Category: New products
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Older Americans Experiencing Fewer Vision Problems
Researchers at Northwestern University in Chicago and University of California in San Francisco say American senior citizens today are having fewer vision impairment problems than older Americans in the 1980s. Northwestern’s Angelo Tanna, a professor of ophthalmology, and UCSF’s Stephen Kaye, a health statistician, report their findings online in the journal Ophthalmology (paid subscription required).…
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Univ. Start-Up Developing High-Energy Light for Microchips
Engineers in a University of Washington fusion-energy lab have started a new company that aims to apply their discoveries to the semiconductor industry. Uri Shumlak, an aeronautics and astronautics professor, and research associate professor Brian Nelson are applying their research on high-energy plasma light from fusion reactors to meet a high-priority need of microchip developers.…
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Researchers Develop Battery Components as Painted Layers
Materials scientists and chemists at Rice University in Houston, with colleagues in Belgium, have created a battery that can be applied as spray-painted layers. Their findings appear in the online journal Scientific Reports. The team led by materials scientist Pulickel Ajayan devised a method for applying five components of a lithium-ion battery — two current collectors,…
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Process Devised to Manipulate Organic Molecules in Drugs
Chemists at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California have developed new techniques they say make it easier to manipulate organic molecules in drug compounds and other chemicals. The team led by Scripps chemistry professor Jin-Quan Yu published its results this week in the online issue of the journal Nature (paid subscription required). Yu, with…
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Robot Recommends and Plays Music Based on Listener Feedback
A robotic device developed at Georgia Institute of Technology, and licensed to a start-up company in Atlanta, can recommend songs based on listeners’ tastes, and even dance to the music selected. Shimi, a musical companion derived from technology developed at Georgia Tech’s Center for Music Technology, is expected to be demonstrated today at Google’s I/O…
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Oracle Unveils Internet-Based Clinical Trial Services
The global software company Oracle has revealed two new Internet cloud-based services aimed at improving clinical trial design and recruitment. The services are expected to be announced today at DIA 2012, a medical products industry meeting in Philadelphia. Oracle says the two applications — Health Sciences Protocol Validator and Health Sciences Patient Recruiter — will…
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Software Developed that Amplifies Video Frame Variations
Computer scientists at Massachusetts Institute of Technology have written software that amplifies variations in successive frames of video that are imperceptible to the naked eye. The team of graduate students, alumni, and faculty from MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory will discuss their software in August at the next Siggraph conference in Los Angeles.…
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Selenium Found to Control Staph Bacteria on Implant Material
Engineers at Brown University in Rhode Island discovered the ability of selenium nanoparticles to control the growth of staph bacteria on a type of plastic often used in medical implants. Doctoral student Qi Wang and biomedical engineering professor Thomas Webster describe their research online this week in the Journal of Biomedical Materials Research A (paid…
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Nanotube Paint Developed to Reveal Structural Strains
Engineers, chemists, and physicists at Rice University and University of Houston in Texas have developed a paint with carbon nanotubes and fluorescent properties that can reveal structural strains in bridges and airplanes. The Rice/Houston team describes its work online in the journal Nano Letters (paid subscription required). The new material developed by the team led…
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Bioengineered Kidney Scaffold Developed and Implanted
Researchers at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in North Carolina have devised a framework for building new kidneys for eventual transplant, and tested the scaffold in pigs. The results are described online in the journal Annals of Surgery (paid subscription required). The goal of the proof-of-concept study was to develop a framework for a replacement…