Tech

After performing thousands of unsuccessful experiments in his attempt to perfect the light bulb, Thomas Edison famously remarked: "I have not failed, not once. I've discovered ten thousand ways that don't work." Australian leaders of an ongoing pancreatic cancer clinical trial known as the Individualised Molecular Pancreatic Cancer Therapy or 'IMPaCT' trial, could say exactly the same thing as Edison.

A Phase IIa placebo-controlled clinical trial of TOPOFEN, a topical anti-migraine therapy for moderate and severe migraine sufferers, showed that the application of a well-known non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID), using the company's proprietary formulation on the skin, over the trigeminal nerve branches, can be a safe and effective alternative treatment for patients suffering from acute migraine.

Cancer DNA circulating in the bloodstream of lung cancer patients can provide doctors with vital mutation information that can help optimise treatment when tumour tissue is not available, an international group of researchers has reported at the European Lung Cancer Conference (ELCC) in Geneva, Switzerland.

The results have important implications for the use of cancer therapies that target specific cancer mutations, explains Dr Martin Reck from the Department of Thoracic Oncology at Lung Clinic Grosshansdorf, Germany, who presented the findings at the conference.

The levels of chemicals used to flavour some brands of e-cigarette fluid exceed recommended exposure limits and could be respiratory irritants, in some cases, suggests research published online in the journal Tobacco Control.

The electronic cigarette market has developed rapidly in recent years, with global sales in 2014 estimated to be in the region of US$7 billion, but the health implications of vaping remain hotly contested.

Nearly anyone touched by ovarian cancer will tell you: it's devastating. It's bad enough that cancer in almost 80 percent of patients reaches advanced stages before diagnosis, and that most patients are expected to die within five years. But just as painfully, roughly one quarter of women diagnosed have no warning that they are resistant to platinum-based chemotherapy, the main line of defense, nor that they will likely have 18 months to live.

Technological advances are enabling scientists to sequence the genomes of cancer tumors, revealing a detailed portrait of genetic mutations that drive these diseases. But genomic studies are only one piece of the puzzle that is precision medicine, a Weill Cornell Medical College researcher writes in Nature. In order to realize the promise of this field, there needs to be an increased focus on creating robust clinical databases that include medical histories from patients around the country, which physicians can then use along with genomic data to tailor individual treatments.

A research team has invented a prototype video camera that is the first to be fully self-powered--it can produce an image each second, indefinitely, of a well-lit indoor scene. They designed a pixel that can not only measure incident light but also convert the incident light into electric power.

The Austrian Centre of Industrial Biotechnology (acib) uses the positive aspects of synthetic biology for the ecofriendly production of a natural compound. The challenge of the biotechnologists Tamara Wriessnegger and Harald Pichler in Graz was to produce Nootkatone in large quantities. The substance is expensive (more than 4000 USD per kilo) and can be found only in minute quantities in grapefruits.

The winner of the 2015 Franz Edelman Award for Achievement in Operations Research and the Management Sciences, sponsored by the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) association for analytics professionals, has been announced, and it is something of a surprise since an award for outstanding operations research would typically be assumed to be a defense contractor or a computer company.

Malaria is a critical health problem in West Africa, where traditional medicine is commonly used alongside modern health care practices. An herbal remedy derived from the roots of a weed, which was traditionally used to alleviate malarial symptoms, was combined with leaves and aerial portions from two other plants with antimalarial activity, formulated as a tea, and eventually licensed and sold as an antimalarial phytomedicine.

The story and challenges behind the development of this plant-based treatment are presented in The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine.

A new study has demonstrated that genetically modified Salmonella can be used to kill cancer cells. The study is published in this week's issue of mBio, an American Society for Microbiology online-only, open access journal.

A liquid form of marijuana may show promise as a treatment for children with severe epilepsy that is not responding to other treatments, according to a study released today which involved 213 people, ranging from toddlers to adults, with a median age of 11 who had severe epilepsy that did not respond to other treatments. Participants had Dravet syndrome and Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, epilepsy types that can lead to intellectual disability and lifelong seizures, as well as 10 other types of severe epilepsy.

As numerous organizations promote the need for a healthy and well-funded transportation system during "Stand Up for Transportation Day", the Diesel Technology Forum is highlighting technology that offers better fuel efficiency and improved environmental performance.

Strategic partnering has become commonplace when introducing innovations to systems markets. In standards battles, network affiliation has been used as a market signal to create confidence in a format's success. This paper's authors thus develop and test a model aimed at finding the right partners to sponsor an innovative technology.

Using technology like tablets in schools has turned into a heated political debate, Los Angeles infamously spent $1.3 billion on a program to give iPads to each student that has subsequently been plagued with problems. In the United Kingdom the head of the National Association of Head Teachers claimed he was dubious about using tech as a teaching aid in non-IT classes.