Publisher Health

Published1 hour agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, ReutersBy Samantha Granville in Las Vegas & Laura GozziBBC NewsA heat dome over the US south-west has translated into extreme heat warnings from coast to coast, which continue to affect more than 110 million people.Temperature records could be broken in as many as 38 cities.In Las Vegas, the intense heatwave is threatening on Sunday to break or tie the city’s record high of 117F (47.2C).It comes as soaring temperatures are also hitting southern Europe and Canada is battling the worst season of wildfires in its history.Scientists have long warned that climate change linked to human activities will lead to an increase in the severity and frequency of extreme weather events. Elsewhere in the south-western US, hundreds of firefighters have been battling brush fires in blistering heat and low humidity on the outskirts of Los Angeles.Temperatures in Death Valley in California hit 128F (53.9C) on Sunday, according to the National Weather Service (NWS). It is the site of the hottest temperature ever reliably recorded on Earth: 134F (56.7C). The usually crowded streets of Las Vegas were considerably emptier than normal on Sunday, with security guards guarding the fountains of upscale casinos and hotels to prevent people from jumping in.The famous strip was a quiet inferno. Some people walked outside, but mostly just to cross the street to the next casino. And those who did exit were mostly intoxicated. When one couple was asked why they were outside, they said “All roads lead to the Bellagio,” referring to one of the most popular hotels and casinos on the strip. Another group of young men shouted, “It’s Vegas baby! The heat’s not going to stop us!” But elsewhere in Las Vegas, people were hanging on to any bit of shade, whether it came from the shadow of a building or even a small tree. At a taco shop on the strip, the tables were all full of patrons dripping with sweat and looking utterly wiped out from the heat. Workers too were draped in the booths, not speaking to each other, but fanning themselves down. Inside the casinos though, business continued. The air conditioning was blasting so high, people were wearing jumpers to stay warm, and there was no indication of devastating temperatures, other than the people walking in off the street with sweat streaming down their faces. El Paso, in Texas, has seen temperatures of 100.4F (38C) and above for more than a month now, with no respite in sight. In Phoenix, Arizona, temperatures have remained above 109.4F (43C) for 17 days. Thick cloud cover on Sunday meant the city was granted a modest reprieve from recent peaks, but daytime temperatures still reached highs of 114F (45.5C).The heat is set to continue for the foreseeable future, and authorities are warning that vulnerable people – including children, pregnant women and the elderly – are at serious risk of heat-related illness.Mobile clinics report treating homeless people suffering from third-degree burns. Public buildings in some parts of California and Nevada have been turned into “cooling centres” where people can take refuge from the heat. Amid the extreme temperatures being seen in Death Valley, Park Ranger Matthew Lamar said: “We hadn’t hit 130F (54.4C) here for over 100 years. And then in 2020, we got 130, in 2021 we got 130, and then we might hit it again this weekend.”He added that the weather was attracting tourists who wanted to “experience the extremes”.But some visitors said others should not lose sight of the fact that those extremes are a symptom of climate change. Speaking to Reuters on Saturday, Tom Comitta said: “People are coming out here to celebrate this. People are excited. It’s not a milestone. I’m calling it Happy Death Day.”Is climate change causing heatwaves?Extreme heat intensifies across south-west USA heat dome occurs when an area of high pressure pushes air towards the ground, compressing it and causing it to heat. The warmer air then rises again, setting up a cycle in which air sinks through the centre of the ‘dome’ and rises up its sides. The pressure also prevents other weather systems that would cool the area – such as rain clouds – from forming. The NWS has said that the current system in the southwestern US is “one of the strongest” of its kind to hit the region.The Weather Channel has said the dome will expand across the nation’s south by the middle of next week – meaning other southern US states will see temperatures rise.Meanwhile, other parts of the US are bracing themselves for severe thunderstorms and flash floods – and north-eastern states could experience another bout of poor air quality as a result of the continuing wildfires in Canada. “As if the rain coming out of the sky isn’t enough, if you start looking up tomorrow, you’re going to see a similar situation in what we had a couple of weeks ago because of the air quality degradation [from the wildfires],” New York governor Kathy Hochul said at a press conference. “And as I said before, this is possibly our new normal.”The world has already warmed by about 1.1C since the industrial era began and temperatures will keep rising unless governments around the world make steep cuts to emissions.More on this story’Dangerous’ US heatwave threatens new recordsPublished1 day agoCanada’s far north records its hottest temperaturePublished6 days ago

