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FDA gives green light to RP-VITA hospital robot(Phys.org)—The FDA has approved RP-VITA from iRobot and InTouch Health. This is an autonomous medical robot which will be able to make its rounds of hospital corridors in the U.S. within the next few months. The RP-VITA robot, to cost hospitals between $4,000 and $6,000 a month to operate, has the distinction of being an autonomous moving, telepresence robot that can allow doctors remotely to interact with their hospital patients.
Autonomous movement is a key feature, as now doctors remotely can direct the robot to anywhere in a hospital. Analysts see this as an important step in the potential use of robots in real-world settings beyond the military. The robot is seen as helping busy hospitals leverage remote presence as part of their routine.
The RP-Vita has built-in mapping, obstacle detection, avoidance technology. Translation: the RP-VITA avoids smashing into objects and people through its use of lasers, sonar, and sensors. The human-sized robot is a 5-foot-6-inch device, and its "face" is a screen.
Read more at: Researchers identify new target for rheumatoid arthritisCo-senior author and Program Director Carl Blobel, M.D., Ph.D., works with collaborator Lionel Ivashkiv, M.D., in the Arthritis and Tissue Degeneration Program lab at Hospital for Special Surgery. Credit: Hospital for Special Surgery/ Robert Essel Photography Researchers at Hospital for Special Surgery have identified a potential new target for drugs to treat patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA), a protein known as IRHOM2. The finding could provide an effective and potentially less toxic alternative therapy to tumor necrosis factor-alpha blockers (TNF-blockers), the mainstay of treatment for rheumatoid arthritis, and could help patients who do not respond to this treatment. Efforts to develop drugs that hone in on this new target are underway.
"This study is an elegant example of the capacity of basic science cell biologists to work with translational rheumatologists to address a clinically relevant question at a basic level," said Jane Salmon, M.D., Collette Kean Research Chair and co-director, Mary Kirkland Center for Lupus Research at Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS) in New York City, and an author of the study. "We have identified a clinically relevant target that can be applied to patients in the near term." The study will appear online, ahead of print, on January 25, in the Journal of Clinical Investigation and in the February 2013 print issue.
Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2013-01-rheumatoid-arthritis.html#jCp
Needles become a thing of the even-more-distant past | DVICEThough my doctor hasn't gotten the note, needles are increasingly becoming a thing of the past. Weve replaced them with silk, with programmable hyposprays and now with lasers. Yet my good ol' doc insists on having this lovely nurse take a two-inch metal member of the arm-pain syndicate and stick it into my biceps.
The new technology is a laser-based system that shoots drugs through the skin in pulses of 250 millionths of a second each, making it completely painless if even noticeable. Not to mention the fact that it doesnt cause any actual tissue damage (meaning its not just masked pain; there simply isnt any reason to hurt).
While getting a flu shot isn't comfortable, this has further reaching implications for those folks who have to self-administer medicine on a regular basis, as it is with something like diabetes. And, sure, it doesnt hurt all that much. But over 20 million Americans have a needle phobia, which is some pretty serious stuff.
A real-life "tractor beam", which uses light to attract objects, has been developed by scientists.
It is hoped it could have medical applications by targeting and attracting individual cells.
The research, published in Nature Photonics and led by the University of St Andrews, is limited to moving microscopic particles.
In science fiction programmes such as Star Trek, tractor beams are used to move much more massive objects.
Stem cells from bone marrow or fat can improve recovery after stroke in rats, according to a study published in BioMed Central's open access journal Stem Cell Research & Therapy. Treatment with stem cells improved the amount of brain and nerve repair and the ability of the animals to complete behavioural tasks.
Stroke is among the leading causes of death worldwide, killing 5.7 million each year (just under 10% of total deaths). Approximately 9 million people had a stroke in 2008 and 30 million people have previously had a stroke and are still alive.
Stem cell therapy holds enormous promise for the future, but there are many questions which need to be answered regarding treatment protocols and which cell types to use. This study attempted to address some of these questions.
