Category Archives: BioEngineering

Your sleep position can make or break your sleep quality -- here's how.

How you sleep is just as personal as what kind of mattress and pillow you prefer. People fall into three categories: sleeping on your side, back or stomach (or a combination of positions). But if you find yourself tossing and turning at night, disturbing your partner by snoring, or waking up more than you prefer, it may be time to take a second look at how you are sleeping.

Some sleeping positions are better for helping ensure you have a good night's rest, especially if you suffer from complaints like snoring or other aches that can keep you up at night.

Dr. Ben Smarr is a sleepscience adviser for Oura and an assistant professor of bioengineering and data science at UC San Diego. Through Smarr's research, he's seen that people who sleep in certain positions tend to report better sleep quality overall. Since personal preferences and health concerns are a big factor, it's important to consult your doctor on your specific situation.

Keep reading to find out more about the benefits of different sleeping positions and how they affect different sleep issues and health concerns.

Side sleeping is best for sleep apnea since you can breathe better in this position.

Snoring can be a huge sleep complaint, especially if you sleep with a partner. Although not a medical concern on it its own, snoring is one sign that you may have sleep apnea -- a serious medical condition that causes you to stop breathing in your sleep.

One of the best positions for snoring or sleep apnea is on your side. "While many people are most comfortable on their backs, side sleepers snore less, so that is usually recommended," Smarr says.

Whether you snore or not, side sleeping is the preferred position for most people according to The Sleep Better Council. Sleeping on your left side specifically is the best position if you suffer from acid reflux, heartburn or indigestion at night. If you do have back pain or hip pain while sleeping on your side, you can place a pillow between your legs or knees to relieve the pressure.

Sleeping on your stomach is better than sleeping on your back if you have sleep apnea since it still allows your airways to stay open, helping you breathe better. This is true for snoring too since keeping your airways as open as possible can help the issue.

The downside of sleeping on your stomach is that if you have neck pain or lower back pain, it could make it worse. This is because sleeping on your stomach can cause your neck to be positioned at an awkward angle. Also sleeping on your stomach takes your back out of a neutral position to one that's more arched, which can aggravate low back pain. If you sleep on your stomach and don't have issues, then don't worry about changing positions.

Sleeping on your back is not good for breathing-related problems like sleep apnea.

Sleeping on your back is not a good idea if you have lower back pain or sleep apnea, according to The Better Sleep Council. And Smarr agrees, especially if you snore or have sleep apnea.

"When on your back, your airway can collapse more easily, as it has more flex front to back than side to side. Lifting your head up can help weight shift away from your neck and reduce the chance of nose or neck closing on themselves, but it's a compromise between verticality and breathing, which is a hard trade to come out on top of," Smarr explains.

That said, if you don't have sleep apnea, sleeping on your back has several benefits. Sleeping on your back is good for your spine since your weight is more centered and evenly distributed in this position. If you have acid reflux,sleeping on your back is helpful since you are facing up and less likely to experience indigestion.

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The information contained in this article is for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as health or medical advice. Always consult a physician or other qualified health provider regarding any questions you may have about a medical condition or health objectives.

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The best sleeping position if you snore or have lower back pain - CNET

Japanese app to seek advise on Coronavirus

Since the beginning of the coronavirus outbreak, several theories had pointed towards the fact that the novel coronavirus strain - COVID 19, which has now become a global epidemic was a bioengineered weapon that had escaped from a lab in Wuhan.

If evidence is to be believed this man-made plague may unwittingly have been unleashed on the population of China by its own government.

Last Friday, Chinese supreme leader Xi Jinping called an emergency meeting following which the country's leadership has issued directives to all the bioengineering labs in the country including those in Wuhan to adhere to strict protocols.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping though never accepted that the coronavirus was manufactured in its lab in Wuhan said that a system should be set up to prevent similar epidemics in the future.

Jinping ordered that a national system to control biosecurity risks must be put in place "to protect the people's health."

