wounds

John Boyega, who portrayed Finn in Disney’s Star Wars sequel trilogy, didn’t have the greatest time making those films. From the jump, he was criticized for his skin color while portraying Stormtrooper FN-2187. And then he saw what was essentially a starring role in The Force Awakens diminish to a supporting one in The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker. However, it looks like Boyega is now “open” to revisiting the franchise. This is despite being pretty hard on Disney three years ago, when he made public statements…

It's certainly ironic that in order to see how a wound is healing, the dressing has to be removed, potentially setting back the healing process. A clever new bandage, however, continuously shows how the wound is faring – without needing a power source.Developed by a team of scientists at the National University of Singapore, the experimental dressing is known as the PETAL (Paper-like Battery-free In situ AI-enabled Multiplexed) sensor patch. Along with being a bit of a forced acronym, the bandage's name also refers to the…

Most wound dressings simply cover the injury and perhaps also kill harmful bacteria. The PAINT system goes much further, as it incorporates a pen that could one day allow doctors to paint a gelatinous healing ink right into wounds.Its name an acronym for "portable bioactive ink for tissue healing," the PAINT technology is being developed by scientists from China's Nanjing University.The system is centered around a 3D-printing pen which contains a sodium alginate gel and particles known as extracellular vesicles (EVs). The…

Researchers have confirmed what Indigenous Australians have long known: native plants have great healing properties. A study has found that two plants show great potential for healing wounds quickly and efficiently. The finding paves the way for introducing more plant-based treatments into healthcare.Two studies by researchers at Charles Darwin University in Australia's Northern Territory looked at the healing properties of two native plants, Calophyllum inophyllum and Tinospora smilacina, as alternative sources of…

Image: ronstik/Adobe Stock Spearphishing is a sliver of all email exploits, but the extent to which it succeeds is revealed in a new study from cybersecurity firm Barracuda Network, which analyzed 50 billion emails across 3.5 million mailboxes in 2022, unearthing around 30 million spearphishing emails. These findings are in the company’s new report about Spear-Phishing Trends. While that proportion represents less than a tenth of a percent of all emails, half of the organizations the firm examined in the study,…

Starting with fibers taken from pig tissue, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed dissolving sutures that can be loaded with molecular sensors or medication. The hope is that the new sutures could speed healing and/or send up the red flag when something is wrong at a surgical site.According to the surgeon Galen of Pergamon, in ancient Greece, when gladiators had their tendons severed, medics used sutures made from silk and the twined intestines of sheep or horses to patch them back…

For some time now, it has been observed that wounds with a zig-zag pattern heal faster than those which simply form a straight line. Scientists have now determined why this is the case, and their findings could change the ways in which surgical incisions are made.Led by Prof. K Jimmy Hsia, a team at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University started out with a micro-patterned hydrogel, the surface of which was seeded with Madin-Darby canine kidney cells. Although these cells are obtained from dog kidneys, they are…

In diabetics, wounds tend to progress quickly and heal slowly. Researchers have developed a method that uses electricity to heal diabetic wounds three times faster and offers great potential for treating those with diseases that lead to reduced wound healing.Diabetics are 15 times more likely to have amputations because of foot wounds and ulcers. So, it’s important to keep an eye on even small cuts, grazes, and scratches that have the potential to develop into larger wounds.When diabetes is poorly controlled, blood…

Scientists have developed a specially engineered biochip that uses electricity to heal wounds up to three times faster than normal.It's well known that electric fields can guide the movements of skin cells, nudging them towards the site of an injury for instance. In fact, the human body generates an electric field that does this naturally. So researchers from the University of Freiburg in Germany set out to amplify the effect.While it might not heal severe injuries with the speed of a Marvel superhero, it could radically…

It's ironic that in order to check if a wound is becoming infected, doctors may end up setting back the healing process by prematurely removing the dressing. An experimental new dressing is designed to help, as it changes color if an infection is occurring.Developed by scientists from Sweden's Linköping, Örebro and Luleå universities, the dressing consists of a nanocellulose mesh which is covered in a porous silica material loaded with bromthymol blue (BTB) dye.First of all, the mesh is tight enough to keep bacteria from…