Rats were treated intravenously with stem cells or saline 30 minutes after a stroke. At 24 hours, the stem cell-treated rats showed a better functional recovery. By two weeks, the animals had near-normal scores in tests. This improvement was seen even though the stem cells did not actually migrate to the damaged area of brain. The treated rats also had higher levels of biomarkers implicated in brain repair – including the growth factor VEGF.
A positive result was seen for both fat (adipose) and bone-marrow derived stem cells. Dr Exuperio Díez-Tejedor from La Paz University Hospital, explained: "Improved recovery was seen regardless of origin of the stem cells, which may increase the usefulness of this treatment in human trials. Adipose-derived cells in particular are abundant and easy to collect without invasive surgery."
The most extensive bilateral arm transplant to date has been successfully achieved thanks to an interdisciplinary team of doctors and nurses at John Hopkins Hospital. The operation, which was performed on December 18, lasted 13 hours and involved 16 physicians from orthopedics, vascular medicine, plastic surgery, and other disciplines from five hospitals.
Today, the 26-year-old patient, Sergeant Brendan Marrocco, can flex his left arm at the elbow along with slightly rotating his wrist, though the feeling in his hands have not returned.
In 2009, Sergeant Marrocco was driving an armored vehicle outside Baghdad when it was hit by a roadside bomb. He awoke at the Walter Reed Medical Center in Washington and found that all of his limbs had to be amputated, though he retained more of his left arm than his right. Though Brendan was the first soldier to survive as a quadruple amputee, he elected for the transplant surgery in order to be able to someday drive and get into athletics again, possibly even hand cycling a marathon.
Brendan now joins a growing list of patients worldwide to receive double arm transplants and becomes only the seventh to do so in the US. As doctors become more confident in the procedure and collaborate with various specialists, these double transplants will likely increase. A widely reported story last fall of a Texas woman who lost all of her limbs due to an invasive streptococcal infection (the flesh-eating bacteria) has been approved to also receive a double arm transplant, and was last known to be waiting for a donor.
Scientists at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have for the first time visualised the molecular changes in a critical cell death protein that force cells to die.
The finding provides important insights into how cell death occurs, and could lead to new classes of medicines that control whether diseased cells live or die.
Cell death, called apoptosis, is important for controlling the number of cells in the body. Defects in cell death have been linked to the development of diseases such as cancer and neurodegenerative conditions. Insufficient cell death can cause cancer by allowing cells to become immortal while excessive cell death of neurons may be a cause of neurodegenerative conditions.
Dr Peter Czabotar, Professor Peter Colman and colleagues in the institute's Structural Biology division, together with Dr Dana Westphal from the institute's Molecular Genetics of Cancer division, made the discovery which is published in the latest edition of the journal Cell.
Medical research Researchers have overcome a major challenge to treating brain diseases by engineering an experimental molecular therapy that crosses the blood-brain barrier to reverse neurological lysosomal storage disease in mice.
Posted online in PNAS Early Edition on Feb. 4, the study was led by scientists at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center. "This study provides a non-invasive procedure that targets the blood-brain barrier and delivers large-molecule therapeutic agents to treat neurological lysosomal storage disorders," said Dao Pan, PhD, principal investigator on the study and researcher in the Cancer and Blood Diseases Institute at Cincinnati Children's. "Our findings will allow the development of drugs that can be tested for other brain diseases like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's."
A 3D printing technique that produces clusters of stem cells could speed up progress towards creating artificial organs, Edinburgh scientists have claimed.
In the more immediate future it could be used to generate biopsy-like tissue samples for drug testing.
The technique relies on an adjustable "microvalve" to build up layers of human embryonic stem cells (hESCs).
Second Sight's Argus II bionic eye is now officially approved for use by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) after its advisory panel concluded that the benefits of helping cure partial blindness outweighed the possible safety problems, such as post-surgical infections.
