Russian scientists have developed revolutionary treatment for burns. Experts at the State University in Saratov have invented a unique material based on chitosan which quickly restores the skin after exposure to high temperatures. The innovative product is a bio-polymer fibre, which has been artificially developed using chitosan that is contained in the shells of crustaceans. The unique properties of this substance have long been known to scientists. However, attempts to make a dressing material on its basis have ended in failure until recently. The advantage of this material is unlike an ordinary bandage, it reduces time needed to treat burns by three times and leaves no scars. The nano-bandage soaks up all liquid that discharges during the healing of an injury. There is no need to replace or remove it. It reabsorbs itself. Moreover, this is an excellent antiseptic that destroys microbes in the wound, says chief medical officer at the Saratov Burn Centre Professor Nikolai Octrovsky. “The dressing treats, stimulates, lies on the tissues without adhering. There is no need to replace it and consequently, the patient does not feel any pain caused by the removal of scabs when using ordinary dressing material. This is a new dressing material with unique properties. It is like a cover of seedlings. This greenhouse should preserve heat, light should penetrate into it and the temperature inside should be stable. The dressing material plays a similar role that helps to restore the skin when a wound is bandaged,” Nikolai Ostrovsky said. According to the expert, the substance has been patented and has undergone clinical tests. Its mass production will be launched shortly. The new material aroused great interest among physicians not only in Russia but also abroad. The U.S. has already made offers, while a leading company that produces plasters in Europe, French URGO Company, is holding talks on the production of this material in France. In this case, this will be an international brand,” Nikolai Ostrovsky said. Source: Voice of Russia
Apple’s stock has recently fallen by almost 30%, down from an all-time high of $703 in late 2012. Despite recording phenomenal earnings, Apple investors are becoming sceptical of Apple’s future plans. Apple is losing their gross margin on the products they sell as components become more expensive and competitors in the industry push Apple to lower their prices. A new report has outlined Apple’s plans to introduce a smart watch in 2013 which would help reintroduce high margins into Apple’s product categories, thus satisfying investors. Oliver Chen, an analyst for Citigroup, has told reuters that Apple has a “$6 billion opportunity” where they could recreate the success of the iPod; reinvent a market that already exists and make it desirable to the general public. In 2013, the entire watch industry is expected to generate $60 billion, which would enable Apple to catch 10%, equivalent to a gross profit of $3.6 billion. Margins on watches are also much higher, with some manufactures getting up to 60%; the iPhone currently nets Apple a 55% margin. Apple is reported to have a 100-person team working on their
“iWatch”, which may replace some of the tasks making currently carried out by the iPhone and iPad. Also Apple is considering the ability for the smart watch to place calls, identify the person an incoming call, check map coordinates as well as act as a pedometer and heart-rate monitor. As of right now, Apple has filed almost 80 patents which include the word “wrist”, one of which includes a flexible screen and a battery charged by kinetic energy. Google is currently developing Glass, which will features a small built-in screen which will be viewable in the right eye of the user. However, Glass does not include a 3G radio, effectively chaining it to a smartphone. If Apple included such a radio in their smart watch, they could open up a new brand of “smart” accessory. Jony Ive, Apple’s lead designer, has an interest in watch. Not only has he owned many high-end brands himself, he also took his team to a Nike factory for a tour. Google Glass will be unveiled at the end of 2013/early 2014, while Apple’s inside source is adamant that Apple’s smart watch will be available during 2013, possibly at Apple’s main WWDC event in June. Another problem Apple faces in regards to a watch is design. People are happy to carry around the same smartphone as everyone else, but a watch is even more of a fashion statement. Apple’s one-size-fits-all mentality may not work in the watch industry where consumers may want different types of straps or different materials. Apple may be forced to offer various models, something they do not like doing. Source: Know Your Destiny
On Friday, the names of this year’s winners of the Global Energy Prize were announced in Moscow. They are Russian scientists Boris Katorgin and Valery Kostyuk and UK scientist Rodney John Allam. The awarding ceremony will take place in St. Petersburg, as a part of an international economic forum, which is traditionally held in this city. The amount of the prize, if translated into dollars, is more than $ 360,000. This year, the Global Energy Prize marks 10 years since its foundation. It is an international prize awarded for discoveries and inventions which help to save energy and are at the same time harmless to the environment. Since 2003, scientists from Russia, the US, Germany, France, Japan, the UK, Iceland, Canada and Ukraine have become winners of this prize. This year, all the three winners of the prize are awarded for inventions which have to do with space. Boris Katorgin and Valery Kostyk are awarded for inventing new types of space rocket engines, and Rodney John