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Amazon Media Room: Press Releases
Like Kindle Singles and Kindle Serials, Kindle Worlds Adds a New Approach to --(BUSINESS WIRE)--May. 22, 2013-- (NASDAQ:AMZN)—Today, announces Kindle Worlds, the first commercial publishing platform that will enable any writer to create fan fiction based on a range of original stories and characters and earn royalties for doing so. has secured licenses from .
At the beginning of March of this year, a radical surgery was performed on an American patient: 75 percent of his skull was replaced with a 3D printed implant. The company that produced the implant, Oxford Performance Materials , made the announcement though offered little detail about the patient or the procedure.
Patient Receives 3D Printed Implant To Replace 75 Percent Of Skull
In this extract from Print Shift , our one-off publication about 3D printing, editor Claire Barrett reports on the growing number of medical applications for the emerging technology and asks how soon we can expect 3D-printed organ transplants.
How 3D printing is changing health and medicine
Over the past several years, scientists have developed so-called “ camera pills ,” that can be swallowed by patients and then transmit video from within their bodies. While such non-digestible gadgets could serve as an invaluable means of imaging, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University are now looking into tiny electronic medical devices that could be swallowed and partially digested, providing non-invasive treatment in the process. The research project is being led by professors Christopher Bettinger and Jay Whitacre.
Edible electronic medical devices could be swallowed like regular pills
New microneedle skin graft patch outperforms surgical staples
You’ve gotta love those Pomphorhynchus laevis worms.
(Phys.org) —It's the spread of the original cancer tumor that kills most people. That's why cancer researchers vigorously search for drugs that can prevent metastases, the spread of cancer.
Researchers discover novel chemical that controls cell behavior
DNA decoder: Knome’s software can tease out medically relevant changes in DNA that could disrupt individual gene function or even a whole molecular pathway, as is highlighted here—certain mutations in the BRCA2 gene, which affects the function of many other genes, can be associated with an increased risk of breast cancer. A genome analysis company called Knome is introducing software that could help doctors and other medical professionals identify genetic variations within a patient’s genome that are linked to diseases or drug response. This new product, available for now only to select medical institutions, is a patient-focused spin on Knome’s existing products aimed at researchers and pharmaceutical companies. The Knome software turns a patient’s raw genome sequence into a medically relevant report on disease risks and drug metabolism.
Knome Software Makes Sense of the Genome
Yorkshire Pigs Control Computer Gear With Brain Waves | Wired Enterprise
<img src="http://www.wired.com/wiredenterprise/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/brain-implant-xray.jpg" alt="" title="brain-implant-xray" width="640" height="482" class="size-full wp-image-38906" /> X-rays of brain-computer-interface implants in Yorkshire pigs and rhesus macaque monkeys several months after surgery. Photo: David A Borton et al.
In a shopping center on the western outskirts of Harrisburg, Penn., sandwiched among a women’s clothing shop, a pet supply store, and a dental clinic, sits a window into the future of healthcare in the United States: Highmark Direct. Open since 2009, it is part of a small chain of nine retail health insurance stores scattered across Pennsylvania owned and operated by Highmark Inc., the fourth-largest plan in the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, which serves 4.9 million members in Pennsylvania, West Virginia, and Delaware. The retail stores run by Highmark, a US$14.8 billion, diversified health-services company, are a direct channel into the growing market for individual health insurance created by reform and by budget-strained employers, many of whom are off-loading healthcare coverage decisions and costs to their employees.
Putting an I in Healthcare
Jeff Swensen for The New York Times Dr. Vivek Reddy, a neurologist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, also works on its digital records effort.
A Digital Shift on Health Data Swells Profits in an Industry
Grant Cornett for The New York Times James Behnke, a 55-year-old executive at Pillsbury, greeted the men as they arrived. He was anxious but also hopeful about the plan that he and a few other food-company executives had devised to engage the C.E.O.’s on America’s growing weight problem. “We were very concerned, and rightfully so, that obesity was becoming a major issue,” Behnke recalled. “People were starting to talk about sugar taxes, and there was a lot of pressure on food companies.”
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
Researchers at the University of Michigan’s Life Sciences Institute have found that amlexanox, an off-patent drug used to treat asthma and canker sores, can also reduce obesity, diabetes and fatty liver disease in mice. The team led by Life Sciences Institute director, Alan Saltiel, focused on the impact that the drug amlexanox has on the genes IKKE and TBK1 in mice. This followed on from research the Saltiel lab published in Cell Magazine in 2009 suggesting a link between the genes, obesity, insulin resistance and diabetes. Saltiel maintains IKKE and TBK1 play a crucial role maintaining "metabolic balance."