Published3 hours agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingBy Jess Warren & Frankie McCamleyBBC NewsAesthetic practitioners with Body Dysmorphic Disorder (BDD) are at risk of negatively impacting patients, a London cosmetic medic has warned.Dr Michael Prager said a lot of his industry peers were “unrecognisable” and people could look “rather weird” if treated by a Botox injector with BDD.A survey found BDD was higher among aesthetic practitioners than patients.A British College of Aesthetic Medicine spokeswoman said she did not believe such practitioners were a risk.Dr Bhavjit Kaur agreed, however, that an aesthetic practitioner with BDD may have a different concept of what looks “normal”, but added BDD was a mental illness that impacted how people perceived their own body, not other people’s. Body Dysmorphic Disorder: “It’s a serious disorder but can go so unseen”Ugly Me: My Life with Body DysmorphiaThe 2021 research, thought to be the first of its kind, found that aesthetic nurses had the highest rate of the disorder in a self-selected survey of 51 practitioners.The authors, London-based Dr Steven Harris and Dr Neetu Johnson, also noted that an increasing number of practitioners were appearing with “exaggerated facial features” as a result of Botox and fillers.Dr Prager, of The Prager Clinic, Knightsbridge, said he had concerns about treating patients with BDD, who often believe that changing their face or body will make them happier.The medic, who has a degree in medicine and became a cosmetic practitioner after working at a hospital as a senior scientist, said it could create a “terrible cycle” for the patient.’I don’t sell happiness'”I don’t sell happiness,” he said. “I sell a medical treatment by definition, with possibly a beneficial cosmetic side effect. “They want to fix an internal problem with an external change, which for me is obviously not something I would even want to go into.”Research has found up to 15% of cosmetic treatment patients and around half of plastic surgery patients have BDD. Rachel Kuske, who works in London, said she began finding fault with her nose aged six.She said: “I remember thinking about my nose, not knowing about plastic surgery, but thinking ‘maybe I need something on my nose’.”This, she said, progressed to negative thoughts about her height and hair. “It’s very difficult to accept that you have BDD because your brain is telling you, ‘this is a problem’,” she said.Dr Kaur added an aesthetic practitioner with BDD, “may focus on one aspect of the person rather than the whole face as holistic treatment”.She said while there were no studies on the risk of an aesthetic practitioner with BDD on patient welfare, she believed they were not a risk to patient health.Dr Kaur concluded by saying patients with BDD should be supported and referred for mental health treatment, but not treated by an aesthetic practitioner.Follow BBC London on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Send your story ideas to hellobbclondon@bbc.co.ukMore on this storyFillers on offer illegally to under-18sPublished14 JuneThe ‘ugly truth’ about Body Dysmorphic DisorderPublished21 June 2015

Researchers have cracked how a particular type of immune cell develops in the body and protects against infection and disease. And the discovery could help in the development of more preventive treatments, according to a new study.
The research, led by Murdoch Children’s Research Institute and Federation University Australia, has uncovered how these specialised white blood cells operate and can produce an immune response.
Associate Professor Dan Pellicci said by understanding the function of these cells, they could be harnessed to help prevent cancer and highly infectious diseases such as COVID-19, Strep A and tuberculosis.
Published in Science Immunology, the study involved samples donated to the Melbourne Children’s Heart Tissue Bank from heart surgery patients up to 16 years old. From these samples, the researchers looked at the role of ‘gamma delta T cells’ within the thymus gland, a small organ located within the chest, close to the heart.
Associate Professor Pellicci said the study showed for the first time how this organ produced these infection-fighting immune cells.
“We have large numbers of these specialised cells in our blood and tissues, which accumulate as we become adults. Until our study, it was unclear how these cells develop in the body,” he said.
“We have shown how these cells are trained over three stages, similar to receiving a primary, secondary and tertiary education, and fully formulate within the thymus. Following this education, the cells are ready to enter the rest of the body and are completely capable of fighting infections.”
Associate Professor Pellicci said previous studies suggested that these immune cells were mainly derived in the liver during a baby’s development in the womb, but this research debunked that theory.

