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ProVision, made by defense contractor L-3 Communications, a passenger enters a chamber that looks like a round phone booth and is scanned with millimeter waves, a form of low-energy radio waves, which have not been shown to strip electrons from atoms or cause cancer.

Some scientists argue the danger is exaggerated. They claim low levels stimulate the repair mechanism in cells, meaning that a little radiation might actually be good for the body.

But in the authoritative report on low doses of ionizing radiation, published in 2006, the National Academy of Sciences reviewed the research and concluded that the preponderance of research supported the linear link. It found “no compelling evidence” that there is any level of radiation at which the risk of cancer is zero.

Rebecca Smith-Bindman, a radiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, estimated that the backscatters would lead to only six cancers over the course of a lifetime among the approximately 100 million people who fly every year. David Brenner, director of Columbia University’s Center for Radiological Research, reached a higher number — potentially 100 additional cancers every year.

But in 1982, the FDA merged the radiological health bureau into its medical-device unit. “I was concerned that if they were to combine the two centers into one, it would probably mean the ending of the radiation program because the demands for medical-device regulation were becoming increasingly great,” said Villforth, who was put in charge of the new Center for Devices and Radiological Health. “As I sort of guessed, the radiation program took a big hit.”

As a result, there is an FDA safety regulation for X-rays scanning baggage — but none for X-rays scanning people at airports.

The U.S. Customs Service deployed backscatter machines for several years but in limited fashion and with strict supervision. Travelers suspected of carrying contraband had to sign a consent form, and Customs policy prohibited the scanning of pregnant women.

In July, a federal appeals court ruled that the agency failed to follow rule-making procedures and solicit public comment before installing body scanners at airports across the country

Federal Aviation Administration’s medical institute has advised pregnant pilots and flight attendants that the machine, coupled with their time in the air, could put them over their occupational limit for radiation exposure

It was made up of 15 people, including six representatives of manufacturers of X-ray body scanners and five from U.S. Customs and the California prison system. There were few government regulators and no independent scientists.

The FDA delegated the task of establishing the voluntary standards to the American National Standards Institute.

“Establishing a mandatory standard takes an enormous amount of resources and could take a decade to publish,” said Dan Kassiday, a longtime radiation safety engineer at the FDA.

and before 9/11, many states also had the authority to randomly inspect machines in airports. But that ended when the TSA took over security checkpoints from the airlines.

Last year, in reaction to public anger from members of Congress, passengers and advocates, the TSA contracted with the Army Public Health Command to do independent radiation surveys. But email messages obtained in a lawsuit brought by the Electronic Privacy Information Center, a civil liberties group, raise questions about the independence of the Army surveys.

One email sent by TSA health and safety director Jill Segraves shows that local TSA officials were given advance notice and allowed to “pick and choose” which systems the Army could check.

The TSA considered the scanners again after two Chechen women blew up Russian airliners in

Facing a continued outcry over privacy, the TSA instead moved forward with a machine known as a “puffer” because it released several bursts of air on the passengers’ clothes and analyzed the dislodged particles for explosives. But after discovering the machines were ineffective in the field and difficult to maintain, the TSA canceled the program in 2006.

Around that time, Rapiscan began to beef up its lobbying on Capitol Hill. It opened a Washington, D.C., office and, according to required disclosures, more than tripled its lobbying expenditures in two years, from less than $130,000 in 2006 to nearly $420,000 in 2008. It hired former legislative aides to Rep. David Price, D-N.C., then chairman of the homeland security appropriations subcommittee, and to Sen. Trent Lott, R-Miss.

In addition, it opened a new North Carolina plant in Price’s district and expanded its operations in Ocean Springs, Miss., and at its headquarters in Torrance, Calif., in Harman’s district.

in 2007, with new privacy filters in place, the TSA began a trial of millimeter-wave and backscatter machines at several major airports, after which the agency opted to go with the millimeter-wave machines. The agency said health concerns weren’t a factor.

strips electrons from glucose molecules to create a small electric current

The idea of a glucose fuel cell is not new

In the 1970s, scientists showed they could power a pacemaker with a glucose fuel cell, but the idea was abandoned in favor of lithium-ion batteries, which could provide significantly more power per unit area than glucose fuel cells

glucose fuel cells also utilized enzymes that proved to be impractical for long-term implantation in the body, since they eventually ceased to function efficiently