The Argus II consists of two parts: an artificial retina with embedded electrodes that's surgically implanted into the eye and a pair of glasses equipped with a camera and visual processor. The video camera captures footage, sends it to the processor and then relays the feed to the bionic eye, thus, allowing the impaired wearer to "see." That said, the Argus II doesn't restore complete vision and only allows people to see just enough light to help them move around. As Pop Sci puts it, "it's like watching TV on a screen with just 60 pixels."
Here's a video showing how the Argus II works:
Diamond uses intense X-rays to reveal the molecular and atomic make-up of objects and materials. It will now use this capability to image Containment Level 3 pathogens. These are responsible for illnesses such as Aids, hepatitis and some types of flu. Level 3 is one step down from the most dangerous types of infectious agent, such as Ebola, which can only be handled in the most secure government facilities. "Viruses, as you know, are sort of tiny nanomachines and you can't see them in a normal microscope. "But with the crystallography and X-ray techniques we use, we are able to get about 10,000 times the resolution of the normal light microscope," explained Dave Stuart, the life sciences director at Diamond and a professor of structural biology at Oxford University. "This takes us from the regime of not being able to see them to being able to see individual atoms. "And if we can look at 'live' viruses and get an atomic-level description of them, it opens up the possibility of using modern drug-design techniques to produce new pharmaceuticals."
A joint UK and Chinese team working at Diamond solved the structure of EV71 last year
Prof Stuart was speaking in Boston at the annual meeting for the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Diamond has been working for some time to get its "Crystal Lab" ready for Level 3 work, and the Oxford researcher used the US conference to announce that the preparation was now complete. Synchrotrons work by accelerating electrons in a giant magnetic ring to near light-speeds. As the particles turn around the circle, they lose energy in the form of exceptionally intense X-rays. This light is channelled down "beamlines" where it hits targets put in its path. The way the X-rays scatter off the atoms in these targets reveals their arrangement. This allows scientists to glimpse the shape of virus and bacteria components and get some insight into how they function.
Diamond has already been studying pathogens at lower levels of containment. A good recent example, says Prof Stuart, is the Human Enterovirus 71 (EV71) that causes hand-foot-and-mouth disease. The infection is relatively common in infants and children, especially across the Asia-Pacific region, and is characterised by fever, painful sores in the mouth, and unpleasant blisters on the hands, feet and buttocks. There is currently no vaccine or anti-viral treatment available. A joint UK and Chinese team working at Diamond solved the structure of EV71 last year.
Diamond is sited on the Harwell science campus just south of Oxford
This allowed the researchers to see a kind of breathing motion in the virus that it uses to initiate the infection process. Evident also was the small molecule it picks up from the body's cells to shift itself from one state to another. "That molecule must be lost to cause an infection, but now that we can see in atomic detail what that molecule looks like, we can try to design a synthetic version that will attach more strongly," Prof Stuart told BBC News. "That would stop the breathing and stop the infection process."
The British synchrotron's new status makes it now one of only two such facilities in the world where Level 3 study is undertaken; the other being in the US. This means it will be a major draw for scientists across the world. Prof Stuart stressed the operations at Diamond would pose no risk to others working on the Harwell site or in the immediate Oxfordshire area. The pathogens will be brought to the synchrotron in crystal form in double-sealed containers that are not opened during their time at the facility. They are manipulated robotically inside the Light Source and, what is more, they are destroyed in the very act of shining X-rays on them.
BBC News - Diamond to shine light on infections
The first prosthetic on record dates back 3,000 years to an Egyptian noblewoman, who wore a leather and wood prosthetic in place of her right big toe. While that's a pretty remarkable example of ingenuity for the time, prosthetics have come quite a long way since then. In fact, a 20-year-old man who lives in Rome is scheduled to receive the first ever bionic hand with a working sense of touch later this year.
The hand will be wired to the patient's nervous system, so that he'll be able to control it in much the same way that he would control a real hand. And If everything goes smoothly, he should also be able to "feel" signals from the hand's touch sensors.
