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Category: biotech/medical

11 December 2013 by Rowan Hooper

BIOENGINEERS dream of growing spare parts for our worn-out or diseased bodies. They have already succeeded with some tissues, but one has always eluded them: the brain. Now a team in Sweden has taken the first step towards this ultimate goal.

Growing artificial body parts in the lab starts with a scaffold. This acts as a template on which to grow cells from the patient’s body. This has been successfully used to grow lymph nodes, heart cells and voice boxes from a person’s stem cells. Bioengineers have even grown and transplanted an artificial kidney in a rat.

Growing nerve tissue in the lab is much more difficult, though. In the brain, new neural cells grow in a complex and specialised matrix of proteins. This matrix is so important that damaged nerve cells don’t regenerate without it. But its complexity is difficult to reproduce. To try to get round this problem, Paolo Macchiarini and Silvia Baiguera at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, Sweden, and colleagues combined a scaffold made from gelatin with a tiny amount of rat brain tissue that had already had its cells removed. This “decellularised” tissue, they hoped, would provide enough of the crucial biochemical cues to enable seeded cells to develop as they would in the brain.

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by RHIANNON EDWARD

a TREATMENT to cure or halt dementia by 2025 is “within our grasp”, Prime Minister David Cameron said yesterday, as he announced a doubling in UK funding for research.

Mr Cameron was addressing scientists, politicians and campaigners from around the world who have gathered in London for a dementia summit called by the UK as part of its year-long chairmanship of the G8.

With the World Health Organisation (WHO) forecasting that the number of dementia sufferers will almost double worldwide every two decades, Mr Cameron has said he wants UK government investment in dementia research to rise from £66 million in 2015 to £122m in 2025, with similar increases from the commercial and charitable sectors.

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and agencies

Corporal Andrew Garthwaite with the defence minister Anna Soubry

A soldier whose arm was blown off by a rocket-propelled grenade in Afghanistan has become the first person in the UK to master a prosthetic limb controlled by thought.

Corporal Andrew Garthwaite, 26, has spent two years learning how to move the arm and grip objects after a six-hour operation to have the limb wired into his body at a medical facility in Vienna.

The operation involved rewiring some of Garthwaite’s nerves so that nerve fibres that once controlled his arm and hand movements instead hooked up to his chest muscles. Electrodes placed on his chest pick up the muscle movements and convert them into signals that direct the prosthetic limb.

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Applied Omniscience in Transformative and Integrative Risk Management! By Mr. Andres Agostini
OMNISCIENCE
This is an excerpt from the presentation, “…Applied Omniscience in Transformative and Integrative Risk Management!…” that discusses some management theories and practices. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of article:

Please see the graphic at http://lnkd.in/dUstZEk

This is an excerpt from the conclusion section of, “…NASA’s Managerial and Leadership Methodology, Now Unveiled!..!” by Mr. Andres Agostini, that discusses some management theories and practices. To read the entire piece, just click the link at the end of this illustrated article and presentation:

superman
In addition to being aware and adaptable and resilient before the driving forces reshaping the current present and the as-of-now future, there are some extra management suggestions that I concurrently practice:

1. Given the vast amount of insidious risks, futures, challenges, principles, processes, contents, practices, tools, techniques, benefits and opportunities, there needs to be a full-bodied practical and applicable methodology (methodologies are utilized and implemented to solve complex problems and to facilitate the decision-making and anticipatory process).

The manager must always address issues with a Panoramic View and must also exercise the envisioning of both the Whole and the Granularity of Details, along with the embedded (corresponding) interrelationships and dynamics (that is, [i] interrelationships and dynamics of the subtle, [ii] interrelationships and dynamics of the overt and [iii] interrelationships and dynamics of the covert).

DETAIL DETAIL DETAILBoth dynamic complexity and detail complexity, along with fuzzy logic, must be pervasively considered, as well.

To this end, it is wisely argued, “…You can’t understand the knot without understanding the strands, but in the future, the strands need not remain tied up in the same way as they are today…”

For instance, disparate skills, talents, dexterities and expertise won’t suffice ever. A cohesive and congruent, yet proven methodology (see the one above) must be optimally implemented.

Subsequently, the Chinese proverb indicates, “…Don’t look at the waves but the currents underneath…”

2. One must always be futurewise and technologically fluent. Don’t fight these extreme forces, just use them! One must use counter-intuitiveness (geometrically non-linearly so), insight, hindsight, foresight and far-sight in every day of the present and future (all of this in the most staggeringly exponential mode). To shed some light, I will share two quotes.