Soon after this, the Chinese Ministry of Science and Technology released a directive that laid out "Instructions on strengthening biosecurity management in microbiology labs that handle advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus."

Experts are of the opinion that this definitely is proof that China unleashed the coronavirus plague that has killed thousands in China and is threatening to become a global epidemic.

Steven W. Mosher, President of the Population Research Institute wrote in NYPost the directive issued by the government to the labs is suggestive of its guilty, especially as there is only one lab capable of handling "advanced viruses like the novel coronavirus" and this one is located in Wuhan.

"It turns out that in all of China there is only one. And this one is located in the Chinese city of Wuhan that just happens to be ... the epicenter of the epidemic. That's right. China's only Level 4 microbiology lab that is equipped to handle deadly coronaviruses, called the National Biosafety Laboratory, is part of the Wuhan Institute of Virology," he wrote.

If the directive wasn't proof enough, now it has emerged that the People's Liberation Army's top biological warfare expert, Major General Chen Wei has been deputed to Wuhan at the end of January to help with the effort to contain the outbreak.

Major General Chen has been researching coronaviruses since the SARS outbreak of 2003 and it is understood that it is now her job to contain the spread of the virus.

And she will be working out of the bioengineering lab at Wuhan to find out ways to contain the spread - the same lab from where the COVID 19 is suspected to have escaped.

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Wuhan virus: China may have just accepted that the 'man-made' coronavirus escaped its biowarfare lab - International Business Times, Singapore Edition

Today's artificial limbs can look very natural, and now an innovative process makes prosthetic hands move more naturally as well.

In an innovative experiment, scientists have shown that the nerves in patients' arms can be trained to control the movements of prosthetic fingers and thumbs.

"This is the biggest advance in motor control for people with amputations in many years," said Paul Cederna, a professor of plastic surgery and biomedical engineering at the University of Michigan.

A challenge to powering prosthetics has been the minute signals put out by an amputee's nerves. Cederna's team boosted the signal by wrapping tiny bits of muscle around nerve endings, according to their study published in Science Translational Medicine.

As the nerves grow into the muscle, the person's thoughts can create a muscle twitch that produces a signal big enough to be picked up by tiny wires connected to a nearby computer, which tells the prosthetic hand to move.

"Our ultimate goal is to have prosthetic limbs that the person views as a part of their body," Cederna said.

Read also: 'Ugly' prosthetics get French design treatment

In an example of how well the system works, a woman who was nervously tapping her own fingers prompted the prosthetic to tap right along with it, Cederna said. "It was just doing what the other hand was doing, like it was a part of her," he noted.

"This worked the very first time we tried it. There's no learning for the participants. All of the learning happens in our algorithms. That's different from other approaches."

The procedure also worked for another amputee in the study who had lost not only his hand, but also part of his arm.

"It's the coolest part of what they've shown," said Lee Fisher, an assistant professor in the University of Pittsburgh's department of physical medicine and rehabilitation and bioengineering.

Participants were able to pick up blocks with a pincer grasp, move their thumb in a continuous motion, lift spherical objects, and even play in a version of Rock, Paper, Scissors, according to the study.

The approach is an "exciting innovation", but no one can predict when it will be marketable, said David Putrino, co-director of the abilities research center at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York. "Currently it takes 17 years to get something (from the lab) out into clinical practice," he said.

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Prosthetic innovation: 'It's like you have a hand again' - The Jakarta Post - Jakarta Post

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BEIJING: They say that science is about knowing and engineering is about doing.

But the rise of artificial intelligence, big data and the Internet of Things can help us both know more and do better when it comes to improving lives worldwide.

Bioengineering, or combining engineering and medicine through emerging technologies, holds enormous promise for tackling disease, controlling pandemics and promotinghealthy lives.

The rapid mobilisation in China and elsewhere to control the outbreak of COVID-19 has showcased the range of new innovations that were unavailable even just a few years ago to help deal with a global health emergency.