The new twist

is that it is fabricated from silicon, using the same technology used to make semiconductor electronic chips

has no biological components

consists of a platinum catalyst that strips electrons from glucose

mimicking the activity of cellular enzymes that break down glucose to generate ATP

So far, the fuel cell can generate up to hundreds of microwatts — enough to power an ultra-low-power and clinically useful neural implant.

in theory, the glucose fuel cell could get all the sugar it needs from the cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that bathes the brain and protects it from banging into the skull

are very few cells in the CSF

There is also significant glucose in the CSF, which does not generally get used by the body

only a small fraction of the available power is utilized by the glucose fuel cell, the impact on the brain’s function would likely be small.

the work is a good step toward developing implantable medical devices that don’t require external power sources.

ultra-low-power electronics, having pioneered such designs for cochlear implants and brain implants

combined with such ultra-low-power electronics, can enable brain implants or other implants to be completely self-powered

group has worked on all aspects of implantable brain-machine interfaces and neural prosthetics, including recording from nerves, stimulating nerves

decoding nerve signals and communicating wirelessly with implants

designed to record electrical activity from hundreds of neurons in the brain’s motor cortex, which is responsible for controlling movement

data is amplified and converted into a digital signal so that computers

can analyze it and determine which patterns of brain activity produce movement

now has detectable levels of HIV after more than two years of not taking antiretroviral therapy without evidence of virus

"Scientifically, this development reminds us that we still have much more to learn about the intricacies of HIV infection and where the virus hides in the body. The NIH remains committed to moving forward with research on a cure for HIV infection."

NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D.

The researchers planning the clinical trial will now need to take this new development into account

The child was born prematurely in a Mississippi clinic in 2010 to an HIV-infected mother who did not receive antiretroviral medication during pregnancy and was not diagnosed with HIV infection until the time of delivery

Because of the high risk of HIV exposure, the infant was started at 30 hours of age on liquid, triple-drug antiretroviral treatment.

Testing confirmed within several days that the baby had been infected with HIV. At two weeks of age, the baby was discharged from the hospital and continued on liquid antiretroviral therapy

The baby continued on antiretroviral treatment until 18 months of age, when the child was lost to follow up and no longer received treatment

when the child was again seen by medical staff five months later, blood samples revealed undetectable HIV levels (less than 20 copies of HIV per milliliter of blood (copies/mL)) and no HIV-specific antibodies

The child continued to do well in the absence of antiretroviral medicines and was free of detectable HIV for more than two years

Repeat viral load blood testing performed 72 hours later confirmed this finding

Additionally, the child had decreased levels of

a key component of a normal immune system, and the presence of HIV antibodies

Based on these results, the child was again started on antiretroviral therapy

To date, the child is tolerating the medication with no side effects and treatment is decreasing virus levels

Genetic sequencing of the virus indicated that the child's HIV infection was the same strain acquired from the mother

In light of the new findings, researchers must now work to better understand what enabled the child to remain off treatment for more than two years without detectable virus or measurable immunologic response

what might be done to extend the period of sustained HIV remission in the absence of antiretroviral therapy

"Typically, when treatment is stopped, HIV levels rebound within weeks, not years."

"The prolonged lack of viral rebound, in the absence of HIV-specific immune responses, suggests that the very early therapy not only kept this child clinically well, but also restricted the number of cells harboring HIV infection," said Katherine Luzuriaga, M.D., professor of molecular medicine, pediatrics and medicine at the University of Massachusetts

The case

indicates that early antiretroviral treatment in this HIV-infected infant did not completely eliminate the reservoir of HIV-infected cells that was established upon infection

may have considerably limited its development and averted the need for antiretroviral medication over a considerable period

during a routine clinical care visit earlier this month, the child, now nearly 4 years of age, was found to have detectable HIV levels in the blood

The technology

could potentially become a cost-effective tool for medical diagnostics and to triage injuries in areas where access to medical care, especially medical imaging, is limited

The researchers tested a prototype in a small-scale pilot study of healthy adults and brain trauma patients admitted to a military hospital for the Mexican Army

The results from the healthy patients were clearly distinguishable from those with brain damage, and data for bleeding was distinct from those for swelling

symptoms of serious head injuries and brain damage are not always immediately obvious, and for treatment, time is of the essence.