Published1 day agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Laura GozziBBC NewsSouthern Europe will continue to swelter next week as an intense heatwave shows no sign of abating.Italy, Spain and Greece have been experiencing high temperatures for several days already. The Italian health ministry issued a red alert for 16 cities including Rome, Bologna and Florence for the weekend.The heatwave is expected to continue well into next week, with 48C (118.4F) possible in Sardinia, according to Italian media.Such a temperature would, however, fall short of the European record high of 48.8C (119.8F) – which was recorded in Sicily in August 2021.The Italian weather service said Sardinia would be at the “epicentre” of next week’s heatwave – which weather forecasters have dubbed Charon, after the ferryman who delivered souls into the underworld in Greek mythology.”Temperatures will reach a peak between 19 and 23 July – not only in Italy but also in Greece, Turkey and the Balkans. Several local heat records within these areas may well be broken during those days,” Italian meteorologist and climate expert Giulio Betti told the BBC. Italy’s government has advised anyone in the areas covered by Saturday’s red alerts to avoid direct sunlight between 11:00 and 18:00, and to take particular care of the elderly or vulnerable.In Rome, tour guide Felicity Hinton, 59, told the BBC the soaring temperatures combined with overcrowding has made it “nightmarish” to navigate the city.”It’s always hot in Rome but this has just been consistently hot for a lot longer than normal,” she said.”My tour guide friends and I are extremely stressed out. People have been fainting on tours and there are ambulances outside everywhere.”Rome resident Elena, 62 told the BBC that she has noticed a “marked change” in summer temperatures since around 2003, and that they have been growing exponentially since. Meanwhile, Greece has hit temperatures of 40C (104F) or more in recent days. The Acropolis in Athens – the country’s most popular tourist attraction – was closed during the hottest hours of Friday and Saturday to protect visitors. In Spain’s Canary Islands, a forest fire that broke out on La Palma on Saturday morning forced the evacuation of at least 4,000 people and has so far destroyed 4,500 hectares (11,000 acres) of land. Fernando Clavijo, president of the Canary Islands regional government, said at least 12 houses had been destroyed and attributed the quick spread of the fire to “the wind, the climate conditions as well as the heatwave that we are living through”.’Dangerous’ US heatwave threatens new records What effects do heatwaves have on the body?Periods of intense heat occur within natural weather patterns, but globally they are becoming more frequent, more intense and are lasting longer due to global warming.”Heatwaves increase every year in number and intensity… and they are among the most tangible, evident, documented and clearly observable signs of climate change,” Mr Betti said.”European summers have gotten much, much hotter in recent years… What should worry us is that summers without intense and prolonged heatwaves simply don’t exist anymore. ‘Normal’ summers have become a rarity.”Last month was the hottest June on record, according to the EU’s climate monitoring service Copernicus.This video can not be playedTo play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser.More on this storyWhat effect do heatwaves have on the body?Published5 days agoA really simple guide to climate changePublished29 June

Black women in Latin America, the Caribbean and the United States are more likely than their white counterparts to report denial of medication or physical and verbal abuse in health care settings.The NewsA new United Nations analysis of Black women’s experiences during pregnancy and childbirth in the Americas has concluded that systemic racism and sexism in medical systems — not genetics or lifestyle choices — are the main reasons they are more likely to experience serious complications or even death.The report, published Wednesday by the U.N.’s sexual and reproductive health agency, the United Nations Population Fund, surveyed data from countries in the Americas, including the United States. It found that Black women were more likely than their white counterparts to report denial of medication or physical and verbal abuse in health care settings, leading to more severe complications, delayed treatment and worse.Black women were more likely to die during or soon after childbirth, the analysis found, though it did not specify how much more likely.A pregnant woman in labor paces as a delivery room is prepared at a hospital in Para State, Brazil.Tarso Sarraf/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhy It Matters: The problem extends beyond the United States.The United States’ maternal death rates have drawn public concern in recent years, with mounting evidence of Black women’s experiences of discrimination and dismissal in health care settings. In the new report, the U.N. expanded the scope of the issue to include the rest of the Americas.Direct country-to-country comparisons were difficult because most of the nations analyzed did not collect maternal health or death data by race. The U.N. researchers looked at data from 35 countries in Latin America, North America and the Caribbean, but found sufficient data to include only nine in the report: Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Panama, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, the United States and Uruguay.Still, this is the first time the U.N. has examined available data on the maternal health of Black women across the Americas. “The result is horrendous,” said Dr. Natalia Kanem, executive director of the agency.Dr. Kanem, who is herself a physician and Black, called the problem “a human rights crisis that is largely ignored or overlooked by decision makers.”The U.N. analysis said that high maternal death rates among Black women have historically been attributed to genetic factors and lifestyle choices, rather than patterns of bias that begin in medical school and continue through health service delivery.Medical school curriculums, for example, include erroneous claims that Black women’s nerve endings are “less sensitive” and require less anesthesia, and that Black women’s blood coagulates faster than that of white women, leading to delayed treatment for dangerous hemorrhages, according to the report. It also found that textbook illustrations of childbirth were depicted on European women’s pelvic anatomy, which could cause unnecessary interventions when nonwhite variability was deemed “abnormal or high-risk.”