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In happy news, it seems the returning vets from OS wars are owning their prostheses; far from hiding them, they are doing everything to ‘pimp them out’.
Which this Doonesbury strip captures:
(Click thru for higher rez)
This via Rob ‘Eyeborg’ Spence, who is seeking a suitable female volunteer to create a real-life Cherry Darling from Death Proof.
From the New York Times comes news of the X2:
…a prosthetic knee loaded with microprocessors, sensors and even a gyroscope that gives amputees more freedom of movement, and better balance, than previous prostheses, veterans affairs officials say. It is smaller, lighter and has a longer-lasting battery (up to four days) than other widely used prostheses.
…built by Otto Bock HealthCare, the same company that builds one of the most advanced prosthetic legs available, the C-leg. Both units use microprocessors and sensors to calculate and control movement, but the X2 also includes a gyroscope and accelerometer, Mr. Miller said. Those devices convey more detailed information about the movement and speed of the leg, enabling microprocessors to determine whether a person is, say, taking a small step up a stair versus hopping over a large obstacle.
With the X2, users should be able to step backward without stumbling or ride a bike without having the knee lock — potential problems with earlier prosthetics, Dr. Miller said.
“They can more closely mimic the natural gait pattern,” he said.
via AnthroPunk
How about a round-up post showing a few ways in which (if we can survive long enough) we just might get to live forever?
First off, scientists! have created stretchy artificial skin:
Scientists at Spain’s University of Granada have created artificial skin with the resistance, firmness and elasticity of real skin. It is the first time artificial skin has been created from fibrin-agarose biomaterial. Fibrin is a protein involved in the clotting of the blood, while agarose is a sugar obtained from seaweed, commonly used to create gels in laboratories. The new material could be used in the treatment of skin problems, and could also replace test animals in dermatological labs
They say perfect for burn victims, I say skin-covered body mods would be neat too.
Speaking of DIY efforts, how about an interview in the Economist about DIY BIO?
It will surprise few of you that DARPA is still bent on creating super-soldiers, or in this case making them super-survivors.
Lastly, this TEDMED Talk from 2009 on regenerating organs is just… whoa:
Previously:
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.
The TED Talk that blew everyone away this year; not only have they figured out how to induce a form of suspended animation in humans, it’s already in clinical trials!
thanks for the tip-off Rusty!
From core77.com:
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.
A video of the 70+ images that were submitted was created:
Link via medgadget.com. Photos of all the top thirty winners can be found here, but I liked this one the best.
From Yahoo! News:
An Italian who lost his left forearm in a car crash was successfully linked to a robotic hand, allowing him to feel sensations in the artificial limb and control it with his thoughts, scientists said Wednesday.
During a one-month experiment conducted last year, 26-year-old Pierpaolo Petruzziello felt like his lost arm had grown back again, although he was only controlling a robotic hand that was not even attached to his body.
…
Petruzziello, an Italian who lives in Brazil, said the feedback he got from the hand was amazingly accurate.
“It felt almost the same as a real hand. They stimulated me a lot, even with needles … you can’t imagine what they did to me,” he joked with reporters.
While the “LifeHand” experiment lasted only a month, this was the longest time electrodes had remained connected to a human nervous system in such an experiment, said Silvestro Micera, one of the engineers on the team. Similar, shorter-term experiments in 2004-2005 hooked up amputees to a less-advanced robotic arm with a pliers-shaped end, and patients were only able to make basic movements, he said.
Experts not involved in the study told The Associated Press the experiment was an important step forward in creating a viable interface between the nervous system and prosthetic limbs, but the challenge now is ensuring that such a system can remain in the patient for years and not just a month.
via Joshua Ellis
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.
From nextnature.net.
From .medgadget.com:
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.
Via reuters.com.
An illegal surgical mashup:
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.
Gorgeous animation about a viral infection:
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.
Link via medgadget.
Via BotJunkie comes the video a lot of people have been waiting a long time to see; an actual, functional cyborg hand:
Dental training mannequins, from Steve Erenberg’s Radio Guy, via makezine.com.
Easier to swallow examination? From /.:
“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.”
Orginal article on the telegraph.co.uk, with a video from BBC News.
See also:
The Lancaster Online reports:
..the double transplant was a bit of setback for Kepner, who had lost part of both of his arms and legs in 1999…After the amputations, Kepner was outfitted with prosthetic hands and feet and forged on with his life.“He had gotten quite used to his hooks,” his mother says of her son’s artificial arms. “He could dress himself. He could drive his car. He could do a lot of things.”
…after the double hand transplant, Kepner had to start over again…Now in therapy, he is learning how to pick up small items, like cotton balls, and catch a ball, but he still has no feeling in his fingers. The nerves grow about an inch a month from where the hands were attached, at the forearm.
“They told him it will be at least until the end of the year before those nerves get down into those fingers,” Doris Schafer said. “Then he’ll begin to do things.”
via BoingBoing
Do you think consumers should be able to order genetic tests? Let your opinion be known!
In this survey, you will be asked questions about issues of privacy and consent that arise in relation to personal genomics services. In addition to answering yes-or-no questions, you will also have the option of leaving comments explaining your answers to the questions, in your own words, for other participants to read. These comments/reasons will be seen by others and only associated with the pseudonym/username you chose.
Furthermore, you will be asked three questions about your level of familiarity with ‘research ethics’ and ‘personal genomics’.
Link via the Biotech Weblog.
Continuing it’s mission to make everything from a sf movie and/or anime exist in reality, Japanese scientists at a subdivision of Panasonic give you this.. the power loader from Aliens:
As Pink Tentacle write, it’s
..a “dual-arm power amplification robot,” the exoskeleton suit is currently equipped with 18 electromagnetic motors that enable the wearer to lift 100 kilograms (220 lbs) with little effort.
The bad news? You won’t be screaming “get away from her you BITCH” anytime soon; estimated retail release is 2015. Still, mech-future here we come!
