An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: Scientists have witnessed brain patterns in dying patients that may correlate to commonly reported "near-death" experiences (NDEs) such as lucid visions, out-of-body sensations, a review of one's own life, and other "dimensions of reality," reports a new study. The results offer the first comprehensive evidence that patient recollections and brain waves point to universal elements of NDEs. During an expansive multi-year study led by Sam Parnia, an intensive care doctor and an associate professor in the department of medicine at NYU Langone Health, researchers observed 567 patients in 25 hospitals around the world as they underwent cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) after suffering cardiac arrest, most of which were fatal.

Electroencephalogram (EEG) brain signals captured from dozens of the patients revealed that episodes of heightened consciousness occurred up to an hour after cardiac arrest. Though most of the patients in the study were sadly not resuscitated by CPR, 53 patients were brought back to life. Of the survivors, 11 patients reported a sense of awareness during CPR and six reported a near-death experience. Parnia and his colleagues suggest that the transition from life to death can trigger a state of disinhibition in the brain that "appears to facilitate lucid understanding of new dimensions of reality -- including people's deeper consciousness -- all memories, thoughts, intentions and actions towards others from a moral and ethical perspective," a finding with profound implications for CPR research, end-of-life care, and consciousness, among other fields, according to a new study published in Resuscitation. [...]

"One of the things that was unique about this project is that this was the first time ever where scientists had put together a method to examine for signs of lucidity and consciousness in people as they're being revived by looking for brain markers, or brain signatures of consciousness, using an EEG device as well as a brain oxygen monitor," Parnia explained. "Most doctors are taught and believe that the brain dies after about five or 10 minutes of oxygen deprivation," Parnia said. "One of the key points that comes out of this study is that that is actually not true. Although the brain flatlines after the heart stops, and that happens within seconds, it doesn't mean that it's permanently damaged and [has] died. It's just hibernating. What we were able to show is that actually, the brain can respond and restore function again, even after an hour later, which opens up a whole window of opportunity for doctors to start new treatments." Indeed, the study reports that "near-normal/physiological EEG activity (delta, theta, alpha, beta rhythms) consistent with consciousness and a possible resumption of a network-level of cognitive and neuronal activity emerged up to 35-60 minutes into CPR. This is the first report of biomarkers of consciousness during CA/CPR."

Michelle Butterfield writes via Global News: A team of scientists, led by a Japanese pharmaceutical startup, are getting set to start human trials on a new drug that has successfully grown new teeth in animal test subjects. Toregem Biopharma is slated to begin clinical trials in July of next year after it succeeded growing new teeth in mice five years ago, the Japan Times reports. Dr. Katsu Takahashi, a lead researcher on the project and head of the dentistry and oral surgery department at the Medical Research Institute Kitano Hospital, says "the idea of growing new teeth is every dentist's dream."

In his research, which he's been conducting at Kyoto University since 2005, Takahashi learned of a particular gene in mice that affects the growth of their teeth. The antibody for this gene, USAG-1, can help stimulate tooth growth if it is suppressed -- and scientists have since worked to develop a "neutralizing antibody medicine" that is able to block USAG-1. Now, his team has been testing the theory that "blocking" this protein could grow more teeth. After their successful tests on mice, the team went on to perform similarly positive trials on ferrets -- animals who have a similar dental pattern to humans.

Now, testing will turn to healthy adult humans and, if all goes well, the team plans to hold a clinical trial for the drug from 2025 for children between two and six years old with anodontia -- a rare genetic disorder that results in the absence of six or more baby and/or adult teeth. According to the Japan Times, the children involved in the clinical trial will be injected with one dose of the drug to see if it induces teeth growth. If successful, the medicine could be available for regulatory approval by 2030.

Since 1999, Slashdot has been covering the annual Ig Nobel prize ceremonies — which honor real scientific research into strange or surprising subjects. "Each winner (or winning team) has done something that makes people LAUGH, then THINK," explains the ceremony web page, promising that "a gaggle of genuine, genuinely bemused Nobel laureates handed the Ig Nobel Prizes to the new Ig Nobel winners." As co-founder Marc Abrahams says on his LinkedIn profile, "All these things celebrate the unusual, honor the imaginative — and spur people's interest in science, medicine, and technology."

