Imma Perfetto
Cosmos science journalist
Artificial heart implanted in patient with end-stage heart failure
The BiVACOR Total Artificial Heart (TAH), invented by Australian Dr Daniel Timms, has been successfully implanted in a human for the first time.
The implantation occurred on 9 July as part of a US Food and Drug Administration Early Feasibility Study, which aims to evaluate the safety and performance of the device as a solution for patients with severe biventricular or univentricular heart failure.
Heart failure affects at least 26 million people worldwide and is increasing in prevalence.
“The Texas Heart Institute is enthused about the groundbreaking first implantation of BiVACOR’s TAH,” says Dr Joseph Rogers, president and CEO of The Texas Heart Institute in the US and national principal investigator on the research.
“With heart failure remaining a leading cause of mortality globally, the BiVACOR TAH offers a beacon of hope for countless patients awaiting a heart transplant.”
She’s got praying mantis eyes
Researchers have developed artificial compound eyes that emulate those of the praying mantis. Their eyes are capable of depth perception (thanks to binocular vision) well as motion parallax, in which nearer objects appear to move faster than distant objects.
“Making the sensor in hemispherical geometry while maintaining its functionality is a state-of-the-art achievement, providing a wide field of view and superior depth perception,” says Byungjoon Bae, a PhD candidate at the University of Virginia in the US and first author of the study describing the technology in Science Robotics.
“The system delivers precise spatial awareness in real time, which is essential for applications that interact with dynamic surroundings.”
The prototype system reduces power consumption by more than 400 times compared to traditional visual systems. Potential applications include low-power vehicles and drones, self-driving vehicles, robotic assembly, surveillance and security systems, and smart home devices.
Human muscle cells return from space
Muscle cells sent to the International Space Station to study the effects of microgravity have returned to Earth with new insights, according to a new study in the journal Stem Cell Reports.
The muscle cells were sent up on a “muscle-on-a-chip” system to mimic the structure of real muscles and were grown in space for 7 days.
On return, the cells displayed changes in gene activity and protein profile related to dysfunctions in muscle regeneration. Gene activity also somewhat resembled muscles with age-related muscle loss, known as sarcopenia, which most commonly affects people ages 60 and older.
“Space is a really unique environment that accelerates qualities associated with aging and also impairs many healthy processes,” says senior author Ngan Huang, an associate professor at Stanford University in the US.
“As space travel becomes more common and available to civilians, it’s important to understand what happens to our muscle in microgravity.
“This concept of engineered tissue chip platform in microgravity is a potentially transformative tool that could allow us to study a variety of diseases and do drug screening without animal or human subjects.”
Ancient rocks reveal secrets from deep within the Earth
New analysis of rocks thought to be at least 2.5 billion years old has helped scientists better understand the chemical history of Earth’s mantle – the layer beneath the planet’s crust.
The findings suggest the mantle has retained a stable oxidation state since these rocks formed. Oxidation is when an atom or molecule loses electrons in a chemical reaction.
The research appears in a paper in the journal Nature.
“The ancient rocks we studied are 10,000 times less oxidised than typical modern mantle rocks, and we present evidence that this is because they melted deep in the Earth during the Archean [Eon], when the mantle was much hotter than it is today,” says co-author Elizabeth Cottrell, chair of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History’s Department of Mineral Sciences in the US.
“Other researchers have tried to explain the higher oxidation levels seen in rocks from today’s mantle by suggesting that an oxidation event or change has taken place between the Archean and today.
“Our evidence suggests that the difference in oxidation levels can simply be explained by the fact that Earth’s mantle has cooled over billions of years and is no longer hot enough to produce rocks with such low oxidation levels.”
The rocks were collected from the seafloor at the Gakkel Ridge near the North Pole and the Southwest Indian Ridge between Africa and Antarctica.
