Ash Scientific

Researchers Make Fuel from Water, Visible Light Efficient

Mimicking photosynthesis is not easy. The bottleneck of artificial photosynthesis is visible light, because converting it into other forms of energy is not efficient. Researchers at Michigan Technological University have found a way to solve this issue, leading to an efficient technique to produce hydrogen fuel. Last week, the Journal of Physical Chemistry published their work.

The technique was developed by Yun Hang Hu, the Charles and Carroll McArthur professor of Materials Science and Engineer, and his PhD student, Bing Han, at Michigan Tech.

A Transformational Leap Toward Precision Medicine

It wouldn’t be crazy to believe a new era in health and longevity is starting based on research coming out nearly every week, which highlights the power of bringing big data analytics, genetics, clinical testing and biotechnology together. 

Scientists recently revealed that applying computer science to more than 15,000 electronic medical records had revealed a way to predict more than a day in advance when a patient was likely to suffer potentially deadly septic shock. Others have used massive amounts of data from an entire country’s population to uncover the connections between the appearance of seemingly unrelated traits with later disease development. Examples abound.

Now biomedical researchers at the University of California, San Francisco say your gut reaction to the expanding volume of discovery isn’t wrong–the world is indeed on the cusp of a healthcare revolution. That revolution will occur thanks to precision medicine, a computer-driven approach to organizing and synthesizing all the available biomedical information. Learn more and see an infographic below.

Food Genomes & Food Safety

Material May Be Key to Super-long-acting Pills

Medical devices designed to reside in the stomach have a variety of applications, including prolonged drug delivery, electronic monitoring and weight-loss intervention. However, these devices, often created with nondegradable elastic polymers, bear an inherent risk of intestinal obstruction as a result of accidental fracture or migration. As such, they are usually designed to remain in the stomach for a limited time.

Now, researchers at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research and Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) have created a polymer gel that overcomes this safety concern and could allow for the development of long-acting devices that reside in the stomach, including orally delivered capsules that can release drugs over a number of days, weeks or, potentially, months following a single administration.

DNA and Light Detect Cancer in the Brain, Head and Neck

Two advances in detection technologies coming out of Johns Hopkins Medicine could soon up the odds of surviving cancers of the brain, head and neck. 

In one breakthrough, researchers have employed an imaging technique that uses safe near-infrared light to differentiate between healthy brain tissue and that which has become cancerous. They hope to advance their work so that neurosurgeons can see 3-D color-coded maps of patient brains while they are performing surgery to more accurately remove tumors.

In another, scientists were able to detect tumor DNA in the saliva and blood of people suffering from head and neck cancers. In diagnostic tests using both body fluids, they were able to successfully identify cancers in 96 percent of patients. 

The Evolution of Medicine

Researchers use laser beams to create molecules - Could allow for new molecular engineering opportunities