Stories tagged health
Blood on tap
Bloodshed happens
Bags of bloodCourtesy spike55151
A lot of blood is shed every day. Many lives are being saved when that shed blood is replaced. Donated blood is only good for a few weeks. Also there is the worry about contamination (HIV, Aids, etc.). What the world needs is a way to manufacture and deliver blood as needed.
Wanted-fresh blood on tap
Our Defense Department's research division (DARPA) wants a a self-contained system that could turn out 100 units of universal blood a week for eight weeks. The system needs to withstand war front conditions and be not much bigger than a refrigerator.
$2 million awarded
That task and $1.95 million was assigned to Arteriocyte less than two years ago. (see Popular Mechanics, Dec 2008 - Bringing Stem Cells to War: Meet the Blood Pharmers). The technology, called Nanex, uses a nanofiber-based structure that mimics bone marrow in which blood cells multiply, according to the company. (cnet News)
FDA approval sought
This week an initial shipment of their pharmed blood product was sent to the Food and Drug Administration for an independent evaluation. If approved, their cost of $5000 per unit of manufactured blood will need to be reduced.
Still, given the price tag of transporting and storing donated blood, Darpa’s betting that a unit of pharmed blood will make financial sense once it costs less than $1,000. Wired
Tags : Transplants without anti-rejection drugs
Pig parts progressCourtesy be_khe A person with diabetes cannot make insulin so insulin needs to be injected at the proper time and amount. Transplanting insulin producing cells called islets may solve the need for insulin injections. Transplanting human islet cells requires an appropriate donor and a lifetime of anti-rejection drugs. Not good.
Pigs to the rescue
Before 1980 insulin from pigs allowed people with diabetes to survive. Pig heart valves transplants also worked out in humans.
Scientists recently injected embryonic pig pancreatic cells into rats which grew to became the pancreas, which houses the islet cells that produce insulin. Eight weeks later islet cells from adult pigs were transplanted into that pancreatic tissue and were not rejected
The new research -- the first long-term, successful cross-species transplant of pig islets without immune suppression -- raises the prospect that it may one day be possible to cure diabetes in humans using a similar strategy. Science Dailey
Success in rats - next try non-human primates
Marc Hammerman and his colleagues at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis are now beginning experimentation using the same methods on non-human primates.
Learn more
The American journal of Pathology (click to see the research abstract).
Cure for Diabetes approaches reality Discovery News
The hype of H1N1 flu has run its course. News reports say that 40 million doses of unused vaccine (valued at $260 million) have been destroyed and that the flu impacted much fewer people than the regular seasonal flu. And there are millions more doses of the vaccine are set to expire at the end of this month. What just happened?
The machine can actually see through purple rectangles: I put those there for your own safety.Courtesy TSAThat headline would likely have been true for most of us anyway, but the new security measures at some airports practically guarantee it.
Y’all remember the new airport scanners that would allow airport security staff to see through our clothes and hair… to the pale, doughy bodies beneath? Organs that we had worked so hard to conceal from the world would be on display for everyone to see. (Not “everyone,” exactly. More like a single security agent.)
We were assured, though, that despite the unveiling of our hidden third, fourth, and fifth nipples, the process was perfectly safe, and would save us from the pat-downs that could subject our vestigial tails and webbed armpits to crude manhandling.
However, it seems that some doctors aren’t so sure that the process is as safe as has been claimed.
The machines work by bathing your body in high frequency radio waves, which penetrate your clothes, but not your body. Depending on your outlook, y’all might be thinking, “Oh, radio waves. Like… for the radio. A little AM/FM never hurt no one.” And, not counting your grammar, you’d be correct. But another equally correct person might think, “Oh, radio waves. Like… in my microwave. If I lived in a microwave oven, I’d probably die.”
These waves shouldn’t do anything to you. Mostly they’re happy just bouncing around, maybe heating things up a little, maybe carrying some talk radio, maybe doing both. The more dangerous electromagnetic radiation (remember, radio waves are a type of electromagnetic radiation) are further up the scale—gamma rays and x-rays are higher energy and have a shorter wavelength, and they can pass through you just fine, and mess things up on their way through.
However, some scientists think that these radio waves are concentrated on and in the skin, especially where clothes do not protect it. (I’m not certain why this is. Maybe because it can penetrate a little bit, so instead of totally bouncing off the body, or being distributed throughout the tissue, it’s all ending up in the skin? I wouldn’t write that on a test, though.) The upshot is that, according to some doctors at least, the dose of radiation received from these machines could be as much as 20 times higher than the official estimates.
What’s more, some research has shown that this type of radiation may, in fact, be harmful. The reason things like x-rays are potentially dangerous is that they have enough energy that they can sort of knock apart some of the molecules in your body. That’s not a big deal, unless one of the molecules that gets changed is in your DNA. When DNA is altered or damaged, there’s a chance that it could start producing cancer cells. That kind of radiation is said to be “ionizing.” The radiation used by the scanners is supposed to be non-ionizing, but, nonetheless, there are models showing how they could “rip apart DNA.” The effect hasn’t been demonstrated experimentally, but, if it’s true, it might mean that the scanners could contribute to skin cancer risk.
There are a lot of “may”s and “potentially”s in the story, so it’s probably not something to lose a lot of sleep over. (Despite the guarantee I put in the first sentence of this post.) Unless you do lots of traveling through airports that use these devices (which, I should stress, are not the same as the metal detectors we all walk through at the airport), your greater concern should probably be imaging technology that makes you look like a surprised, naked ghost.
Perennial grainCourtesy RaeA In a paper titled Increased Food and Ecosystem Security via Perennial Grains scientist state that perennial grains could be available in two decades and urge that research into perennial grains be accelerated by putting more personnel, land, and technology into breeding programs.
