Industries
Research makes latest cancer treatment more precise
Researchers in Germany have taken an important step towards improving the accuracy of a highly effective radiotherapy technique used to treat cancer. The team, from the German Cancer Research Centre (DKFZ), the Heidelberg Ion-Beam Therapy Centre (HIT) and the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB), hoped to address uncertainty about the dosimetry – the measurement and assessment of the absorbed radiation dose – for carbon io...
GMS boasts 12x performance and density
General Micro Systems announced the S1U-MD, a 1U rackmount, multi-domain server and managed Ethernet switch/router based on the Intel Xeon D server CPU. S1U-MD boasts 12x the performance of traditional blade-servers, but in one-twelfth the size of traditional systems. Isolating Red and Black domains to ensure security or designing for redundancy is normally accomplished with one full-depth box for each Red and Black domain: 1) two physically...
Assembled dress-packs feature cable protection for welding robots
igus now offers fully assembled dress-packs for rapid replacement of energy chain systems on welding robots. A custom designed, drop-in replacement, these complete solutions can be connected quickly and easily to the robot, thereby minimising production downtime.
'Living diode' makes use of cardiac muscle cells
Scientists are one step closer to mimicking the way biological systems interact and process information in the body - a vital step toward developing new forms of biorobotics and novel treatment approaches for several muscle-related health problems such as muscular degenerative disorders, arrhythmia and limb loss.
NASA and MIT develop quantum-dot spectrometer
A NASA technologist has teamed with the inventor of a nanotechnology that could transform the way space scientists build spectrometers, the all-important device used by virtually all scientific disciplines to measure the properties of light emanating from astronomical objects, including Earth itself.
LifeFlow aids sepsis and shock
410 Medical, a company out of Durham, North Carolina, is releasing in the US its LifeFlow Rapid Infuser for treating patients afflicted by sepsis or shock. The device can help infuse 500 milliliters of crystalloid fluid into a patient within two and a half minutes, including in both adults and children, and an entire litre can be delivered within five minutes. The FDA cleared device has so far been tested at the WakeMed Health & Hospital...
Magnetic implant offers alternative drug delivery method
University of British Columbia researchers have developed a magnetic drug implant—the first of its kind in Canada—that could offer an alternative for patients struggling with numerous pills or intravenous injections. The device, a silicone sponge with magnetic carbonyl iron particles wrapped in a round polymer layer, measures just six millimetres in diameter. The drug is injected into the device and then surgically implanted in t...
Brain model quantifies pain beyond sensory input
Pain is a signal of actual or potential damage to the body, so it is natural to think of it as a localised sensation: knee pain in the knee, back pain in the back and so on. However, research has demonstrated that pain is an experience constructed in the brain. A knee doesn't "feel" anything. Instead, it sends signals to the brain. Input from the body is important, but a person's pain experience also depends on the brain's interpretation of ...
Now you can 'build your own' bio-bot
For the past several years, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have been developing a class of walking "bio-bots" powered by muscle cells and controlled with electrical and optical pulses. Now, Rashid Bashir's research group is sharing the recipe for the current generation of bio-bots. Their how-to paper is the cover article in Nature Protocols.
Portable tool provides single-cell RNA sequencing
Sequencing messenger RNA molecules from individual cells offers a glimpse into the lives of those cells, revealing what they’re doing at a particular time. However, the equipment required to do this kind of analysis is cumbersome and not widely available. MIT researchers have now developed a portable technology that can rapidly prepare the RNA of many cells for sequencing simultaneously, which they believe will enable more widespread u...