August 23, 2006, 6:47 PM CT

Space Age To Surgery Equipment

Though robots were once the stuff of Star Wars and The Jetsons, commercially available systems have made robotic surgeries common in hospitals. Located just feet away from the surgeon, the systems are minimally invasive and offer surgeons better dexterity.

Department of Defense-funded researchers want to take that capability to the next level so surgeries can commence on battlefields with the surgeon's work being done by a robot that's miles away and connected by communication links.

"There is a large community that is envisioning a robot that is deployable in an armored vehicle, much closer to combat, where an expert surgeon can remotely work on the patient very quickly after an injury is sustained," said Dr. Blake Hannaford, a professor of electrical engineering and adjunct professor in bioengineering and mechanical engineering at the University of Washington. "The kind of focus, as I understand it, is stopping arterial bleeding that's not amenable to a tourniquet. and stabilizing that so that a Soldier can be transported for regular care".

Hannaford and his team have created a surgical robot that works on a patient's abdomen. It has two arms, and a motorized carriage on the operating table lets the arms move anywhere on the table.

"It's very position-able to any part of the body," he said, adding that this may possibly allow the robot be used on arms and legs.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

August 23, 2006, 6:08 PM CT

Pearl The Robot

Pearl, the Nursebot, is a personal robotic assistant that could help more older adults and people with disabilities live independently. Developed by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh, the mobile robot could be used to prompt people with failing memories to take medicine or visit a doctor, to provide remote telepresence for professional careivers or to assist with tasks that would be difficult for people with limited mobility.

Credit: Ken Andreyo, Carnegie Mellon University.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

August 23, 2006, 6:04 PM CT

Green Apple

A fluorescent dye injected into a tank of stirred liquid creates a pattern that resembles a green apple. The demonstration, conducted by Rutgers scientists from the NSF Engineering Research Center on Structured Organic Composites, shows how liquids mix in a typical pharmaceutical manufacturing operation. Engineers will use such studies to help drug makers improve product uniformity.

Credit: M. M. Alvarez, T. Shinbrot, F. J. Muzzio, Rutgers University, Center for Structured Organic Composites.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

August 23, 2006, 5:57 PM CT

Astronomers 'See' the Invisible

By observing a rare head-on collision of galaxies at 10 million miles per hour, astronomers have made the first direct detection of "dark matter"--the mysterious, invisible stuff that comprises at least one-quarter of the universe.

Researchers have known for 70 years that there is much more mass in galaxies than can be seen. For example, spiral galaxies rotate at speeds that are only possible if the total mass of the galaxy is several times larger than the total of its component stars and dust. The "missing" mass is the dark matter. But dark matter neither emits nor reflects light, and only interacts with ordinary matter through gravity. Consequently, its presence has only been inferred, not observed directly. Moreover, it typically accompanies and envelops ordinary matter, often in the form of a "halo" around galaxies, and is not found by itself.

Marusa Bradac of the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology at Stanford, along with colleagues elsewhere, decided to hunt for dark matter by exploiting one of its few telltale visible effects: gravitational lensing. As Einstein predicted, mass curves space around it, and large masses curve it a lot. So light coming toward Earth from behind a large mass is bent by gravitationally curved space just as light in a telescope is bent by a curved lens. As a result, images of objects behind the mass are stretched. The amount of stretching is proportional to the quantity of mass warping space.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

August 23, 2006, 5:53 PM CT

El Hombre Vs The Babe

Baseball purists, especially those of Yankee allegiance, might argue that St. Louis Cardinals homerun-hitting superstar Albert Pujols is simply not in the same league as legendary New York Yankees slugger Babe Ruth.

It's an argument that science may never fully resolve, but researchers at Washington University in St. Louis can now offer at least some hard numbers on how Pujols compares to the Babe in terms of the perceptual and motor skills necessary to consistently hit balls out of the park.

Pujols visited Washington University in April to take part in a series of laboratory tests similar to those conducted on Babe Ruth on a summer afternoon in 1921 by a couple of graduate students at Columbia University. Results of the Pujols testing, conducted at the request of a reporter from GQ magazine, are detailed in a story that appears in the magazine's September issue.

"This spring, GQ persuaded Albert Pujols, reigning National League MVP and the game's most dominant slugger, to take time off from an epic home-run tear and reenact, at Washington University in St. Louis, the 1921 Babe Ruth tests," writes Nate Penn, author of the GQ article, which is titled "Performance: How To Build The Perfect Batter".

The Pujols tests were conducted by faculty in the University's Department of Psychology in Arts & Sciences and in the School of Medicine, including Richard Abrams, Ph.D., professor of psychology; Desiree White, Ph.D., associate professor of psychology; David Balota, Ph.D., professor of psychology; and Catherine Lang, Ph.D., assistant professor of physical therapy, neurology and occupational therapy.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

August 23, 2006, 5:42 PM CT

'Father of molecular medicine,' Vernon Ingram dies at 82

Vernon Ingram, an MIT biology professor known as the "father of molecular medicine," died Aug. 17 from injuries suffered during a fall. He was 82.

A memorial service has been scheduled for Sunday, Sept. 10th at 2 p.m. in Wong Auditorium (E51). A reception will follow at Ashdown House.

Ingram was best known for his discovery, during the 1950s, that a single amino acid substitution is responsible for the molecular abnormality that leads to sickle cell anemia.

The find was "one of the absolutely seminal discoveries in the history of molecular biology," said Graham Walker, MIT professor of biology.

