Futurismic

Research at Cambridge University has found a link between delinquent behaviour in children and reduced levels of the so-called stress hormone, cortisol, which “enhances memory formation and is thought to make people behave more cautiously and to help them regulate their emotions, particularly their temper and violent impulses.”

First of all, I find this a little worrying, as it seems to be part of a trend to reduce all psychiatric problems (especially in kids) to phenomena that can be regulated with the correct cocktail of chemicals. Secondly, assuming for a moment that the link is confirmed, is this a recent development? In other words, have low-cortisol brains evolved as a response to an increasingly stressful world, or is the cause environmental?

And thirdly, has anyone thought of doing cortisol level testing on politicians? [story via FuturePundit]

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It’s that time of year again, when doctors recommend everyone from children to old folks get jabbed with the latest influenza vaccine that may or may not actually be effective against this year’s strain. And it’s that time of year again when people start worrying about the presumably inevitable next great ‘flu pandemic, which many fear could be coming as avian influenza continues to mutate.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could just get a single shot that would protect against multiple types…including the possible bird ‘flu pandemic?

Clinical trials of just such a vaccine have begun at Oxford University, led by Dr. Sarah Gilbert of the Jenner Institute. (Via PhysOrg.)

Existing flu vaccines work by inducing protective antibodies to proteins on the outer surface of the influenza virus. These proteins differ between strains and change over time, so each vaccine only works against a specific strain.

The Oxford scientists led by Dr Gilbert are taking a new approach. They have developed a novel vaccine that targets internal proteins essential to the flu virus that change very little over time or between strains.

‘By targeting the internal proteins of the virus, we can come up with a universal flu jab,’ explains Dr Gilbert. ‘The same vaccine would work against all seasonal flu and protect against bird flu.’

Such a universal vaccine would not change from year to year, removing the need for annual immunisations. All ages could receive the injection at any time of year, and manufacturers would be able to produce supplies continuously at a sufficient level.

***

The vaccine…induces T cells, part of the body’s immune system, to kill any cells infected by the flu virus, so controlling the infection. The body maintains a low-level T cell response to flu from previous flu infections which the vaccine should boost to levels high enough to protect against subsequent infection.

The vaccine is just entering a Phase 1 clinical trial, in which 12 healthy volunteers will receive a single injection, then have their immune response monitored over time. If the Phase 1 trial is successful, further clinical trials will follow.

Meanwhile…time to book that annual ‘flu shot. After all, it might work.

(Photo Credit: Cynthia Goldsmith, Centers for Disease Control, via Wikimedia Commons.)

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THC may fight bacteria, including some drug-resistant strains. Potential like this should not be wasted.

[Image: tinabinaboobops]

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Via Jeremy Tolbert and various other sources, the headline pretty much says it all. The discovery of virophages - a “newly discovered type of virus that spreads at the expense of other viruses” - offers a potential new alternative to antibiotics in fighting viral infections. [image by Nils Geylen]

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Computers are very useful for analyzing large quantities of data, but presenting that data to humans in a useful form is an ongoing challenge. (A challenge that predates computers, actually: that’s why graphs were invented.)

Here’s an intriguing new way to examine data: turn it into music. Gil Alterovitz, a research fellow at Harvard Medical School, is developing a computer program that translates protein and gene expression into music: harmony represents good health, and discord indicates disease:

The first step in the gene-to-sound conversion was to pare down multiple measurements to a few fundamental signals, each of which could be represented by a different note. Together, the notes would form a harmonic chord in normal, healthy states and become increasingly out of tune as key physiological signs go awry, signaling disease.

He found, for example, that “when set to music, colon cancer sounds kind of eerie.” You can listen to some samples online. (Via KurzweilAI.net)

Alterovitz hopes the system could be tuned to identify other diseases, and might have applications outside medicine: it could be used to simplify information for air-traffic controllers or in other situations where large data sets have to be analyzed.

Not only that, a DJ in the Boston area is apparently interested in playing Alterovitz’s “music” in local bars.

Perhaps he could call it “Forever in Blue Genes.”

(Ouch, a Neil Diamond reference. I’m showing my age, aren’t I?)

(Image by Gil Alterovitz.)

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Sounds like science fiction, or maybe soon-to-be-an-episode-of Law ‘n’ Order.

Somebody’s thinking went like this: Let’s test Chantix, a stop-smoking drug with possible side effects that include suicide and “neuropsychiatric behavior,” on Iraq war vets already suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. What could possibly go wrong? Former US Army sniper James Elliott “snapped” months after he began taking the drug for $30 a month, left home with a loaded gun, and was stopped by police responding to a 911 call before he could do any harm.

