Category Health/Medical

Kidney injury is a dreaded complication in patients hospitalized for COVID-19, with more than a third of patients ending up in need of dialysis. Patients with COVID-19-related kidney injury are also at much higher risk of death.

“We don’t known exactly why patients with severe COVID-19 have a high rate of kidney injury,” says Salim Hayek, M.D., a cardiologist at the Michigan Medicine (University of Michigan) Frankel Cardiovascular Center and senior author of a new observational study.” It is, however, becoming clearer that a hyperactive immune system plays a major role in the morbidity of COVID-19, including kidney-related complications.”

In the multi-center study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Hayek and an international team of experts report th...

These systems could potentially overcome computational hurdles faced by current digital technologies. In the September issue of the journal Nature, scientists from Texas A&M University, Hewlett Packard Labs and Stanford University have described a new nanodevice that acts almost identically to a brain cell. Furthermore, they have shown that these synthetic brain cells can be joined together to form intricate networks that can then solve problems in a brain-like manner.

“This is the first study where we have been able to emulate a neuron with just a single nanoscale device, which would otherwise need hundreds of transistors,” said Dr. R...

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a new method of 3D-printing gels and other soft materials. Published in a new paper, it has the potential to create complex structures with nanometer-scale precision. Because many gels are compatible with living cells, the new method could jump-start the production of soft tiny medical devices such as drug delivery systems or flexible electrodes that can be inserted into the human body.

A standard 3D printer makes solid ...

Carnegie Mellon University’s Maysam Chamanzar and his team have invented an optical platform that will likely become the new standard in optical biointerfaces. He’s labeled this new field of optical technology “Parylene photonics,” demonstrated in a recent paper in Nature Microsystems and Nanoengineering.

There is a growing and unfulfilled demand for optical systems for biomedical applications. Miniaturized and flexible optical tools are needed to enable reliable ambulatory and on-demand imaging and manipulation of biological events in the body. Integrated photonic technology has mainly evolved around developing devices for optical communications...