You can watch this year's entire goofy webcast online. (At 50 minutes there's a jaw-droppingly weird music video about running on water...) Slashdot reader Thorfinn.au shares this summary of this year's winning research: CHEMISTRY and GEOLOGY PRIZE [POLAND, UK] — Jan Zalasiewicz, for explaining why many scientists like to lick rocks.

LITERATURE PRIZE [FRANCE, UK, MALAYSIA, FINLAND] — Chris Moulin, Nicole Bell, Merita Turunen, Arina Baharin, and Akira O'Connor for studying the sensations people feel when they repeat a single word many, many, many, many, many, many, many times.

MECHANICAL ENGINEERING PRIZE [INDIA, CHINA, MALAYSIA, USA] — Te Faye Yap, Zhen Liu, Anoop Rajappan, Trevor Shimokusu, and Daniel Preston, for re-animating dead spiders to use as mechanical gripping tools.

PUBLIC HEALTH PRIZE [SOUTH KOREA, USA] — Seung-min Park, for inventing the Stanford Toilet a computer vision system for defecation analysis et al.

COMMUNICATION PRIZE [ARGENTINA, SPAIN, COLOMBIA, CHILE, CHINA, USA] — María José Torres-Prioris, Diana López-Barroso, Estela Càmara, Sol Fittipaldi, Lucas Sedeño, Agustín Ibáñez, Marcelo Berthier, and Adolfo García, for studying the mental activities of people who are expert at speaking backward.

MEDICINE PRIZE [USA, CANADA, MACEDONIA, IRAN, VIETNAM] — Christine Pham, Bobak Hedayati, Kiana Hashemi, Ella Csuka, Tiana Mamaghani, Margit Juhasz, Jamie Wikenheiser, and Natasha Mesinkovska, for using cadavers to explore whether there is an equal number of hairs in each of a person's two nostrils.

NUTRITION PRIZE [JAPAN] — Homei Miyashita and Hiromi Nakamura, for experiments to determine how electrified chopsticks and drinking straws can change the taste of food.

EDUCATION PRIZE [HONG KONG, CHINA, CANADA, UK, THE NETHERLANDS, IRELAND, USA, JAPAN] — Katy Tam, Cyanea Poon, Victoria Hui, Wijnand van Tilburg, Christy Wong, Vivian Kwong, Gigi Yuen, and Christian Chan, for methodically studying the boredom of teachers and students.

PSYCHOLOGY PRIZE [USA] — Stanley Milgram, Leonard Bickman, and Lawrence Berkowitz for 1968 experiments on a city street to see how many passersby stop to look upward when they see strangers looking upward.

PHYSICS PRIZE [SPAIN, GALICIA, SWITZERLAND, FRANCE, UK] — Bieito Fernández Castro, Marian Peña, Enrique Nogueira, Miguel Gilcoto, Esperanza Broullón, Antonio Comesaña, Damien Bouffard, Alberto C. Naveira Garabato, and Beatriz Mouriño-Carballido, for measuring the extent to which ocean-water mixing is affected by the sexual activity of anchovies.

After manufacturing crystals of an HIV drug in space, the first orbital factory is stuck in orbit after being denied reentry back to Earth due to safety concerns. Gizmodo reports: The U.S. Air Force denied a request from Varda Space Industries to land its in-space manufacturing capsule at a Utah training area, while the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) did not grant the company permission to reenter Earth's atmosphere, leaving its spacecraft hanging as the company scrambles to find a solution, TechCrunch first reported. A spokesperson from the FAA told TechCrunch in an emailed statement that the company's request was not granted at this time "due to the overall safety, risk and impact analysis."

