Scientists have determined how to fortify the cassava plant, a staple root crop in many developing countries, with enough vitamins, minerals and protein to provide the poor and malnourished with a day’s worth of nutrition in a single meal.
The researchers have further engineered the cassava plant so it can resist the crop’s most damaging viral […]

A free and simple piece of open source software is helping manage the spread of disease in developing countries.
The Open Medical Record System (OpenMRS) is providing countries, such as South Africa, with an online patient medical record system.
Users do not require any programming knowledge for the tool which helps improve how people are treated.
Full […]

A US team has developed a new way to turn a patient’s T-cells against a deadly, metastasised skin cancer. A 55-year old man who received the immune boost lives tumour-free, more than two years after treatment.
“He had a remarkable response,” says Cassian Yee, an immunologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle, Washington, US, […]

Now a new device has been developed which can direct and focus streams of cells in a liquid, and even separate them out according to size. “We can take a stream of cells and focus, defocus and reflect it as if it’s a light beam,” says Robert Austin of Princeton University, who developed the device […]

A startup based in Cambridge, MA, says that it plans to soon begin clinical trials of a nanostructured material that stops bleeding almost instantly. A startup called Arch Therapeutics has licensed the technology from MIT and is developing manufacturing processes for making it in large amounts.
The new material can be poured over a site and […]

The photos of his severed finger tip are pretty graphic. You can understand why doctors said he’d lost it for good.
Today though, you wouldn’t know it. Mr Spievak, who is 69 years old, shows off his finger, and it’s all there, tissue, nerves, nail, skin, even his finger print.
‘Pixie dust’
How? Well that’s […]

A group of volunteer engineers are finishing the design for a home-brewed wind turbine that will bring electricity to off-the-grid Guatemalan villages by this summer.
[…]
We’re shooting for under $100, which is a challenge, but we’re in that range.”
The effort comes amidst recent efforts to bring new light and power to small towns in the […]

Researchers in Texas report development of a gel-like material that could help speed the long-awaited arrival of insulin that can be taken in a pill by mouth, rather than with injections.
In the report, Nicholas A. Peppas and colleagues point out acid in the stomach destroys insulin, preventing its administration by mouth. Many different research groups […]

An extraordinary new scientific study, which for the first time documents marked improvement in Alzheimer’s disease within minutes of administration of a therapeutic molecule, has just been published in the Journal of Neuroinflammation
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The new study documents a dramatic and unprecedented therapeutic effect in an Alzheimer’s patient: improvement within minutes following delivery of perispinal etanercept, which […]

Yoga’s postures, controlled breathing and meditation may work together to help ease brains plagued by anxiety or depression, a new study shows.
Brain scans of yoga practitioners showed a healthy boost in levels of the neurotransmitter gamma-aminobutyric (GABA) immediately after a one-hour yoga session. Low brain levels of GABA are associated with anxiety and depression, the […]