Richie Long who farms in Ballymacarbry in Co. Waterford is a participant in the Teagasc Green Acres Calf to Beef Programme.
Richie finishes both early maturing and continental calves originating from his brothers dairy farm.These calves are finished as steers and heifers at 20-24 months-of-age.
With this arrangement, theres potential for Richie and his brothers, Michael and Liam, to work together in terms of the beef sires being used.
In addition, Richie can also be confident that the calf has been managed correctly in terms of colostrum and nutrition in the early days of life, which allow the animal to reach its weight targets in future months.
In the short video (below), the Co. Waterford-based farmer gives us a quick run through of the system operated on the farm, along with some of the changes he has made during the first year of the programme, while also outlining his plans for the future.
As AgriLand previously reported last April,for the 2019 breeding season, a team of eight beef bulls of various breeds have been selected that are positive for carcass weight and conformation, without being excessively hard-calving for the dairy herd.
After examining the cows and having been briefed on the background to the herd including parity, genetic background and calving pattern Hereford, Limousin, Belgian Blue, Charolais and Aubrac bulls were selected.
The calving difficulty of the bulls selected range from 3.2% up to 7.8%, with the easier calving bulls targeted at younger and smaller cows, while those of higher calving difficulty will be mated to older cows with a proven track record of easy calving.
Some of the calves from the above sires have now arrived on Richies farm (see video below).
In the following video, as part of the Calf Health and Management Series, National Cattle Breeding Centre (NCBC) and Munster Bovines Rose Goulding who was involved in choosing suitable sires for the calf-to-beef enterprise details how both dairy and beef farmers can build relationships and work together to produce calves that are suitable for beef production, without affecting dairy herd performance.
Rose talks us through the genetic makeup of the calves and outlines the sire selection process and why certain sires were used on different groups of cows.
Commenting on the benefits of this type of relationship, Rose said: Thepartnership here can be replicated across the cattle industry in Ireland, whereby the dairy farmer understands the beef farmers needs and visa versa.
Its a win:win situation for both parties. When they work together, the dairy farmer understands more about the beef farmers needs.
But, the beef farmer also needs to understand the dairy farmers needs, so its a real working relationship and it can really be a win:win scenario, she concluded.
Part 1:Video series: The complete guide to buying and rearing dairy-beef calvesPart 2:Video: What can I pay for dairy-beef calves?Part 3:Video: What questions should I ask dairy farmers when sourcing dairy-beef calves?
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The importance of choosing dairy calves with the right genetics for beef production - Agriland
As soon as he learned about the existence of ancient wheat specimens at University College Londons Petrie Museum of Egyptian Archaeology from a 2018 BBC documentary, Richard Mott of the UCL Genetics Institute wanted to study them. The samples likely contained bits of ancient wheat DNA, he reasoned, which could yield valuable insights into the history of cultivation of this all-important crop species.
Archaeobotanists at UCL helped Mott and a team of collaborators choose a handful of well-preserved husks from the museums collection of ancient emmer wheat, a variety native to the Near East and one of the first crops to be domesticated in the region, from which the researchers selected two husks for DNA extraction. After carefully removing the husks from the box, photographing them, and wrapping them in foil, the scientists transported the centuries-old plant material to a freshly bleached cleanroom used exclusively to process ancient and forensic samples.
Its fascinating to see this gene flow happening in an area important for human history.
M. Timothy Rabanus-Wallace, Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research
There, team member Laura Botigu, a population geneticist and visiting researcher from the Centre for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) in Barcelona, Spain, donned a hairnet, two Tyvek suits, two pairs of latex gloves, and a maskpart of a protocol designed to avoid contaminating the samples with her own cells. Uncertain how the delicate husks would hold up to the standard decontamination protocol of bleaching the samples, Botigu bleached one and left the second untouched. Then, to lyse the plants cells, she put the samples in a rotator that gently shook the husks inside an oven over the next several days. Finally, she used a centrifugation protocol to separate any DNA from the degraded cell walls and proteins.
Once the samples had been prepped and delivered to the UCL Genomics facility for sequencing, it was a waiting game to see if the procedure had yielded any readable wheat DNA. This is the more stressful part, Botigu says. Because they lack the type of protective collagen matrix found in bones, plants dont preserve ancient DNA as well as animals. You finish, the DNA is theoretically extracted, but you dont see it in the tube, says Botigu. Youre in the blind until you hear back from the sequencing services.
