In the future, NASA astronauts journeying into deep space may give themselves a health check-up with the aid of a small medical device developed by a team of scientists, including one from LLNL. "The point of developing tools like this one is for detecting disease from long-term exposure to microgravity and ionizing radiation," Coleman said, [...]
From the article by Julia Zorthian at Time Magazine: For the human body, Kelly said space travel has "permanent effects we simply do not fully understand" Astronaut Scott Kelly, back from his year in space on the International Space Station, said the “permanent effects we simply do not fully understand” that astronauts experience in space must [...]
From the article by Jeff Kluger at Time Magazine: Everything's different in zero-g You may or may not want to go to space, but here’s something certain: you definitely don’t want to get sick there. Ask the crew of Apollo 7, the 1960s mission in which the commander contracted a cold, spread it to the [...]
Health officials have announced the first death linked to the Zika virus has occurred in Puerto Rico. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported Friday that a Puerto Rican man in his 70s died from internal bleeding related to a rare immune reaction to the Zika virus infection in late February. The reaction, [...]
From New Scientist: It’s one of the most controlled places on the planet. At Australia’s newest nanoscience centre, the air is 100 times cleaner than a sterile surgical operating theatre, and even the slightest vibrations from passing trucks or radio waves are completely blocked out. The Sydney Nanoscience Hub will allow scientists to zoom in [...]
From Chemical and Engineering News: Experts debate controversial paper that suggests delivery efficiencies for cancer nanomedicines are low and not improving. Cancer drugs don’t discriminate. They kill all cells, not just the cancerous ones. So drugmakers often look for ways to minimize how much of a chemotherapy drug ends up in healthy tissue while still [...]
From The Irish Times: Good security is all about vigilance. Your body’s immune system scrutinises all newcomers to weed out whatever looks suspicious and checking and rechecking ID. In University College Dublin, Prof Ken Dawson is developing a new approach to targeting cancer, one based on using “nano” drugs that can pass repeated checks by [...]
From the article at The Scientist: Coating hospital surfaces, surgical equipment, patient implants, and water-delivery systems with nanoscale patterns and particles could curb the rise of hospital-acquired infections. Picture a hospital room: white walls, stainless steel IV poles and bedrails, scratchy bedsheets. For more than 100 years, this has been the standard hospital environment, and [...]
Loss of Bone Density and Mass under Microgravity Another significant area of concern for human space travel relates to the loss of bone density and mass under microgravity. The bones of humans under the 1g gravity of Earth are in a continual state of flux as bones are constantly being renewed [...]
(Image credit: 123RF) In 2004, NASA released its Bioastronautics Critical Path Roadmap (BCPR), with an aim to “establish tolerance limits to the space environment and develop countermeasures to overcome these problems.” The BCPR listed close to 50 space-related medical risk factors, which included those associated with the potential for serious cardiac dysrhythmias (from [...]
