Tag: medicine

Trained bacteria…

…the next frontier in medicine! Seriously, this is neat stuff. If you can make bacteria go where you want them to go, you can use them like little tiny pack animals to deliver drugs, clean up pollutants, and other Good Things.

"I always feel like somebody’s watching me…", Part 2

Actually, this sounds like a great idea: Bluetooth-capable vital signs monitors that keep in touch with a central computer via your cellphone, so you can carry on with your life while resting assured that those pesky symptoms that tend to crop up and then vanish before you can see a doctor–and never seem to reoccur …

Continue reading

Mini-DNA replicator

This is pretty amazing: A pocket-sized device that runs on two AA batteries and copies DNA as accurately as expensive lab equipment has been developed by researchers in the US. The device has no moving parts and costs just $10 to make. It runs polymerase chain reactions (PCRs), to generate billions of identical copies of …

Continue reading

Exercise by taking a pill?

My kind of workout.

Plugging computer memory into the brain

Researchers have created computer chips that can talk to the brain, chips which could revolutionize the way we think about thinking, and how we treat various neurological disorders, including Alzheimer’s: “It’s the type of science that can change the world,” says Richard H. Granger, Jr., a professor of brain sciences who leads the Neukom Institute …

Continue reading

Universal blood

Blood is always in demand, and not just by vampires. Blood transfusions mean the difference between life and death when people suffer traumatic injuries, or undergo major surgery. But there’s always been a problem with transfusions: people don’t all have the same blood type, and giving someone the wrong blood type is worse than giving …

Continue reading

Universal red blood cells?

This sounds promising: An international team of academic and industry scientists has come up with a feasible way of making universal red blood cells that are stripped of their blood type. The hope is that it can be developed into a viable way of relieving blood bank shortages.(Via Austin Bay Blog.)

This sounds promising…

“UBC Researchers Find New Superbug Weapon for Near-empty Antibiotics Arsenal“:The team found that a peptide, or chain of amino acids, they have dubbed innate defense regulator peptide (IDR-1), can increase innate immunity without triggering harmful inflammation, and offer protection both before and after infection is present. *** “Antibiotics are now under threat because of the …

Continue reading

Tanning junkies

Everyone has heard by now that too much sun is bad for your skin, yet you still see normally pale-skinned people who stay nut-brown all year long—even in the depths of winter. In the summer, they lie in the sun. In the winter, they lie in a padded coffin and have themselves irradiated. The danger …

Continue reading

But did it contain a miniature Racquel Welch?

News item: Some 40 years after the release of the classic science fiction movie Fantastic Voyage, researchers in the NanoRobotics Laboratory of École Polytechnique de Montréal’s Department of Computer Engineering and Institute of Biomedical Engineering have achieved a major technological breakthrough in the field of medical robotics. They have succeeded for the first time in …

Continue reading

"Gentlemen, we can rebuild him."

Here comes the bionic eye, the best hope yet of restoring sight to the blind: Profoundly blind people could get their best shot yet of restored vision with a more advanced “bionic eye”, researchers have announced. Trials of the new retinal prosthesis will begin shortly, following the success of a prototype that has enabled six …

Continue reading

A treatment for tinnitus?

It’s not a cure, but scientists have discovered an unexpectedly effective way to treat the symptoms of tinnitus, at least in one patient. As I’ve mentioned before, my ears have been ringing for as long as I can remember. Mostly I ignored the problem; occasionally it annoys me, usually when I read something about tinnitus …

Continue reading

Easy AdSense Pro by Unreal