— originally uploaded by Red Wolf
Scientists from Melbourne’s Bionics Institute and the University of Melbourne believe they can use nanotechnology to deliver restorative drugs to deep within the ear to sufferers of neural hearing loss.
It is the most common form of deafness, affecting people as they age, or if they’ve been exposed to prolonged periods of loud noise in industries such as music, mining, construction, manufacturing or the military — via ABC News
Sutures and staples are the usual options for closing wounds postoperatively, but they can be painful and require surgical skills. The microMend Skin Closure Device, produced by Seattle-based KitoTech Medical, provides a potentially better alternative.
The design of the microMend is conceptually similar to a bandage, like Steri-Strip. The device is made of a thin adhesive backing with two arrays of tiny microstaples
on either side. It is placed across a wound, one side at a time, so that the microstaples can insert into the skin and align the two edges of a wound. The device is flexible enough to allow conformity to a patient’s movements, and it has a holding strength similar to that of sutures. The microstaples are supposedly painless, and the device can last for as long as it takes for the wound to heal — via Medgadget
The FATH (Fundación Argentina de Trasplante Hepático) and DDB Argentina present The man and the dog
, a story of friendship that seeks to inspire people to become organ donors.
The film The man and the dog
, by DDB Argentina, is an awareness film created by DDB Buenos Aires for the FATH (Fundacion Argentina de Transplante Hepatico), a non-governmental non-profit organization that thanks to the commitment of people and companies has been carrying out its charitable work since 18 years ago — via Youtube
The world’s largest porn site has launched a centre dedicated to educating people about sexuality and sexual health — because of poor standards of sex and relationship education (SRE).
In the US sex and relationship education is often heavily regulated by state lawmakers, meaning that school kids are commonly taught under abstinence-only
programmes that do not provide quality advice on protection, avoiding STIs or sexual health in general.
In addition, a handful of states continue to maintain laws that ban teachers from mentioning homosexuality.
In the absence of any real education, young people are increasingly turning to pornography to learn about sex — which campaigners warn can lead to body issues, unrealistic expectations and even dangerous or risky practises.
But rather than being part of the problem, the world’s largest porn site Pornhub is trying to be part of the solution, launching an online resource centre dedicated to sexual health.
The website has hired clinical psychologist Dr Laurie Betito to run the new Pornhub Sexual Wellness Centre, which will provide readers with information and advice regarding sexuality, sexual health and relationships
.
It explains: The free site will feature original editorial content on an assortment of topics from an array of esteemed doctors, therapists, community leaders and experts
.
Unlike many sex ed resources online, all the contributors to the site are qualified medical experts.
The site already has content on a number of topics including consent, transgender terminology and HIV/AIDS — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Today, Iceland tops the European table for the cleanest-living teens. The percentage of 15- and 16-year-olds who had been drunk in the previous month plummeted from 42 per cent in 1998 to 5 per cent in 2016. The percentage who have ever used cannabis is down from 17 per cent to 7 per cent. Those smoking cigarettes every day fell from 23 per cent to just 3 per cent.
The way the country has achieved this turnaround has been both radical and evidence-based, but it has relied a lot on what might be termed enforced common sense. This is the most remarkably intense and profound study of stress in the lives of teenagers that I have ever seen,
says Milkman. I’m just so impressed by how well it is working.
If it was adopted in other countries, Milkman argues, the Icelandic model could benefit the general psychological and physical well-being of millions of kids, not to mention the coffers of healthcare agencies and broader society. It’s a big if — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The drugmaker Purdue Pharma launched OxyContin two decades ago with a bold marketing claim: One dose relieves pain for 12 hours, more than twice as long as generic medications.
Patients would no longer have to wake up in the middle of the night to take their pills, Purdue told doctors. One OxyContin tablet in the morning and one before bed would provide smooth and sustained pain control all day and all night
.
On the strength of that promise, OxyContin became America’s bestselling painkiller, and Purdue reaped $31 billion in revenue.
But OxyContin’s stunning success masked a fundamental problem: The drug wears off hours early in many people, a Los Angeles Times investigation found. OxyContin is a chemical cousin of heroin, and when it doesn’t last, patients can experience excruciating symptoms of withdrawal, including an intense craving for the drug.