The researchers took advantage of the characteristic changes in tissue composition and structure in brain injuries

For brain edemas, swelling results from an increase in fluid in the tissue

For brain hematomas, internal bleeding causes the buildup of blood in certain regions of the brain.

Because fluid conducts electricity differently than brain tissue, it is possible to measure changes in electromagnetic properties.

Computer algorithms interpret the changes to determine the likelihood of injury.

The study involved 46 healthy adults, ages 18 to 48, and eight patients with brain damage, ages 27 to 70.

engineers fashioned two coils into a helmet-like device, fitted over the heads of the study participants

One coil acts as a radio emitter and the other serves as the receiver. Electromagnetic signals are broadcast through the brain from the emitter to the receiver

the waves are extremely weak, and are comparable to standing in a room with the radio or television turned on

The device's diagnoses for the brain trauma patients in the study matched the results obtained from conventional computerized tomography (CT) scans

Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) occurs naturally in the body and is essential to survival

CoQ10 works as an electron carrier in the mitochondria, the powerhouse of the cells, to produce energy and is also a powerful antioxidant

CoQ10 levels are decreased in the heart muscle of patients with heart failure, with the deficiency becoming more pronounced as heart failure severity worsens

Double blind controlled trials have shown that CoQ10 improves symptoms, functional capacity and quality of life in patients with heart failure with no side effects

until now, no trials have been statistically powered to address effects on survival

study randomised 420 patients with severe heart failure

to CoQ10 or placebo and followed them for 2 years

primary endpoint was time to first major adverse cardiovascular event (MACE)

unplanned hospitalisation due to worsening of heart failure, cardiovascular death, urgent cardiac transplantation and mechanical circulatory support

CoQ10 halved the risk of MACE

29 (14%) patients in the CoQ10 group reaching the primary endpoint compared to 55 (25%) patients in the placebo group

CoQ10 also halved the risk of dying from all causes, which occurred in 18 (9%) patients in the CoQ10 group compared to 36 (17%) patients in the placebo group

CoQ10 treated patients had significantly lower cardiovascular mortality

and lower occurrence of hospitalisations for heart failure

There were fewer adverse events in the CoQ10 group compared to the placebo group

CoQ10 is the first medication to improve survival in chronic heart failure since ACE inhibitors and beta blockers more than a decade ago

Other heart failure medications block rather than enhance cellular processes and may have side effects

CoQ10

is a natural and safe substance, corrects a deficiency in the body and blocks the vicious metabolic cycle in chronic heart failure called the energy starved heart

CoQ10 is present in food, including red meat, plants and fish, but levels are insufficient to impact on heart failure

CoQ10 is also sold over the counter as a food supplement but

Food supplements can influence the effect of other medications including anticoagulants and patients should seek advice from their doctor before taking them

The new technique could lead to more efficient medical testing, such as in the examination of blood samples

The team

discovered a technique which will allow them to provide 'negative' force acting upon minuscule particles

Normally when matter and light interact the solid object is pushed by the light and carried away in the stream of photons

Such radiation force was first identified by Johanes Kepler when observing that tails of comets point away from the sun

Over recent years researchers have realised that while this is the case for most of the optical fields, there is a space of parameters when this force reverses.

scientists

have now demonstrated the first experimental realisation of this concept together with a number of exciting applications for bio-medical photonics and other disciplines

The exciting aspect is that the occurrence of negative force is very specific to the properties of the object, such as size and composition

allows optical sorting of micro-objects in a simple and inexpensive device

optical fractionation has been identified as one of the most promising bio-medical applications of optical manipulation allowing

scientists identified certain conditions, in which objects held by the "tractor" beam force-field, re-arranged themselves to form a structure which made the beam even stronger

Now some patients are getting such repairs for valves, irregular heartbeats, holes in the heart and other defects—without major surgery

Doctors even are testing ways to treat high blood pressure with some of these new approaches

Instead of opening the chest, we're able to put catheters in through the leg, sometimes through the arm

Many patients after having this kind of procedure in a day or two can go home

It may lead to cheaper treatment, although the initial cost of the novel devices often offsets the savings from shorter hospital stays

Not everyone can have catheter treatment, and some promising devices have hit snags in testing

