❤️ Health Tech
Health Tech, or digital health, helps us understand and take control of our own health. But we also cover more traditional health news like medicines, vaccines and medical procedures.
A human burn has just been successfully treated using live-cell pig skin tissue
When someone has a severe burn, a protective covering needs to be temporarily grafted onto the wound site – and as soon as possible. Although that covering typically consists of skin from a human cadaver, genetically-engineered live-cell pigskin has now been used on a patient for the first time. Applied to
New Hybrid Brain Map Reveals How Neurons Connect
Projects that map the billions of connections within entire brains have always had a tinge of grandiosity. Yet to connectomists, these projects aren’t just the key to cracking the brain’s ultimate mysteries. Understanding how and why neurons form connections called synapses may be the path towards computer simulations
Cellular Computers Get a Boost With CRISPR
Cancer’s impenetrable secrets partly rely on its mysterious molecular history. As cells turn to the dark side, a whirlwind of DNA changes gradually accumulate. Like flipping multiple interlinked light switches, the cell gradually changes its internal molecular operations, until its once-beneficial nature turns malevolent. Why, when, and how this
A Brief Tour Through the Wild West of Neural Interfaces
To most of us, zapping neurons with electricity to artificially “incept” memories, sensation, and movement still sounds crazy. But in some brain labs, that technology is beginning to feel old school. As a new review [https://www.nature.com/articles/s41587-019-0198-8] in Nature Biotechnology concludes: get off the throne, electrodes,
The Crucial Role of Brain Simulation in Future Neuroscience
“Do we have a chance of ever understanding brain function without brain simulations?” So asked the Human Brain Project [https://www.humanbrainproject.eu/en/brain-simulation/] (HBP), the brainchild of Henry Markram [https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/human-brain-project-digital-simulation-neuron/] , in a new paper [https://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(19)30290-9?
DARPA’s New Project Is Investing Millions in Brain-Machine Interface Tech
When Elon Musk and DARPA both hop aboard the cyborg hypetrain, you know brain-machine interfaces (BMIs) are about to achieve the impossible. BMIs, already the stuff of science fiction, facilitate crosstalk between biological wetware with external computers, turning human users into literal cyborgs. Yet mind-controlled robotic arms [https://singularityhub.com/
Microsoft Is Building an All-In-One DNA Data Storage Device
The modern world is facing a tsunami of data [https://singularityhub.com/2018/09/30/the-rise-of-dataism-a-threat-to-freedom-or-a-scientific-revolution/] . DNA is emerging as an ultra-compact way of storing it all [https://singularityhub.com/2018/04/26/the-answer-to-the-digital-data-tsunami-is-literally-in-our-dna/] , and now researchers supported by Microsoft have created the first system that can automatically translate digital
First Human CRISPR Trial in the US Aims to Cure Inherited Blindness
Gene editing is advancing at a faster pace than most of us can keep up with. One significant recent announcement was gene editing tool CRISPR’s application to non-genetic diseases thanks to a new ability to edit single letters in RNA [https://singularityhub.com/2019/07/24/editing-rna-expands-crisprs-use-far-beyond-genetic-diseases/] . Even as
Scientists Just Released a New Playbook for Engineering Longer, Healthier Lives
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment anti-aging research morphed from quackery to an established science. Some say it’s 1939, when an experiment that restricted calories in rodents bizarrely increased their lifespan. Others argue it’s 1961, when Leonard Hayflick discovered a limit [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/