Grantham is 99 years old and lives in Templeman House, a British care home, which brought in Biscuit. Staff there say dogs – even robotic dogs – can help to elicit memories from residents and spark conversations with care providers.

“I found out today that Ron used to go fly fishing when he finished work and take the dog across the fields with him while he fished,” said Deanna Barnes, home manager at care home, told Reuters. “We didn’t know that before. So obviously the dog brings out memories that they can reflect on and tell us.”

Biscuit stands around two feet tall and looks something like a labradoodle. He’s equipped with sensors in various places on its body that allow him to react when a human interacts with it.

Simon Bird, the deputy chief executive at Care South, which owns Templeman House and several other care homes in the south of England, said Biscuit was particularly effective at reducing stress and anxiety in residents with dementia.

“When we do have residents that are getting particularly stressed or very anxious, the manager or the staff will bring Biscuit out. He’s a good distraction. He reduces stress levels,” Bird said.

“He does stimulate memory and also encourages a lot of social interaction and recollection and reminiscence.”

Though Biscuit may ultimately be nothing more than a collection of plastic, wiring and sensors wrapped in synthetic fur, residents still have an emotional reaction to him.

As resident Elsie Proctor, 94, petted Biscuit, she told the dog “You’re beautiful. Yes, you are a beautiful one, yes, that’s lovely.”

Reuters

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The new app called “HopkinsPD”, developed by researchers from the Johns Hopkins University, helped Parkinson’s patients to objectively monitor symptoms in the home and then share data to doctors.

“A smartphone-derived severity score for Parkinson’s disease is feasible and provides an objective measure of motor symptoms inside and outside the clinic that could be valuable for clinical care and therapeutic development,” said the research team including Srihari Mohan, undergraduate student at the varsity.

Typically, patients with Parkinson’s disease are evaluated by medical specialists during three or four clinic visits annually, and patients are asked to fill out a cumbersome 24-hour “motor diary” at home to record their mobility, involuntary twisting movements, etc.

The doctor then uses this self-reported or imprecise data to guide treatment.

In the new study, published in the journal JAMA Neurology, the team collected the data with the help of “HopkinsPD” app and then using a machine learning technique, they converted it into an objective Parkinson’s disease severity score—that better reflected the overall severity of patients’ symptoms and how well they were responding to medication.

This smartphone evaluation does not rely on the subjective observations of a medical staff, and can be administered any time or day in a clinic or within the patient’s home.

The app is available both for Android as well as iOS smartphones.

IANS

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Researchers who developed the device and published their results in the journal Nature said they hoped the new scanner would improve research and treatment for patients who can’t use traditional fixed MEG scanners, such as children with epilepsy, babies, or patients with disorders like Parkinson’s disease.

“This has the potential to revolutionize the brain imaging field, and transform the scientific and clinical questions that can be addressed with human brain imaging,” said Gareth Barnes, a professor at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Neuroimaging at University College London, who co-led the work.

Current MEG scanners are cumbersome and weigh as much as half a tonne, partly because the sensors they use to measure the brain’s magnetic field need to be kept very cold – at minus 269 degrees Celsius, Barnes’ team explained.

They also run into difficulties when patients are unable to stay very still – very young children or patients with movement disorders for example – since even a 5-millimeter movement can mean the images are unusable.

In the helmet scanner, the researchers overcame these problems by using quantum sensors, which are lightweight, work at room temperature and can be placed directly onto scalp – increasing the amount of signal they are able to pick up.

Matt Brookes, who worked with Barnes and built the prototype at Nottingham university, said that as well as overcoming the challenge of some patients being unable to stay still, the wearable scanner offers new possibilities in measuring peoples’ brain function during real world tasks and social interactions.

“This has significant potential for impact on our understanding of not only healthy brain function but also on a range of neurological, neurodegenerative and mental health conditions.”

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“The significance of the work lies in the fact that we have for the first time developed a useful PET ‘radioligand’ (a radioactive bio-chemical substance) that can be applied to image the ‘GluN2B’ receptor subunit of the ‘NMDA’ receptor complex in humans,” said co-author Simon M. Ametamey from the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, ETH Zurich, Switzerland.

