The power of friendships
A study published in Scientific Reports has found that people with more friends might have higher activity of endorphins: molecules released in the brain that regulate pain. The researchers made people in the study take a “wall sit” test — squatting against a wall with their knees at 90°. People with more friends were able to sit there for longer, and that’s likely because their endorphin activity was stronger, the researchers think. “Endorphins are our body’s natural painkillers, and they’re actually stronger than morphine,” says Katerina Johnson, the paper’s lead author and a doctoral student at the University of Oxford in the U.K.
Apple launcheds ‘CareKit’
This week, Apple released its very first apps, ‘CareKit’, an open software platform to assist people in managing medical conditions. It will make it easy for patients to keep track of the line of treatment, symptoms and medications, and also share that information with a care team — all from a mobile device. For Apple, the move signals the company’s first real step into the realm of true health care, as opposed to scientific research or simple health tracking. Among the four apps released is one that helps users manage their diabetes, and one that people can use to track symptoms of depression. For Apple, the move signals the company’s first real step into the realm of true health care, as opposed to scientific research or simple health tracking. The last two are used for communicating with a person's health team, and providing users with insight into how well a treatment is working based on their own answers and their progress over time. ‘CareKit’ shares some resemblance with ‘HealthKit’, the platform that lets developers tap into the iPhone’s sensors to gather various health metrics, and ‘ResearchKit’, which gives scientists the ability to recruit participants for scientific studies. At their core, ‘Carekit’ apps are geared towards people who want to keep track of specific symptoms or their medical progress. But the biggest differentiator by far is this: CareKit apps aren’t just for consumers. They are also designed to be attractive to doctors who might want to keep an eye on their patients remotely.
Pacemakers that can run on glucose
Researchers at the Instituto Tecnológico de la Energía (Technological Institute of Energy, ITE) in Spain are working on developing a “bio-battery” that uses blood glucose to produce energy. Such a battery would cut down on the number of surgical interventions a pacemaker user must undergo.
Though pacemakers do not use much power, they do end up running out; and that means a surgery to replace its batteries. However, the researchers at the institute are looking to make electrodes from materials that are compatible with the human body, and which are also able to oxidise blood glucose into fuel. The right materials, made from polymeric and carbonaceous materials, would be able to use the body’s glucose for a permanent supply of power.
Breast milk and early brain growth in preemies
Feeding premature babies mostly breast milk during the first month of life appears to spur more robust brain growth, when compared with babies given little or no breast milk. Researchers who were studying preterm infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Missouri, U.S., ound that preemies whose daily diets were at least 50 per cent breast milk had more brain tissue and cortical-surface area by their due dates than premature babies who consumed significantly less breast milk. The researchers will present their findings on May 3 at the annual meeting of the Pediatric Academic Societies, in Baltimore, U.S.
Do lizards dream?
Neuroscientists at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt, Germany, continuously recorded the brain activity of lizards over several weeks and found that, at night, while sleeping, the lizards’ eyelids twitched during the REM-like stage, just like other animals. Rapid eye movement sleep is a unique phase of mammalian sleep characterised by random movement of the eyes, low muscle tone throughout the body, and the propensity of the sleeper to dream vividly. Although more studies are needed, the results suggest that the lizards could be rehearsing the day’s events as they sleep, forming new memories of all the places they found a snack.
