Medicine
fromNature
15 hours agoPersonalized CRISPR therapies could soon reach thousands - here's how
FDA proposed a 'plausible mechanism pathway' to enhance development of personalized genetic therapies for rare disorders.
Body agency is a power returned after an incident took it away from the user's physical form, and some wearable devices and technologies have this exact goal in mind.
WINT Design Lab envisions regenerative futures through devices and biotextiles that allow humans to connect with their bodies more and free themselves from fossil materials that harm them and the environment.
The body of the robotic fingers is built from polyglycerol sebacate, a synthetic elastomer made from glycerol and sebacic acid. Glycerol is a byproduct of biodiesel production while sebacic acid is derived from castor oil, and both of them are plant-based. Polyglycerol sebacate is safe since it is already used in medical implants because the body can absorb it without a toxic response.
An exoskeleton is a relatively new class of wearable device designed to enhance, support, or assist human movement, strength, posture, or even physical activity. The main piece goes around your waist like a belt, and from it, a pair of hinged, mechanized splints extend down over the hips to strap onto each thigh, where they provide some robotic assistance to normal movements like walking, running, or squatting.
When you have an acute injury, your body is sending signals through the peripheral and central nervous systems and the immune system to say, hold on, I need to stop doing this so we can allow the tissue to heal, says Ericka Merriwether, a physical therapist and pain researcher at New York University. Rest, after all, is the first part of the familiar RICE therapy, which stands for rest, ice, compression and elevation.
According to the outlet SlashGear, the neighborhood encompasses five 1,000-square-foot houses just north of Sacramento. Each domicile is produced by a hulking concrete printer worth about $1.5 million, which took about 24 days to spit out the first house. In the future, 4Dify expects the whole process to take about 10 days, but that isn't what's astonishing about the Yuba County neighborhood - it's the price tag.
The brain is the conductor of the orchestra, the muscles are the instruments. When your body is out of alignment, the orchestra is playing out of tune. Misalignment in the musculoskeletal system is frequently the root cause of chronic pain and the resulting poor posture.
Rather than waiting until you arrive in a ski village or going out of your way to drive into the mountains, Boot Solutions is introducing a process in which you simply scan your feet and they do all the fitting remotely. Overall it seems pretty simple. You use the Boot Solutions app on on your phone to take a medical grade 3D scan of both feet and the company offers you plans from there.
The system, tested in prototype form by NPR at the company's headquarters, consists of fairly standard-looking sneakers with a carbon fiber plate running through the soles. These sneakers are attached at the back to close-fitting, 3D-printed titanium leg shells that cinch to the calves. The battery-powered contraptions, containing complex motors, sensors and circuitry, weigh a couple of pounds and look like something out of Terminator or RoboCop.
That's today's project. In this article, I'll show you how I started with a picture of me, used some intermediate AI, and turned it into a physical 3D plastic me figurine. Do I need a me figurine? No. Is it cool? Yeah. Does it show off another AI capability? Yep. I'll be honest. I didn't expect my editor to sign off on this pitch.
Artificial intelligence (AI) machine learning is making a difference in assistive technology to help restore movement for the paralyzed. A new study in the American Institute of Physics journal APL Bioengineering shows how AI has the potential to restore lower-limb functions in those with severe spinal cord injuries (SCIs) by identifying patterns in brain signals captured noninvasively via electroencephalography (EEG).
Bracesys sidesteps all these limitations with an adjustable framework of segmented units, articulating connectors, and tension dials. The entire system weighs just 150 grams and folds flat into an envelope, yet provides rigid support comparable to traditional casts. More remarkably, clinicians can customize it to each patient's anatomy in real time, adjusting the fit as swelling decreases and healing progresses.
There's something quietly radical about designing for pain. Not the dramatic, cinematic kind, but the daily grind of chronic discomfort that shapes how millions of people move through their lives. That's exactly what Madhav Binu, Kriti V, and Himvall Sindhu set out to tackle with Revive, a home-based rehabilitation device for knee osteoarthritis patients. The numbers tell a sobering story. Forty percent of India's elderly population lives with knee osteoarthritis, a condition that doesn't just hurt.
A 33-year-old man survived for 48 hours without his lungs, after a medical team replaced the organs with an external artificial-lung system that it developed to keep him alive until he could receive a double lung transplant. There have been cases in which people have had their lungs removed and been connected to an external device to maintain oxygen levels.
Artificial intelligence has taken the medical device industry by storm - even adding a layer of complexity to the operating room that's resulting in patients being hurt, some health professionals claim. As Reuters reports, the TruDi Navigation System by device maker Acclarent was designed to treat chronic sinusitis, inflammation of the nasal sinuses, by inserting a tiny balloon to enlarge the sinus cavity openings.
A study led by Stanford Medicine researchers has found that an injection blocking a protein linked to aging can reverse the natural loss of knee cartilage in older mice. The same treatment also stopped arthritis from developing after knee injuries that resemble ACL tears, which are common among athletes and recreational exercisers. Researchers note that an oral version of the treatment is already being tested in clinical trials aimed at treating age-related muscle weakness.
When Dr. Homoud Aldahash started the three-hour process of removing a tumor about the size of a walnut from a patient's brain, it was an experience unlike any other in his 25 years as a neurosurgeon. It wasn't Aldahash's gloved hands slicing 68-year-old Mohammed Almutrafi's right frontal lobe, but surgical instruments attached to a set of robotic arms, which Aldahash controlled from a console where he sat three meters away.