The problem offers new insight into why so many people have become addicted to OxyContin, one of the most abused pharmaceuticals in US history — via redwolf.newsvine.com
The US Food and Drug Administration has cleared the use of the XSTAT 30 — an innovative sponge-filled gunshot wound dressing device — for use in the general population. Approved last year for battlefield use, the device can plug a gunshot wound in just 15 seconds.
The XSTAT Rapid Hemostasis System is an expandable, multi-sponge dressing that’s used to control severe, life-threatening bleeding from wounds in bodily areas where a traditional tourniquet is of no use, such as the groin or armpit. It works by pumping expandable, tablet-sized sponges into the wound, staunching bleeding while a patient is rushed to hospital.
The tablets are standard medical sponges that expand on contact with blood, and the dressing lasts for about four hours. Each applicator absorbs about a pint of blood, and up to three applicators can be used on a patient. To assist with extraction, each tablet contains a radioplaque marker that can be spotted under an X-ray — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A Spanish cancer patient is the first person in the world to receive a titanium 3D-printed sternum and rib cage, designed and manufactured by an Australian company.
The 54-year-old needed his sternum and a portion of his rib cage replaced.
The CSIRO said chest prosthetics were notoriously tricky
to create due to the complex customised geometry and design for each patient.
Thoracic surgeons typically use flat and plate implants in the chest, but they can come loose over time and create complications, the CSIRO said.
A 3D-printed implant was a safer option for the patient because it can identically mimic the intricate structures of the sternum and ribs.
Almost a fortnight since the surgery, the CSIRO confirmed the patient was discharged and had recovered well — via redwolf.newsvine.com
In the 1930s, it was generally accepted that the body needed sodium to function, but no one had studied what broke down when the sodium in a person’s diet was removed. One researcher researcher and four volunteers decided to find out. It was awful.
The body’s need for salt wasn’t hard to establish. Anyone with a tongue noticed that the sweat and tears which came out of the body tasted the same as the little crystals leftover when sea water evaporated. Later research confirmed that it’s the sodium that makes sodium chloride so necessary to us, but, well into the twentieth century, no one quite knew what would happen when sodium levels dropped. Doctor Robert McCance wasn’t about to let that kind of ignorance persist. He recruited four volunteers and desalinated them — via io9
Australian scientists say a particular strain of probiotics could offer a possible cure for people with potentially fatal peanut allergies.
Researchers from the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne gave 60 children who are allergic to peanuts either a probiotic along with a small dose of peanut protein or a placebo.
Lead researcher Associate Professor Mimi Tang said more than 80 per cent of children who received the protein and probiotic were able to tolerate peanuts without any allergic symptoms at the end of the trial.
This is 20 times higher than the natural rate of resolution for peanut allergy,
she said.
Twenty-three of the 28 children who received the probiotic with the peanut protein were able to eat peanuts after the study.
The effect lasted for two to five weeks after treatment.
The strain of probiotic used in the study was Lactobacillus rhamnosus — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Frank Swain has been going deaf since his 20s. Now he has hacked his hearing so he can listen in to the data that surrounds us.
I am walking through my north London neighbourhood on an unseasonably warm day in late autumn. I can hear birds tweeting in the trees, traffic prowling the back roads, children playing in gardens and Wi-Fi leaching from their homes. Against the familiar sounds of suburban life, it is somehow incongruous and appropriate at the same time.
As I approach Turnpike Lane tube station and descend to the underground platform, I catch the now familiar gurgle of the public Wi-Fi hub, as well as the staff network beside it. On board the train, these sounds fade into silence as we burrow into the tunnels leading to central London.
I have been able to hear these fields since last week. This wasn’t the result of a sudden mutation or years of transcendental meditation, but an upgrade to my hearing aids. With a grant from Nesta, the UK innovation charity, sound artist Daniel Jones and I built Phantom Terrains, an experimental tool for making Wi-Fi fields audible.
