Teenage Scientists Working on Turning Mosquitos Into 'Flying Syringes' to Deliver Vaccines

A team of teenagers interested in biotechnology is working on turning mosquitos into “flying syringes” to deliver vaccines to humans. Their company, Provita Pharmaceuticals

, has already presented its research to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and has submitted a grant idea to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Provita’s sixteen-year old CEO Joshua Meier was a finalist in the 2012 Google Science Fair and a student at the Bergen County Academies. After teaming up with several other kids interested in biotechnology and business, Meier founded the company and started work on a business plan to support their research.

The first goal of the flying syringe project is to bioengineer mosquitoes to deliver vaccinations against the West Nile Virus. Most of the research is conducted on the Bergen County Academies high school campus and is owned and paid for by the school.

“We can’t really culture mosquitoes in the lab at our high school because that’s dangerous, but we a have research adviser and ideas planned out, and the next step is making a partnership, contacting other places that do have animal facilities,” said Meier. Their project has also caught the attention of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, which has expressed its interest in helping with future development of the firm.

The team’s first project called Coagula aims to help people with hemophilia and von Willebrand disease by enabling patients to take fewer treatments for their conditions, while reducing the possibility of infections. Coagula is still under development, Meier said.

Has evolution given humans unique brain structures?

Our ancestors evolutionarily split from those of rhesus monkeys about 25 million years ago. Since then, brain areas have been added, have disappeared or have changed in function.
This raises the question, ‘Has evolution given humans unique brain structures?’. Scientists have entertained the idea before but conclusive evidence was lacking. By combining different research methods, we now have a first piece of evidence that could prove that humans have unique cortical brain networks.
Professor Vanduffel explains: “We did functional brain scans in humans and rhesus monkeys at rest and while watching a movie to compare both the place and the function of cortical brain networks. Even at rest, the brain is very active. Different brain areas that are active simultaneously during rest form so-called ‘resting state’ networks. For the most part, these resting state networks in humans and monkeys are surprisingly similar, but we found two networks unique to humans and one unique network in the monkey.”
“When watching a movie, the cortex processes an enormous amount of visual and auditory information. The human-specific resting state networks react to this stimulation in a totally different way than any part of the monkey brain. This means that they also have a different function than any of the resting state networks found in the monkey. In other words, brain structures that are unique in humans are anatomically absent in the monkey and there no other brain structures in the monkey that have an analogous function. Our unique brain areas are primarily located high at the back and at the front of the cortex and are probably related to specific human cognitive abilities, such as human-specific intelligence.”
The study used fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scans to visualise brain activity. fMRI scans map functional activity in the brain by detecting changes in blood flow. The oxygen content and the amount of blood in a given brain area vary according to a particular task, thus allowing activity to be tracked.

Cordless Neuromuscular Back Pain Reliever

Some of us do experience issues with our back, and let me say this, it is not a nice problem to have at all. Of course, we have seen the resident chiropractor but to no avail, and all the different kinds of so-called “grandmother’s remedies” and tips that you picked up from friends and family members do not seem to work, either. Don’t give up on your back just yet, especially after it has supported you all these years, why not give the $199.95 Cordless Neuromuscular Back Pain Reliever a chance?

The Cordless Neuromuscular Back Pain Reliever will boast of a streamlined cordless electrotherapy system that delivers hours of drug-free pain relief from lower back pain. It is touted to be as powerful as professional equipment, where the device itself employs Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS) which are actually harmless electrical pulses that block pain signals which pass through nerves to the brain. The system is also capable of increasing blood flow to the area in order to promote healing and relaxation. This thin, flexible unit will not impede movement, as it can be worn under clothing, and you will not need to have it removed between treatments. It is said that these adhesive electrode pads will remain securely in place for up to 5 applications, where this purchase includes 40 gel pads that ought to last for approximately three months, and it is powered by a couple of AAA batteries.

The first bionic eye is here!

After years of research, the first bionic eye has seen the light of day in the United States, giving hope to the blind around the world.

Developed by Second Sight Medical Products, the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System has helped more than 60 people recover partial sight, with some experiencing better results than others.

Consisting of 60 electrodes implanted in the retina and glasses fitted with a special mini camera, Argus II has already won the approval of European regulators. The US Food and Drug Administration is soon expected to follow suit, making this bionic eye the world's first to become widely available

Evolution to be blamed for bad backs, tooth aches: Scientists

Evolution may have put humans at the top of the food chain but it also landed us with bad backs, dropped arches and impacted wisdom teeth, scientists have claimed.

