Endoscopy is already known as a nightmare for most people, and it was about time that technology did something about it. German scientists from the Fraunhofer-Institut für Biomedizinische Technik have announced that images of your intestines can now be taken in a more pleasurable manner, and all the patient has to do is to swallow a pill that has a small camera inside.

The device is not new to the medical world, but until now, the pill’s movement could not be controlled, to take snapshots that were of particular interest for the doctors. But now, the candy-sized camera can be successfully directed, and the procedure of such an intervention is quite simple. The camera will transmit images of the intestinal villi to an external receiver carried by the patient on its belt or pocket.

All the images are stored on the receiver, and the doctor will download and analyze them at the patient’s next visit. The only problem is that it’s not suitable for taking pictures of the stomach or esophagus, as its 5 grams weight quickly takes it to the next steps of digestion. It will, however, deliver pictures of your other intestines, and, as far as I can see, this is much better than having inserted a  tube  through either parts of your body…

Via

The device wraps around the finger link a band-aid and can make them feel the images that would normally appear on the display. The researchers are trying to take advantage of our most widespread sense, the touch.

The flexible display is really revolutionary through it’s capabilities to change it’s shape and also because is soft. It can’t be compared to any other actual device of it’s kind and if it does prove successful, it might be a true help for visually impaired.

Ig Mo Koo, one of the researchers, stated that “When you apply a normal device to a non-flat surface like human skin, it is impossible to stimulate the whole skin through its shape. In the case of a wearable tactile display, however, it can be applicable to many kinds of surfaces without the limitation of stimulus area because of its flexibility.”

Some of the usages researchers see in the future of this device are in communication, tactile display cloth, tele-surgical glove, virtual reality keyboard, tele-feeling transferring system and much more.

“When we make it using a normal device, stimulus elements can be attached only in a limited area. But if we develop it as a wearable tactile display, it is possible to not only make a glove-type in the process of manufacturing, but also apply stimulus elements on the whole part of the glove,” Koo said.

One of it’s advantages is the use of a material that can stimulate the skin without any electromechanical transmission, the electroactive polymer, which consists of eight layers of dielectric elastomer actuator films, sprayed with electrodes.

The skin is protected from the electrodes by a layer and the entire sheet is just 210 micrometers thick. The device conveys information to the user, by inducing a voltage across the films, which compresses them down and expands them outward. This makes the film to induce the user a mild sensation, by putting pressure on his skin.

Due to the use of polymers, the device is hyperelastic, being able to support large amounts of elastic strain then return to it’s original shape. Also it’s very efficient on power, not very expensive and the fabrication process is relatively easy, because it doesn’t use complex electronics.

The researchers are planning to make it even more efficient and develop applications that will make it a must for visually impaired.

Via Physorg

Professors from Princeton worked in collaboration with their friends at the Boston University from Massachusetts to develop a new device that focuses streams of cells in a liquid, and even separate them according to their size.

The discovery can be used to sort out cells from the blood flow that look suspicious, and that could be cancer carriers. The device consists of a silicon wafer studded with rows of tiny pillars through which a liquid containing multi-sized particles is made to flow. The blood will flow slower thorough it, due to friction, and the particles or cells of regular size will get through.

The bigger cells, however, will get stuck in the pillars, so the whole liquid is successfully bolted in the process. There have been many researches done over the years for a cure for cancer, and we only came up with ways to eliminate infected sections of the body or tumors. After doing that, if the doctors weren’t careful enough, a few cells could remain and spread through the body.

This method hasn’t been applied to anything yet, but we’re pretty sure it will soon solve the spreading matter, if the blood going out of the excised area will be filtered after surgery. The teams of researchers from both Princeton and Boston universities should be congratulated for their idea, which should save many lives, at least until doctors will find a cure to definitely prevent cancer.

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Depression affects many people around the world and researchers are trying to find out new ways of fighting against. Humans are treating depression with drugs and therapy but this is not satisfying enough. An interesting technique to cure depression is to use brain “pacemakers” which regulate the brain activity.

Brain pacemakers are based on electrodes that are firing low-voltage signals to the happy centers of your brain and they rewire the neurons in order to bring your happiness back.

