Health, Medicine, & Biotechnology

VESGEN is a newly automated, userinteractive program that maps and quantifies the effects of vascular therapeutics and regulators on microvascular form and function. VESGEN analyzes two-dimensional, black and white vascular images by measuring important vessel morphology...

PYROFAST is a needle-free injection system with pyrotechnical gas propulsion that provides accurate and comfortable drug delivery through the skin for intra-dermal, subcutaneous, and intra-muscular injections of liquid and solid (lyophilized) drugs. The needle-free injection occurs within...

Failure is not an option when it comes to medical equipment. From critical or sensitive devices like lasers, MRI scanners, knee joints, and implantable pacemakers to instruments as straightforward as stethoscopes, when life is at stake, medical equipment must be reliable.

A compact, ambulatory biometric data acquisition system has been developed for space and commercial terrestrial use. BioWATCH (Bio medical Wireless and Ambulatory Telemetry for Crew Health) acquires signals from bio-medical sensors using acquisition modules attached to a common data and power bus. Several...

A method of detecting water-borne pathogenic bacteria is based partly on established molecular-recognition and fluorescent-labeling concepts, according to which bacteria of a species of interest are labeled with fluorescent reporter molecules and the bacteria can then be detected by...

A document discusses the adaptation of a patented biomass-digesting process, denoted sequential batch anaerobic composting (SEBAC), to recycling of wastes aboard a spacecraft. In SEBAC, high-solids-content biomass wastes are converted into methane, carbon dioxide, and compost.

A team led by Professor Yosi Shacham-Diamand, vice-dean of Tel Aviv University's Faculty of Engineering, has developed a nano-sized laboratory, complete with a microscopic workbench, to measure water quality in real time. This lab-on-a-chip is a breakthrough in the effort to keep water safe from pollution. "We've developed a platform...

Researchers at University of Toronto and Bloorview, Canada's largest children's rehabilitation hospital, have developed a technique that uses infrared light brain imaging to decode preference. When children with disabilities can't speak or gesture to control their environment, they may develop a learned helplessness that impedes...

UCLA scientists have used brain-scan technology, along with patient-specific information on Alzheimer's disease risks, to help diagnose brain aging before symptoms appear. The researchers used positron emission tomography (PET), which allows the revealing of plaques and tangles, the hallmarks of neurodegeneration. The PET...

Cornell University graduate student George Lewis is trying to shrink ultrasound devices to make them practical for any hospital or medical research lab. Lewis has developed a palm-sized, battery-powered ultrasound device powerful enough to stabilize a gunshot wound or deliver drugs to brain cancer patients. Current...

A team of scientists studying the human brain at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and the University of Chieti, Italy, report that a simple decision-making task does not involve the frontal lobes, where many of the higher aspects of human cognition, including self-awareness, are thought to originate. Instead, they...

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a computer program that trains itself to predict genes in the DNA sequences of fungi. Understanding the recently sequenced fungal genomes can help in developing and producing critical pharmaceuticals. Gene prediction can also help to identify potential...

Scientists from Novartis Institute for Biomedical Research and the British Columbia Cancer Agency have demonstrated a new instrument that makes it possible to detect and quantify multiple different clinically important proteins in a single tumor sample using conventional staining. Currently, pathologists usually need a separate...

Scientists from Finland, Germany, and the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) have developed a new X-ray technique for the early detection of breast cancer. Current X-ray mammography fails to identify about 10 to 20% of palpable breast cancers because glandular tissues can mask cancer lesions. Better results are...

A new method is able to circumvent the bias to which one commercial DNA extraction method falls prey with regard to the lysing of certain types of microbial cells, resulting in a truncated spectrum of microbial diversity. By prefacing the protocol with glass-bead-beating agitation...