The Panchatantra (body of Eastern philosophical knowledge) establishes, “…Knowledge is the true organ of sight, not the eyes.…” And Antonio Machado argues, “… An eye is not an eye because you see it; an eye is an eye because it sees you …”

Managers always need a clear, knowledgeable vision. Did you already connect the dots stemming from the Panchatantra and Machado? Did you already integrate those dots into your big-picture vista?

As side effect, British Prime Minister W. E. Gladstone considered, “…You cannot fight against the future…”

PARALLEL PARALLEL PARALLEL
3. In all the Manager does, he / she must observe and apply, at all times, a sine qua non maxim, “…everything is related to everything else…”

4. Always manage as if it were a “project.” Use, at all times, the “…Project Management…” approach.

5. Always use the systems methodology with the applied omniscience perspective.

In this case, David, I mean to assert: The term “Science” equates to about a 90% of “…Exact Sciences…” and to about 10% of “…Social Sciences…” All science must be instituted with the engineering view.

6. Always institute beyond-insurance risk management as you boldly integrate it with your futuring skill / expertise.

BEYOND BEYOND BEYOND
7. In my firmest opinion, the following must be complied this way (verbatim): the corporate strategic planning and execution (performing) are a function of a grander application of beyond-insurance risk management. It will never work well the other way around. Transformative and Integrative Risk Management (TAIRM) is the optimal mode to do advanced strategic planning and execution (performing).

TAIRM is not only focused on terminating, mitigating and modulating risks (expenses of treasure and losses of life), but also concentrated on bringing under control fiscally-sound, sustainable organizations and initiatives.

TAIRM underpins sensible business prosperity and sustainable growth and progress.

8. I also believe that we must pragmatically apply the scientific method in all we manage to the best of our capacities.

If we are “…MANAGERS…” in a Knowledge Economy and Knowledge Era (not a knowledge-driven eon because of superficial and hollow caprices of the follies and simpletons), we must do therefore extensive and intensive learning and un-learning for Life if we want to succeed and be sustainable.

As a consequence, Dr. Noel M. Tichy, PhD. argues, “…Today, intellectual assets trump physical assets in nearly every industry…”

Consequently, Alvin Toffler indicates, “…In the world of the future, THE NEW ILLITERATE WILL BE THE PERSON WHO HAS NOT LEARNED TO LEARN…”

We don’t need to be scientists to learn some basic principles of advanced science.

Accordingly, Dr. Carl Sagan, PhD. expressed, “…We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows about science and technology…” And Edward Teller stated, “…The science of today is the technology of tomorrow …”

And it is also crucial this quotation by Winston Churchill, “…If we are to bring the broad masses of the people in every land to the table of abundance, IT CAN ONLY BE BY THE TIRELESS IMPROVEMENT OF ALL OF OUR MEANS OF TECHNICAL PRODUCTION…”

I am not a scientist but I tirelessly support responsible scientists and science. I like scientific and technological knowledge and methodologies a great deal.

Chiefly, I am a college autodidact made by his own self and engaged into extreme practical and theoretical world-class learning for Life.

APPROACH APPROACH APPROACH9. In any management undertaking, and given the universal volatility and rampant and uninterrupted rate of change, one must think and operate in a fluid womb-to-tomb mode.

The manager must think and operate holistically (both systematically and systemically) at all times.

The manager must also be: i) Multidimensional, ii) Interdisciplinary, iii) Multifaceted, iv) Cross-functional, and v) Multitasking.

That is, the manager must now be an expert state-of-the-art generalist and erudite. ERGO, THIS IS THE NEWEST SPECIALIST AND SPECIALIZATION.

Managers must never manage elements, components or subsystems separately or disparately (that is, they mustn’t ever manage in series).

Managers must always manage all of the entire system at the time (that is, managing in parallel or simultaneously the totality of the whole at once).

10. In any profession, beginning with management, one must always and cleverly upgrade his / her learning and education until the last exhale.

