U.S. Food and Drug Administration cleared the use of the XSTAT 30 wound dressing, an expandable, multi-sponge dressing used to control severe, life-threatening bleeding from wounds in areas that a tourniquet cannot be placed (such as the groin or armpit) in battlefield and civilian trauma settings. The clearance expands the device’s indication from use by the military only to use in adults and adolescents in the general population. Early control of severe bleeding may prevent shock and may be l...

Oxford Nanopore Technologies has created a device that uses nanotechnology to put a complete lab on a single printed circuit board. It also can strip away single strands of DNA, which greatly reduces the preparation required for test samples. They have created the MinION device that connects to a laptop using a USB cable to produce immediate results. This amazing device fits in your hand, and is already commercially available. The big news, however, is that they have shrunk the technology even f...

A team of European researchers, supported by the European Commission and Siemens, is developing a smart walker that will bring sensor and tablet technology to bear helping improve mobility in older adults. The "FriWalk" (short for Friendly Robot Walker) includes cameras and sensors for detailed gait analysis, a heart rate sensor, and a tablet interface that can provide activity coaching. FriWalk is a high-tech mobility aid that contains depth sensors and cameras to help support the user and m...

Ulcer is something that affects everyone just about as they get older. Scientists believe that inactivity and constant sitting can also be one of the reasons of causing ulcers. The Leaf Healthcare Sensor is designed to alert a person when it is time to turn and do some moving in order to combat no moving around. The tri-axial accelerometer that is in the sensor can monitor the position that a person is in and then help assist them in proper ways to turn. It even works with optimizing tissue pres...

Japan's Riken Brain Science Institute and rubber manufacturer Sumitomo Riko have built an experimental robot bear nurse that is able to lift patients and gently transfer them between beds and wheelchairs. Ageing populations are an increasing concern and in Japan, hospital staff and carers in nursing homes are required to lift patients about 40 times a day, which is strenuous and can cause lower-backpain. To aid carers, the Riken-SRK Collaboration Center for Human-Interactive Robot Research...

Harnessing the power of 3DP to develop innovative medicines Powder-liquid three-dimensional printing (3DP) technology was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s as a rapid-prototyping technique. This technology uses an aqueous fluid to bind together multiple layers of powder using a unique, patent-protected process to create a wide range of products. This work was expanded into the areas of tissue engineering and pharmaceutical use from 1993 to 2003....

Scientists have developed an "intelligent knife" that can tell surgeons immediately whether the tissue they are cutting is cancerous or not. In the first study to test the invention in the operating theatre, the “iKnife” diagnosed tissue samples from 91 patients with 100 per cent accuracy, instantly providing information that normally takes up to half an hour to reveal using laboratory tests. The findings, by researchers at Imperial College London, are published today in the journal Scienc...

Walt Disney Co.'s lab network, together with scientists from MIT, the University of Washington and Carnegie Mellon, has developed systems that the company could use to help robots identify individuals, as well as to track everyday interactions between people and things. RapID is similar to an older Disney Research project called ID-Sense (see RFID for Reading People's Reactions). The goal of the ID-Sense project was to develop a system for identifying human-object interactions within a home o...

It doesn't take much to unleash an arc flash but the consequences can be devastating. A wrench slipping from a worker's hand can produce a disastrous explosion that can maim or kill employees, destroy equipment, and disrupt a facility for weeks. The main line of defense against arc flashes is to prevent them but when flashes do occur, most electrical systems are ill prepared to contain them. That's because the traditional techniques used to handle flashes are rudimentary. Traditional arc-resi...

University of California, San Diego has developed a sensor capable of detecting single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), a type of DNA mutations. Research team has created an electrical graphene chip that is able to detect mutations in DNA. Researchers say the technology could be used in a wide range of medical applications in the future, including blood testing for early cancer screenings, tracking disease biomarkers and even real-time detection of viral and even microbial sequences. Profe...

