Category Health/Medical

Explored illustration of integrated electronics that includes a transistor, a diode, a memory, a capacitor, an antenna, and a resistor, with interconnects and dielectrics on a moisture-sensitive degradable polymer substrate. The inset in the lower right of the figure shows the top view (left). Optical image of the circuit fabricated on the substrate (right). Credit: Gao et al., Sci. Adv. 2017;3: e1701222

A team from the U.S. and China has demonstrated electronic devices that can degrade and disappear on demand using nothing but moisture in the air. Most people know that electronic devices do not work particularly well in humid conditions—if your house is humid all the time, your desktop computer will not last very long, for example...

Predicted mean values of YAL, YoL, and YAL/YoL% from statistical models that prespecified values of healthy and unhealthy lifestyles. At comparable values of sociodemographic factors, a healthy lifestyle differed considerably from an unhealthy lifestyle in terms of YAL, YoL, disabled years, and YAL/YoL% and was associated with an absolute and relative compression of the disabled period in all race and sex groups.

New research published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society indicates that a healthy lifestyle may help reduce the duration of an individual’s disabled period near the end of life. In the community-based study of 5248 older adults recruited at an average age of 73 and followed for 25 years, the average number of disabled years was ~2.9 for men and 4.5 for women.

Multi...

Neurons in the zona incerta expressing Lhx6 are shown in green. Cells in this region that are activated during sleep express c-fos and are shown in red. Credit: Seth Blackshaw, Ph.D

Researchers find new sleep-promoting cells. Johns Hopkins researchers report the unexpected presence of a type of neuron in the brains of mice that appears to play a central role in promoting sleep by turning ‘off’ wake-promoting neurons. The newly identified brain cells, located in a part of the hypothalamus called the zona incerta, could offer novel drug targets to treat sleep disorders, such as insomnia and narcolepsy, caused by the dysfunction of sleep-regulating neurons.

A summary of the research describes neurons that express a gene called Lhx6...

Brian J. O’Roak, Ph.D., assistant professor of molecular and medical genetics, OHSU, January 4, 2017. Credit: OHSU/John Valls

Autism spectrum disorder affects ~1 out of every 68 children in the US. Despite expansive study, the origin and risk factors of the complex condition are not fully understood. To better understand the root causes, an team led by researchers at OHSU in Portland, Oregon has applied a new systematic analysis to a cohort of 2,300 families who have a single child affected with autism. The study focused on identifying and characterizing low-lying genetic mutations that may have been missed in previous research, given these mutations are only present in a fraction of the bulk DNA of an individual.

Known as postzygotic mosaic mutations, or PMMs, these genetic changes occur ...