“When a Black woman dies during childbirth, whether in São Paulo, Bogotá or New York, it’s often put down to her lifestyle or to individual failure: She didn’t get there in time to see the doctor or the nurse, she made poor life decisions, she was predisposed to certain medical conditions. And then the world moves on,” Dr. Kanem said.The new report, she said, “categorically refutes that.”Background: Maternal deaths are on the rise.The overall maternal mortality ratio of maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in Latin America, North America and the Caribbean increased by about 15 percent between 2016 and 2020, piquing officials’ interest in possible contributing factors, including race. There are more than 200 million people of African descent in the Americas — one in four people in Latin America and the Caribbean, and one in seven in the United States and Canada.Among countries that provide maternal death rates by race, the United States has the lowest death rate overall, but the widest racial disparities. Black women in the United States are three times more likely than white women to die during or soon after childbirth. Those problems persist across income and education levels, as Black women with college degrees are still 1.6 times as likely to die in childbirth as white women who have not finished high school.What’s Next: U.N. calls medical schools, health care providers and governments to action.U.N. officials urged medical schools to re-examine their curriculums and hospitals to strengthen policies surrounding denial of care and patient abuse. Medical teams must also consider innovative ways to help Black women overcome structural barriers that make it difficult to receive sufficient prenatal care, officials said, such as a lack of access to reliable transportation and insurance. The agency suggested partnerships with various Black traditional healers and midwives to help navigate longstanding reservations.The U.N. project also revealed a profound dearth of surveillance data, which has likely kept the problems from becoming well known, it said. The report encouraged every country to enhance its data collection efforts. Without a transparent look at the problem, the report said, it will be near impossible to design interventions to remedy it.

Kelly Hanna’s leg was amputated on a summer day in 2020, after a Michigan doctor who called himself the “leg saver” had damaged her arteries by snaking metal wires through them to clear away plaque.It started with a festering wound on her left foot. Her podiatrist referred Ms. Hanna to Dr. Jihad Mustapha. Over 18 months, he performed at least that many artery-opening procedures on Ms. Hanna’s legs, telling her they would improve blood flow and prevent amputations.They didn’t — for Ms. Hanna or many of his other patients. Surgeons at nearby hospitals had seen so many of his patients with amputations and other problems that they complained to Michigan’s medical board about his conduct. An insurance company told state authorities that 45 people had lost limbs after treatment at his clinics in the past four years.Dr. Mustapha is no back-alley operator working in the shadows of the medical establishment, an investigation by The New York Times has found. With the financial backing of medical device manufacturers, he has become a leader of a booming cottage industry that peddles risky procedures to millions of Americans — enriching doctors and device companies and sometimes costing patients their limbs.The industry targets the roughly 12 million Americans with peripheral artery disease, in which plaque, a sticky slurry of fat, calcium and other materials, accumulates in the arteries of the legs. For a tiny portion of patients, the plaque can choke off blood flow, leading to amputations or death.But more than a decade of medical research has shown that the vast majority of people with peripheral artery disease have mild or no symptoms and don’t require treatment, aside from getting more exercise and taking medication. Experts said even those who do have severe symptoms, like Ms. Hanna, shouldn’t undergo repeated procedures in a short period of time.Many people with peripheral artery disease also have heart disease or diabetes, which present serious risks. Such patients, already anxious about their health, are susceptible to warnings from doctors that, absent intrusive medical procedures, they could lose their legs.Some doctors insert metal stents or nylon balloons to push plaque to the sides of arteries. Others perform atherectomies, in which a wire armed with a tiny blade or laser is deployed inside arteries to blast away plaque. Rigorous medical research has found that atherectomies are especially risky: Patients with peripheral artery disease who undergo the procedures are more likely to have amputations than those who do not.The volume of these vascular procedures has been surging. The use of atherectomies, in particular, has soared — by one measure, more than doubling in the past decade, according to a Times analysis of Medicare payment data.Atherectomies Have SoaredThe number of atherectomies billed to Medicare has risen significantly over the past decade.