It wasn’t until three weeks later that the Veterans Administration advised the veterans in the Chantix study that the drug may cause serious side effects, including “anxiety, nervousness, tension, depression, thoughts of suicide, and attempted and completed suicide.”

[Image: Mike Licht]

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One of the hardest things about this eye-on-the-future blogging gig is finding a story like this, where the headline - “Cat brain could provide bionic eye firmware” - says everything you can say about it without going into the technical detail. [image by fazen]

So I guess I’ll just use a pull-quote:

“To try and develop a more sophisticated model [of the way brains respond to visual input], the team recorded the responses of 49 individual neurons in a part of a cat’s brain called the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN). The LGN receives and processes visual information from the retina, via the optic nerve, before sending it on to the cerebral cortex.

Using a mixture of simple stimuli, like dots and bars, and building up to more complex moving artificial scenes, the team tried to work out the basics of the LGN’s response to visual features.”

The end-goal here is to provide prosthetic vision for persons whose ocular nerve has degenerated from lack of use, but I’m thinking that model will have a lot of other applications as well.

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Research is being carried out in my home town to see whether Bluetooth wireless technology is actually good for something more practical than spamming strangers at the pub with crude LOLcat pictures. [image by kalshassan]

In fact, the UK communications watchdog organisation Ofcom predicts Bluetooth and similar wireless technologies could save lives. For example, heart attack patients could be fitted with in-body sensors which would remind them when to take their medications (if it noticed they hadn’t already), or put in a call to a doctor or the ambulance service if it detected the patient had collapsed.

Hardly an unfamiliar idea to science fiction habitués - but it’s interesting to note how real-world experience with these sorts of technologies has shown us the potential flaws that the fiction missed. I mean, if I was relying on wireless technology to keep me alive, I’d want a much more reliable uptime rate from my ISP’s DNS servers.

[Hat tip to Ed Ashby]

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New improvements in genome sequencing technology mean it’s cheaper and faster than ever before, and the trend looks set to continue - a researcher suggests that the US$1000 genome is only six years away.

I wonder if this is a Moore’s Law style exponential curve … and if so, should we start theorising about a Biosingularity?

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Well, as long as I’m posting about nanotechnology, check this out (Via PhysOrg):

Researchers from the Nano Machine Center at the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA have developed a novel type of nanomachine that can capture and store anticancer drugs inside tiny pores and release them into cancer cells in response to light. Known as a “nanoimpeller,” the device is the first light-powered nanomachine that operates inside a living cell, a development that has strong implications for cancer treatment.

The study was conducted jointly by Jeffrey Zink, UCLA professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Fuyu Tamanoi, UCLA professor of microbiology, immunology and molecular genetics. A little further along in the press release:

The pores of the particles can be loaded with cargo molecules, such as dyes or anticancer drugs. In response to light exposure, a wagging motion occurs, causing the cargo molecules to escape from the pores and attack the cell. Confocal microscopic images showed that the impeller operation can be regulated precisely by the intensity of the light, the excitation time and the specific wavelength.

The cells they killed were only in vitro, of course, and there’s the usual caveat:

Tamanoi and Zink say the research represents an exciting first step in developing nanomachines for cancer therapy and that further steps are required to demonstrate actual inhibition of tumor growth.

The accomplishment is detailed in the nanotechnology journal Small. You can find the citation here, but you’ll have to pay to read the article.

And look out for the fine print. One would think that in a nanotechnology journal, it might be very fine indeed.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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A long-time staple of science fiction has been the concept of suspended animation. It’s one of the ways to get around the immensely long travel times astronauts heading to the outer planets or other solar systems must endure. The usual SFnal approach has been “cold sleep,” where the suspended animation is achieved by means of extremely low temperatures: a kind of cryogenic suspension, with undefined futuristic technology somehow prevent cell damage and death in the human icicles.

Turns out, there just might be another way: low doses of hydrogen sulfide, the stinky gas that is responsible for the unpleasant odor of rotten eggs, and which is fatal in large doses, can, in small, controlled doses, safely and reversibly depress both metabolism and cardiovascular function in mice, producing a suspended-animation  like state (Via EurekAlert):

In all the mice, metabolic measurements such as consumption of oxygen and production of carbon dioxide dropped in as little as 10 minutes after they began inhaling hydrogen sulfide, remained low as long as the gas was administered, and returned to normal within 30 minutes of the resumption of a normal air supply. The animals’ heart rate dropped nearly 50 percent during hydrogen sulfide adminstration, but there was no significant change in blood pressure or the strength of the heart beat. While respiration rate also decreased, there were no changes in blood oxygen levels, suggesting that vital organs were not at risk of oxygen starvation.

