Medical

A 25-year-old man recovering from a coma has made remarkable progress following a treatment at UCLA to jump-start his brain using ultrasound. The technique uses sonic stimulation to excite the neurons in the thalamus, an egg-shaped structure that serves as the brain's central hub for processing information. "It's almost as if we were jump-starting the neurons back into function," said Martin Monti, the study's lead author and a UCLA associat...

By assigning a barcode to stem cells, researchers at Lund University in Sweden have made it possible to monitor large blood cell populations as well as individual blood cells, and study the changes over time. Among other things, they discovered that stem cells go through different stages where their ability to restore immune cells varies. The findings provide important information for the research and treatment of leukaemia and autoimmune disease...

A portable power-free test for the rapid detection of bacterial resistance to antibiotics has been developed by academics at Loughborough University and the University of Reading. The test termed Lab-on-a-Stick is an inexpensive microfluidic strip – comprising of tiny test tubes about the size of a human hair – capable of identifying bacteria found in urine samples and checking if they are resistant to common antibiotics.

Every day, millions of Americans with diabetes have to inject themselves with insulin to manage their blood-sugar levels. But less painful alternatives are emerging. Scientists are developing a way of administering the medicine orally with tiny vesicles that can deliver insulin where it needs to go without a shot. They will share their in vivo testing results. The researchers are presenting their work at the 252nd National Meeting & Expo...

CEVA has announced that Oticon has licensed and deployed the RivieraWaves BLE technology for use as part of the Bluetooth implementation in its Oticon Opn hearing aid. According to the company, the Oticon Opn combines breakthrough technologies to “help people with hearing loss hear better, with less effort and better recall”.

Novel scaffolds are shown enabling cells to behave in a different but controlled way in vitro due to the presence of aligned, self-assembled ceramic nanofibers of an ultra-high anisotropy ratio augmented into graphene shells. "This unique hybrid nano-network allows for an exceptional combination of selective guidance stimuli for stem cell development, variations in immune reactions, and behavior of cancer cells", says Professor Michael Gasik...

  Using ultrasound technology, physicists from the Munich-Centre for Advanced Photonics make proton radiation in cancerous tissue visible. In future, the irradiation of tumors with protons could become more precise.

A new device developed by researchers at MIT and a physician at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center could greatly improve doctors’ ability to accurately diagnose ear infections. That could drastically reduce the estimated 2 million cases per year in the United States where such infections are incorrectly diagnosed and unnecessary antibiotics are prescribed. Such overprescriptions are considered a major cause of antibiotic resistance...

  Innovate UK is providing funding to support the next stage in development of a bio-active implant, Smart Spacer, which will counter post-operative infection following knee surgery. The programme has the potential to substantially reduce the £300m that these complications cost the NHS.

During a heart attack, clots or narrowed arteries block blood flow, harming or killing cells within the tissue. But the damage doesn't end after the crushing pain subsides. Instead, the heart's walls thin out, the organ becomes enlarged, and scar tissue forms. If nothing is done, the patient can eventually experience heart failure. But scientists now report they have developed gels that, in animal tests, can be injected into the heart to shore up...