Innovation

Jose Gomez-Marquez is like the MacGyver of medical devices, hacking toys and turning them into gadgets that can be used to diagnose conditions such as diabetes and dengue fever. By taking everyday items like Legos and bike pumps and turning them into replacements for expensive medical devices, he's attempting to save lives on the cheap.

"Most of the devices that get donated to developing countries fail because they were not designed to be used in these environments," Gomez-Marquez said during a visit to CNET this week to show some of his creations. "We need to make the Land Rover version of medical devices for these countries. Right now we are sending the Ferrari versions and they fail."

Gomez-Marquez is program director for MIT's Innovations in International Health initiative, which aims to teach medical professionals in the developing world how to hack ordinary objects to make their own medical devices. With a degree in mechanical engineering and a love of design, Gomez-Marquez wants to level the playing field in health care.

"One of the ways to empower better designs is by empowering users who are everyday users of the devices," he said. "So we made these kits to do that."

… Read more

Engineers at the University of Illinois today unveiled novel, skin-mounted electronics this week whose circuitry bends, wrinkles, and even stretches with skin.

The device platform includes electronic components, medical diagnostics, communications, and human-machine interfacing on a patch so thin and durable it can be mounted to skin much like a temporary tattoo.

What's more, the team was able to demonstrate its invention across a wide range of components, including LEDs, transistors, wireless antennas, sensors, and conductive coils and solar cells for power.

"We threw everything in our bag of tricks onto that platform, and then added a few … Read more

Welcome to mating 2.0: the sexual act itself might not change, but when the parts don't work, we'll simply build new ones.

So say scientists in Japan who, using stem-cell techniques, are the first to engineer sperm in infertile male mice that successfully fertilized eggs and produced offspring.

The team, led by Mitinori Saitou at Kyoto University, report in the journal Cell that it used stem cells to create primordial germ cells, the precursor to sperm cells, and injected those germ cells into the testicles of infertile mice. The cells eventually produced normal-looking sperm, which went on … Read more

Female mosquitoes just don't get to have any fun. They mate only once, lay eggs, and eventually die.

In an effort to combat malaria, researchers at Imperial College London hope to take advantage of the female mosquito's plight--and reduce the mosquito population--by engineering spermless males. They say the key is that the females don't seem able to tell the difference; they still mate with the sterile males and proceed to lay eggs that never hatch.

This is an improvement over previous attempts to engineer sterile males, the team said, because that process often exposed the males to … Read more

It's not just your mom who's telling you to sit up straight anymore.

Researchers from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in Israel have developed a new training method that uses Webcam imaging to tell workers sitting at computers when their posture needs a boost.

In their six-week study of 60 university and hospital workers using the Webcam pop-up photo method, the researchers report in the journal Applied Ergonomics that while traditional ergonomic training and photo training both resulted in short-term improvements in posture, only the Webcam approach resulted in longer-term gains, and it had the most impact on … Read more

A psychology professor and an electrical and computer engineering professor at Clemson University in South Carolina have teamed up to develop a watch-like device that tracks wrist-roll motion to count how many bites the wearer takes.

In the lab, they report, their Bite Counter has been more than 90 percent accurate in tallying bites regardless of the food, utensil, container, or user.

They say the device, which can be turned on and off at will, is something of a pedometer for eating. It's certainly not tracking types of food. But even if it's intended to monitor mere quantity of consumption, it can only be so accurate.… Read more

Researchers at the University of Cincinnati have created a disposable lab-on-a-chip sensor that can test levels of potentially harmful heavy metals in humans in as few as 10 minutes.

Their work, published in the August issue of the journal Biomedical Microdevices, is co-authored by assistant professor of environmental engineering Erin Haynes, who has also been studying air pollution and the effects of lead and manganese on residents in Marietta, Ohio--home to the only manganese refinery in the U.S. and Canada. (Manganese compounds are used to make steel and other products.)

Manganese is naturally ubiquitous and considered essential both nutritionally … Read more

Researchers have invented a silicone lab on a chip they say could make genetic analysis far more sensitive--not to mention rapid and cost-effective--by routing fluid through microscopic tubes and valves, and allowing individual cells to fall into place much like balls in a pinball machine.

Standard genetic testing involves vast numbers of cells that, when analyzed, provide a sort of composite picture that cannot reveal the behaviors of individual cells.

"It's like trying to understand what makes a strawberry different from a raspberry by studying a blended-fruit smoothie," said Carl Hansen, an assistant professor who led the … Read more

Scientists at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland have designed an artificial lung that uses air instead of pure oxygen as a ventilating gas--an advance that could turn accompanying oxygen cylinders into relics of the past.

What's more, the device for use in humans could come in at just 6x6x4 inches, which is roughly the volume of the real human lung, meaning it could conceivably pave the way for implantable artificial lungs.

"Current technology involves complex systems that are limited to intensive care units, so [the] device has the potential to provide clinically relevant oxygenation levels using ambient air, opening the door to portable systems," says Jeffrey Borenstein, an expert in microsystems technology and biomedical devices at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Mass., in a news release.

Joseph Potkay, an electrical engineering and computer science professor and the lead author of the paper describing the lung, estimates that based on current performance the unit could be powered by the heart instead of a mechanical pump.… Read more