R&D

Epidural Stimulation Could Combat Paralysis

Exciting news was reported by an international team of life scientists at the University of Louisville, KY; UCLA, Los Angeles, CA; and the Pavlov Institute of Physiology, Saint Petersburg, Russia; who...

Stretchable Antenna for Wearable Health Monitoring

Researchers at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, say that they have developed a new, stretchable antenna that can be incorporated into wearable technologies, such as health monitoring...

Robotic Drumming Prosthesis Aids Creativity and Control

Professor Gil Weinberg, founding director of the Georgia Tech Center for Music Technology, has created a robotic drumming prosthesisthat can be attached to amputees’s arms and powers two...

Repairing Broken Bones with Silk Implants

When a surgeon needs to repair a broken bone requiring screws and plates to help bond the broken sections so the fracture to heal, the "fixation devices" are usually made of metal alloys. But metal...

Bioplastic Could Transform Manufacturing

Researchers at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston, MA, say that they have developed a method for large-scale manufacturing of everyday objects using a fully degradable...

Pressure Sensor for Bladder Control

Spinal injuries can damage the nerve supply to the bladder, meaning that people cannot tell when their bladder is full and needs to be emptied. This can create excessively high pressure on the bladder, which...

Stanford Scientists Working to improve Astronauts' Heart Health

Astronauts in the Apollo program after just a few days in space, felt dizzy when standing. Tests revealed that each beat of their heart pumped less blood than it had before the...

A Graphene-Metal Sandwich Could Improve Electronics

Researchers have discovered that creating a graphene-copper-graphene “sandwich” enhances copper’s heat conducting properties, which could help in shrinking electronics. Engineers at the...

Lowering the Costs of Organ Cell Printing

A specialized 3D printing extruder developed by a sophomore and collaborator at the University of Alabama in Huntsville (UAH) could lower the costs of printing cellular structures for use in drug...

Determining Risks of Nickel in the Heart

Materials scientists at the Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany, have examined implants made of nickel-titanium alloy in a long-term study and have determined that the release of nickel from...

Bionic Hand Allows Amputee Real-Time Sense of Touch

A team of researchers and engineers at the Swiss Ecole polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Center for Neuroprosthetics and SSSA (Italy) have developed a revolutionary sensory feedback...

Pomegranate Inspires Battery Design

Researchers at Stanford University and the Department of Energy’s SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory has invented an electrode designed like a pomegranate with silicon nanoparticles clustered like seeds...

Credit Card-Sized Device Could Diagnose Cancer in Minutes

University of Washington, Seattle, scientists and engineers are developing a low-cost device that could help pathologists diagnose pancreatic cancer earlier and faster. The prototype can...

Self-Aligning Wires for Nanoelectronics

Miniaturization in microelectronics is beginning to reach its physical limits, say researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) Institute of Ion Beam Physics and Materials Research, who...

Portable Diagnostics Using Holograms

Researchers from the University of Cambridge, UK, are working to develop portable medical tests and devices, which could be used to monitor conditions such as diabetes, cardiac function, infections,...

Sensitive Electronic Whiskers for Robotics

Researchers with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the University of California, Berkeley, say that they have created tactile sensors from composite films of carbon nanotubes and silver...

Monitoring Cerebral Pressure in Hydrocephalus

Researchers at the Fraunhofer Institute for Microelectronic Circuits and Systems IMS in Duisburg, Germany, have developed a sensor that can measure and individually adjust brain pressure if the...

Bio-Inspired Robotic Rehabilitation Device

A soft, wearable device that mimics the muscles, tendons, and ligaments of the lower leg could aid in the rehabilitation of patients with foot-ankle disorders such as drop foot, said Yong-Lae Park, an...

Wearable Nanowire Sensors Hold Promise for Prosthetics

A team of scientists at North Carolina State University, Raleigh, used silver nanowires to develop wearable, multifunctional sensors that, they say, could be used in biomedical...

Cyborgs Are Already Here

Cyborgs that combine machine systems with living organisms to have extraordinary abilities are already a reality say researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). This is especially true with medical implant...

R&D Roundup: March 2014

Cyborgs Are Already Here Cyborgs that combine machine systems with living organisms to have extraordinary abilities are already a reality say researchers at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). This is especially...

Tongue Stud Used to Control Wheelchair

Powered wheelchair users, who are paralyzed from the neck down, can control their chair by sipping or puffing air into a straw mounted on their wheelchair to execute four basic commands that drive the...

X-Ray Technology for Soft Tissues

Traditional X-rays generally cannot image the body’s soft tissues, except with the use of contrast-enhancing agents that must be swallowed or injected, and their resolution is limited. But a new approach...

Continuous Patient Monitoring with “Diagnostic Skin”

The routine action of taking a person’s temperature belies the critical importance of obtaining accurate body temperature to assess the health of a patient. Subtle variations in body...

Novel Biological Sources for Implantable Battery Materials

Where will the next source of electrode materials for batteries to power edible medical devices come from? Would you believe, from marine cuttlefish? Researchers at Carnegie Mellon...

Mighty Morphing Composite Material

Experiments by researchers at Rice University, Houston, TX, found that new biocompatible, stable, and inert materials they developed that start as flat slabs can morph into shapes that can be controlled by...

Transistor for High-Performance Devices at Low Voltage

A team of scientists at Penn State, University Park, PA, say that a new type of transistor could make fast, low-power computing devices possible for energy-constrained applications such as...

R&D Roundup: February 2014

Pierced Tongue Used to Control Wheelchair Powered wheelchair users, paralyzed from the neck down, can control their chair by sipping or puffing air into a straw to execute four basic commands that drive the chair....

Anklebot: A Robotic Walking Coach

The ankle is a complex joint, supported by muscle, tendon, and bones, and maintaining stability and locomotion. Characterizing how it works, however, is not so straightforward says a group of researchers from...