For the study, published in The Journal of Nuclear Medicine, the agent was used in live rats to investigate the dose and effectiveness of “eliprodil”—a drug that blocks the “NMDA GluN2B” receptor.

PET scans with the new “radioligand” successfully showed that the receptors are fully occupied at neuro-protective doses of “eliprodil”.

“These results mean that a new radio-pharmaceutical tool is now available for studying brain disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and MS, among others,” Ametamey said.

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Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in the US said that they achieved this cat-like ‘hearing’ with a device that is tens of trillions times (10 followed by 13 zeros) smaller in volume and 100,000 times thinner than the human eardrum.

“We need transducers that can handle signals without losing or compromising information at both the ‘signal ceiling’ (the highest level of an undistorted signal) and the ‘noise floor’ (the lowest detectable level),” said corresponding author on a paper Philip Feng.

They constructed the device by exfoliating individual atomic layers from the bulk semiconductor crystal and using a combination of nanofabrication and micromanipulation techniques to suspend the atomic layers over micro-cavities pre-defined on a silicon wafer and then making electrical contacts to the devices.

“What we’ve done here is to show that some ultimately miniaturized, atomically thin electromechanical drumhead resonators can offer remarkably broad dynamic range, up to ~110dB, at radio frequencies (RF) up to over 120MHz,” Feng said.

“These dynamic ranges at RF are comparable to the broad dynamic range of human hearing capability in the audio bands.”

Human eardrums normally have dynamic range of about 60 to 100dB in the range of 10Hz to 10kHz, and our hearing quickly decreases outside this frequency range.

Other animals, such as the common house cat or beluga whale, can have comparable or even wider dynamic ranges in higher frequency bands.

The study also revealed that these incredibly small drumheads only need picoWatt up to nanoWatt level of RF power to sustain their high frequency oscillations.

The advances would likely contribute to making the next-generation of ultralow-power communications and sensory devices smaller and with greater detection and tuning ranges.

 IANS

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“This is the first time scientists have been able to identify a patient’s own brain cell code or pattern for memory and, in essence, ‘write in’ that code to make existing memory work better, an important first step in potentially restoring memory loss,” said the study’s lead author Robert Hampson, Professor at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina, US.

The study focused on improving episodic memory, which is the most common type of memory loss in people with Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and head injury.

Episodic memory is information that is new and useful for a short period of time, such as where you parked your car on any given day.

Reference memory is information that is held and used for a long time, such as what is learned in school.

The researchers enrolled epilepsy patients at Wake Forest Baptist who were participating in a diagnostic brain-mapping procedure that used surgically implanted electrodes placed in various parts of the brain to pinpoint the origin of the patients’ seizures.

Using the team’s electronic prosthetic system based on a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear mathematical model, the researchers influenced the firing patterns of multiple neurons in the hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in making new memories in eight of those patients.

First, they recorded the neural patterns or ‘codes’ while the study participants were performing a computerised memory task.

The patients were shown a simple image, such as a colour block, and after a brief delay where the screen was blanked, were then asked to identify the initial image out of four or five on the screen.

In this test, the patients’ episodic memory performance showed a 37 per cent improvement over baseline.

In a second test, participants were shown a highly distinctive photographic image, followed by a short delay, and asked to identify the first photo out of four or five others on the screen.

When stimulated with the correct answer codes, study participants showed a 35 per cent improvement in memory over baseline.

“We showed that we could tap into a patient’s own memory content, reinforce it and feed it back to the patient,” Hampson said.

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“ELISA is an important technology for biochemical analysis of proteins and hormones and is critical for the diagnosis of many diseases, such as HIV and Lyme Disease,” said corresponding author Anna Pyayt, Assistant Professor at the University of South Florida in Tampa, US.

“But the machines required for the incubation and reading are expensive and bulky,” Pyayt said.

Instead of sending patients to a laboratory, the new cellphone-based technology – Mobile Enzyme Linked Immunosorbent Assay (MELISA) — allows for the very same test to be conducted in the doctor’s office, clinic or even in a remote area.

“The MELISA allows patients to undergo testing and obtain results at point-of-care,” Pyayt said.

