A Second Space Age Spanning Omics, Platforms, and Medicine Across Orbits.

The recent acceleration of commercial, private, and multi-national spaceflight has created an unprecedented level of activity in low Earth orbit (LEO), concomitant with the highest-ever number of crewed missions entering space and preparations for exploration-class (>1 year) missions. Such rapid advancement into space from many new companies, countries, and space-related entities has enabled a"Second Space Age." This new era is also poised to leverage, for the first time, modern tools and methods of molecular biology and precision medicine, thus enabling precision aerospace medicine for the crews. The applications of these biomedical technologies and algorithms are diverse, encompassing multi-omic, single-cell, and spatial biology tools to investigate human and microbial responses to spaceflight. Additionally, they extend to the development of new imaging techniques, real-time cognitive assessments, physiological monitoring, and personalized risk profiles tailored for astronauts. Furthermore, these technologies enable advancements in pharmacogenomics (PGx), as well as the identification of novel spaceflight biomarkers and the development of corresponding countermeasures. In this review, we highlight some of the recent biomedical research from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), European Space Agency (ESA), and other space agencies, and also detail the commercial spaceflight sector's (e.g. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Axiom, Sierra Space) entrance into aerospace medicine and space biology, the first aerospace medicine biobank, and the myriad upcoming missions that will utilize these tools to ensure a permanent human presence beyond LEO, venturing out to other planets and moons.

Complex 33-beam simulated galactic cosmic radiation exposure impacts cognitive function and prefrontal cortex neurotransmitter networks in male mice.

Astronauts will encounter extended exposure to galactic cosmic radiation (GCR) during deep space exploration, which could impair brain function. Here, we report that in male mice, acute or chronic GCR exposure did not modify reward sensitivity but did adversely affect attentional processes and increased reaction times. Potassium (K+)-stimulation in the prefrontal cortex (PFC) elevated dopamine (DA) but abolished temporal DA responsiveness after acute and chronic GCR exposure. Unlike acute GCR, chronic GCR increased levels of all other neurotransmitters, with differences evident between groups after higher K+-stimulation. Correlational and machine learning analysis showed that acute and chronic GCR exposure differentially reorganized the connection strength and causation of DA and other PFC neurotransmitter networks compared to controls which may explain space radiation-induced neurocognitive deficits.

Lipidest: a lipid profile screening test under extreme point of care settings using a portable spinning disc and an office scanner.

The demand for lipid profile (the cholesterol and triglyceride elements in the blood) testing outside resourced diagnostic centers is continuously increasing for personalized and community-based healthcare to ensure timely disease screening and management; however, it is inevitably challenged by several bottlenecks in the existing point of care technologies. These deficits include delicate sample pre-processing steps and device complexity, which give rise to unfavourable cost propositions to safeguard against compromised test accuracy. To circumvent these bottlenecks, herein, we introduce a new diagnostic technology, 'Lipidest', that integrates a portable spinning disc, a spin box, and an office scanner to reliably quantify the complete lipid panel from finger-prick blood. Our design facilitates the direct miniature adaptation of the established gold standard procedures as against any indirect sensing technologies that are otherwise common in point-of-care applications introduced commercially. The test procedure harmoniously connects all the elements of sample-to-answer integration in a single device, traversing the entire pipeline of the physical separation of plasma from the cellular components of the whole blood, the automated mixing with the test reagents on the same platform in situ, and office-scanner-adapted quantitative colorimetric analytics that eliminate any undesirable artefacts on account of variabilities in the background illumination and camera specifications. The exclusive value of eliminating sample preparation steps, including the rotationally actuated segregation of the specific blood constituents without any cross-interference between them, their automated homogeneous mixing with the respective test reagents, and the simultaneous, yet independent, quantitative readout without specialized instrumentation, render the test user-friendly and deployable in resource-constrained settings with a reasonably wide detection window. The extreme simplicity and modular nature of the device further make it amenable to mass manufacturing without incurring unfavourable costs. Extensive validation with laboratory-benchmark gold standards provide acceptable accuracy and indicates the value of the first-of-its-kind ultra-low-cost extreme-point-of-care test with a scientific foundation akin to highly accurate laboratory-centric technologies for cardiovascular health monitoring and beyond.

Instrument-free single-step direct estimation of the plasma glucose level from one drop of blood using smartphone-interfaced analytics on a paper strip.

We demonstrated an instrument-free miniaturized adaptation of the laboratory gold standard methodology for the direct estimation of plasma glucose from a drop of whole blood using a low-cost single-user-step paper-strip sensor interfaced with a smartphone. Unlike a majority of the existing glucose meters that use whole blood-based indirect sensing technologies, our direct adaptation of the gold-standard laboratory benchmark could eliminate the possibilities of cross interference with other analytes present in the whole blood by facilitating an in situ plasma separation, capillary flow and colorimetric reaction occurring concomitantly, without incurring additional device complexity or embodiment. The test reagents were dispensed in lyophilized form, and the resulting paper strips were found to be stable over three months stored in a normal freezer, rendering easy adaptability commensurate with the constrained supply chains in extreme resource-poor settings. Quantitative results could be arrived at via a completely-automated mobile-app-based image analytics interface developed using dynamic machine learning, obviating manual interpretation. The tests were demonstrated to be of high efficacy, even when executed by minimally trained frontline personnel having no special skill of drawing precise volume of blood, on deployment at under-resourced community centres having no in-built or accessible healthcare infrastructure. Clinical validation using 220 numbers of human blood samples in a double-blinded manner evidenced sensitivity and specificity of 98.11% and 96.7%, respectively, as compared to the results obtained from a laboratory-benchmarked biochemistry analyser, establishing its efficacy for public health and community disease management in resource-limited settings without any quality compromise of the test outcome.

