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Category: biotech/medical – Page 2,584

A Delivery Drone’s Home: Here’s Matternet’s Idea For The Kind Of Docking Station That Could End Up On Your Block

If drone delivery companies get to shape city streets to their liking, the curbside array of lamp posts, garbage cans and free magazine distribution boxes will be joined someday by docking stations for their aircraft. Matternet on Tuesday unveiled a 10-foot tall kiosk three years in the making that’s designed to safely integrate its medical delivery drones into urban environments — and to drastically reduce the number of employees the startup needs and achieve a breakthrough on costs.

Plenty of companies have developed docking stations for recharging drones and to shelter them when they’re idle. Matternet could be the first to field a system that automatically handles cargo.

After its M2 drone enters through the top and docks, the station loads and unloads payload boxes, swap batteries and assesses the condition of the drone. Medical workers will be able to retrieve and drop off boxes through a hatch after scanning their IDs.

Experts: Rapid testing helps explain few German virus deaths

BERLIN (AP) — Germany has confirmed more than 1,100 cases of the new coronavirus but — so far — just two deaths, far fewer than other European countries with a similar number of reported infections.

Experts said Monday that rapid testing as the outbreak unfolded meant Germany has probably diagnosed a much larger proportion of those who have been infected, including younger patients who are less likely to develop serious complications.

That’s given authorities more chance of containing the virus, and more time to prepare for it.

Coronavirus ‘worse than a bomb’ on Italy, says doctor coordinating response

Giacomo Grasselli — a senior Italian government health official who is coordinating the network of intensive care units in Lombardy — explains the “critical” situation in Italy, brought about by the Covid-19 outbreak (Subscribe: https://bit.ly/C4_News_Subscribe)

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NASA center in California issues mandatory work-from-home order after employee tests positive for coronavirus

NASA’s Ames Research Center in California has issued a mandatory policy for employees to work from home after one worker tested positive for the coronavirus responsible for COVID-19.

The research center, which is located in Moffett Field in the Silicon Valley, has been placed on restricted access after the employee was confirmed to have the coronavirus on Sunday (March 8).

Scientists single out gene that triggers aging symptoms

Circa 2018 we need crispr pills for this.

The steady march of aging might not have to be so steady, according to a growing body of research. Now a team from the University at Buffalo has isolated a single gene that controls senescence, the process that stops cells from dividing and contributes to aging symptoms. Ramping it up, they found how easily the effect can spread among neighboring cells. That makes the gene a crucial target for future work into anti-aging and cancer therapies.

Living cells have a natural limit to the amount of times they can divide, before they stop and become what are known as senescent cells. The problem is, over time these senescent cells build up in the body, eventually contributing to the physical symptoms we associate with aging, such as increased risk of diabetes, heart disease, arthritis and cataracts. On the other hand though, completely halting senescence can lead to cancer, as the cells continue to divide unchecked.

Realizing this mechanism, scientists have been developing ways to clear out these senescent cells, including a new class of drugs known as senolytics. In tests, these drugs have been found to extend the lifespan of mice by up to an impressive 35 percent, and keep them in better health for longer.

Econogenomics: The Economics of Genomic Testing for Health

Let’s say it was possible to buy your health by the day. How much would you be willing to pay for each year of perfect health? What if you could buy years of health for your loved ones, too? At what price point would you draw the line?

This sort of difficult calculus, on a much larger and chronologically longer scale, underpins many decisions we make in medicine — not just decisions that we make as patients, but also the decisions that are made for us by employers, health insurance funders and policymakers. We don’t have the resources to pursue every possible treatment, to research every possible breakthrough, so how do we allocate the resources available? It turns out that there is an entire field of healthcare economics devoted to understanding the costs and benefits of conventional medicine, and to navigating the trade-offs between more expense and better healthcare.

Determining the costs and benefits of new areas like genomic medicine is especially tricky, because we have so much less experience in these areas, and even experts cannot yet fully agree on the spectrum of harms and benefits.

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