RapidArc : Latest in Radiation Technology For The Treatment Of Caner
RapidArc, a new type of radiation treatment for Cancers is the latest technology from Varian Medical Systems. This wonderful health breakthrough technology has first been put into use in Central New York at Syracuse Radiation Oncology with great results.
In RapidArc Technology, the machine rotates around the patient and in less than two minutes it blasts the cancer cells with radiation. Whereas in conventional radiotherapy treatment which is traditionally being used since long it requires to lie still for about 15-20 minutes during which, even a shall shift in the position may guide the radiation off target causing serious problems to the health tissue. Thus, due to its high speed treatment capability RapidArc reduces the risk of the radiation missing the target.
Moreover, as the unit can rotate to each angle, it constantly changes the shape of the beam to conform to the shape of the area that needs to receive radiation, while at the same time sparing the surrounding critical tissue. So it is best suited to eliminate cancers that are close to delicate organs like prostate, pancreas, bladder etc., With the treatments that are precise & 2-8 times faster than conventional radiotherapy, this Wonderful Technology has considerably improved the quality of care and patient comfort during treatment.
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Phantom Omni Haptic Device
Blind people or those having poor eye sight cannot learn alphabet as easily as others do by copy writing. For those guys someone has to make them write and with the movement of the hand they can learn. This herculean task is now made easy by a RoboPen named PHANTOM OMNI.
Its a Haptic device which simulates a pen in 3D free space with the help of a software called VTK Designer.It is developed by SensAble Technologies which is a company evolved from undergraduate research done at MIT in the 1990s by industry pioneers Thomas Massie and Dr. Kenneth Salisbury, and is headquartered in Woburn, MA. It can be well used to guide the hands of the blind to make them learn not only alphabet but any piece of drawing. When tested on 8 blind students, within 20min of practice they could easily write.
In the real world the user holds in his/her hand a pen attached to a mechanical arm placed on the top of the desk. The arm design enables the user to maneuver without being disturbed by the equipment weight.The physical pen being held by the user is translated into its virtual counterpart rendered on the screen.The virtual pen follows the movements of the physical one and when the virtual pen collides with virtual objects appropriate forces are sent to the physical pen and its guides the user accordingly. It can also alarm the user by sending audio signals on how and where to steer the pen.
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Its a Haptic device which simulates a pen in 3D free space with the help of a software called VTK Designer.It is developed by SensAble Technologies which is a company evolved from undergraduate research done at MIT in the 1990s by industry pioneers Thomas Massie and Dr. Kenneth Salisbury, and is headquartered in Woburn, MA. It can be well used to guide the hands of the blind to make them learn not only alphabet but any piece of drawing. When tested on 8 blind students, within 20min of practice they could easily write.In the real world the user holds in his/her hand a pen attached to a mechanical arm placed on the top of the desk. The arm design enables the user to maneuver without being disturbed by the equipment weight.The physical pen being held by the user is translated into its virtual counterpart rendered on the screen.The virtual pen follows the movements of the physical one and when the virtual pen collides with virtual objects appropriate forces are sent to the physical pen and its guides the user accordingly. It can also alarm the user by sending audio signals on how and where to steer the pen.
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Warning signs: Vista Therapeutics is commercializing nanowire sensors for detecting early warnings of organ failure in trauma patients. Arrays of silicon nanowires like those on the chips above can detect individual proteins in unprocessed blood samples. The nanowires are labeled with antibodies, greenish-gray blobs in the chip image at right. The antibodies are also visible in the fluorescent images at left.Credit: Vista Therapeutics
Physicians often test the levels of a few telltale blood proteins in seriously injured or ill patients to detect organ failure and other problems. Now Vista Therapeutics, a startup based in Santa Fe, NM, hopes to improve the care of these patients with sensitive devices for continuous bedside monitoring of such blood biomarkers. Instead of taking daily snapshots of the patient's levels of blood proteins, the company's nanosensors should allow for continuous monitoring of changes that occur over periods of only a few hours.
Spencer Farr, CEO of Vista Therapeutics, says that the first application of the technology will be for careful monitoring of patients whose status can change rapidly--such as those in the ICU after suffering a heart attack or traumatic injuries from a car accident. "We envision having a branch in the patient's IV that tests continuously or every five to ten minutes," says Farr. The nanowires are sensitive enough that they should be able to detect trace biomarkers that diffuse into the IV line from the blood. After a car wreck, for example, patients could be closely monitored for molecular warning signs of impending kidney and other organ failure.
