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Handheld spectral analyzer turns smartphone into diagnostic tool | Bioengineering | U of I. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have developed technology that enables a smartphone to perform lab-grade medical diagnostic tests that typically require large, expensive instruments. Costing only $550, the spectral transmission-reflectance-intensity (TRI)-Analyzer from Bioengineering and Electrical & Computer Engineering Professor Brian Cunningham’s lab attaches to a smartphone and analyzes patient blood, urine, or saliva samples as reliably as clinic-based instruments that cost thousands of dollars.

The spectral transmission-reflectance-intensity (TRI)-Analyzer attaches to a smartphone and analyzes patient blood, urine, or saliva samples as reliably as clinic-based instruments that cost thousands of dollars. “Our TRI Analyzer is like the Swiss Army knife of biosensing,” said Cunningham, the Donald Biggar Willett Professor of Engineering and director of the Micro + Nanotechnology Lab at Illinois. For more information, contact: Ph.D. students face significant mental health challenges. Approximately one-third of Ph.D. students are at risk of having or developing a common psychiatric disorder like depression, a recent study reports. Although these results come from a small sample—3659 students at universities in Flanders, Belgium, 90% of whom were studying the sciences and social sciences—they are nonetheless an important addition to the growing literature about the prevalence of mental health issues in academia.

One key message for scientific trainees that are struggling with these types of challenges, write co-authors Katia Levecque and Frederik Anseel of Ghent University in an email to Science Careers, is that “you are not alone.” Beyond that, the authors encourage Ph.D. students to appreciate how important it is to take care of themselves. “Mental health problems can develop into serious threats to one’s wellbeing and career, and can have detrimental consequences in the long-term,” they write.

RealRyder Indoor Cycling Helps Parkinson's Patients. Can fish skin help treat burns? Malaria: Kenya, Ghana and Malawi get first vaccine. Image copyright D Poland/PATH The world's first vaccine against malaria will be introduced in three countries - Ghana, Kenya and Malawi - starting in 2018. The RTS,S vaccine trains the immune system to attack the malaria parasite, which is spread by mosquito bites.

The World Health Organization (WHO) said the jab had the potential to save tens of thousands of lives. But it is not yet clear if it will be feasible to use in the poorest parts of the world. The vaccine needs to be given four times - once a month for three months and then a fourth dose 18 months later. This has been achieved in tightly controlled and well-funded clinical trials, but it is not yet clear if it can be done in the "real-world" where access to health care is limited. It is why the WHO is running pilots in three countries to see if a full malaria vaccine programme could be started.

Dr Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa, said: "The prospect of a malaria vaccine is great news. In young bilingual children 2 languages develop simultaneously but independently | EurekAlert! Science News. A new study of Spanish-English bilingual children by researchers at Florida Atlantic University published in the journal Developmental Science finds that when children learn two languages from birth each language proceeds on its own independent course, at a rate that reflects the quality of the children's exposure to each language. In addition, the study finds that Spanish skills become vulnerable as children's English skills develop, but English is not vulnerable to being taken over by Spanish.

In their longitudinal data, the researchers found evidence that as the children developed stronger skills in English, their rates of Spanish growth declined. Spanish skills did not cause English growth to slow, so it's not a matter of necessary trade-offs between two languages. "One well established fact about monolingual development is that the size of children's vocabularies and the grammatical complexity of their speech are strongly related. About Florida Atlantic University: Self-taught artificial intelligence beats doctors at predicting heart attacks. Doctors have lots of tools for predicting a patient’s health. But—as even they will tell you—they’re no match for the complexity of the human body. Heart attacks in particular are hard to anticipate. Now, scientists have shown that computers capable of teaching themselves can perform even better than standard medical guidelines, significantly increasing prediction rates. If implemented, the new method could save thousands or even millions of lives a year.

“I can’t stress enough how important it is,” says Elsie Ross, a vascular surgeon at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, who was not involved with the work, “and how much I really hope that doctors start to embrace the use of artificial intelligence to assist us in care of patients.” Each year, nearly 20 million people die from the effects of cardiovascular disease, including heart attacks, strokes, blocked arteries, and other circulatory system malfunctions. How to super-size your memory, according to science. Image copyright Konrad/Driessen You can super size your memory to make it more like that of a world champion, according to scientists.

Scans reveal that while memory champions' brains are nothing special in terms of anatomy, they do show changes in brain connectivity. What's more, neuroscientists were able to train people with ordinary memory skills to emulate the masters. The learners could remember lists of names at a time and showed similar brain connectivity patterns. "A good memory is something you could learn and you could train (for)," said lead researcher, Dr Martin Dresler, of Radboud University Medical Centre in Nijmegen, The Netherlands.

