Interesting Engineering: Dutch startup develops artificial womb to save babies born too early to survive

Dutch startup develops artificial womb to save babies born too early to survive
By Mrigakshi Dixit, Nov 06, 2025 04:05 AM EST

A Netherlands-based startup, Aqua Womb, is exploring the potential of making a womb-like life support system for extremely premature infants.
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The Guardian reported that the system utilizes a glass tank filled with synthetic amniotic fluid at near-body temperature.

It is designed with a firm outer silicone layer that pushes back against the baby’s kicks, thereby helping their muscles to stretch and gain strength.

An artificial womb would allow the baby to be delivered via C-section directly into a fluid-filled pouch and connected to a human-made placenta.

Another incredible invention which will be a massive game-changer if it proves to work as designed.

Interesting Engineering: Scientists create fluoride-free gel that restores lost enamel within two weeks

Scientists create fluoride-free gel that restores lost enamel within two weeks
By Neetika Walter Nov 05, 2025 01:27 PM EST

Losing tooth enamel has long been a one-way street. Once it’s gone, it’s gone forever. But that may soon change.

Scientists have developed a new gel that can repair and regenerate enamel, offering a glimpse of a future where teeth can heal themselves.
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Acting as a scaffold, it pulls calcium and phosphate ions from saliva and promotes the organized growth of new minerals in a process known as epitaxial mineralization.

The result? Newly grown enamel that restores both the structure and properties of natural teeth.

They're expecting a product to ship next year. If it works as promised, this will be a massive game-changer for dental health.

MacRumors: Apple Vision Pro Can Now Be Controlled With Brain-Computer Interface

Apple Vision Pro Can Now Be Controlled With Brain-Computer Interface
Tuesday July 30, 2024 6:54 am PDT by Hartley Charlton

Apple's Vision Pro headset can now be controlled using only thoughts, thanks to integration with neurotechnology startup Synchron's brain-computer interface (BCI).

The company today announced that Apple Vision Pro has been successfully used by a patient through direct brain control facilitated by Synchron's brain-computer interface technology. Mark, a 64-year-old man suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), demonstrated the integration.

With this technology, Mark controlled the cursor on the Vision Pro to play Solitaire, watch Apple TV, and send text messages without using his hands, which he can no longer move due to his condition. The Vision Pro's reliance on hand gestures would otherwise pose a barrier for users like Mark who have lost upper limb functionality.

Incredible. This is one of the best uses of this tech I've read about to date.

Also reported by Apple Insider

IEEE Spectrum: Handheld Vagus Nerve Stimulator Gets Emergency Approval for COVID-19 Use

Handheld Vagus Nerve Stimulator Gets Emergency Approval for COVID-19 Use
By Samuel K. Moore. 22 Jul 2020 | 16:30 GMT

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has granted an emergency use authorization for treating suspected COVID-19 patients with a non-invasive vagus nerve stimulator. The handheld device, made by electroCore, in Basking Ridge, N.J., sends a train of electric pulses through the skin to a nerve in the neck. Research has shown this pulse train causes airways in the lungs to open and may also have a more general anti-inflammatory effect.

According to FDA’s authorization, the gammaCore Sapphire CV device can be used either at home or in a clinic or hospital to “acutely treat adult patients with known or suspected COVID-19 who are experiencing exacerbation of asthma-related [shortness of breath] and reduced airflow, and for whom approved drug therapies are not tolerated or provide insufficient symptom relief.”

This is a really cool piece of tech. Now I wonder how many different conditions this device might be able to treat using different frequencies and power levels.

Johns Hopkins: Coronavirus Disease 2019 vs. the Flu

Coronavirus Disease 2019 vs. the Flu
Lisa Lockerd Maragakis, M.D., M.P.H.

Influenza “the flu” and COVID-19, the illness caused by the new coronavirus, are both infectious respiratory illnesses. Although the symptoms of COVID-19 and the flu can look similar, the two illnesses are caused by different viruses.

As of Mar. 8, 2020, the flu is showing much more of an impact on Americans than COVID-19. You can find up-to-date information on COVID-19 at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Lisa Maragakis, M.D., M.P.H., senior director of infection prevention at Johns Hopkins, explains how the flu and COVID-19 are similar and how they are different.

To all those who are panicking over COVID-19 (no thanks to media coverage that seems to want a global panic), scroll down to the end, where mortality is compared:

COVID-19: Approximately 3,653 deaths reported worldwide; 17 deaths in the U.S., as of Mar. 8, 2020.

Flu: 291,000 to 646,000 deaths worldwide; 12,000 to 61,000 deaths in the U.S. per year.

The COVID-19 situation is changing rapidly. Since this disease is caused by a new virus, people do not have immunity to it, and a vaccine may be many months away. Doctors and scientists are working on estimating the mortality rate of COVID-19, but at present, it is thought to be higher than that of most strains of the flu.

Even given the final cautionary paragraph, it's important to point out that the flu claims orders of magnitude more lives every year than COVID-19.

Of course, you should take reasonable precautions. But they are the same precautions you should be taking every year because of the flu. Shutting down all of civilization out of fear of what might happen in the future is just ridiculous.

Tips to help guard against coronavirus

On yesterday's Mark Levin Show (March 3, 2020), a caller provides good advice, based on medical facts, about how to protect against the coronavirus.