An African proverb argues, “…Tomorrow belongs to the people who prepare for it…” And Winston Churchill established, “…The empires of the future are the empires of the mind…” And an ancient Chinese Proverb: “…It is not our feet that move us along — it is our minds…”
DESTINY DESTINY DESTINY
And Malcolm X observed, “…The future belongs to those who prepare for it today…” And Leonard I. Sweet considered, “…The future is not something we enter. The future is something we create…”

And finally, James Thomson argued, “…Great trials seem to be a necessary preparation for great duties …”

AGE AGE AGE
Consequently, Dr. Gary Hamel, PhD. indicates, “…What distinguishes our age from every other is not the world-flattening impact of communications, not the economic ascendance of China and India, not the degradation of our climate, and not the resurgence of ancient religious animosities. RATHER, IT IS A FRANTICALLY ACCELERATING PACE OF CHANGE…”

Please see the full presentation at http://goo.gl/8fdwUP

Altering the surface of orthopaedic implants has already helped patients – and nanotech can fight infections too

One of medicine’s primary objectives is to trick the body into doing something it doesn’t want to do. We try to convince our immune systems to attack cancer cells (our immune systems don’t normally attack our own bodies), we try to convince neurons to regrow (another unnatural phenomenon), and we try to convince the body to accept foreign bits, such as someone else’s kidney or a fake bone. In order to accomplish this, we try to make parts of our bodies we don’t want, such as cancers, look foreign. We try to make foreign bits that we do want, such as orthopaedic implants, look natural. Nanotechnology, as you might have guessed, can help us do just that.

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Tim Parker, Benzinga Staff Writer

Before scientists create something that has mainstream uses, it often starts as science fiction.

A new technology deep within IBM’s (NYSE: IBM [FREE Stock Trend Analysis]) Singapore research facility isn’t quite ready for the mainstream but when it is, the implications for those who suffer from fungal infections and later, other infections, could have a new ally in their fight but this ally is completely different than current treatments.

If you’re a fan of Star Trek, you’ve seen nanotechnology. These are microscopic machines that get inside machines or in this case, the body, to identify and fix problems.

Scientists have developed a nanomedicine 1,000 times small than a grain of sand that fights fungal infections. Here’s how it works: By creating an electrical charge on each of these tiny particles, they can be programmed to attack only fungal cells while leaving healthy cells alone.

The particles attach themselves to the fungi and rip their cellular membranes apart killing the cell.

This is different than conventional treatments in that it’s a physical attack where the cell is torn apart instead of a drug-like attack where the cell is put to sleep. By killing the cell, there is no opportunity for it to develop a resistance to the nanoparticle. This eliminates the growing problem plaguing doctors: Infections that are increasingly becoming resistant to current therapies.

“It rips the membrane out in a physical attack,” said IBM scientist, James Hedric. “It’s kind of like popping a balloon. We don’t put them to sleep like most drugs do. We kill them. That is why it is so effective. And they can’t adapt to a physical attack. They can adapt to drugs.”

By

Bebionic3

Simple tasks, like plucking the stem off a cherry, are still monumental challenges for artificial hands. With a bill of materials perhaps a few hundred components long, it is not surprising that their functionality is low compared with one assembled from trillions of components. A new prosthetic bionic hand, designed and built by researchers at Case Western University is now capable of using measurements from 20 sensor points to control the grip force of its digits. Incredibly, the sensor data is linked directly to the sensory nerves in the patient’s forearm. The control for the grip closure is then extracted myoelectrically from the normal biological return loop to the muscles in the forearm.

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Written By:

surgery

Hands-free devices like Google Glass can be really transformative when the hands they free are those of a surgeon. And leading hospitals, including Stanford and the University of California at San Francisco, are beginning to use Glass in the operating room.

In October, UCSF’s Pierre Theodore, a cardiothoracic surgeon, became the first doctor in the United States to obtain Institutional Review Board approval to use the device to assist him during surgery. Theodore pre-loads onto Glass the scans of images of the patient taken just before surgery and consults them during the operation.

“To be able to have those X-rays directly in your field without having to leave the operating room or to log on to another system elsewhere, or to turn yourself away from the patient in order to divert your attention, is very helpful in terms of maintaining your attention where it should be, which is on the patient 100 percent of the time,” said Theodore.

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Kelsey Campbell-Dollaghan on Gizmodo

How 3D Printers Are Cranking Out Eyes, Bones, and Blood Vessels

At the dawn of rapid prototyping, a common predication was that 3D printing would transform manufacturing, spurring a consumer revolution that would put a printer in every home. That hasn’t quite happened—-and like so many emerging technologies, rapid prototyping has found its foothold in a surprisingly different field: Medicine.

The following studies and projects represent some of the most fascinating examples of “bioprinting,” or using a computer-controlled machine to assemble biological matter using organic inks and super-tough thermoplastics. They range from reconstructing major sections of skull to printing scaffolding upon which stem cells can grow into new bones. More below—and look out for more 3D printing week content over the next few days.

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