The results of two human clinical trials into a stem cell therapy that can reverse symptoms of age-associated frailty have been published, and the indications are that this landmark treatment is both safe and strikingly effective in tackling key factors in aging.
Link: https://newatlas.com/aging-frailty-stem-cell-treatment-human-trials/51867/
Antibiotics may have a new teammate in the fight against drug-resistant infections.
Researchers have engineered nanoparticles to produce chemicals that render bacteria more vulnerable to antibiotics. These quantum dots, described online October 4 in Science Advances, could help combat pathogens that have developed resistance to antibiotics (SN: 10/15/16, p. 11).
Link: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/superbugs-may-meet-their-match-these-nanoparticles
We admit to a weird fascination with electronics that can be swallowed. Whether its robots, cameras, or edible actuators, we find them James Bond-level cool.
So here’s another one for you: A flexible sensor developed at MIT and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston can monitor movements in the stomach, sense ingestion, and power itself for at least two days without degrading
Link: https://spectrum.ieee.org/the-human-os/biomedical/devices/fitbit-for-the-stomach
David Sinclair has been reverse-engineering the aging process for two decades. As the co-director of the Paul F. Glenn Center for the Biology of Aging at Harvard Medical School, Sinclair and his colleagues have identified several key enzymes and interactions inside cells that cause them to “lose their identity” over time, making our bodies more susceptible to diseases like cancer, heart disease, and dementia.
Link: https://www.seeker.com/health/biotech/life-extending-discovery-renews-debate-over-aging-as-a-disease
Ron Finley is standing in the deep end of an Olympic-sized swimming pool. The pool is empty, has been empty for years, the water long ago replaced by an elaborate garden. The garden overflows the geometry of the pool, growing up the sides, in and out of buckets and boxes and pails, around brightly painted artwork and a mural painted by one of Finley’s three grown sons, two of whom are artists.
Link: https://www.latimes.com/food/dailydish/la-fo-ron-finley-project-20170503-story.html
HUNTINGTON BEACH Jake Hammit had to make a decision: hold onto his surfboard or let go of his prosthetic leg.
The surfboard could do more damage, plowing into a group of people wading in shallow waters on the inside near the sand, he figured. The prosthetic leg, however, was replaceable.
Kamisha Hendrix’s heart lay on the table between us. Seventy days ago, this heart had been beating inside of her, back behind the dark scar that plunged into the neckline of her blouse.
“No—my heart didn’t beat,” Hendrix clarified. “It trembled.”
NEW DELHI — The most popular movie in India this summer is about a toilet. It nearly causes a divorce. It makes a father slap his adult son. It splits a village in half. But, ultimately, it’s about a romance.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/03/world/asia/india-toilet-movie.html
Scientists in the U.S. and India have found an inexpensive treatment that could possibly save hundreds of thousands of newborns each year.
The Resomator stands monolithic in the corner of a room in the bowels of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). It’s as sterile as a hospital here, but every patient is already dead.
LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – An innovative vending machine for HIV tests being piloted in Britain aims to help in the fight to end the epidemic by encouraging more people to find out whether they have contracted the virus as a first step to seek treatment, a doctor said.