Others on the market now are so new that it will take several years to see if their results last as long as the benefits from surgery do.

these procedures have allowed many people too old or frail for an operation to get help for problems that otherwise would likely kill them

You can do these on 90-year-old patients

also offer an option for people who cannot tolerate long-term use of blood thinners or other drugs to manage their conditions

Heart valves

Millions of people have leaky heart valves. Each year, more than 100,000 people in the United States alone have surgery for them

Without a valve replacement operation, half of these patients die within two years, yet many are too weak to have one.

just over a year ago,

Edwards Lifesciences Corp. won approval to sell an artificial aortic valve flexible and small enough to fit into a catheter and be wedged inside the bad one

At first it was just for inoperable patients. Last fall, use was expanded to include people able to have surgery but at high risk of complications.

Catheter-based treatments for other valves also are in testing. One for the mitral valve

mixed review by federal Food and Drug Administration advisers this week; whether it will win FDA approval is unclear. It is already sold in Europe

Heart rhythm problems

Catheters can contain tools to vaporize or "ablate" bits of heart tissue that cause abnormal signals that control the heartbeat

Now catheter ablation is being used for the most common rhythm problem—atrial fibrillation, which plagues about 3 million Americans and 15 million people worldwide.

Ablation addresses the underlying rhythm problem. To address the stroke risk from pooled blood, several novel devices aim to plug or seal off the pouch

The upper chambers of the heart quiver or beat too fast or too slow. That lets blood pool in a small pouch off one of these chambers

Clots can form in the pouch and travel to the brain, causing a stroke

a tiny lasso to cinch the pouch shut. It uses two catheters that act like chopsticks. One goes through a blood vessel and into the pouch to help guide placement of the device, which is contained in a second catheter poked under the ribs to the outside of the heart. A loop is released to circle the top of the pouch where it meets the heart, sealing off the pouch.

A different kind of device

sold in Europe and parts of Asia, but is pending before the FDA in the U.S

like a tiny umbrella pushed through a vein and then opened inside the heart to plug the troublesome pouch.

Early results from a pivotal study released by the company suggested it would miss a key goal, making its future in the U.S. uncertain.

Heart defects

St. Jude Medical Inc.'s Amplatzer is a fabric-mesh patch threaded through catheters to plug the hole

In two new studies, the device did not meet the main goal of lowering the risk of repeat strokes in people who had already suffered one, but some doctors were encouraged by other results

Сlogged arteries

The original catheter-based treatment—balloon angioplasty—is still used hundreds of thousands of times each year in the U.S. alone

A Japanese company, Terumo Corp., is one of the leaders of a new way to do it that is easier on patients—through a catheter in the arm rather than the groin

Newer stents that prop arteries open and then dissolve over time, aimed at reducing the risk of blood clots, also are in late-stage testing

High blood pressure

About

1 billion people worldwide have high blood pressure, a major risk factor for heart attacks

Researchers are testing a possible long-term fix for dangerously high pressure that can't be controlled with multiple medications.

uses a catheter and radio waves to zap nerves, located near the kidneys, which fuel high blood pressure

At least one device is approved in Europe and several companies are testing devices in the United States

Both problems have the same underlying defect: the inability to remove a buildup of fat and cholesterol

researchers shed new light on how deposits of cholesterol contribute to macular degeneration and atherosclerosis and even blood vessel growth in some types of cancer

Patients who have atherosclerosis often are prescribed medications to lower cholesterol and keep arteries clear

This study suggests that some of those same drugs could be evaluated in patients with macular degeneration

we need to investigate whether vision loss caused by macular degeneration could be prevented with cholesterol-lowering eye drops or other medications that might prevent the buildup of lipids beneath the retina

The new research centers on macrophages, key immune cells that remove cholesterol and fats from tissues

In macular degeneration, the excessive buildup of cholesterol begins to occur as we age, and our macrophages begin to malfunction

In the "dry" form of age-related macular degeneration, doctors examining the eye can see lipid deposits beneath the retina

As those deposits become larger and more numerous, they slowly begin to destroy the central part of the eye, interfering with the vision needed to read a book or drive a car

As aging macrophages clear fewer fat deposits beneath the retina, the macrophage cells themselves can become bloated with cholesterol, creating an inflammatory process that leads to the formation of new blood vessels that can cause further damage

