Category Health/Medical

New imaging potential: Standard resolution (left) compared to (center, right) high resolution and super-resolution obtained with the chip-based technique. Credit: Bielefeld University/Robin Diekmann

Physicists have developed a photonic chip that makes it possible to carry out super-resolution light microscopy, ie ‘nanoscopy,’ with conventional microscopes. In nanoscopy, the position of single fluorescent molecules can be determined with a precision of just a few nano-meters (millionth of a millimeter). This information can be used to produce images with a resolution of ~20 to 30 nm, and thereby 10X that of conventional light microscopy. Until now, this method has required the use of expensive special instruments...

1. The robotic arms are highly sensitive to touch, have up to ten degrees of movement, and can perform surgical procedures by means of a single incision.
Copyright : The Hong Kong Polytechnic University
2.The robotic arms are highly sensitive to touch, have up to ten degrees of movement, and can perform surgical procedures by means of a single incision.
Copyright : NISI (HK) Limited

HK researchers have developed a novel surgical robotic system that provides tactile feedback and is capable of single-incision and natural orifice (incision-free) robotic surgery. The system minimizes surgical trauma and is safer than currently available robotic systems...

New research correlates sugary drinks—as well as diet soda—to smaller brain volume and memory deficits. Photo by RapidEye/iStock

Both sugary, diet drinks correlated with accelerated brain aging. Researchers using data from the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) found that people who drink sugary beverages frequently are more likely to have poorer memory, smaller overall brain volume, and a significantly smaller hippocampus. A follow-up study found that people who drank diet soda daily were almost 3X as likely to develop stroke and dementia when compared to those who did not.

Researchers are quick to point out that these findings, which appear separately in the journals Alzheimer’s & Dementia and Stroke, demonstrate correlation but not cause-and-effect...

Ludmila Belayev et al. Neuroprotectin D1 upregulates Iduna expression and provides protection in cellular uncompensated oxidative stress and in experimental ischemic stroke, Cell Death and Differentiation (2017). DOI: 10.1038/cdd.2017.55

LSU Health New Orleans School of Medicine team has shown for the first time that NDP1, a signaling molecule made from DHA, can trigger the production of a protective protein against toxic free radicals and injury in the brain and retina. The research in an experimental model of ischemic stroke and human retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells, is available in Advance Publication Online in Nature’s Cell Death and Differentiation.

Neuroprotectin D1 (NPD1) is a lipid messenger made from the omega-3 fatty acid docosahexaenoic acid (DHA) made on demand when cell...