Within just a few weeks, the team got good news. For the husk that Botigu had bleached, about two-thirds of the reads aligned with genomes of modern wild and domesticated emmer wheat varietiesa relatively good success rate for ancient DNA, according to evolutionary geneticist Michael Scott, a postdoc in Motts lab who conducted the bio-informatics analysis of the sequences. The first surprise was how well it worked, he says. It appears that the dry conditions in Egypt were good for DNA preservation. The unbleached husk had yielded a smaller quantity of sequences, but those fragments mostly matched the ones in the bleached sample, validating the identity of those sequences as coming from the ancient wheat samples rather than from contaminants.
The museum wheat, which carbon dating showed was from between 1130 and 1000 BC, was genetically much more similar to modern domesticated varieties than to modern wild ones, suggesting that the plant lineage the samples came from had already been domesticated. Specifically, the sequences most resembled those of modern domesticated strains grown in Turkey, Oman, and India. There was also evidence for genetic exchange between the museum wheat strain and the wild emmer wheat that grew in the Levant, a large region in the Eastern Mediterranean that was a center of agricultural development in the Neolithic period, and where emmer was first cultivated. The genetic exchange could have occurred before the wheats introduction to Egypt from the Levant, says Scott. Alternatively, its possible that the ancient Egyptians wheat was able to interbreed with wild wheat in the Southern Levant thanks to interactions between the people in the two regions.
ANCIENT HUSKS: These wheat specimens were analyzed for ancient DNA by researchers at University College London.
CHRIS STEVENS
With big data and with a really good analysis method they were able to detect this gene flow, says M. Timothy Rabanus-Wallace, an agricultural geneticist at the Leibniz Institute of Plant Genetics and Crop Plant Research in Germany who coauthored a perspective published alongside the study in Nature Plants last October. Its fascinating to see this gene flow happening . . . in an area important for human history.
The bioinformatics analysis also uncovered some genetic variants in the ancient samples that werent found in any of the modern emmer wheat genomes the researchers studied. If these variants helped the wheat survive in arid locations around the Near East, perhaps introducing those sequences into modern varieties could help make them more sustainable or more drought resistant, Scott says, though he admits that this is very much just an idea.
The detection of ancient genetic variation is a notable achievement because wheat genomes are largethree to five times the length of a human genomeand repetitive, making the analysis . . . incredibly complex, says James Breen, head of the bioinformatics core at the South Australian Health and Medical Research Institute who reviewed the study and coauthored the perspective with Rabanus-Wallace, a PhD student in his lab at the Australian Centre for Ancient DNA at the time. So being able to find unique pieces of DNA in that genome is very difficult. He adds that after a couple of additional validation tests performed by the UCL team, he was convinced that the data that came out was legitimately ancient.
Botigu and Scott emphasize that the study is primarily a proof of concept that museum-kept plant samples can yield readable genetic material. We were able to look at DNA from specimens that had been stored in the museum for over 90 years without special preservation conditionsthe museum was actually even bombed and flooded during wartime, says Scott. We think our study helps demonstrate the importance of museum collections as sources of genetic data, whichin combination with new samplescan be used to uncover the history of selection on crops and their movement around the globe.
I think thats one of the biggest values of ancient DNA in plants, adds Nathan Wales, an archaeologist at the University of York who was not involved in Scott and Botigus studyto draw connections between different cultures and the different agricultural products they were growing and trading, and seeing how that changed over time.
Jef Akst is managing editor of The Scientist. Email her atjakst@the-scientist.com.
Read more:
Ancient Wheat Genome Reveals Clues to the Agricultural Past - The Scientist
Researchers say that the effect of high altitudes on people's breathing and its coordination with the heartbeat is due to genetic differences. Clear physiological differences have already been demonstrated between people living in the Himalayas and Andes compared with people living at sea level, revealing an evolutionary adaptation in the control of blood flow and oxygen delivery to the brain and the rest of the body.
Now an international team led by Professor Aneta Stefanovska of Lancaster University has identified genes that are related to cardiorespiratory function during so-called acute periodic breathing. Their report is published in the Journal of Physiology. Periodic breathing (PB) occurs in most humans at high altitudes and is characterised by periodic alternations between hyperventilation (too-fast breathing) and apnoea (no breathing). The altered respiratory pattern due to PB is accompanied by changes in heart rate and blood flow.
