#Biomedical Research Tools

[agaselectronicmaterials]

Discover A-Gas's innovative range of microfluidics and lab-on-chip solutions, designed for high precision in disease modeling and drug screening. These cutting-edge products leverage the latest technology to offer unparalleled accuracy and efficiency in micro-scale experiments, making them ideal for biomedical and pharmaceutical applications. Learn how our solutions can enhance your research and development efforts in this dynamic field.

[prachicmi2]

Exploring the Advancements and Applications of Immunofluorescence Analyzers

An immunofluorescence analyzer is a sophisticated diagnostic tool that utilizes the principles of immunofluorescence to detect and analyze specific antigens or antibodies in biological samples. This technology has revolutionized the field of medical diagnostics by providing rapid, accurate, and sensitive results for various diseases and conditions. Immunofluorescence Analyzer have found extensive applications in various areas of medical diagnostics. One of the primary applications is in the field of autoimmune disorders, such as systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), rheumatoid arthritis, and antinuclear antibody (ANA) testing. These analyzers enable the detection of specific autoantibodies, facilitating the accurate diagnosis and monitoring of autoimmune diseases. Get more insights on, Immunofluorescence Analyzer

[curiousquill1]

VJ Instruments Plethysmometer: Streamlining Lab Processes with Precision

"The quest for precision has always been the driving force of scientific progress." In volumetric analysis and fluid displacement measurements, the VJ Instruments Plethysmometer represents the remarkable innovation that is changing the current face of lab daily operations.

Understanding Modern Plethysmometry

The precision and reliability of measurement instruments determine the laboratory's efficiency. The Plethysmometer VJ Instruments is the epitome of a breakthrough in volumetric analysis technology, making it the real test-tube success tool for researchers and lab technicians to achieve accurate measurements while working effectively.

Key Areas Under Investigation

Pharmaceutical development and research

Testing of medical devices

Study of materials science

Analyzing biological samples

Quality control measures

Putting Great Design into Functionality

The VJ Instruments Plethysmometer shows excellent engineering, addressing many common laboratory issues. Its compact design optimizes bench space without sacrificing functionality or accessibility.

Design Feat Features:

Ergonomic control panel with intuitive interface

High-resolution digital display

Spill-resistant housing

Quick-release sample chamber

Vibration-dampening feet

The modular design guarantees quick maintenance and easy cleaning, minimizing downtime between measurements. This attention to practical details reflects a deep understanding of lab workflows and the need for uninterrupted operation.

Accuracy That Moves Forward

In terms of measurement, the VJ Instruments Plethysmometer sets a new standard for precision:

±0.1% measurement accuracy across the entire sample size range

Real-time temperature compensation

Automatic calibration verification

Digital data logging with timestamp capabilities

Export functionality in various file formats

These features ensure that researchers can trust their results while spending less time verifying measurements, leading to faster and more accurate lab experiments.

Overcoming Common Laboratory Challenges

Laboratories face several challenges that the VJ Instruments Plethysmometer tackles head-on:

Time Management:

30-second cycle of measurement for any sample

Batch processing capabilities

Automated cleaning cycles

Data Quality:

Built-in error detection

Sample tracking system

Automated measurement recording

Resource Optimization:

Minimal sample preparation required

Lower reagent consumption

Energy-saving due to efficiency

Investment That Pays Dividends

Investing in a VJ Instruments Plethysmometer is more than just acquiring equipment; it's an investment in efficiency and accuracy that yields real returns:

Financial Benefits:

Reduced labor costs with automation

Less sample waste

Reduced maintenance needs

Extended calibration intervals

Operational Benefits:

Improved throughput

Increased reliability of measurements

Enhanced documentation compliance

Simplified training requirements

Support to Your Success

VJ Instruments backs up its plethysmometer with robust support:

Initial assistance with setup and calibration

Staff training programs

Technical support hotline

Scheduled software updates

Preventive maintenance services

Model 1400 VJ Instruments Plethysmometer: Find Your Perfect Solution

When choosing lab equipment, consider whether the VJ Instruments Plethysmometer fits your needs:

Top Questions You Should Ask:

What sample sizes do you typically handle?

How important is measurement speed to your processes?

How crucial is high accuracy to your procedures?

How will automatic data collection transform your documentation process?

Typically, the answers to these questions highlight why the VJ Instruments Plethysmometer becomes the top choice for labs focused on efficiency and accuracy.