To make the detectors, Vista Therapeutics has licensed nanowire sensing technologies developed by Harvard University chemist Charles Lieber. Silicon nanowires, semiconducting wires as thin as two nanometers, have what Lieber calls the "ultimate sensitivity," even with completely unprocessed samples such as blood. When a single protein binds to an antibody along the wire, the current flowing through the wire changes. Arrays of hundreds of nanowires, each designed to detect a different molecule in the same sample, can be arranged on tiny, inexpensive chips. The changes can be monitored continuously as molecules bind and unbind, making it possible to detect subtle trends over time, without requiring multiple blood draws.
The standard protein-detection technique, ELISA, is very sensitive but, Farr says, takes 90 minutes to perform. It starts with a blood draw that must be extensively processed--first to purify the proteins, then to label them with fluorescent dyes--and then tested with expensive imaging equipment in a hospital lab. "ELISA is a powerful technology for one-time measurements," says Farr, "but there's no existing technology for continuous biomarker measurement."
The sensitivity of nanowire detectors should also open up the possibility of finding new biomarkers. The blood biomarkers that doctors routinely test for--including prostate-specific antigen for cancer screening and c-reactive protein, a sign of heart failure--can be monitored with ELISA because their levels change over days or weeks. Because nanowire sensors allow for extremely sensitive, continuous monitoring, they should allow doctors to monitor the levels of blood proteins and other molecules whose concentration changes over a much shorter timescale. Changes in these biomarkers are currently undetectable. "We expect we'll be able to include those that change rapidly, peaking within a matter of a few hours," says Farr. Because it hasn't been practical to make such measurements before, it's not clear just what these biomarkers will be, but Farr hopes that Vista will uncover them.
Initially, Vista will market clinical devices for monitoring known biomarkers in IV lines. In the future, the company might develop implantable chips for patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes. A nanowire chip in an artery in the wrist might continuously monitor blood glucose and proteins indicative of early liver damage and other diabetic complications. The device could send alerts to a wristwatch. Because nanowires are so sensitive and inexpensive, they could also find their way into home tests for cancer, where early detection is key, says Farr.
via [technologyreview]
Newly discovered genetic variations could predict who needs more folic acid and can impair an enzyme whose malfunction has been linked to birth defects and heart disease--but added nutrients can reverse the effect, according to new research. The findings could signify a step forward for nutrigenomics, a growing field examining how our diet and genes interact to affect our health. Scientists hope that nutrigenomics research will one day help people overcome some of their genetic foibles with personally tailored cocktails of vitamins. The daily vitamin dosages recommended by the U.S. Department of Agriculture "are based on studies done 60 years ago, and are based on the assumption that everyone is biochemically the same," says Nick Marini, a biologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the new research in collaboration with Jasper Rine, another Berkeley biologist. "We also think compliance would be better if an individual knew they personally needed more of a particular vitamin."
The human genome codes for approximately 600 enzymes that must interact with vitamins or minerals in order to function properly. Scientists have known for years that some rare and severe metabolic disorders, caused by misspellings in the genes for vitamin-dependant enzymes, can be treated with vitamins. But research linking such genetic variations to more subtle health effects, which might affect a much broader swath of the population, is only just beginning.
And here is the rest of it.
In a pilot study published in June, scientists focused on an enzyme called MTHFR, or methylenetetrahydrofolate reductase, which converts the B vitamin folate (also called folic acid) from one form into another. Folate plays many roles in maintaining human health: it's been linked to preterm birth and birth defects, as well as to cardiovascular disease, stroke, and colorectal cancer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration mandated the addition of the vitamin to cereals and other grains in 1993.
Previous research suggested that variations in the MTHFR enzyme may make some people more susceptible to the effects of folate deficiency. A common genetic variant that produces a weakened version of the enzyme increases risk of birth defects and possibly of heart disease, although it's not clear why. About 12 percent of people of European descent have two copies of that variation.
Marini and his colleagues sequenced the MTHFR gene in 564 people of different ethnicities and found four new variants that also impair enzyme function. In a unique step, the researchers then rigged a molecular system to measure how efficiently the different forms of the enzyme could churn out their molecular products. They added the human gene sequences to yeast cells, which were engineered such that their growth rate depended on how well the enzyme was working. Three of those sequences performed poorly: the yeast cells containing them grew more slowly than their counterparts when fed limited amounts of folate. But the same yeast grew at normal rates when given the vitamin in excess, suggesting that higher doses of folate might help people who are genetically susceptible to health problems linked to B-vitamin deficiency. The findings were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Continue Reading...