Breathing, ECG of the heart and microvascular blood flow were simultaneously monitored for 30 minutes in 22 healthy male subjects, with the same measurements repeated under normal and low oxygen levels, both at real and simulated altitudes of up to 3800m. As part of the experiment, the participants were also taken in a cable car to a high altitude laboratory at the top of Aiguille du Midi mountain in Chamonix in France and tested immediately on arrival and after six hours at this altitude of 3842m.
The researchers found that orchestration between the participants' hearts and lungs, as measured by phase coherence, responded differently to periodic breathing depending on whether they had one of two specific genetic variants affecting the cardiorespiratory response to insufficient oxygen. Chronic periodic breathing is generally seen as an unfavourable state, being associated with increased mortality in chronic heart failure, but in healthy people, it may be an indication of better alertness to oxygen insufficiency at high altitudes.
Hypoxia, as well as occurring during rapid ascents to high-altitudes, can also be a significant problem at sea-level, being a contributory factor in many health conditions including cancer, strokes, and heart attacks. Professor Stefanovska said: "The similarities between hypoxia-induced PB at altitude, and the breathing characteristics observed in certain pathological states, provide an opportunity to further our understanding of the physiological processes involved in chronic hypoxic states that occur even when oxygen is abundant.
"Considering living systems as collections of interacting oscillators whose dynamics is governed by multiple underlying open systems enables the observation of functional changes over time, and investigation of how they are altered in health and disease." (ANI)
(This story has not been edited by Devdiscourse staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
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Study reveals how cardiorespiratory function is related to genetics - Devdiscourse
A wolf pack in Moffat County has upended one of Colorados most controversial wildlife management debates, prompting voters, legislators and wildlife officials to wonder what course to chart on wolf reintroduction and management.
In mid-February, Colorado Parks and Wildlife confirmed through DNA tests on scat samples taken from Moffat County that a pack of at least four wolves was present in Colorado. The four were siblings, three females and one male.
This is the first time weve documented a group of wolves, a pack of wolves in the state since they were extirpated in the early 1940s, said Eric Odell, wildlife species conservation program manager.
These wolves were confirmed by Parks and Wildlife less than a month after a Colorado petition was certified giving voters the chance to weigh in on wolf reintroduction.
The pack coming into the state was a real reset in the conversation because, of course, before that the wolf reintroduction conversation was centered around the proposed ballot initiative, which has now gained signatures, said Colorado State Sen. Kerry Donovan, who is working on the issue in the Legislature. With the pack coming into the state, and with both sexes represented within the pack, we now have a management issue as well that the state isnt perhaps entirely prepared for.
Representatives of the Colorado Stop the Wolf Coalition have said the presence of this pack and its three females that could reproduce will make reintroduction unnecessary. But wildlife biologists say the presence of Craigs newest neighbors doesnt mean a re-established wolf population in Colorado is a done deal.
Another two wolves were observed by Parks and Wildlife staff, but genetic testing on those two has not been confirmed. More scat has been tested, but the full results have not been released. The genetics of those two animals are critical in understanding whether this pack is the start of a full wolf recovery in Colorado or an anomaly.
Its built into their social system to avoid mating with relatives, so they would not form a mated pair, University of Colorado-Denver Professor Diana Tomback said of the sibling wolves. The perpetuation of this pack is going to depend on what the genetic relationship is of the other two members.
Tomback, a conservation biologist who served on the science committee of the Rocky Mountain Wolf Project, said there are still too many unknowns to determine the future of these wolves. However, having a breeding pack in Colorado may not be enough for the species to recover, she said, without more wolves to provide genetic diversity.
If you actually go by the guidelines used by U.S. Fish and Wildlife to determine whether a population is recovered, it has to populate enough range and be there with enough population size to be able to withstand disturbances and challenges that are natural to their environment, Tomback said. From the perspective of genetic diversity, this one pack is inadequate.
Other wolves make the trek from the northern Rocky Mountains to Colorado, Odell said. Between 2004 and 2019, six gray wolves were photographed or killed in Colorado. More would have to make that journey and find this pack for the population to expand.
