Search Results (3)

Wireless soft miniature robots have been studied for biomedical applications. However, the wireless soft miniature robots developed so far are mainly composed of synthetic polymers that do not guarantee biocompatibility and biodegradability. Additionally, current soft robots have limitations in demonstrating mobility in narrow spaces, such as blood vessels within the body, by using their flexible body. This study proposes a wireless hybrid-actuated soft miniature robot for biomedical applications. The proposed soft miniature robot consists of biodegradable chitosan and magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) and is fabricated into an eight-arm shape by laser micromachining. The soft miniature robot can implement hydrogel swelling and magnetic-actuated shape morphing by using the difference in MNP density and magnetic field responsiveness within the robot body, respectively. Furthermore, the soft miniature robot can be guided by external magnetic fields. As feasibility tests, the soft miniature robot demonstrated on-demand pick-and-place motion, grasping a bead, moving it to a desired location, and releasing it. Furthermore, in an in-channel mobility test, the flexible body of the soft miniature robot passed through a tube smaller in size than the robot itself through magnetically actuated shape morphing. These results indicate that the soft miniature robot with controllable shape change and precise magnetic-driven mobility can be a minimally invasive surgical robot for disease diagnosis and treatment. Full article

Background: Women report a heightened concern of (breast) cancer, relative to other chronic conditions. This experimental study investigated whether such heightened concern may be a function of availability bias. Methods: participants (N = 750; 100% female) were randomly assigned to one of two experimental conditions: in the recall condition, they were asked to name the health condition they feared most; in the recognition condition, they picked the disease they feared most out of a list of chronic conditions. Results: The probability of selecting cancer as the most frightening disease varied as a function of experimental condition χ² (10) = 112.13, p < 0.001. Participants in the recall condition were almost twice as likely to select cancer as the most frightening disease (N = 240, 59.10%) as those in the recognition condition (N = 121, 35.20%), who most frequently selected neurological diseases as the most threatening. The majority of participants believed that cancer was the disease receiving the most media attention (86.27%) (prior to the COVID-19 pandemic), and the one accounting for the highest number of deaths among Spanish females (63.50%). Conclusions: altogether, these results provide experimental evidence that availability bias may partly account for misperceptions and a heightened fear of cancer, which may narrow the scope of women’s information-seeking and health-preventive behaviors. Full article

The study of tau protein aggregation and interactions with other molecules or solvents using molecular dynamics simulations (MDs) is of interest to many researchers to propose new mechanism-based therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, Pick’s disease, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and other tauopathies. In this review, we present recent MD simulation studies of tau oligomers and fibrils such as tau-NPK, tau-PHF, tau-K18, and tau-R3-R4 monomers and dimers. All-atom simulations by replica exchange MDs and coarse-grained MDs in lipid bilayers and in solution were used. The simulations revealed different mechanisms in the binding of tau in bilayers and in solutions, depending on the peptide size. Phosphorylation is also an important factor in MD simulations. The use of steered MDs was also included to simulate the dissociation of tau fibrils. The exponential improvement in the computing power of computers has led to an increasing number of scientists and engineers using a cost-effective, high-performance computing platform to study how the tau protein interacts and the effects of changing its structure, such as the phosphorylation of tau fibrils. Full article