2014 Science News Review

                                            

Lana Jovsic 
9E
26/03/15

                                                          2014 Science News Review

Looking back on the pervious year, there have been numerous remarkable discoveries, all of which either improved our knowledge of something that we knew existed or informed us about completely new. It is known that the human body is prone to being affected by various illnesses/infections some of which we are able to fight of on our own and some of which still remain fatal to the human body. Three articles that especially caught my eye are about: a bionic hand allowing amputee to feel again, the bionic eye and finally the possible cure for cancer.

Figure 1- Dennis Aabo Sorensen participating in the test in
order to see whether he can feel if the object is hard or soft.

Over the course of the previous year there have been various discoveries that are of great importance but one that I truly find remarkable is the bionic hand that restores the amputees sense of touch. After one looses a body part they think that they will never be given the opportunity to feel again, but that might not be the case anymore.  Nine years after Dennis Aabo Sorensen lost his left hand researchers from “Ècole Polytechnique Fédéral De Lausanne” in Switzerland and from the “Scuola Superiore Sant'Anna” in Italy conducted an experiment hoping to allow the amputee to regain their sense of touch. The way that they made this happen is they implanted electrodes into his left arm. The sense of touch was achieved is by measuring the tension in the artificial tendons (tough band connecting bone and tissue) that control the fingers, and then turning it into an electrical current. After it is turned into an electrical current it is passed through the electrodes attached to the two main nerves in the arm of the amputee. In order to test whether Sorensen was able to feel if the object is soft or hard they blindfolded him while playing music in his headphones and asked him if the object was hard or soft which he did successfully as we can see in figure 1. “The idea was to translate the language of the prosthetic into an electrical signal the central nervous system could understand," said Silvestro Micera  who worked on this project for 15 years. Even though years will go by before this prosthetic is going to be available for the public it is said that there are possibilities of there being prosthetics resembling this one for the lower part of the body as well.

I think that this discovery is truly remarkable because of many reasons the main one being that it opens the door to many different possibilities. Up until this point this is the most advanced we have gotten to have an amputee with a restored sense of touch. Even though there is many things that need to be enhanced with this prosthetic it is a fantastic start. Hopefully in the future this project will be further developed so that the product is available for more people in an easier way. I find this really significant because it enables people who have lost their sense of touch be able to evaluate objects to at least some extent using their prosthetic.

Figure 2- Is showing an individual who was legally blind due
Retinitis pigmentosa being able to trace
a letter on the screen proving she can
tell light from dark after she had the
 prosthesis put in. 

Retinitis pigmentosa is just one on the numerous diseases that affects the human vision and it affects 1.5 million people across the world.  According to Cleveland Clinic up until this point there have been no proven treatments for the late stage of RP but thanks to the new technology there was a retinal prosthesis made. This is achieved by surgically implanting the prosthesis in the place of the eye which is affected by RP. In a eye of a healthy individual the rods and cones convert light into small electrochemical impulses that are sent to your brain by the optic nerve which then decodes them into images we see. When it comes to a person with RP the photoreceptors are damaged over time so the brain doesn’t receive the electromechanical images. The new technology is made to replace the cells that have degenerated over time and help the person effected perceive patterns of light. On the down side the retinal implant does not restore your complete vision but what is does is it allows people to detect light and dark in their surroundings as well as the movement of objects/people. Figure 2 shows an individual who prior to the implant had no vision, now are able to tell light from dark as was proven by their ability to correctly trace the letters on the screen in front of them.

In my opinion the bionic eye is very significant because even though it doesn’t fully restore ones eyesight according to the clinical study of 30 participants said they were able to perform some of their daily tasks with more ease than before. I think that this discovery is one of the most important ones in the past year because it is a huge step forward for numerous people who had no other option for treatments. Another thing, which I find of great importance, is that this prosthesis can be used to help people who have different diseases effecting eyesight.

Figure 3- Cancer patient Stacy Erholtz participating in
the first trial for the experimental study

Every year 7.6 million people die from cancer world wide, and the everlasting struggle is to finally find a cure for the fatal disease, which may be exactly what was discovered in the pervious year. According to “Mayo Clinic”  there has been a discovery of a cure, which actually worked on two of the patience it was tested on. "We've known for a long time that we can give a virus intravenously and destroy metastatic cancer in mice. Nobody's shown that you can do that in people before." said Stephen Russell who was one of the main researchers for this study. Stacy Erholtz is a 50 year old woman who has been battling with an aggressive from of blood cancer for the past 10 years but after just one dose she was in complete remission. She participated in the experimental study (as seen in figure three) where she was injected with measles vaccine, enough to vaccinate 100 million people. The measles virus makes the cancer cells join together and eventually explode. Unfortunately this isn’t the cure for all of the cancers and it doesn’t necessarily apply to all of the patience but in the future the researchers are hoping to perfect the treatment and make it more applicable to a wider range of people suffering from myeloma, which killed approximately 11,000 people in the past year.

This has been one of the most important discoveries of the previous year because it is a huge breakthrough and there are many options of it being perfected and used as an affective cure for certain types of cancer. Even though this study isn’t a definite cure for cancer I think that it is a step in the right direction which could possible after more research lead to a definite cure. As Stephen Russell mentioned in his quote for News.mic, this was proven to work on mice but this is the first time its has been proven to work on a human which makes it even more significant.

Every year we gain new knowledge regarding something that is unknown to us and 2014 was no different.  The year of 2014 was filled with numerous discoveries each making a huge impact on our society and improving our way of life. Because of the three discoveries that were mentioned previously we are one step closer to making everyday life easier for people who’s health/physical ability was taken away from.