Health tech

Tossing clothes into the wash when dirty is so last year, thanks to a discovery by chemists out of the University of California at Davis. Near-ordinary cotton may simply need be exposed to light to get busy killing bacteria and breaking down toxic chemicals such as pesticide residues.

Ning Liu, a doctoral student at UC Davis, worked with textile chemists Gang Sun and Jing Zhu to develop a method that incorporates a compound (2-AQC) into cotton fabrics. When exposed to light, it produces reactive oxygen species such as hydrogen peroxide that kill bacteria and break down toxins.

While Liu says 2-AQC is more expensive than other compounds, it is difficult to remove from cotton due to strong bonding, and cheaper equivalents should work, too.

"The new fabric has potential applications in biological and chemical protective clothing for health care, food processing, and farm workers, as well as military personnel," she says.

The team reported on its findings in the Journal of Materials Chemistry last month, shortly before another study out of the University of Iowa chronicled the vast presence of even drug-resistant disease-causing bacteria on hospital curtains.… Read more

The Fitbit electronic pedometer is for people taking baby steps into a fitness.

Since launching the company at a 2008 TechCrunch event, founder James Park says, he has discovered that while Nike and Garmin sell their fitness monitoring products to health and activity nuts, the Fitbit has ended up winning market share with the broad middle of the population, so to speak. "We don't have a very athletic user base," Park says.

The new $99 Fitbit Ultra, launching today, is much the same as the previous product, with one key hardware difference: it has a pressure altimeter, so it can determine when you're climbing stairs (or, in my town, hills).

This is a key metric to track for those trying to improve fitness by walking around, and Park hopes that the Fitbit Ultra will encourage people to climb the equivalent of 10 flights of stairs a day as they're racking up their standard 10,000 steps. The device also measures sleep quality.… Read more

Researchers at MIT and Harvard University have developed tiny gold-studded scaffolds that can be used to build tissue in which cells have a synchronous beat, a possible repair tool for treating heart-attack victims.

In a study reported in Nature Nanotechnology, Daniel Kohane, a professor in the Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology (HST), and colleagues improved the electrical conductivity of scaffolds used to grow cardiac cells.

They devised a new scaffold material but based it on alginate, an organic substance that's already used in tissue scaffolds. They combined the alginate with a solution containing gold nanowires, which are good conductors.

After cardiac cells were seeded on the composite scaffold, the researchers compared the conductivity of the gold-enhanced cells with cells grown on regular alginate. They checked each for the presence of calcium, which helps electrical signals travel in the tissue. … Read more

Health and wellness firm Zeo's labeling of sleep problems in America as an "epidemic" might not be hyperbole. Some 64 million of us grapple with sleep issues every night, and another 49 million struggle at least a few nights a week, according to the firm's analysis of U.S. Census data.

Zeo, which first caught our eye in 2005 under the name Axon Labs with an alarm clock called SleepSmart, now offers a highly evolved mobile sleep system that employs a wireless headband to track all known sleep phases, including Light, Deep, and REM sleep.

The Zeo Sleep Manager then sends the resulting sleep data directly to the user's mobile device (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and soon Android-based smartphones), which then syncs to the user's online Zeo account, where a ZQ sleep score that summarizes sleep quality is calculated. (It used to be transmitted to an SD card and then had to be manually uploaded.)… Read more

Robots are playing increasingly important roles in surgery, but what about post-op care? Panasonic has developed a robot with telepresence functions can help bedridden patients communicate with loved ones, and upgraded its robot bed and hair-washer.

Hospi-Rimo is a communications robot aimed at helping patients chat with their doctors when they're not around--or talk with distant friends and family.

Based on the electronics giant's Hospi drug-delivery bot, Hospi-Rimo can be remote-controlled or move around autonomously. It can automatically move to specified locations, avoiding obstacles en route.

