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.

The “nose” is a palm-sized plastic bottle filled with a liquid nutrient that helps bacteria to grow.  Attached to the inside of the bottle is a small array of chemical dots that change color in reaction to the odors released by the bacteria. The device can identify eight of the most common disease causing bacteria.

Other work in an “artificial nose” has yielded prototypes that can detect forms of cancer in a patient’s breath, and the presence of certain kinds of explosives.

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 give them human-like touch sensitivity.  Additional uses include inkless fingerprint scanners, biological imaging, or performance enhancement of micro-electro-mechanical systems.  ApplySci hopes that this technology will find its way into body tactile sensors in the near future.

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 trained with artificial intelligence and machine-learning algorithms.  IBM Research says this sort of technology allows for the creation of “applications that mimic the brain’s abilities for perception, action, and cognition.”

IBM’s long-term goal is to build a chip system with ten billion neurons and a hundred trillion synapses, while consuming one kilowatt of power and occupying less than two liters of volume.

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 by everyday stresses.

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 databases where vast amounts of information on gene actions and their effects are stored and then identifies the genes that maintain the stability of differentiated cells. Working from the appropriate records, the model suggests which genes in the starting cells need to be switched on and off again, and when, in order to change them into a different cell type.”

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 helps them program pumps to deliver the appropriate amount of insulin. Researchers have been trying to link the two technologies in order to automate insulin delivery, to create what has been referred to as an artificial pancreas.

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 device that uses a magnetic-field gradient to extract the nanobead-bound germs. The blood is then returned to the body.  The team at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering hopes that the device will be able to identify the specific microorganism causing the patient’s blood infection.  This could help physicians more quickly determine the most effective antibiotic treatment.

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 onto skin. But their success in making their circuits wireless could prove crucial to many potential applications, especially in medicine.