Health Tech

Many superheroes come equipped with special seeing abilities, like X-ray vision or night vision. Superman even sports telescopic vision, the ability to see over long distances. Researchers are working on a contact lens that bestows telescopic vision, though it won't let you spy on faraway planets.

The lens experiment came about through DARPA-funded research into vision enhancement devices for soldiers. What the researchers developed could become a solution for people suffering from age-related macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness for older adults. The goal is to improve vision with an unobtrusive device.… Read more

Christina Stephens has been chronicling her journey from a foot crush injury through amputation and adapting to a prosthetic leg on her Facebook page, Amputee OT. While her standard prosthetic leg is custom made and fitted to her, she's also willing to experiment a bit, as shown by her Legoleg, a prosthetic leg crafted from Legos.

Stephens, an occupational therapist and clinical researcher, got the idea from a research lab co-worker, who joked she should make a leg from Legos. Most people would have laughed and left it there. Stephens laughed and went home to make it happen.… Read more

When I was a varsity swimmer in high school, I was taught creative visualization, which is a fancy way of saying that I would sit in a quiet place, close my eyes, and imagine myself in an upcoming race -- stroke for stroke. I could feel the temperature of the water, the pounding of my heart, the overwhelming urge to breathe as I sliced through the water without once turning my head for air. It was a mental rather than physical exercise, and for me at least, it translated to faster racing times.

For years, researchers have investigated this phenomenon, and now a new little study out of Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education finds that watching an avatar model healthy behaviors can actually help women lose weight in the real world.… Read more

File this one under the grossly, absurdly, and perhaps soon patently awesome. Researchers at North Carolina State University say they have developed a system by which cockroaches may actually perform search and rescue.

Using Microsoft's motion-sensing Kinect, they plotted a path for cockroaches and tracked them. Researchers nudged the roaches into motion with wires attached to the bugs' sensory appendages, and they steered the roaches by sending small electrical impulses to wires attached to the bugs' antennae. The old-fashioned horse and whip are just so crude by comparison.

Still, why the cockroach? Presumably their size could prove useful in … Read more

Most vaccines work by giving the immune system a crash course in how to attack bacteria or viruses. The goal is to protect against diseases -- think influenza, polio, and smallpox, which have collectively killed tens of millions of people in recent history.

Now an experimental vaccine being developed at Stanford University uses an entirely different approach to get at the same end goal -- protecting against type 1 diabetes by instructing a diabetic's immune system to stop attacking its own body.… Read more

A prototype device created by John Hopkins University grad students can enable a pathologist to inspect excised breast tissue mid-surgery to determine whether a cancerous tumor has been fully removed.

The prototype's ability to dramatically reduce the time to inspect breast tissue -- down to as quickly as 20 minutes -- could ultimately decrease, if not flat out eliminate, the need for a second operation on the same tumor, John Hopkins announced this week.

One in five women who have surgery to remove cancerous breast tissue have to go back for follow-up surgery because not all the diseased tissue … Read more

When he was born in a high school biology lab last November, little Buttercup wasn't like all the other ducklings: His left foot was turned backward, making getting around a bit of a trial for the little guy. Although his caregiver at the school worked on turning the foot around the right way, it couldn't quite get there.

So when he was transferred to Feathered Angels Waterfowl Sanctuary in Arlington, Tenn., new owner Mike Garey realized pretty quickly that something had to be done.

"With his deformed foot, he would have been in pain and had constant cuts and foot infections walking on the side of it even at our sanctuary here, and foot infections on these guys is always a serious matter," Garey said. … Read more

Be still my beating heart. Or, rather, be very, very fast, so that it can be used by science.

This is the battle cry out of the University of Toronto, where researchers are unveiling a biowire that could lead to the production of mature cardiac patches that are derived from real human cardiomyocytes (heart cells). Reporting this week in the scientific journal Nature Methods, cardiac researchers say the tech could lead to the development of mature cardiac patches in a range of sizes.

Let's back up, because when it comes to matters of the heart, things get complicated fast.… Read more

Of all the countries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, South Korea has by far the highest suicide rate -- 28.4 per 100,000 people per year according to the OECD, making it the most common cause of death for people under 40.

And one bridge over the Han River, the Mapo Bridge, has been dubbed the Bridge of Death for its unfortunate popularity among those seeking to end their own life. Between 2007 and 2012, more than 100 people attempted suicide from the Mapo Bridge.

To try to counteract the number of deaths from the bridge, the Seoul City government didn't build a high fence or suicide barrier; instead, it teamed with Samsung Life Insurance to take a different path, adding interactive handrails that speak directly to passersby. … Read more