No thanks.
Biologists have been mixing the DNA of different animals since the 1970s, but the idea of injecting the genes of animals into humans remains taboo. Called transgenics, it’s a practice that could cure illness in the future — and eventually reshape our species. Here’s what you need to know about it.
Illustration by Jim Cooke.
I am not surprised at all by this finding given the other issues with pollution such as cancer from carcinogens, asthma, sinus infections, etc.
Air pollution is a known culprit in lung and heart disease. Fine particulate matter, tiny particles, 1/30th the width of a human hair, are released into the air by power plants, factories, cars and trucks. These fine particles somehow invade the body’s defenses and do the most damage. Air quality is worst in urban areas with increased traffic. New research points out that air pollution negatively affects brain and cognitive development in young children and teenagers.
Moreover, Jennifer Weuve, an assistant professor of internal medicine at Rush Medical College, found that older women who had been exposed to high levels of the pollution experienced greater cognitive decline compared with other women their age (Archives of Internal Medicine, 2012). Other studies cite black carbon in the form of soot as a cause of cognitive decline in an aging population for both men and women. Simply put: Dirty air messes up the brain.
In a new study conducted by a research team at Umeå University in Sweden, the correlation between exposure to air pollution in residential areas and children’ and adolescents’ psychiatric health was studied. The results show that air pollution increased the need for prescribed psychiatric medication for a mental illness. “The results can mean that a decreased concentration of air pollution, first and foremost traffic-related air pollution, may reduce psychiatric disorders in children and adolescents,” says lead researcher Anna Oudin, the Unit for Occupational and Environmental Medicine at the Department of Public Health and Clinical Medicine.
Legendary master filmmaker Werner Herzog examines the past, present and constantly evolving future of the Internet in Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World. Working with NETSCOUT, a world leader in-real time service assurance and cybersecurity, which came aboard as a producer and led him into a new world, Herzog conducted original interviews with cyberspace pioneers and prophets such as PayPal and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk, Internet protocol inventor Bob Kahn, and famed hacker Kevin Mitnick. These provocative conversatons reveal the ways in which the online world has transformed how virtually everything in the real world works, from business to education, space travel to healthcare, and the very heart of how we conduct our personal relationships.
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I believe that we have been at a tipping point for a while with the public being able to maintain their tolerance levels of paying high prices for healthcare across the globe. This article highlights this well.
Foundations like PhG, medical institutes and companies such as InnVentis and Insilico Medicine have been taking this challenge on by developing treatments and technologies such as InnVentis precision medicine technologies, Insilico’s.
Anti-aging research and treatments all used to improve the success rates and costs of treatment of diseases such as cancer. The sooner that we can bring many of these new nextgen treatments into the mainstream the better.
BTW- not to mention the benefits that other areas of technology will gain from the bio research and findings from these nextgen medical companies and foundations.
By Deena Beasley.
CHICAGO (Reuters) — Americans pay the highest prices in the world for cancer drugs, but the treatments are least affordable in lower income countries, according to the results of a new study released on Monday.
The study of cancer drug prices in seven countries, which did not take into account discounts or rebates to list prices, was presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Clinical Oncology in Chicago.
Oregon Health & Science University is currently seeking volunteers for human testing of its “promising” HIV vaccine. If that’s not enough, the Oregon university’s approach to its ground-breaking HIV vaccine is reportedly being used to develop vaccines for other diseases and infections, including tuberculosis. While many believe the TB is virtually eradicated, it actually kills almost 2 million people every year.
As Oregon Live reports, the Oregon university’s novel HIV vaccine could equate a huge step forward in the fight against HIV, as well as give the Oregon school the confidence and research it needs to pursue vaccinations against other deadly infections. In addition to being a stepping stone toward the prevention of HIV and TB, the current vaccine trials could open the door for vaccines that would prevent malaria and hepatitis C, among others.
“HIV is the poster child because it affects so many people, but there are many other conditions that are also extremely challenging to prevent or cure.”
It’s not all that easy to call KnuEdge a startup. Created a decade ago by Daniel Goldin, the former head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, KnuEdge is only now coming out of stealth mode. It has already raised $100 million in funding to build a “neural chip” that Goldin says will make data centers more efficient in a hyperscale age.
Goldin, who founded the San Diego, California-based company with the former chief technology officer of NASA, said he believes the company’s brain-like chip will be far more cost and power efficient than current chips based on the computer design popularized by computer architect John von Neumann. In von Neumann machines, memory and processor are separated and linked via a data pathway known as a bus. Over the years, von Neumann machines have gotten faster by sending more and more data at higher speeds across the bus as processor and memory interact. But the speed of a computer is often limited by the capacity of that bus, leading to what some computer scientists to call the “von Neumann bottleneck.” IBM has seen the same problem, and it has a research team working on brain-like data center chips. Both efforts are part of an attempt to deal with the explosion of data driven by artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Goldin’s company is doing something similar to IBM, but only on the surface. Its approach is much different, and it has been secretly funded by unknown angel investors. And Goldin said in an interview with VentureBeat that the company has already generated $20 million in revenue and is actively engaged in hyperscale computing companies and Fortune 500 companies in the aerospace, banking, health care, hospitality, and insurance industries. The mission is a fundamental transformation of the computing world, Goldin said.
Nice.
LetterOne, the investment vehicle owned by Russian tycoon Mikhail Fridman, has launched L1 Health in the US and appointed Diageo chairman Dr Franz Humer to the firm’s advisory board.
L1 Health will target up to $3bn (£2.1bn) of investments in the global healthcare sector over the next three years “with the goal of making sizeable equity investments in businesses that it can support and help grow for significant periods of time”, the group said.
LetterOne said it chose to base the new venture in the US so as to be closer to the markets it wishes to enter, and it plans to focus on “areas where scale, market consolidation and efficiency improvements can drive value”. LetterOne added that L1 Health is already looking at a variety of investment opportunities.
Click on photo to start video.
Legendary master filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man, Cave of Forgotten Dreams) examines the past, present and constantly evolving future of the Internet in Lo And Behold: Reveries Of The Connected World. Herzog conducted original interviews with cyberspace pioneers and prophets such as PayPal and Tesla co-founder Elon Musk, Internet protocol inventor Bob Kahn, and famed hacker Kevin Mitnick. These provocative conversations reveal the ways in which the online world has transformed how virtually everything in the real world works, from business to education, space travel to healthcare, and the very heart of how we conduct our personal relationships.
See it in theatres, On Demand, Amazon Video and iTunes August 19th.