Future Outlook

The progress in laboratory equipment demands more advanced yet user-friendly tools. The VJ Instruments Plethysmometer strikes the ideal balance between cutting-edge technology and practical use, making it a valuable asset for any forward-thinking laboratory.

Enhance your lab's capabilities—get in touch with VJ Instruments to discover how their plethysmometer can revolutionize your measurements and ignite a new level of precision and efficiency in your research.

[reasonsforhope]

"When bloodstream infections set in, fast treatment is crucial — but it can take several days to identify the bacteria responsible. A new, rapid-diagnosis sepsis test could cut down on the wait, reducing testing time from as much as a few days to about 13 hours by cutting out a lengthy blood culturing step, researchers report July 24 [2024] in Nature.

“They are pushing the limits of rapid diagnostics for bloodstream infections,” says Pak Kin Wong, a biomedical engineer at Penn State who was not involved in the research. “They are driving toward a direction that will dramatically improve the clinical management of bloodstream infections and sepsis.”

Sepsis — an immune system overreaction to an infection — is a life-threatening condition that strikes nearly 2 million people per year in the United States, killing more than 250,000 (SN: 5/18/08). The condition can also progress to septic shock, a steep drop in blood pressure that damages the kidneys, lungs, liver and other organs. It can be caused by a broad range of different bacteria, making species identification key for personalized treatment of each patient.

In conventional sepsis testing, the blood collected from the patient must first go through a daylong blood culturing step to grow more bacteria for detection. The sample then goes through a second culture for purification before undergoing testing to find the best treatment. During the two to three days required for testing, patients are placed on broad-spectrum antibiotics — a blunt tool designed to stave off a mystery infection that’s better treated by targeted antibiotics after figuring out the specific bacteria causing the infection.

Nanoengineer Tae Hyun Kim and colleagues found a way around the initial 24-hour blood culture.

The workaround starts by injecting a blood sample with nanoparticles decorated with a peptide designed to bind to a wide range of blood-borne pathogens. Magnets then pull out the nanoparticles, and the bound pathogens come with them. Those bacteria are sent directly to the pure culture. Thanks to this binding and sorting process, the bacteria can grow faster without extraneous components in the sample, like blood cells and the previously given broad-spectrum antibiotics, says Kim, of Seoul National University in South Korea.

Cutting out the initial blood culturing step also relies on a new imaging algorithm, Kim says. To test bacteria’s susceptibility to antibiotics, both are placed in the same environment, and scientists observe if and how the antibiotics stunt the bacteria’s growth or kill them. The team’s image detection algorithm can detect subtler changes than the human eye can. So it can identify the species and antibiotic susceptibility with far fewer bacteria cells than the conventional method, thereby reducing the need for long culture times to produce larger colonies.

Though the new method shows promise, Wong says, any new test carries a risk of false negatives, missing bacteria that are actually present in the bloodstream. That in turn can lead to not treating an active infection, and “undertreatment of bloodstream infection can be fatal,” he says. “While the classical blood culture technique is extremely slow, it is very effective in avoiding false negatives.”

Following their laboratory-based experiments, Kim and colleagues tested their new method clinically, running it in parallel with conventional sepsis testing on 190 hospital patients with suspected infections. The testing obtained a 100 percent match on correct bacterial species identification, the team reports. Though more clinical tests are needed, these accuracy results are encouraging so far, Kim says.

The team is continuing to refine their design in hopes of developing a fully automated sepsis blood test that can quickly produce results, even when hospital laboratories are closed overnight. “We really wanted to commercialize this and really make it happen so that we could make impacts to the patients,” Kim says."

-via Science News, July 24, 2024

[globalnewscollective]

Why Research Funding Is Under Attack

Scientific progress in the U.S. is under threat, and the stakes couldn’t be higher.

What’s Happening?

The Trump administration moved to cut NIH funding for research projects that it deemed politically controversial, including studies on climate change, reproductive health, women`s health and pandemic preparedness.

What Does This Mean for You?

Delays in Medical Breakthroughs – Research in cancer, Alzheimer’s, and infectious diseases could slow down if funding is politicized.

Threats to Public Health – NIH funding supports studies that protect against future pandemics. Cutting it makes everyone more vulnerable.

Censorship in Science – Allowing politicians to defund research they don’t like sets a dangerous precedent for scientific freedom.

Loss of Innovation and Jobs – Universities, biotech companies, and research institutions rely on NIH grants to drive progress and economic growth.