One pack is a start to establishing a population, but it does not meet the (U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service) definition of a wolf population two or more packs successfully reproducing for two or more years, Odell said. Genetic diversity is important, and only one pack does not provide that needed diversity.
Wolves have spread this way in the past. Gray wolves were reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park and Idaho in the mid-1990s and expanded their populations in Idaho, Wyoming and Montana. Today, more than 2,000 wolves are estimated in those three states.
In the early 2000s wolves started to pop up in Oregon, which sits across the Snake River from Idaho, said Michelle Dennehy, communications coordinator for the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife. One was killed crossing a road. Another was found shot. All were lone wolves, known as dispersers, that had left packs to search for mates.
In 2008, a wolf from Idaho crossed the Snake River and gave birth, starting the first pack in the state.
In 2009, Oregon confirmed a second pack, she said. By 2010, both packs were giving birth to pups.
We didnt do any translocation, Dennehy said. Everything is here naturally or reproduced naturally and weve gone from, if you just look at the numbers, from 10 in 2009 to 137 at the end of 2019.
Oregon and Colorado are not a one-to-one comparison when it comes to wolf migration though, Tomback said. The major obstacle between Idahos estimated 1,000 wolves and northeast Oregon is the Snake River. While it is a difficult river to cross, many wolves have done it. According to the latest Oregon Wolf Management Plan, Radio-collar data shows that dispersing wolves immigrate to and emigrate from Oregon, indicating that Oregon is part of a metapopulation with Idaho and Washington.
THE HARD ROAD TO COLORADO
In Wyoming, wolves in the northwestern portion of the state are managed with some hunting allowed in areas outside Yellowstone National Park. In the rest of the state, wolves are considered a nuisance species and can be killed with no limit, Odell said.
A wolf must make a 120-mile trek from the southern edge of Wyomings Wolf Trophy Game Management Area through high desert hills, sagebrush seas, canyons and across Interstate 80 to get to the Colorado border. During that trip, by Wyoming law, they can be killed without limitation.
It is a challenge and this does seem to be the first time two individuals, a male and a female have made it down and found each other and successfully reproduced, Odell, with Colorado Parks and Wildlife, said. Wolf management in Wyoming, they manage it as a game species in the northwest part of the state and, then outside of that its a varmint species, so there is quite a challenge for animals to cross that landscape.
Because of the difficulty in crossing through southern Wyoming, Odell said this pack is likely a mated pair that produced pups in or near Colorado.
Denny Behrens, Colorado Stop the Wolf Coalition co-chairman and regional director for Big Game Forever, said this natural reproduction and the known instances of wolves dispersing into Colorado in the past make further reintroduction efforts, like the initiative that will appear on the November ballot this year, moot.
Theres no need for introduction in this state, Behrens said. They are naturally dispersing out of the nonessential experimental area up in Wyoming and so its the same thing. Theyre moving into Washington and Oregon and California.
Tomback said she is skeptical that dispersing wolves will make it to Colorado frequently enough to provide the necessary genetic diversity to ensure the continued survival of the population.
If people want to reintroduce wolves into Colorado, its going to take more than waiting for this to happen, Tomback said. The last 25 years have shown that, yes, individual wolves may disperse and make it down, but theyre not able to find another wolf of the right sex and form a pack. So wolf reintroduction, scientifically, the reality is its going to take some help to get that genetic diversity and to get the numbers down where wolves can form packs with each other.
Donovan has proposed a bill to provide for the reintroduction of wolves, but only after a funding source has been identified to pay for wolf management and reimbursement to ranchers who lose livestock to wolf depredation. It also gives five years for the current wolf population to establish naturally before moving forward with reintroduction.
Donovan said she was pursuing the legislation to take a deliberative approach to the question of wolf management and reintroduction, but she said many unknowns still surround the states lone pack.
We will have to see if they settle down in a range, if they reproduce this spring, Donovan said. Right now, we dont know if we have a roaming pack of teenagers or if we have a group thats looking to settle down in Colorado.
While the first pack in Colorado is historic being the first to cross that hostile terrain, find each other and perhaps settle here for good they are only the start of what could mark the first return of a real population of wolves in the state in 80 years, Odell said. Whether through human reintroduction or from wolves dispersing from the north, the formation of more packs will be needed if wolves are going to once again range widely throughout Colorado.