Allam – for inventing new kinds of rocket fuel. The time when scientific discoveries and inventions were made by individuals has long passed away. Moreover, today, discoveries and inventions, as a rule, appear not as a result of work of one scientific institution, or even several institutions in one country, but as a result of scientists’ international cooperation – and all the three winners acknowledge this. Rodney John Allam says that he would not have made his inventions without cooperation with the Institute of Thermal Physics in the Russian city of Novosibirsk. In an interview with the Voice of Russia, another winner, Boris Katorgin, said: “In fact, I don’t know why the jury chose me personally – I believe that the whole staff of the Energomash company, for which I work, deserves this prize. Our company has been producing engines for rockets and other flying devices for a long time, and they have proved themselves very well.” At present, engines made by Energomash are used not only on Russian space devices, but on some US ones as well. Mr. Katorgin says that his company has already registered 13 patents in the US. Very soon, the Energomash engines will be used in a number of other countries – contracts to that end have already been signed. According to estimates, these contracts may bring an income of about $ 1 bln to Russia. Source: Voice of Russia
London, December 17 (ANI): It can cost you a lot if your mobilephone screen cracks after you accidentally dropped it, but help is at hand. Amazon has invented an airbag for smartphones. The innovative technology makes use of the motion-sensors that are now built into most smartphones to detect when it has entered an airborne state, so that a mini-airbag can be deployed to cushion its fall. Amazon has won a patent for the protective system this week. As well as mobile phones, the technology could be used on electronic readers, including the online retailer's own Kindle, as well as computer tablets and cameras. Amazon's founder, Jeff Bezos, filed the application for a patent himself. The application reads "Prior to impact between a surface and a device, a determination of a risk of damage to the device is made. If the risk of damage to the device exceeds a threshold, a protection system is activated to reduce or eliminate damage to the device." The airbag would draw on data from a mobile phone's built-in gyroscope, camera, accelerometers and other such sensors, according to the patent. Then, if it is determined that the gadget has been dropped, the technology will trigger the release of airbags and could even include air-jets to change its trajectory in mid-air. (ANI). Source: NewsTrackIndia, Image: flickr.com
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted market approval to an artificial retina technology today, the first bionic eye to be approved for patients in the United States. The prosthetic technology was developed in part with support from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The device, called the Argus® II Retinal Prosthesis System, transmits images from a small, eye-glass-mounted camera wirelessly to a microelectrode array implanted on a patient's damaged retina. The array sends electrical signals via the optic nerve, and the brain interprets a visual image. While the Argus II is a major breakthrough in retinal prosthetics, researchers are continuing their research. This third-generation retina chip, itself still very early in the development stage, contains 1,000 electrodes and was developed by Wentai Liu, a professor of bioengineering at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science and his colleagues. Early engineering done by Liu and his team was licensed to Second Sight
for the Argus II Retinal Prosthesis System. The FDA approval currently applies to individuals who have lost sight as a result of severe to profoundretinitis pigmentosa (RP), an ailment that affects one in every 4,000 Americans. The implant allows some individuals with RP, who are completely blind, to locate objects, detect movement, improve orientation and mobility skills and discern shapes such as large letters.The Argus II is manufactured by, and will be distributed by, Second Sight Medical Products of Sylmar, Calif., which is part of the team of scientists and engineers from the university, federal and private
Credit: Wentai Liu, UCLA
sectors who spent nearly two decades developing the system with public and private investment. "Seeing my grandmother go blind motivated me to pursue ophthalmology and biomedical engineering to develop a treatment for patients for whom there was no foreseeable cure," says the technology's co-developer, Mark Humayun, associate director of research at the Doheny Eye Institute at the University of Southern California and director of the NSF Engineering Research Center for Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems(BMES). "It was an interdisciplinary approach grounded in biomedical engineering that has allowed us to develop the Argus II, making it the first commercially approved retinal implant in the world to