Harm to Women and Minorities – Many of the affected research areas disproportionately impact women and marginalized communities. Reproductive health studies, maternal care advancements, and research on diseases that primarily affect minority populations are often the first to be cut when funding becomes politicized. Without proper investment, health disparities will continue to widen, leaving these groups with fewer resources and medical solutions tailored to their needs.

The Bigger Picture

This is about more than just one round of funding cuts—it’s about whether science can remain independent in a democracy. If political agendas continue to interfere with research, the U.S. risks falling behind in medicine, technology, and environmental science. Other countries will take the lead, while American innovation suffers.

What Can You Do?

Support Science Advocacy Groups – Organizations fighting for independent research need public backing.

Contact Lawmakers – Demand that science funding decisions be based on evidence, not ideology.

Stay Informed – Misinformation is a powerful tool—know the facts and share them.

Science should serve the public good, not political interests. The fight isn’t over, and the future of research depends on how we respond now.

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive

By John Flint

A landmark study has found the virus that causes COVID-19 accumulates and persists in the body - especially the brain - for years after infection.

The international team of scientists believe what they have discovered can help explain long COVID.

The research builds on other studies showing the invasiveness of the SARS-CoV-2 virus and the long-term implications.

“Using optical clearing and imaging, we observed the accumulation of SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in the skull-meninges-brain axis of human COVID-19 patients, persisting long after viral clearance,” the study authors reported in leading biomedical journal Cell Host and Microbe last week.

Meninges are three layers of membranes that cover and protect the brain and spinal cord.

Infectious disease experts in Australia have acclaimed the peer-reviewed study.

Professor Brendan Crabb, Director and CEO of the Burnet Institute for Medical Research and Public Health in Melbourne said the study underlined the need to treat COVID more seriously.

“This work uses cutting edge imaging technology to see things (molecules and cellular structures) to a resolution not achieved before in and around the brains of people infected with SARS-Cov-2 and mice infected with a version of SARS-Cov-2 modified to (infect) mice.

“The virus moves around the body, elegantly confirming what we already know.

“This paper shows that the virus, and especially shed spike protein, can persist around the brain for a long period of time, driving a pathological inflammatory response. This is proposed as a likely cause of the neurological symptoms people with acute and long forms of COVID experience.

“Although not without limitations, this works adds substantially to a large body of work that says COVID enters via the respiratory tract but goes into your bloodstream and so quickly moves around the body accessing many tissues, including the outer regions of the brain.

“Virus in this brain region likely persists and seemingly sheds spike protein which can be further neuro-invasive and persist even longer, (for) years even. This spike persistence is pathological, driving inflammatory responses that have likely consequences for proper brain functioning, such as memory, cognition and neurodegenerative diseases.”

“Next time you think of dismissing COVID as just another annoying common cold it may pay to visualise what you see so starkly in this paper, the virus moving freely around your body and finding a long-term home in all sorts of places where it can really cause trouble, including the brain and the heart,” Prof Crabb, who’s on the board of the WA-based Kids Research Institute Australia, added.

“This work further emphasises the need for individuals, and societies as a whole to take this infection more seriously and try and reduce the amount of transmission using the tools we currently have, most especially vaccination, clean indoor air approaches and well-fitted masks in crowded and poorly ventilated indoor settings.”

“It also showed mRNA spike-based vaccines are protective against spike accumulating in the brain periphery, consistent with what we already know about their protective effect in long COVID.”

Perth long COVID sufferer Melissa Challenor has been sick for two years.

“It’s not getting any better for me,” she said on Friday. “People like me are not making shit up. It’s in our brains, it’s in our bodies, it’s in our organs.

“I’m still being seen by the senior neuro physio at Sir Charles Gairdner Hospital who’s been amazing, but now he’s sort of going, ‘Well, where do I refer you? Do I refer you to the Parkinson’s people? Do I refer you to the dementia people?’ Because the neurological symptoms are really quite bad.”

In a commentary published by the Medical Journal of Australia two weeks, researchers from the Burnet Institute said long COVID may be driven by “long infection” and that persistent replicating SARS‐CoV‐2 may be the “unifying driver for long COVID”.

The institute’s Dr Michelle Scoullar said studies had found traces of the virus in many tissues, blood and the gut well after an initial infection.

