New Harvard study fights fat with salty, icy injections

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Injecting an icy saline slurry into fat deposits could be a new fat-reduction technique

It sure sounds like a pop-up ad you’d see online, but scientists have created and tested a new treatment that melts away belly fat. The new technique, developed by researchers from Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), involves injecting an icy saline solution directly into fat deposits to shrink them by half.

The new process sounds simple enough. It uses a sterile solution made up of saline, glycerol, and between 20 and 40 percent small ice particles, giving it a slushy texture. This mixture is injected directly into fat deposits, such as around the abdomen, where it crystallizes and kills the fat cells. Over the course of a few weeks following the treatment, the body will flush out the dead cells.

The team says that this process could be used to reduce fat stores in basically any part of the body, at any depth, as long as it can be accessed by a needle or catheter. Importantly, it doesn’t seem to have any adverse effects on other tissues, such as muscle.

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Scientists have created an artificial retina implant that could restore vision to million

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Scientists have developed a retinal implant that can restore lost vision in rats, and are planning to trial the procedure in humans later this year.

The implant, which converts light into an electrical signal that stimulates retinal neurons, could give hope to millions who experience retinal degeneration – including retinitis pigmentosa – in which photoreceptor cells in the eye begin to break down, leading to blindness.

The retina is located at the back of the eye, and is made up of millions of these light-sensitive photoreceptors. But mutations in any one of the 240 identified genes can lead to retinal degeneration, where these photoreceptor cells die off, even while the retinal neurons around them are unaffected.

Because the retinal nerves remain intact and functional, previous research has looked at treating retinitis pigmentosa with bionic eye devices that stimulate the neurons with lights, while other scientists have investigated using CRISPR gene editing to repair the mutations that cause blindness.

Now, a team led by the Italian Institute of Technology has developed a new approach, with a prosthesis implanted into the eye that serves as a working replacement for a damaged retina.

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Scientists use stem cells from frogs to build first living robots

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Researchers foresee myriad benefits for humanity, but also acknowledge ethical issues

Be warned. If the rise of the robots comes to pass, the apocalypse may be a more squelchy affair than science fiction writers have prepared us for.

Researchers in the US have created the first living machines by assembling cells from African clawed frogs into tiny robots that move around under their own steam.

One of the most successful creations has two stumpy legs that propel it along on its “chest”. Another has a hole in the middle that researchers turned into a pouch so it could shimmy around with miniature payloads.

“These are entirely new lifeforms. They have never before existed on Earth,” said Michael Levin, the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts. “They are living, programmable organisms.”

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Quantum computing : Solving problems beyond the power of classical computing

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Quantum computers will lead to vast improvements in drug discovery, weather forecasting and supply chain optimisation.

Weather forecasting today is good. Can it get better? Sure, it can, if computers can be better. This is where quantum computers come into the picture. They possess computing capacity beyond anything that today’s classical computers can ever achieve. This is because quantum computers can run calculations exponentially faster than today’s conventional binary computers. That makes them powerful enough to bridge gaps which exist in today’s weather forecasting, drug discovery, financial modelling and many other complex areas.

Classical computing has been the backbone of modern society. It gave us satellite TV, the internet and digital commerce. It put robots on Mars and smartphones in our pockets.

“But many of the world’s biggest mysteries and potentially greatest opportunities remain beyond the grasp of classical computers,” says Stefan Filipp, quantum scientist at IBM Research. “To continue the pace of progress, we need to augment the classical approach with a new platform, one that follows its own set of rules. That is quantum computing.”

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The AI doctor will see you now

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A lightbox showing a mammogram xray

Advances in neural networks and other techniques promise to transform health care while raising profound questions about our bodies and society.

AI software can identify early signs of breast cancer long before the disease can be diagnosed by conventional means.

When MIT professor Regina Barzilay received her breast cancer diagnosis, she turned it into a science project. Learning that the disease could have been detected earlier if doctors had recognized the signs on previous mammograms, Barzilay, an expert in artificial intelligence, used a collection of 90,000 breast x-rays to create software for predicting a patient’s cancer risk.

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Israeli scientists find way to treat pancreatic cancer in 14 days

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Cancerous cells forming a lump in the pancreatic tissue

The tumor in one mouse that was injected with human cancer cells completely disappeared.

