Medicine

Bleeding internally? Seal it with this DARPA foam

While any soldier dreads the idea of being shot, sustaining an internal abdominal injury from an explosion or other impact can be far worse. Bleeding from wounds that can't be compressed causes some 85 percent of preventible battlefield deaths.

As part of DARPA's Wound Stasis program, Arsenal Medical has developed an injectable polymer foam that expands inside the body to stanch internal bleeding.

The concept of foam growing in the body reminds me of that 1980s B-horror film "The Stuff," but apparently it's effective.

Based on testing in pigs, DARPA says the product can control hemorrhaging in an abdominal cavity for at least an hour, a critical window to get the soldier to a medical facility. … Read more

High-tech camouflage could protect soldiers from ballistic heat

Powerful explosives from fires or roadside bombs produce two near-simultaneous blasts: first, a high-pressure blast that can cause internal injuries, and then a thermal blast that produces temps above 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit and can literally cook skin, according to Robert Lochhead, a professor of polymer science at the University of Southern Mississippi.

He worked with chemists to engineer a high-tech camouflage paint that is waterproof; easy to apply and remove; non-irritating to the eyes, nose, and mouth; and actually reflects -- instead of absorbs, like most face paints -- intense heat.… Read more

Can IBM's Watson help cancer patients?

Patients at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center may receive cancer diagnoses and treatment with the help of IBM's Watson supercomputer by the end of 2013.

Watson would make diagnoses and suggest treatment approaches that take into account individual patient concerns, the Associated Press reported today.

Using its natural-language processing powers, the artificial intelligence system will study textbooks, oncology studies, and medical records if patients give permission. An advisory panel will test its assessments of increasingly complicated cancer cases. … Read more

Better health care via texting in the developing world (video)

Health care can be difficult to access for rural residents in the developing world. San Francisco startup Medic Mobile is working to change that, by providing communications tools to doctors, patients, and community health workers.

SmartPlanet correspondent Sumi Das speaks with Josh Nesbit, the company's CEO, to find out more about how simple text messaging is being used to provide better health care.

This video originally appeared on SmartPlanet with the headline "Doctors use simple texts to deliver better health care in developing world."

Implantable device propels itself through bloodstream

As implantable medical devices become smaller and less power hungry, they are taking on a variety of new roles. What began as largely stationary objects, such as pacemakers and cochlear implants, are becoming small enough to actually pass through our bodies (i.e. in the form of pills) to deliver drugs and perform diagnostics.

Now, a new class of medical devices is emerging that adds a twist to the traditional implant: the devices are so small that they can travel through our bloodstream, not to mention are powered wirelessly via electromagnetic radio waves, according to Stanford electrical engineer Ada Poon.

By moving through the bloodstream, these tiny implants will be able to perform minor surgeries such as removing blood clots, Poon told an audience at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference in San Francisco this week.… Read more

Nifty stem-cell engineering sheds light on Parkinson's disease

Researchers at the University at Buffalo may have taken a significant step toward unraveling the way Parkinson's disease assails the human nervous system--thanks in part to a nifty bit of stem-cell engineering.

Scientists led by physiologist Jian Feng took skin cells from healthy control subjects and people with a particular type of Parkinson's disease and transformed them into a type of primordial cell--technically, an "induced pluripotent stem cell." Such iPS cells, as they're known, can be coaxed into developing as almost any type of cell in the body.

Here, they turned into brain cells. … Read more

Delivering anesthesia via contact lenses

Eye drops are so 1.0. Not only can they be messy and inconvenient to apply, they deliver medicine to treat dryness and other issues in imprecise volumes so quickly that they need to be reapplied every few hours.

And for those applying eye drops after laser eye surgery--when the eyes are especially tender--they can be a real pain.

Which is why researchers at the University of Florida are working to design contact lenses already helpful in protecting the eyes post-surgery that can extend the release time of anesthesia to help with this post-surgery pain.

The trick, chemist Anuj Chauhan … Read more

Spare a little computing power to fight malaria

After IBM's Watson computing system defeated two human competitors on Jeopardy this year, it partnered with the nonprofit Scripps Research Institute to direct the tournament prize money toward finding a cure for drug-resistant malaria.

Now all the team is asking for is a little help from around the globe. It's using the World Community Grid, described as a "supercomputer of the people," to use spare computing power from volunteered PCs.

Since the Grid was set up seven years ago, some 575,000 people in more than 80 countries have donated spare computing power from nearly 2 … Read more

This app helps heal bad burns

Ph.D. student Chris Seaton, who studies computer science at the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom, witnessed firsthand the horrors of serious burns while deployed in Afghanistan, Kenya, and elsewhere during his four years as a captain in the Royal Army Medical Corps.

So with the help of plastic surgeons at the University of Liverpool, Seaton developed Mersey Burns, an app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch that helps reduce errors when treating burn victims.

Mersey Burns has already won an innovation award, and it is set to be featured in the January issue of the Bulletin of the Royal College of Surgeons.… Read more

A vaccine for breast, ovarian cancers?

Could a shot in the arm help destroy a growing tumor? That concept is looking more and more plausible.

Scientists have been investigating the potential of vaccines to prevent various types of cancer for several years. In 2010, one study found that a single vaccination prevented breast cancer tumors from forming in mice.

A team of researchers at the National Cancer Institute's Laboratory of Tumor Immunology and Biology now is reporting in the journal Clinical Cancer Research that a vaccine might show promise in treating (as opposed to preventing) both metastatic breast cancer and ovarian cancer.

Led by cancer … Read more