“We know vaccines can reduce the risk of long COVID, but if the virus continues to be active, antiviral treatments could be a potential treatment for long COVID and might even offer a cure,” she said.

“By prioritising prevention, advancing treatments, and improving access to vaccines, we can take significant steps toward addressing the global challenge of long COVID.”

In the United States, about 5.5 per cent of people infected with COVID experience long-term health effects, including fatigue, muscle pain, and impaired cognitive function.

A recent study demonstrated a lowering of IQ by six points in individuals with long COVID relative to unaffected individuals. Individuals with mild acute infection showed a three‐point drop in IQ. Children can also get long COVID. A US study in August reported symptoms in 6-to-11 year-olds were different to those for adolescents.

Researchers at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine found that “younger children were more likely to experience a cluster of symptoms relating to stomach and digestive problems, and another characterised by sleep and memory/focus issues, while adolescents had a cluster dominated by change in smell or taste.”

Long COVID also carries an economic burden in terms of lost labour hours. It cost the Australian economy about $9.6 billion in 2022, a study by The Kirby Institute at the University of NSW, reported.

[selamat-linting]

me : obviously any business would want to cut costs and the adoption of ai makes sense when you see it from that perspective. i think LLMs is a tool, its not inherently bad especially if you look at how it helped with biomedical researches, and honestly the issues i've seen with it is mostly related to labor rights issues, the nature of a fragile economic bubble, and people's general incuriosity enabled and amplified. that being said, i've seen mostly small business that are cheap and kinda shitty that uses it so "ai art" has that tacky vibe i dislike just like how i hate the microsoft corporate art style. seeing wwe using it is not exactly surprising to me, they've never really got rid of the tacky "company on the verge of bankruptcy" image no matter how high their production budget gets. like, every show, every video package seems like one last bid to tell their investors theyre profitable even when they've been number one in pro wrestling for decades.

that being said i probably wont start gassing them up if they actually hire artists for the show. its wwe, lol. a corporation like any other. i mean, hollywood hires artists and its mostly underpaid vfx and cgi workers, a lot from the global south. plenty of us animation studies outsource their work to other countries like korea and japan, underpaying them in the process, and erasing the work and skill that goes into it by slapping a US brand to it. or i can argue the whole scale of it and how normalized it is makes it more harmful than the occasional use of "ai art". also, back before CGI was a thing there are cases of actors left disabled or very ill from special effects make up too! everything has its downsides and risks, and as long as mainstream / pop art is produced under capitalism, its not going to be free of exploitation. and i think hyperfocusing on one issue while forgetting the rest and losing the bigger picture is pretty silly isnt it?

my inflammatory reddit user alter : your disgusting and exploitative use of artists (ai art) vs our authentic display of human collaboration and ingenuity (outsourcing and underpaying animation workers from "nameless" studios in asia)

[subdee]

I gotta say that:

1) Going after Harvard's tax exempt status - weaponizing the IRS in THE most public possible way against the most visible target you could possibly imagine;

1a) For that matter lying about the funding Harvard receives from the government; the money is attached to research grants for mainly biomedical research and trying to change the funding formula for NIH and NSF grants to take money away from "enemies" was one of the first moves of the Trump admin that was blocked by the courts, not that they even care;

2) Going so hard on the pro-Palestine = antisemitic rhetoric as an excuse to crack down on free speech on college campuses that dozens of Jewish religious leaders start saying that maybe equating Zionism with Judaism was a mistake after all;

2a) Going so hard on that rhetoric that you even lose Tom Motherfucking Friedman;

3) Defying a 9-0 supreme Court decision to return Kilmar Garcia Abrego from El Salvadore and then ON TOP OF THAT lying to the base that this was a 9-0 ruling in favor as if you think every one of them is a complete moron;

3a) Being so sure the base wants the foreign concentration camp that you send a dozen House representatives down there for photos in front of the people in cages;

3b) Meeting with the president of El Salvador and "accidentally" letting the hot mic pick up that "home growns" are next and he'll have to build "five more places" (CECOT already holds 40,000 people) to warehouse them all;

4) Attacking the head of the Federal Reserve, Jerome Powell, for not lowering interest rates, after suggesting you just might just ignore some of those US debts, you know, maybe we just don't have to pay those, as if this won't completely destroy the US bond market and therefore the governments ability to pay for things;

And so on... I'm probably forgetting a few... Are all desperation moves of an administration that knows they fucked up on the trade war with China and are casting about in a panic for anything that might distract their base from the money rapidly disappearing from their country, their social security, and their 401ks.

