Health tech

Most of us have sent a garbled text or two (or dozens) in our day, and probably received more than our share as well. But such disoriented messages can in some rare cases move beyond the parlance of speedy modern-day communication to signal a health emergency, Harvard scientists caution.

In a study published online in the Archives of Neurology last week, the researchers coin the term "dystexia" to describe a confused text message that may indicate neurological dysfunction.

They cite the case of a 25-year-old pregnant woman who sent her husband a series of confusing messages about their baby's due date following a routine doctor's appointment. … Read more

Anyone who's had surgery would probably agree that being wheeled into the operating room can prove quite the anxiety-producing ride.

A London design studio has come up with a wonderfully creative way to calm young patients en route to surgery -- interactive wallpaper that turns clinical corridor walls into a magical forest to engage and distract the kids as they journey toward their procedure.

The installation, called Nature Trail, fills about 165 feet of corridor walls in part of the Mittal Children's Medical Centre at London's Great Ormond Street Hospital. … Read more

Jan Scheuermann can't use her limbs to feed herself, but she's pretty good at grabbing a chocolate bar with her robot arm.

She's become the first to demonstrate that people with a long history of quadriplegia can successfully manipulate a mind-controlled robot arm with seven axes of movement. Earlier experiments had shown that robot arms work with brain implants.

Scheuerman was struck by spinocerebellar degeneration in 1996. A study on the brain-computer interface (BCI) linking Scheuermann to her prosthetic was published online in this month's issue of medical journal The Lancet.

Training on the BCI allowed her to move an arm and manipulate objects for the first time in nine years, surprising researchers.

It took her less than a year to be able to seize a chocolate bar with the arm, after which she declared, "One small nibble for a woman, one giant bite for BCI." Check it out in the video below. … Read more

Styrofoam, a plastic shell, and your own head are the only things separating your brain from the curb if you have an accident. It's a standard setup that most helmet designers use, but that arguably doesn't go far enough, as concussions are still one of the most common injuries bikers suffer in an accident.

What differentiates 6D Helmets' new products are the dual layers designed to protect a rider's head from a broader range of impact than standard helmets -- in particular, low-threshold energy impacts. A standard helmet is certainly useful in high-speed collisions, but 6D's "Omni-Directional Suspension System," or ODS, aims to keep motocross bikers safer in accidents involving less than 10mph of force. … Read more

It's easy to take our electric lights for granted. Many people in developing counties don't have the luxury of electric grids and have to rely on kerosene lamps to brighten the night. Kerosene costs money and breathing the fumes is dangerous. A new light powered by gravity could be a superior solution to lighting needs.

GravityLight doesn't need to be recharged through solar cells. It doesn't use batteries at all. It's powered by the same force that keeps our feet on the ground. A weight attached to the light takes 3 seconds to lift up, but provides 30 minutes of light as it descends. … Read more

For some people, touching a touch screen is difficult, if not impossible.

According to Georgia Tech, more than 200,000 kids in the U.S. public school system have some sort of orthopedic disability that hinders them from experiencing the vast information that awaits them on a tablet or smartphone. Children with neurological disorders -- such as muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, and spina bifida -- can also have difficulty using touch-screen devices due to motor skill impairments.

The need to counteract this limitation inspired Ayanna Howard, a Georgia Tech engineering professor, and graduate student Hae Won Park to create Access4Kids, a prototype assistive device that could level the playing field.… Read more

While any soldier dreads the idea of being shot, sustaining an internal abdominal injury from an explosion or other impact can be far worse. Bleeding from wounds that can't be compressed causes some 85 percent of preventible battlefield deaths.

As part of DARPA's Wound Stasis program, Arsenal Medical has developed an injectable polymer foam that expands inside the body to stanch internal bleeding.

The concept of foam growing in the body reminds me of that 1980s B-horror film "The Stuff," but apparently it's effective.

Based on testing in pigs, DARPA says the product can control hemorrhaging in an abdominal cavity for at least an hour, a critical window to get the soldier to a medical facility. … Read more

A Ph.D. student at the University of Toronto is using the same transfer paper currently affixing temporary tattoos to kids -- in conjunction with a common screen-printing technique -- to develop a medical sensor that keeps tabs on a person's exertion by monitoring the skin's pH levels.

Similar devices, which are called ion-selective electrodes (ISEs), are already common among athletic trainers and medical researchers to help spot fatigue, dehydration, or even metabolic diseases. But they tend to be bulky and don't stick well to sweaty skin.

The new sensor stays put and doesn't look so, … Read more

Next time you see an obese adolescent, blame the parents. At least that's what researchers at the Imperial College London are suggesting. They have developed a calculator to predict a newborn's chances of developing childhood or adolescent obesity

With only one in 10 cases of obesity being the result of a rare genetic mutation, researchers set out to determine which environmental factors played the largest roles in the development of childhood obesity.

"Once we compare different statistical models, and we added the genetic variants [associated with causing obesity], their ability to explain childhood obesity didn't improve … Read more