacking the stress system to let your psychology influence your physiology

Posted by in categories: health, neuroscience

Can the brain’s conscious mechanisms exert a significant influence on the body’s autonomic functions? New research suggests yes – with possible implications for mental health.

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May 8, 2019

New approach to drug discovery could lead to personalized treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders

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

Researchers have developed a method that could drastically accelerate the search for new drugs to treat mental health disorders such as schizophrenia.

Mental health disorders are the leading cause of disability worldwide, accounting for 31% of total years lived with disability. While our understanding of the biology behind these disorders has increased, no new neuropsychiatric drugs with improved have been developed in the last few decades, and most existing treatments were found through luck.

This is mainly because doctors can’t take brain tissue samples from in the same way that they are able to do a biopsy on a cancer tumour elsewhere in the body for example, so it’s difficult for researchers to understand exactly what to target when designing new neuropsychiatric drugs.

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May 8, 2019

Research team finds new ways to generate stem cells more efficiently

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health

Induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells are among the most important tools in modern biomedical research, leading to new and promising possibilities in precision medicine. To create them requires transforming a cell of one type, such as skin, into something of a blank slate, so it has the potential to become virtually any other kind of cell in the body, useful for regenerative therapies for everything from heart disease to diabetes.

However, current methods to induce pluripotency are inefficient: In a batch of 100 cells slated for reprogramming, only five or so complete the transition. A new study published today in Cell Reports by a team of researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Wisconsin Institute for Discovery (WID) and School of Medicine and Public Health could improve that efficiency.

It describes combined laboratory and computational methods that lead to better completion of pluripotency, a faster process, and improved understanding of how cells become reprogrammed from one cell type to another, for instance, transforming a skin cell to a cardiac cell. And it includes some surprises, the authors say.

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May 8, 2019

Genetic therapy heals damage caused by heart attack

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

Researchers from King’s College London have found that therapy that can induce heart cells to regenerate after a heart attack.

Myocardial infarction, more commonly known as a heart attack, caused by the sudden blocking of one of the cardiac coronary arteries, is the main cause of , a condition that now affects over 23 million population in the world, according to the World Health Organisation.

At present, when a patient survives a , they are left with permanent structural damage to their heart through the formation of a scar, which can lead to heart failure in the future. In contrast to fish and salamander, which can regenerate the heart throughout life.

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May 8, 2019

Wireless movement-tracking system could collect health and behavioral data

Posted by in categories: health, information science

We live in a world of wireless signals flowing around us and bouncing off our bodies. MIT researchers are now leveraging those signal reflections to provide scientists and caregivers with valuable insights into people’s behavior and health.

The system, called Marko, transmits a low-power radio-frequency (RF) signal into an environment. The signal will return to the system with certain changes if it has bounced off a moving human. Novel algorithms then analyze those changed reflections and associate them with specific individuals.

The system then traces each individual’s movement around a digital floor plan. Matching these movement patterns with other data can provide insights about how people interact with each other and the environment.

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May 7, 2019

After eating raw rodent’s kidney for ‘good health,’ couple dies of bubonic plague, sparks quarantine

Posted by in categories: food, health

A Mongolian couple died from the bubonic plague after eating raw marmot meat, sparking a quarantine that trapped tourists for days, officials said Monday.

According to AFP, the couple died May 1 in a remote area of the country’s Bayan-Ölgii province, which borders China and Russia.

A six-day quarantine of 118 people who had come in contact with the couple, including locals and a number of foreign tourists, had been lifted as of Tuesday, Ariuntuya Ochirpurev, a World Health Organization official, told the BBC.

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May 6, 2019

AI can detect depression in a child’s speech

Posted by in categories: biotech/medical, health, information science, robotics/AI

A machine learning algorithm can detect signs of anxiety and depression in the speech patterns of young children, potentially providing a fast and easy way of diagnosing conditions that are difficult to spot and often overlooked in young people, according to new research published in the Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics.

Around one in five suffer from anxiety and depression, collectively known as “internalizing disorders.” But because children under the age of eight can’t reliably articulate their emotional suffering, adults need to be able to infer their mental state, and recognise potential mental health problems. Waiting lists for appointments with psychologists, insurance issues, and failure to recognise the symptoms by parents all contribute to children missing out on vital treatment.

“We need quick, objective tests to catch kids when they are suffering,” says Ellen McGinnis, a at the University of Vermont Medical Center’s Vermont Center for Children, Youth and Families and lead author of the study. “The majority of kids under eight are undiagnosed.”

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May 6, 2019

5,000 Years in The Making

Posted by in categories: climatology, health, sustainability

Dear Colleagues.

ReWheel, Inc. was founded to save energy based on a simple truth that wasting energy is extremely not smart … as well as very damaging to our planet’s health.

Most of us are either scientists or believe in science. And that is how we know that we are losing the war against climate change. This war will not be won by any one technology but by our combined efforts. To protect our planet for our children and their children, and those who comes after, we need to act.

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