Google To Build Robotic Surgery Assistance Platform With Johnson & Johnson. Google and Johnson & Johnson have announced that the will team up to develop an advanced, robot-assisted surgery platform. The team effort will involve “capabilities, intellectual property and expertise” from both companies, and will involve Johnson & Johnson subsidiary Ethicon, maker of medial devices. All of the language in the announcement of the partnership suggests that the companies will be using robotics to supplement, not replace human surgeons, at least in this stage of the partnership. The passage below perhaps best illustrates the intent of the collaboration: Robotic-assisted surgery is a type of minimally invasive surgery that uses technology to give surgeons greater control, access and accuracy during the surgical procedure while benefitting patients by minimizing trauma and scarring, enabling accelerated post-surgical healing.
Robot-assisted surgery generally involves a human surgeon controlling instruments via a computer or a remote manipulator. Via Business Insider. Will 'VIP' protect us from the flu and HIV and malaria? Efforts to develop broadly effective vaccines for HIV and malaria have had limited success. Now scientists are testing a totally different approach—one that so far seems very promising. Unlike vaccines, which introduce substances such as antigens into the body hoping to illicit an appropriate immune response, the new method provides the body with step-by-step instructions for producing specific antibodies shown to neutralize a particular disease.
The method is called vectored immunoprophylaxis, or VIP. The technique was so successful in triggering an immune response to HIV in mice that it has since been applied to a number of other infectious diseases. “It is enormously gratifying to us that this technique can have potentially widespread use for the most difficult diseases that are faced particularly by the less developed world,” says Nobel Laureate David Baltimore, president emeritus and a biology professor at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech).
How VIP treatment works. Jonathan Rothberg’s New Startup Raises $100 Million for Chip-based Ultrasound. A scanner the size of an iPhone that you could hold up to a person’s chest and see a vivid, moving, 3-D image of what’s inside is being developed by entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg. Rothberg says he has raised $100 million to create a medical imaging device that’s nearly “as cheap as a stethoscope” and will “make doctors 100 times as effective.” The technology, which according to patent documents relies on a new kind of ultrasound chip, could eventually lead to new ways to destroy cancer cells with heat, or deliver information to brain cells.
Rothberg has a knack for marrying semiconductor technology to problems in biology. He started and sold two DNA-sequencing companies, 454 and Ion Torrent Systems (see “The $2 Million Genome” and “A Semiconductor DNA Sequencer”), for more than $500 million. Rothberg won’t say exactly how Butterfly’s device will work, or what it will look like. Most ultrasound machines use small piezoelectric crystals or ceramics to generate and recieve sound waves. Stop cancer from spreading without chemo. Researchers are testing a protein therapy that stops breast and ovarian cancer from metastasizing in mice. “The majority of patients who succumb to cancer fall prey to metastatic forms of the disease,” says Jennifer Cochran, an associate professor of bioengineering at Stanford University. Today doctors try to use chemotherapy to slow or stop cancer from spreading from the original tumor site to other parts of the body, but these treatments are unfortunately not very effective and have severe side effects.
The new therapy doesn’t have side effects. It works by preventing two proteins–Axl and Gas6–from interacting to initiate the spread of cancer. Axl proteins stand like bristles on the surface of cancer cells, poised to receive biochemical signals from Gas6 proteins. When two Gas6 proteins link with two Axls, the signals that are generated enable cancer cells to leave the original tumor site, migrate to other parts of the body, and form new cancer nodules.
Dramatic reductions. Oxygen absorbing material may allow us to breathe underwater. Using specially synthesized crystalline materials, scientists from the University of Southern Denmark have created a substance that is able to absorb and store oxygen in such high concentrations that just one bucketful is enough to remove all of the oxygen in a room. The substance is also able to release the stored oxygen in a controlled manner when it is needed, so just a few grains could replace the need for divers to carry bulky scuba tanks. The key component of the new material is the element cobalt, which is bound in a specially designed organic molecule. In standard form – and depending on the available oxygen content, the ambient temperature, and the barometric pressure – the absorption of oxygen by the material from its surroundings may take anything from seconds to days.
