Lifelogging App Talks to Your Doctor | MIT Technology Review
Here’s the smartphone technology that alerts a doctor when patients are headed for trouble.
Human Clone Embryonic Stem Cell Lines - Business Insider
Researchers announced Wednesday, May 15, in the journal Cell that they’ve been able to make stable colonies of embryonic stem cells by injecting the DNA from ‘adult’ human cells into a human egg cell emptied out of its genetic material.
“Our finding offers new ways of generating stem cells for patients with dysfunctional or damaged tissues and organs,” study researcher Shoukhrat Mitalipov of Oregon Health & Science University, said in a press release. “Such stem cells can regenerate and replace those damaged cells and tissues and alleviate diseases that affect millions of people.”
This technique they used to make these stem cells is called somatic cell nuclear transfer, and is the same technique used to clone animals, like Dolly the sheep.
To put it in very simplified terms: the researchers first harvest a human egg from a woman’s ovaries and completely remove her genetic material from the egg. Then, they take a human skin cell and insert it into the egg using an inactivated virus which fuses the two cells. The embryo that grows from this would be a genetic copy of the person that donated the cell.
Real-time brain feedback can help people overcome anxiety | KurzweilAI
People provided with a real-time readout of activity in specific regions of their brains can learn to control that activity and lessen their anxiety, say Yale researchers.
They used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), to display the activity of the orbitofrontal cortex (a brain region just above the eyes) to subjects while they lay in a brain scanner.
Through a process of trial and error, these subjects were gradually able to learn to control their brain activity. This led both to changes in brain connectivity and to increased control over anxiety. These changes were still present several days after the training.
Extreme anxiety associated with worries about dirt and germs is characteristic of many patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Hyperactivity in the orbitofrontal cortex is seen in many of these individuals.
Injectable Microscopic Robots Can Detect Threat Of Blindness - PSFK
Oxygen is vital to human life, and while many know of the ramifications that a lack of oxygen may have to our lungs or brains, many are not aware that our retinas also need oxygen to function; without it, permanent blindness – sometimes within mere hours – can occur. Up until now, it has been difficult for doctors to gauge how much oxygen is reaching the eye, but now researchers at Swiss university ETH Zurich have developed miniscule robots that can be injected into the eye and measure the amount of oxygen in the retina.
What’s In Your Gut? Ask Citizen Science | Co.Exist
The American Gut Project is trying to create a better picture of the human “microbiome.” Give it some of your info, and they’ll tell you a lot about all the bugs that make up your digestive system and how they’re affecting your health.
The Internet of Things: Coming to a network near you - Network World
Network When people talk about the Internet of Things (IoT), the most common examples are smart cars, IP-addressable washing machines and Internet-connected nanny cams.
But IoT is coming to the enterprise as well, and IT execs should already be thinking about the ways that IoT will shake up the corporate network.
[DEFINED: What is the Internet of Things?]
SLIDESHOW: 25 of the weirdest things in the ‘Internet of Things’]
“Products and services which were previously outside their domain will increasingly be under their jurisdiction,” says Daniel Castro, senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a Washington-based research and educational institute.
So, what are these devices?
Castro says that companies increasingly will be operating in “smart buildings” with advanced HVAC systems that are connected to the rest of the corporate network.
Many utility companies will be deploying Web-connected smart meters at customers’ facilities to allow for remote monitoring.
Companies are tying their physical security to their network security, so that data from security cameras and authentication readers are coming under the purview of enterprise IT.
Retailers such as WalMart, Target and Best Buy already use RFID and other tracking technologies to manage supply chain logistics, says IDC’s Michael Fauscette. IoT is a natural next step.
Then there’s “operational technology,” where enterprise assets such as manufacturing equipment, fleet trucks, rail cars, even patient monitoring equipment in hospitals, become networked devices, says Hung LeHong, research vice president at Gartner.
Hologram-like 3-D brain helps researchers decode migraine pain
Wielding a joystick and wearing special glasses, pain researcher Alexandre DaSilva rotates and slices apart a large, colorful, 3-D brain floating in space before him.
Despite the white lab coat, it appears DaSilva’s playing the world’s most advanced virtual video game. The University of Michigan dentistry professor is actually hoping to better understand how our brains make their own pain-killing chemicals during a migraine attack.
The 3-D brain is a novel way to examine data from images taken during a patient’s actual migraine attack, says DaSilva, who heads the Headache and Orofacial Pain Effort at the U-M School of Dentistry and the Molecular and Behavioral Neuroscience Institute.
Different colors in the 3-D brain give clues about chemical processes happening during a patient’s migraine attack using a PET scan, or positron emission tomography, a type of medical imaging.
“This high level of immersion (in 3-D) effectively places our investigators inside the actual patient’s brain image,” DaSilva said.
