Artificial

Bioartificial kidney under study at MCG

Whether a bioartificial kidney containing billions of donor kidney cells will help intensive care patients with kidney failure survive is under study at the Medical College of Georgia. MCG Medical Center has joined a study taking place in intensive care units across the country to evaluate the efficacy of the renal assist device, says Dr. Harold M. Szerlip, MCG nephrologist specializing i...

Ophthalmologists Use Artificial Silicon Retina Microchip To Treat Vision Loss

Ophthalmologists at Rush University Medical Center implanted Artificial Silicon Retina (ASR) microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The implant is a silicon microchip 2mm in diameter and one-thousandth of an inch thick, less than the thickness of a human hair. Four patients had surgery Tuesday, January 25. The fifth patient is sch...

Ophthalmologists implant five patients with artificial silicon retina microchip

Ophthalmologists at Rush University Medical Center implanted Artificial Silicon Retina (ASR) microchips in the eyes of five patients to treat vision loss caused by retinitis pigmentosa (RP). The implant is a silicon microchip 2mm in diameter and one-thousandth of an inch thick, less than the thickness of a human hair. Four patients had surgery Tuesday, January 25. The fifth patient is sch...

UCSD medical/bioengineering reseachers show titanium debris satobtage artificial joints

Microscopic titanium particles weaken the bonding of hip, knee, and other joint replacements, according to research published online in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by researchers at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) School of Medicine and the Jacobs School of Engineering. The team demonstrated that titanium implants are safe in large blocks, but at the microscopic...

Bad aftertaste? New sensory on/off switch may 'cure' bane of artificial sweetener search

Chemistry and biology researchers at Virginia Tech have enhanced the abilities of the molecules they are creating to deliver killing blows to cancer cells. The man-made molecular complexes enter cancer cells and, when signaled, deliver killing medicine or cause the cell to change. The new supermolecules have more units that will absorb light - providing more control over the range of light freque...

Researchers create functioning artificial proteins using nature's rules

By examining how proteins have evolved, UT Southwestern Medical Center researchers have discovered a set of simple "rules" that nature appears to use to design proteins, rules the scientists have now employed to create artificial proteins that look and function just like their natural counterparts. In two papers appearing in the Sept. 22 issue of the journal Nature, Dr. Rama Ranganathan, a...

UC Berkeley researchers create a biologically-inspired artificial compound eye

Using the eyes of insects such as dragonflies and houseflies as models, a team of bioengineers at University of California, Berkeley, has created a series of artificial compound eyes. These eyes can eventually be used as cameras or sensory detectors to capture visual or chemical information from a wider field of vision than previously possible, even with the best fish-eye lens, said Luke P...

New Research Shows Artificial Light at Night Stimulates Breast Cancer Growth in Laboratory Mice

Results from a new study in laboratory mice show that nighttime exposure to artificial light stimulated the growth of human breast tumors by suppressing the levels of a key hormone called melatonin. The study also showed that extended periods of nighttime darkness greatly slowed the growth of these tumors. The study results might explain why female night shift workers have a higher rate of...

Secrets of the sea yield stronger artificial bone

The next generation of artificial bone may rely on a few secrets from the sea. Scientists from the U.S. Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have harnessed the way seawater freezes to develop a porous, scaffolding-like material that is four times stronger than material currently used in synthetic bone. Although still in the investigational stages, var...

Stimulation of the semicircular canals can artificially control human walking and balance

By applying electrical currents across the heads of people while they walk, researchers have improved our understanding of how our vestibular system helps us maintain upright posture; at the same time, the researchers found that the stimulus could be applied in a way that allowed a person who was walking straight ahead to be steered by "remote control" without her balance being affected. The find...

Bacteria could make new library of cancer drugs that are too complex to create artificially

Researchers at the University of Warwick are examining a way of using bacteria to manufacture a new suite of potential anti-cancer drugs that are difficult to create synthetically on a lab bench. This group of antibiotics has stimulated much recent interest as they can be used to target and k...

An artificial cornea is in sight, thanks to biomimetic hydrogels

If eyes are "the windows of the soul," corneas are the panes in those windows. They shield the eye from dust and germs. They also act as the eye's outermost lens, contributing up to 75 percent of the eye's focusing power. On Sept. 11 in San Francisco at the annual meeting of the American Chemical Society, chemical engineer Curtis W. Frank will present a novel biomimetic material that's finding it...

Artificial cornea offers better results for infants, some blind patients

Infants and adults who are blind due to a cloudy or damaged cornea are seeing some remarkable results thanks to a new version of an artificial implant that takes the place of the cornea, the clear covering of the eye that serves as our window on the world. The results of operations involving the first infants and children in the world to receive the device, performed by physicians at the U...

Hair-growth drug artificially lowers PSA levels in prostate cancer screening, study finds

The popular hair-growth drug finasteride, taken by millions of balding men, artificially lowers the results of the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test, the standard screening test for prostate cancer, a multicenter study has found. The study, involving 308 men ranging in age from 40 to 60 years old, is available online in the British medical journal The Lancet and is scheduled to be publ...

Mechanical 'artificial hearts' can remove need for heart transplant by returning heart to normal

Mechanical 'artificial hearts' can be used to return severely failing hearts to their normal function, potentially removing the need for heart transplantation, according to new research. The mechanical devices, known as Left Ventricular Assist Devices (LVADs), are currently used in patients with very severe heart failure whilst they await transplantation. The new study, published in the Ne...

Researchers create artificial enzyme that mimics the body's internal engine

The protein cytochrome c oxidase (CcO) is the ultimate enzyme responsible for all aerobic life on Earth, from bacteria to people. It is also a crucial component of the cellular machinery that generates energy in our body. With such impressive credentials, you might expect that scientists would have a clear understanding of how CcO works. But they don't, according to James P. Collman, professor em...

Progress toward artificial photosynthesis?

Plants can do it: they simply grab carbon dioxide out of the air and covert it into biomass. In this process, known as photosynthesis, the plants use light as their energy source. Chemists would also like to be able to use CO2 as a carbon source for their synthetic reactions, but it doesn’t work just like that. A team headed by Markus Antonietti at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interf...

Scientists develope a new model of artificial canine skin

Researchers at UNIVET, a spin-off of the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, in cooperation with the animal nutrition company Affinity Petcare, have developed an artificial cellular model which faithfully reproduces the characteristics of dog’s skin and which will allow, therefore, the carrying out of various lines of research related to skin biology and pathology without the need to use live anim...