Technologies

16:19, November 26

The therapy tested on pigs and corpses

A new therapy for children with curved spines was approved for general use after tests only on pigs and dead bodies, an investigation has revealed. Magec rods are supposed to help straighten the spine. But…

14:54, October 25

AI helps diagnose depression faster by analysing Facebook posts

‘Depression appears to be quite detectable in this way; it really changes people’s use of social media in a way that something like diabetes doesn’t,’ researchers write. An artificial intelligence (AI) programme trained to scour Facebook posts for “linguistic red flags”…

13:18, October 16

Lab-grown oesophagus implanted in mice

Scientists in London have grown a bio-engineered oesophagus which was successfully implanted into mice. The work, published in Nature Communications, was led by scientists at Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) and the Francis Crick Institute. The…

09:09, September 13

The face of a stranger

After a 2011 hunting accident, this Quebec man thought he’d live forever with half a face. Then a confident young surgeon made an extraordinary offer. In a windowless room in the basement of a Montreal…

19:28, August 13

Could glaucoma be an autoimmune disease?

Glaucoma may be one of the leading causes of irreversible blindness in Canada, but surprisingly little is known about what actually causes it. Now, U.S. researchers think they have found evidence that the eye disease…

10:08, June 17

Gene therapy reverses rat’s paralysis

Scientists say they have taken a significant step towards the goal of giving paralysed people control of their hands again. The team at King’s College London used gene therapy to repair damage in the spinal…

21:39, May 24

Have a stomach ache? Swallow a sensor

Diagnosing the cause of stomach pain could soon be as simple as swallowing two small pills that work together to report back about what is happening in your body. This technology uses biosensors, an analytical…