A new treatment developed by Tel Aviv University could induce the destruction of pancreatic cancer cells, eradicating the number of cancerous cells by up to 90% after two weeks of daily injections of a small molecule known as PJ34.

Pancreatic cancer is one of the hardest cancers to treat. Most people who are diagnosed with the disease do not even live five years after being diagnosed.

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Exclusive: Humans placed in suspended animation for the first time

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Doctors have placed humans in suspended animation for the first time, as part of a trial in the US that aims to make it possible to fix traumatic injuries that would otherwise cause death.

Samuel Tisherman, at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, told New Scientist that his team of medics had placed at least one patient in suspended animation, calling it “a little surreal” when they first did it. He wouldn’t reveal how many people had survived as a result.

The technique, officially called emergency preservation and resuscitation (EPR), is being carried out on people who arrive at the University of Maryland Medical Centre in Baltimore with an acute trauma – such as a gunshot or stab wound – and have had a cardiac arrest. Their heart will have stopped beating and they will have lost more than half their blood. There are only minutes to operate, with a less than 5 per cent chance that they would normally survive.

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The world’s first Gattaca baby tests are finally here

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The DNA test claims to let prospective parents weed out IVF embryos with a high risk of disease or low intelligence.

Anxious couples are approaching fertility doctors in the US with requests for a hotly debated new genetic test being called “23andMe, but on embryos.”

The baby-picking test is being offered by a New Jersey startup company, Genomic Prediction, whose plans we first reported on two years ago.

The company says it can use DNA measurements to predict which embryos from an IVF procedure are least likely to end up with any of 11 different common diseases. In the next few weeks it’s set to release case studies on its first clients.

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The pharmacy of the future will see robots come to the rescue of humans

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High technology is changing the way pharmacies operate – and how customers get served

It looks like a normal pharmacy in a normal Johannesburg shopping mall. But behind the scenes at the Morningside Dispensary, a revolution is underway

It may not be getting the attention that politicians get when they talk of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, but it is a real and practical example of what emerging technologies make possible in everyday life.

For the customers of this pharmacy are being served by a robot. Even when they don’t realise it, and are talking to a human pharmacist, the efficiency with which they are being served is made possible by a robot.

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Precious metal flecks could be catalyst for better cancer therapies

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Tiny extracts of a precious metal used widely in industry could play a vital role in new cancer therapies.

Researchers have found a way to dispatch minute fragments of palladium — a key component in motor manufacture, electronics and the oil industry — inside cancerous cells.

Scientists have long known that the metal, used in catalytic converters to detoxify exhaust, could be used to aid cancer treatment but, until now, have been unable to deliver it to affected areas.

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First long-distance heart surgery performed via robot

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In a feat of networking, engineering, and medicine, a doctor performed a heart procedure while standing 20 miles from his patient.

A doctor in India has performed a series of five percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) procedures on patients who were 20 miles away from him. The feat was pulled off using a precision vascular robot developed by Corindus. The results of the surgeries, which were successful, have just been published in EClinicalMedicine, a spin-off of medical journal The Lancet.

The feat is an example of telemedicine, an emerging field that leverages advances in networking, robotics, mixed reality, and communications technologies to beam in medical experts to remote locations for everything from consultations to surgical procedures. Telemedicine, which could decentralize healthcare by distributing doctors into local communities virtually, could ease shortages of nurses and doctors and potentially cut healthcare costs. In France, people are already visiting Telehealth cabins for fast, convenient healthcare. During the recent Ebola crisis, the University of Virginia delivered care in parts of Africa via telemedicine.

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‘Extraordinary’ breakthroughs in anti-Aging research ‘will happen faster than people think’

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People 50 and older have a lot to look forward to, according to Juvenescence’s Greg Bailey—mainly that we won’t be aging as fast or poorly as our parents. “Science fiction has become science,” said the UK-based anti-aging biotech’s CEO about the company’s completing its $100 million Series B round of financing last week. “I think the world is going to be shocked,” he said in an interview. In total, Juvenescence has now raised $165 million in just 18 months to fund longevity projects with the lofty goal of extending human lifespans to 150 years.

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