Dr. Ali Rezai chief of the Cleveland Clinic’s Center for Neurologic Restoration says: “We’re rewiring the brain in many ways”. Although it’s an experimental method, deep-brain simulation helped a lot of people since it first appeared a few years ago. Hopefully, researchers will improve this technology and these brain implants will help depressed humans.

Associated Press via io9

Inspired by the US government’s huge investments in the severed fingers regrowing with pig powder field, designer Tim Hawkinson created this finger to terrify the Ace Gallery visitors.

Dozens of pens and pencils painted and well covered with the blood-like red color were stuffed in the giant artificial finger, and they leave the impression that they are blood veins. The bizarreness of human body reconstruction is dealt with interest by Tim Hawkinson, who is intrigued by the weirdness of the body structure.

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Researchers play an important part in improving our current technology, actually they are the most important because they come up with ideas that could help us. A domain that many of them focus is medicine and a disease that they are looking to cure is blindness and a recent report shows that blind people could be treated with light-sensitive proteins found in unicellular algae.

These proteins are found in Chlamydomonas because they can orient themselves towards light to aid in photosynthesis. According to the study, the researchers managed to restore light-sense to blind mice using the light-sensitive proteins found in the unicellular algae.

The discovery was made by a group of researchers at the Friedrich Miescher Institute in Switzerland and the leader of the study, Dr. Botond Roska, explained: “Imagine giving a speech to a large room of people, but only the first row can hear you”. The first row is represented by the light-sensing cells which have to send the information to the brain and he means that when the first layer is damaged, the eye becomes blind “like a camera with the cap on”.

The team of researchers tried to “turn up the volume of the speech” and the treatment worked fairly well. The scientists knew that as they placed two packs of mice, one with sight and one blind, in dark rooms and after a half an hour they turned the lights on. Before the treatment, the blind mice didn’t have any reaction to the light, but after the treatment with light-sensitive proteins, the mice acted almost like the sighted mice which means that they were able to distinguish between dark and light.

The results are very promising, but the researchers need to make some further tests in order to restore the functionality of a wider range of light receptors. Also, the scientists have to prove that the treatment is applicable to humans and the tests should show at least the same efficiency. Probably, this treatment could be the cure for blindness and sightless could soon have a normal life.

Robotic surgeons are getting more and more precise and a few days ago, Calgary doctors managed to remove a brain tumor from a 21 year old woman using a two-handed robot called NeuroArm. The operation took about nine-hours and it’s the first time that a robot made a surgery like this and hopefully, there will be more like this and successful, too.

In order to perform this surgery, the doctors used remote controls and imaging screen, and in the end the egg-shaped brain tumor of Paige Nickason was removed. After this operation, the University of Calgary received many requests for surgeries like this.

The advantage of NeuroArm is that it can move in smaller increments than a human. One or two milimetres for a surgeon respectively, 50 microns for the robot.

“Paige’s brain surgery represents a technical achievement in the use of image-guided robotic technology to remove a relatively complex brain tumour,” said Dr. Garnette Sutherland, professor of neurosurgery at the University of Calgary faculty of medicine and NeuroArm team leader.

Dr. Sutherland says that the technology can be improved because for the moment, the robots don’t have the dexterity of a human, but “it’s evolving and it will continue to evolve”.

Source

Nanotechnology is definitely one of the most important branch of technology and nanoscaled components and other parts have proven to be very efficient and helpful. Using nanotechnology, researchers from the UC San Diego, UC Santa Barbara and MIT have created “nanoworms” which can circulate freely through bloodstream without interefering with the immune system.

These nanoworms are a very important discovery because they could fight against tumors, as the doctors might find and unveil the exact location of tiny tumors which cannot be detected with conventional technology and equipment.

According to Michael Sailor, chemistry and biochemistry professor at the UC San Diego, the nanoworms are very efficient because “most nanoparticles are recognized by the body’s protective mechanisms, which capture and remove them from the bloodstream within a few minutes”, and thanks to “a combination of their shape and to a polymer coating on their surfaces that allows the nanoworms to evade these natural elimination processes. As a result, our nanoworms can circulate in the body of a mouse for many hours”.

