RP-VITA can navigate to your room to put you in touch with a doctor, and it's being used in everything from newborn care to stroke treatment. RP-VITA is designed to make doctors more widely available through telepresence. Would you mind if your doctor were treating you through a display on top of a robot? What if that display could save your life? Well, that could be the case if you find yourself at one of seven U.S. and Mexican hospitals that have deployed the RP-VITA telepresence robot, which obtained FDA approval earlier this year as the first of its kind. RP-VITA, which stands for Remote Presence Virtual + Independent Telemedicine Assistant, is now on hand at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, five other medical centers in the U.S., and one in Mexico City, developers iRobot and InTouch Health announced today. "During a stroke, the loss of a few minutes can mean the difference between preserving or losing brain function," the companies quoted Paul Vespa, director of neurocritical care at the Reagan Center, as saying in a release. "The new technology enables me to concentrate on caring for my patient without being distracted by the need to … Continue reading →

Senator Durbin Defends Rallying with Communists and Anarchists Senator Durbin Defends Rallying with Communists and Anarchists. By: Rebel Pundit … Continue reading →

Newswise UCLA researchers led by Drs. Peiyee Lee and Richard Gatti at the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research have used induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC) to advance disease-in-a-dish modeling of a rare genetic disorder, Ataxia Telangiectasia (A-T). Their discovery shows the positive effects of drugs that may lead to effective new treatments for the neurodegenerative disease. iPSC are made from patient skin cells rather than from embryos and can become any type of cells, including brain cells, in the laboratory. The study appears online ahead of print today in the journal Nature Communications. Patients with A-T begin life with neurological deficits that become devastating through progressive loss of function in a part of the brain called the cerebellum, which leads to severe difficulty with movement and coordination. A-T patients also suffer frequent infections due to their weakened immune systems and have increased cancer risk. A-T is caused by lost function in a gene, ATM, which normally repairs damaged DNA in the cells and preserves normal function. Laboratory mouse models are commonly used to study A-T; however, mice with A-T do not experience the more debilitating effects that humans do. In mice with A-T, … Continue reading →

The University of Arizona Genetics Core (UAGC), located in the Thomas W. Keating Bioresearch Building on the UA campus, is home to rows of rectangular machines that hum busily at all hours of the day and night. These machines, with names like Illumina HISEQ 2000 and Ion Torrent, are the inanimate workhorses of the UAGC, producing hundreds of thousands of pieces of data in a single run. They sequence DNA and RNA, the genetic code and the genetic messages that program the building blocks forming a plant, animal or human. This is Ryan Sprissler's workplace and his intellectual playground.Sprissler, staff scientist and manager at the UAGC, and a Ph.D. candidate in the UA genetics program, enjoys spreading the word about genetics and the mission of the UAGC. He and his colleagues use genetic tools to explore topics including the story of human migration, and the mysteries of human disease. Sprissler describes a particularly interesting project to which the UAGC contributed--the Genographic Project.The purpose of the Genographic Project, a collaboration involving the UAGC, National Geographic, IBM and researchers from around the world, was to study patterns of migration based on the genetics of human populations. If a population stays in one … Continue reading →

Public release date: 7-May-2013 [ | E-mail | Share ] Contact: Markus M. Lerch lerch@uni-greifswald.de The JAMA Network Journals Two genome-wide association studies and a subsequent meta-analysis have found that certain genetic variations are associated with susceptibility to Helicobacter pylori, a bacteria that is a major cause of gastritis and stomach ulcers and is linked to stomach cancer, findings that may help explain some of the observed variation in individual risk for H pylori infection, according to a study in the May 8 issue of JAMA. "[H pylori] is the major cause of gastritis (80 percent) and gastroduodenal ulcer disease (15 percent-20 percent) and the only bacterial pathogen believed to cause cancer," according to background information in the article. "H pylori prevalence is as high as 90 percent in some developing countries but 10 percent of a given population is never colonized, regardless of exposure. Genetic factors are hypothesized to confer H pylori susceptibility." Julia Mayerle, M.D., of University Medicine Greifswald, Greifswald, Germany, and colleagues conducted a study to identify genetic loci associated with H pylori seroprevalence. Two independent genome-wide association studies (GWASs) and a subsequent meta-analysis were conducted for anti-H pylori immunoglobulin G (IgG) serology in the Study of … Continue reading →