Gizmodo reached out to Varda Space to ask which regulatory requirements have not been met, but the company responded with a two-word email that ominously read, "no comment." The California-startup did provide an update on its spacecraft through X (formerly Twitter). "We're pleased to report that our spacecraft is healthy across all systems. It was originally designed for a full year on orbit if needed," Varda Space wrote on X. "We look forward to continuing to collaborate w/ our gov partners to bring our capsule back to Earth as soon as possible." Varda Space Industries launched its first test mission on June 12, "successfully sending a 200-pound (90-kilogram) capsule designed to carry drug research into Earth's orbit," reported CNN. "The experiment, conducted in microgravity by simple onboard machines, aims to test whether it would be possible to manufacture pharmaceuticals in space remotely."

Ian Wilmut, the British scientist who led the project that cloned a mammal for the first time, Dolly the sheep, died on Sunday at the age of 79. The Roslin Institute, a research center near Edinburgh where Dr. Wilmut had worked for decades, said in a statement that the cause was complications of Parkinson's disease. From the statement: Ian Wilmut was born near Stratford-upon-Avon before the family moved to Yorkshire. It was at school in Scarborough that he first became interested in biology. He went to the University of Nottingham, initially to study agriculture, later switching to animal science. His studies continued with a PhD and fellowship at the University of Cambridge, focused on the preservation of semen and embryos by freezing. This work led to the birth of Frostie, the first calf to be born from a frozen embryo.

Dr Wilmut then moved to the Animal Breeding Research Organisation (ABRO), near Edinburgh, the predecessor to the Roslin Institute. He continued to work with reproductive cells and embryos, and contributed to a project to make genetically modified sheep that could produce milk containing proteins used to treat human diseases. This highlighted that a new, more efficient method of developing sheep with these characteristics was needed. He led efforts to develop cloning, or nuclear transfer, techniques that could be used to make genetically modified sheep. It was these efforts which led to the births of Megan and Morag in 1995 and Dolly in 1996. Polly, the first mammal to be both cloned and genetically modified, was born in 1997. Following the success of the cloning research, Dr Wilmut began to focus on using cloning to make stem cells which could be used in regenerative medicine.

Microsoft is teaming up with digital pathology provider Paige to build the world's largest image-based artificial intelligence model for identifying cancer. From a report: The AI model is training on an unprecedented amount of data that includes billions of images, according to a release. It can identify both common cancers and rare cancers that are notoriously difficult to diagnose, and researchers hope it will eventually help doctors who are struggling to contend with staffing shortages and growing caseloads. Paige develops digital and AI-powered solutions for pathologists, which are doctors who carry out lab tests on bodily fluids and tissues to make a diagnosis. It's a specialty that often operates behind the scenes, and it's crucial for determining a patient's path forward.

"You don't have cancer until the pathologist says so. That's the critical step in the whole medical edifice," Thomas Fuchs, co-founder and chief scientist at Paige, told CNBC in an interview. But despite pathologists' essential role in medicine, Fuchs said their workflow has not changed much in the last 150 years. To diagnose cancer, for instance, pathologists usually examine a piece of tissue on a glass slide under a microscope. The method is tried and true, but if pathologists miss something, it can have dire consequences for patients.

An anonymous reader shares a report: Storied venture firm Y Combinator has removed an Indian startup from its batch after discovering "irregularities" at the firm, several people familiar with the matter told TechCrunch. Medobed, an Indian startup that promises medicine delivery in 10 minutes, was initially selected in Y Combinator's S23 batch. In recent weeks, Y Combinator has severed its ties with the Indian firm and a partner at the venture firm has also suggested many prospective investors to not engage with Medobed, according to two people familiar with the matter and a copy of an email obtained by TechCrunch. It's very rare for Y Combinator, which selects a few hundred startups from tens of thousands of applications, to remove a firm from its coveted batch, the report adds.