Of course, it’s always a large and fraught step from mice to humans, but if this discovery is transferable to humans, it could be used to allow organ function to be preserved when oxygen supply is limited, such as after a traumatic injury, the researchers say. the next step will be to study the use of hydrogen sulfide in larger mammals. It’s possible, they say, that in larger mammals hydrogen sulfide could be delivered via intravenous drugs, which would prevent lung toxicity.

Warren Zapol, MD, the chief of Anesthesia and Critical Care at Massachusetts General Hospital and senior author of the study, sums it up: “This is as close to instant suspended animation as you can get, and the preservation of cardiac contraction, blood pressure and organ perfusion is remarkable.”

Start booking those flights to Alpha Centauri!

(Image: Wikimedia Commons)

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New Scientist reports that a group of addiction researchers have filed a patent on a method for producing antibodies that can clean the bloodstream of “designer drugs” from the amphetamine family.

It’s not yet been tested in humans, of course, but the implication is that injections of these antibodies could eradicate the chemicals in question from a patients body, which would doubtless be of great assistance in withdrawal programs. [image from erowid.org]

But as we all know, the street finds its own use for things. Once stuff like this hits the black market, I think there’ll be a lot less people worrying about mandatory drug testing in the workplace.

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Nanotechnology is perhaps the most rapidly advancing new technology out there right now. All kinds of nanomachines based on biochemical mechanisms, tiny structures of metal or other techniques are being created and studied in universities and laboratories around the world.

Scientists have now created a device two billionths of a metre in size that could work as a chemical ‘brain’ for a group of nanomachines. Potentially this could lead to their use in medical techniques such as nano-surgery on tumours.

“If [in the future] you want to remotely operate on a tumour you might want to send some molecular machines there,” explained Dr Anirban Bandyopadhyay of the International Center for Young Scientists, Tsukuba, Japan. “But you cannot just put them into the blood and [expect them] to go to the right place.”

Dr Bandyopadhyay believes his device may offer a solution. One day they may be able to guide the nanobots through the body and control their functions, he said.

“That kind of device simply did not exist; this is the first time we have created a nano-brain,” he told BBC News.

[story and image via BBC Science/Nature. Thanks to Kian Momtahan for the link!]

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I don’t need to remind you that computers are everywhere - this is the intarwub, after all. But even I get a bit surprised at some of the specific places computers end up - I never knew that people are being implanted with heart monitor/defibrillators that can broadcast data about the patient’s condition back to their doctor. [image by CarbonNYC]

Having found that out, though, I’m not at all surprised to hear that researchers have found a security vulnerability that could potentially allow an attacker to compromise and deactivate the device and prevent it from delivering the heart-restarting shocks it is designed for.

Repeat after me - everything can and will be hacked.

On the subject of electric shocks to the body, you can choose to have them for fun as opposed to for your health; the grinders point out the arrival of the Mindwire V5 electroshock force-feedback device, which will interface with your games console and deliver a brisk jolt to your hands when you get PWNED. Pain is fun, kids!

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In old science fiction movies, mad scientists and the like always seem to have, somewhere around their lab, a brain in a jar.

I never much saw the point of that. How about something really useful: an immune system in a jar? (Via New Scientist Invention Blog.)

Invented by George Lewis, a virologist at the University of Maryland, this simple replica immune system would allow scientists to test vaccines in the laboratory to make sure they trigger the production of antibodies, without having to take the sometimes dangerous step of actually testing the vaccine in a living human being. This could greatly speed the process of producing new vaccines.

They simply culture white blood cells in the presence of an antigen (which could be a virus, or could be a vaccine designed to stimulate the immune system to produce antibodies against a specific virus). The cultured cells respond by producing new cells that make antibodies against the antigen.

Mad scientists, however, will probably want to stick with the old brain-in-the-jar: cultured white blood cells just don’t have the same visual impact.

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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A European Union-funded project led by Philips Electronics aims to develop a hospital bed that can passively assess a patient’s heart rate, sleep quality, temperature and other criteria without the need to wire up the patient directly. (Via MedGadget.)

According to a BBC story:

The bed would include, not only an electronic weight scale and blood pressure monitor, but also sensors which measure heart rate, breathing rate and body movement while sleeping.