But will it matter? Are the billionaires who helped put Trump in office alarmed enough about all this to stop funding right wing propaganda?

Ultimately, does Trump still have enough fans left that if he orders the National Guard to conduct mass arrests of citizens rioting in the streets, they'll obey?

Because honestly at this point, that's what it might come down to.

***

I read this comment recently about Palestine, it was so fucking accurate:

After Nonviolence: The end of peaceful resistance in Palestine - by Ben Ehrenreich -

All of this revealed a fundamental miscalculation. In colonial India, in the Jim Crow South, and in Palestine, the goal of nonviolent resistance was to leverage one’s sacrifices, to use one’s courage when faced with the repressive violence of the state as a tool for moral awakening, to move people of conscience to act. To that end, it had worked. Over the past decade, sympathy for Palestinians in the United States has grown steadily, particularly among the young, while support for Israel has plummeted. But last year’s campus demonstrations were almost everywhere repressed by the police, and the fact that a majority of Americans supported putting conditions on military aid to Israel found no reflection in either party’s platform.

Manal, Bilal, and others in Nabi Saleh had done everything they were supposed to do. The moral awakening occurred as planned. It just didn’t make a difference. What they hadn’t counted on was the utter lack of real democracy in the West.

I know I've already lost people here so I'll summarize. All the opinion polls showed Americans opposed the war in the Gaza, but it didn't matter.

Similarly, all the opinion polls show more and more Americans oppose Trump. Even the Republicans oppose some specifics of his agenda when asked about them directly.

But will it matter? Not if more people don't speak up. Trump is pissing off an awful lot of powerful people who are much smarter than he is with all this desperate flailing about, though.

[bpod-bpod]

Sent to Sleep

If you’ve ever pulled an all-nighter and felt rough the next day, you know how important sleep is. But although it’s a fundamental feature of almost all animal life, its complex regulation means its exact function and mechanisms remain elusive. Researchers investigated fruit fly neurons suspected to be involved in sleep. Using a genetic tool to exclusively act in the brain (showing green in the bottom left panel), but nowhere else (such as the ovaries, middle, or gut, right), they dissected the activity of specific neurons – those that protrude into the dorsal fan-shaped body. Activating the neurons made flies sleep more, and helped turn short-term memories into long-term ones, illustrating both direct influence on sleep, and a tangible outcome from increased sleep. Understanding the precise neurons and molecules that control sleep could ultimately lead to more sophisticated insomnia therapies, improved memory consolidation techniques, and sweet dreams for all.

Written by Anthony Lewis

Image from work by Joseph D. Jones and Brandon L. Holder, and colleagues

Division of Biological and Biomedical Systems, School of Science and Engineering, University of Missouri-Kansas City, Kansas City, MO, USA

Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Published in PLOS Biology, March 2025

You can also follow BPoD on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Bluesky

[redfacedpalindrome]

i think it's so cool that you're a biology researcher! if i may ask, how did you find yourself in that path and how did you know you wanted to go to med school? i'm not in college yet but i've been considering the possibility of clinical practice in the future but i am not too sure 🥹

hi!! omg that's so exciting i remember trying to figure it out as well. this is LONG because i have a lot of advice so i am vv sorry in advance!

so i spent most of my time in high school thinking i was going to be an engineer. i'm talking 4 courses of physics, multivariable calculus and self-taught diffEq, statistics, more calculus, two years of computer science, and I did a physics program at Fermi Lab. I was always interested in biology and medicine though, so in my head the best overlap was going to be biomedical engineering.

but when i started actually applying to biomedical engineering programs, i started to realize that if i went into bme, i'd end up just inches away from the job i actually wanted. like, i'd be developing the tools but i wanted to be at the physician-patient interface. and that kind of made up my mind for me, that i at least wanted to try to be in medicine.

so i hail mary'd and i applied to a direct-med program-

(sidebar, i don't actually know if this has come up so much as it has been sign-posted by my linguistic preferences but i'm american and studying medicine in america is one triple mega xl shitshow. in a direct-med program, rather than applying to undergrad, finishing, maybe taking gap years to build a cv?, and applying out to medical schools, then residency + fellowship which is a grand total of like 1 trillion years, you apply to med school and undergrad at the end of high school and then you kinda have a conditional admission to med school as long as you complete the pre-med requirements and it shortens the process to a conservative 0.8 trillion years.)

i've done an unfortunate job here of making this process seem horrible, but i will say two things: this process is long and difficult. you know what the interesting thing is though? life is usually both long and difficult. there are easier ways to make money, there will always be easier ways to make money – but if you love medicine and you love biology, the fulfillment you will have practically every day as you make your way through this process outweighs everything. i have spent twelve hour days in lab, come in on weekends, left at ungodly late hours all for minimum wage and felt blinding satisfaction that is rare to find in a lot of roles. and i've heard similar things from a lot of my friends. i will never pretend it's easy, but something being hard doesn't make it not FUN.

