INSIDER

Researchers in the George Washington UniversitySchool of Engineering and Applied Science, Washington, DC, have created a smartphone-controlled liquid handling system that could make handheld diagnostic testing a reality. Their technology is operated by a smartphone, using a mobile app that they also designed,...

New research has confirmed that a technique developed previously at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Gaithersburg, MD, can enable optical microscopes to measure the 3D shape of objects at nanometer-scale resolution—far below the normal resolution limit for optical...

A new device that fits around the head like a halo, developed by a physician at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences and a researcher at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, delivers therapy to quickly bust blood clots that could cause stroke. When ultrasound is typically used in...

A team of engineers at Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, has developed an innovative method of using off-the-shelf 3D printers and materials to fabricate custom medical implants that can contain antibacterial and chemotherapeutic compounds for targeted drug delivery.

A team of scientists from the University of Surrey, UK, and Trinity College Dublin, Ireland, report that they have developed a new type of flexible sensor that is inexpensive yet sensitive enough to measure a patient’s breathing, heart rate, or movement, alerting doctors to any irregularities.

A team of researchers at the University of California, San Diego, has designed a sensor applied as a temporary tattoo that can not only monitor a person’s progress during exercise but produce power generated by their perspiration that may be used to energize small electronic devices.

Defects in the head, face, or jaw, whether from disease, injury, or birth defect, can dramatically impact a person’s appearance. A team of researchers at Texas A&M University, College Station, report that they have developed a specialized material that can expand with warm salt water to...

Following surgery, a physician generally listens to the abdomen of a patient for signs of digestion before allowing that patient to be fed, in order to avoid a condition called post-operative ileus, a malfunction of the intestines. Dr. Brennan Spiegel, a professor of medicine at the David...

Chemists at Stanford University have developed a non-invasive technique using lasers and carbon nanotubes that visualizes blood flow in the brain, which could help provide powerful insights into strokes and possibly Alzheimer's disease. Current non-invasive technologies like CT scans or MRI visualize...

When seeking chemical compounds with just the right properties to create new products, including medical devices, researchers can spend years of trial and error testing them in the lab. To aid researchers in this quest, a team of scientists at the McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Science at...

An international team of researchers from Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, and other institutions, have created an inexpensive diagnostic device that, they say, can be used by health care workers in the world’s poorest areas to monitor diabetes, detect malaria, discover environmental pollutants,...

A team of engineers at The University of Texas (UT) at Austin have designed an optical device that, they say, may offer a fast, comprehensive, noninvasive, and lower-cost solution to detect melanoma and other skin cancer lesions, thereby reducing unnecessary biopsies. Their device is a probe that uses light in...

A team of engineers at MIT, Cambridge, MA, have fabricated a new elastic material covered with microscopic, hair-like structures that tilt in response to a magnetic field. Depending on the field’s orientation, they say, the microhairs uniformly tilt to form a path through which fluid can flow. They...

A team of engineers at The University of Texas at Austin has developed a tiny, low-power device that mimics a fly’s hearing mechanism, which could be used to build the next generation of hypersensitive hearing aids with intelligent microphones that could adaptively focus only on those...

The race is on to design smaller, cheaper, and more efficient rechargeable batteries to meet power storage needs. Now, a team of researchers at Stanford University report that they have taken a big step toward designing a pure lithium anode, which, they say, would greatly advance current lithium ion batteries.

A team of researchers at the National Taiwan University Hospital and National Chiao-Tung University has developed a new optical technology that can hang on eyeglasses that, they say, may detect diabetic autonomic neuropathy at an earlier stage, when it is more easily treated. This...

Researchers at the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University, Boston MA, created an Organ-on-a-Chip cell culture device using microchip manufacturing methods. The device is the size of a computer memory stick, and contains hollow channels lined with...

The strength of barnacle cement is unbeaten when compared to anything man-made, say researchers at Newcastle University, UK. It can stick to any surface, under any conditions. But exactly how it works has been a mystery. The international team of scientists have shown for the first time that barnacle...

A team of nuclear engineers at Oregon State University, Corvallis, say that they have developed a small, portable, and inexpensive radiation detection device to help users understand whether or not their surroundings pose a health risk. They say that the technology used in the new device provides...

A new phase-changing material built from wax and foam that’s capable of switching between hard and soft states could allow surgical robots to shape-shift and move through the body to reach a particular point without damaging any of the organs or vessels along the way, say engineers...

A research team at the Allen Institute for Brain Science, Seattle, WA, has pioneered a new way, called Virtual Finger, to navigate digital 3D images of tiny structures like neurons and synapses using the flat surface of their computer screens. This cost- and time-efficient technology,...

A research team at the Cockrell School of Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin has created a new nonlinear metasurface, or meta mirror, that may help advance the miniaturization of laser systems for biomedical research and other applications.

A study conducted by Purdue University, West Lafayette, IN, and Brigham and Women's Hospital, Boston, MA, successfully used a new tool to help brain surgeons test and more precisely remove cancerous tissue during surgery.

A collaborative team of UK scientists from the School of Computing and Communications at Lancaster University, along with Microsoft Research, Guy's Hospital, St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust, and King's College London has done pioneering research in touchless technology for vascular surgery.

Robonaut, a human-like robot designed by NASA and General Motors, which was developed to serve astronauts in space, has been on the International Space Station since February 2011. Researchers have tested the robot’s ability to perform dull or dangerous tasks that free up human crew time...

A collaboration between researchers at Penn State University, and Shinshu University in Japan say that they have developed a simple, scalable method of making graphene oxide (GO) fibers that are strong, stretchable, and can be easily crolled into yarn with strengths approximating that of Kevlar.

Portable, optical brain imaging for concussion was evaluated by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh Schools of the Health Sciences. They say this is the first step toward demonstrating its use on patients.

Scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) recently received $5.6 million from the Department of Defense's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop an implantable neural interface that can record and stimulate neurons within the brain to treat neuropsychiatric...

Scientists at the Rochester Institute of Technology, Rochester, NY, are developing imaging software that, they say, could give radiologists a tool to measure the growth of nodules in patients at risk of lung cancer. In a two-year study, Nathan Cahill, an associate professor in RIT’s School of...