TRACKING THE SPREAD

Engineers at technology company Alibaba, for example, developed anopen-source platformfor tracking the spread of COVID-19, to help health authorities prevent and prepare for new cases.

By gathering more data, governments and agencies can take more informed decisions about travel restrictions, hygiene measures and medical provisions to better protect the public and minimise the threat.

Such a tool could also be harnessed to help prevent future outbreaks as part of a One Health model thatmonitors animal healthand disease spread to predict when and how animal-borne infections might jump the species barrier to people.

Baidu, another technology company, has also developed an algorithm for predicting coronaviruss biomolecular structure to accelerate research into a vaccine.

Honing such a process could help speed up the development of vaccines against other existing and emerging diseases, meaning immunity could be offered more quickly before an outbreak takes hold.

Computer engineering has a long tradition of using an open-source model, which not only allows players in the private sector to benefit from each other, but also enables the public sector to benefit from market-driven innovation to help manage social wellbeing.

Just in the past few weeks, my alma mater, Nankai University, open-sourced analytic software for infection prediction, showing scientists and engineers across both public and private sectors collaborating to fight against a common threat to mankind.

CONTAINING THE EPIDEMIC

Finally, advances in bioengineering have also provided emergency infrastructure to help both contain the epidemic and treat those affected.

The speciality 1,000-bedfield hospitalbuilt in just 10 days in Wuhan was a feat of engineering willpower, and a case study for rapidly delivered infrastructure.

As well as prefabricated units, the hospital incorporated specialised ventilation systems and quarantine wards, which offer useful lessons for other regions coping with an outbreak of infectious disease, as well as other humanitarian situations.

Meanwhile, the use ofrobotsto deliver medicines and food to quarantined patients in Hangzhou and other cities in China have helped reduce the risk of infection among medical staff, and limit the spread of disease, while also ensuring that patients needs are met.

INHERENT CHALLENGES

Necessity is the mother of invention, and many of these solutions have come to the fore because the world is facing new and evolving challenges.

With China's recent reforms and economic growth, lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty, the demand for health services has become more intense, providing huge impetus for the development of bioengineering.

Between 2010 and 2018, investment in biomedical research and development more than doubled, alongside the rise of digital technology.

Internet companies, large and small, are using software that incorporates computer vision technology to serve community doctors and help them asses test results faster and more accurately, for example.

However, the current COVID-19 outbreak also exposes the gap between bioengineering development, and growing healthcare demands.

Governments and health authorities need to invest further in research and development, but more importantly, institutions need to foster inter-disciplinary research to allow new innovations that cross the divisions between traditional disciplines like medicine and engineering.

At the same time, there are also inherent challenges to overcome in the adoption of new biomedical technology itself.

Codedgender biasesin digital assistants like Siri, for example, risk reinforcing social behaviours and attitudes, while technologies such asdronesraise issues including privacy, surveillance and individual freedom.

Health mapping using algorithms, for example, should not infringe the privacy of individuals, and measures are needed to ensure that data gathered on the spread of illness does not engender discrimination or even racism.

And the use of automatons in healthcare also has social implications when it comes to the emotional and pastoral care often provided by human nurses and doctors.

Addressing these kinds of challenges is not easy but it must start with engineers, regulators and governments establishingconsensusaround ethical principles of fairness, for example, and then converting this into measurable technical standards to ensure responsible conduct.

With every new development in science and technology, we must ensure the risks of unintended consequences are mitigated to help meet the UNs goals of achieving a better, fairer life for everyone by 2030.

The COVID-19 epidemic has been a reminder of how globalisation has compounded public health issues, increasing the speed of disease spread and health risks, on the one hand.

Onthe other,it reminds us how important global efforts are to enhance our engineering capacity with powerful new tools to face the challenges of tomorrow.

If developed and adopted responsibly, smart bioengineering can help not only improve lives but save them as well.

Downloadourappor subscribe to our Telegram channel for the latest updates on the coronavirus outbreak:https://cna.asia/telegram

Gong Ke is president of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO).

