In the experiment weights were dropped on lab rats' heads (ouch) to cause the brain injury. Some of the rats were treated with PEG shortly after the injury (within 2-6 hours), or received a placebo treatment.

The scientists found that the rats that were given intravenous PEG within 4 hours after brain injury had a better recovery than the less fortunate rats. The material works by helping neurons "seal up" leaky membranes.

If further studies prove to be successful we could soon see PEG being carried in ambulances for immediate use in head trauma victims.

Read more in Nature here...

Article abstract...

Image: jesusali

A custom prosthetic was made for Hope using a molded body piece attached to hinged model airplane wheels. The device allows her to turn, lie down, and propel herself forward easily using her hind legs.

Before the prosthetic Hope had to move around by hopping. Puppy healthcare experts were worried that this would soon damage her bones and internal organs. Hope's only concern now will be running/rolling away from her innumerable instant-fans.

Read the full story here...

(Hat Tip: Gizmodo)

To set up your personal exposure timer, enter the SPF of the sunscreen you have on, and your skin type (ranging anywhere from "alabaster" to "distinctly pigmented"). Now when out in the sun hit the UV button , and the UV sensor will detect the current UV level. Now you can sizzle at ease knowing that your monitor will beep when it's time for you to set yourself on a cooling rack.

Product page: Personal UV Monitor with Exposure Timer ...

Check out the user manual here...

(Hat tip: Gizmodo)

Designed for maximum ease of use, Zebra's newest patient I.D. solution combines the small-footprint HC100(TM) thermal printer and easy-to-load cartridges containing Zebra's Z Band(R) direct thermal wristbands -- the only antimicrobial coated wristbands currently available in the market. In contrast to many laser solutions, the HC100 Patient I.D. Solution generates individual wristbands on demand. There is no need for staff to load labels into a special tray, print the labels, attach them to wristbands and apply laminate coatings, resulting in less waste and lower costs.

Featuring a smart card that optimizes print intensity and automatically calibrates for band size, the patient I.D. solution facilitates quick and accurate scanning at the point of care by producing bar codes and text that withstand water, blood, soap and other liquids while remaining smudge-free longer than the average patient stay. The HC100 printer accommodates Zebra's complete line of white and color Z Band cartridges, which are available in a variety of infant, pediatric and adult sizes as well as in both adhesive tab and clip closures. An antimicrobial coating protects Z Band wristbands from MRSA Types II, III and IV, in addition to S. aureus, P. aeruginosa and E. coli -- the leading causes of hospital infections in the United States.

Nothing like a MRSA-free wristband to make your hospital stay more comfortable.

Read the press release or check out the product website...

GE Healthcare, through a collaboration with CenTrak, Inc. of Newton, PA, today announced the availability of a new RFID technology capable of dividing a room or segmenting a bay by creating radio frequency identification (RFID) “virtual walls.” The technology was developed to meet the needs of healthcare providers to track tagged mobile medical equipment down to portion of a single room. This sub-room-level distinction in certain areas of the hospital provides an important enhancement to RFID room-level accuracy.

The Asset Optimization System gives hospitals the ability to accurately locate assets within a monitored area as small as 6’ x 8’, which is the size of a typical small patient bay, whether curtained off or wide open. “Our customers tell us that reliable accuracy, along with cost, are the two most important factors in choosing among current RFID systems,” said Bret Barczak, general manager of Services & Solutions for GE Healthcare. ”Most systems capable of providing higher than room-level accuracy, like ultra wide band, traditionally have been cost prohibitive. The Asset Optimization System allows healthcare providers to create virtual RFID rooms where higher level intelligence, tracking and reporting are more valuable, particularly in places like the OR and ED.”

Product page: InTouch Care ...

Press release: GE HEALTHCARE AND CENTRAK INTRODUCE BED-LEVEL LOCATION TECHNOLOGY TO HELP HEALTHCARE PROVIDERS TRACK TAGGED MOBILE MEDICAL EQUIPMENT ...

The robot places single doses of medication in small plastic bags. Each bag has a bar code that identifies the drug. When the system is fully implemented, the nurse will scan the bar code on the medication bag, along with the bar code on the patient's wrist band. If the computer detects it's the wrong drug or wrong dose, a pop-up warning will appear and the computer will sound an alert.

Hospitals around the country are beginning to use robotics in the pharmacy. Loyola is the first hospital in the Midwest to use the most advanced system of its kind. It's called PillPick,® manufactured by SwissLog Healthcare Solutions.