A two-year human trial conducted by James Cook University (JCU) has concluded, demonstrating positive results using low-dose human hookworm therapy to treat chronic conditions, particularly in relation to type 2 diabetes. New Atlas reports: [O]f the 24 participants who received worms, when offered a dewormer at the end of the second year of the trial, with the option to stay in the study for another 12 months, only one person chose to kill off their gut buddies -- and it was only because they had an impending planned medical procedure. "All trial participants had risk factors for developing cardiovascular disease and type 2 diabetes," said Dr Doris Pierce, from JCU's Australian Institute of Tropical Health and Medicine (AITHM). "The trial delivered some considerable metabolic benefits to the hookworm-treated recipients, particularly those infected with 20 larvae."

In this double-blinded trial, 40 participants aged 27 to 50, with early signs of metabolic diseases, took part. They received either 20 or 40 microscopic larvae of the human hookworm species Necator americanus; another group took a placebo. As an intestinal parasite, the best survival skill is to keep the host healthy, which will provide a long-term stable home with nutrients 'on tap.' In return, these hookworms pay the rent in the form of creating an environment that suppresses inflammation and other adverse conditions that can upset that stable home. While the small, round worms can live for a decade, they don't multiply unless outside the body, and good hygiene means transmission risk is very low.

As for the results, those with 20 hookworms saw a Homeostatic Model Assessment of Insulin Resistance (HOMA-IR) level drop from 3.0 units to 1.8 units within the first year, which restored their insulin resistance to a healthy range. The cohort with 40 hookworms still experienced a drop, from 2.4 to 2.0. Those who received the placebo saw their HOMA-IR levels increase from 2.2 to 2.9 during the same time frame. "These lowered HOMA-IR values indicated that people were experiencing considerable improvements in insulin sensitivity -- results that were both clinically and statistically significant," said Dr Pierce. Those with worms also had higher levels of cytokines, which play a vital role in triggering immune responses. The study was published in the journal Nature Communications.

"Italian producers of parmesan cheese have been fighting against imitations for years," writes the Wall Street Journal, adding "Their latest trick to beat counterfeiters is edible microchips.

"Now, makers of Parmigiano-Reggiano, as the original parmesan cheese is officially called, are slapping the microchips on their 90-pound cheese wheels as part of an endless cat-and-mouse game between makers of authentic and fake products." New methods to guarantee the origin of products are being used across the EU. Some wineries are putting serial numbers, invisible ink and holograms on their bottles. So-called DNA fingerprinting of milk bacteria pioneered in Switzerland, which isn't in the EU, is now being tested inside the bloc as a method for identifying cheese. QR codes are also proliferating, including on individual portions of pre-sliced Prosciutto di San Daniele, a raw ham similar to Prosciutto di Parma. A smartphone can be used to show information such as how long the prosciutto has been aged and when it was sliced... The new silicon chips, made by Chicago-based p-Chip, use blockchain technology to authenticate data that can trace the cheese as far back as the producer of the milk used.

The chips have been in advanced testing on more than 100,000 Parmigiano wheels for more than a year. The consortium of producers wants to be sure the chips can stand up to Parmigiano's aging requirement, which is a minimum of one year and can exceed three years for some varieties... The p-Chips can withstand extreme heat or cold, can be read through ice and can withstand years of storage in liquid nitrogen. They have outperformed RFID chips, which are larger, can be more difficult to attach to products, are more fragile and can't survive extreme temperatures, according to p-Chip Chief Technology Officer Bill Eibon. Parmigiano producers also use QR codes, but the codes are easily copied and degrade during the cheese's aging process.

A robot heats the Parmigiano wheel's casein label — a small plaque made of milk protein that is widely used in the cheese industry — and then inserts the chip on top. A hand-held reader can grab the data from the chips, which cost a few cents each and are similar to the ones that some people have inserted under the skin of their pets. The chips can't be read remotely. In lab tests, the chips sat for three weeks in a mock-up of stomach acid without leaking any dangerous material. Eibon went a step further, eating one without suffering any ill effects, but he isn't touting that lest p-Chip face accusations it is tracking people, something that isn't possible because the chips can't be read remotely and can't be read once they are ingested.

"We don't want to be known as the company accused of tracking people," said Eibon. "I ate one of the chips and nobody is tracking me, except my wife, and she uses a different method."
Merck KGaA will soon be using the same chips, the article points out, and the chips "are also being tested in the automotive industry to guarantee the authenticity of car parts.

