Full Body Optoacoustic Functional Imaging of Small Animals
Researchers working at Duke University and Washington University in St. Louis developed a new photoacoustic technique called single-impulse photoacoustic computed tomography (SIP-PACT) that provides an amazing high resolution look inside small living animals such as mice. Photoacoustic imaging involves shining a laser light into tissue, which generates pulses of sound waves due to the tissue heating up and expanding. The effect is seemingly small, but ultrasound transducers are able to detect these sound waves to render an image.
The new technology provides a live look at moving organs, the blood flowing, and even the pro...
Source: Medgadget - May 17, 2017 Category: Medical Devices Authors: Editors Tags: News Radiology Source Type: blogs
FDA to Address Cybersecurity at Workshop
Cybersecurity continues to be a hot topic in healthcare with several areas of concern. These include the theft of personal health information from a provider’s database, using ransom wear to extract payment from providers without actually stealing information, and compromising the performance of medical devices that are connected to the network, employ wireless functions or are otherwise hackable in either real or imagined scenarios. One might note that these latter concerns may not be in proportion to the actual risk, ie they attract a great deal of attention and gnashing of teeth but in a rationale hierarchy of act...
Source: Medical Connectivity Consulting - May 8, 2017 Category: Information Technology Authors: William Hyman Tags: Data Security Standards & Regulatory Source Type: blogs
Bit by the Research Bug: Priscilla ’s Growth as a Scientist
This is the third post in a new series highlighting NIGMS’ efforts toward developing a robust, diverse and well-trained scientific workforce.
Credit: Christa Reynolds.
Priscilla Del Valle
Academic Institution: The University of Texas at El Paso
Major: Microbiology
Minors: Sociology and Biomedical Engineering
Mentor: Charles Spencer
Favorite Book: The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, by Rebecca Skloot
Favorite Food: Tacos
Favorite music: Pop
Hobbies: Reading and drinking coffee
It’s not every day that you’ll hear someone say, “I learned more about parasites, and I thought, ‘This is so cool!’” But it’s al...
Source: Biomedical Beat Blog - National Institute of General Medical Sciences - March 28, 2017 Category: Research Authors: Christa Reynolds Tags: Being a Scientist Bacteria BUILD Infectious Diseases Profiles Training Source Type: blogs
New Hydrogel a Good Candidate as Artificial Vitreous, to Help Fix Detached Retinas
The space between the lens of the eye and the retina is filled with a substance called vitreous, a highly transparent jelly-like material that helps us see clearly. With age, or due to injury, the vitreous may become depleted, requiring surgical replenishment to restore vision. Current interventions have severe limitations, so a team of international researchers headed by scientists at Unviersity of Tokyo, have developed a hydrogel that may be an excellent replacement for vitreous.
Their oligo-TetraPEG hydrogel starts as a liquid that can be injected into the eye, but turns to a gel within about ten minutes. Such fast ch...
Source: Medgadget - March 11, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Editors Tags: Ophthalmology Source Type: blogs
Post-doctoral position in sensorimotor learning and control of speech production
TheLaboratory for Speech Physiology and Motor Control(PI Ludo Max, Ph.D.) at the University of Washington (Seattle) announces an open post-doctoral position in the areas ofsensorimotor integration and sensorimotor learning for speech production. The position will involve experimental work on both typical speech and stuttering. The lab is located in the University of Washington's Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences and has additional affiliations with the Graduate Program in Neuroscience and the Department of Bioengineering. Seehttp://faculty.washington.edu/ludomax/lab/for more information.The successful candidate wil...
Source: Talking Brains - February 26, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Post-Doc Position in the Department of Speech, Language & Hearing Sciences, Sargent College, Boston University
The Guenther Lab at Boston University is seeking applications for a postdoctoral associate in computational neuroscience and neuroimaging of speech in normal and disordered populations. The Guenther Lab is one of the world's preeminent speech, neuroscience laboratories, and the associate will work with a team of experts in neuroimaging, computational modeling, and neural data collection and analysis within the Guenther Lab, the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.Required Skills:PhD ...
Source: Talking Brains - February 23, 2017 Category: Neuroscience Authors: Greg Hickok Source Type: blogs
Intravascular Camera Using Multiple Lasers for Illumination Helps Assess Dangerous Plagues
A collaboration between scientists at University of Washington and University of Michigan has led to the development of a new way of imaging atherosclerosis within blood vessels. The technology relies on delivering a tiny camera into a vessel’s lumen and illuminating the plagues using red, green, and blue lasers. The scanning fiber endoscope (SFE) was originally developed at UW to visualize cancer cells, but its small size and multi-modal imaging warranted testing its capabilities inside of vessels.
Scanning fiber angioscopic images with red reflectance for structural images (left) and blue fluorescence for label-fre...
Source: Medgadget - February 14, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Editors Tags: Cardiology Radiology Source Type: blogs
Ingestible Medical Devices Powered by Gastric Fluids
Scientists have been attempting to produce practical ingestible electronics for years, and now researchers at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, may have figured out how to power them using surrounding fluids in the gut. Previously developed ingestible electronics typically use batteries that contain materials that, if leaked, are toxic to the human body. Other techniques, such as harvesting heat or vibrations from the surroundings, have been attempted. However, most of these methods don’t produce enough consistent energy to power the sensors in the devices.
