Covid-19 pneumonia creates breathing difficulties leading to low blood oxygen levels (hypoxaemia). Unable to get enough oxygen to supply vital organs, patients with hypoxaemia are at very high risk of death...
Hamish Graham & Adegoke Falade 20 hours ago
Dr Msandeni Chiume Kayuni found herself in the middle of a supply crisis as Covid-19 spread to Africa in April 2020...
Rebecca Richards-Kortum & Theresa Mkandawire 31 Mar 2021
Amid the rising number of deaths from Covid-19, political leadership, health systems and scientific prowess is being tested locally and internationally. The pandemic provides an opportunity for innovation and new scientific discoveries...
Salome Maswime, Collet Dandara & Sudesh Sivarasu 22 Apr 2020
In a digital economy, content is key to attract attention, educate, entertain and market. That's why Africa needs more successful content businesses...
Roy Morrison 10 Mar 2020
There's been a rise in recent years of biomedical engineering techniques that can restore lost tissue and bone. If you've been in a car crash, for instance, there are ways to restore or repair the lost body part or damaged tissues...
Franca Nneka Alaribe & Keolebogile Shirley Motaung 13 Aug 2019
There is a new advanced persistent threat (APT) in the global village and it's called 'Stolen Pencil'...
A collaboration between biomedical engineers from the University of Cape Town (UCT) and Osmania University in India has developed a tool for clinicians to administer medication to their patients remotely...
Someone in the world suffers a spinal cord injury every one to two minutes, often leading to irreversible and life-changing loss of movement and feeling...
Biomedical engineers from the Medical Devices Lab at UCT have developed a reloadable auto-injector, which will have a huge impact for end users with vials of adrenaline available for a fraction of the cost..
Using nanoparticles, Yale researchers have developed a drug-delivery system that could reduce organ transplant complications by hiding the donated tissue from the recipient's immune system...
William Weir 4 Aug 2017
Burhani Engineers has signed a partnership with the Kibera Sub-County government in Kenya to provide computer systems and engineering power classes to at least 10 schools in the county...
The FirstRand Laurie Dippenaar and FirstRand Foundation postgraduate scholarship awards for 2017 have been awarded, in addition to a new award, the FirstRand Oxford African Studies scholarship...
Is online learning a real solution to the #Feesmustfall crisis? Certainly, it is a step forward from the old "Open University": public TV with mail assignments...
Issued by Pert Industrials 9 Nov 2016
Wits University has announced that it has developed a suite of online course offerings that will be made available over the next three years to enhance access to higher education...
When it comes to communicating, cells perform better in crowds. When too many work together, though, the cells end up in a game of "telephone," passing on increasingly unreliable signals...
William Weir 19 Jan 2016
Engineers like to claim their primacy as problem solvers. But while this ability will always be critical for engineers, there is more to engineering than just solving problems...
Petr Matous and Abbas El-Zein 12 Nov 2015
Convincing a large group of people to change its behaviour is no popularity contest, a new study shows.
Jim Shelton 11 May 2015
Yale researchers successfully corrected the most common mutation in the gene that causes cystic fibrosis, a lethal genetic disorder...
Ziba Kashef 27 Apr 2015
UNSW biomedical engineer Melissa Knothe Tate is using previously top-secret semiconductor technology to zoom through organs of the human body, down to the level of a single cell...
Scientists have developed a new approach for treating a deadly brain cancer that strikes 15,000 in the United States annually and for which there is no effective long-term therapy. The researchers, from Yale and Johns Hopkins, have shown that the approach extends the lives of laboratory animals and are preparing to seek government approval for a human clinical trial.
PHILADELPHIA, USA: A promising new approach to treating solid tumors with radiation was highly efficacious and minimally toxic to healthy tissue in a mouse model of cancer, according to data published in Cancer Research, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research.
Many STDs spread by bacteria, like syphilis and chlamydia, can be controlled and cured with antibiotics. By comparison, cheap and effective treatments for viral STDs have largely remained elusive. Researchers in Mark Saltzman's lab are working to change that, developing nanoparticles to prevent infection by a widespread viral STD: herpes simplex virus type 2.