A health agency warned the artificial sweetener may be a carcinogen, but others say that risk is overblown and consumers flock to the taste.About eight years ago, in response to customer concerns about possible health risks associated with the artificial sweetener aspartame, PepsiCo decided to remove the ingredient from its popular diet soda.Sales flopped. A year later, aspartame was back in Diet Pepsi.Today, the top three ingredients listed in the tiny print on the backs of cans and bottles of Diet Pepsi — and on its competitor Diet Coke — are water, caramel color and aspartame.A trip through the grocery store reveals the ingredient on the labels of not only diet sodas but also diet teas, sugar-free gums, sugar-free energy drinks and diet lemonade drink mix. By some estimates, thousands of products contain aspartame.The use of aspartame, which is often known by the brand name Equal, in food and beverage products has long been scrutinized. The latest iteration came on Thursday, when an agency of the World Health Organization declared that aspartame could possibly cause cancer and encouraged people who consume a significant number of beverages with aspartame to switch to water or other unsweetened drinks.But even with the emergence of many new artificial sweeteners, as well as those that are plant- and fruit-based, Big Food just can’t quit aspartame, and analysts don’t expect it to this time. That’s because the ingredient is one of the least expensive sugar alternatives to use, it works especially well in beverages and mixes, and people like the way it tastes.There was also pushback about the urgency of the W.H.O.’s announcement. In a quick rebuke, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration said it disagreed with the findings, reiterating its stance that aspartame is safe. And a second W.H.O. committee said a 150-pound person would need to drink more than a dozen cans of Diet Coke a day to exceed the safe threshold for the sweetener.“The big beverage companies have been doing contingency planning for months, experimenting with different sweeteners, with a goal of having the taste and quality of the diet beverages being as consistent as possible with existing products,” said Garrett Nelson, who covers the beverage industry at CFRA Research. But they are not likely to change the recipe unless they see a significant drop in consumer demand based on the W.H.O. report, he said.“If consumers really stop buying Diet Coke because of this report, if sales start to suffer, it might be time to go to Plan B,” Mr. Nelson said.Like Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke uses aspartame.Andres Kudacki for The New York TimesCoca-Cola referred questions to the American Beverage Association, the lobbying arm for the industry. “Aspartame is safe,” Kevin Keane, the interim president of the organization, said in a statement.PepsiCo did not respond to questions for comment, but in an interview with Bloomberg Markets that aired on Thursday, Hugh F. Johnston, the chief financial officer of PepsiCo, said he did not expect a big consumer reaction.“I do believe that, in fact, this is not going to be a significant issue with consumers based on just the preponderance of evidence that suggests aspartame is safe,” Mr. Johnston said.The assessment of the W.H.O. agency adds to consumer confusion around aspartame, but it is also the latest in a recent spate of research focusing on the potential risks and questioning the true benefits of artificial sweeteners. Just a few weeks ago, the W.H.O. advised against using artificial sweeteners for weight control, saying a review of studies did not show long-term benefit in reducing body fat in children or adults. The review also suggested that the sweeteners were tied to an increased risk of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular diseases.This year, researchers at North Carolina State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill released a study that found a chemical formed after digesting another sweetener, sucralose, breaks up DNA and may contribute to health problems.For years, food and beverage companies and regulators have typically denounced research that raises questions about artificial sweeteners, broadly arguing that the studies were flawed or inconclusive or that the health risks were minuscule.“A substantial body of scientific evidence shows that low- and no-calorie sweeteners provide effective and safe options to reduce sugar and calorie consumption,” Robert Rankin, president of the Calorie Control Council, the lobbying association for manufacturers and suppliers of nearly two dozen alternative sweeteners, said in an emailed statement on Thursday.Indeed, most food and beverage companies that use aspartame are reluctant to switch partly because aspartame is less expensive than other alternatives and is 200 times as sweet as sugar, meaning a little goes a very long way.“One of the benefits of aspartame is that it’s been made for so long that manufacturers have really refined the costs and processing of it so well and they get a superior product,” said Glenn Roy, an adjunct organic chemistry professor at Vassar College who spent more than three decades working at food companies, including NutraSweet, General Foods and PepsiCo.On top of that, the F.D.A. approved aspartame in 1974, giving companies decades of data and information on what aspartame can and cannot do in products. For instance, it can enhance and extend certain fruit flavors, like cherry and orange, making it a preferred sweetener for beverages and chewing gum. But when heated, aspartame loses its sweetness, making it less desirable for baked or cooked products.Food and beverage companies are releasing new no- or low-sugar products in response to consumer demand, but many are being made with newer sweeteners, or a blend of sweeteners. Each new product undergoes a litany of sensory and flavor tests before it is released.But for products that have been around for decades, like diet sodas, loyal customers are accustomed to a specific taste, and they could be turned off by changes in ingredients, scientists warn.

