Messenger
implants to help your doctor plan his treatment soon?
What if your doctor can implant an electronic device in your
body that informs him about what is happening inside your body for best-suited
treatments? Researchers have now developed electronic devices that become soft
when implanted inside the body and can deploy to grip 3D objects such as large
tissues, nerves and blood vessels.
‘These biologically adaptive, flexible transistors can
change shape and maintain their electronic properties after they are implanted
in the body,’ said Jonathan Reeder, a graduate student in materials science and
engineering at University of Texas at Dallas. You need the device to be stiff
at room temperature so the surgeon can implant the device, but soft and flexible
enough to wrap around 3D objects so the body can behave exactly as it would
without the device. ‘By putting electronics on shape-changing and softening
polymers, we can do just that,’ Reeder added. Shape memory polymers developed
by Walter Voit, an assistant professor of materials science and engineering and
mechanical engineering, are key to enabling the technology. The polymers
respond to the body’s environment and become less rigid when they are
implanted.
In addition to the polymers, the electronic devices are
built with layers that include thin, flexible electronic foils. The Voit and Reeder
team fabricated the devices with an organic semiconductor but used adapted
techniques normally applied to create silicon electronics that could reduce the
cost of the devices. The rigid devices become soft when heated. Outside the
body, the device is primed for the position it will take inside the body. ‘The
next step is to shrink the devices so they can wrap around smaller objects and
add more sensory components,’ Reeder noted. The research is now available
online on the journal Advanced Materials’ website.
Source: www.thehealthsite.com
15.05.2014
Canadians
top drinkers, Indians not far behind: WHO
The bubbly flows freely among Canadians and Americans. In a
latest survey released by the WHO, Canadians are drinking more alcohol than
most of the rest of the world – followed by Americans. Drinking is also going
up in India. ‘The amount of drinking around the world is going up, especially
in India and China, where incomes are rising and alcohol marketing is active,’
the report noted. Americans drink 7.5-9.9 litres of alcohol per person per year
while Canadians gulp down more than 12.5 litres each as do Russians and
Australians, the data revealed.
Africans do not drink as much as Americans and residents of
Islamic countries drink the least of all. Worldwide, almost a quarter (24.8
percent) of all alcohol consumed is in the form of unrecorded alcohol, the
World Health Organisation (WHO) report said. Unrecorded alcohol is
alcohol made at home, alcohol meant for other purposes (like medical) or
smuggled. Around the world, just over half of recorded alcohol intake is in the
form of spirits.
Next comes beer, accounting for about 35 percent of
consumption, and 55 percent of drinking in WHO’s Americas region.
Overall, wine consumption comprises just eight percent of global consumption.
The WHO report also took a look at how drinkers drink and what that means for
their health risk. ‘Alcohol consumption also contributes to about 10
percent of the disease burden due to tuberculosis, epilepsy, haemorrhagic
stroke and hypertensive heart disease in the world,’ the report added. Drinking
with meals or drinking daily or nearly daily presented the least health risk to
the drinker, the report said.
Source: www.thehealthsite.com
15.05.2014
If you walk in
the footprints of others, you wont make any of your own
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