News24 reports that South African and South Korean engineers and researchers are working on a smartphone application capable of doing AIDS tests in rural parts of Africa that are the worst hit by the disease. The application can photograph and analyse blood samples and even measure the health of immune systems to diagnose HIV, in areas far from laboratories. The team hopes that trials in clinics may start next year.
Dr Megan Russell is using her engineering knowledge to find practical solutions to the problems of healthcare in poorer countries by helping develop medical technology appropriate for more primitive conditions.
Speaking to 6 000 Gauteng schools learners at the launch of the 2012 National Science Week at the University of Johannesburg's Soweto campus, Science and Technology Minister Naledi Pandor said that the department strives to contribute to the gradual transformation of South Africa's resource-based economy to a knowledge economy, SAinfo reports.
PRETORIA: The Department of Science and Technology officially launched on Monday, 30 July, the 2012 National Science Week at the University of Johannesburg's Soweto Campus.
Yale biologists and engineers have designed drug-loaded nanoparticles that target the soft underbelly of many types of cancer - a tiny gene product that tumors depend upon to replicate and survive.
Using "random lasers" as a source of illumination in medical imaging equipment could improve both processing time and the clarity of the final images, according to new research by Yale University scientists.
Researchers at Yale University have developed a novel nanoparticle with promising applications in gene therapy, a type of medical treatment that addresses the root causes of diseases now typically treated for symptoms.
Eric Gershon 12 Dec 2011
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine have developed a technique that delivers gene therapy into human brain cancer cells using nanoparticles that can be freeze-dried and stored for up to three months prior to use.
Scientists monitor frequencies of brain activity to unleash new insights into how it works.
Sticky gel composed of MPEG-pDHA may help seal wounds created by surgery: Study - and the gel has been developed from the same compound found in spray tanning lotion.
CT scans can detect differences in lung blood flow patterns, which identify smokers most at risk of emphysema.
Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed a "smart coating" that helps surgical implants bond more closely with bone and ward off infection.
A synthetic bone matrix offers hope for babies born with craniosynostosis, a condition that causes the plates in the skull to fuse too soon. Implants replacing some of the infant's bone with the biodegradable matrix could eliminate some of the operations currently used to treat the condition.
New non-invasive technology designed to painlessly measure glucose levels in the human eye shows promise of one day replacing the finger-stick blood test, according to results of a pre-clinical study funded by Freedom Meditech, Inc.
In its quest to find new strategies to treat osteoarthritis and other diseases, a Boston University-led research team has reported finding a new computer tomography contrast agent for visualizing the special distributions of glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) - the anionic sugars that account for the strength of joint cartilage.
Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, collaborating with paediatric cardiologists and surgeons at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, have developed a tool for virtual surgery that allows heart surgeons to view the predicted effects of different surgical approaches.
Light directed at a breast tumor through a needle can provide pathologists with biological specifics of the tumor and help oncologists choose treatment options that would be most effective for that individual patient.
A novel aerosol version of the most common tuberculosis (TB) vaccine, administered directly to the lungs as an oral mist, offers significantly better protection against the disease in experiments on animals than a comparable dose of the traditional injected vaccine, researchers report this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Using artificial cell-like particles, Yale biomedical engineers have devised a rapid and efficient way to produce a 45-fold enhancement of T cell activation and expansion, an immune response important for a patient's ability to fight cancer and infectious diseases, according to an advance on line report in Molecular Therapy.
A report in the open access journal BioMedical Engineering OnLine refutes claims that portable music players, such as Apple's iPod, interfere with cardiac pacemakers.
Do your ears ring after a loud concert? Well, nerves that sense touch in your face and neck may be behind the racket in your brain, University of Michigan researchers say.
Developing foetuses are extremely sensitive to radiation, which poses an impossible dilemma for expecting mothers in need of screening or treatment for cancer. However…
University of Virginia Engineering School Associate Professor William F. Walker and Research Associate Francesco Viola have developed a new tool - an advanced imaging algorithm - that is, quite literally, transforming the way we see things.