The machine has a large screen (naturally with a happy face) and sensors to learn about its environment. Panasonic says it could be used in hospitals (like its precursor Hospi) or residences where elderly people live alone.

The company's hair-washing robot, introduced last year, has 24 fingers and provides bubble and hand washes. Improvements include refined head-scanning to provide custom washing, conditioning, and drying functions, and user-set spot massages.

Announced in 2009 and then commercialized, the RoboticBed is basically an electric wheelchair that morphs into a fully adjustable bed. It now has a power-assist tilt function to prevent slippage during long periods of sitting, as well as a simplified control interface.

The latest prototypes of the three robots will be shown off at the International Home Care & Rehabilitation Exhibition (HCR) 2011 next month in Tokyo. … Read more

Optical tweezers have been used by biophysicists since their invention at Bell Labs in the 1980s, and are typically used to study cellular components. But they have a few drawbacks, not least of which are overheating and inefficiency.

So engineers at Harvard have been working on a next-gen model they call plasmonic nanotweezers to solve those and other issues with traditional optical tweezers so that tiny particles such as viruses can be isolated, observed, and manipulated.

Back at Bell Labs, scientists had shined a laser through a microscope lens to focus it tightly. They found that light, made of electromagnetic waves, creates a gradient force at the point of focus that is capable of attracting a tiny particle and holding it in that beam of light until random motion or some other force knocks it out.

The basic limitation of this approach is that a lens cannot focus that beam beyond half the wavelength of light, so if the particle the researchers hope to trap is smaller than the focal spot, they might have trouble trapping it.

Meanwhile, that focal size limit also places an upper limit on the gradient force generated, and yet a stronger force is required to trap nanoscale particles. So for a conventional optical tweezer to capture nanoscale particles, a high-powered laser is required.… Read more

Every once in a while a hilarious idea is actually well executed. Mommy Tummy 8.0 out of the Kanagawa Institute of Technology in Japan is looking to be one of those.

The idea is that a pregnancy simulator might help a dude (or a lady who has yet to experience the joys of pregnancy) better empathize with pregnant women.

Even setting aside the obvious issue that the simulator wearer is not experiencing hormonal changes, and that he can take the simulator off at any point (oh, the freedom), there is something downright bizarre about a man who appears to be pregnant. (See video below.)

Get past the oddity and the Mommy Tummy 8.0 is actually an impressive little (and then rather suddenly big) gadget. It comprises a water bag, touch sensor, acceleration sensor, and fetal air actuator to simulate the growth, weight, and even movement of a fetus.… Read more

Can the merciless resolve of a robot overlord help you shed pounds? A Hong Kong startup is hoping dieters are willing to pony up for a $960 droid instead of just using an app.

Intuitive Automata is accepting orders for Autom, its cute robot weight-loss helper that has long been in development.

The 15-inch talking droid has an LCD touch screen. Users enter data on calories they consume and the exercise they do each day. The robot responds with customized advice and encouragement, and can download new speech patterns from the Internet so the chatter doesn't get too dull.

Developer Cory Kidd says that many dieters have tried phone- or Web-based apps to get rid of excess weight, but there's a "psychological difference" in using a machine with a head, blinking eyes, and body.

Perhaps Autom's face-tracking function and big blue eyes will make users feel guilty about sneaking that pizza slice between meals. Kidd refers to Autom with female pronouns, and says "she" doesn't scold users.

A study by Kidd compared 45 dieters in the Boston area and monitored their calories and exercise by computer, on paper, or with Autom. The results showed the robot helped people stick to their diets for nearly twice as long as the other tracking methods. … Read more

In the future, we'll all have cyborg bodies with replaceable parts, right? The transition to immortality, though, may take some getting used to. Touch Bionics has a handy new tool to help us practice.

The Scottish maker of the i-Limb Pulse bionic hand is showing off its new Virtu-limb, a tool it describes as "a groundbreaking simulation and training product for myoelectric upper limb prostheses." … Read more