Health
Providing EIA diagnosis kits for infectious diseases
Slimming health foods
Nano scale lasers
Here is world's smallest semiconductor laser designed by the researchers at University of California at Berkeley. The light generated is smaller than a single protein molecule. The uses for these range of nano lasers will be astounding, including the biomedical, computing and communication sectors. In the biomedical arena, such devices will be used for manipulating and characterizing DNA molecules. Optical computing will be made feasible and it would probably replace the present chip based electronic circuits, thereby revolutionizing integrated circuit board technologies.
The trick of the technology is that the light beam is being compressed to a few dozens of nanometers by a technique of binding it to the electrons that oscillates at the surface of metals. This interaction between light and electrons is known as plasmons, and up to the present moment, these plasmons only lasted for a fleeting moment, making it impractical to use. The researchers overcame this by pairing a cadmium sulfide nano-wire with a silver surface and insulated from each other by a 5 nanometer gap. This gap however will be brought down to just one nanometer in the future. The researchers' work is detailed in the paper, “Plasmon lasers at deep sub-wavelength scale”, which appears in the journal Nature. Have you got any new ideas to make use of this cutting edge technology?
September 15, 2009.
The doctor is also the builder
Have we been wrong worrying about not sufficient organ donors? It looks like we were wrong. According to development in the field of organ reconstruction work done at the labs, the thought of creating organs is not that impossible. It is today possible to create arteries in vitro and the day when we can create a whole organ is not too far off. The hardware that can do the job is now available. In a joint collaboration between engineering firm Inventec and regenerative medicine company Organovo, a prototype machine called a 3D bio-printer is used to create organs by layering cell by cell construction of tissues. Tissues are build up using regenerated cells in a three dimension fashion, mimicking the original organ pattern by way of a sophisticated micro size printing heads.
Larger organs will be created by placing cells unto a preformed scaffold following a computerized image of the human tissue. The micro sized printer head is used to inject individual cells unto each other just like the building of houses brick by brick. The sophistication of the bio-printer is such that it is able to move its head within micronic dimensions. In this way, a patient’s own cell can be used to construct a whole organ tissue and there will not have such issues like organ rejection. Researchers say that they will be able to do an artery replacement in a heart bypass operation within five years. Complete organ construction is within sight in ten years time. However, organ reconstruction will still be a tedious work but one that can opens up a whole lot of possibilities. One of which is that man may be able to store his own organs for an emergency. And doctors will be architects as well.
December 21, 2009.
You might carry this microscope with you for health reasons!
Aydogan Ozcan, a UCLA professor has invented the world’s smallest microscope. It is specifically designed to perform as part of setup for telemedicine, but will have many other uses due to its size and robustness. Unlike conventional microscopes, the self contained devise, as yet unnamed, uses no lens but instead uses an imaging technology called “LUCAS” – Lens-less Ultra-wide-field Cell Monitoring Array platform based on Shadow imaging. It can image blood and fluid samples and thus is suitable for used as a telemedicine appendage. In areas of disaster, the microscope can be used to test for water qualities without having to bring in sophisticated equipments.
"LUCAS" technology uses light-emitting diodes to illuminate the objects. It generates an array of holographic images which is then captured by a light sensor and analyzed by computers. The beauty of the system is that the unit can be made very robust and could be easily deployed in the field where it is most needed. There is also minimal amount of training on how to use it. Because it could be made in a very small size, the microscope could one day be incorporated in hand-phones for health monitoring. Blood or fluid samples are smeared on a chip which is then slotted into the device. A light emitting diode is used to generate the holographic images. With added parts, the device can also be converted into a differential interference contrast (DIC) microscope.