Walker, who was Ingram's friend and colleague for 30 years, said that Ingram was "one of the greatest men I have met in my life. An extraordinary scientist, an extraordinary intellect, and an absolutely wonderful human being".

In recent years, Ingram focused his research on neuroscience, particularly Alzheimer's disease. Though in his 80s, he still ran a small laboratory at MIT and was constantly pursuing new research, Walker said.

"He was a dyed-in-the-wool, inveterate experimentalist," Walker said. "He was going at full speed right up until the end".

Ingram and his wife, Elizabeth, served as housemasters at Ashdown House from 1985 until a few years ago.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

August 23, 2006, 5:05 AM CT

Sturgeon's general warning

They take a long time before they mate and, once old enough, don't mate every year. Even so, sturgeons are heavily sought after for their eggs, which are made into caviar.

For these and other reasons, many sturgeons - a variety of ancient, bottom-feeding fish - are in trouble.

Trent Sutton, a fisheries biologist at Purdue University, has helped to ensure that a local variety of sturgeon, the shovelnose, does not become endangered or threatened like many of its relatives.

"The problem with sturgeons in general is that they are a long-lived fish that take a long time to reach sexual maturity," Sutton said.

He has completed a series of studies on the shovelnose sturgeon in Indiana waterways, particularly the Wabash River. His findings have become the basis for size and catch limits on the fish that will be put into place next summer, said Bill James, chief of fisheries for the Indiana Department of Natural Resources (DNR). There are currently no fishing regulations for the shovelnose.

Sutton's research identifies many of the fish's habits that were previously unknown. Importantly, he found that the Wabash River population appears to be stable. Nevertheless, his sampling uncovered very few young fish in the river.

"This raises a few red flags," Sutton said. "This means that either the females aren't laying eggs or that they aren't spawning at all - both of which would have serious ramifications".........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

August 23, 2006, 5:00 AM CT

Why soldiers were not expressing war traumas?

After the Second World War, Finnish psychiatrists felt that soldiers had readapted to civilian society very well. The reason was not that Finnish soldiers were exceptionally strong, but that war psychiatrists put the blame for long-term psychological problems on the soldiers themselves. Thus explains researcher Ville Kivimäki, who is involved in the research project "The War That Follows Peace" funded by the Academy of Finland.

Soldiers very rarely sought compensation for psychological war injuries. According to Kivimäki, this does not indicate the non-existence of the problem: "Refusing to talk about traumatic war experiences is related to a deep-seated culture of shame and very limited resources for veterans to express their traumas. War psychiatry had a profound impact on the creation of this culture. Even though the restrictive and stigmatising aspects of war psychiatry might seem repulsive, it did establish a certain type of reality, defined possibilities for the existence of soldiers and veterans, and created tension between traumatic war experiences and the culturally acceptable forms of expressing them".

According to Kivimäki, war psychiatrists were not just quacks, but primarily emphasised that soldiers presenting with psychological problems be quickly brought back from the front lines for treatment. Disabled patients were not forcibly returned to the front lines, at least according to official directives. They were given assignments in which they could best serve their country.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

August 22, 2006, 8:37 PM CT

high-friction micro-fibers

Inspired by the remarkable hairs that allow geckos to hang single-toed from sheer walls and scamper along ceilings, a team of scientists led by engineers at the University of California, Berkeley, has created an array of synthetic micro-fibers that uses very high friction to support loads on smooth surfaces.

High friction materials can prevent sliding under high loads or steep inclines. The scientists observed that the synthetic array of polypropylene fibers could hold a quarter to a glass slide inclined at an 80 degree angle, yet is not "sticky" like adhesive tape. The fibers, packed 42 million per square centimeter, each measured a mere 20 microns long and 0.6 microns in diameter, or about 100 times thinner than a human hair. One micron is one-thousandth of a millimeter.

The micro-fiber array is described in the Aug. 19 issue of Physical Review Letters.

"We think the result represents an important milestone in our ongoing research project to understand gecko adhesion," said Ronald Fearing, UC Berkeley professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences and principal investigator of the project.

The researchers are careful to point out that unlike gecko hairs, the micro-fiber array does not exhibit adhesion. Adhesion describes the resistance of an object to being pulled off a surface, while friction describes the resistance to being dragged or slid along a surface. Thus, a person should not use a micro-fiber suit to attempt Spiderman stunts.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

August 22, 2006, 8:09 PM CT

Self-inflicting injuries in teens

In a survey of more than 6,000 15 and 16-year-old school pupils, scientists observed that girls are four times more likely to have engaged in deliberate self-harm in comparison to boys, with 11 per cent of girls and 3 per cent of boys reporting that they had self-harmed within the last year.

Prior estimates for the amount self-harm in the country were based on the 25,000 'presentations' at hospitals in England and Wales each year that are the result of deliberate self-poisoning or self-injury amongst teenagers.

However, research by academics from the universities of Bath and Oxford has observed that only 13 per cent of self-harming incidents reported by the pupils had resulted in a hospital visit.

Eventhough self-poisoning is the most common form of self-harm reported in hospitals, the study revealed that self-cutting was the more prevalent form of self-harm (64.5 per cent), followed by self-poisoning through overdose (31 per cent).

"The study shows that deliberate self-harm is common amongst teenagers in England, particularly in girls who are four times more likely to self-harm than boys," said Dr Karen Rodham from the Department of Psychology at the University of Bath.

"Until now, most studies of deliberate self-harm in adolescents in the UK have been based on the cases that reach hospital.........

Posted by: Ethen      Permalink         Source

Older Blog Entries  

---