Scientists have identified a probiotic in dairy fermentation that may help alleviate and reverse some autism symptoms. Currently patients can only use antipsychotics, antidepressants, stimulants and anti-anxiety medications for treatments, but the new study suggests a natural method could just as effective. The discovery was made using genetically modified mice that were prone to autism-like symptoms. When modified, the mice exhibited symptoms of the disorder like a reduced interest in social interactions and an imbalance in the key neurotransmitters crucial for functions like learning, memory and cognitive processes. Researchers gave the animals a daily dose of the probiotic Lactobacillus murinus (a type of bacteria commonly found in dairy products like cheese and yogurt) for one month.

Soft tissue manipulation is an integral aspect of most surgical procedures; however, the vast majority of surgical graspers used today are made of hard materials, such as metals or hard plastics. Furthermore, these graspers predominately function by pinching tissue between two hard objects as a method for tissue manipulation. As such, the potential to apply too much force during contact, and thus damage tissue, is inherently high. As an alternative approach, gaspers developed using a pneumatic vortex could potentially levitate soft tissue, enabling manipulation with low or even no contact force. In this paper, we present the design and well as a full factorial study of the force characteristics of the vortex gripper grasping soft surfaces with four common shapes, with convex and concave curvature, and ranging over 10 different radii of curvature, for a total of 40 unique surfaces. By changing the parameters of the nozzle elements in the design of the gripper, it was possible to investigate the influence of the mass flow parameters of the vortex gripper on the lifting force for all of these different soft surfaces. An $\pmb{ex}$ $\pmb{vivo}$ experiment was conducted on grasping biological tissues and soft balls of various shapes to show the advantages and disadvantages of the proposed technology. The obtained results allowed us to find limitations in the use of vortex technology and the following stages of its improvement for medical use.

It might not be a dingy castle surrounded by crashing lightning, but scientists in this clean, quiet laboratory would put any mad scientist's ambition to shame. While Dr Frankenstein had to build his monster out of spare parts, the researchers here aim to go further and make their body parts from scratch. At Nottingham University's Centre for Additive Manufacturing, scientists are combining 3D printing and cutting-edge biology to harness the body's own healing powers. And, while it might seem like science-fiction, they hope to soon print new parts for damaged organs on demand. To see just how close they are, MailOnline's Wiliiam Hutner dusted off his lab coat and went behind the scenes with the UK's very own Frankenstein lab.

Accurate 3D modeling of human organs plays a crucial role in building computational phantoms for virtual imaging trials. However, generating anatomically plausible reconstructions of organ surfaces from computed tomography scans remains challenging for many structures in the human body. This challenge is particularly evident when dealing with the large intestine. In this study, we leverage recent advancements in geometric deep learning and denoising diffusion probabilistic models to refine the segmentation results of the large intestine. We begin by representing the organ as point clouds sampled from the surface of the 3D segmentation mask. Subsequently, we employ a hierarchical variational autoencoder to obtain global and local latent representations of the organ's shape. We train two conditional denoising diffusion models in the hierarchical latent space to perform shape refinement. To further enhance our method, we incorporate a state-of-the-art surface reconstruction model, allowing us to generate smooth meshes from the obtained complete point clouds. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach in capturing both the global distribution of the organ's shape and its fine details. Our complete refinement pipeline demonstrates remarkable enhancements in surface representation compared to the initial segmentation, reducing the Chamfer distance by 70%, the Hausdorff distance by 32%, and the Earth Mover's distance by 6%. By combining geometric deep learning, denoising diffusion models, and advanced surface reconstruction techniques, our proposed method offers a promising solution for accurately modeling the large intestine's surface and can easily be extended to other anatomical structures.