With a ballot initiative coming in November, a bill proposed in the Senate and at least six wolves wandering through northwest Colorado wilderness, Donovan said looking into all the issues wolves represent is now more important than ever.
We have wolves in Colorado and we suspect that delisting could come out of D.C. sooner rather than later, Donovan said. I think it is a perfect time to look at these issues in a very thoughtful way with the folks in the room who are most excited about having wolves in the mountains again and what that means and the people in the room who are most concerned about what it means to have a federal land lease and a wolf pack as your neighbors.
Link:
Moffat County wolves open up a new pack of issues - The Grand Junction Daily Sentinel
Biomedical scientists at LMU have isolated immune cells from human tonsils obtained following a routine medical procedure, and utilized them to examine aspects of immune response and test the impacts of anti-inflammatory agents at the cell level. Human tissues are considered as waste when surgically removed from patients and especially when these tissues are derived from tonsils.
However, LMU immunologist Dirk Baumjohann and his group have more interest in the pharyngeal tonsil tissue extracted during a normal adenoidectomy. The purpose behind this is tonsils are part of the lymphatic framework. As lymphoid organs, naturally confined, intact tonsils are a valuable source of resistant cells and can fill in as a stage for researching the cell biology of the immune response.
Study in detail inEBioMedicinethat is an open- access title issued by the publishers of a leading journal The Lancet.
Tonsils play a key role in providing protection against ingested infectious agents and airborne. An Emmy Noether Research Group Leader at the LMU Biomedical Center who recently obtained a faculty position at the University of Bonn, Dirk Baumjohann, has shown more interest in the functional interaction of two main classes of lymphoid cells that are B cells and T helper cells.
Read more-Mediterranean Diet Voted as The Best Diet of 2020 by Nutrition Experts
Among T helper cells, supposed T follicular assistant cells assume a fundamental initiating job in empowering B cells to create and discharge antibodies that explicitly perceive foreign proteins called antigens. On the other hand, misled immune responses interceded by these cells can cause hypersensitivities and autoimmune system diseases. The activation of B cell by T follicular helper cells germinal focuses that are located in lymphatic tissues like the spleen, the lymph nodes, and the tonsils
In the investigation, the analysts tried their framework with a few medications that have been endorsed for the treatment of different inflammatory autoimmune diseases including rheumatoid joint pain, ulcerative colitis, psoriasis, and Crohns ailment.
The researchers have indicated that the action of T follicular partner cells and B cells is suppressed by these agents. Inflammatory responses are intervened by the binding of signal proteins called cytokines to specific receptors on immune cells. Also, many signaling pathways are activated by binding that leads to changes in gene expression.
Read more-Can Lower intake of Fruits and Vegetables and Higher Body Fat Cause Anxiety Disorders???
A post-doc in Baumjohanns group and lead author of the study, Angelika Schmidt finds that in these analyses, the immunologists have utilized little squares of tonsil tissue, just as profoundly focused suspensions of separated tonsil cells. Suspensions are simpler to deal with and there are options to replicate the outcomes using cell material that are put away in the freezer.
Schmidt tells that the immune defense mechanisms can be directly analyzed in human cells if the human tissue-derived material is available.
Researchers explain that the new culture framework will empower specialists to study human lymphoid tissue under physiologically significant conditions. It gives another and significant trial model for the study of human immune cells.
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Researchers Use Tonsils as a Testbed for Anti-inflammatory Agents - TheHealthMania
FALLBROOK Woman of Wellness meets Thursday, March 5, at 6 p.m. for San Diego Blood Bank Saving Lives Today, Improving Life Tomorrow at Fallbrook Library, 124 S. Mission Road.
Fallbrook Regional Health Districts Woman of Wellness Program is looking forward to a presentation by Rob Tressler, Ph.D., vice president of laboratories for the San Diego Blood Bank. He oversees the public cord blood bank and cell therapy research program. His scientific focus is in stem cell biology, oncology and anti-aging research. Tressler will discuss how the blood bank is saving lives with traditional blood donation, as well as improving life tomorrow with the stem cell therapy research and other exciting programs.
In addition, FRHD will sponsor a blood drive March 31, at the administrative office, 138 S. Brandon Road, Fallbrook. Watch for details and mark the calendar now as this opportunity to donate blood.