-and i got in! even then, i wasn't sure if locking myself into a med program was the best idea since literally months before that i was so committed to engineering. but i knew that if i put myself into that program, i would come out the other end a physician and i wouldn't regret it. and honestly, i'm extremely grateful for this because it surrounded me with a cohort of peers who all delusionally committed to medicine at the age of 17. they're the best :) and they were the biggest influences on my love for my intended career.

if you're from literally any other country (most do medical education differently), it will be a little bit of a different experience but i think broadly surrounding yourself with peers who can encourage you and inspire you to find ways to be fulfilled within the healthcare field and help you not second guess your decision is super important. i also think if you're interested in maybe being in clinical practice, taking a look at studying medical humanities (bioethics, medical sociology, health policy, the history of medicine) could also be an interesting exploration because it will get you in touch with both the art and science of medicine. the humanistic components are understudied by a lot of aspiring physicians but if you root your passions there i swear you never lose it.

when it comes to medical/biological science (and my now position as a vascular biology researcher), i started with bench science research in undergrad! i cold emailed a bunch of principal investigators to find if they had room for an undergraduate research assistant, and i found a lab that studies blood vessel growth and became insanely attached to the subject matter. i get to do a cool combination of hands-on science and data analysis, and they give me a lot of room to take charge of the project and present its findings.

i always thought i'd wanna do research 'curing' something, like research that specifically impacts a disease. my research, however, is basic science research – so i'm basically trying to figure out how a set of genes work and what they do because we don't know it yet! i never thought i'd fall in love with this project but i did! so my advice on research is to reach out to whoever you can, try to find good mentors, and keep on open mind. you never ever know what you'll end up with a passion for.

let me know if there are any other questions i can answer! but you're early in the process yet – you have a lot of time to explore :) i'm not sure all of this was actually useful advice cos the path i took was kind of a niche path, but i swear i can give better more applicable advice.

[pandoraxassay]

[   rege-jean page,  pansexual,  transmasc  +  he/they   ]  valentin chevalier  is  a  lawful neutral  agent  of  pandora  selected  for  their  groundbreaking genetic research and medical experience,  but  did  not  undergo  or  complete  the  mutation  process.  to  the  rest  of  the  world,  the  thirty-seven  year  old  originally  from  calais, france  is  deceased  or  missing.  however,  in  atlantis,  they  are  now  known  as  assay  of  faith  after  proving  their  mastery  in  biomedical and genetic research.  the  agent  has  been  with  pandora  for  three years  and  is  trusted  for  being  organized  &  intelligent,  but  once  reprimanded  for  being  obsessive  &  abrasive. 

BACKGROUND:// Name: Valentin Chevalier Nickname(s): Val, Doc Callsign: Assay Age: 37 Birthplace: Calais, France Sex: Trans Masc Pronouns: He/they Division: Faith Active Duty Duration: Three years [ Further demographic information available at EXPUNGED. ]

PHYSICAL:// Hair: Black, 4c, trimmed and shaped regularly Eyes: Brown Height: 5'6" Build: Slim, trim, lean muscles Distinguishing Marks: N/A; ASSAY lacks notable scarring, has no tattoos, and no recorded birthmarks.

MENTAL:// Positive Traits: Fastidious, organized, protocol-minded, disciplined, creative, problem solver, intelligent, servile Negative Traits: Obsessive, abrasive, judgmental, egotistical, dismissive, sanctimonious, difficult, exacting

POWER:// Due to his scholastic and biomedical background, ASSAY was never considered a candidate.

