Tag: university

  • Device Improves Wheelchair Control for Spinal Cord Injured

    A system designed at Georgia Institute of Technology enables people with high-level spinal cord injuries to operate a computer and electrically powered wheelchair by moving their tongues. The Tongue Drive, as the system is called, is scheduled for demonstration today by electrical and computer engineering professor Maysam Ghovanloo and colleagues at the IEEE International Solid-State…

  • Braille Texting App for Visually Impaired in Prototype

    Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have built a prototype application for touch-screen mobile devices that aims to be a way of texting without the need to look at a handheld device’s screen. The team led by postdoctoral researcher Mario Romero in Georgia Tech’s interactive computing school will demonstrate the app this weekend at the Abilities…

  • Cell Phone User Locations Open to Hackers via Networks

    Computer scientists at University of Minnesota in Minneapolis have discovered a vulnerability in cellular networks that can allow hackers to follow individual cell phone users without their knowledge. Ph.D. candidate Denis Foo Kune, with fellow student John Koelndorfer and professors Nick Hopper and Yongdae Kim presented their findings earlier this month at the Network &…

  • J&J, University to Partner on Spider Venom Therapy for Pain

    Researchers at University of Queensland in Australia are collaborating with the U.S. pharmaceutical company Johnson & Johnson to develop components of spider venom as a potential treatment for pain. Johnson & Johnson’s Corporate Office of Science and Technology (COSAT) and other company units will provide funding to the university’s Institute for Molecular Bioscience for the…

  • Device Company, MIT Test Drug-Delivery Implanted Microchip

    Scientists at medical technology developer MicroCHIPS in Walthan, Massachusetts and MIT reported the results of a successful human clinical trial of a programmable and wirelessly controlled implanted microchip to deliver drugs. The results appear online in the journal Science Translational Medicine (paid subscription required). The trial, the first successful test of this type of device,…

  • Living Tissue Cell Model Developed to Study Brain Tumors

    Researchers at Brown University in Providence and Harvard Medical School in Boston have created a three-dimensional living tissue model of the brain, including surrounding blood vessels, to study potential brain tumor treatments. The team of chemistry and biomedical engineering researchers published their findings in the journal Theranostics. The need for a living tissue model arose…

  • University Spinoff Designs Virtual Reality for Architects

    A start-up company begun in 2010 by students at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany is developing virtual reality systems to enable visualizing proposed designs for building spaces before construction. The company, inreal Technologies GmbH, also in Karlsruhe, will demonstrate its system at the CeBIT technology show on 10 March in Hannover, Germany. The…

  • Mass Production Process Devised for Micro Robots, Devices

    Engineers at Harvard University have developed a technology that makes possible the mass production of miniature electronic and robotic devices, using layering and folding processes similar to the Japanese paper-folding art of origami. Doctoral candidates Pratheev Sreetharan and Peter Whitney say their discovery is scheduled for publication in the March 2012 issue of the Journal…

  • iPhone App Tells Best and Worst Times for Coffee

    Computer scientists at Pennsylvania State University in University Park have devised an iPhone application that tells the best time for coffee to get a mental kick, and when caffeine can ruin your sleep. Frank Ritter, who is on the IT, psychology, and computer science faculties at Penn State and Kuo-Chuan (Martin) Yeh, computer science and…

  • Stem Cells Repair Heart Muscle in Clinical Trial

    A clinical trial at Cedars-Sinai Heart Institute in Los Angeles and Johns Hopkins Medical Center in Baltimore has shown that treating patients with their own heart-derived stem cells helps re-grow healthy muscle damaged by a heart attack. The team led by Raj Makkar of Cedars-Sinai using technology developed by Eduardo Marbán (pictured right), director of…