Most dermatologists still decide which moles require a biopsy by good old fashioned eye-balling, but a new device developed by researchers at British Colombia Cancer Agency (BCCA) could remove that guesswork, using a handheld laser to quickly identify problem spots that require closer examination.
Called the Verisante Aura, the device employsRaman spectroscopyto identify the molecular makeup of moles by changing the vibrational state of the molecular bonds in a skin growth. Shining a particular laser light on those bonds causes a shift in the kind of light that is reflected back to a sensor, and that shift belies exactly what kinds of molecules are there and in what concentration they exist.
Scientists in the Hotchkiss Brain Institute at the Faculty of Medicine, University of Calgary, have discovered a new mechanism that nerve cells (neurons) use to fine-tune their electrical output. The discovery, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, provides new insights about how the activity of the nervous system is regulated at the cellular level.
Computer supported, interactive e-learning systems are widely used in the teaching of physiology. However, the currently available complimentary software tools in the field of the physiology of cardiovascular mechanics have not yet been adapted to the latest systems software. Therefore, a simple-to-use replacement for undergraduate and graduate students‘ education was needed, including an up-to-date graphical software that is validated and field-tested.
Software compatible to Windows, based on modified versions of existing mathematical algorithms, has been newly developed. Testing was performed during a full term of physiological lecturing to medical and biology students.
Background: Heart signals represent an important way to evaluate cardiovascular function and often what is desired is to quantify the level of some signal of interest against the louder backdrop of the beating of the heart itself. An example of this type of application is the quantification of cavitation in mechanical heart valve patients.
Methods: An algorithm is presented for the quantification of high-frequency, non-deterministic events such as cavitation from recorded signals. A closed-form mathematical analysis of the algorithm investigates its capabilities. The algorithm is implemented on real heart signals to investigate usability and implementation issues. Improvements are suggested to the base algorithm including aligning heart sounds, and the implementation of the Short-Time Fourier Transform to study the time evolution of the energy in the signal.
British scientists have developed a breath analyzer that tells how much fat you are burning off at the gym. The device is being built to pinpoint the moment when a sweaty session on the treadmill finally starts to pay off by detecting when the body has used up its supply of food energy and switches to breaking down fat instead.
Exercise machines currently estimate when people have entered the “fat burning zone”.The breath analyzer works by picking up minute changes in the levels of a molecule called acetone in people’s breath, which is given off when the body starts to burn fat. Gus Hancock, whose company Oxford Medical Diagnostics has developed the machine, said, “Acetone is a molecule that is produced by people who are burning fat rather than food.”
A team led by Stanford researcher Ingmar Riedel-Kruse has taken gaming to an entirely new level, introducing life itself into games.
Riedel-Kruse and his lab have developed the first biotic video games. The player’s moves directly influence the behavior of living micro-organisms in real time as the game is being played.Players are able to influence the basic biological functions of single-celled organisms. The team’s goal is for players to learn about biological processes and interact with them without having to go through the rigorous process of formal experimentation.
In total the team has created eight different games that allow players to interact with paramecia (the single-celled organisms used in numerous biology experiments).