"And if you use these strategic mnemonic training memory strategies you can really considerably increase your memory, even if you have a very bad memory at the start. " Memory palace They are based on mnemonics, memory devices that help you recall lots of information, especially in the form of lists. Image copyright Getty Images Ancient methods. Surprising Reason More Sex May Be Key To Happiness: Cuddling And Affection Increase Couples' Wellbeing. Researchers have long known that people who have more sex are generally happier than the those who get lucky less often, but the chicken and egg question remained: Does sex actually make you happier, or do happier people just have more sex?

According to a new study, sex really does make you happier, but it was the time spent cuddling after sex, and not the joy of orgasm, that made people happy. The study, now published online in Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, revealed that it's general exchanges of words and signs of affection following sex that directly cause increased long-term happiness and more life satisfaction in couples who have sex at least once a week. Read: Make It Count: Sex Once A Week Makes For A Happy Life (Unless You're Single) “When engaging in sex, people not only seek an intimate connection, but indeed experience more affection, both when having sex and in the next several hours,”explained the researchers, The British Psychological Society reported. Playing Favorites: Brain Cells Prefer One Parent’s Gene Over the Other’s.

Some neurons prefer mom's or dad's gene. Credit: Spherical Chicken Studios Feb 23, 2017 12:00 PM SALT LAKE CITY - Most kids say they love their mom and dad equally, but there are times when even the best prefers one parent over the other. The same can be said for how the body’s cells treat our DNA instructions. It has long been thought that each copy - one inherited from mom and one from dad - is treated the same. In at least one region of the newborn mouse brain, the new research shows, inequality seems to be the norm.

More than an oddity of the brain, the disparity also takes place at other sites in the body, including liver and muscle. Among genes regulated in this unorthodox way are risk factors for mental illness. What the genetic imbalance could mean for our health remains to be determined, but preliminary results suggest that it could shape vulnerabilities to disease, explains Gregg. Image caption: Genetics up close Media Contacts. Doctors save Canadian woman's life by removing her lungs for six days | World news. In what is believed to be the first procedure of its kind in the world, doctors in Canada have saved a young mother’s life by resorting to a radical solution – they removed her lungs for six days while she waited for a transplant.

In April, Melissa Benoit arrived at a Toronto hospital with a severe lung infection. Doctors soon realised that Benoit, who had been born with cystic fibrosis, had just hours to live, leading them to consider the unprecedented approach. “It was a difficult discussion because when we’re talking about something that had never to our knowledge been done before, there were a lot of unknowns,” Dr Niall Ferguson of the University Health Network, the health authority responsible for the Toronto general hospital, told a news conference on Wednesday.

A recent bout with influenza had left the then 32-year-old fighting off respiratory failure, forcing doctors to keep her sedated and on a ventilator to help her breathe. Since then, her strength has steadily improved. Autism Researchers Discover Genetic ‘Rosetta Stone’ Distinct sets of genetic defects in a single neuronal protein can lead either to infantile epilepsy or to autism spectrum disorders (ASDs), depending on whether the respective mutations boost the protein’s function or sabotage it, according to a new study by UC San Francisco researchers. Tracing how these particular genetic defects lead to more general changes in brain function could unlock fundamental mysteries about how events early in brain development lead to autism, the authors say. “The genetics of neuropsychiatric disease is often complicated, but here we have a single gene in which specific mutations can cause either infantile seizures or autism in a consistent and predictable manner,” said Stephan Sanders, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at UCSF and member of the UCSF Weill Institute for Neurosciences who is co-senior author of the new study.

“This gives us an opportunity to understand both what these disorders have in common and what makes them different.” Blood-repellent materials: A new approach to medical implants. Medical implants like stents, catheters and tubing introduce risk for blood clotting and infection – a perpetual problem for many patients. Colorado State University engineers offer a potential solution: A specially grown, “superhemophobic” titanium surface that’s extremely repellent to blood. The material could form the basis for surgical implants with lower risk of rejection by the body.

Biomedical, materials approaches It’s an outside-the-box innovation achieved at the intersection of two disciplines: biomedical engineering and materials science. Kota, an expert in novel, “superomniphobic” materials that repel virtually any liquid, joined forces with Popat, an innovator in tissue engineering and bio-compatible materials. Chemical compatibility A material “phobic” (repellent) to blood might seem counterintuitive, the researchers say, as often biomedical scientists use materials “philic” (with affinity) to blood to make them biologically compatible.