Dr. Silvestro Micera from the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne in Switzerland will be performing the transplant:
This is real progress, real hope for amputees. It will be the first prosthetic that will provide real-time sensory feedback for grasping. It is clear that the more sensory feeling an amputee has, the more likely you will get full acceptance of that limb. We could be on the cusp of providing new and more effective clinical solutions to amputees in the next year.
This exciting advancement could help out so many individuals with artificial limbs, and we can't wait for an update once the transplant takes place
Scientists Reprogram Cells to Fight Diabetes | IdeaFeed | Big ThinkUniversity of Pennsylvania researchers have successfully "reprogrammed" certain cells to produce more insulin in the body, representing a potential genetic treatment for patients diagnosed with diabetes. "For years researchers have been searching for a way to treat diabetics by reactivating their insulin-producing beta cells, with limited success. Turning related alpha cells into beta cells may one day offer a novel and complementary approach for treating type 2 diabetes. Treating human and mouse cells with compounds that modify cell nuclear material called chromatin induced the expression of beta cell genes in alpha cells."
Type 1 and type 2 diabetes are not only caused by an insufficient amount of insulin (produced by beta cells) but also by an excess of glucagon (produced by alpha cells). "In theory, transplantation of healthy beta cellsfor type 1 diabetics in combination with immunosuppression to control autoimmunityshould halt the disease, yet researchers have not yet been able to generate these cells in the lab at high efficiency, whether from embryonic stem cells or by reprogramming mature cell types." Researchers now reason that they might reprogram alpha cells towards the beta-cell phenotype to produce these much-needed insulin-producing cells.
A part of the brain's ability to shield itself from the destructive damage caused by a stroke has been explained by researchers.
It has been known for more than 85 years that some brain cells could withstand being starved of oxygen.
Scientists, writing in the journal Nature Medicine, have shown how these cells switch into survival mode.
They hope to one-day find a drug which uses the same trick to protect the whole brain.
Treating a stroke is a race against time. Clots that block the blood supply prevent the flow of oxygen and sugar to brain cells, which then rapidly die.
But in 1926, it was noticed that some cells in the hippocampus, the part of the brain involved in memory, did not follow this rule.
"They're staying alive when the prediction would say that they should die," said Prof Alastair Buchan from Oxford University who has investigated how they survive.
Five very different psych disorders may have something in common--genetics. Researchers have found that autism, attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder and schizophrenia all share common genetic underpinnings.
The findings, published online in the journal The Lancet, conducted a genome-wide analysis of 33,332 cases and 27,888 controls. They found that, in particular, single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in two genes involved in calcium-channel activity appeared to play a role in all five disorders. SNPs are DNA sequence variations that occur when a single nucleotide--A, T, C or G--in the genome differs between paired chromosomes.
In all, researchers found that SNPs in four regions were associated with all five disorders: two on chromosome 10, one on chromosome 3 and another on chromosome 12. The two on chromosome 10 included the L-type voltage-gated calcium-channel subunit CACNB2 and the one on chromosome 12 included another calcium-channel subunit called CACNA1C, which has been previously linked to bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and major depressive disorder.
So what does this mean exactly? It shows that a genetic variant plays a role in several diseases. In addition, it shows that calcium signaling, a key regulator of the growth and development of neurons, can influence many traits. The findings also imply that genetics can contribute to the prediction and prevents of psychiatric diseases.
Breakthrough hailed in US as Atlanta scientists cure HIV baby - Science - News - The IndependentUS team gave child stronger, faster dose of antiretroviral drugs straight after birth
Breakthrough hailed in US as Atlanta scientists cure HIV baby
Scientists appeared a step closer to conquering the Aids virus after US doctors confirmed they had cured an infant born with HIV through a course of antiretroviral drugs, the first time this has ever been recorded.
Doctors in Atlanta said a two-and-a-half-year-old child from Mississippi was born HIV positive and received a three-drug infusion within 30 hours of its birth, a stronger and far swifter dose than normally administered.
Last night scientists confirmed that the child, whose identity has not been disclosed, has since been off medication for HIV for over a year, is believed no longer to be infectious.