The discovery that football players were unknowingly acquiring permanent brain damage as they racked up head hits throughout their professional careers created a rush to design better head protection. One of these inventions is nanofoam, the material on the inside of football helmets.
Thanks to mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Baoxing Xu at the University of Virginia and his research team, nanofoam just received a big upgrade and protective sports equipment could, too. This newly invented design integrates nanofoam with “non-wetting ionized liquid,” a form of water that Xu and his research team now know blends perfectly with nanofoam to create a liquid cushion. This versatile and responsive material will give better protection to athletes and is promising for use in protecting car occupants and aiding hospital patients using wearable medical devices.
The team’s research was recently published in Advanced Materials.
For maximum safety, the protective foam sandwiched between the inner and outer layers of a helmet should not only be able to take one hit but multiple hits, game after game. The material needs to be cushiony enough to create a soft place for a head to land, but resilient enough to bounce back and be ready for the next blow. And the material needs to be resilient but not hard, because “hard” hurts heads, too. Having one material do all of these things is a pretty tall order.
The team advanced their work previously published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which started exploring the use of liquids in nanofoam, to create a material that meets the complex safety demands of high-contact sports.
“We found out that creating a liquid nanofoam cushion with ionized water instead of regular water made a significant difference in the way the material performed,” Xu said. “Using ionized water in the design is a breakthrough because we uncovered an unusual liquid-ion coordination network which made it possible to create a more sophisticated material.”
The liquid nanofoam cushion allows the inside of the helmet to compress and disperse the impact force, minimizing the force transmitted to the head and reducing the risk of injury. It also regains its original shape after impact, allowing for multiple hits and ensuring the helmet’s continued effectiveness in protecting the athlete’s head during the game.

“An added bonus,” Xu continued, “is that the enhanced material is more flexible and much more comfortable to wear. The material dynamically responds to external jolts because of the way the ion clusters and networks are fabricated in the material.”
“The liquid cushion can be designed as lighter, smaller and safer protective devices,” said associate professor Weiyi Lu, a collaborator from civil engineering at Michigan State University. “Also, the reduced weight and size of the liquid nanofoam liners will revolutionize the design of the hard shell of future helmets. You could be watching a football game one day and wonder how the smaller helmets protect the players’ heads. It could be because of our new material.”
In traditional nanofoam, the protection mechanism relies on material properties that react when it gets crunched, or mechanically deformed, such as “collapse” and “densification.” Collapse is what it sounds like, and densification is the severe deformation of foam on strong impact. After the collapse and densification, the traditional nanofoam doesn’t recover very well because of the permanent deformation of materials — making the protection a one-time deal. When compared to the liquid nanofoam, these properties are very slow (a few milliseconds) and cannot accommodate the “high-force reduction requirement,” which means it can’t effectively absorb and dissipate high-force blows in the short time window associated with collisions and impacts.
Another downside of traditional nanofoam is that, when subjected to multiple small impacts that don’t deform the material, the foam becomes completely “hard” and behaves as a rigid body that cannot provide protection. The rigidness could potentially lead to injuries and damage to soft tissues, such as traumatic brain injury (TBI).
By manipulating the mechanical properties of materials — integrating nanoporous materials with “non-wetting liquid” or ionized water — the team developed a way to make a material that could respond to impacts in a few microseconds because this combination allows for superfast liquid transport in a nanoconfined environment. Also, upon unloading, i.e., after impacts, due to its non-wetting nature, the liquid nanofoam cushion can return to its original form because the liquid is ejected out of the pores, thereby withstanding repeated blows. This dynamic conforming and reforming ability also remedies the problem of the material becoming rigid from micro-impacts.