Giovanni Traverso, the senior author of the stud...
Source: Medgadget - February 9, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Thomas Obisesan Tags: GI Source Type: blogs
New Imaging Technique Provides Quick Tumor Diagnosis During Brain Surgeries
If a tumor is suspected during brain surgery, it takes 30-40 minutes from the time of removing the sample from the patient’s brain to the time of diagnosis. The sample is taken through a rigorous process of tissue sectioning, staining, mounting, and interpretation by pathologists. Researchers from University of Michigan have now developed an imaging technique that could significantly reduce the time taken for such diagnoses. The method, called Stimulated Raman Scattering (SRS) microscopy, was developed in 2008, but due to the hazardous nature of lasers, they could not be used in a clinical setting. In a paper publish...
Source: Medgadget - February 8, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Rukmani Sridharan Tags: Pathology Source Type: blogs
Neural Network Learns to Diagnose Congenital Catracts
In two newly published studies in Nature Biomedical Engineering, researchers trained a neural network to diagnose congenital cataracts with the same level of accuracy as individual ophthalmologists. Congenital cataracts is a rare disease that results in clouding of the eye’s lens and is responsible for about 10% of childhood vision loss worldwide. The AI, a novel method for diagnosing this disease, is the product of a multi-hospital effort spearheaded by Dr. Erping Long and Dr. Haotian Lin from Sun Yat-sen University in China.
A convoluted neural network is a computer algorithm that mimics our visual cortex, which allow...
Source: Medgadget - February 1, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Thomas Obisesan Tags: Informatics Ophthalmology Source Type: blogs
New Technique Improves Electric Vagus Nerve Stimulation to Treat Chronic Inflammation
Electric stimulation of the vagus nerve stimulation is a powerful emerging technique for managing a number of conditions, including chronic inflammatory diseases. Yet, while targeting biophysical mechanisms involved in inflammation, one can stimulate others that manifest in unpredictable side effects.
Researchers at Georgia Tech have invented a way of delivering electrical stimulation in a more targeted way, using an additional electrode that prevents some nerve activity while letting the stimulating electrode do its thing. The result is few side effects while achieving maximum therapy.
“We use an electrode with a kilohe...
Source: Medgadget - January 18, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Editors Tags: News Source Type: blogs
Artificial Stem Cells Promote Tissue Healing Minus Side Effects
A collaboration between researchers at North Carolina State University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University have apparently created a synthetic mimic of cardiac stem cells. These may end up being used instead of natural stem cells while reducing or eliminating side effects that may arise from stem cell therapy.
The artificial cell consists of PLGA, a commonly used biocompatible polymer, mixed with growth factor proteins obtained from human cardiac stem cells grown in a typical fashion. Holding this all together is a cardiac stem cell membrane. The structu...
Source: Medgadget - January 12, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Editors Tags: Nanomedicine Source Type: blogs
Paperfuge: A Low-Cost Power-Free Centrifuge for Rapid Diagnostics
Centrifuges are universal machines routinely used in every lab in order to spin solutions at high speeds to separate liquids, such as blood, into different components. While they are easily available in developed countries, they are expensive and bulky to be used in developing countries, especially where stable electrical supply is a luxury. The field of rapid diagnostics is getting cheaper thanks to frequent technological advancements and improving manufacturing techniques.
Sometimes, though, looking to an age-old practice might hold all the solutions needed for a modern-day problem. A team from Stanford University, fro...
Source: Medgadget - January 12, 2017 Category: Medical Equipment Authors: Rukmani Sridharan Tags: Diagnostics Pathology Public Health Source Type: blogs
December 2016 Disruptive Women in Health Care Man of the Month – Connor Landgraf
Universities everywhere would do well to utilize Disruptive Women’s December Man of the Month Connor Landgraf in marketing campaigns, making the point that a single moment in a classroom can change the world. Landgraf, at age 26, is the co-founder and CEO of Eko Devices, a start-up he created with two fellow graduates of the University of California, Berkeley. Eko’s first product, the Eko Core, was named by TIME Magazine as one of 2015’s top inventions and he and his colleagues were selected by Forbes for its “30 Under 30” list of the brightest young stars in 15 different fields of endeavor.
For Landgraf, the...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - December 12, 2016 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: dw at disruptivewomen.net Tags: Man of the Month Source Type: blogs
Fight Aging! Newsletter, July 11th 2016
In conclusion, hTERT expression strictly limits telomerase activation in most of somatic cells, whereas mTERT expression is detectable in most of mouse tissue cells. The interspecies differences between human and mice suggest an improved mouse line, in which both telomerase regulation and telomere length controls are humanized, would considerably benefit the studies of human aging and cancer using mouse models.
ON CELLULAR REPROGRAMMING AND CELLULAR REJUVENATION
https://www.fightaging.org/archives/2016/07/on-cellular-reprogramming-and-cellular-rejuvenation/
The commentary linked below takes a look at some re...
Source: Fight Aging! - July 10, 2016 Category: Research Authors: Reason Tags: Newsletters Source Type: blogs
