A current focus in global health research is to make medical tests that are not just cheap, but virtually free. One such strategy is to start with paper – one of humanity’s oldest technologies – and build a device like a home-based pregnancy test that might work for malaria, diabetes or other diseases.
A University of Washington bioengineer recently developed a way to make regular paper stick to medically interesting molecules. The work produced a chemical trick to make paper-based diagnostics using plain paper, the kind found at office supply stores around the world. (more…)
COLUMBIA, Mo. — One person dies every hour from melanoma skin cancer in the United States, according to the American Cancer Society. A technique known as photoacoustics can find some forms of melanoma even if only a few cancerous cells exist, but a recent study by University of Missouri researchers found that the technique was limited in its ability to identify other types of cancer. Attaching markers, called enhancers, to cancer cells could improve the ability of photoacoustics to find other types of cancer and could save lives thanks to faster diagnoses, but the technique is in its early stages.
“Eventually, a photoacoustic scan could become a routine part of a medical exam,” said Luis Polo-Parada, assistant professor of pharmacology and physiology and resident investigator at the MU Dalton Cardiovascular Research Center. “The technique doesn’t use X-rays like current methods of looking for cancer. It could also allow for much earlier detection of cancer. Now, a cancerous growth is undetectable until it reaches approximately one cubic centimeter in size. Photoacoustics could potentially find cancerous growths of only a few cells. Unfortunately, our research shows that, besides some cases of melanoma, the diagnostic use of photoacoustics still has major limitations. To overcome this problem, the use of photoacoustic enhancers like gold, carbon nanotubes or dyed nanoparticles is needed.” (more…)
Gaming system a new step for telepathology and other telemedicine fields
Online crowd-sourcing — in which a task is presented to the public, who respond, for free, with various solutions and suggestions — has been used to evaluate potential consumer products, develop software algorithms and solve vexing research-and-development challenges. But diagnosing infectious diseases?
Working on the assumption that large groups of public non-experts can be trained to recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists, researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA have created a crowd-sourced online gaming system in which players distinguish malaria-infected red blood cells from healthy ones by viewing digital images obtained from microscopes. (more…)
Durland Fish has researched ticks and their associated diseases for decades. A professor in the Division of Epidemiology of Microbial Diseases at the Yale School of Public Health, he has, among other things, contributed to the discovery that the bacterium that causes Lyme disease has European ancestry and that the disease, once nearly eradicated in North America, roared back with reforestation. More recently he helped develop a Lyme disease “app” for the iPhone and other Apple devices that provides users with detailed information about tick populations in any given area in the United States and even comes with a video on how to safely remove a tick. He has also worked on mosquito-borne West Nile virus and dengue fever. Students selected Fish as the school’s mentor of the year in 2010. (more…)
COLUMBUS, Ohio – Water-associated infectious disease outbreaks are more likely to occur in areas where a region’s population density is growing, according to a new global analysis of economic and environmental conditions that influence the risk for these outbreaks.
Ohio State University scientists constructed a massive database containing information about 1,428 water-associated disease outbreaks that were reported between 1991 and 2008 around the world. By combining outbreak records with data on a variety of socio-environmental factors known about the affected regions, the researchers developed a model that can be used to predict risks for water-associated disease outbreaks anywhere in the world. (more…)
*Students from around the world talked with Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates and Executive Vice President Brad Smith on Friday about removing obstacles that keep young people from starting their own businesses and nonprofits.*
Davos, Switzerland — Jan. 30, 2012 — When the world’s policymakers descend on Davos, Switzerland, for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, Bill Gates can usually get their attention.
This year, in between discussing food sustainability and announcing a US$750 million donation to fight AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis, Gates turned his attention to a few students who hope to make a similarly outsized humanitarian mark on the world. (more…)
*As we begin the New Year, a look at some of the stories of futuristic scenarios brought to life in 2011, plus developments that promise dramatic improvements in the near future.*
REDMOND, Wash. – Jan. 3, 2012 – From revolutionizing the way we interact with computers to developing tools to speed development of cures for crippling diseases, 2011 was a year of forward-thinking breakthroughs at Microsoft. See some of the innovations introduced in 2011 and how Microsoft is working to take new technologies from the lab to the living room. (more…)
*Project to use 2 million PCs to crunch numbers, compress 100 years of research into just one*
LA JOLLA, CA and ARMONK, NY – IBM’s Watson computing system broke new ground earlier this year when it defeated two celebrated human competitors on the Jeopardy! game show. Now, The Scripps Research Institute is hoping to do something equally novel but more critical to human health with part of the prize money from that tournament: Find a cure for drug-resistant malaria. And it’s asking for the public’s help.
To that end, Scripps Research and IBM are encouraging anyone in the world with a personal computer to join World Community Grid, a sort of “supercomputer of the people” that will crunch numbers and perform simulations for “GO Fight Against Malaria”—the project that Scripps Research and IBM have launched at https://www.worldcommunitygrid.org. (more…)
