Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Implantable device propels itself through bloodstream


There are no doubts that technological advancements have enhanced and developed the eras of biology, anatomy, and medicine. Today’s technological advancements allow researchers and innovators to become creative and further use their imagination. In my opinion, these advancements and developments proved that there is no such thing called “science fiction”. Engineer Ada Poon designed a tiny, wirelessly powered, self-propelled medical device capable of controlled emotion through blood. The device can be implanted or injected into the human body and powered wirelessly using electromagnetic radio waves. The device doesn’t need a battery and doesn’t have cables. Ada Poon said that the device application ranges from diagnostic purposes to minimally invasive surgeries such as, removing blood clots. 

Tuesday, March 27, 2012

A single-pixel wireless contact lens display



A group of researchers from University of Washington and Aalto University designed, built, and tested each subsystem of a single-pixel contact lens display. This contact lens comprises a light emitting diode (LED), an antenna, an integrated circuit (IC) for power harvesting and LED control, and a polymer substrate with electrical interconnects. In their test, the lens was controlled by a remote radio frequency transmitting data from the lens. The new technology projects text and images before the person’s eyes. One of the main current disadvantages; the lens is made of a hard plastic that doesn’t allow the eye to breath, so it cannot be worn for a long time. The researchers noted that their long-term goal is to create a display lens that can be comfortably worn.


  

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Speech-Jamming Gun

Do you wish you have a magical stick that makes people shut-up? Do you feel sometimes annoyed and you wish you can say “be quiet”?

The two Japanese researchers Kazutaka Kurihara and Koji Tsukada, came up with a prototype for a device that makes your wishes come true and makes people shut-up! According to the researchers, scientifically when “we make utterances we not only generate sound as output, but also we utilize sound actually heard by our ears” in our brain. This process called Auditory Feedback and humans’ natural utterances are jammed when this process is artificially delayed.

The researchers used the idea of speech disturbance by Delayed Auditory Feedback to build their device. The developed a system that can impose strong constraint on speech-based discussion by making speech difficult for some people. They focused on two major negative features of human speeches; unavoidability and occupancy.

The portable speech-jamming gun transmits signals via the air in a round-trip manner between the gun user and the target. The device works by aiming and shooting the target to disturb him/her.