Date

9/23/2022

publishing company

STATEGROUP

Title

Xenotransplantation could be the future—if only the pigs could be kept virus-free.

summarize

This article is about xenotransplantation. There are over 100,000 Americans on the national transplant list in the United States, with an average of

17 dying waiting for an organ transplant. So, researchers were interested

in xenotransplantation, which involves transplanting organs of other

species into humans to prevent this from happening and to save human

life. This article focuses on the heart, among many organs. Pigs are used for human heart transplantation, which are about 97% similar to human

hearts. But this is said to be very dangerous. As reported in the

New England Journal of Medicine, 57-year-old David Bennett, who

received a pig heart transplant, contracted pCMV and died 60 days after

surgery. This is due to an immune rejection reaction. This must be

overcome in order to safely receive a pig's heart, which requires that the

pig be "humanized" to be compatible with our bodies. To be humanized,

at least three pig genes need to be knocked out using the gene-editing tool CRISPR. In addition, it takes an enormous amount of time, money and effort to bring pigs to birth aseptically.

My thought

It was amazing that a pig, a species different from a human, not a monkey or a chimpanzee, resembled a human heart, and that it survived for about 60 days after transplanting it into a human. And also It was surprising that transplanting pig hearts into humans requires a tremendous amount of

time and effort, including genetic manipulation, sterility, and regular

testing. But I focused more on the inside of this seemingly good study.

Pigs judged to be free of viruses through the above complicated process, when they grow to the size of an adult human after 6 months, cut their

organs and prepare for transplantation into humans. I believe that human

life is important, but that of other animals is just as important. Pigs, born to give new life to humans, die in less than six months, without even

enjoying freedom, only for humans. I think this kind of behavior is really

unethical. Through this article, I became more interested in artificial

organs that can create organs that can give people new life without

killing animals, and I want to explore more about them.

New learn/ topics to explore further/

I want to explore more about artificial organs

1.   How can we make an artificial organ that resembles the structure of a human organ?

3.   Have there been any cases of artificial organs being transplanted into humans?

4.   If an artificial organ is transplanted into a human, will it be usable forever? Should I change it every year or every few years?

5.   The inner side of the artificial organ

6.    Prons and cons of artificial organs

Name of invention

Painkiller Tampon

Date

9/25/2022

Contents

Invention Motivation

Most girls, on average, start their first menstruation around the

age of 12. Menstruation is a physiological phenomenon in which

the thickened uterine mucosa comes off and is discharged

through the vagina along with bleeding. We are more familiar

with the word ‘period' than 'menstruation'. Period is painful even before it starts, and We call this period pain. So, what causes

period pain? First of all, we can think of it as basically due to

intrauterine bleeding. Not only this, but it can also be caused by

the secretion of a substance called 'prostaglandin'. Just before

menstruation, the endometrium releases a substance called

prostaglandin, which causes strong contractions of the uterine

muscles and causes pain similar to colic during childbirth.

However, not everyone experiences this kind of pain. The severity of period pain varies from person to person, and some women

experience only mild abdominal discomfort, while others suffer

from severe vomiting, diarrhea, and back pain that make daily life difficult. I belong to the latter. During the first two days of period, the pain is so severe that it is difficult to lead a smooth daily life without painkillers. However, the use of pain relievers does not

mean that they are immediately effective. 'Advil', which we often take during period, is an oral analgesic; It does not have an

analgesic effect immediately taking it, and the pain-blocking

effect is an average of 4 hours. So, if the pain reappears after

4 hours, you need to take this medicine again or crave the pain.

Based on this experience, I thought about using the function of a tampon that is absorbed through the mucous membrane and

absorbs acupuncture points in the body. Including drugs that can relieve pain in tampons, I thought that absorption of the drug

through the female genital mucosa could provide rapid pain

relief and I wanted to invent a product that can relieve period

pain through drug absorption.

Feature

The biggest feature of the present invention is that it is possible

to use a smaller dose of the drug than oral administration,

maintain steady drug administration levels, and require less

frequent administration than the oral route. An oral analgesic

takes effect 1 hour after taking it, and the effect is as short as

4 hours. As a result, some people overdose on pain relievers. If

you take an overdose of painkillers, you may become resistant to painkillers, and even if you take painkillers any longer, the pain

may not be relieved and you can also get gastrointestinal

hemorrhage, nephropathy and hepatotoxicity.  Based on this

problem, the biggest feature of the invention I thought of is that

it uses a vaginal administration method rather than an oral

administration method. According to ''The vagina as a route for

drug delivery: a review' (By Sushma Srikrishna, Kinda Cardoso),

the vaginal administration method uses a smaller amount of the drug than oral administration and can achieve similar effects, that it can be kept constant. Through this, despite reducing the

number of administration, a much greater effect than oral

administration can be seen. Vaginal administration literally means inserting the drug through the vagina. Isn't there something that comes to mind when you think about inserting through the vagina during menstruation? right. That's a tampon. Tampons are placed in the vagina to stop bleeding during menstruation. Dip this

tampon with an analgesic and put it inside the vagina to stop our pain faster and safer than oral pain relievers.

Date

10/14/2022

publishing company

Boston University

Title

New Miniature Heart could help speed hear disease cures

summarize

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, every 36 seconds a person dies from heart disease. For this reason, it is important to create an artificial heart that can replace the real human heart. Boston University has created a replica of a heart chamber using a combination of nanoengineered parts and human heart tissue. There are no springs or external power sources—like the real thing, it just beats by itself, driven by the live heart tissue grown from stem cells.  In addition, this invention can be widely used not only for the heart but also for various organs, avoiding dangerous experiments that risk the lives of humans and animals.

My thought

As we all know, the heart is one of the most important organs in our body. There are many different types of heart disease, including coronary artery disease (CAD), cardiac arrhythmias, heart failure, etc. However, even if we do not have heart disease, as we get older, 1/3 of the heart muscle cells die, making it difficult to carry out our daily life. When I see this, the health of the heart seems to be the health of our whole body. Look at the article, Boston University has created an artificial heart for heart failure. Heart failure occurs when the heart muscle doesn't pump blood as well as it should. (Source: Mayo Clinic) The heart is made up of muscles, and when the muscles stop, we die. That's why the heart muscle is so important. Because the muscle of the heart is what makes the heartbeat,

I thought that to make the heartbeat, I had to give it a strong force or artificially tap it like a strong spring. However, according to the article above, the spring cannot simulate the force acting on the actual muscle of a person, so it is difficult to live a lifetime. So the Boston University students used human heart tissue and nano-engineered parts instead of a spring machine that beats itself by heart tissue. I had this kind of shock because I had never heard of it or seen it before. This made me more interested in nanotechnology and further wanted to explore more about medical devices for adults with poor heart health.

New learn/ topics to explore further/

1, What is nano-engineering?

2, about nanotechnology medical devices

3. What kinds of medical device that can help people who have heart disease, or poor heart health?