In addition, the patient could wear a vest with woven-in electrodes to provide a full electro-cardiogram reading.

All this information would be analysed on a PDA and the results sent via a telephone line or broadband connection to doctors.

The device, it is claimed, could even provide clues to interrupted sleep by measuring sleep phase patterns.

No word on whether it would have a big monitor over the bed with flashing lights and a cool beeping noises, a la Dr. McCoy’s sick-bay beds on Star Trek.

An interesting caveat from Dr. Nick Robinson of the Royal Society of Medicine’s Telehealth forum:

“We are used to making decisions based on taking a blood pressure reading on an occasional basis - and all the evidence we have for intervening is based on this. The real challenge for this technology is not taking the measurements, but working out what to do with it, so that we are not constantly getting false alarms.”

Can too much information about a patient’s condition actually be a bad thing?

(Image: Wikimedia Commons.)

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First the good news - there may be a more efficient way to receive vaccinations than traditional injections.

But before those of you with a phobia get too excited by the prospect, the alternative still involves needles - the needles of tattoo machines, in fact.

“… administering pieces of DNA from the human papillomavirus virus into the skin of mice by three tattoo-gun injections produced a 200-fold greater production of antibodies to the virus than was achieved with the old method of a needle injection into a muscle.

Vaccines made with bits of DNA are not new, but the usual ways of delivering them have not worked very well. The reason that tattoo injections are so much more effective is thought to be because the repeated puncturing of the skin by the rotating tattoo needle does real damage to the skin — the presence of a bona fide wound causes inflammatory cells to flood into the site, where they speed and enhance the immune response to the vaccine.”

So probably more painful than traditional hypodermic injections, but cheaper and more effective - two factors that matter a lot in the world of health-care. [via grinding.be] [image by Frenkieb]

We can assume that someone will come up with a less painful way to achieve the same results, too. How about some sort of sticky patch that uses an enzyme to create a skin wound, then delivers the vaccine and starts the healing process, all in one?

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Scientists from the University of Arizona have figure out how to make holographic displays, viewable without special eyeware, that can be erased and rewritten in a matter of minutes. (Via PhysOrg.)

Dynamic hologram displays could be made into devices that help surgeons track progress during lengthy and complex brain surgeries, show airline or fighter pilots any hazards within their entire surrounding airspace, or give emergency response teams nearly real-time views of fast-changing flood situations or traffic problems, for example…and no one yet knows where the advertising and entertainment industries will go with possible applications…

The prototype display is only four inches by four inches and only comes in red, but larger displays in full colour are considered possible. The researchers are aiming for a one-foot-by-one-foot display next, then a three-foot-by-three-foot display. Eventually they hope to be able to display life-sized holographic images of humans that can be updated every few minutes.

Watch a video here.

The researchers point out that a great deal of data is lost when three-dimensional information, such as that collected by an MRI or CAT scan, is displayed in two dimensions on a flat computer monitor. As they say, “…when we develop larger, full-color 3-D holograms, every hospital in the world will want one.”

And two minutes after the first one is installed, hospital staff will be referring to the room it’s placed in as the “holodeck.”

(Image: University of Arizona.)

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After work by Stanford University found that carbon nanotubes don’t seem to have any detrimental effect inside the bodies of mice, researchers are looking for more ways of utilising the growing technology in medicine. DARPA has awarded a grant to Rice university to study whether a carbon nanotube based pill would be a good way of treating radiation sickness. Radiation in the body deforms cells and molecules, releasing terribly damaging free radicals which then cause more damage to the body.

“More than half of those who suffer acute radiation injury die within 30 days, not from the initial radioactive particles themselves but from the devastation they cause in the immune system, the gastrointestinal tract and other parts of the body. Ideally, we’d like to develop a drug that can be administered within 12 hours of exposure and prevent deaths from what are currently fatal exposure doses of ionizing radiation,” said James Tour, Rice University’s Chao Professor of Chemistry and director of Rice’s Carbon Nanotechnology Laboratory.

The Carbon pills would absorb large quanties of the radiation within the body, as well as the free radicals, which could dramatically cut down on the post-exposure spread of damaged cells. As DailyTech mention in their article about the discovery, video game Fallout had carbon-based anti-radiation pills way back in 1997. The third Fallout game is being released this year by the makers of Oblivion, Bethesda, for your post-apocalyptic gaming pleasure.

[story and Fallout 3 teaser poster via DailyTech]

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