Human Ear Created With 3D Printer | Singularity HubResearchers have constructed a living human ear that looks and feels just like the real thing, and they made it with the help of a 3D printer. The new ear improves upon prosthetic ears made by current methods which are not only unlifelike, but often uncomfortable to wear and even painful. Better yet, at most the ear takes only a week to make.
The ear wasn’t 3D printed with “living ink” – researchers still have a way to go before tissue even as simple as an ear can be fabricated de novo. For their ear, the researchers and clinicians at Cornell used a 3D printer to make a precise ear mold. Serving as medical models, the ears of two twin sisters were laser scanned and photographed with a high-definition camera to create a digitized 3D image – a process which took just 30 seconds. The image was then used to fabricate a mold with a Stratasys FDM 2000 3D printer. They then injected a gel containing collagen derived from animals into the ear mold and followed that by injecting 250 million cartilage cells. The collagen, a structural protein found normally in cells, acted as a scaffold on which the cartilage cells grew. In just fifteen minutes the ear was ready. They removed it, shaped it further with trimming, then placed it in a cell culture medium for three to five days before implanting it.
The US military is planning to use fleets of small ships as platforms for unmanned aircraft to land and take off.
The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) said it needed to increase its airborne "surveillance and reconnaissance".
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), known as drones, are commonly launched on land - but deploying them at sea is harder because they need to refuel.
They currently require large aircraft carriers with long runways.
The new project has been dubbed Tern (Tactically Exploited Reconnaissance Node) after a sea-bird known for its endurance.
Darpa programme manager Daniel Patt, said: "Enabling small ships to launch and retrieve long-endurance UAVs on demand would greatly expand our situational awareness and our ability to quickly and flexibly engage in hotspots over land or water."
Seven Genetic Risk Factors Associated with Age-related Macular Degeneration : Health & Medicine : Science World ReportSeven new regions of the human genome are now associated with an increased risk of age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness among older adults.
According to recent reports from Case Western University School of Medicine, a study is working to help identify the causes and concerns associated with these risks.
The AMD Gene Consortium, a network of international investigators representing 18 research groups, has also confirmed the existence of 12 other regions -called loci-that had been identified in previous studies. The reported findings can be found in the journal Nature Genetics.
Willem Overwijk, Ph.D.
Cancer vaccines that attempt to stimulate an immune system assault fail because the killer T cells aimed at tumors instead find the vaccination site a more inviting target, scientists at The University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center report in Nature Medicine.
A common substance used in many cancer vaccines to boost immune attack betrays the cause by facilitating a buildup of T cells at the vaccination site, which then summon more T cells to help with the perceived threat.
"Vaccines stimulate production of T cells primed to attack the target cancer, and there are many T cells in the bloodstream after vaccination. We found that only a few get to the tumor while many more are stuck at or double back to the vaccination site," said senior author Willem Overwijk, Ph.D., in MD Anderson's Department of Melanoma Medical Oncology.
The result: largely unscathed tumors while an overstimulated immune response can cause lesions at the injection site. The team found that a major culprit in this failure is incomplete Freund's adjuvant (IFA), a mineral oil-based adjuvant included in many vaccines to stoke the immune response.
"IFA sticks around the vaccination site for up to three months, along with the antigen designed to trigger immunity against the tumor," Overwijk said. "T cells keep attacking and secreting chemokines to call for reinforcements. But it's an unkillable target; T cells can't kill mineral oil."
Eventually, the T cells die. "The vaccination site increasingly resembles a viral infection, with lots of damaged tissue and antigens," Overwijk said.
Switch from IFA to saline adjuvant reverses effect
"Switching to a saline-based adjuvant in a melanoma vaccine reversed the T cell effect in mice," Overwijk said, "Major accumulations of T cells gathered in tumors, shrinking them, with minimal T cell activity at the vaccination site."
Peptide antigens are available for almost all types of cancer, Overwijk said. A saline adjuvant could change the poor performance of cancer vaccines. A clinical trial of the concept is expected to open later this year at the University of Virginia and MD Anderson.
