Currently in the prototype stage, from medgadget.com:
Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed tiny generators that can produce enough electricity from random, ambient vibrations to power a wristwatch, pacemaker or wireless sensor. In humans, these vibrations could come from moving muscles or limbs. The generators have demonstrated that they can produce up to 500 microwatts from typical vibration amplitudes found on the human body. That’s more than enough energy to run a wristwatch, which needs between 1 and 10 microwatts, or a pacemaker, which needs between 10 and 50.
To Age or Not to Age profiles the science of aging, it also addresses some of the moral, religious, practical and economic implications of increased, lifespan. Who will have access to the medicine? Who will benefit from the breakthroughs? Will the price of these compounds make this a drug for the elites?
This has had very limited screenings so far, but if you’re in, or near, Paris you can see it on the 29th.
The Deafinite Style is a concept from Munich-based Designaffairs STUDIO that turns a hearing aid into a piece of jewelry, provided you’re up for a bit of lobe stretching to get started. The main advantage they propose (aside from an instant hipster-grunge-punk look) is the opportunity to embed the TriMic System — a highly effective directional microphone system made from 3 individual microphones — into the plug, helping people who suffer from severe hearing loss.
Scientists of the University of Pennsylvania are creating electronics that almost completely dissolve inside the body, through the use of thin, flexible silicon electronics on silk substrates.
While implanted electronics must usually be encased to protect them from the body, these electronics don’t need protection. The whole process is pretty much seamless: The electronics on the flexible silk substrates conform to biological tissue. The silk melts away over time and the thin silicon circuits left behind don’t cause irritation because they are just nanometers thick.
To make the devices, silicon transistors about one millimeter long and 250 nanometers thick are collected on a stamp and then transferred to the surface of a thin film of silk. The silk holds each device in place, even after the array is implanted in an animal – so far the technique is tested on mice – and wetted with saline, causing it to conform to the tissue surface.
In a paper published in the journal Applied Physics Letters, the researchers report that such circuits can be implanted in animals with no adverse effects. And the performance of the transistors on silk inside the body doesn’t suffer.
The researchers are now developing silk-silicon LEDs that might act as photonic tattoos that can show blood-sugar readings, as well as arrays of conformable electrodes that might interface with the nervous system.
Toumaz Technology out of Abingdon, UK has announced it partnered with the Imperial College London to perform a clinical trial on the company’s “Digital Plaster” vital signs monitor. The technology, which we covered in the past (see flashbacks below), allows for continuous monitoring and wireless transmission of temperature, heart and respiratory rates to help speed up workflow and get rid of some of the cables.
Article discussing the initial trial:
The focus of the trial will be to verify that the physiological data acquired by the digital plaster system within a clinical setting is equivalent to that acquired using current gold-standard monitors in use in hospitals – equipment that is often bulky, expensive and fixed, such that patient mobility is impaired. The Sensium digital plaster is wireless and unobtrusive, meaning that patients can remain ambulatory in hospital while still being monitored. This flexibility allows continuous vital sign monitoring to be extended to patients who would not normally be monitored, thereby offering the potential to increase patient safety. The Sensium digital plaster is a disposable device with a working lifetime of several days, after which the plaster is disposed of in the appropriate waste receptacle.
The trial is being conducted in three phases, an initial phase with non-patient volunteers followed by two patient study groups: patients recovering from surgery, and patients with specific medical conditions in the general wards.
Researchers are no longer limited to creating artificial bladders or kidneys:
Researchers have engineered artificial penises in rabbits, using cells from the animals, who then used their new organs to father baby rabbits.
The work takes scientists closer to making other complex solid organs such as livers using a patient’s own cells, the researchers reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Monday.
It provides a tailor-made transplant, said Dr. Anthony Atala of Wake Forest University Baptist Medical Center’s Institute for Regenerative Medicine, who led the study.
“Once the tissue is there, the body recognizes the tissue as its own,” Atala said in a telephone interview.
Atala focused on the penis because he is a pediatric urologist, who has specialized for years in disorders and congenital defects of the bladder and sexual organs.
“That was the inspiration for this work. We are seeing babies born with deficient genitalia all the time. There are no good options,” Atala said.
He is also a specialist in regenerative medicine, which uses the body’s own cells to repair damage. In this case, Atala’s team used ordinary cells, not the stem cells often used in such research.
A company called Stryker Biotech was in court last week defending a bone-growth product it sold for years, despite reports that it would “drift” in the body, causing bones to grow in random locations.
