Thanks to an innovative "depot” injection approach from a team at MIT, long-lasting shots could become a lot less painful. Involving the injection of tiny, drug-delivering crystals suspended within a solvent, the team’s method could deliver drugs with thinner needles, fewer injections, and a lot less pain overall.Describing the approach in a study in Nature Chemical Engineering, the team says that the method could work with contraceptives and other drugs that are taken consistently over time ...read more
Shortages of GLP-1 medications, like Ozempic and Wegovy, are common occurrences. These shortages will likely continue into the future and will make it hard for patients dealing with Type 2 diabetes and obesity to receive consistent treatment.At the most recent meeting of the American Chemical Association, a research team presented their findings that could solve the GLP-1 shortage. They suggest that an improvement in GLP-1 drug delivery, a process they call “painting,” could reduce the amoun ...read more
As concerns over Earth’s limited resources continue to grow, some entrepreneurs are eagerly looking beyond our planet to establish the next big business venture: asteroid mining. The prospect of setting up mining operations in space holds the potential for enticing rewards of rare metals that can’t be easily found on Earth.However, these projects face an uphill climb. Asteroid mining missions may cost upwards of billions of dollars, and the technology they’d need to rely on requires furthe ...read more
Before his discovery of King Tutankhamun’s tomb in 1922, it’s rumored that Howard Cater, the renowned Egyptologist, discovered another mummy in 1919. Known as either the Bashiri Mummy, the Mummy of Pacheri, or the “untouchable one,” this mummy was so intricately wrapped that researchers never unfurled it for fear of irreversible damage. The fabric across the mummy's face is woven in an intricate pattern that resembles the base of a pyramid, and it may be the only known mummy to have use ...read more
Tuberculosis (TB) is mostly forgotten, but certainly not gone. We often associate TB with bygone times. In 1882, the consumption, as it was often called then, killed one in seven people in Europe and the U.S. The disease traveled by coughing; crowded cities in both Europe and the U.S. were thought to be one reason behind its rise. In the Victorian Era, wealthy folks travelled to remote, temperate climates to avoid TB, but people with less resources hacked up blood as their lungs deteriorated, un ...read more