"The chips could eventually be used on livestock, crops or medicine stored in liquid nitrogen."

A genetically altered pig kidney transplanted into a brain-dead man has continued to function for 32 days, an advance toward the possible use of animal organs in humans, surgeons at NYU Langone Health said Wednesday. The Washington Post reports: The kidney was not rejected in the minutes after it was transplanted -- a problem in xenotransplantation, the use of organs from a different species. It began producing urine and took over the functions of a human kidney such as filtering toxins, the physicians said at a news conference. Also Wednesday, researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham Heersink School of Medicine published a similar case study, of a brain-dead patient who received two pig kidneys that underwent 10 gene alterations earlier this year. The kidneys were not rejected and continued to function for seven days. The results were peer-reviewed and published in the journal JAMA Surgery.

In the NYU Langone transplant, the specially bred pig from which the kidney was procured required just one genetic alteration, to remove a protein that human immune systems attack shortly after surgery. Surgeons also implanted the pig's thymus gland, which helps train the immune system, by sewing it under the outer layer of the kidney, and used immunosuppressive drugs to prevent rejection later on. Managing the condition of the brain-dead man, who on Wednesday still had a heart beat and was breathing with the aid of a ventilator, for an extended period of time also requires extensive efforts by critical care personnel. But the work has revealed information about longer-term use of animal organs, the doctors said. The researchers expect to follow the patient for another month.

With the results released Wednesday, both Montgomery and Locke said they can envision moving toward the early stage of clinical trials to identify the safety of transplanting pig kidneys into live humans. [...] The genetic alteration in the NYU Langone study knocked out a carbohydrate molecule known as Alpha-gal, for short. Humans do not produce the substance and create high levels of antibodies against it, which has in the past proven a formidable obstacle to xenotransplantation. "Now that it can be completely removed from the pig, that allows us to move forward," Montgomery said. Still, the team said, pigs have 1,000 proteins that humans don't, and it can take 10 to 14 days to see how a person's immune system reacts to them. Getting beyond that stage with this patient at NYU Langone is a first sign that long-term viability of the organ and patient is possible, they said.

Amazon said on Tuesday its online pharmacy will automatically apply manufacturer-sponsored coupons to more than 15 insulin and diabetes medicines to help patients access discounts pledged by the drug industry. From a report: With the new program, patients using Amazon Pharmacy will no longer have to search for and manually enter coupons from the three largest insulin makers, Novo Nordisk, Eli Lilly, and Sanofi, to lower the cost of their insulin to as little as $35 for a month's supply, the company said.

Novo, Lilly and Sanofi announced in March that they would slash their insulin prices by at least 70% by or in 2024, but a report from Senator Elizabeth Warren released last month said some patients were finding it difficult to get already discounted generic insulin from pharmacies at the promised lower price. Despite Lilly lowering the list price of its Insulin Lispro to $25 per vial in May, patients were still being quoted as much as $330 for the medicine, were not being told about cheaper options when they went to pharmacies, and were finding it difficult to use Lilly's savings program, Warren's report found. Vin Gupta, Amazon Pharmacy's Chief Medical Officer, said the report highlighted the need to make it easier for patients to get their insulin at the lowest possible prices.

Science magazine reports: Researchers have shown how to conduct thousands of rapid molecular screenings simultaneously, using light to identify target molecules snared on top of an array of tiny silicon blocks. In theory, the tool could be used to spot 160,000 different molecules in a single square centimeter of space. Developed to spot gene fragments from the SARS-CoV-2 virus and other infectious organisms, the technology should also be able to identify protein markers of cancer and small molecules flagging toxic threats in the environment...