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Commentary: COVID-19 crisis reveals the extraordinary promise of bioengineering - CNA

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. Novel biomedical advances that show promise in the lab often fall short in clinical trials. For researchers studying peripheral artery disease, this is made more difficult by a lack of standardized metrics for what recovery looks like. A new study from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign researchers identifies major landmarks of PAD recovery, creating signposts for researchers seeking to understand the disease and develop treatments.

Having these landmarks could aid in more optimal approaches to treatment, identifying what kind of treatment could work best for an individual patient and when it would be most effective, said Illinois bioengineering professor Wawrzyniec L. Dobrucki, who led the study. He also is affiliated with the Carle Illinois College of Medicine.

PAD is a narrowing of the arteries in the limbs, most commonly the legs, so they dont receive enough blood flow. It often isnt diagnosed until walking becomes painful, when the disease is already fairly advanced. Diabetes, obesity, smoking and age increase the risk for PAD and can mask the symptoms, making PAD difficult to diagnose. Once diagnosed, there is no standard treatment, and doctors may struggle to find the right approach for a patient or to tell whether a patient is improving, Dobrucki said.

The researchers used multiple imaging methods to create a holistic picture of the changes in muscle tissue, blood vessels and gene expression through four stages of recovery after mice had the arteries in their legs surgically narrowed to mimic the narrowing found in PAD patients. They published their results in the journal Theranostics.

There are a lot of people who study PAD, so there are all these potential new therapies, but we dont see them in the clinics, said postdoctoral researcher Jamila Hedhli, the first author of the paper. So the main goal of this paper is utilizing these landmarks to standardize our practice as researchers. How can we see if the benefit of certain therapies is really comparable if we are not measuring the same thing?

The cross-disiplinary collaboration identified landmarks over four stages of disease recovery. Pictured, from left: senior research scientist Iwona Dobrucka, professor Jefferson Chan, postdoctoral researcher Jamila Hedhli, graduate student Hailey Knox, professor Wawrzyniec Dobrucki, professor Michael Insana, adjunct John Cole.

Photo by Fred Zwicky

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Dobruckis group collaborated with bioengineering professor Michael Insana, chemistry professor Jefferson Chan and senior research scientist Iwona Dobrucka, the director of the Molecular Imaging Laboratory in the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology, to monitor the mice with a suite of imaging technologies that could be found in hospitals or clinics, including ultrasound, laser speckle contrast, photoacoustics, PET and more. Each method documented a different aspect of the mouses response to the artery narrowing anatomy, metabolism, muscle function, the formation of new blood vessels, oxygen perfusion and genetic activity.

By serially imaging the mice over time, the researchers identified key features and events over four phases of recovery.

Each imaging method gives us a different aspect of the recovery of PAD that the other tools will not. So instead of looking at only one thing, now were looking at a whole spectrum of the recovery, Hedhli said. By looking at these landmarks, were allowing scientists to use them as a tool to say At this point, I should see this happening, and if we add this kind of therapy, there should be an enhancement in recovery.

Though mice are an imperfect model for human PAD, each of the imaging platforms the researchers used can translate to human PAD patients, as well as to other diseases, Dobrucki said. Next, the researchers plan to map the landmarks of PAD in larger animals often used in preclinical studies, such as pigs, and ultimately in human patients.

We are very interested in improving diagnosis and treatment, Hedhli said. Many people are working to develop early diagnosis and treatment options for patients. Having standard landmarks for researchers to refer to can facilitate all of these findings, move them forward to clinic and, we hope, result in successful clinical trials.

The National Institutes of Health, the American Heart Association, and the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of Poland supported this work. Chan, Dobrucki, Hedhli and Insana also are affiliated with the Beckman Institute. Hedhli was supported by a Beckman-Brown Postdoctoral Fellowship.

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Study maps landmarks of peripheral artery disease to guide treatment development - University of Illinois News