Medical

When contact lenses work really well, you forget they are on your eyes. You might not feel the same at the end of a long day staring at a computer screen. After too many hours of wear, the lenses and your eyes dry out, causing irritation that might outweigh the convenience of contacts. Stanford researchers hope to alleviate this pain by both advancing the understanding of how natural tears keep our eyes comfortable, and developing a machine for d...

AVX Corporation has released a  series of next-gen, medical-grade solid tantalum capacitors. Delivering lower DC leakage (DCL) values than any competitive offering — down to 0.0025CV, or 25% of typical industry limits — and requiring significantly less voltage de-rating than the standard 50% recommendation for solid tantalum capacitors — as low as 20% for filtering applications, and as low as 0% for pacing, hold-up, an...

Professor Il-Doo Kim in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) is developing ultrasensitive and highly selective gas sensors to diagnose diseases by exhaled breath analysis. Professor Kim has led the development of semiconductor metal oxide-based nanofiber sensor arrays, which are optimised for pattern recognition of breath prints.

Australian researchers have launched the TROG 15.01 SPARK clinical trial, which will use revolutionary KIM technology to improve targeting accuracy for patients undergoing radiotherapy for prostate cancer - cutting treatment time from 40 visits to just five.

The proportion of older adults with age-related vision loss is estimated to be as high as one in three over the age of 50. In Canada, that's roughly 3.6 million people. Many of these individuals turn to adaptive devices designed to magnify objects and text, but these devices can be prohibitively expensive, uni-functional and bulky. Enter the iPad: a technological device that's relatively cheap, serves many purposes, is smaller than most books, an...

Powerbox has announced a series of power supplies for BF (Body Floating) medical applications. Complying with the latest EMI coexistence standard IEC 60601-1-2: 2014 (4th edition) and specifically designed with patient and operator safety in mind, the OBS01 series delivers an output power of 1100W (1250W peak), which is market leading power density – OBS01 is available in seven different voltages from 24 to 48V with an efficiency up to...

Desensitisation is a technique that prevents rejection of transplanted kidneys, which means that donors and patients can be much more easily matched. A new study of 1,000 patients shows its promise at changing how organ transplants work. Incompatibility between donor and recipient is the biggest barrier to successful transplants. If the recipient’s immune system attacks the organ, then the transplant fails.

As the bioimaging revolution gives scientists ever-more detailed views on the inner workings of cells, there is growing demand for public infrastructure to store, share and link the massive datasets produced using high-resolution imaging techniques. Complementing large-scale, EMBL-led, intergovernmental initiatives such as Euro-BioImaging, the EMBL-EBI has expanded its EMPIAR data service to accommodate new high-resolution imaging modalities such...

A scientific team from the Center for Nanoparticle Research at IBS has created a wearable GP-based patch that allows accurate diabetes monitoring and feedback therapy by using human sweat. The researchers improved the device's detecting capabilities by integrating electrochemically active and soft functional materials on the hybrid of gold-doped graphene and a serpentine-shape gold mesh.

They look like small, translucent gems but these tiny 'gel' slivers hold the world of a patient's tumour in microcosm ready for trials of anti-cancer drugs to find the best match between treatment and tumour. The 'gel' is a new 3D printable material developed by QUT researchers that opens the way to rapid, personalised cancer treatment by enabling multiple, simultaneous tests to find the correct therapy to target a particular tumour.