The crystalline material changes color when absorbing or releasing oxygen: black when saturated, pink when oxygen released (Photo: University of Denmark) Source: University of Southern Denmark. Share. Ten finalists selected for Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize. The list of potential winners of the Qualcomm Tricorder XPRIZE has been whittled down to 10. The aim of the project is to make science fiction science fact, encouraging the creation of a medical scanning device that would mimic some of the key functions of the iconic Star Trek tricorder, allowing consumers access to reliable, easy to use diagnostic equipment any time, anywhere, with near instantaneous results. Die-hard Star Trek fans might want to temper their excitement a little, as it is highly unlikely that the final product will bear too great a resemblance to the scanner seen on the big screen.
Nonetheless the devices being developed could represent a significant technological advancement in the diagnostic domain. Qualcomm is offering a US$10 million prize purse in the hope of stimulating the research and development of precision diagnostic equipment, seen by many as essential in a world where healthcare systems are often strained to breaking point. Source: Qualcomm. Scientists grow whole organs inside animals for the first time. Researchers have had success growing organs in controlled lab environments, but repeating that feat inside a complex, messy animal body?
That's more than a little tricky. However, researchers at the University of Edinburgh have managed that daunting feat for the first time. They've grown thymus glands inside lab mice by "reprogramming" the genes in tissue-regenerating cells and partnering those with support cells. The team didn't have to use scaffolds or other "cheats" to trigger the growth; it just injected the cells and waited. There weren't even any obvious limitations.
The catch, as you might have guessed, is the scale. [Image credit: Rama, Wikimedia Commons] Adult females oust teenage boys as largest gaming demographic | The Rundown. Women are playing more video games — on both consoles like Nintendo’s Wii and mobile devices. Photo by Flickr user Clemson Adult female gamers have unseated boys under the age of 18 as the largest video game-playing demographic in the U.S., according to a recently published study from the Entertainment Software Association, a trade group focused the U.S. gaming industry.
While men still account for the majority of the U.S. gaming population, the number of women playing games on both consoles and mobile devices is up to 48 percent, from 40 percent in 2010. The spike in the number female gamers is likely tied to widespread smartphone adoption. In addition to traditional PCs and the Nintendo Wii game console, women were more likely to game on their mobile devices, and were just as likely as men to play on Apple’s iPhone and iPad platforms. In the past, female gamers were thought to play games primarily as a means of connecting with their loved ones. British university makes antibiotic resistance breakthrough - Health News - Health & Families. In research that could pave the way for an entirely new class of drugs to combat highly resistant “superbugs”, the scientists say they have found the “Achilles heel” of a major group of bacteria which includes E.coli and other potentially deadly species.
Antibiotic resistance – the process whereby bacteria evolve resistance to the drugs we use to treat them – is regarded by most experts as one of the gravest threats facing mankind, ranking alongside climate change and global terrorism. In Europe there are already estimated to be 25,000 deaths per year as a result of drug-resistant infections. Developing new forms of antibiotics is seen as one of the key avenues for combating the threat.
Now scientists at the University of East Anglia (UEA) say that they have discovered a way in which drugs could attack the cell membrane of one of the three major bacteria groups, known as gram negatives. Loading gallery 'Six of the greatest challenges facing humanity': Which deserves £10m in prize money? Phagoburn: Evaluation of phage therapy for the treatment of burn wound infections. 10 Digital Health Trends Shaping the Next 20 Years. Pine bark substance could be potent melanoma drug. HERSHEY. Pa. -- A substance that comes from pine bark is a potential source for a new treatment of melanoma, according to Penn State College of Medicine researchers. Current melanoma drugs targeting single proteins can initially be effective, but resistance develops relatively quickly and the disease recurs.
In those instances, resistance usually develops when the cancer cell's circuitry bypasses the protein that the drug acts on, or when the cell uses other pathways to avoid the point on which the drug acts. "To a cancer cell, resistance is like a traffic problem in its circuitry," said Gavin Robertson, professor of pharmacology, pathology, dermatology, and surgery and director of the Penn State Hershey Melanoma Center. "Cancer cells see treatment with a single drug as a road closure and use a detour or other roads to bypass the closure. " Penn State researchers may have solved this problem by identifying a drug that simultaneously creates many road closures. Suspended-animation trials to begin on humans. This month, the world's first attempts at placing humans in suspended animation using a new technique will take place at the UPMC Presbyterian Hospital in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania -- not for space travel, but to save lives.