Auto-brewery syndrome

Rare medical condition can turn bodies into breweries.
Here's how auto-brewery syndrome works
Ryan W. Miller, USA TODAY. Published 2:30 p.m. ET Oct. 25, 2019 | Updated 3:31 p.m. ET Oct. 25, 2019

Free beer: Great. Beer that ferments inside your stomach without you knowing why you're getting drunk: Not so great.

In a case study published in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal Open Gastroenterology, doctors describe a patient who repeatedly had elevated blood alcohol levels but denied ever drinking a drop.

The cause: a rare condition known as "auto-brewery syndrome," or ABS, which causes the carbohydrates one ingests to turn into alcohol, fermented by fungi or bacteria in the gastrointestinal system.

"ABS is probably an underdiagnosed condition," the study authors wrote, adding that no diagnostic criteria exists to confirm the syndrome or treat it. However, the researchers do propose treatment that could be tested in future studies.

A friend told me about this today. I didn't believe it could be true, but it apparently is.

Jerusalem Post: A cure for cancer? Israeli scientists say they think they found one

A cure for cancer? Israeli scientists say they think they found one
Maayan Jaffe-Hoffman, January 28, 2019 23:14

A small team of Israeli scientists think they might have found the first complete cure for cancer.

“We believe we will offer in a year’s time a complete cure for cancer,” said Dan Aridor, of a new treatment being developed by his company, Accelerated Evolution Biotechnologies Ltd. (AEBi). ... “Our cancer cure will be effective from day one, will last a duration of a few weeks and will have no or minimal side-effects at a much lower cost than most other treatments on the market,” Aridor said.

... Aridor, chairman of the board of AEBi and CEO Dr. Ilan Morad, say their treatment, which they call MuTaTo (multi-target toxin) is essentially on the scale of a cancer antibiotic – a disruption technology of the highest order.

... Morad said that so far, the company has concluded its first exploratory mice experiment, which inhibited human cancer cell growth and had no effect at all on healthy mice cells, in addition to several in-vitro trials. AEBi is on the cusp of beginning a round of clinical trials which could be completed within a few years and would make the treatment available in specific cases.

Aridor added: “Our results are consistent and repeatable.”

Incredible. Here's hoping that the treatment works as well on humans as it has on mice.

Scientific American: It's Time to End the War on Salt

It's Time to End the War on Salt
The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science
By Melinda Wenner Moyer - July 8, 2011

For decades, policy makers have tried and failed to get Americans to eat less salt. In April 2010 the Institute of Medicine urged the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate the amount of salt that food manufacturers put into products; New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has already convinced 16 companies to do so voluntarily. But if the U.S. does conquer salt, what will we gain? Bland french fries, for sure. But a healthy nation? Not necessarily.

This week a meta-analysis of seven studies involving a total of 6,250 subjects in the American Journal of Hypertension found no strong evidence that cutting salt intake reduces the risk for heart attacks, strokes or death in people with normal or high blood pressure. In May European researchers publishing in the Journal of the American Medical Association reported that the less sodium that study subjects excreted in their urine—an excellent measure of prior consumption—the greater their risk was of dying from heart disease. These findings call into question the common wisdom that excess salt is bad for you, but the evidence linking salt to heart disease has always been tenuous.

I'm going to show this article to everybody who gets in my face about salt consumption.

Junk science combined with megalomaniacal politicians is not justification for controlling what people are allowed to eat, especially when the scientific evidence shows that it actually endangers health.

Forbes: Vitamins Lack Clear Health Benefits, May Pose Risks

Back in December, Forbes wrote:

Vitamin fans, take note: An editorial in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that multivitamins provide no health benefit in the long-run, and in fact, "should be avoided." The authors of the piece, "Enough is Enough: Stop Wasting Money on Vitamin and Mineral Supplements," summarize the work of three review studies in the same journal, which together find no effect for vitamins on cardiovascular health, cancer risk, cognitive health, or mortality. The bottom line, at least to the authors, is clear: We should stop wasting our money on multivitamins, since there’s little evidence to their benefit, and some evidence to their detriment. But as always, others say they jury is still out on this one.

It does go on to say, however, that this is in the context of trying to prevent chronic conditions and extend life. If you don't get enough of something your diet (e.g. many women have iron deficiencies, and people who eat a lot of junk food may lack all kinds of vitamins and minerals), then you should take supplements to make up the difference, but that's a completely different scenario from the person taking large doses of vitamins in order to try and prevent cancer, for example.

Read the rest of the article for more details.

Laboratories cause cancer in mice

Not quite, but Corante reports that standard lab conditions tend to induce thermal stress on lab mice, resulting in corrupt data when performing cancer studies:

Lab Mice Are Being Kept Too Cold, Apparently

Posted by Derek
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Now we have this, from PNAS. The authors, from the Roswell Park Institute and the EPA, say that standard rodent facility conditions are actually causing unintended chronic physiological stress:

We show here that fundamental aspects of antitumor immunity in mice are significantly influenced by ambient housing temperature. Standard housing temperature for laboratory mice in research facilities is mandated to be between 20–26°C; however, these subthermoneutral temperatures cause mild chronic cold stress, activating thermogenesis to maintain normal body temperature. When stress is alleviated by housing at thermoneutral ambient temperature (30–31°C), we observe a striking reduction in tumor formation, growth rate and metastasis. . .Overall, our data raise the hypothesis that suppression of antitumor immunity is an outcome of cold stress-induced thermo- genesis. Therefore, the common approach of studying immunity against tumors in mice housed only at standard room temperature may be limiting our understanding of the full potential of the antitumor immune response.