The same liquid properties that make this new nanofoam safer for athletic gear also offer a potential use in other places where collisions happen, like cars, whose safety and material protective systems are being reconsidered to embrace the emerging era of electric propulsion and automated vehicles. It can be used to create protective cushions that absorb impacts during accidents or help reduce vibrations and noise.
Another purpose that might not be as evident is the role liquid nanofoam can play in the hospital setting. The foam can be used in wearable medical devices like a smartwatch, which monitors your heart rate and other vital signs. By incorporating liquid nanofoam technology, the watch can have a soft and flexible foam-like material on its underside and help improve the accuracy of the sensors by ensuring proper contact with your skin. It can conform to the shape of your wrist, making it comfortable to wear all day. Additionally, the foam can provide extra protection by acting as a shock absorber. If you accidentally bump your wrist against a hard surface, the foam can help cushion the impact and prevent any harm to the sensors or your skin.

Aerobic glycolysis, the process by which cells transform glucose into lactate, is key for eye development in mammals, according to a new Northwestern Medicine study published in Nature Communications.
While it has been well known that retinal cells use lactate during cell differentiation, the exact role that this process plays in early eye development was not previously understood.
The findings further the field’s understanding of the metabolic pathways underlying organ development, according to Guillermo Oliver, PhD, the Thomas D. Spies Professor of Lymphatic Metabolism, Director of the Feinberg Cardiovascular and Renal Research Institute Center for Vascular and Developmental Biology, and senior author of the study.
“For a long time, my lab has been interested in developmental biology. In particular, to characterize the molecular and cellular steps regulating early eye morphogenesis,” Oliver said. “For us, the question was: ‘How do these remarkable and critical sensory organs we have in our face start to form?'”
Nozomu Takata, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow in the Oliver lab and first author of the paper, initially approached this question by developing embryonic stem cell-derived eye organoids, which are organ-like tissues engineered in a petri dish. Intriguingly, he observed that early mouse eye progenitors display elevated glycolytic activity and production of lactate. After introducing a glycolysis inhibitor to the cultured organoids, normal optic vesicle development halted, according to the study, but adding back lactate allowed the organoids to resume normal eye morphogenesis, or development.
Takata and his collaborators then compared those organoids to controls using genome-wide transcriptome and epigenetic analysis using RNA and ChIP sequencing. They found that inhibiting glycolysis and adding lactate to the organoids regulated the expression of certain critical and evolutionary conserved genes required for early eye development.
To validate these findings, Takata deleted Glut1 and Ldha, genes known for regulating glucose transport and lactate production from developing retinas in mouse embryos. The deletion of these genes arrested normal glucose transport specifically in the eye-forming region, according to the study.
“What we found was an ATP-independent role of the glycolytic pathway,” Takata said. “Lactate, which is a metabolite known as a waste product before, is really doing something cool in eye morphogenesis. That really tells us that this metabolite is a key player in organ morphogenesis and in particular, eye morphogenesis. I see this discovery as having broader implications, as likely also being required in other organs and maybe in regeneration and disease as well.”
Following this discovery, Takata said he plans to continue to take advantage of traditional and emerging developmental biology’s tools such as mouse genetics and stem cells-derived organoids to study the role of the glycolytic pathway and metabolism in the development of other organs.
The findings could also be useful in better understanding the direct effect that metabolites could have in regulating gene expression during organ regeneration and tumor development, Oliver said.
“Both regeneration and tumorigenesis involve developmental pathways that go awry in some occasions, or you need to reactivate,” Oliver said. “For many developmental processes, you need very strict transcriptional regulation. A gene is on or off at certain times, and when that goes wrong, that could lead to developmental defects or promote tumorigenesis. Now that we know that there are specific metabolites responsible for normal or abnormal gene regulation, this can broaden our thinking on approaches to therapeutic treatments.” Additional Feinberg faculty co-authors include Ali Shilatifard, PhD, the Robert Francis Furchgott Professor and chair of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics and director of the Simpson Querrey Institute for Epigenetics, Alexander Misharin, MD, PhD, associate professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care, Jason M. Miska, PhD, assistant professor of Neurological Surgery and Navdeep Chandel, PhD, the David W. Cugell, MD, Professor of Medicine in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care and of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics.