restore sight to some blind patients," Humayun adds. The effort by Humayun and his colleagues has received early and continuing support from NSF, the National Institutes of Health and the Department of Energy, with grants totaling more than $100 million. The private sector's support nearly matched that of the federal government. "The retinal implant exemplifies how NSF grants for high-risk, fundamental research can directly result in ground-breaking technologies decades later," said Acting NSF Assistant Director for Engineering Kesh Narayanan. "In collaboration with the Second Sight team and the courageous patients who volunteered to have experimental surgery to implant the first-generation devices, the researchers of NSF's Biomimetic MicroElectronic Systems Engineering Research Center are developing technologies that may ultimately have as profound an impact on blindness as the cochlear implant has had for hearing loss." Although some treatments to slow the progression of degenerative diseases of the retina are available, no treatment has existed that could replace the function of lost photoreceptors in the eye. The researchers began their retinal prosthesis research in the late 1980s to address that need, and in 1994 Humayun received his first NSF grant, an NSF Young Investigator Award, which built upon additional support from the Whittaker Foundation. Humayun used the funding to develop the first conceptualization of the Argus II's underlying artificial retina technology. Since that time, he and his collaborators--including Wentai Liu of the University of California, Los Angeles and fellow USC researchers Jim Weiland and Eugene de Juan, Jr.--received six additional NSF grants, totaling $40 million, some of which was part of NSF's funding for BMES, launched in 2003. BMES drives research into a range of sophisticated prosthetic technologies to treat blindness, paralysis and other conditions. "We were encouraged by the team's exploratory work in the 1980s and 1990s, supported by NSF and others, which revealed that healthy neural pathways can carry information to the brain, even though other parts of the eye are damaged," adds Narayanan. "The retinal prosthesis they developed from that work simulates the most complex part of the eye. Based on the promise of that implant, we decided in 2003 to entrust the research team with an NSF Engineering Research Center," says Narayanan. "The center was to scale up technology development and increase device sensitivity and biocompatibility, while simultaneously preparing students for the workforce and building partnerships to speed the technology to the marketplace, where it could make a difference in people's lives. The center has succeeded with all of those goals." The researchers' efforts have bridged cellular biology--necessary for understanding how to stimulate the retinal ganglion cells without permanent damage--with microelectronics, which led to the miniaturized, low-power integrated chip for performing signal conversion, conditioning and stimulation functions. The hardware was paired with software processing and tuning algorithms that convert visual imagery to stimulation signals, and the entire system had to be incorporated within hermetically sealed packaging that allowed the electronics to operate in the vitreous fluid of the eye indefinitely. Finally, the research team had to develop new surgical techniques in order to integrate the device with the body, ensuring accurate placement of the stimulation electrodes on the retina. "The artificial retina is a great engineering challenge under the interdisciplinary constraint of biology, enabling technology, regulatory compliance, as well as sophisticated design science," adds Liu. "The artificial retina provides an interface between biotic and abiotic systems. Its unique design characteristics rely on system-level optimization, rather than the more common practice of component optimization, to achieve miniaturization and integration. Using the most advanced semiconductor technology, the engine for the artificial retina is a 'system on a chip' of mixed voltages and mixed analog-digital design, which provides self-contained power and data management and other functionality. This design for the artificial retina facilitates both surgical procedures and regulatory compliance." The Argus II design consists of an external video camera system matched to the implanted retinal stimulator, which contains a microelectrode array that spans 20 degrees of visual field. The NSF BMES ERC has developed a prototype system with an array of more than 15 times as many electrodes and an ultra-miniature video camera that can be implanted in the eye. However, this prototype is many years away from being available for patient use. "The external camera system-built into a pair of glasses-streams video to a belt-worn computer, which converts the video into stimulus commands for the implant," says Weiland. "The belt-worn computer encodes the commands into a wireless signal that is transmitted to the implant, which has the necessary electronics to receive and decode both wireless power and data. Based on those data, the implant stimulates the retina with small electrical pulses. The electronics are hermetically packaged and the electrical stimulus is delivered to the retina via a microelectrode array." In 1998, Robert Greenberg founded Second Sight to develop the technology for the marketplace. While under development, the Argus I and Argus II systems have won wide recognition, including a 2010 Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award and a 2009 R&D 100 Award, but it is only with FDA approval that the technology can now be made available to patients. "An artificial retina can offer hope to those with retinitis pigmentosa, as it may help them achieve a level of visual perception that enhances their quality of life, enabling them to perform functions of daily living more easily and the chance to enjoy simple pleasures we may take for granted," says Narayanan. "Such success is the result of fundamental studies in several fields, technology improvements based on those results and feedback from clinical trials--all enabled by sustained public and private investment from entities like NSF." Contacts and sources: National Science Foundation, Source: Nano Patents And Innovation