The device accurately measures progesterone levels, a key hormone that impacts female fertility and is indicative of some cancers.

It consists of a water bath heater that incubates samples at a target temperature and analyses them via images taken by mobile phone.

The device uses colour analysis to determine the RGB (red, green, blue) colour components of each sample.

The blue colour component is used for further analysis due to its sensitivity to the changes in progesterone concentration.

“It is designed to make biomedical testing simple and affordable. When low cost testing can be integrated with routine clinic visits, this would greatly improve the quality of healthcare and detect worrisome signs earlier,” Pyayt added.

The portable MELISA weighs less than half a kilogram and the researchers believe that it has the potential help older patients suffering chronic conditions and those across the world.

IANS

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The app allows them to keep track of medications, follow-up appointments and lifestyle changes needed after a heart attack.

“We have found that there are many gaps in care in patients recovering from a heart attack,” said lead author William Yang, from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, US.

“We wanted to engage patients in their own care, and help them transition from the hospital to home using existing technology,” Yang added.

Heart attack patients “may suddenly have new doctors and more medical visits, including cardiac rehab, and the app helps them track and centralise all those appointments”, he said.

The app helps patients to keep track of all their medications, including how much to take and at what time.

It also syncs with the Apple Watch to monitor heart rate and keep track of how much they are walking and with a Bluetooth blood pressure monitor.

Yang said the app has also proven useful to patients even while they were still in the hospital as it allows patients to store important medical information on the app.

The results were presented at the American College of Cardiology’s Cardiovascular Summit in Las Vegas.

IANS

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The study, published in the journal Science Advances, demonstrates the feasibility of embedded optical zoom and autofocus for a wide range of applications including cell phone cameras, eyeglasses and virtual and augmented reality hardware.

“This research combines breakthroughs in artificial muscle technology with metalens technology to create a tunable metalens that can change its focus in real time, just like the human eye,” said co-author Alan She from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS).

”It also shows the possibility of future optical microscopes, which operate fully electronically and can correct many aberrations simultaneously,” the researcher added.

To build the artificial eye, the researchers first needed to scale-up the metalens.

Prior metalenses were about the size of a single piece of glitter. They focus light and eliminate spherical aberrations through a dense pattern of nanostructures, each smaller than a wavelength of light.

“Because the nanostructures are so small, the density of information in each lens is incredibly high,” said She.

To solve this problem, the researchers developed a new algorithm to shrink the file size to make the metalens compatible with the technology currently used to fabricate integrated circuits.

In a paper recently published in Optics Express, the researchers demonstrated the design and fabrication of metalenses up to centimetres or more in diameter.

“This research provides the possibility of unifying two industries; semiconductor manufacturing and lens-making, whereby the same technology used to make computer chips will be used to make metasurface-based optical components, such as lenses,” the researchers said.

The researchers also demonstrated that the lens can simultaneously focus, control aberrations caused by astigmatisms, as well as perform image shift. Together, the lens and muscle are only 30 microns thick.

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The study, published online in the journal Scientific Reports, demonstrated fast, scalable and high-resolution 3D printing of hydrogels, which remain solid and retain their shape despite containing water.

Hydrogels are everywhere in our lives, including in contact lenses, diapers and the human body.

The smart gel could provide structural rigidity in organs such as the lungs and can contain small molecules like water or drugs to be transported in the body and released.

It could also create a new area of soft robotics and enable new applications in flexible sensors and actuators, biomedical devices and platforms or scaffolds for cells to grow, Lee said.

“The full potential of this smart hydrogel has not been unleashed until now,” said Lee.

“We added another dimension to it and this is the first time anybody has done it on this scale. They’re flexible, shape-morphing materials. I like to call them smart materials,” he added.

The engineers worked with a hydrogel that has been used for decades in devices that generate motion and biomedical applications such as scaffolds for cells to grow on.

They learned how to precisely control hydrogel growth and shrinkage.

In temperatures below 32 degrees Celsius, the hydrogel absorbs more water and swells in size.

When temperatures exceed 32 degrees Celsius, the hydrogel begins to expel water and shrinks, the study showed.

The engineers also found that the objects they could create with the hydrogel range from the width of a human hair to several millimeters long.

IANS

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