Those vessels characterize the later "wet" form of the disease

that inflammation creates a toxic mix of things that leads to new blood vessel growth

Most of the vision loss

is the result of bleeding and scar-tissue formation related to abnormal vessel growth

the scientists identified a protein that macrophages need to clear fats and cholesterol

As mice and humans age, they make less of the protein, and macrophages become less effective at engulfing and removing fat and cholesterol

team found that macrophages, from old mice and in patients with macular degeneration, have inadequate levels of the protein, called ABCA1, which transports cholesterol out of cells

As a result, the old macrophages accumulated high levels of cholesterol and couldn't inhibit the growth of the damaging blood vessels

when the researchers treated the macrophages with a substance that helped restore levels of ABCA1, the cells could remove cholesterol more effectively, and the development of new blood vessels was slowed

able to deliver the drug, called an LXR agonist, in eye drops

found that we could reverse the macular degeneration in the eye of an old mouse

could focus therapy only on the eyes, and we likely could limit the side effects of drugs taken orally

since macrophages are important in atherosclerosis and in the formation of new blood vessels around certain types of cancerous tumors, the same pathway also might provide a target for more effective therapies for those diseases

can reverse the disease cascade in mice by improving macrophage function, either with eye drops or with systemic treatments,

Some of the therapies already being used to treat atherosclerosis target this same pathway, so we may be able to modify drugs that already are available and use them to deliver treatment to the eye

Not even Super Glue will stick in a fish aquarium because a layer of water forms that keeps the two surfaces from bonding

mussels somehow elbow the water aside and bind themselves to rocks anyway

Over 30 years, Waite’s team has uncovered the basis of this remarkable ability

parts of the proteins that face out toward the hard surface. It enables liquid holdfast proteins to solidify rapidly and stick flawlessly to wet and salty surfaces

If I were to list the desired properties for medical adhesives, they would look exactly the same

colleagues have created a synthetic, thread-like polymer called polyethylene glycol that mimics the mussel protein

To see if the compound worked in live animals, a veterinary surgeon collaborating with Messersmith's team made a 2.5-centimeter incision in the carotid artery of a dog and placed four stitches along the length of that incision to hold it in place

With the stitches alone, the incision bled when the surgeon pressed it.

just 20 seconds after the mussel-based glue was applied, the artery was sealed and didn’t bleed.

recently

team began testing its glue on fetal membranes

For the past few decades, surgeons have begun surgically repairing birth defects like spina bifida while a fetus is still in utero

the process is risky because the surgery risks rupturing the fetal membrane prematurely, sending the mother into premature labor.

There are no good adhesives on the market for surgeons to repair such fetal-membrane tears

in recent, unpublished experiments in rabbits, Messersmith and colleagues found that after a veterinary surgeon poked a 3.5-mm hole in the animal’s fetal membrane, the new, mussel-inspired glue readily sealed up the puncture

without the glue, only 40% of the fetal rabbits survived the surgery, but with the glue, 60% did.

In another recent result

researchers chemically altered the polyethylene glycol polymer so that the glue would shrink when it hardened

This could counter tissue swelling during surgery,

fetal surgeons working with Messersmith are testing whether the glue can help reseal the tissue surrounding the spinal cord to repair a serious birth defect known spinal bifida in rabbits

UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science

Working on the assumption that large groups of public non-experts can be trained to recognize infectious diseases with the accuracy of trained pathologists

School of Medicine at UCLA

found that a small group of non-experts playing the game (mostly undergraduate student volunteers) was collectively able to diagnosis malaria-infected red blood cells with an accuracy that was within 1.25 percent of the diagnostic decisions made by a trained medical professional.

