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Here is the latest batch of news from the medical products community. Please click the link for more.

A new method for getting semi-conducting polymers in line could pave the way for cheaper, greener, “paint-on” plastic electronics. A Michigan Engineering team created a liquid polymer solution that they could brush over a surface, automatically aligning the molecules with one another in the direction of...

Engineers at the University of California, San Diego are developing nanofoams that could be used to make better body armor; prevent traumatic brain injury and blast-related lung injuries in soldiers; and protect buildings from impacts and blasts. The nanofoams are made up of a honeycomb, or porous,...

A University of Chicago research group manufactured granular materials of various shapes in a 3D printer to test their aggregate properties when jammed into a confined space.

Congress has ordered the Federal Aviation Administration to open up airspace to unmanned aircraft by October 2015, a decision that will likely see thousands of domestic drones soaring the sky. Many are excited about the many innovative possibilities of the autonomous technology,...

Air travelers of the future could have quieter, greener and more fuel-efficient airliners because of NASA research efforts that are moving into further development and testing.

The School of Design at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has recently designed a new aircraft lavatory especially for the visually impaired by providing an organized system for reading Braille and other tactile information. This unconventional design is called...

A humidity sensor developed by the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), the SEALDH laser hygrometer, has proven its worth when used aboard an aircraft; it fulfills all pre-conditions to be used as a transfer standard for conventional humidity-measuring instruments. This...

An interdisciplinary team of mechanical engineers and autism experts at Vanderbilt University have developed robotic systems that will enhance the basic social learning skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD).

New optical technologies using "metasurfaces" are nearing commercialization, with potential applications including advanced solar cells, computers, telecommunications, sensors, and microscopes.

Images transformed into pixels and projected onto a headset can help the visually impaired in everyday tasks, such as navigation, route planning and finding objects, according to a study led by researchers from the Keck School of Medicine of USC.

The application period for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute's (NSBRI) Postdoctoral Fellowship Program is now open. The two-year fellowships are available in any US laboratory carrying out space-related biomedical or biotechnological research. Applicants are required to submit...

A team of scientists at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), one of the two Swiss Federal Institutes of Technology, have developed a tiny implantable device that can analyze the concentration of up to five proteins and organic acids in the blood simultaneously, and then transmit the...

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued draft recommendations to medical product manufacturers for providing consumers with more accurate information about products not made with natural rubber latex (NRL), which can cause sensitivity or allergy in users.

Longtime cochlear implant users are reporting dramatic improvements in their hearing, thanks to new image-guided programming methods developed by researchers at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Using a patent-pending nonsurgical process, audiologists can fine-tune and customize cochlear implant programming,...

The Human Connectome Project, a five-year project to link brain connectivity to human behavior, has released a set of high-quality imaging and behavioral data to the scientific community. The project has two major goals: to collect vast amounts of data using advanced brain imaging methods on a large...

Ultrasound technology could soon be improved to produce high-quality, high-resolution images, thanks to the development of a new key material by a team of researchers in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Texas A&M University, College Station. The engineered material, known as a "metamaterial,"...

Research is being conducted at the Chevy Chase Clinical Research facility in Chevy Chase, MD, on a device that can measure the amount of force applied to the colonoscope during a colonoscopy, in order to make a colonoscopy safer and less uncomfortable. Dr. Louis Korman of Capital Digestive Care and Artann Laboratories...

A bedside electronic device that measures eye movements can be used to quickly determine whether the cause of severe, continuous, disabling dizziness is a stroke or something benign, according to researchers at Johns Hopkins Medicine, Baltimore, MD. To distinguish stroke from a more benign condition, such as...

A team of engineers at the California Institute of Technology has developed self-healing integrated chips. The technology will allow chips in a smartphone or computer, for example, to repair and defend themselves on the fly, recovering in microseconds from problems ranging from less-than-ideal battery...