"[P]revious sensors have not been able to detect a wide range of target molecules," from very low to very high abundance, says Jennifer Dionne, an applied physicist at Stanford University. In hopes of getting around these problems, Dionne and her colleagues turned to an optical detection approach that relies on metasurfaces, arrays of tiny silicon boxes — each roughly 500 nanometers high, 600 nanometers long, and 160 nanometers wide — that focus near-infrared light on their top surface. This focusing makes it easy for a simple optical microscope to detect the shift in the wavelength of light coming from each silicon block, which varies depending on what molecules sit on top...

[T]he technique could allow doctors to detect viral infections without first having to amplify the genetic material from a patient, Dionne says. Perhaps as important, she notes, an array can be designed to reveal how much target DNA has bound, making it possible to detect in minutes not just whether a particular virus is present, but how intense the infection is. Such information could help doctors tailor their treatments. Current tests can also do this, but they normally take several hours to amplify the genetic material and quantify the results.

Dionne and her colleagues have formed a company called Pumpkinseed Bio to commercialize their new detectors, specifically aimed at detecting minute levels of proteins and other molecules that can't readily be amplified to make them easier to detect. And because only a small number of silicon blocks would be needed to spot individual target molecules, researchers should be able to craft arrays to track a multitude of disease biomarkers simultaneously. "We hope to look at many disease states at the same time," says Jack Hu, a former graduate student in Dionne's lab and head of the new startup. "That's the vision."
Thanks to Slashdot reader sciencehabit for sharing the article.

Shoddy guidebooks, promoted with deceptive reviews, have flooded Amazon in recent months. Their authors claim to be renowned travel writers.

But do they even exist?

The New York Times: The books are the result of a swirling mix of modern tools: A.I. apps that can produce text and fake portraits; websites with a seemingly endless array of stock photos and graphics; self-publishing platforms -- like Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing -- with few guardrails against the use of A.I.; and the ability to solicit, purchase and post phony online reviews, which runs counter to Amazon's policies and may soon face increased regulation from the Federal Trade Commission. The use of these tools in tandem has allowed the books to rise near the top of Amazon search results and sometimes garner Amazon endorsements such as "#1 Travel Guide on Alaska." A recent Amazon search for the phrase "Paris Travel Guide 2023," for example, yielded dozens of guides with that exact title. One, whose author is listed as Stuart Hartley, boasts, ungrammatically, that it is "Everything you Need to Know Before Plan a Trip to Paris."

The book itself has no further information about the author or publisher. It also has no photographs or maps, though many of its competitors have art and photography easily traceable to stock-photo sites. More than 10 other guidebooks attributed to Stuart Hartley have appeared on Amazon in recent months that rely on the same cookie-cutter design and use similar promotional language. The Times also found similar books on a much broader range of topics, including cooking, programming, gardening, business, crafts, medicine, religion and mathematics, as well as self-help books and novels, among many other categories. Amazon declined to answer a series of detailed questions about the books.

National Geographic: Research does show that heart attacks, also called myocardial infarctions, are on the rise in younger people. Common symptoms include chest pain or discomfort; pain that radiates into the jaw, neck, back or arms; shortness of breath; and feeling weak or faint. A study of more than 2,000 young adults admitted for heart attack between 2000 and 2016 in two U.S. hospitals found that 1 in 5 were 40 years old or younger -- and that the proportion of this group has been increasing by 2 percent each year for the last decade.

The study, published in 2019 in the American Journal of Medicine, also found that people ages 40 or younger who have had a heart attack are just as likely as older adults to die from another heart attack, stroke, or other reason. In fact, increases in heart disease among younger adults in 2020 and 2021 are responsible for more than 4 percent of the most recent declines in life expectancy in the U.S., according to an editorial published in March in JAMA Network. The problem isn't uniquely American. Research shows that adults in Pakistan and India, for example, are also experiencing heart attacks at younger ages.

Air pollution is helping to drive a rise in antibiotic resistance that poses a significant threat to human health worldwide, a global study suggests. From a report: The analysis, using data from more than 100 countries spanning nearly two decades, indicates that increased air pollution is linked with rising antibiotic resistance across every country and continent. It also suggests the link between the two has strengthened over time, with increases in air pollution levels coinciding with larger rises in antibiotic resistance.