To boost sales of a product called OP-1 Implant with a bone-setting filler called Calstrux. The mixture was not approved by the FDA, and in fact OP-1 was only supposed to be used on a rare bone disease, not on people who simply needed to have their bones knit together fast. Surgeons were urged by Stryker to shape the OP-1/Calstrux paste into a “tootsie roll” or “vienna sausage” shape and implant it. Unfortunately, the substance often broke down and drifted through patients’ bodies. Bids of sprouting bone that looked like “oatmeal” or “white sesame seeds” would appear far from the site of injury where the substance had been implanted.
The product has excellent application possibilities, too bad about the drift issue. Link via io9.com.
NPR’s Robert Krulwich sat down with David Bolinsky of XVIVO, a firm that makes amazing animations for medicine and life sciences, to explain to the general public how viruses infect cells and reproduce themselves. For demonstration they used animation XVIVO produced for Zirus, a company developing novel methods to fight pathogenic viruses.
“Scientists in Italy have developed a robot which will move around the lower digestive tract using legs. The “Spider-Pill” is fitted with a camera and will stow its legs until it reaches the lower intestine. Once there it can crawl around and take pictures under direction from surgeons. Its USP is that it’s more appealing that an endoscopy.”
The implanted chip, according to the MIT team behind it, features a “microfabricated polyimide stimulating electrode array with sputtered iridium oxide electrodes” which is implanted into the user’s retina by a specially-developed surgical technique. There are also “secondary power and data receiving coils”.
Once the implant is in place, wireless transmissions are made from outside the head. These induce currents in the receiving coils of the nerve chip, meaning that it needs no battery or other power supply. The electrode array stimulates the nerves feeding the optic nerve, so generating a image in the brain.
The wireless signals, for use in humans, would be generated by a glasses-style headset equipped with cameras or other suitable sensors and transmitters tuned to the coils implanted in the head.
Currently implanted in Yucatan minipigs, human trials are still three years away. Link and photo via theregister.co.uk and original article (available to subscribers only) at Biomedical Engineering.
Pittsburgh police on Thursday used an audio cannon manufactured by American Technology Corporation (ATCO), a San Diego-based company, to disperse protesters outside the G-20 Summit — the first time its LRAD series device has been used on civilians in the U.S.
“The police fired a sound cannon that emitted shrill beeps, causing demonstrators to cover their ears and back up,” The New York Times reported. For years, similar “non-lethal” products designed by ATC have been used at sea by cruise ships to ward off pirates.
“LRAD creates increased stand off and safety zones, supports resolution of uncertain situations, and potentially prevents the use of deadly force,” ATC spokesperson Robert Putnam told DailyFinance. “We believe this is highly preferable to the real instances that happen almost every day around the world where officials use guns and other lethal and non-lethal weapons to disperse protesters.”
Still, Putnam acknowledged the potential for physical harm. “If you stand right next to it for several minutes, you could have hearing damage,” he said. “But it’s your choice.” He added that heavy-duty ear-phones can render the weapon less effective.
Now that the law enforcement authorites have begun using the LRAD in U.S. cities, a whole new marketplace for the company may have opened up. Don’t be surprised to see a LRAD at an event with large crowds in your town sometime in the future.
We talked about the prototype HUD contact in January 2008. They have been working on improvements:
Today — together with his students — Babak A. Parviz, bionanotechnology expert at University of Washington, is already producing devices that have a lens with one wirelessly Radio Frequency powered LED. To turn such a lens into a functional browser, control circuits, communication circuits and miniature antennas will have to be integrated. These lenses will eventually include hundreds of semitransparent LEDs, which will form images in front of the eye: words, charts, imagery enabling the wearers to navigate their surroundings whithout distraction or disorientation. The optoelectronics in the lens may be controlled by a seperate device that relays information to the lens’s control circuit. Another use could be the monitoring of the wearer’s health and biomarkers f.e. cholesterol, sodium, kalium or glucose.
Link and photo via nextnature.net, though the image is a concept only at this point and not yet a working prototype.
Perhaps most perplexing is the question of legal responsibility. If someone wearing a neural prosthesis were to punch someone, who is to blame? The action may have been deliberate, in which case the patient is to blame, or the chip may have been malfunctioning and the responsibility would lie with the manufacturer. Discovering where the truth lay would be no easy task. The law has had trouble catching up with the self-parking car, never mind an electronically controlled limb gone wild.
The Japanese are gearing up for a time when there are more elderly folks needing assistance than there are young whippersnappers available to do the choirs. The RIBA, or Robot for Interactive Body Assistance, is a 400 pound (180 kilos) device designed by engineers at the RIKEN institute and Tokai Rubber Industries to carry people up to 135 pounds (61 kilos) between hospital beds, wheelchairs, and even toilets. The device is full of tactile sensors to make carrying safe and comfortable for patients, and it can even recognize faces and be commanded via voice to perform basic tasks.
Creepy. Cute bear ears aside, I’d like a different nurse, thank you.