The game, which can be accessed on cell phones and personal computers, can be played by anyone around the world, including children

if you carefully combine the decisions of people — even non-experts — they become very competitive

if you just look at one person's response, it may be OK, but that one person will inevitably make some mistakes. But if you combine 10 to 20, maybe 50 non-expert gamers together, you improve your accuracy greatly in terms of analysis

could potentially help overcome limitations in the diagnosis of malaria

current gold standard for malaria diagnosis involves a trained pathologist using a conventional light microscope to view images of cells and count the number of malaria-causing parasites

process is very time-consuming, and given the large number of cases in resource-poor countries, the sheer volume presents a big challenge

significant portion of cases reported in sub-Sahara Africa are actually false positives, leading to unnecessary and costly treatments and hospitalizations

t the same platform could be applied to combine the decisions of minimally trained health care workers to significantly boost the accuracy of diagnosis, which is especially promising for telepathology, among other telemedicine field

By training hundreds, and perhaps thousands, of members of the public to identify malaria through UCLA's crowd-sourced game, a much greater number of diagnoses could be made more quickly — at no cost and with a high degree of collective accurac

research group created an automated algorithm for diagnosing the same images using computer vision, as well as a novel hybrid platform for combining human and machine resources toward efficient, accurate and remote diagnosis of malaria.

Before playing the game, each player is given a brief online tutorial and an explanation of what malaria-infected red blood cells typically look like using sample images

one of the major challenges will be the skepticism of traditional microscopists, pathologists and clinical laboratory personnel, not to mention malaria experts, who will initially view with suspicion a gaming approach in malaria diagnostics

capturing such energy could lead to cheap, clean ways to sanitize a small container of water, for example, or to run a simple lab bench reaction

Scientists knew that bonds can break when mechanical force is applied to a polymer

breakage can generate free radicals, atoms with unpaired electrons that are eager to engage in further reactions

new work shows that when a polymer is squeezed in water, the free radicals migrate and react with the water, generating enough hydrogen peroxide to spur other reactions.

When the scientists added gold and silver metal salts to a PDMS tube filled with water, squeezing the tube powered reactions that generated gold and silver nanoparticles

also injected the sole of a Nike LeBron sneaker with water and a compound that fluoresces when it is cleaved

Half an hour of walking applied force to the polymers in the sneaker’s sole, and the resulting free radicals made enough hydrogen peroxide to cleave the fluorescing compound and make the sole glow. 

capturing and converting the mechanical energy of polymer squeezing into energy for driving reactions can be as efficient as 30 percent

comparable to some power plants that use coal.

PDMS is used in some medical devices such as catheters, and in some breast implants, raising the issue that normal wear in the body might generate free radicals that could cause inflammation and other problems

adding an antioxidant such as vitamin E, which latches onto free radicals, to the implant ingredients might be a quick and easy way to

Some of the body’s immune cells, though, generate well more hydrogen peroxide than that generated by the polymers

the fact that enough free radicals are generated to drive reactions — which might even contribute to the breakdown of medical devices — is interesting, Tang says. “I don’t know how unique it is or material-specific, but it could have potential importance.”

The greater the glow, the more of the biomarker is present.

if the amount of biomarker is too small, the fluorescent light is too faint to be detected, setting the limit of detection

major goal in immunoassay research is to improve the detection limit.

involves a common biological test called an immunoassay, which mimics the action of the immune system to detect the presence of biomarkers

When biomarkers are present

the immunoassay test produces a fluorescent glow (light) that can be measured in a laboratory

tackled this limitation by using nanotechnology to greatly amplify the faint fluorescence from a sample

fashioning glass and gold structures so small they could only be seen with a powerful electron microscope

able to drastically increase the fluorescence signal compared to conventional immunoassays, leading to a 3-million-fold improvement in the limit of detection

key to the breakthrough lies in a new artificial nanomaterial called D2PA

a thin layer of gold nanostructures surrounded glass pillars just 60 nanometers in diameter.

A nanometer is one billionth of a meter; that means about 1,000 of the pillars laid side by side would be as wide as a human hair.

e pillars are spaced 200 nanometers apart and capped with a disk of gold on each pillar

sides of each pillar are speckled with even tinier gold dots about 10 to 15 nanometers in diameter

a sample such as blood, saliva or urine is taken from a patient and added to small glass vials containing antibodies that are designed to "capture" or bind to biomarkers of interest in the sample

Another set of antibodies that have been labeled with a fluorescent molecule are then added to the mix

biomarkers are not present in the vials

fluorescent detection antibodies do not attach to anything and are washed away

immunoassays are commonly used in drug discovery and other biological research.

plays a significant role in other areas of chemistry and engineering, from light-emitting displays to solar energy harvesting

made the findings in mice, whose brains are remarkably similar to the human brain

