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    Category Health/Medical

    Recycling Light

    January 12, 2016, Categories  Technology/Electronics, Health/Medical, Physics

    A nanophotonic incandescent light bulb demonstrates the ability to tailor light radiated by a hot object. Credit: Ognjen Ilic

    A nanophotonic incandescent light bulb demonstrates the ability to tailor light radiated by a hot object. Credit: Ognjen Ilic

    How photonics can reshape the spectrum of light, and rehabilitate Edison’s light bulb along the way. The incandescent bulb is an example of a high temperature thermal emitter. It is very useful, but only a small fraction of the emitted light (and therefore energy) is used: most of the light is emitted in the infrared and in this context wasted. Now, MIT researchers describes another way to recycle light emitted at unwanted infrared wavelengths while optimizing the emission at useful visible wavelengths.

    While as a proof-of-concept the research group built a more energy-efficient incandescent light bulb, the same approach could also be used to improve the performance...

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    Painkiller Tapped to become future Cancer-Killer

    January 11, 2016, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Cheap Diclofenac has anti-cancer properties. Like other drugs examined by the ReDO project, diclofenac is cheap and readily accessible — and as it’s already present in many medicine cabinets, it has been carefully tested. The Repurposing Drugs in Oncology (ReDO) project, an international collaboration between the Anticancer Fund, Belgium, and US based GlobalCures, finds that existing and widely-used non-cancer drugs may represent a relatively untapped source of novel therapies for cancer.

    Diclofenac is a well-known and widely used non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID) used to treat pain in conditions such as rheumatoid arthritis, as well as migraine, fever, acute gout and post-operative pain.

    NSAIDs have shown promise in cancer prevention, but there is now emerging evidence that su...

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    2 Metallic elements found in Natural Clays that enable them to Kill even Antibiotic-Resistant Microbes

    January 11, 2016, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Working in tandem, chemically reduced iron (Fe2+) and aluminum (Al3+) in blue clays can kill pathogenic bacteria, such as these E. coli cells. Credit: ASU

    Working in tandem, chemically reduced iron (Fe2+) and aluminum (Al3+) in blue clays can kill pathogenic bacteria, such as these E. coli cells. Credit: ASU

    “We think of this mechanism like the Trojan horse attack in ancient Greece,” said Lynda Williams, a clay-mineral scientist at ASU’s School of Earth and Space Exploration (SESE). “Two elements in the clay work in tandem to kill bacteria.”

    She explained, “One metallic element – chemically reduced iron, which in small amounts is required by a bacterial cell for nutrition – tricks the cell into opening its wall. Then another element – aluminum – props the cell wall open, allowing a flood of iron to enter the cell. This overabundance of iron then poisons the cell, killing it as the reduced iron becomes oxidized.”

    A chance discovery of a medi...

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    Using Skin to Save the Heart

    January 10, 2016, Categories  Health/Medical, Biology/Biotechnology

    Heart cells are shown. Blue indicates nuclei. Credit: Yoshida Laboratory, CiRA, Kyoto University

    Heart cells are shown. Blue indicates nuclei. Credit: Yoshida Laboratory, CiRA, Kyoto University

    Cell therapies for heart ailments involve transplanting over a billion heart cells to the patient’s heart. Many of these cells fail to engraft, however, compromising the benefits. One reason for the poor engraftment is that normally the heart cell population is a mixture of cells with different maturation. Researchers have now identified an ideal maturation stage that enhances engraftment and may reduce the number of cells required for therapy.

    Under the direction of Sr Lecturer Yoshinori Yoshida, Dr Funakoshi took induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells that were reprogrammed from skin cells and made them into heart cells...

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