While the process of natural selection allowed humans to become much more advanced than other primates, it is also to blame for many of the maladies we suffer from today.

For all our success as a species, the problems we still experience as a result of our evolution demonstrates that humans are in fact "not very well designed", researchers explained.

Our development of large and complex brains, for example, resulted in a narrowing of our mouths which in turn caused the pain of impacted wisdom teeth.

Similarly, when our ancestors began walking on two feet six or seven million years ago, they prompted skeletal changes which today result in bad backs.

Our spines were originally arch-shaped, but standing upright turned the backbone into a weight-bearing pillar, causing the development of the "S" shaped curves which help us balance and walk but also cause lower back pain.

Studies suggest that conditions like flat footedness and high ankle sprains, which are often attributed to our modern, inactive lifestyle, were in fact plaguing our ancestors as many of 3.5 million years ago, the Telegraph reported.

Prof Jeremy DeSilva of Boston University said that our feet would be much more effective if they resembled the "blades" used by paraplegic runners, rather than consisting of 26 individual moving parts.

Impacted wisdom teeth can be blamed on our development of large brains, which caused the shape of our skulls to change and shortened our mouths leaving no room for a third molar, Prof Alan Mann added.

Many people now carry genetic mutations which mean they no longer develop wisdom teeth, with 25 percent of people now lacking at least one third molar.

Although lacking wisdom teeth does not provide a survival advantage in the modern world,

Prof Mann suggested that the trait may one day die out because people with aching jaws might be marginally less likely to have children.

He said that one plausible scenario might be that one evening, a partner in a relationship suggests a bout of reproduction, and the other partner, plagued by an impacted third molar which is painful enough to be distracting, says: "not tonight dear, my jaw is killing me."

Scientists create nanoscale vehicle to battle cancer without harming healthy cells

Devising a method for more precise and less invasive treatment of cancer tumors, a team led by researchers from the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science has developed a degradable nanoscale shell to carry proteins to cancer cells and stunt the growth of tumors without damaging healthy cells. In a new study, published online Feb. 1 in the peer-reviewed journal Nano Today, a group led by Yi Tang, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute at UCLA, reports developing tiny shells composed of a water-soluble polymer that safely deliver a protein complex to the nucleus of cancer cells to induce their death. The shells, which at about 100 nanometers are roughly half the size of the smallest bacterium, degrade harmlessly in non-cancerous cells. The process does not present the risk of genetic mutation posed by gene therapies for cancer, or the risk to healthy cells caused by chemotherapy, which does not effectively discriminate between healthy and cancerous cells, Tang said. "This approach is potentially a new way to treat cancer," said Tang. "It is a difficult problem to deliver the protein if we don't use this vehicle. This is a unique way to treat cancer cells and leave healthy cells untouched." The cell-destroying

material, apoptin, is a protein complex derived from an anemia virus in birds. This protein cargo accumulates in the nucleus of cancer cells and signals to the cell to undergo programmed self-destruction. The polymer shells are developed under mild physiological conditions so as not to alter the chemical structure of the proteins or cause them to clump, preserving their effectiveness on the cancer cells. Tests done on human breast cancer cell lines in laboratory mice showed significant reduction in tumor growth. "Delivering a large protein complex such as apoptin to the innermost compartment of tumor cells was a challenge, but the reversible polymer encapsulation strategy was very effective in protecting and escorting the cargo in its functional form," said Muxun Zhao, lead author of the research and a graduate student in chemical and biomolecular engineering at UCLA. Tang's group continues to research ways of more precisely targeting tumors, prolonging the circulation time of the capsules and delivering other highly sought-after proteins to cancer cells. The research team also included former UCLA Engineering student Zhen Gu, now an assistant professor in the joint biomedical engineering department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and North Carolina State University, and University of Southern California researchers including graduate student Biliang Hu, postdoctoral scholar Kye-Il Joo and associate professor Pin Wang.

A monster tumor

A monster tumor (red, glossy lump) is rerouting the brain's streets and highways. These pathways -- the white matter that connects neuronal cell bodies -- are represented in red and blue, with red being near enough the tumor to be a concern during surgery, and blue being a safe distance away. Constructed by a team at Sherbrooke Connectivity Imaging Lab using magnetic resonance imaging, this image was awarded an honorable mention.