Category Health/Medical

Amorphous silicon core inside a 1.7-micron inner-diameter glass capillary Image: Penn State

A new method to improve semiconductor fiber optics may lead to a material structure that might one day revolutionize the global transmission of data, according to an interdisciplinary team. Researchers are working with semiconductor optical fibers, which hold significant advantages over silica-based fiber optics, the current technology used for transmitting nearly all digital data. Silica – glass – fibers can only transmit electronic data converted to light data. This requires external electronic devices that are expensive and consume enormous amounts of electricity...

A team of biomedical engineering researchers has created a revolutionary 3D-bioprinted patch that can help heal scarred heart tissue after a heart attack. Two of the researchers involved are biomedical engineering Associate Professor Brenda Ogle (right) and Ph.D. student Molly Kupfer (left). Credit: Patrick O’Leary, University of Minnesota

A team of biomedical engineering researchers, led by the University of Minnesota, has created a revolutionary 3D-bioprinted patch that can help heal scarred heart tissue after a heart attack. The discovery is a major step forward in treating patients with tissue damage after a heart attack. The research study is published in Circulation Research, a journal published by the American Heart Association. Researchers have filed a patent on the discovery.

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The Cas13a enzyme causes collateral RNA damage that is the heart of a new diagnostic system, SHERLOCK, that can detect minute quantities of virus and much more

Researchers have created a version of CRISPR-Cas that can be used to diagnose infections, such as Zika and dengue, with a high level of sensitivity. The advancement could help facilitate rapid detection and diagnosis of many other pathogens, too. While some methods exist for detecting genetic sequences, they have trade-offs among sensitivity, specificity, simplicity, cost, and speed. In the search for a more effective method, Feng Zhang, Jonathan S. Gootenberg and colleagues turned to a CRISPR-Cas system that targets RNA.

Binding the target RNA activates this particular Cas enzyme to promiscuously cleave nearby RNA...

Integrated electrokinetically driven microfluidic devices with pH-mediated solid-phase extraction coupled to microchip electrophoresis for preterm birth biomarkers. ELECTROPHORESIS, 2017; DOI: 10.1002/elps.201700054

With help from a palm-sized plastic rectangle with a few pinholes in it, Brigham Young University researchers are hoping to minimize the problem of premature deliveries. The small chip – integrated microfluidic device, predicts with up to 90% accuracy, a woman’s risk for a future preterm birth. “It’s like we’re shrinking a whole laboratory and fitting it into one small microchip,” said BYU chemistry Ph.D. student Mukul Sonker.

In the US alone, a half million babies are born preterm; worldwide, the number is an estimated 15 million...