Tumor analysis is a key part of the cancer diagnostic workflow for all patients. Once a mass is removed from a patient, microscopic analysis is used to determine if it is cancer, as well as its characteristics and grade. Typically, protein or DNA changes in sections of the sample are measured to determine the patient’s potential drug response. Samples with insufficient information, however, can be a major problem for pathologists and oncologists who are challenged with increasing numbers of the...

Every day around the world, digital data is impacting investigations. Making it intelligent and actionable takes new workflows powered by a unified platform — the Cellebrite UFED Digital Forensics Platform. With powerful data acquisition, management and analysis tools, it will unify teams and unlock the intelligence of mobile data to accelerate investigations and produce defensible evidence. Cellebrite's innovative UFED Pro Series is designed for the forensic examiners and investigators that ...

The FDA has just approved the AspireAssist device from AspireBariatrics for Weight Loss. AspireAssist helps you lose weight quickly through an innovative approach to portion control, reducing the number of calories absorbed by your body. AspireAssist provides a channel for stomach contents to be emptied before the nutrients are absorbed further down in the GI system. A tube is placed within the stomach that connects to a port on the belly. About twenty minutes after ingesting food the pati...

Biomimetics or biomimicry is the imitation of the models, systems, and elements of nature for the purpose of solving complex human problems.[1] The terms "biomimetics" and "biomimicry" derive from Ancient Greek: βίος (bios), life, and μίμησις (mīmēsis), imitation, from μιμεῖσθαι (mīmeisthai), to imitate, from μῖμος (mimos), actor. A closely related field is bionics.[2] Living organisms have evolved well-adapted structures and materials over geological time through natural selection. Biomimeti...

Holosuite is an optimized, multi-threaded implementation of end-to-end 3D telepresence operating on two remote PCs via internet. It can render visual output to holographic displays, as well as advanced 3D displays with motion parallax reprojection. There is a temptation to label Holosuite as “3D Skype” or “3D Videoconferencing”, but this fails to distinguish what is important about Holosuite, as it neglects the collaborative and interactive aspects of Holosuite. The Holosuite software proj...

Open Bionics, who have previously collaborated with Disney for Marvel and Star Wars-inspired prosthetics, will produce an arm based on the game's protagonist Adam Jensen. The Deus Ex video game franchise, which is itself set in a world where human augmentation through mechanical prosthetics is the norm, seems like a natural source of inspiration for prosthetic design. Together, Eidos Montreal, Square Enix, and OpenBionics are working on the development of two Deus Ex inspired bionic arms, ...

Doctors have a powerful arsenal of cancer-fighting chemotherapy drugs to choose from, though a key challenge is to better target these drugs to kill tumors while limiting their potentially harmful side effects. Now, researchers at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) are helping to develop and test materials for a new device that can be inserted via a tiny tube into a vein and soak up most of these drugs like a sponge. That’s after a separate tube de...

NASA's GPM mission is the first to coordinate a network of international satellites (current and planned) to produce the next generation of data on global precipitation. The star of the mission is the GPM Core Observatory, launched in February of 2014. It carries an advanced radar/radiometer system and serves as a reference standard that will unify precipitation measurements from the constellation. To do this, technology had to be developed that could link the data from the GPM Core Observatory ...

As numerous achievements have taken place in space over the last 50-plus years, a number of innovations have simultaneously taken place on the ground. For example, Jack Triolo, a senior engineer at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, worked with John B. Schutt, a chemist extraordinaire and coatings specialist at Goddard from the 1960s through the 1990s. Schutt spent considerable time experimenting with formulas to create super-durable coatings for spacecraft. “My job was to fly different coa...

Your brain is made up of billions of brain cells called neurons, which use electricity to communicate with each other. The combination of millions of neurons sending signals at once produces an enormous amount of electrical activity in the brain, which can be detected using sensitive medical equipment (such as an EEG), measuring electricity levels over areas of the scalp. The combination of electrical activity of the brain is commonly called a brainwave pattern, because of its cyclic, "wave-l...

