Stem cell transplants can reverse diabetes
Example of Ian
Half a billion people worldwide live with diabetes. There are different types with different causes, but they all cause people to have high blood sugar. If not properly controlled, this excess sugar can wreak havoc throughout the body, putting people at risk for gum disease, nerve damage, kidney disease, blindness, amputations, heart disease, and stroke. and cancer.
Currently, patients manage the condition with medication, insulin and lifestyle changes, but a new generation of treatments could reverse the disease. Details of the first woman to be treated for type 1 diabetes with stem cells taken from her own body were published last month. Before that, a 25-year-old needed a lot of insulin. Now he makes his own.
In April, a similar cell transplant allowed a 59-year-old man with type 2 diabetes to come off insulin. It’s early days and challenges remain, not least in terms of scaling up treatment, but the results so far are encouraging.
Cancer vaccines
Example of Ian
Vaccines were one of the surprising success stories of this epidemic. Now scientists hope that the same mRNA technology that powered Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech’s Covid-19 jabs can be used to train the immune system to recognize and attack cancer.
These jabs work by instructing the patient’s cells to secrete a specific protein that acts as a signal for the immune system. In this case, scientists adjust the vaccine design to match the proteins on the surface of the patient’s cancer cells.
In August, hundreds of patients entered the world’s first trial of an mRNA cancer vaccine for melanoma and trials are underway for pancreatic, colon and other cancers. And since the protection provided by vaccines can last for a long time, it may be possible to use the method as a preventive measure, for those with a high genetic risk of breast or ovarian cancer. motherhood, and prevent cancer from returning.
AI will help to catch cancer early
Robert Booth
The next four years will see rapid advances in the use of artificial intelligence to better diagnose serious diseases such as lung cancer and brain tumours, which should mean longer lives.
The technology is being used in hospitals, including several in the north of England, to catch cancer earlier and prolong life. The system, which scans x-rays and prioritizes where it sees something suspicious that a human doctor might miss, has been shown to improve diagnostic accuracy by 45% and the effectiveness of check by 12%, according to South Tyneside and Sunderland NHS Foundation. Trust.
Hannah Devlin
In the two years since its launch, the James Webb telescope has revealed the night sky in a series of images that are masterpieces of technicolor. It also enables unprecedented discoveries about the origins of stars, black holes, the evolution of the universe and the possibility of life elsewhere in the universe.
The telescope is so powerful that it has seen galaxies that existed when the universe was less than 300m years old, whose light has traveled 14bn years – almost the age of the universe itself – to reach to us. Taking light from the first stars to illuminate the sky – long considered the holy star of the stars – now seems to be within reach. Some of these discoveries are still conjecture, with ancient galaxies appearing to be much brighter or larger than expected, and the first black holes appearing to be snow faster than can be explained by current models.
In science, surprising and unexpected findings are not frowned upon – they are the fuel that fuels the next revolution. This telescope promises to do just that for our understanding of the history of the universe and how we humans are alone in it.
Renewable energy is increasing rapidly
Jillian Ambrose
The world’s transition to green energy is increasing. A recent report by the International Energy Agency (IEA), a global energy watchdog, found that over the next six years, renewable energy projects are on track to be used up at a rapid pace. and thought three times over the past nine years. This could put the world on track to exceed the 2030 targets set by governments to create a global renewable energy capacity roughly equal to the existing power systems of China, the EU, India and the US combined.
In Europe, a surge in solar power caused market prices to turn negative for several hours this summer. Wind manufacturers are gearing up to introduce a new generation of floating offshore wind turbines to better handle stronger offshore wind speeds.
The increase in green electricity will be led by the clean energy programs of China and India, which will help to eliminate the use of fossil fuels of the two most polluting countries in the world.
China will have more than half of the world’s renewable resources by the end of the decade, according to the IEA, which is thought to have delayed China’s pipeline of future coal-fired power plants. The number of new coal plant approvals in China has dropped from 100GW in 2022 and 2023 to just 12 new projects of 9.1GW in the first half of 2024, according to the Global Energy Monitor.
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