Medical

A partnership between the Polytechnic School and the Faculty of Dentistry at the University of São Paulo (USP) achieved a new patent. Researchers developed a prototype of a type of eye prosthesis with eyelids that blink in sync with the healthy eye. The project had two FD professors, Neide Coto and Reinaldo Dias, and a student of engineering at the Polytechnic, Paulo Oguro. The system was patented by the USP Innovation Agency in 2015.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin–Madison have developed a novel strategy to reprogram cells from one type to another in a more efficient and less biased manner than previous methods. The ability to convert cells from one type to another holds great promise for engineering cells and tissues for therapeutic application, and the new Wisconsin study could help speed research and bring the technology to the clinic faster.

Dr Max Ortiz Catalan at Chalmers University of Technology has developed a novel method of treating phantom limb pain using machine learning and augmented reality. This approach has been tested on over a dozen of amputees with chronic phantom limb pain who found no relief by other clinically available methods before. The treatment reduced their pain by approximately 50%, reports a clinical study published in The Lancet.

Scientists hoping to get a glimpse of molecules that control brain activity have devised a probe that allows them to image these molecules without using any chemical or radioactive labels. Currently the gold standard approach to imaging molecules in the brain is to tag them with radioactive probes. However, these probes offer low resolution and they can’t easily be used to watch dynamic events, says Alan Jasanoff, an MIT professor of b...

Brad Postle’s lab, at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, is challenging the idea that working memory remembers things through sustained brain activity. They caught brains tucking less-important information away somewhere beyond the reach of the tools that typically monitor brain activity — and then they snapped that information back into active attention with magnets. Their latest study will be published in the journal&nb...

Regius Professor Chris Toumazou, co-founder of dnaNUDGE, the developer of the world’s first DNA-based service to ‘nudge’ consumers towards genetically optimal buying behaviour, has been honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Elektra European Electronics Industry Awards 2016. 

  Lattice Semiconductor and NDS Surgical Imaging have announced a strategic partnership leveraging Lattice’s WirelessHD solution specifically for medical device applications. 

  A WSU research team has successfully used a mild electric current to take on and beat drug-resistant bacterial infections, a technology that may eventually be used to treat chronic wound infections. The researchers report on their work in the online edition of npj Biofilms and Microbiomes.

Parkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic, as yet incurable neuro-degenerative disease. Early diagnosis is a matter of increasing urgency, particularly in the ageing European population as prompt detection improves patient outcomes. PD predominantly affects people over the age of 60 with an incidence of 5 out of 1000 people. Early onset of PD is characterised by movement disorders such as tremors, rigidity and slow movement that is later followe...

What if humans could regrow an amputated arm or leg, or completely restore nervous system function after a spinal cord injury? A new study of one of our closest invertebrate relatives, the acorn worm, reveals that this feat might one day be possible. Acorn worms burrow in the sand around coral reefs, but their ancestral relationship to chordates means they have a genetic makeup and body plan surprisingly similar to ours.