The US Food and Drug Administration has allowed the marketing of a contact lens sensor that may help practitioners identify the best time of day to measure a patient’s intraocular pressure (IOP). It is important to determine whether a patient has elevated IOP as it is often associated with the optic nerve damage that is characteristic of glaucoma. Triggerfish has a sensor embedded in a soft silicone contact lens that detects tiny changes or fluctuations in an eye’s volume. The device is wo...

Hair loss is a common side effect of certain types of chemotherapy, commonly associated with the treatment of breast cancer. Hair may fall out entirely, gradually, in sections, or may become thin. Hair loss due to cancer treatment is usually temporary, but minimizing or relieving these kinds of side effects are considered important to overall treatment. “We are pleased to see a product for breast cancer patients that can minimize chemotherapy-induced hair loss and contribute to the quality of...

LifeVest wearable defibrillator is worn by patients at risk for sudden cardiac arrest (SCA), providing protection during their changing condition and while permanent SCA risk has not been established. The LifeVest allows a patient’s physician time to assess their long-term arrhythmic risk and make appropriate plans. The LifeVest is lightweight and easy to wear, allowing patients to return to their common activities of daily living, while having the peace of mind that they are protected from SCA....

Nissan's new smartwatch that links drivers intimately with their cars, showing both driving telemetry such as speed, and driver heart rate... Nissan says the watch will be the first in an ongoing line of wearable devices for drivers. Nissan Motorsport (Nismo, for short) is the performance division of Nissan Motor Company. Wherever Nissan cars are raced professionally, Nismo engineers are responsible for the delicate tuning that delivers a track-worthy performance. Nissan Nismo Smart Wat...

Researchers in Switzerland are working to develop magnifying contact lenses that zoom in and out with a wink. The innovative new vision-enhancing system, the first of its kind, includes a set of telescopic lenses and smart glasses that can distinguish between blinks and winks so that the user can easily flick between zoomed and normal vision. The visual aids, which are still in the prototype stage, could be useful for those with visual impairment, which affects some 285 million people worl...

Snowcorn is a bracelet like concept device with sixth sense which includes a built-in projector, a camera and Wi-Fi connectivity. Moreover, this device can be placed anywhere on around your neck or chest. The transparent part of this device is a screen that can show basic functions or time and more complicated controls are done by the projected UL. You will be able to customize it with your desired color and style. This device will allow you to scan a business card to include the person’s par...

Afrezza® is an inhaled human insulin indicated to help improve glycemic control in adults with diabetes mellitus Inhalable insulin is a powdered form of insulin, delivered with a nebulizer into the lungs where it is absorbed. Inhaled insulin is another option for people with diabetes to control their blood sugar. It works for both type 1 and type 2 diabetes. The FDA has approved an inhaled, rapid-acting, dry-powder formulation of recombinant human insulin (Afrezza–Mannkind/Sanofi) for tre...

Swimband is a personal water safety system that is designed to prevent accidental drowning for toddlers. iSwimband is a Bluetooth device that connects to a smart phone or tablet to alert parents if a swimmer has been underwater for a long period, or a non-swimmer has entered the water. Swimband is the world's first wearable wireless sensor designed to notify you immediately with audible/visual alerts on your smartphone, tablet and linked speakers if a swimmer has been submerged dan...

Blood glucose monitoring technology has evolved since the test strip. Now there are electrochemical sensors being developed that employ a two or three electrode system and are convenient to use. (Vashist, Zheng, Al-Rubeaan, Luong, & Sheu, 2011). The Abbott company has been a pioneer in diabetes monitoring systems. They are starting to roll out a new glucose monitoring system in select markets and should be worldwide in the near future. The FreeStyle® Libre Pro Flash Glucose Monitoring...

By leveraging technological advances in wireless monitoring, artificial intelligence, and affordable point-of-care biomedical processes, new opportunities in consumer-driven, in-home, medical diagnostic tools are not only possible, but they are the future of health care. Many of us have spent hours navigating through a disjointed, complicated health care system, the failures of which are frustrating to both patients and providers. What if, instead of waiting several weeks to get an appointmen...