Engineers have developed a flexible robot that enters the rectum to 3D print living cells on damaged organs, eliminating the need for patients to'go under the knife.' The University of South Wales Sydney team designed the miniature robotic arm to directly deliver'bioink,' made of gelatin, collagen, human cells and other materials, onto the surface of internal organs and tissues. The proof-of-concept device, known as F3DB, features a highly maneuverable swivel head that'prints' the bioink, attached to the end of the arm, all of which can be controlled externally. The research team said that with further development, and potentially within five to seven years, the technology could be used by medical professionals to access hard-to-reach areas inside the body via small skin incisions or natural orifices. The lead researcher Dr Thanh Nho Do said in a statement: 'Existing 3D bioprinting techniques require biomaterials to be made outside the body and implanting that into a person would usually require large open-field open surgery which increases infection risks. 'Our flexible 3D bioprinter means biomaterials can be directly delivered into the target tissue or organs with a minimally invasive approach.'

A robotic pill that can propel itself through mucus in the intestine could enable some injection-only drugs, such as insulin or certain antibiotics, to be delivered by mouth. To be absorbed into the bloodstream, drugs taken orally have to survive harsh stomach acid and enzymes, as well as manoeuvre through bacteria and mucus in the intestine, which can rule out many sensitive drugs from being taken this way. Only 1 per cent of insulin, for example, is taken up by the body when it is swallowed because stomach enzymes break it down, so people with diabetes have to take injections instead. Shriya Srinivasan at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and her colleagues have developed a drug-carrying capsule called RoboCap that can drill through mucus in the lower intestine and disperse its load. "I was watching videos of these machines that can make tunnels and I thought, 'OK, what if we did this but for mucus,'" she says.

"health resides in the overall organisation of the meta-organism that integrates the host and the microbiota". Let's see now the hallmarks of health by Carlos and Guido and some AI tolls that can help us stay healthy. We exist only because we have barriers (i.e. the intestinal, respiratory and cutaneous barrier) that shield us from our environment, and because we have subcellular, cellular and inter-cellular compartments, that they are allowing the formation of electrophysiological and chemical gradients at the level of organelles (i.e. It is this compartmentalisation in every living organism, a consequence of the reduction of entropy (the amount of entropy is a measure of the molecular disorder, or randomness, of a system), that is actually allowing the maintenance of health. Any alterations or deficiencies in the structural and/or regulatory components of the network just described, can cause severe skin pathologies.

A robot has performed laparoscopic surgery on the soft tissue of a pig without the guiding hand of a human--a significant step in robotics toward fully automated surgery on humans. Designed by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) is described today in Science Robotics. "Our findings show that we can automate one of the most intricate and delicate tasks in surgery: the reconnection of two ends of an intestine. The STAR performed the procedure in four animals and it produced significantly better results than humans performing the same procedure," said senior author Axel Krieger, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering at Johns Hopkins' Whiting School of Engineering. The robot excelled at intestinal anastomosis, a procedure that requires a high level of repetitive motion and precision.

In a major step toward autonomous healthcare, a robot successfully completed laparoscopic surgery on a pig without human backup. Designed by a team of Johns Hopkins University researchers, the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR) has performed the procedure--which requires a high level of repetitive motion and precision--in four animals, producing "significantly better" results than humans. "Our findings show that we can automate one of the most intricate and delicate tasks in surgery: the reconnection of two ends of an intestine," according to Axel Krieger, assistant professor of mechanical engineering at JHU's Whiting School of Engineering. Even the slightest hand tremor or misplaced stitch can lead to catastrophic complications. Krieger, in collaboration with the Children's National Hospital in Washington, D.C., and Hopkins professor of electrical and computer engineering Jin Kang, designed and built the vision-guided robot specifically to suture soft tissue.

While robotic laparoscopic surgical systems do make certain procedures safer and less invasive, those systems are still operated by human surgeons. Now, however, a surgical robot has performed a delicate operation entirely on its own. Known as the Smart Tissue Autonomous Robot (STAR), the robotic-arm-equipped device was designed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Back in 2016, when operating on pigs, STAR was shown to be equal to or better than experienced surgeons at performing a procedure known as an intestinal anastomosis – this involved painstakingly suturing together the two severed ends of a small intestine. At the time, however, the robot had to access the intestine via a large external incision, and still required some guidance from humans.