Ever since the invention of nanotechnology, scientists tried to foresee its medical potential. By operating on such a small scale, tiny nano-robots could potentially enter the human body, making for better diagnoses, rushing through the bloodstream delivering medicine, or even performing complex operations too difficult for human hands.
“Nanorobotics can play a major role in medical applications, especially for target interventions into the human body through the vascular network,” says Sylvain Martel, director of the nanorobotics laboratory at École Polytechnique de Montréal. ” I believe that nanorobotics could bring new methods and tools to these particular applications.”
While medical molecular machines are not likely to appear soon, there are a great amount of research going into the development of nanoscale robots, and not only for therapeutic use. Can we really use robots at the nano level? Or can we reduce our current machines to that size? We simply do not have the technology yet to make microscopic robotics…
This does not mean that nanomedicine is impossible. Nanomaterials can do anything from improve dental and bone implants, because their mechanical and chemical properties can be tuned to match those of the surrounding tissue, as well as improving medical imaging and better delivering drugs in the body.
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Study Group of the Wake Forest University have successfully grown a rabbit’s penis, based on collagen and cells of rabbits. With artificial penis rabbits regained not only erectile function but also the reproduction ability, a medical conference in the U.S. has been told.
The research was led by the team of Dr. Anthony Atala, who said that the novel experiments raise hope that tissue engineering can one day be used to help men with severe impotence, or needing penile reconstruction, to regain their full sexual function.
The concept is that cells from a reduced organ are sprayed onto a collagen matrix, then bathed with compounds that stimulate cell growth and left in kept in an environment that duplicates the temperature and chemical makeup of living tissue.
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Vision is the most important of the five senses, because it allows us to see the world in every detail, enjoy its colors, variety of nuances and shapes.
Environmental pollution, inherited genes, congenital diseases are the reasons for loss of most people’s eyesight. The choice of many of us is silicone hydrogel contact lenses.
Silicone hydrogel lenses are the latest development in soft contact lens materials. They are healthier than conventional soft lenses because they allow up to 6 times more oxygen to pass through them and increased oxygen transmission results in better overall eye health.
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Why do we need contact lenses? Most people prefer them instead of glasses, which, in their view, distort the appearance. In addition, there are many other benefits for contact lenses wearers:
- vision becomes more natural, the size of objects close to the real;
- the contact lens moves with the eye, so there is no distortion inherent in the use of glasses;
- the field of view is not limited as by spectacles;
- contact lenses never mist.
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The brown recluse spider exists in significant populations mainly in the central Midwestern states southward to the Gulf of Mexico, especially in Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri.
SIZE
Body – 1/4 to 1 inch. The legs span an area roughly the size of a quarter to a half-dollar.
COLOR
Light brown to a dark, reddish or chocolate brown, but most are light to medium brown.
HABITAT
Houses are the common habitat of this kind of spider. Inside homes, the brown recluse spider can be found in any of the following places: dark spots within baths, dormitories, garages, closets and cellars, vent and heating conducts, seldom used clothes or shoes. They can nest in stored clothes, old books, boxes, furniture, toys, carpets, coatings, corners and cracks.
POISON
The spider has a powerful poison and occasionally bites a person, thus causing local injuries and sometimes more common symptoms. The poison causes the necrosis of the soft tissue that starts as a local inflammation with reddening, edemas and pain.
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New research being presented at an obesity conference this week found that the cereals that are most frequently and aggressively marketed directly to American children as young as 2 were also the least healthy.
The study, reported in The Cereal Food Advertising to Children and Teens Score Report, was part funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and was conducted by researchers from Yale University’s Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity. It is being presented at Obesity 2009, the 27th annual scientific meeting of The Obesity Society, in Washington on 27 October.
Researchers find that cereals for children have 85% more sugar, 65% less fiber and 60% more sodium than cereals marketed to adults. In addition, companies are spending more than $156 million a year to market these cereals directly to kids.
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A team of Harvard Stem Cell Institute scientists at Massachusetts General Hospital and collaborators at Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS) has taken a giant step toward the possibility of using human stem cells to repair damaged hearts.
Scientists have grown a piece of heart muscle from Embryonic Stem Cells by using stem cells from a mouse embryo, a big step toward one day repairing damage from heart attacks.
Director of the Cardiovascular Research Center, the Professor of Basic Science at Harvard Medical School, Chien said “This is the beginning of making heart parts for heart disease.”
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Many of colored contact lenses are available with and without vision correction so even people without a need for vision correction can wear them, as well as people who have astigmatism, or need bifocal contact lenses. The center of the lens, the part that lies over your pupil, is clear so you can see.
An enhancement tint is a solid but translucent (see-through) tint. An enhancement tint changes your eye color. As the name implies, it’s meant to enhance the existing color of your eyes. These types of tints are usually best for people who have light colored eyes and want to make their eye color more intense. Color tints are deeper, opaque tints that can change your eye color completely. Usually they are made of patterns of solid colors. If you have dark eyes, you’ll need this type of color contact lens to change your eye color. Color contacts come in a wide variety of colors, including green, amethyst, blue, gray, violet, and hazel.
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A new study found that many contact lens wearers in the United States do not follow the recommended replacement schedules for their lenses, making them vulnerable to a variety of eye infections, which cause serious eye problems.
The study examined 1,654 contact lens wearers in groups with different replacement frequency. It found that people wore their contact lenses for a much longer period of time than recommended and didn’t replace contact lens case in time:
- 26 % of those who over-wore their lenses said they wanted “to save money” by wearing their contacts for longer periods
- 51 % said they “forgot which day to replace their contact lenses”
- 18 % of participants reported it was “not important” to clean contact lenses every day
- 16 % of contact lenses wearers replaced their contact lens case only once a year
- 14 % never replaced their lens case
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What is a blood test?
Blood tests are a very useful diagnostic tool. Blood is made up of several different kinds of cells and other compounds, including various salts and certain proteins. When blood clots outside the body, the blood cells and some of the proteins become solid. The remaining liquid is called serum, which can be used in chemical tests and in tests to find out how the immune system fights diseases.
What do doctors examine in the blood?
Blood contains two main elements: the fluid that is called plasma and cells. There are three kinds of cells: red blood cells, white blood cells and platelets. To get the information they need from the blood, doctors actually do several tests with the blood sample. These include measurements of the levels of the cells and a blood smear. A blood smear is a film of blood placed on a slide to allow doctors to look at the individual cells under a microscope.
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Ever since the invention of nanotechnology, scientists tried to foresee its medical potential. By operating on such a small scale, tiny nano-robots could potentially enter the human body, making for better diagnoses, rushing through the bloodstream delivering medicine, or even performing complex operations too difficult for human hands.