INTIMATE DETAILS:// Sexual Orientation: Pansexual Romantic Orientation: Homoromantic Position: Bottom (may top if partner insists) Temperament: Submissive Kinks: Service, clothed male/nude male, business attire, medical play (including some use of medical tools, eg speculums), disinterest, "free use by appointment," employer/employee or master/servant, more TBD No-Goes*: Scat, vomit, excessively rough play, public play, anything strictly against the rules [ ask if unsure ] >> * these are character-specific >> NOTE: character is transmasc and will refer to genitals using female-coded language and medical terminology. Please inform the author if this needs to be avoided for specific interactions.

[milfmilker420]

"Many people believe that gain-of-function research was one of the key causes of the COVID pandemic that struck us in the last decade," said White House secretary Will Scharf. "What this executive order does first of all, it provides powerful new tools to enforce the ban on federal funding for gain-of-function research abroad. It also strengthens other oversight mechanisms related to that issue and creates an overarching strategy to ensure that biomedical research in general is being conducted safely."

Many scientists refute that theory, arguing that the weight of the evidence suggests the pandemic started when someone in China was infected by a wild animal carrying the virus.

That said, many scientists also agree that better oversight is needed because of the possible risks. But many worry a moratorium would be too broad and could stifle safe research and that is necessary to prevent or respond to the next pandemic.

"If we ban it, the next time another COVID virus comes through we won't have the data to quickly find new treatments, screening and even preventative measures," says Kristin Matthews, a fellow in science and technology policy at Rice University's Baker Institute for Public Policy.

listen, should “gain of function” research be monitored? yes. it is very risky and should not be dealt with lightly. but this research is vital to preventing and treating disease, and his racist lies about Covid being started in a lab in China (despite the evidence showing otherwise) is harming not just Americans, but the whole world. if another pandemic happens, we will not have the knowledge and data needed to respond quickly and save lives. he does not care if anyone dies as long as he is in power.

[mosertone]

Scientists have built a silent sound beam that lifts and moves objects—without touching them At a precision acoustics lab in Denmark, researchers have engineered an invisible tractor beam made entirely of sound waves. It allows them to levitate, rotate, and steer small solid objects through mid-air—without any wires, magnets, or contact. What’s even more astonishing is that the system works silently, operating below the human hearing threshold. The beam works by generating complex 3D acoustic fields using phased arrays of ultrasonic speakers. These waves interfere in specific patterns, forming pressure pockets that act like invisible “hands” in space. The object—be it a droplet, a piece of metal, or a micro-sensor—is trapped inside and gently moved by adjusting the wave field. Traditional acoustic levitation is limited to simple up-and-down hovering. But this new design creates dynamic vortexes and knots in the air, allowing researchers to move objects around corners, rotate them in 3D, and even stack them—all in complete silence. The system is precise down to millimeters and works with solid, liquid, or even some gel-like materials. This technology could revolutionize sterile environments where touch is dangerous: handling fragile cells in biomedical labs, assembling microchips without contamination, or even manufacturing in space, where gravity complicates handling. Since it's non-contact and uses no magnetic or optical components, it’s safe for delicate biological systems. In future versions, multiple beams could work in concert like fingers, allowing true mid-air manipulation of tools or tissues. A no-contact robotic hand—built from sound and physics. We’ve always touched the world to move it. Now we can do it without a single touch.

See less

Pharoah said, "STONES! MOVE!" The stones said, "BY YOUR COMMAND"

I wanna believe

[covid-safer-hotties]

Also preserved in our archive (Updated daily!)

Researchers report that a new AI tool enhances the diagnostic process, potentially identifying more individuals who need care. Previous diagnostic studies estimated that 7 percent of the population suffers from long COVID. However, a new study using an AI tool developed by Mass General Brigham indicates a significantly higher rate of 22.8 percent.

The AI-based tool can sift through electronic health records to help clinicians identify cases of long COVID. The often-mysterious condition can encompass a litany of enduring symptoms, including fatigue, chronic cough, and brain fog after infection from SARS-CoV-2.

The algorithm used was developed by drawing de-identified patient data from the clinical records of nearly 300,000 patients across 14 hospitals and 20 community health centers in the Mass General Brigham system. The results, published in the journal Med, could identify more people who should be receiving care for this potentially debilitating condition.

“Our AI tool could turn a foggy diagnostic process into something sharp and focused, giving clinicians the power to make sense of a challenging condition,” said senior author Hossein Estiri, head of AI Research at the Center for AI and Biomedical Informatics of the Learning Healthcare System (CAIBILS) at MGB and an associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School. “With this work, we may finally be able to see long COVID for what it truly is — and more importantly, how to treat it.”