An important role in the research was played by Sangeeta Bhatia, physician, bioengineer and professor of Health Sciences and Technology at MIT, who said that “these nanoworms could offer physicians the ability to increase the efficacy of drugs by allowing them to deliver them directly to the tumors”. This means that now we can treat tumors without any negative impacts on healthy tissue and the anti-cancer drugs will “concentrate” all their attention on tumors.

The nanoworms are made of spherical iron oxide nanoparticles which tend to get together in order to develop gummy worms that measure 30 nanometers long. They are very similar to earthworms saving-that they are 3 million times smaller. The nanoworms were built from iron-oxide because this composition is destined to come out very brightly at the MRI (magnetic resonance imaging).

Iron-oxide’s properties are explained better by Prof Sailor who stated that “the magnetism of the individual iron oxide segments, typically eight per nanoworm, combine to provide a much larger signal than can be observed if the segments are separated. This translates to a better ability to see smaller tumors, hopefully enabling physicians to make their diagnosis of cancer at earlier stages of development”.

The thing that allows the nanoworms to trace the tumor is the F3 peptide which is a molecule with a specific purpose: targeting the tumor. The F3 peptide was developed Erkki Ruoslahti, cell biologist and professor at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research at UC Santa Barbara.

I have to say that this discovery was kind of an accident, but we have to thank for that to Ji-Ho Park, UC San Diego graduate student in materials science and engineering, who noticed that the nanoworms wandered for hours in the bloodstream of the mice with tumors that were being tested.

ji-Ho Park stated that “this is an important property because the longer these nanoworms can stay in the bloodstream, the more chances they have to hit their targets, the tumors”.

Now, the scientists are trying to develop chemical “zip codes” with the purpose of specifically delivering the nanoworms anywhere in the body. Prof Ruoslahti is working to build “tumor-targeting nanodevices” which “will improve the diagnostic imaging of cancer and allow pinpoint targeting of treatments into cancerous tumors”. We can only hope that the people affected by cancer will finally suffer less and cure faster.

Researchers from the University of Manchester demonstrated with the help of a study that ketamine also known as “Special K” can treat people who suffer from depression. Ketamine is used as a horse tranquillizer and as a hallucinogenic pleasure drug, and now it seems like many “depressed” people will get it from pharmacies, most likely a prescription will be needed.

According to Bill Deakin, neurologist and leader of the study, this is a “completely novel way of treating depression and a new avenue of understanding depression”. To get to this conclusion, Deakin and his team treated 33 healthy men who were monitored minute by minute and the scans showed that the drug took suprinsingly good effects almost immediately.

Bill Deakin is very happy with his research because “many people don’t respond to treatment” and here he was reffering to Prozac. Maybe this is the end of Prozac, but we hope that the 121 million people affected by depression will feel much better after the ketamine treatment.

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The medicine is advancing quickly and now doctors can perform operations without letting any visible scars most of the times. At the Hospital Clinic de Barcelona, Europe, has been conducted the first in Europe and the second in the world, a kidney extraction through the vagina.

The kidney of the woman was affected by malignant tumour and it was extracted using the most advanced technology instruments of surgery. The operation is called transvaginal nephrectomy and also it needs two 1cm incisions in the abdomen, but the post-operatory period is less painful and it doesn’t leave visible scars on the abdomen.

The staff that performed the extraction consisted of Dr. Antonio Alcaraz, head of the Urology Unit; Dr. Mª José Ribal, specialist in Urology and Dr. Alejandro Molina, resident physician of Urology with the participation of Dra. Concepcion Monsalve, anesthesiologist, Mrs. Ana Palacio, instrumentist, and Dr. Francesc Carmona, Head of Gynaecology.

All the components of the team are part of the Hospital Clinic de Barcelona and so far they performed nephrectomy using a technique called laparoscopy which needs an incision in the abdomen and leaves behind a visible scar of about 6cm.

This technique allows the patient to leave the hospital after less than 48 hours and it was developed thanks to the intense training and experimental research of the Urology Unit. This procedure is possible due to the NOTES programme (Natural Orifice Transluminal Endoscopy Surgery) that opens the idea to perform operations through the orifices of the human body.

The Hospital Clinic de Barcelona had two other NOTES-based surgeries before - one consisted of the extraction of the bile vesicle through the mouth and the second, the treatment of the gastroesophageal reflux. Both of the interventions were successful and now, with the third, we are sure that this is the future of surgery.