Scientists have known that cerebrospinal fluid or CSF plays an important role cleansing brain tissue, carrying away waste products and carrying nutrients to brain tissue through a process known as diffusion

The newly discovered system circulates CSF to every corner of the brain much more efficiently, through what scientists call bulk flow or convection

It's as if the brain has two garbage haulers – a slow one that we've known about, and a fast one that we've just met

How has this system eluded the notice of scientists up to now

the system operates only when it's intact and operating in the living brain, making it very difficult to study

study the living, whole brain, the team used a technology known as two-photon microscopy, which allows scientists to look at the flow of blood, CSF and other substances in the brain of a living animal

If the glymphatic system fails to cleanse the brain as it is meant to, either as a consequence of normal aging, or in response to brain injury, waste may begin to accumulate in the brain. This may be what is happening with amyloid deposits in Alzheimer's disease

Perhaps increasing the activity of the glymphatic system might help prevent amyloid deposition from building up or could offer a new way to clean out buildups of the material in established Alzheimer's disease

took an in-depth look at amyloid beta

found that more than half the amyloid removed from the brain of a mouse under normal conditions is removed via the glymphatic system

RevMedx recently asked the FDA to approve a pocket-size invention: a modified syringe that injects specially coated sponges into wounds

XStat, the device could boost survival

by plugging wounds faster and more efficiently than gauze. 

early efforts were inspired by Fix-a-Flat foam for repairing tires

They bought some ordinary sponges from a hardware store and cut them into 1-centimeter circles

Then, they injected the bits of sponge into an animal injury

After seeing early prototypes, the U.S. Army gave the team $5 million to develop a finished product

The final material would need to be sterile, biocompatible, and fast-expanding

The team settled on a sponge made from wood pulp and coated with chitosan, a blood-clotting, antimicrobial substance that comes from shrimp shells

To ensure that no sponges would be left inside the body accidentally, they added X-shaped markers that make each sponge visible on an x-ray image.

In just 15 seconds, they expand to fill the entire wound cavity, creating enough pressure to stop heavy bleeding

Getting the sponges into a wound,

proved to be tricky.

RevMedx needed a lightweight, compact way to get the sponges deep into an injury

30 millimeter-diameter, polycarbonate syringe that stores with the handle inside to save space

To use the applicator, a medic pulls out the handle, inserts the cylinder into the wound, and then pushes the plunger back down to inject the sponges as close to the artery as possible.

Three single-use XStat applicators would replace five bulky rolls of gauze in a medic’s kit

RevMedx also designed a smaller version of the applicator, with a diameter of 12 millimeters, for narrower injuries

Each XStat will likely cost about $100, Steinbaugh says, but the price may go down as RevMedx boosts manufacturing

When RevMedx submitted its application to the FDA, the U.S. Army attached a cover letter requesting expedited approval

In the future, RevMedx hopes to create biodegradable sponges that don’t have to be removed from the body

To cover large injuries, like those caused by land mines, the team is working on an expanding gauze made of the same material as XStat sponges

17 January – NASA announces that the Kepler space observatory has developed a reaction wheel issue

2 January A study by Caltech astronomers reports that the Milky Way Galaxy contains at least one planet per sta

3 January

8 January

20 January – Scientists prove that quadruple-helix DNA is present in human cells

25 January

An international team of scientists develops a functional light-based "tractor beam", which allows individual cells to be selected and moved at will. The invention could have broad applications in medicine and microbiology

30 January – South Korea conducts its first successful orbital launch

6 February

Astronomers report that 6% of all dwarf stars – the most common stars in the known universe – may host Earthlike planets

Scientists discover live bacteria in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Whillans

American scientists finish drilling down to the subglacial Lake Whillans, which is buried around 1 kilometre (0.62 mi) under the Antarctic ice

10 February NASA's Curiosity Mars rover uses its onboard drill to obtain the first deep rock sample ever retrieved from the surface of another plane

15 February A 10-ton meteoroid impacts in Chelyabinsk, Russia, producing a powerful shockwave and injuring over 1,000 people

28 February

Astronomers make the first direct observation of a protoplanet forming in a disk of gas and dust around a distant sta

