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What Are Microbeads And Why Are They Illegal?

As written in an article for Popular Science, Sophie Bushwick, microbeads have become more harm than help.Next time you wash your face, think of the sludge that you’ve just dumped in the rivers and ocean. Not from your skin. From microbeads.

Microbeads are tiny bits of plastic found in exfoliating body washes and facial scrubs. Since their introduction in 1972, they have made their way into more than 100 personal care products sold by companies such as Procter & Gamble, Unilever, and L’Oréal.
But there’s mounting evidence that these beads—while great at scraping dead dermis—are equally adept at killing marine life and bringing harmful chemicals into the food chain. Since 2012, when researchers …Read More

Image Source: 5 Gyres / YouTube

Turn Your Smartphone Into A Solar Panel

TURN YOUR SMARTPHONE INTO A SOLAR PANEL

AND LET THE DEVICE RECHARGE ITSELF

Instead of searching for an outlet to keep your phone alive, what if all you needed was some sunshine? An MIT startup has created a transparent coating that transforms surfaces into solar panels.

The Trick

Typically solar panels soak up photons from the sun’s rays and convert them into electricity. The panels tend to be dark, because the darker a material, the more visible light it absorbs. The idea of transparent panels would usually get dismissed because they don’t, by definition, absorb any visible light—it just passes right through them.

The Tech

Ubiquitous Energy, a spinoff of MIT, has created a coating…READ MORE

Can We Stop The Surge Of Man-Made Earthquakes?

CAN WE STOP THE SURGE OF MAN-MADE EARTHQUAKES?

THERE’S A WHOLE LOT MORE SHAKING GOING ON IN THE MIDWEST LATELY—AND HUMANS ARE CAUSING IT.

Mark Crismon and I were sitting outside his Oklahoma house, looking at the day lilies that lined his pond, when our conversation was interrupted by a distant boom. “Did you feel that?” Crismon asked. “Just be quiet. Sit still.” He’s a lanky 76-year-old, retired from an electronics career, with gray hair combed straight back from his ruddy face. The booms continued, once or twice per minute; I felt them under my skin. “That’s a small earthquake,” he said, seconds before the sound recurred…READ MORE

How does our brain multitask?

Multitasking…we all do. However, few of us know how our brain does it. Recent study shows how our brains are able to multitask. Researchers hope to use this information to better understand and treat autism and ADHD.

In an article for Popular Science, Claire Maldarelli takes us further. If you’ve ever had to cook dinner, prepare for the next day’s work meeting, while also listen to a friend complain over the phone, then you know all too well the importance of multitasking. But what’s actually going on inside our brains that allows for us to strategically focus on one task over another? That’s remained largely a mystery, at least until recently. Earlier this week…Read more

Image source: Michael Halassa

Hearts and Arteries Could Be 3D-Printed Cheaply

Any patient who needs an organ transplant has to put her name on a list. Wouldn’t it be better if doctors could simply print out a liver or a heart on demand?

What Are The Side Effects

Learn More About A Pneumococcal Disease Vaccine and Side Effects. www.pneumococcal-disease-info.com

At Carnegie Mellon University, researchers are making big strides toward this future.

They bought a consumer-level 3-D printer anyone can purchase online for about $1,000, and hacked it to print soft materials.

“We’ve been able to take MRI images of coronary arteries and 3-D images of embryonic hearts and 3-D bioprint them with unprecedented resolution,” Adam Feinberg, an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Biomedical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University, said in a press release.

Like most 3-D printers, the one Feinberg and his team purchased was designed to print plastic or metal. Normally, it deposits material onto a surface layer-by-layer until the object is built up into the required shape.

Printing soft materials is a bigger challenge because the materials normally collapse under their own weight when printed. Imagine trying to print Jello layer-by-layer. It wouldn’t hold its shape. And printers capable of creating soft objects cost about $100,000 each.

Feinberg and his team hacked the inexpensive printer to print gooey, biological material such as collagen, the connective tissue that keeps….READ MORE

Miniature, Beating Hearts Grown Using Stem Cells

Dr. Bruce Conklin, a stem cell biologist at the Gladstone Institute of Cardiovascular Disease in San Francisco, along with colleagues developed these tiny hearts using stem cells derived from skin tissue. The scientists allowed the cells to grow in a petri dish, adding a chemical layer containing slight physical and chemical differences, thanks to tiny etchings made with oxygen plasma.

VIDEO: First Cloned Human Embryos Yield Stem Cells

Because of these slight differences, the stem cells developed into different types of cardiac tissue cells, similar to the process that takes place in the human body. By the 20th day of the trial, the cells actually formed heart “microchambers” that were beating slowly.

This fascinating milestone can help researchers learn more about the way the heart develops in vitro to help prevent defects and can aid in evaluating heart drugs for safety, particularly for pregnant women. The tiny hearts could also serve as models to treat damaged hearts. In addition, the concepts learned from this trial could be used by scientists attempting to grow other types of organs in a lab.

A study published in scientific journal Nature Communications shared these findings.

Tiny Brain Parts Teased From Stem Cells

This isn’t the first time stem cells have been used…READ MORE

The Price of Success? Your Health

Study hard. Work hard. Pay your dues, and anyone can be a success. This is the classic advice imparted to those striving for a better life, a prescription that generally fails to account for other factors that inhibit upward mobility in people who start out life in an economically insecure household.

The concept of upward mobility is a cornerstone of the American Dream. For those who achieve that dream, climbing to a higher socioeconomic status can cost decades…Read More

A 25 minute daily walk can add years to your life

New research shows that exercise can delay the ageing process, with experts suggesting one walk a day could halve the risk of heart attack death and add seven years to the lifespan Just 25 minutes of brisk walking a day could add to seven years to your life, heart experts have said. Researchers s…

Image source: Alamy

Medical Testing Is Not Just Good News But Good Business

Medical Testing Is So Hot Right Now. This Startup Wants In. In an article for Wired, Nick Stockton introduces us to The California Headquarters of Cofactor Genomics. It’s a bright little bungalow a few blocks from downtown Mountain View. Cofactor, an RNA sequencing company is turning away from drug discovery for big pharma toward consumer diagnostics. That’s right, a pivot.

When you get your blood drawn, doctors are looking for proteins and antibodies inside it—proxies for disease. Based on the presence and quantities of certain proteins or antibodies, a diagnostic physician can say with reasonable certainty whether you’ve been fighting off a particular disease. That’s the kind of test…Read more

Image source: Cofactor Genetics

FDA tells food industry to phase out artificial trans fats

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is ordering food companies to phase out the use of heart-clogging trans fats over the next three years, calling them a threat to public health.

The move will remove artificial trans fats from the food supply almost entirely. Consumers aren’t likely to notice much of a difference in their favorite foods, but the administration says the move will reduce coronary heart disease and prevent thousands of fatal heart attacks every year.

Scientists say there are no health benefits to the fats,…READ MORE

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