Researchers at the Wyss Institute have completed the first clinical study of a new rapid neuroassessment device they developed to quantitatively measure neuromuscular performance and are currently conducting a study with athletes in the Boston area to determine the sensitivity of the technology in diagnosing concussions. Doctors routinely track their patients’ hand-eye coordination to monitor [...]

Future combat medics could save the lives of soldiers, preventing them from bleeding out on battlefields, by injecting medical foam into their bodies. The scientists presented their findings at the 2012 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Surgery of Trauma in Kauai, Hawaii. Currently, little that can be done to stanch internal bleeding [...]

Newly published findings from the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center describe how rutin was shown to inhibit the formation of blood clots in an animal model of thrombosis. Found in fruit, vegetables and over the counter supplements, this flavonoid proved to be a potent anti-thrombotic compound, inhibiting both platelet accumulation and fibrin generation during thrombus [...]

Scientists at the University of Washington are using nanotechnology manufacturing techniques to build and refine portable diagnostics that have surfaces with tiny posts of varying height and spacing. When shaken, the surface moves drops along certain paths to conduct medical or environmental tests. As medical researchers and engineers try to shrink diagnostics to fit in [...]

Physicists from Yale University have engineered a “random laser” which they believe will improve both processing time and the clarity of the images from devices that use laser illumination. The published study describes their findings in detail and explains how random lasers enable faster image generation while generating speckle-free images. Using “random lasers” as a [...]

Rett syndrome, a severe autism spectrum disorder, which affects roughly 1 girl in 10,000 to 20,000 worldwide, could be reversed by a bone-marrow transplant. The findings were published in the journal Nature, and suggest that the brain-dwelling immune cells, called microglia, are defective in sufferers of Rett syndrome. Bone-marrow transplants or other means of boosting [...]

Last week, school administrators at the LeRoy Central School District in northwestern New York state approved a plan that will allow further testing at the town’s high school, where a total of 19 people, 18 girls and one boy, developed a sudden-onset disorder with symptoms similar to Tourette’s syndrome Many of the infected patients claim [...]

Researchers have announced that a wirelessly-programmed implant, which has been successfully tested in human trials, could save patients the pain of daily injections. The trials were run on seven Danish women with osteoporosis, and the implant successfully delivered daily doses of the drug Teriparatide, which stimulates bone formation. Over the course of one month, the [...]

While many people struggle working out a couple of times a week, researchers from McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada, have come up with the exact number to get yourself healthy and stay that way. They basically wanted to find out with how little you could get away with, and still improve your health significantly. They studied [...]

Examining astronauts in need of medical help while in space is about to get a lot easier. Researchers at the European Space Agency developed a head-mounted display for 3D guidance in diagnosing problems and performing surgery. By using a stereo head-mounted display and an ultrasound tool tracked via an infrared camera, CAMDASS merges actual and [...]

Researchers have been designing a wide variety of self-propelled micromotors, many which operate using an oxygen-bubble propulsion mechanism that requires a high concentration of hydrogen peroxide as fuel, which in turn is hazardous at high concentrations, hindering its usefulness in biomedical applications. In a new study, scientists have created a new type of micromotor that [...]

Look around and you’ll probably notice hard plastic somewhere near you, but there’s an invisible enemy hidden within those everyday objects in the form of BPA (Bisphenol A). BPA is one of the building blocks of clear hard plastics, dental sealants, and resins lining food cans, but it also does a pretty good job of [...]