The study was supported by an Illumina Next Generation Sequencing award

A low-cost version of ketamine to treat severe depression has performed strongly in a double-blind trial that compared it with placebo.
In research published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry, researchers led by UNSW Sydney and the affiliated Black Dog Institute found that more than one in five participants achieved total remission from their symptoms after a month of bi-weekly injections, while a third had their symptoms improve by at least 50 per cent. The study was a collaboration between six academic clinical mood disorder units in Australia and one in New Zealand and was funded by the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC).
“For people with treatment-resistant depression — so those who have not benefitted from different modes of talk-therapy, commonly prescribed antidepressants, or electroconvulsive therapy — 20 per cent remission is actually quite good,” lead researcher Professor Colleen Loo says.
“We found that in this trial, ketamine was clearly better than the placebo — with 20 per cent reporting they no longer had clinical depression compared with only 2 per cent in the placebo group. This is a huge and very obvious difference and brings definitive evidence to the field which only had past smaller trials that compared ketamine with placebo.”
How the trial worked
The researchers recruited 179 people with treatment-resistant depression. All were given an injection of either a generic form of ketamine that is already widely available in Australia as a drug for anaesthesia and sedation — or placebo. Participants received two injections a week in a clinic where they were monitored for around two hours while acute dissociative and sedative effects wore off — usually within the first hour. The treatment ran for a month and participants were asked to assess their mood at the end of the trial and one month later.

As a double-blind trial, neither participants nor researchers administering the drug were aware which patients received generic ketamine or placebo, to ensure psychological biases were minimised. Importantly, a placebo was chosen that also causes sedation, to improve treatment masking. Midazolam is a sedative normally administered before a general anaesthetic, while in many previous studies the placebo was saline.
“Because there are no subjective effects from the saline, in previous studies it became obvious which people were receiving the ketamine and which people received placebo,” Prof. Loo says.
“In using midazolam — which is not a treatment for depression, but does make you feel a bit woozy and out of it — you have much less chance of knowing whether you have received ketamine, which has similar acute effects.”
Other features of the recent trial that set it apart from past studies included accepting people into the trial who had previously received electroconvulsive therapy (ECT).
“People are recommended ECT treatment for their depression when all other treatments have been ineffective,” Prof. Loo says.

“Most studies exclude people who have had ECT because it is very hard for a new treatment to work where ECT has not.”
Another difference about this trial was that the drug was delivered subcutaneously (injected into the skin) rather than by drip, thus greatly reducing time and medical complexity. The study is also the largest in the world to date that compares generic ketamine with placebo in treating severe depression.
Much more affordable
Apart from the positive results, one of the standout benefits of using generic ketamine for treatment-resistant depression is that it is much cheaper than the patented S-ketamine nasal spray currently in use in Australia. Where S-ketamine costs about $800 per dose, the generic ketamine is a mere fraction of that, costing as little as $5, depending on the supplier and whether the hospital buys it wholesale. On top of the cost for the drug, patients need to pay for the medical care they receive to ensure their experience is safe — which at Black Dog Institute clinics, comes to $350 per session.
“With the S-ketamine nasal spray, you are out of pocket by about $1200 for every treatment by the time you pay for the drug and the procedure, whereas for generic ketamine, you’re paying around $300-350 for the treatment including the drug cost,” Prof. Loo says.
She adds that for both S-ketamine and generic ketamine treatments, the positive effects often wear off after a few days to weeks, so ongoing treatment may be required, depending on someone’s clinical situation. But the prohibitive costs of the drug and procedure make this an unsustainable proposition for most Australians.
“This is why we’re applying for a Medicare item number to fund this treatment now, because it’s such a powerful treatment.
“And if you consider that many of these people might spend many months in hospital, or be unable to work and are often quite suicidal, it’s quite cost effective when you see how incredibly quickly and powerfully it works. We’ve seen people go back to work, or study, or leave hospital because of this treatment in a matter of weeks.”
The researchers will next be looking at larger trials of generic ketamine over longer periods, and refining the safety monitoring of treatment.
Participating trial sites UNSW / Black Dog Institute Royal Prince Alfred Hospital / University of Sydney NeuroCentrix Research Institute Royal Adelaide Hospital / University of Adelaide Monash Alfred Psychiatry Research Centre / Monash University University of Otago Gold Coast University HospitalInstitutions of non-site collaborators Deakin University University of Newcastle The George Institute for Global Health University of Western Australia