"Our analysis presents strong evidence that increasing levels of air pollution are associated with increased risk of antibiotic resistance," researchers from China and the UK wrote. "This analysis is the first to show how air pollution affects antibiotic resistance globally." Their findings are published in the Lancet Planetary Health journal. Antibiotic resistance is one of the fastest-growing threats to global health. It can affect people of any age in any country and is already killing 1.3 million people a year, according to estimates. The main drivers are still the misuse and overuse of antibiotics, which are used to treat infections. But the study suggests the problem is being worsened by rising levels of air pollution.

The study did not look at the science of why the two might be linked. Evidence suggests that particulate matter PM2.5 can contain antibiotic-resistant bacteria and resistance genes, which may be transferred between environments and inhaled directly by humans, the authors said. Air pollution is already the single largest environmental risk to public health. Long-term exposure to air pollution is associated with chronic conditions such as heart disease, asthma and lung cancer, reducing life expectancy. Short-term exposure to high pollution levels can cause coughing, wheezing and asthma attacks, and is leading to increased hospital and GP attendances worldwide.

Long-time Slashdot reader destinyland writes: This is straight out of science fiction. The technology is absolutely incredible..." says a woman who received an AI-powered bionic arm. "I'm just absolutely in awe of the technology and excited about the future prospects this will give me."

The short video clip (produced by the BBC) also features the woman's doctor explaining that "the top section is customized to fit...with electrodes there recording the unique pattern of movement, that then talk to a little computer inside the forearm that then, through AI, build data and record those movements to tell the arm what to do."

A GoFundMe campaign had raised £296,613 (about $378,121 USD) to purchase the bionic arm — and last week the grateful recipient shared a long-awaited status update. "It's here. It fits. It works...! 6 months after I first signed up in the clinic I have my bionic arm. State of the art, tailored to my body, the price of a very nice sports car. 24h in and I'm already putting it to good use. The feeling of freedom is unbeatable. Being able to carry things in 2 hands! Open a bottle! Give my husband a 2 arm hug!

"I wouldn't have been able to do this without you, you believed in me since the very beginning. You stood by me in my darkest hour. THANK YOU."

"Scientists in Japan may be at the start of a truly monumental accomplishment: a vaccine that can slow or delay the progression of Alzheimer's disease," reports Gizmodo: In preliminary research released this week, the vaccine appeared to reduce inflammation and other important biomarkers in the brains of mice with Alzheimer's-like illness, while also improving their awareness.

More research will be needed before this vaccine can be tested in humans, however. The experimental vaccine is being developed primarily by scientists from Juntendo University in Japan.

It's intended to work by training the immune system to go after certain senescent cells, aging cells that no longer divide to make more of themselves, but instead stick around in the body. These cells aren't necessarily harmful, and some play a vital role in healing and other life functions. But they've also been linked to a variety of age-related diseases, including Alzheimer's. The vaccine specifically targets senescent cells that produce high levels of something called senescence-associated glycoprotein, or SAGP. Other research has suggested that people with Alzheimer's tend to have brains filled with these cells in particular.

The team tested their vaccine on mice bred to have brains that develop the same sort of gradual destruction seen in humans with Alzheimer's.

As detailed in a paper published in Cell Chemical Biology, researchers have developed a "cancer-killing pill" capable of destroying solid tumors while leaving healthy cells unaffected. The new drug has been in development for 20 years and is now undergoing pre-clinical research in the U.S.. Derek Lowe, a medicinal chemist and freelance writer on science and pharmaceutical topics, writes about the new paper via Science Magazine: It's about a molecule designated AOH1996, which seems to have a unique mode of action in tumor cells, one that might make it more more selective for those as compared to normal ones. The key target here is a protein called PCNA (from its old name of "proliferating cell nuclear antigen"). [...] The current molecule is a traditional direct small molecule binder that is selective for caPCNA over the regular type, which is a very attractive advantage to explore. The team behind it has been working on it for several years now to validate that mechanism, and the new paper linked first above is their report of going all the way into animal models. AOH1996 is a very unremarkable-looking molecule - to be honest, it looks like the sort of stuff that you used to see in old combinatorial chemistry libraries in the late 90s and early 2000s, a couple of aryl-rich groups strung together with amide bonds. It's certainly not going to be the most soluble stuff in the world, but they seem to have been able to formulate it. But I'm definitely not going to make fun of any chemical structure that works! [...]