Fallbrook Regional Health District invites men and women to Woman of Wellness each first Thursday of the month, except for this event on the second Thursday. A social time begins at 6 p.m., followed by the presentation at 6:30 p.m. This free event includes refreshments. Donations of non-perishable food items are collected for the Fallbrook Food Pantry.
For more information, call (760) 731-9187.
Submitted by Fallbrook Regional Health District.
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Woman of Wellness to hear from San Diego Blood Bank representative - Fallbrook / Bonsall Villlage News
Medicus AI
Started:2016
Founder(s):DrBaher Al Hakim, DrNadine Nehme and Makram Saleh
Based:Vienna, Austria; started in Dubai
Sector:Health Tech
Staff:119
Funding:7.7 million (Dh31m)
Seven per cent of all searches on Google are about health, mounting to a staggering 70,000 medical-related queries a minute, Google says.
We are all, to some degree, curious or anxious about our bodies. Medicus AI, a health technology company started in Dubai in 2015, is looking to capitalise on that natural inclination. Its app translates medical reports and health data into easy-to-understand, personalised explanations and recommendations for users.
Apps for improving overall well-being - like tracking if youre getting enough sleep, eating well and moving - are one of the worlds hottest digital trends. Studies show this may be a good thing: about 80 per cent of health outcomes are caused by things that happen outside of the medical system, like eating and exercise habits, socioeconomic status and where we live. All of these factors have a bigger impact on health outcomes than the care received in a clinical setting, according to Deloitte.
Medicus AI is taking it a step further by combining the everyday activity of a user with interpretations of their latest medical test results, including vital signs, family history, current medications, and the most commonly-tested blood, urine and stool markers, which are submitted by the companys lab and hospital clients. Patients are then prompted to set up an account so they can see their results in plain, conversational language. The platform also delivers custom health tips and recommended steps to make more healthy choices, like a daily step goal or a followup appointment with a physician.
Just as the average time medical practitioners are spending with patients is declining, our curiosity is increasing, Dr Baher Al Hakim, the chief executive and co-founder of Medicus AI told The National. Our concrete idea was to work with blood tests, but the bigger, more abstract concept was to completely redesign health care.
Diagnostic labs produce billions of reports annually, but the industry has struggled to introduce user-friendly technology products to inform its customers. Medicus AI, which has two full-time and nine part-time medical doctors on staff, combines human-verified data analysis with artificial intelligence (AI) to produce the reports.
Dr Al Hakim, who grew up in Syria and moved to Dubai in 2005 after graduating from dentistry school in Damascus, has been a serial entrepreneur for the last 15 years. But he said Medicus AI is showing the most promise.
In the past I was naive enough to believe the ideas in my head were good enough, he said. After a decade of stymied attempts at launching a digital agency, a FinTech company and a rapid R&D firm, in 2015 he had a chance conversation with his best friend about his latest idea to turn blood test results into the basis for a health technology app.
That conversation led to Dr Al Hakim's meeting with his friend's sister Dr Nadine Nehme who was looking to move to Dubai. Dr Nehme, who holds a PhD in molecular and cellular biology and has done a post-doctoral programme in immunology and genetics, was finding herself antsy as an assistant professor at universities in Beirut. She describes herself as a scientist at the core and was eager to expand her reach beyond the classroom.
She describes her 2015 meeting with Dr Al Hakim as effortless, and with her research background and his entrepreneurial instincts, they agreed to go into business together that day. Less than a year later, the first iteration of the app was coded and they partnered with a lab in Dubai to perform 120 blood tests on family, friends and prospective investors.
The initial tests were routine, checking things like white and red blood cell count, glucose and cholesterol levels to see if a patient is vulnerable to infection, being pre-diabetic or has high cholesterol.
The results were analysed by the lab then uploaded to the Medicus AI app, which converted the results into plain English: are you healthy or not?
Even the completely healthy people really liked to see their results, Dr Al Hakim recalled.
With valuable user feedback and a proof of concept in hand, they landed $600,000 in seed funding, led by Audalion Ventures in Dubai and Speed Invest, a venture capital fund based in Austria.
And then they made a bold move.
With Dr Nehme still in Dubai, her co-founder moved to Vienna, Austria.
There was a lack of deep tech and capital in Dubai, Dr Al Hakim said. In order to grow, Medicus AI was after hospital clients that were the largest in their given market, processing a minimum of 1 million lab results a year. To start out, they decided the team should focus on Europe.
