INSIDER

Breast cancer is one of the most common forms of cancer and cancer deaths among women worldwide. Routine screening can increase breast cancer survival by detecting the disease early when it is most treatable. A new imaging tool, called a photoacoustic mammoscope, being developed by a team of researchers at the...

Multiple sclerosis (MS) involves an immune system attack against the central nervous system and causes progressive paralysis by destroying nerve cells and the spinal cord. It interrupts vision, balance, and even thinking. Although there is still no cure, there are some medications and alternative treatments that may...

A team of engineers at the University of Colorado at Boulder say that they have successfully added a fourth dimension to their printing technology, opening up exciting possibilities for the creation and use of adaptive, composite materials in manufacturing, packaging, and biomedical applications.

While sutures have evolved over millennia, and catgut gave way to synthetics for stitching up injuries and surgical wounds, the basic process of suturing tissue remains the same. However, the method may finally have become outdated, say a team of researchers at Ithaca College, Ithaca, NY.

Researchers at Kiel University, Kiel, Germany, have been studying the role of adhesion in nature, which allows insects and lizards to climb walls, plants to twine up structures, and even bacteria cling to surfaces. During evolution, many of these develop mushroom-shaped adhesive structures and organs,...

According to a study of 69,000 Medicare patient records led by researchers at The Johns Hopkins Hospital's Department of Orthopaedic Surgery and Spine Outcomes Research Center, people with spine compression fractures who undergo operations to strengthen back bones with cement survive...

A small, wireless capsule has been developed by a team of doctors and engineers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, that, they say, can restore the sense of touch that surgeons are losing as they shift increasingly from open to laparoscopy or minimally invasive surgery.

While most artificial feet and limbs work well to restore mobility to people who have lost a leg, few provide a natural gait. As a result, more than half of all amputees suffer a fall every year, compared to about one-third of people over age 65. To find a better way of restoring natural motion to artificial...

A study by Columbia University Medical Center (CUMC), New York, NY, researchers suggests that narrow-spectrum ultraviolet (UV) light could dramatically reduce surgical infections without damaging human tissue.

New research at the University of Chicago is laying the groundwork for touch-sensitive prosthetic limbs that one day could convey real-time sensory information to amputees via a direct interface with the brain.

The world’s largest smartphone chipmaker, Qualcomm, says it wants to start helping partners manufacture a radically different kind of a chip—a neuro-inspired chip that mimics the neural structures and processing methods found in the brain. This approach could enable machines to perform complex tasks while consuming...

A team of scientists at the University of Texas at Arlington used mathematical modeling to develop a computer simulation that they hope will one day improve the treatment of dangerous reactions to medical implants such as stents, catheters, and artificial joints.

The silk of the venomous brown recluse spider could be the key to creating new super-sticky films and wafer-thin electronics and sensors for medical implants that are highly compatible with the human body. So says a team of scientists from Oxford University, UK, and The College of William and Mary,...

Measuring blood flow in the laboratory to study ailments like migraines or strokes and designing new ways to address them can be accomplished using laser speckle contrast imaging. However, this requires expensive professional-grade imaging equipment. Researchers at the University of Texas at...

Small cubes with no exterior moving parts can propel themselves forward, jump on top of each other, and snap together to form arbitrary shapes, say researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge. Known as M-Blocks, the robots are cubes with no external moving parts. Nonetheless, they’re able to...

Laser-based technology could make brain tumor surgery more accurate by allowing surgeons to better identify cancer tissue from normal brain tissue at a microscopic level during surgery. This could allow them to avoid leaving behind cells that could spawn a new tumor, say a team of...

Engineers in the School of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Colorado State University, Fort Collins, are developing a new family of replacement heart valves made from synthetic materials that, they say, will be superior to current mechanical and tissue-based...

While computerized smart systems can deliver drugs intravenously in exact volumes to hospital patients, the systems cannot recognize which medications are in the tubing nor can they determine the concentration of the drug in the tubing, which could lead to serious medication...

A team of scientists from Graz University of Technology, Austria, together with colleagues from the Medical University of Graz, Vienna University of Technology, and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna, are developing absorbable implants to promote bone healing that can be broken down...

Implanted medical devices like defibrillators and insulin pumps now include wireless connections to let doctors or technicians update software or download data—but such improvements could open the door to life-threatening wireless attacks. Security researchers have shown that they can...

Researchers at Nottingham Trent University and Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust in the UK say that they are developing the world’s first electronic smart pump, which could increase survival chances of victims of chronic heart failure. The smart aortic graft would be...

An innovative new heart catheter, the IntellaTip MiFi™ XP catheter, pinpoints areas for therapy delivery. The device was given FDA approval in the United States in August for the treatment of atrial flutter, an arrhythmia that affects nearly one million people in the United States.

Computerized smart systems can deliver drugs intravenously in exact volumes to hospital patients. However, the systems do not recognize which medications are in the tubing, nor can they determine the concentration of the drug in the tubing. This can lead to medication errors including incorrect...

Aydogan Ozcan, a professor of electrical engineering and bioengineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science, and his team have created a portable smartphone microscope attachment that can be used to detect viruses and bacteria without the need for bulky and...

Eden Steven, a physicist at Florida State University Magnet Lab, Tallahassee, conducting innovative experiments with spider silk, wanted to see what would happen when strands of spider’s silk were coated with carbon nanotubes. Using drops of water to adhere the powdery carbon nanotubes to the spider...

The Altair Robotics Laboratory at the University of Verona, Italy, has developed and is making available its Xron, a new simulator for training in robotic surgery. With Xron, a trainee controls the virtual robots in a realistic environment using stereoscopic rendering and advanced input devices.

The stench released by disease-causing bacteria is the basis for a faster and simpler new way to diagnose blood infections and pinpoint the specific microbe, scientists reported at the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society. The new test produces results in 24 hours,...

Scientists and engineers funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NABIB) are teaming up with neurosurgeons to develop technologies that enable less invasive, image-guided removal of hard-to-reach brain tumors. Novel imaging techniques allows...

A new prototype device for rapid and safe IV insertion has been designed to reduce pain in hospitalized children. Inserting an intravenous (IV) catheter to administer fluids to patients can be difficult, particularly in children and infants, and often causes pain, distress, and frustration. To...