A third radiation belt is discovered around the Eart

1 March – Boston Dynamics demonstrates an updated version of its BigDog military robot

3 March – American scientists report that they have cured HIV in an infant by giving the child a course of antiretroviral drugs very early in its life. The previously HIV-positive child has reportedly exhibited no HIV symptoms since its treatment, despite having no further medication for a year

researchers replace 75 percent of an injured patient's skull with a precision 3D-printed polymer replacement implant. In future, damaged bones may routinely be replaced with custom-manufactured implants

7 March

A study concludes that heart disease was common among ancient mummies

11 March

12 March NASA's Curiosity rover finds evidence that conditions on Mars were once suitable for microbial life after analyzing the first drilled sample of Martian rock, "John Klein" rock at Yellowknife Bay in Gale Crater. The rover detected water, carbon dioxide, oxygen, sulfur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, chloromethane and dichloromethane. Related tests found results consistent with the presence of smectite clay minerals

14 March CERN scientists confirm, with a very high degree of certainty, that a new particle identified by the Large Hadron Collider in July 2012 is the long-sought Higgs boson

18 March

NASA reports evidence from the Curiosity rover on Mars of mineral hydration, likely hydrated calcium sulfate, in several rock samples, including the broken fragments of "Tintina" rock and "Sutton Inlier" rock as well as in the veins and nodules in other rocks like "Knorr" rock and "Wernicke" rock.[177] Analysis using the rover's DAN instrument provided evidence of subsurface water, amounting to as much as 4% water content, down to a depth of 60 cm

27 March – A potential new weight loss method is discovered, after a 20% weight reduction was achieved in mice simply by having their gut microbes altered.

NASA scientists report that hints of dark matter may have been detected by the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer on the International Space Station

3 April

15 April A functional lab-grown kidney is successfully transplanted into a live rat in Massachusetts General Hospital

18 April – NASA announces the discovery of three new Earthlike exoplanets – Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f, and Kepler-69c – in the habitable zones of their respective host stars, Kepler-62 and Kepler-69. The new exoplanets, which are considered prime candidates for possessing liquid water and thus potentially life, were identified using the Kepler spacecraft

21 April The Antares rocket, a commercial launch vehicle developed by Orbital Sciences Corporation, successfully conducts its maiden flight

After years of unpowered glide tests, Scaled Composites' SpaceShipTwo hybrid spaceplane successfully conducts its first rocket-powered fligh

29 April

1 May IBM scientists release A Boy and His Atom, the smallest stop-motion animation ever created, made by manipulating individual carbon monoxide molecules with a scanning tunnelling microscope

A new study finds that children whose parents suck on their pacifiers have fewer allergies later in life

NASA reports that a reaction wheel on the Kepler space observatory may be malfunctioning and may result in the premature termination of the observatory's search for Earth-like

15 May

16 May Water dating back 2.6 billion years, by far the oldest ever found, is discovered in a Canadian mine

27 May Four-hundred-year-old bryophyte specimens left behind by retreating glaciers in Canada are brought back to life in the laboratory

29 May

Russian scientists announce the discovery of mammoth blood and well-preserved muscle tissue from an adult female specimen in Siberia

A new treatment to "reset" the immune system of multiple sclerosis patients is reported to reduce their reactivity to myelin by 50 to 75 percent

4 June

During the Shenzhou 10 mission, Chinese astronauts deliver the country's first public video broadcast from the orbiting Tiangong-1 space laboratory

20 June

China's Shenzhou 10 manned spacecraft returns safely to Earth, having conducted China's longest manned space mission to date

26 June

20 June

20 June

6 July

Scientists report that a wide variety of microbial life exists in the subglacial Antarctic Lake Vostok, which has been buried in ice for around 15 million years. Samples of the lake's water obtained by drilling were found to contain traces of DNA from over 3,000 tiny organisms

15 July

ASA engineers successfully test a rocket engine with a fully 3D-printed injector

19 July

NASA scientists publish the results of a new analysis of the atmosphere of Mars, reporting a lack of methane around the landing site of the Curiosity rover

Earth is photographed from the outer solar system. NASA's Cassini spacecraft releases images of the Earth and Moon taken from the orbit of Saturn

29 July – Astronomers discover the first exoplanet orbiting a brown dwarf, 6,000 light years from Earth

exoplanet

7 January

Astronomers

report that "at least 17 billion" Earth-sized exoplanets are estimated to reside in the Milky Way Galaxy

20 February