Posts tagged technology
Specialists Brought to Every Town from Science and Invention. 1924-04.
With an assist of electrical indicating devices, it is simply probable to broadcast a commentary of any illness over wires from one place to another with roughly comprehensive accuracy. The ideas required are shown in a painting herewith. A cardiograph is trustworthy to a patient’s dual wrists and variations in a stream can be done to register in an apart specialist’s office. Respiration vigour is transmitted by a CO rheostat, a same as is a box with a blood pressure. The heart tinge is transmitted by a radio microphone, heat by a thermocouple. An X-ray of a putrescent member is transmitted by television.
Wit Grit and a Supercomputer Yield the Chemical Structure of the HIV Capsid
This is some exciting stuff. We have long known about the various parts of the HIV particle, from the outer lipid membrane and docking glycoproteins to the viral RNA within. However, the intermediate structure, the P24 capsid, the shell of the delivered genomic payload when HIV particles dock has never been mapped out. The problem was always one of computational power. We simply did not have the number crunching power to solve the structure. Until now.
With the help of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications at the University of Illinois, a team of researchers, armed with the petaflop supercomputer Blue Waters have finally published the structure of the HIV Capsid.
Dr. Peijun Zhang, project lead and associate professor in structural biology at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine explained the significance of this to BBC: “The capsid is critically important for HIV replication, so knowing its structure in detail could lead us to new drugs that can treat or prevent the infection. The capsid has to remain intact to protect the HIV genome and get it into the human cell, but once inside, it has to come apart to release its content so that the virus can replicate. Developing drugs that cause capsid dysfunction by preventing its assembly or disassembly might stop the virus from reproducing.”
This breakthrough in understanding the assembly and shape of the capsid could create a new avenue of therapy that can inhibit its assembly or disassembly.
“The big problem with HIV is that it evolves so quickly that any drug you use you get drug resistance, which is why we use a multi-drug cocktail,” Professor Simon Lovell, a structural biologist at the University of Manchester, said. “This is another target, another thing we can go after to develop a new class of drugs to work alongside the existing class.”
Read more: BBC. Nature. University of Illinois. National Science Foundation. NIH
Medical Apps: Reply
- Neppto: Which smartphone do you think is the best for clinical stuff?
- I think that right now from both a quantity and quality standpoint, Apple is still the best platform for medical professionals. It came to the market first and has the most developer support. Android has the largest market share worldwide and that cannot be ignored but the development cycle is fractured because there is such a variety of devices, hardware capabilities and operating system versions. Support for Android will improve over time but those issues will continue to be a barrier to entry for many companies hoping to reach the widest audience.
Baby's Life Saved with Groundbreaking 3-D Printed Device that Restored His Breathing
A bioresorbable splint has been created and used for first time at the University of Michigan, where doctors implanted the device in an infant and stopped a life-threatening condition called tracheobronchomalacia.
This volumetric printing business is really starting to make some medical advances possible. Last time it was 3-D printed liver lobule, this time it is a tracheal splint to help a baby breathe. Science and technology are awesome.
3D Printer Makes World’s Smallest Human ‘Livers.’
3D printing technology just keeps getting better and better. This time, scientists at Organovo in San Diego were able to create a 3D printer that prints using liver cells. Layering these cells into a histologically correct lattice, the team plans to model disease processes and medication effects more accurately.
The plan is to eventually be able to print fully functional human livers that are viable for transplantation.
DNA Testing Chip for SNP Identification for Personalized Drug Therapy.
When I was in pharmaceutical sciences, one of the biggest buzzwords was pharmacogenomics. The fast-growing knowledge base of genetic determination and predispositions, coupled with the advent of more efficiency, more affordable genetic testing methods was driving a new market and treatment area: personalized medicine.
The two areas of research and interest were in genetic predispositions to disease and the genetic variability to pharmacological response. Some people are fast metabolizers and others slow; some have the mutation to make a drug effective while others do not.
This DNA chip was designed for rapid sequencing for specific single nucleotide polymorphisms or SNPs, variations in a single DNA base among individuals to find these mutations to best tailor pharmacotherapy.
First “Warmed Liver” Transplant Takes Place in London via OrganOx.
The concept is simple: preserve the function of transplant organs after they are removed from a donor’s body.
The solution: keep the organs functioning as close to physiological conditions as possible.
The challenge: making the solution a reality.
The dynamic duo who made this happen, an engineer and surgeon spent 15 years creating the technologies necessary to get this to work and it would appear that the very first “warm” organ transplant is recovering well. The future outlook of this concept is encouraging.
This is another victory for innovation, science, and medicine.
A High-Resolution Endoscope as Thin as a Human Hair
Engineers at Stanford have developed a prototype single-fiber endoscope that improves the resolution of these much-sought-after instruments fourfold over existing designs. The advance could lead to an era of needle-thin, minimally invasive endoscopes able to view features out of reach of today’s instruments.
Common Afflictions of Kitchen Appliances.
Never look at your kitchen appliances the same ever again. “Millions of appliance afflictions go undiagnosed every year.”
Alya Red: A Computational Heart.
I had heard about this simulation before but this is the first time I have seen the computational model in action and it is beautiful. Put together by a team of engineers, doctors, and biotechnologists at the Barcelona Supercomputing Centre, this finely detailed model of the heart uses data from the diffusion tensor imaging via MRI scans, histology and other tools to show the amazingly complex contractions of the heart. The aim is to give doctors and scientists a way to study the heart’s electrical and mechanical function in order to find better ways of treating cardiac conditions.
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