Science and Health News

Main Point:A newly developed «Smart Cup» can detect disease-causing agents such as herpes simplex virus type 2 (HSV-2) with the help of smartphone camera. Published in:Sensors and Actuators B: Chemical

Vanna Belton from Baltimore has been blind for more than five years, but after undergoing surgery where stem cells extracted from her bone marrow were injected into her right eye’s retina and left eye’s optic nerve, she has regained some of her sight. «When I realised I could see the license plates, we started walking around the neighbourhood reading them," she told the Baltimore Sun, adding that for the first time since 2009, she’s been able to navigate her way around without a cane. While Belton’s recovery is certainly remarkable, it’s also incredibly perplexing. The doctor who performed the stem cell treatment, ophthalmologist Jeffrey N. Weiss, cut so many corners to get her and 277 other patients into surgery, even he can’t explain why it works.

The substance that provides energy to all the cells in our bodies, Adenosine triphosphate (ATP), may also be able to power the next generation of super-computers. That is what an international team of researchers led by Prof. Nicolau, the Chair of the Department of Bioengineering at McGill, believe. They’ve published an article on the subject earlier this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), in which they describe a model of a biological computer that they have created that is able to process information very quickly and accurately using parallel networks in the same way that massive electronic super computers do.

When mitochondria-the cell’s power plant-are sick or damaged, they must be cleared away so the cell can survive. In the brain, this mitochondrial quality control pathway is so critical that neurodegenerative disease can result if bad mitochondria accumulate in neurons.

Using a sophisticated, custom-designed 3D printer, regenerative medicine scientists at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center have proved that it is feasible to print living tissue structures to replace injured or diseased tissue in patients. Reporting in Nature Biotechnology, the scientists said they printed ear, bone and muscle structures. When implanted in animals, the structures matured into functional tissue and developed a system of blood vessels. Most importantly, these early results indicate that the structures have the right size, strength and function for use in humans.

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have built a wearable robotic limb that allows drummers to play with three arms. The two-foot long «smart arm» can be attached to a musician’s shoulder. It responds to human gestures and the music it hears. When the drummer moves to play the high hat cymbal, for example, the robotic arm maneuvers to play the ride cymbal. When the drummer switches to the snare, the mechanical arm shifts to the tom.

The first complete sequences of the Y chromosomes of Aboriginal Australian men have revealed a deep indigenous genetic history tracing all the way back to the initial settlement of the continent 50 thousand years ago, according to a study published in the journal Current Biology today (25th February 2016).

Twenty-seven out of 29 patients with an advanced blood cancer who received an experimental, «living» immunotherapy as part of a clinical trial experienced sustained remissions, according to preliminary results of the ongoing study at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center. Some of the patients in the trial, which began in 2013, were originally not expected to survive for more than a few months because their disease had previously relapsed or was resistant to other treatments, said Dr. Stanley Riddell, an immunotherapy researcher and oncologist Fred Hutch. Today, there is no sign of disease.