Medical

Synthetic biology allows researchers to program cells to perform novel functions such as fluorescing in response to a particular chemical or producing drugs in response to disease markers. In a step toward devising much more complex cellular circuits, MIT engineers have now programmed cells to remember and respond to a series of events. These cells can remember, in the correct order, up to three different inputs, but this approach should be ...

  In a paper published in Biomedical Optics Express, from The Optical Society (OSA), Stefan Musolino of the University of Adelaide and the ARC Centre of Excellence for Nanoscale BioPhotonics, Australia, and his colleagues describe an optical fibre-based probe capable of making pinpoint brain temperature measurements in moving lab animals. 

Titanium is the leading material for artificial knee and hip joints because it's strong, wear-resistant and nontoxic, but an unexpected discovery by Rice University physicists shows that the gold standard for artificial joints can be improved with the addition of some actual gold. "It is about 3-4 times harder than most steels," said Emilia Morosan, the lead scientist on a study in Science Advances that describes the properties of a 3-to-1 mixtur...

A Yale-led team of researchers developed a new approach to scanning the brain for changes in synapses that are associated with common brain disorders. The technique may provide insights into the diagnosis and treatment of a broad range of disorders, including epilepsy and Alzheimer's disease. The study was published in Science Translational Medicine. Certain changes in synapses—the junctions between nerve cells in the brain&m...

Scientists from MIPT and their colleagues have developed a compact and powerful ceramic-based laser with applications in minimally traumatic and inexpensive laser surgical scalpels, and also for cutting and engraving composite materials. The results of the study have been published in Optics Letters. Today, lasers are in consumer electronics devices, medicine, metallurgy, metrology, meteorology, and many other areas.

Researchers from The University of Texas at Arlington have demonstrated that electrical conductivity can be an effective means to precisely measure the amount of blood present in dry blood spot analysis, providing an alternative to the current preferred approach of measuring sodium levels. Dry blood spots are a pinprick of blood blotted on filter paper and allowed to air dry, which is then sent to a laboratory for analysis.

Imagine being able to instantly diagnose diabetes, Ebola or some other disease, simply by watching how a droplet of blood moves on a surface. That's just one potential impact of research led by Arun Kota, assistant professor in Colorado State University's Department of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biomedical Engineering. Kota's lab makes coatings that repel not just water, but virtually any liquid, including oils and acids - a pr...

Recent analysis from Frost & Sullivan has shown that visible progress in the development of human enablement and enhancement technologies has given a huge boost to its mass adoption potential.

When you think of Germany, what do you think of? Most people will usually say football, beer and BMWs. What most people won't say is medical technology (medtech). Despite that, Germany’s medtech sector is by far the largest in Europe and the third largest in the world. It’s home to some of the largest OEMs and presents a wide range of opportunities for technology experts.

Biochemists at the University of California San Diego have developed artificial cell membranes that grow and remodel themselves in a manner similar to that of living mammalian cells. The achievement, detailed in a paper published in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, follows the successful design last year in the same laboratory of artificial, or synthetic, cell membranes capable of sustaining continual grow...