"We looked at five systems, and this one was the most innovative," said Richard Ricker, administrative director of the pharmacy department, Loyola.

The system is 28 feet long and 13 feet wide. At the front end, a robot arm packages medications in single-dose bags. At the back end, a patient's medication bags are arranged in order of administration and attached to a plastic ring. A card attached to the ring specifies each drug, along with important patient information.

The robot packages 3,200 medications, including tablets, capsules, vials, ampules and suppositories. It works around the clock.

The robot is designed to eliminate the type of serious human error involving Quaid's twins last November. The infants were supposed to receive 10 units per millimeter of the blood thinner Heparin. Instead they received 10,000 units. The 10-unit vials and 10,000-unit vials looked similar, and a pharmacy technician mistakenly placed them in the same drawer.

Product page: PillPick automated unit dose packaging, storage and dispensing system...

Press release: $1.5 Million Robot at Loyola Cuts Risk of Drug Errors...

(hat tip: Medical Quack)

"Our filter for conformers works like a quadrupole mass filter," explains Frank Filsinger, who, as a doctoral student, carried out most of the work. Quadrupole mass filters are used in many laboratories to separate molecules by their mass-to-charge ratio. The apparatus used by the researchers in Berlin sorts the particles in a very similar way, with the difference that they isolate them on the basis of their mass and their dipole moment. Dipole moment is a measure of the strength of a dipole.

The scientists tested their new method on an aminophenol - on two conformers in which the hydroxide group of the molecule is oriented differently. This group consists of an oxygen and a hydrogen atom, and is characteristic of alcohols. Their different orientations in the aminophenol are called cis and trans positions. In the cis version, the hydroxide group points to one side of the molecule, in the trans variant it points precisely to the other side. For this reason, the dipole moment of the cis-aminophenol is approximately three times greater than that of its trans counterpart.

In order to isolate the two conformers with the hydroxide "arm" in different positions, the researchers vaporized a small quantity of the substance and bundled it into a molecular beam. The beam travels exactly one metre in the Berlin researchers’ equipment. In order that the cis and trans versions separate over this distance, Küpper and his colleagues apply electrical fields that exert forces on the molecules: they group four electrodes - live metal rods that form a sort of tube - around the molecular beam. The beam moves through this tube. Alternating voltage runs through two electrodes, causing the positive and negative poles to repeatedly jump backwards and forwards. The direction in which the force of the electrical field acts on the molecules changes accordingly.

The frequency of the alternating field is decisive; that is, the speed at which the poles change places. Different dipoles vary in their response to the alternating field. Finally, at a certain frequency of the alternating field only molecules with a certain dipole moment, or more precisely, only those with a certain mass-to-dipole-moment ratio, reach the end of the apparatus. All the others gradually drift out of the trajectory of the beam.

The researchers working with Frank Filsinger in Berlin not only isolated only one specific conformer in this way. They can even sort the conformers by the amount they rotate. Molecules rotate constantly, but not always at the same speed. There is a measure of the speed of rotation - the rotation quantum number, which increases with the rotational speed of the molecule. However, the dipole of the particle becomes thereby increasingly weaker and the electric field has a weaker effect on it. "We also filter out the molecules in the lowest rotation quantum states," says Küpper. This allows the molecules to be oriented in space particularly well. The researchers hope that, in future, they will be able to get all the particles with arms facing in the right direction moving.

Press release: Casting for molecules

Dr Martin, a materials scientist with UQ's Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, has developed a unique polyurethane coating that is thinner, stronger and more flexible than what is currently available and could lead to better golf balls and condoms.

The secret to his discovery is synthetic nanoparticles – nanoscale disc-like particles –that can be added to conventional thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) to extend its benefits and performance. TPUs are used in everything from surfing leg ropes and rollerblade wheels, to soles on shoes and textiles and fabrics like Lycra.

And while many great scientific discoveries can be attributed to a burning desire to help humankind, Dr Martin's inspiration was much simpler.

“I'm a single-figure golfer and I was getting frustrated with paying a lot of money for balls that only end up getting damaged after a few holes,” Dr Martin said.

“We had been working with these nanocomposites for a while and this just seemed like a natural fit.

“By coating the ball in a thin layer of our new polyurethane it can make them much more scuff resistant.”

While in talks with a golf ball manufacturer now, Dr Martin and his team are also exploring other applications.