The decision paid off. A year ago, when Medicus AI closed Series A funding of 5 million (Dh20.2m), it reported annual revenue of almost 1m, with its client list including Al Borg Labs in Saudi Arabia and Roche Diagnostics in France. Clients pay a base subscription fee, and then pay per report sent to a patient. The app is white labelled for each client.
Today, it has headquarters in Vienna, with offices in Dubai, Paris, Berlin and Beirut. From a couple of dozen hospital clients in Germany, France and Austria, this year the company is doubling down on the Middle East, according to Dr Al Hakim.
Today, of 112 employees about 80 are on the product side: researchers and AI engineers who make the content relevant in Arabic, German, French and English.
Last month Medicus AI achieved a pivotal milestone, receiving a medical device classification for its mobile app in the EU, which means it can be freely sold anywhere in the EU and will be helpful as it expands worldwide.
Just in time, too. At the end of 2019, the company announced it was looking to raise $22m in the first half of 2020, led by Chinese fund Sunhope Ventures, and began an aggressive expansion plan into Chinas technology capital, Shenzhen. Their plan to hire 18 people is facing delays, however, amid uncertainty over the spread of the coronavirus and containment measures being implemented in the country.
Dr Nehme said she is most excited about a pilot project with Chinas biggest life insurance provider to expand its app to serve pregnant women in Hong Kong.
I was so overwhelmed in my first pregnancy, even though I understood what the doctor was telling me," she recalled.
This came from personal need. We all want to make the best of what we have to help ourselves be healthier.
Revolut, its as essential as your passport when traveling. They have disrupted the traditional banking sector, one of the oldest institutions, using user-centric innovation.
Long-term planning, resilience, being able to adapt and respond quickly to all developments.
Grow more aggressively, hire faster and earlier.
The transition to personalised medicine. Presently patients are treated with a one-size-fits-all approach. With personalised medicine, treatment will be tailored based on a patients unique profile and diagnostic markers and on predicting the therapy response. We are not there, yet, as creating the ability to synthesise personalised medicines relies on collecting and analysing vast amounts of data. The more data we collect, the more accurate, and therefore effective, treatments will be. This will be the next revolution in medicine and the effectiveness of the new medicines will significantly improve the doctor-patient relationship.
Updated: February 29, 2020 04:16 PM
Started:2016
Founder(s):DrBaher Al Hakim, DrNadine Nehme and Makram Saleh
Based:Vienna, Austria; started in Dubai
Sector:Health Tech
Staff:119
Funding:7.7 million (Dh31m)
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Generation start-up: doctors and AI provide tailored health advice on this app - The National
(Photo : Piqsels)A recent study suggests that laziness can be blamed on one's genes.
Do you ever wonder why you find it hard to exercise everyday, while others don't? It must be your genes. A recent study found that a certain genetic mutation reduces one's ability to exercise.
For quite some time now, it has been thought that some people consider exercising much easier than others. While some find joy in jogging off to the gym, others find it terrifying to even do anything that may possibly lead to shortness of breath or perspiration. Now this is no longer just some random situation. In fact, scientists have already discovered the link between one's ability to efficiently exercise and certain genes.
The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reported that a genetic mutation in some individuals are making it more difficult for them to exercise. The mutation can impact the "cellular oxygen sensing" that is linked to ahuman's ability to effectively work out.
The research team also found that those with the gene had reduced growth rate, constantly low blood sugar, limited capacity for exercise and an extremely high red blood cell number. With these findings, it can then be said that laziness is indeed, hereditary.
ALSO READ:Wearable Medical Devices: The Next Most Popular Gadgets for Health and Fitness Enthusiasts
(Photo : Photo by bruce mars on Unsplash)
In an attempt to figure out why individuals with a limited capacity to exercise behave the way they do, the team of researchers thoroughly evaluated one case study.
After several tests, including genetic analysis, the scientists found that themutated genebeing examined was thevon Hippel-Lindau, or the VHL gene. It is a type of gene playing a vital role in one's genetic makeup, mainly contributing to the survival of human cells when the ability to take in oxygen is reduced.
Additionally, the researchers also found that the VHL gene was damaged in some individuals struggling to exercise. The main reason for this is that this gene is associated with the mitochondria. When the mitochondria fail to fire on all cylinders, which is the usual case in those with mutated VHL, exercising is certainly quite a hard thing to do.
