Health and Wellbeing

According to the latest statistics, every year approximately 2,500 babies die from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in the U.S. alone, with thousands more falling victim to it around the world. In typical cases, an infant passes away in their sleep, with no apparent explanation. While various theories have been put forward, the exact cause of SIDS is unknown. While not offering an answer to the mystery, two students from Israel's Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) are working on a computer system, that could keep more babies from becoming SIDS statistics. Read More

While some inventions originating in Japan can seem a little quirky by Western standards, many of those are at the same time rather innovative. This is certainly the case with the cooling foams and gels in spray-cans, which are cooling down Japanese city-dwellers this summer. Read More

Every year in the lead up to flu season, those at high risk of infection, such as the young, the elderly and those who are immune-compromised, head off to the doctor for a jab in the hopes it will protect them from the flu. However, influenza vaccines have a number of shortcomings that means even those who have been vaccinated may still get influenza. Researchers at the Scripps Research Institute and Dutch biopharmaceutical company Crucell have now found a broadly acting antibody that could lead to a single, near-universal flu vaccine to replace annually changing vaccines. Read More

It’s widely recognized that asthma rates have increased significantly since the 1960’s and continue to rise. With increases in asthma and other allergic diseases centered on industrialized nations, a recent hypothesis suggested that the disappearance of specific microorganisms that populate the human body due to modern hygiene practices might be to blame. Now researchers claim they have confirmed this hypothesis by proving that a certain gastric bacterium provides reliable protection against allergy-induced asthma. Read More

There are approximately 1.5 million people worldwide who require regular hemodialysis treatments, due to the fact that their kidneys are no longer able to clean their blood. Clinicians generally reuse the same access point on each patient's body, for routing their bloodstream to the dialysis machine. Unfortunately, over time this can cause infections, blood clots or narrowing of the arteries at that access point. This can result in the need for a blood-vessel-opening procedure, or sometimes even in death. Now, however, a group of five biomedical engineering graduate students from Johns Hopkins University have created an implantable device, that could act as a safe, easy access point for dialysis. Read More

If you're finding it hard to shed those extra pounds because you're chained to desk all day and can't find time to fit in some exercise then the Elliptical Machine Office Desk will mean there's no more excuses. Consisting of an adjustable-height desk that pairs with a semi-recumbent elliptical trainer, it's claimed the setup will allow the average user to burn about 4,000 calories in a typical working week. And with a healthy body and a healthy mind said to go hand in hand, the setup might even make you more productive in the office. Read More

If a just-announced research project is successful, then maybe – just maybe – diabetics will finally be free of having to perform daily finger prick blood tests and insulin injections. Based on new findings regarding the body’s production of insulin, Mayo Clinic endocrinologists Yogish Kudva and Ananda Basu are in the process of developing an artificial pancreas, that would automatically deliver the hormone when needed. Read More

Using a virus containing a ‘library’ of DNA, researchers from the University of Leeds in the U.K., working with the Mayo Clinic in the U.S., have developed a vaccine that was able to destroy prostate cancer tumors in mice, while leaving healthy tissue untouched. Because the virus contains multiple fragments of genes, the vaccine is able to produce many possible antigens thereby boosting its effectiveness. The technique could be used to create vaccines to treat a wide range of cancers, including breast, pancreatic and lung tumors. Read More

To minimize the toxic effects of chemotherapy, many researchers have been working to develop nanoparticles that that deliver drugs directly to tumors. But researchers at MIT claim that even the best of these nanoparticles are typically only able to deliver about one percent of the drug to their intended target. Now, a team has developed a new delivery system that sees a first wave of nanoparticles homing in on a tumor that then calls in a larger second wave that dispenses the cancer drug. In a mouse study, the new approach was found to boost drug delivery to tumors by over 40-fold. Read More