The new paper shows preclinical toxicity testing in two species (mice and dogs), which is what you need to get to human trials. It seems to pass those very well, with no signs of trouble at 6x the effective dose in either species. And if you were throwing DSBs all over the place in normal tissues, believe me, you'd see tox. It is clean in an Ames test, for example. As for efficacy, in cell assays the concentration needed for 50% growth inhibition across 70 different cancer cell lines averaged around 300nM, while it showed no toxic effects on various non-cancer lines up to 10 micromolar (at least a 30x window). The affected cells show cell-cycle arrest, replication stress, apoptosis, and so on. And application of AOH1996 along with other known chemotherapy agents made the cells much more sensitive to those, presumably because they couldn't deal with those on top of the problems that AOH1996 was already causing.

It also shows growth arrest in xenograft tumors in mouse models, with a no-effect dose at least six times its effective dose, and combination therapy with a topoisomerase inhibitor showed even more significant effects. The compound has entered a Phase I trial in humans on the basis of the above data, and I very much look forward to seeing it advance to Phase II, where it will doubtless be used in combination with several existing therapies. I hope that human cancers will prove vulnerable to this new mode of attack in the clinic, and that they are not able to mutate around it with new forms of caPCNA too quickly, either. The comparison with the peptide agent mentioned above will be especially interesting, too. There's only one way to find out - good luck to everyone involved!

Amazon is rolling out its virtual health clinic service nationwide, the company announced Tuesday. From a report: The e-retailer launched the service, called Amazon Clinic, last November, touting it as a virtual platform for users to connect with health-care providers to treat common conditions like sinus infections, acne, and migraines. Users select their condition, choose a provider, then answer a brief questionnaire. Depending on where they live, users can choose to connect with a clinician over video or text message. Amazon does not provide the telemedicine services itself, but instead provides Amazon Clinic as a platform to connect telemedicine partners with patients. Current partners include Curai Health, Hello Alpha, SteadyMD and Wheel.

With Tuesday's announcement, users in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., can access Amazon Clinic via video visits. Due to regulatory issues, message-based chat on Amazon Clinic is only available in 34 states. Nworah Ayogu, the chief medical officer and general manager of Amazon Clinic, told CNBC in an interview that the company vets the quality of each provider and their internal operations to determine "they have stood up as a provider group." The e-commerce giant also makes sure the provider groups are staffed across all 50 states "to be able to deliver care in a timely response," Ayogu added.

A team of scientists has extended the lives of old mice by connecting their blood vessels to young mice. The infusions of youthful blood led the older animals to live 6 to 9 percent longer, the study found, roughly equivalent to six extra years for an average human. From a report: While the study does not point to an anti-aging treatment for people, it does hint that the blood of young mice contains compounds that promote longevity, the researchers said. "I would guess it's a useful cocktail," said James White, a cell biologist at the Duke University School of Medicine and an author of the new study.

Joining animals together, known as parabiosis, has a long history in science. In the 19th century, French scientists connected the blood vessels of two rats. To prove that the rats shared a circulatory system, they injected belladonna, a compound from the deadly nightshade plant, into one of the animals. The pupils of both rats dilated. In the 1950s, Clive McCay of Cornell University and his colleagues used parabiosis to explore aging. They joined young and old rats, stitching together their flanks so that the capillaries in their skin merged. Later, Dr. McCay and his colleagues examined the cartilage in the old rats and concluded it looked younger. In the early 2000s, parabiosis went through a renaissance. Researchers used 21st century techniques to study what happened when animals of different ages shared the same bloodstream. They found the muscles and brains of old mice were rejuvenated, while younger mice showed signs of accelerated aging.