Our modern world is suffused with data. Since radio towers began climbing over towns and cities in the early 20th century, the air has grown thick with wireless communication, the platform on which radio, television, cellphones, satellite broadcasts, Wi-Fi, GPS, remote controls and hundreds of other technologies rely. And yet, despite wireless communication becoming a ubiquitous presence in modern life, the underlying infrastructure has remained largely invisible
— via redwolf.newsvine.com
New Bioinspired Approach to Sepsis Therapy from Wyss Institute on Vimeo
Harvard scientists have invented a new artificial spleen that is able to clear toxins, fungi and deadly pathogens such as Ebola from human blood, which could potentially save millions of lives.
Blood can be infected by many different types of organ infections as well as contaminated medical instruments such as IV lines and catheters.
When antibiotics are used to kill them, dying viruses release toxins in the blood that begin to multiply quickly, causing sepsis, a life-threatening condition whereby the immune system overreacts, causing blood clotting, organ damage and inflammation.
It can take days to identify which pathogen is responsible for infecting the blood but most of the time, the cause is not identified, while the onset of sepsis can be hours to days. Broad-spectrum antibiotics with sometimes devastating side effects are used and currently over eight million people die from the condition worldwide annually.
Even with the best current treatments, sepsis patients are dying in intensive care units at least 30% of the time,
said Dr Mike Super, senior staff scientist at Harvard’s Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, which led the research. We need a new approach.
To overcome this, researchers have invented a biospleen
, a device similar to a dialysis machine that makes use of magnetic nanobeads measuring 128 nanometres in diameter (one-five hundredths the width of a single human hair) coated with mannose-binding lectin (MBL), a type of genetically engineered human blood protein.
The study, An Extracorporeal Blood-Cleansing Device For Sepsis Therapy, has been published in the journal Nature Medicine — via redwolf.newsvine.com
A maritime fort constructed in the 1860s in the middle of the Thames Estuary is on the market for half a million pounds, or roughly $835,000.
With its fifteen-foot thick walls and insanely daunting approach—accessible on foot only at low tide and, even then, after a squelching walk across seemingly endless mudflats — it’s certainly a good option if you’re looking for solitude — via BLDGBLOG
Scientists have developed a new pain-free filling that allows cavities to be repaired without drilling or injections.
The tooth-rebuilding technique developed at King’s College London does away with fillings and instead encourages teeth to repair themselves.
Tooth decay is normally removed by drilling, after which the cavity is filled with a material such as amalgam or composite resin.
The new treatment, called Electrically Accelerated and Enhanced Remineralisation (EAER), accelerates the natural movement of calcium and phosphate minerals into the damaged tooth.
A two-step process first prepares the damaged area of enamel, then uses a tiny electric current to push minerals into the repair site. It could be available within three years — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Australians have been told they are wasting their money
on homoeopathy, with the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) reporting there is no reliable evidence
homeopathic remedies are effective in treating health conditions.
The finding, which has been documented in a draft information paper, has been welcomed by some in the medical research community, who argue patients should not pay money for unproven folk remedies.
Doctor Nick Zeps, who was part of the working group that developed the paper, says the evidence that was gathered in the review would suggest that there is no reliable evidence in many instances that homoeopathy has an effect that is different from a placebo
.
If it’s no better than a placebo, then objectively you could say that they [patients] were wasting their money,
he said.
The finding has been supported by Emeritus Professor of medicine at the University of New South Wales, John Dwyer.
I think there’s no question … that people are relatively easily hoodwinked into thinking that these preparations might be effective,
he said — via redwolf.newsvine.com
Pretty much everything you need to know about sex in 6 minutes — via Youtube
This image is a balloon race
. The higher a bubble, the greater the evidence for its effectiveness. But the supplements are only effective for the conditions listed inside the bubble. You might also see multiple bubbles for certain supplements. These is because some supplements affect a range of conditions, but the evidence quality varies from condition to condition. For example, there’s strong evidence that Green Tea is good for cholesterol levels. But evidence for its anti-cancer effects is conflicting. In these cases, we give a supplement another bubble — via Information Is Beautiful
The Tutu Project is proud to announce that they were chosen by Deutsche Telekom to tell their story of how Bob and Linda Carey have chosen to deal with breast cancer through inspiration, courage and love — via Youtube
20 cancer patients participated in a unique makeover experience — via Youtube
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