Category: Conference

http://phys.org/news/2013-09-artificial-nose-device-diagnosis-sepsis.html Researchers at the National University of Kaohsiung in Taiwan and the University of Illinois have developed an “artificial nose” capable of detecting the odor of germs that lead to blood poisoning.  Within 24 hours it determines whether a patient’s blood has bacteria that cause sepsis, a gain of up to two days over conventional methods.…

http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nphoton.2013.191.html In a related development to Berkeley’s touch responsive e skin, Georgia Tech Professor Zhong Lin Wang  has proposed a new “piezo-phototronic” approach to the human-machine interface.  Zinc-oxide nanowires serve as tiny LEDs which have an emission intensity dependent on the local strain put on them.  The nanowire array could act as artificial skin for robots to…

http://www-03.ibm.com/press/us/en/pressrelease/41710.wss IBM is planning a a brain-inspired model for a new generation of highly-interconnected, asynchronous, parallel and large-scale computing systems based around the concept of cognitive computing.  It is an ecosystem designed for programming neurosynaptic chips that have an architecture inspired by the function, low power, and compact volume of the brain Cognitive computing systems can be…

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/medical-and-healthcare/in-depth/tailored-treatments-sensors-for-personalised-medicine/1016865.article Doctors are still dependant on single point-in-time measurements of factors such as blood glucose and hormone levels, which do not show how these factors dip or rise into danger zones over the course of a day.   Similarly, monitoring heart rates over time in a hospital does not always show the physical responses caused…

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/stem.1473/abstract Professor Antonio del Sol of the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine has developed a model that makes predictions from which differentiated cells, such as skin cells, can be very changed into completely different cell types, such as nerve cells.  Embryonic stem cells are not used.  Researcher Issac Crespo describes the process: “Our theoretical model first queries…

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-22/medtronic-insulin-pump-cuts-deadly-night-blood-sugar-lows.html Medtronic has designed an insulin pump that temporarily shuts off when blood sugar levels fall too low—a key advance in the effort to fully automate the delivery of insulin in diabetes patients.  Current technology allows people who use insulin pumps to wear a sensor that measures the amount of blood sugar in the body, which…

http://wyss.harvard.edu/viewpressrelease/108/ Harvard researchers are developing a device that could be used to rapidly remove pathogens from the blood of patients with sepsis.  The dialysis-like machine acts as an artificial spleen, filtering the blood using injectable magnetic nanobeads engineered to stick to microorganisms and toxins.  After the beads are injected, blood is removed and run through a…

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20130524-zapping-bacteria-the-wireless-way Professor John Rogers of the University of Illinois has created bio-absorbable electronic circuits which could be implanted into wounds and powered wirelessly to destroy bacteria during healing before dissolving harmlessly into body fluids once their job is done.  Rogers and others have previously reported biodegradable flexible circuits and electronic devices that can be safely laid directly…