Smartphone-Enabled Paper-Based Hemoglobin Sensor for Extreme Point-of-Care Diagnostics.

We report a simple, affordable (∼0.02 US $/test), rapid (within 5 min), and quantitative paper-based sensor integrated with smartphone application for on-spot detection of hemoglobin (Hgb) concentration using approximately 10 µL of finger-pricked blood. Quantitative analytical colorimetry is achieved via an Android-based application (Sens-Hb), integrating key operational steps of image acquisition, real-time analysis, and result dissemination. Further, feedback from the machine learning algorithm for adaptation of calibration data offers consistent dynamic improvement for precise predictions of the test results. Our study reveals a successful deployment of the extreme point-of-care test in rural settings where no infrastructural facilities for diagnostics are available. The Hgb test device is validated both in the controlled laboratory environment (n = 200) and on the field experiments (n = 142) executed in four different Indian villages. Validation results are well correlated with the pathological gold standard results (r = 0.9583) with high sensitivity and specificity for the healthy (n = 136) (>11 g/dL) (specificity: 97.2%), mildly anemic (n = 55) (<11 g/dL) (sensitivity: 87.5%, specificity: 100%), and severely anemic (n = 9) (<7 g/dL) (sensitivity: 100%, specificity: 100%) samples. Results from field trials reveal that only below 5% cases of the results are interpreted erroneously by classifying mildly anemic patients as healthy ones. On-field deployment has unveiled the test kit to be extremely user friendly that can be handled by minimally trained frontline workers for catering the needs of the underserved communities.

Triggering The Birth of New Cycle's Sunspots by Solar Tsunami.

When will a new cycle's sunspots appear? We demonstrate a novel physical mechanism, namely, that a "solar tsunami" occurring in the Sun's interior shear-fluid layer can trigger new cycle's magnetic flux emergence at high latitudes, a few weeks after the cessation of old cycle's flux emergence near the equator. This tsunami is excited at the equator when magnetic dams, created by the oppositely-directed old cycle's toroidal field in North and South hemispheres, break due to mutual annihilation of toroidal flux there. The fluid supported by these dams rushes to the equator; the surplus of fluid cannot be contained there, so it reflects back towards high latitudes, causing a tsunami. This tsunami propagates poleward at a speed of ~300 m/s until it encounters the new cycle's spot-producing toroidal fields in mid-latitudes, where it perturbs the fields, triggering their surface-eruption in the form of new cycle spots. A new sunspot cycle is preceded for several years by other forms of high-latitude magnetic activity, such as coronal bright points and ephemeral regions, until the tsunami causes the birth of new cycle's spots. The next tsunami is due by 2020, portending the start of intense 'space weather' that can adversely impact the Earth.

Noninvasive characterisation of foot reflexology areas by swept source-optical coherence tomography in patients with low back pain.

Objective. When exploring the scientific basis of reflexology techniques, elucidation of the surface and subsurface features of reflexology areas (RAs) is crucial. In this study, the subcutaneous features of RAs related to the lumbar vertebrae were evaluated by swept source-optical coherence tomography (SS-OCT) in subjects with and without low back pain (LBP). Methods. Volunteers without LBP (n = 6 (male : female = 1 : 1)) and subjects with LBP (n = 15 (male : female = 2 : 3)) were clinically examined in terms of skin colour (visual perception), localised tenderness (visual analogue scale) and structural as well as optical attributes as per SS-OCT. From each subject, 6 optical tomograms were recorded from equidistant transverse planes along the longitudinal axis of the RAs, and from each tomogram, 25 different spatial locations were considered for recording SS-OCT image attributes. The images were analysed with respect to the optical intensity distributions and thicknesses of different skin layers by using AxioVision Rel. 4.8.2 software. The SS-OCT images could be categorised into 4 pathological grades (i.e., 0, 1, 2, and 3) according to distinctness in the visible skin layers. Results. Three specific grades for abnormalities in SS-OCT images were identified considering gradual loss of distinctness and increase in luminosity of skin layers. Almost 90.05% subjects were of mixed type having predominance in certain grades. Conclusion. The skin SS-OCT system demonstrated a definite association of the surface features of healthy/unhealthy RAs with cutaneous features and the clinical status of the lumbar vertebrae.

Finding an optimum immuno-histochemical feature set to distinguish benign phyllodes from fibroadenoma.

PURPOSE: Benign phyllodes and fibroadenoma are two well-known breast tumors with remarkable diagnostic ambiguity. The present study is aimed at determining an optimum set of immuno-histochemical features to distinguish them by analyzing important observations on expressions of important genes in fibro-glandular tissue. METHODS: Immuno-histochemically, the expressions of p63 and α-SMA in myoepithelial cells and collagen I, III and CD105 in stroma of tumors and their normal counterpart were studied. Semi-quantified features were analyzed primarily by ANOVA and ranked through F-scores for understanding relative importance of group of features in discriminating three classes followed by reduction in F-score arranged feature space dimension and application of inter-class Bhattacharyya distances to distinguish tumors with an optimum set of features. RESULTS: Among thirteen studied features except one all differed significantly in three study classes. F-Ranking of features revealed highest discriminative potential of collagen III (initial region). F-Score arranged feature space dimension and application of Bhattacharyya distance gave rise to a feature set of lower dimension which can discriminate benign phyllodes and fibroadenoma effectively. CONCLUSIONS: The work definitely separated normal breast, fibroadenoma and benign phyllodes, through an optimal set of immuno-histochemical features which are not only useful to address diagnostic ambiguity of the tumors but also to spell about malignant potentiality.