The technique will initially be used on 10 patients whose wounds would otherwise be lethal in an attempt to buy the surgeons some time. It works, as suggested by science fiction, by cooling the body -- but not by applying an external temperature change. Instead, a team of surgeons will remove all of the patient's blood, replacing it with a cold saline solution. This will cool the body, slowing its functions to a halt and reducing the need for oxygen. Effects similar to this have been seen in accidents: Swedish Anna Bågenholm survived trapped under a layer of ice in freezing water for 80 minutes in a skiing accident; Japanese Mitsutaka Uchikoshi survived 24 days without food or water by entering a state of hypothermic hibernation.
Your Future Healthy Home Will Have Plants Inside Its Walls. We all know that plants take in carbon dioxide and release oxygen. It's one reason to keep greenery around the house: to make the air more breathable. Less well-known is that plant roots also improve the air we breath. When roots are exposed to air, they absorb toxins like toluene and formaldehyde and break them down into more benign forms.
Two university teams are now exploiting this fact by building appliance-sized "biofilter" units. Researchers at Purdue University have created a Biowall that lives inside a home's heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system. Made up of stacked plants growing aeroponically, the wall reduces airborne nasties and could even help reduce energy costs if deployed fully. The Biowall is based on research by Bill Wolverton, an ex-NASA scientist.
In the past, American homes have been nothing like space ships. The plants include English Ivy and Golden Pothos and grow out of commercial filters that are sprayed with water and fertilizer.
Women. Work. Cities and Urban Environments. Transport. Transport. Water. Capitalism. Developing biz. Governance. War. Wearable Technology - Make It Wearable Challenge by Intel. Intel announces first Make It Wearable finalists. Wearable technology was one of the big themes as this year's CES in Las Vegas. One of the companies pushing the technology was Intel, with the launch of its Make It Wearable contest.
Now, the company has announced the competition's first finalists. Make It Wearable was announced by Intel's chief executive Brian Krzanich, as part of the firm's CES keynote presentation. At the same time, the company also unveiled Edison, an SD card-sized PC aimed at allowing people to create wearable technology and that could be used by those wanting to enter the contest. Intel's aim for Make It Wearable was to encourage innovation with its own technology, and it pledged to distribute more than US$1.3 million in awards to participants.
In total, five finalists have been selected for the Dream It track of the Make It Wearable contest. Aditya Bansal's Run-n-Read is aimed at allowing users to read whilst running on a treadmill. The video below provides an introduction to Make It Wearable. Source: Intel. Tattoo-based medical sensor puts a happy face on detecting metabolic problems.
The tattoo-based solid-contact ion-selective electrode – or 'smiley-face tattoo,' if you prefer (Photo: University of Toronto) Next time you see an adult with a stick-on tattoo, don’t laugh – that person might have a metabolic problem, or they could be a high-performing athlete who’s getting their training schedule fine-tuned. No, really. A team lead by Dr. Joseph Wang at the University of California, San Diego, has created a thin, flexible metabolic sensor that is applied to the skin ... and it takes the form of a smiley-face tattoo. For some time now, medical researchers and athletic trainers have been using devices known as ion-selective electrodes (ISEs). By detecting changes in the pH levels of sweat on the skin, these can be used to assess a person’s metabolic state, or to tell when an athlete is tired or dehydrated.
These devices can be bulky, however, plus it’s hard to keep them adhered to overly-sweaty skin. A paper on the research was recently published in the journal Analyst. Graphene tooth tattoo monitors oral health. A graphene sensor effectively tattooed onto a tooth can be used to detect bacteria and so wirelessly monitor oral health, research has shown Image Gallery (3 images) A graphene sensor effectively tattooed onto a tooth can be used to detect bacteria and so wirelessly monitor oral health, research has shown.
Graphene printed onto water-soluble silk can be "bio-transferred" onto organic materials such as tooth enamel. By incorporating antimicrobial peptides and a resonant coil, individual bacteria cells can be detected without need of an onboard power supply or wired connections. And that's not all the technology shoehorned into the paper-thin sensor. With the sensor positioned on the tooth, the silk scaffold is dissolved in water, leaving the sensor and its components in place, fixed to the tooth by the same van der Waals forces that gecko-inspired biomimicking devices exploit.
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