Perennial grains have roots that reach 10 feet or deeper, reduce erosion, build soil, need less herbicide, and best of all, survive over winter so there is no need to plow, cultivate, or replant.
Babies are dying
"Whooping cough is now an epidemic in California," said Dr. Mark Horton, director of the California Department of Public Health, in a statement. "Children should be vaccinated against the disease and parents, family members and caregivers of infants need a booster shot." ABCnews
Click here to watch whooping cough video on You Tube.
Life with Asperger Syndrome: I just read this book, loaned to me by the mother of another Asperger syndrome boy I cared for.Courtesy Jesse Saperstein When my nephew was an infant, he would not crawl, and he would flap his arms like a bird. I ended up doing daycare for him (and his brother) until they started school. I also noticed they would often say things twice, the second time softer to themselves. Years later I learned about Asperger Syndrome (AS). Asperger syndrome is a mild form of autism, or autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
Diagnosing autism is not simple
Symptoms of autism spectrum disorders vary and require trained professionals to diagnose. You can listen to Dr. Susan Levy for an explanation.
New research may lead to a simple urine test for autism diagnosis
According to research published in Journal of Proteome Research, children with autism have a different chemical fingerprint in their urine than non-autistic children.
The researchers reached their conclusions by using H NMR Spectroscopy to analyse the urine of three groups of children aged between 3 and 9: 39 children who had previously been diagnosed with autism, 28 non-autistic siblings of children with autism, and 34 children who did not have autism who did not have an autistic sibling.
They found that each of the three groups had a distinct chemical fingerprint. Non-autistic children with autistic siblings had a different chemical fingerprint than those without any autistic siblings, and autistic children had a different chemical fingerprint than the other two groups. ScienceDigest
Early detection of autism can change lives
According to AutismSociety.org the advantages of early detection and intervention cannot be overemphasized. Children who receive intensive therapy can make tremendous strides in their overall functioning and go on to lead productive lives.
Paper "dipstick" test can tell blood type in seconds
Blood transfusions save millions of lives every year. Getting the wrong type of blood can be deadly, though.
While the expensive equipment required to differentiate blood type is not available in many poor areas, now a strip of paper costing pennies can be used instead. Learn more about the "dipstick blood test" in ScienceDaily.
Let's form a transient cage-like entity around an ethanol molecule: I mean... a person. I think.Courtesy Urban MixerThat's right, vodka is 103%. According. To. Me.
And today, on the birthday of Paul Gauguin, the inventor of vodka*, we learn that that extra 3% is composed largely of science. Possibly.
See, vodka is supposed to be a neutral spirit—pretty much just a tasteless 40% ethyl alcohol, 60% water solution. (Tasteless except for the taste of alcohol, which is very strong.) And yet, when you get to the age where going to a bar is an appropriate thing to do, you will see and hear gentlemen saying things like, "Grey Goose on the rocks!" And then they give the bartender an amount of money they probably worked half an hour or more to earn.
Why?
Three reasons:
1) Something about filtering. Whatever.
2) Some people are ridiculous. If you ever say something like, "Grey Goose on the rocks!" you're one of them. But that's ok, because it takes all kinds, you know?
In the 40/60 alcohol/water solution we call vodka, groups of molecules called "hydrates" form. Hydrates in vodka consist of a molecule of alcohol sequestered by a bunch of water molecules, bonded together with hydrogen. If the bottle of vodka were a club, say, the alcohol would be like an attractive individual, surrounded by damp gentlemen united by their taste for premium vodka. (Don't think about it too much—it's a dangerously recursive metaphor.)
Scientists carefully analyzed several different popular brands of vodka, and found that the concentration of hydrates differed in each. So a good vodka might be like a happening club, with lots of attractive people surrounded by fellas. Or maybe it'd be like a very exclusive club, with just a few foxy people being ground into sweaty embarrassment on a relatively lonely dance floor.
The scientists didn't go so far as to say what concentration of hydrates was best, only that different concentrations might lend to an individual's brand preference. Instead of actually tasting the difference, though, drinkers might "perceive" the concentration of hydrates through other qualities, like how "watery" the vodka feels (even though all the brands tested had the same concentration of water.)
So there may be something to the practice of ordering specific expensive brands of vodka, and then drinking them straight. That doesn’t mean you should do it, though.
*Not true. Paul Gauguin never invented vodka. He did die of syphilis, though. Happy birthday, Paul!
Allergic to peanuts?Courtesy texnic
What is food allergy?
Food allergy is an abnormal response to a food triggered by the body’s immune system. Symptoms include itching, a rash, vomiting, difficult breathing, and lowered blood pressure.
While almost 30% of Americans think they have food allergies, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) found that
food allergy occurs in 6 to 8 percent of children 4 years of age or under, and in 3.7 percent of adults.
Better testing for food allergies needed
Diagnosing food allergies is described on the Mayo Clinic website. The procedures take time and money and, according to many, yield unreliable results.
"MIT chemical engineer Christopher Love believes he has a better way to diagnose such allergies. His new technology, described in the June 7 issue of the journal Lab on a Chip, can analyze individual immune cells taken from patients, allowing for precise measurement of the cells’ response to allergens such as milk and peanuts.
To perform the test, blood must be drawn from the patient, and white blood cells (which include T cells) are isolated from the sample.
The cells are exposed to a potential allergen and then placed into about 100,000 individual wells arranged in a lattice pattern on a soft rubber surface. Using a technique known as microengraving, the researchers make “prints” of the cytokines produced by each cell onto the surface of a glass slide. The amount of cytokine secreted by each individual cell can be precisely measured. MITnews
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