Dr. Federico Formenti, one of the study's lead authors said that they find this discovery of mutation, as well as the linked phenotype, exciting as it allows for a deeper understanding of human physiology, particularly when it comes how the human body senses and responds to the reduced availability of the oxygen.
The researchers experimented on mice, which were bred to have a mutation ingenesclose to that of humans in order to interrupt its function. In relation to this, researchers characterized the mice in terms of obesity, physical activity, as well as the cellular biology to understand how this gene was associated with obesity.
The saidstudyshowed the levels of physical activity, body weight and how much the mice ate. The study also showed othercellular level measurements that are obesity-related, such as the expression of the protein on the brain cells' surface.
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Too Lazy to Exercise? Is It Genetic? - Science Times
Its the time of year when we start reaching for the Berocca tablets in an attempt to keep those cold and flu viruses at bay.
But with the recent spread of coronavirus to the UK, its never been more important to keep your inner security guard in tip-top condition.
Its no surprise that eating well, getting a good nights sleep and washing your hands regularly can help support your bodys ability to fight off infections, but are there other ways to boost your bodys defence mechanism?
Heres how the immune system works, and how to keep it in balance...
So what is it?
The immune system is a network of cells, organs, proteins and antibodies that work to protect you against bacteria, viruses and parasites. It doesnt only work when we feel ill.
Every day we inhale one hundred million viruses, according to the Medical Research Council, and the immune systems job is to keep us safe. There are two main parts: the innate response and the acquired response.
The innate response works out what is friend and foe, then tries to flush out the invader its this that can make us feel feverish or snotty. The acquired response remembers specific invaders and sends the right cells to kill them off.
How do you stop germs spreading?
The NHS says the best defence against germs is to follow basic hygiene washing hands with hot soapy water, or using hand sanitiser.
Use a tissue or your sleeve to catch a cough or sneeze, and avoid touching your eyes, nose and mouth if your hands are not clean.
Does wearing a face mask help?
Since the outbreak of coronavirus, sales of face masks have risen 800%, and its likely youve seen people wearing them in busy locations, like at train stations or in airports.
But there is no conclusive evidence to suggest they can stop virus particles from entering the mouth and throat. They may stop you self-contaminating by putting your hands in your mouth or nose.
What about supplements?
Many over-the-counter products claim to boost your immune system, but there is little evidence to show that they do. If you have a poor diet, it may help to take a daily multi-vitamin, but if you are healthy and eat well getting lots of fibre, fruit, veg and healthy fats your immune system should have everything it needs to run optimally.
Age matters
Unfortunately, the immune system declines by about 2-3% a year from our 20s, which is why older people are more susceptible to infections, says Janet Lord, professor of immune cell biology at the University of Birmingham. Death rates from diseases like pneumonia and bronchitis are three times higher among elderly people.
1. Spice things up Season your food with garlic, onions, ginger, turmeric and cayenne pepper. These have antioxidant, detoxification and antimicrobial properties.
2. Drink green tea Its rich in antioxidants called Polyphenols, which are efficient infection fighters.
3. Get enough sleep A good nights sleep (were talking 7-9 hours) can bolster the T cells, which fight infection in the body. One study also showed that just one night of 4 hours sleep depleted the bodys natural killer cells by 70%.
4. Reduce stress The brain and the immune system are in constant communication when we are stressed, the brain produces more cortisol and prepares the body for emergency situations. But while it is doing that, it depresses our immune system. Try relaxation exercises like yoga or meditation. Positive thinking can also go a long way.
5. Keep warm It turns out its true what your mother said cold viruses are more infectious at temperatures lower than 37C, which is the average core body temperature. So wrap up warm when you go outside.
6. Fluids, fluids, fluids Staying hydrated helps your body naturally eliminate toxins and other bacteria that might cause illness. Aim for at least eight glasses of water a day.
7. Essential oils Lemon has powerful antibacterial properties and has been shown to stimulate the production of white blood cells, which fight off infections. Diffuse six drops of lemon oil in a diffuser (like the Tisserand Aroma Spa Diffuser, 39.95) to help give your immune system a boost.
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7 ways to improve your immune system that are better than coronavirus face masks - Mirror Online