For the purposes of their study, Estiri and colleagues defined long COVID as a diagnosis of exclusion that is also infection-associated. That means the diagnosis could not be explained in the patient’s unique medical record but was associated with a COVID infection. In addition, the diagnosis needed to have persisted for two months or longer in a 12-month follow-up window.

Precision Phenotyping: A Novel Approach The novel method developed by Estiri and colleagues, called “precision phenotyping,” sifts through individual records to identify symptoms and conditions linked to COVID-19 to track symptoms over time in order to differentiate them from other illnesses. For example, the algorithm can detect if shortness of breath results from pre-existing conditions like heart failure or asthma rather than long COVID. Only when every other possibility was exhausted would the tool flag the patient as having long COVID.

“Physicians are often faced with having to wade through a tangled web of symptoms and medical histories, unsure of which threads to pull, while balancing busy caseloads. Having a tool powered by AI that can methodically do it for them could be a game-changer,” said Alaleh Azhir, co-lead author and an internal medicine resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, a founding member of the Mass General Brigham healthcare system.

The new tool’s patient-centered diagnoses may also help alleviate biases built into current diagnostics for long COVID, said researchers, who noted diagnoses with the official ICD-10 diagnostic code for long COVID trend toward those with easier access to healthcare.

The researchers said their tool is about 3 percent more accurate than the data ICD-10 codes capture, while being less biased. Specifically, their study demonstrated that the individuals they identified as having long COVID mirror the broader demographic makeup of Massachusetts, unlike long COVID algorithms that rely on a single diagnostic code or individual clinical encounters, skewing results toward certain populations such as those with more access to care.

“This broader scope ensures that marginalized communities, often sidelined in clinical studies, are no longer invisible,” said Estiri.

Limitations and Future Directions Limitations of the study and AI tool include the fact that health record data the algorithm uses to account for long COVID symptoms may be less complete than the data physicians capture in post-visit clinical notes. Another limitation was the algorithm did not capture the possible worsening of a prior condition that may have been a long COVID symptom. For example, if a patient had COPD that worsened before they developed COVID-19, the algorithm might have removed the episodes even if they were long COVID indicators. Declines in COVID-19 testing in recent years also makes it difficult to identify when a patient may have first gotten COVID-19.

The study was limited to patients in Massachusetts.

Future studies may explore the algorithm in cohorts of patients with specific conditions, like COPD or diabetes. The researchers also plan to release this algorithm publicly on open access so physicians and healthcare systems globally can use it in their patient populations.

In addition to opening the door to better clinical care, this work may lay the foundation for future research into the genetic and biochemical factors behind long COVID’s various subtypes. “Questions about the true burden of long COVID — questions that have thus far remained elusive — now seem more within reach,” said Estiri.

Reference: “Precision phenotyping for curating research cohorts of patients with unexplained post-acute sequelae of COVID-19” by Alaleh Azhir, Jonas Hügel, Jiazi Tian, Jingya Cheng, Ingrid V. Bassett, Douglas S. Bell, Elmer V. Bernstam, Maha R. Farhat, Darren W. Henderson, Emily S. Lau, Michele Morris, Yevgeniy R. Semenov, Virginia A. Triant, Shyam Visweswaran, Zachary H. Strasser, Jeffrey G. Klann, Shawn N. Murphy and Hossein Estiri, 8 November 2024, Med. DOI: 10.1016/j.medj.2024.10.009 www.cell.com/med/fulltext/S2666-6340(24)00407-0?_returnURL=https%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS2666634024004070%3Fshowall%3Dtrue

[materialsscienceandengineering]

High-speed camera for molecules: Entangled photons enable Raman spectroscopy

In recent years, two cutting-edge technologies have rapidly gained momentum: quantum entangled light sources and ultrafast stimulated Raman spectroscopy. Quantum entanglement is a unique phenomenon rooted in the principles of quantum mechanics, where particles exhibit instantaneous correlations over vast distances. This field has garnered significant attention in quantum communication, quantum sensing, and quantum computing, even receiving the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2022. Conversely, stimulated Raman spectroscopy represents a modern analytical method used to study molecular vibrational properties and interactions, offering valuable insights into molecular fine structure. Its applications span various domains, including chemical analysis, biomedical research, materials science, and environmental monitoring. By combining these two techniques, an exceptionally powerful analytical tool for studying complex molecular materials emerges.

Read more.