It’s always interesting to witness the progression of companies between trade shows. Months or year(s) have gone by, and in between, exhibiting companies don’t idle — they find new ways to meet the ever-growing demands of the medical industry.

One of those demands is customization of orthopedic implants. At this year’s Medical Design & Manufacturing (MD&M) East show, I spoke with Micron Products about their work with ConforMIS to develop a patient-specific knee replacement system, which allows a customized implant to be modeled and produced from a patient’s scans in a matter of days.

When it comes to medical components, everyone is still looking to go smaller and faster, without compromising on performance. A Mini Hybrid Connector from Colder Products Company is an example of a new product that fits this trend by combining air lines and electronics into a compact single connection point.

Bayer MaterialScience aims to meet another demand — for smaller, less intrusive medical devices — by launching a new grade of medical polycarbonate designed for molding devices with extremely thin walls (as low as 0.014 inches) and long flow lengths (150 millimeters).

Still, even if you’re in sync with the needs of the medical device industry, somtimes you just don’t have the funds to get your idea off the ground. Proto Labs is hoping to prevent that from happening with the Cool Idea! Award. Simply enter online by sharing a few details and uploading a 3D CAD model of your idea. Then, if you’re selected, you can use Proto Labs’ parts for prototyping, testing, or even an initial production run. The company plans to select “cool ideas” on an ongoing basis through 2011, until it has awarded $100,000 in services.

Mother Nature is a great innovator. In fact, one might argue that some of today’s most efficient technologies were not engineered, but rather, exist in nature as the byproducts of a little process called evolution.

As such, it comes as no surprise that scientists sometimes look to nature as a source of inspiration for their next innovations. One example that comes to mind is Rice University’s Project Squid Skin. This four-year, $6 million grant from the Office of Naval Research aims to develop “metamaterials” that emulate the camouflage techniques of a class of animals called cephalopods (which includes squid, octopus, and cuttlefish). Researchers plan to use patterns of organized nanostructures to create sheets of materials that can change colors quickly and “see” light in the same way that squid skins do.

Meanwhile, scientists at the University of Southampton are developing an underwater sonar device that would be able to detect objects through bubble clouds that normally scatter sound and clutter the sonar image. The inspiration for this research? Dolphins, which have been observed to create bubble nets that outsmart manmade sonar. “It occurred to me that either dolphins were blinding their sonar when making such nets, or else they have a better sonar system,” said Professor Timothy Leighton of the University’s Institute of Sound and Vibration Research (ISVR). Not a bad point.

Of course, marine life isn’t the only sector of the animal kingdom capable of setting exciting new technologies in motion. A German bionics company, Festo, designed a Bionic Handling Assistant (robotic arm) that was inspired by the elephant’s trunk. According to the company, the system could be useful for medical technology, rehabilitation, and in industrial environments. Not too shabby for an animal sometimes referred to as “Dumbo.”

Like many other alluring things on this Earth, video games can toe the line between good and evil. They are notoriously addicting (sometimes to their users’ detriment) — but that quality also allows them to function as a successful medium in rehabilitation and therapy applications.

“There are some people who claim that playing video games contributes to attention deficit, that it rewires our brains,” said NASA Langley Research Center scientist Alan Pope. “Well, if that’s the case, then let’s decide how we want video games rewiring our brain.” Pope and his team are developing “Mindshift” gaming technology that helps users learn how to control stress and sharpen their ability to concentrate. A former version of this NASA-developed technology has also been commercialized into a game for children with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder. Read more about the technology here.

It appears that games may indeed “rewire” our brains — for better or for worse. In a recent University of Oxford experiment, healthy volunteers viewed a film that included traumatic images of injury from a variety of sources. After waiting for 30 minutes, 20 volunteers played Tetris for 10 minutes, 20 volunteers played Pub Quiz, a word-based quiz game, for 10 minutes, and a final set of 20 volunteers did nothing.

Subjects who played Tetris reportedly experienced significantly fewer flashbacks of the film, while those who played Pub Quiz actually experienced significantly more flashbacks, in comparison to the control group of volunteers who did nothing. This surprised me, because I had guessed that the games would have a neutral or beneficial effect on the subjects — certainly not a negative effect, as in the case of the word-based game.

Could it be the visual component of Tetris that, at least in this particular experiment, made it a better candidate for reducing the incidence of traumatic flashbacks? Whatever the reason, it’s nice to have an excuse to play a bit of Techtris (NASA Tech Briefs’ version of Tetris) — strictly to pay tribute to the game’s potentially therapeutic qualities, of course.

As the holidays fade and the New Year unfolds, it’s back to business for most of us. For NASA Tech Briefs, that includes a bunch of trade shows and conferences our editors will attend over the next few months.

One show I plan to attend is the Pacific Design & Manufacturing Show, taking place at the Anaheim Convention Center in Anaheim, Calif., from February 9 through 11. The show will feature the latest design and manufacturing solutions from hundreds of companies. The diverse array of products and services include adhesives, CAD/CAM/CAE software and services, electrical and electronic components, fluid handling media and controls, instruments and controls, materials, mechanical components, motors and motion controls, testing and inspection products and services, and valves, switches, and controls.

No less than seven other shows are co-located with the Pacific Design & Manufacturing Show. Three of the more significant shows are the Medical Design & Manufacturing Show West, Electronics West, and Green Manufacturing Expo. The Medical Design & Manufacturing Show West and Green Manufacturing Expo represent the burgeoning fields of medical technology and “green” technology – sectors that held their own during the economic downturn and are increasingly important to design engineers.

In coming weeks, I hope to get more details on some of the products and technologies being shown. If your company plans to exhibit, drop me a line and let me know what you’ll be showing. Hopefully, we can meet during the show to discuss what’s new and exciting.

One of the world’s leading manufacturers of cars and light trucks, Toyota, is making inroads into the area of brain machine interface (BMI) technology. Toyota has developed a brain wave control that analyzes the brain waves of a wheelchair driver in as little as 125 milliseconds, as opposed to several seconds with existing technologies. Brainwave results are displayed on a panel so quickly that drivers do not sense any delay.

The system has the capacity to adjust itself to each individual driver’s characteristics, and thus is able to improve the efficiency with which it senses the driver’s commands. The system has achieved a 95 percent accuracy rate.

Toyota plans to utilize the technology in applications centered on medicine and nursing care management. The system is expected to help the elderly and physically handicapped maneuver wheelchairs and be particularly useful in rehabilitative medicine.

So far, Toyota has not stated whether the technology will eventually be adapted to drivers of motor vehicles. I can envision brain wave technology helping drivers with physical handicaps control vehicles. However, I doubt whether the technology would – or should be – available to the everyday driver.

Allowing the brain waves of a person prone to “road rage” or careless driving habits control the actions of a vehicle weighing several tons is not a pleasant thought.