Drug Delivery & Dispensing

A team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign say that they know how to reverse the characteristics of a key bonding material—polyurea—to provide an inexpensive alternative for a broad number of applications, such as drug delivery, tissue engineering, and packaging.

Seeking a way to print technology, improve device portability, and lower the cost of electronics, a team of engineers at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, led by Assistant Professor Anming Hu, has discovered a way to print circuits on paper.

A team of engineers at the University of California, San Diego, working with cardiologists in Madrid, Spain, say that they have developed a novel ultrasound technology that makes cardiac screening cheaper and much easier, making it possible to reach a larger number of people of all ages. They used...

According to a recent report by the Freedonia Group, world demand for disposable medical supplies will increase 6.6 percent yearly to nearly $245 billion in 2018. The upgrading and enforcement of infection prevention standards, coupled with an expanding volume of hospital, surgical, and outpatient...

The safe use of silver ions in antibacterial textiles has been a matter of debate worldwide, with consumers increasingly seeking a proven alternative. Sweden’s national agency for chemical inspection has ruled silver a health risk, citing possible damage to human genetic material,...

A team of scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, invented a Wearable Artificial Kidney device, designed to untether patients from large dialysis machines. The device can give patients with end-stage renal failure a degree of mobility and freedom for such routine activities as...

By creating easy to snap together components, a team of scientists at the University of Southern California Viterbi School of Engineering, Los Angeles, say that it is now possible to build a 3D microfluidic system quickly and cheaply. Microfluidic systems are used to precisely manipulate small volumes of...

When a patient has sepsis, in which bacteria or fungi multiply too swiftly in a patient's blood for antibiotics to help, the result is often deadly. However, a new device inspired by the human spleen and developed by a team at Harvard's Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering, Boston, MA,...

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 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 researchers from Boston University and Massachusetts General Hospital report their study results in a paper published in the New England Journal of Medicine, that reveals that the latest version of a bionic pancreas device was successfully tested in type 1...

Using precarious particles called polaritons that straddle the worlds of light and matter, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, researchers have demonstrated a new, practical and potentially more efficient way to make a coherent laser-like beam. They say that their first-time polariton laser is fueled by...

Inspired by earthworms, which use peristaltic locomotion to wriggle, an engineering student at the University of Cincinnati's College of Engineering and Applied Science used a worm’s contracting and expanding motion to provide a way for gels to freely swim in liquids.

The NIH’s Bionic Man site helps viewers visually explore some of the latest bioengineering creations from research funded by the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering. From prosthetics to artificial kidneys, these technologies are changing lives now and in the future.

A team of engineers at The University of Texas at Austin say that they have built the smallest, fastest, and longest-running synthetic motor to date. This nanomotor, which could fit inside a human cell, is an important step toward developing miniature machines that could one day move through the body to...