The 3-D research occurs in the U-M 3-D Lab, part of the U-M Library.
via: neurosciencestuff
(via futuretechreport)
“Medical research has found there is a direct link between good health and living with a sense of community. People with strong social ties tend to have lower healthcare costs, recover faster from illness, and live longer.”
Diana Leafe Christian, “Finding Community.” (via utnereader)
Organic transistors for brain mapping | KurzweilAI
To improve brain mapping, a group of French scientists have produced the world’s first biocompatible microscopic organic transistors that can amplify and record signals directly from the surface of the brain, building on prototypes developed at the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF).
This is the first in vivo use of transistor arrays to record brain activity directly on the surface of the cortex using electrocorticography (ECoG). This is a ten-fold improvement in signal/noise quality compared with current ECoG electrode technology, the scientists say.
In epileptic patients, ECoG recordings help to scout brain regions responsible for seizure genesis. For patients with brain tumors, recordings help to chart the brain for tumor removal. In addition, electrical recordings of neuronal activity are being used in brain-machine interfaces to help paralyzed people control prosthetic limbs.
However, neurons and brain networks generate small electric potentials, which are difficult to extract from noise when recorded with classical electrodes made of metals. In addition, today’s ECoG amplifiers are bulky and placed outside the skull, where the signal degrades.
These new biocompatible microdevices are flexible enough to go inside the brain and follow the curvilinear shape of the brain surface.
Unless you’re reading this while using an inhaler, this fact may surprise you: According to the CDC, 26 million Americans currently have the chronic respiratory disease we know as asthma. Not only that, but the CDC tells us that the disease costs the U.S. $3,300 per person annually, and medical expenses associated with asthma have increased to about $56 billion (thanks to hospitalizations, emergency room visits and missed work), while over 10 percent of insured Americans are unable to afford their prescription medicines.
Asthmapolis launched in 2010 to help find a solution by leveraging the advances in sensor technology (and the reduced costs of producing said sensors) and mobile data monitoring to help people manage their asthma more effectively, in turn reducing the costs both for those suffering from asthma and for the U.S. healthcare system itself. And, today, the Wisconsin-based startup has announced that it has raised $5 million in Series A financing from The Social+Capital Partnership to build out a comprehensive solution and support system for those with the chronic respiratory disease.
Asthmapolis is one of a new generation of digital health startups attempting to hack the old software, devices and care systems that continue to prevail in today’s healthcare landscape. We recently wrote about Intersect ENT, for example, which is hacking stents (yes, stents) to help doctors more effectively treat the 31 million-plus people suffering from sinusitis.
NIH explains Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) initiative | KurzweilAI
The National Institute of Health (NIH) has provided further details on the Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies (BRAIN) Initiative announced April 2 by President Obama, aimed at revolutionizing our understanding of the human brain.
By accelerating the development and application of innovative technologies, researchers will be able to produce a revolutionary new dynamic picture of the brain that, for the first time, shows how individual cells and complex neural circuits interact in both time and space, the agency says.
Long desired by researchers seeking new ways to treat, cure, and even prevent brain disorders, this picture will fill major gaps in our current knowledge and provide unprecedented opportunities for exploring exactly how the brain enables the human body to record, process, utilize, store, and retrieve vast quantities of information, all at the speed of thought.
MRI Technology Detects Diseases In Seconds Rather Than Hours - PSFK
A typical MRI body scan is a difficult process which involves lying motionless in a tight space often for hours at a time. Imagine if that time could be shortened not only to minutes, but mere seconds. On your next visit to the doctors office, complex scanning procedures could be accomplished quickly and painlessly.
Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland say that after a decade of work they’ve developed a new MRI (magnetic resonance imagining) technique that can scan for those diseases very quickly. In just 12 seconds, for instance, it may be possible to differentiate white from gray matter in cerebrospinal fluid in the brain; in a matter of minutes, a full-body scan would provide far more data, making diagnostics considerably easier and less expensive than today’s scans.
Using Big Data Analytics to Save Lives
The rise of drones (unmanned aerial vehicles) has been at the forefront of the news over the last months, with issues emerging that range from the remote use of military force to domestic privacy.
However there are many very positive applications of drones. Matternet, spawned from a Singularity University program, envisages creating a network of drones to address developing world problems. Over a billion people are geographically isolated and are often not able to access regular transport and the goods that can travel to them. Rather than building physical infrastructure, drones can cheaply and easily allow drugs, food, and other essentials to get to where they are needed. The video below shows the Matternet Vision.
Visualize Global Health | Humanosphere
It’s a new dawn for global health data borne of necessity, mind-numbing numbers, Netflix and a desire to avoid insanity.
“For our own sanity, we needed to create a new way to look at this stuff,” said Peter Speyer.
Speyer, head of data development at Seattle’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, explained why he and his colleagues are transforming a massive collection of health data known as the Global Burden of Disease (GBD) into a stunning collection of powerful online and interactive visual tools. Go to the link; below is just a screen grab. Seriously, go there and try these out. You’ll have fun even if you don’t know yet what you’re doing.
