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Multiple methods of keeping water from freezing can be used by law enforcement personnel, skiers, and campers, and underwater by military personnel.

Three methods are being developed for keeping water from freezing during high-altitude climbs so that mountaineers can remain hydrated. Three strategies have been developed. At the time of this reporting two needed to be tested in the field and one was conceptual.

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The handheld digital device has three attachable lenses for ear, eye, and skin imaging.

A handheld, digitized ophthalmo scope, otoscope, or dermoscope takes digital images and video, and transmits the images to patients’ electronic medical records and/or to physicians for remote diagnosis. The device can be used for retinal (ophthalmoscopy), ear (otoscopy), or skin (dermatoscopy) imaging.

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Photodynamic therapy is used to eradicate tumor tissue and provide enhanced drug delivery.

An obstacle to successful cancer drug therapy is the existence of drug delivery barriers, which result in insufficient and heterogeneous drug delivery to the tumor tissue. This drug delivery problem not only limits the clinical application of existing chemotherapeutics, but also decreases the effectiveness of many new drugs under development. Photodynamic therapy (PDT), a modality involving the combination of a photo-sensitizer and laser light, is an established cancer therapy. This work demonstrates the effectiveness of vascular-targeting PDT in eradicating tumor tissue, and modifying vascular barrier function for enhanced drug delivery.

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Any test that attenuates light is a candidate for use with the device — potentially thousands of different tests.

While most physicians have easy access to lab tests, those tests can be slow and expensive. Consumer versions of tests are inaccurate and have limited scope, and often involve sending a sample to a lab. Physicians, emergency rooms, EMTs, patients, visiting nurses, and caregivers may all need access to quick, accurate tests without waiting for results and making callbacks. Some chronic tests require the mixing of reagents, and so are difficult to perform at home.

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Cells can be cultured and sampled with minimal human intervention.

A prototype miniature bioreactor system is designed to serve as a laboratory benchtop cell-culturing system that minimizes the need for relatively expensive equipment and reagents and can be operated under computer control, thereby reducing the time and effort required of human investigators and reducing uncertainty in results. The system includes a bioreactor, a fluid-handling subsystem, a chamber wherein the bioreactor is maintained in a controlled atmosphere at a controlled temperature, and associated control subsystems. The system can be used to culture both anchorage-dependent and suspension cells, which can be either prokaryotic or eukaryotic. Cells can be cultured for extended periods of time in this system, and samples of cells can be extracted and analyzed at specified intervals. By integrating this system with one or more microanalytical instrument(s), one can construct a complete automated analytical system that can be tailored to perform one or more of a large variety of assays.

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Biodegradable drug carriers allow sustained drug release for days or even weeks.

Silicon-based nanoporous particles as biodegradable drug carriers are advantageous in permeation, controlled release, and targeting. The use of biodegradable nanoporous silicon and silicon dioxide, with proper surface treatments, allows sustained drug release within the target site over a period of days, or even weeks, due to selective surface coating. A variety of surface treatment protocols are available for silicon-based particles to be stabilized, functionalized, or modified as required. Coated polyethylene glycol (PEG) chains showed the effective depression of both plasma protein adsorption and cell attachment to the modified surfaces, as well as the advantage of long circulating.

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Key analytes can be detected using sample volumes of only 100 mL.

An apparatus that includes highly miniaturized thin-film electrochemical sensor array has been demonstrated as a prototype of instruments for simultaneous detection of multiple substances of interest (analytes) and measurement of acidity or alkalinity in bioprocess streams. Measurements of pH and of concentrations of nutrients and wastes in cell-culture media, made by use of these instruments, are to be used as feedback for optimizing the growth of cells or the production of desired substances by the cultured cells. The apparatus is designed to utilize samples of minimal volume so as to minimize any perturbation of monitored processes.

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