MIT team develops steerable soft thread-like robot capable of navigating tiny blood vessels
Snake robots are among the most familiar type of mechanical device for working in confined spaces. Flexible, tubular robots have been used for applications such as working in the interior of nuclear reactors, water distribution systems and inside the human body to aid surgery. The MIT team, mechanical engineers affiliated to the institution’s Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies, have downsized the snake paradigm to the scale of a thread half a millimetre in diameter, which can be remotely controlled by magnetic fields to worm its way through the convoluted blood vessels of the brain to deliver clot-busting drugs or devices to break up and remove the blockage. Such robots have the potential to quickly treat a stroke and prevent damage to the brain, the team claims.
The back of your eye, called the retina, reveals a wealth of health information to doctors, and may one day show your body’s true biological age, regardless of how old you are.
They claim that more than 100,000 passengers could be affected in a single day. 🤔
#engineering
Several high-profile executives of U.S. airlines warned on Monday, January 17, of an oncoming “catastrophic” aviation crisis that will take hold by Wednesday should AT&T and Verizon activate their new 5G services, a report from Reuters reveals.
“The time taken to optimize antibiotic therapy might mean the difference between life and death if an infection is serious,” says Adrian Egli. “A fast, accurate diagnosis is extremely important in those kinds of cases.” (Credit: Getty Images)
This could help treat serious infections more efficiently in the future.
In less than two years, you might be able to buy a smartwatch —powered with a radioactive diamond battery—that will outlive you and your progeny for generations.
The potentially game-changing battery comes from the San Francisco–based startup Nano Diamond Battery (NDB), which lauds its namesake “high-power diamond-based alpha, beta, and neutron voltaic battery” for its ability to give devices “life-long and green energy.” Imagine: Just one battery could power your insulin pump or pacemaker for your entire life (with loads of time to spare). Or it could provide the juice for a space rover, collecting Mars regolith samples for decades without any human assistance.
Culinary Herbs & Spices For Health, Wellness & Longevity — Dr. Hamed Faridi Ph.D., Executive Director, McCormick Science Institute
Dr. Hamed Faridi, Ph.D. is the founder of Faridi Strategy Group LLC and serves as the Executive Director of the McCormick Science Institute (https://www.mccormickscienceinstitute.com/).
About the Bioprint FirstAid Handheld Bioprinter capabilities.
Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) are testing 3D bioprinted bandages made of their own cells that could be used to better heal flesh wounds in space.
The German Space Agency (DLR) is leading the experiment which was launched to the ISS at the end of December 2021 on SpaceX’s 24th commercial resupply mission. The payload contained the BioPrint FirstAid Handheld Bioprinter, which is designed to hold cells from astronauts within a bioink that can be used to apply bandages to wounds when needed.
Viruses can be wily adapters, changing their identities to find new hosts and thwart efforts to stop them. That’s why University of Wisconsin-Madison researchers and their collaborators are making progress toward developing universal vaccines against some the planet’s most harmful pathogens, including the virus family responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Last fall, the National Institutes of Health announced it was investing in three teams working to develop a vaccine that would simultaneously work against a broad range of coronaviruses. Among them is a research collaboration, the Pan-Coronavirus Vaccine consortium, led by UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine Professor of Pathobiological Sciences Yoshihiro Kawaoka.
“This pan-coronavirus vaccine is basically preparing for the future,” Kawaoka says.
Athletes headed to the Beijing Olympic Winter Games are making final travel preparations, including keeping in line with China’s health measures on the “My 2022″ smartphone app. However, inadequate encryption measures within the app can leave Olympians, journalists and sports officials vulnerable to hackers, privacy breaches, and surveillance, according to a cybersecurity report by the Citizen Lab obtained exclusively by DW. Additionally, the IT forensic specialists found that the app includes a censorship keyword list. The findings come as international concern over digital safety at the Games mounts. Germany, Australia, UK and US have urged their athletes and National Olympic Committees to leave their personal phones and laptops behind and to travel with special devices over fears of digital espionage. The Dutch Olympic Committee outright banned its athletes from bringing personal phones and laptops due to surveillance concerns.
In the Olympic Playbook for athletes and team officials, the International Olympic Committee states that the “My 2022″ app is “in accordance with international standards and Chinese law.” But based on its findings, Citizen Lab concludes that the insecure transmission of personal information “may constitute a direct violation of China’s privacy laws.” This is because China’s data protection laws require that a person’s health and medical records held digitally be transmitted and stored in an encrypted manner. Citizen Lab’s findings also raise questions concerning two Western tech giants that carry the “My 2022″ app: Apple and Google. “Both Apple’s and Google’s policies forbid apps to transmit sensitive data without proper encryption, so Apple and Google will need to determine whether the app’s unresolved vulnerabilities warrant delisting,” Citizen Lab’s Knockel told DW. The Beijing Organizing Committee has stood by its app, however, saying it “passed the examination” of international mobile application markets such as Google, Apple and Samsung.“We have taken measures such as personal information encryption in the app to ensure privacy security,” the committee said Monday to Xinhua News Agency.
The human body did not evolve to handle life in space, and it shows in our very blood.
Since our species first started to spend extended periods of time beyond our planet, researchers have noticed a curious and consistent loss of red blood cells among astronauts.
The phenomenon is called ‘space anemia’, and until recently, its cause was a mystery. Some experts have argued space anemia is only a short-term phenomenon – a brief compensation for the fluid changes in our bodies under microgravity.