“The condom is another example of where our technology might be applied,” he said.

“We could make softer and thinner condoms that allow greater sensitivity and are actually stronger than current ones, while also reducing the risk of allergic response which some people have to latex rubber. We can all see the advantages of that application.”

Not limited to the golf green and the bedroom, Dr Martin said the potential applications for the technology are expanding.

“Wherever polyurethane is used, our technology can be used,” he said.

The university wants to commercialize its nanotechnology via TenasiTech Pty Ltd, a start-up company, whose prospectus you can see below:

Press release: Thinner, stronger and more flexible research...

Tyndall will initially likely try to market the device as an alternative to lasers, particularly in medical equipment. Lasers are far from perfect. They wear out, they create safety problems for people handling them, and they can also produce heat, a problem when you are trying to harvest or examine fluid or tissue samples from a patient. By contrast, these micro LEDs could be placed at the tip of fiber-optic probes or used inside chips designed for examining blood samples without changing the state of the materials it is studying.

Details about µLEDs, taken from the technology page at Tyndall:

The microLED (µLEDs) has been developed as a next generation source for miniature lighting applications. Based on free standing GaN the microLED has a number of excited new features. At present the Photonics Sources Group is optimising the device structure to best suit the needs of industry. We are eager to produce customer-specific prototypes, under an EI funded project.

Advantages include:

• 10 fold reduction in the active light emitting layer.
• Minimal power consumption
• Optimum extraction efficiency (up to 8 time more efficient that conventional LEDs).
• Collimated beam
• Formation of addressable arrays.
• Lowest power optical indicator.
• Colour range: UV – blue – green – yellow – orange.
• Excellent coupling efficiency both glass and plastic optical fibres.

Applications:

Initial applications have been identified in the areas of:
• microsensors,
• microfluidics,
• fibre coupling,
• handheld devices,
• mounted displays (HUD / HMDs)
• Low power visible indicators.

Technology offer and oveview of µLEDs:

More from CNET...

Technology page: MicroLEDs...

So what are the MOFs? The European Science Foundation explains:

The materials called MOFs (Metal Organic Frameworks) represent one of the biggest breakthroughs in solid state science whose potential is only just being realised, according to the ESF workshop convenor Gérard Férey. “The domain is currently exploding, and there are so many potential applications that it is difficult to decide how to prioritise them. The only limit is our imagination,” said Férey.

There is no doubt though that the first big application of MOFs - storage of gases - will be highly important, given the urgency of developing alternatives to fossil fuels for automobiles. “For hydrogen storage, MOFs are already used, and many carmakers have these products in prototypes,” said Férey.

MOFs are porous materials with microscopic sized holes, resembling honeycombs at molecular dimensions. This property of having astronomical numbers of tiny holes within a relatively small volume can be exploited in various ways, one of which is as a repository for gases. Gas molecules diffuse into the MOF solid and are contained within its pores. In the case of gas storage, MOFs offer the crucial advantage of soaking up some of the gas pressure exerted by the molecules.

This makes hydrogen derived from non-fossil energy sources such as fuel cells, or even genetically engineered plants, potentially viable as a fuel for cars while the alternative of pressurised canisters is not. The key difference is that the amount of gas stored in a conventional cylinder at say 200 atmospheres pressure could be accommodated in an MOF vessel of the same size at just 30 atmospheres, which is much safer.

The porous nature of MOFs enables them to be exploited in quite another way as catalysts to accelerate chemical reactions for a wide variety of materials production and pharmaceutical applications, although this field, as Férey noted, is still in its infancy.

Yet already the field is gaining interest beyond academia from serious companies, with a significant development at the ESF workshop being the presence and support of German chemicals giant BASF. This in turn has provided high endorsement of the field’s potential and has stimulated interest from other companies, according to Férey.

But several challenges remain before this potential can be realised, the first one being to assemble research and development teams with the right body of skills. As Férey noted, many of the skills already exist but the researchers need to expand their horizons and focus more broadly on the big picture beyond their specialised domains.

There is also the technical challenge of learning first how these materials are formed, and then applying the knowledge to design MOFs matched to specific requirements. MOFs are crystalline solids that form in highly regular patterns from solutions, just as salts and sugars do. Researchers need to learn how to manipulate the starting conditions to obtain just the crystalline composition and arrangement they want.

ESF: Novel organic metal hybrids revolutionise materials science and chemical engineering ...