End of fillings in sight as scientists find Alzheimer's drug makes teeth grow back  Study finds association between eating hot peppers and decreased mortality. Like spicy food? If so, you might live longer, say researchers at the Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, who found that consumption of hot red chili peppers is associated with a 13 percent reduction in total mortality - primarily in deaths due to heart disease or stroke—in a large prospective study. The study was published recently in PLoS ONE. Going back for centuries, peppers and spices have been thought to be beneficial in the treatment of diseases, but only one other study—conducted in China and published in 2015 - has previously examined chili pepper consumption and its association with mortality. This new study corroborates the earlier study's findings. There are some possible explanations for red chili peppers' health benefits, state Chopan and Littenberg in the study.

Explore further: Eat spicy, live longer? Study says yes. Scientists Discovered How to Regenerate Human Skin. As If It Never Happened The human body can do many impressive things. Despite years of evolution honing its capability to carry out the complicated mechanisms needed to ensure our survival, the body has not refined the process of healing skin. Sure, wounds inflicted on the body’s largest organ can heal, but we are left with scar tissue. A team of scientists from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania however, believe they have found a way to do the previously impossible – allow skin to regenerate using fat cells. According to Penn Medicine News: Fat cells called adipocytes are normally found in the skin, but they’re lost when wounds heal as scars. “Essentially, we can manipulate wound healing so that it leads to skin regeneration rather than scarring,” said George Cotsarelis, MD, the chair of the Department of Dermatology and the Milton Bixler Hartzell Professor of Dermatology at Penn, and the principal investigator of the project.

Window of Opportunity. Scientists discover concussion biomarker - Northwestern Now. EVANSTON - The secret to reliably diagnosing concussions lies in the brain’s ability to process sound, according to a new study by researchers from Northwestern University’s Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory. Widely considered a crisis in professional sports and youth athletic programs, sports-related concussions have had devastating neurological, physical, social and emotional consequences for millions of athletes. Still, no single test has been developed to reliably and objectively diagnose concussions. The groundbreaking research, to be published Dec. 22 in the journal Nature, Scientific Reports, has found a biological marker in the auditory system that could take the ambiguity and controversy out of diagnosing concussions and tracking recovery. “This biomarker could take the guesswork out of concussion diagnosis and management,” said lead author Nina Kraus, the Hugh Knowles Professor in the School of Communication and director of the Auditory Neuroscience Laboratory.

Dr. Study: Toddlers of Obese Parents More Susceptible to Developmental Delays. Gene Therapy To Prevent Inherited Diseases May Cause Other Ills. Why the #$%! Do We Swear? For Pain Relief. Junk food cravings are triggered by the mere thought of being low class. A possible explanation for why people find it hard to maintain eye contact when talking. Prostate cancer laser treatment 'truly transformative' Heimlich manoeuvre inventor dies aged 96. Babies made from three people approved in UK. US life expectancy declines for first time in 20 years. The invention that helped me write again. Zika therapy 'works in the womb' HIV cure close after disease 'vanishes' from blood of British man 

The science world is freaking out over this 25-year-old's answer to antibiotic resistance. First 'three person baby' born using new method. Landmark Map Reveals the Genetic Wiring of Cellular Life. Microsoft will 'solve' cancer within 10 years by 'reprogramming' diseased cells. New study finds link between the way people walk and aggression. How Morality Changes in a Foreign Language. Researchers find evidence of 'hidden hearing loss' in college-age human subjects. Evidence Rebuts Chomsky's Theory of Language Learning. Brain radiotherapy 'no benefit' for lung cancer spread. Genes and the Intergenerational Transmission of BMI and Obesity. Why Do We Pace When We're Thinking? Large human brain evolved as a result of ‘sizing each other up’ Brain-robot training triggers improvement in paralysis.

Where Does Your Mind Reside?: Crash Course Philosophy #22. Slow-motion replays can distort criminal responsibility. Almost all men are stronger than almost all women. GetSharedSiteSession?rc=4&redirect= Alcohol is a direct cause of seven ​​forms of cancer, finds study | Society. Chicken odour 'prevents malaria' research in Ethiopia finds. What Google Learned From Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team. Hidden red hair gene a skin cancer risk. A civil servant missing most of his brain challenges our most basic theories of consciousness — Quartz.

Artificial pancreas likely to be available by 2018. Blind People Use Same Emotional Expressions Because They Are Innate, Not Learned - Study. Modern Human Variation: Distribution of Blood Types. Ultrasound Opens the Brain to Promising Drugs. Pathogens: In Vivo Molecular Dissection of the Effects of HIV-1 in Active Tub... The IFITMs Inhibit Zika Virus Replication: Cell Reports. Changing gut bacteria through diet affects brain function, UCLA study shows. Life Before Birth - In the Womb. Scientists Find A "Weak Spot" In HIV That May Pave the Way to a Vaccine.