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DENA HEADLEE: Imagine a bandage that can detect early tissue
problems resulting in bedsores long before there are any
visible signs of damage. Each year, bed sores affect an
estimated 2.5 million people in the U.S. That's why National
Science Foundation-funded engineers at the University of
California-Berkeley are developing a "smart bandage."
A thin, flexible film outfitted with an array of dozens of
electrodes. A very small current discharged between the
electrodes creates a map of the state of the bedsore underneath
the bandage. By monitoring the electrical changes that occur
when a healthy cell starts to die, the team is able to detect
damage before there are any visible signs.
MICHEL MAHARBIZ: We set out to create a type of bandage that
could detect when bedsores are forming...before they are fully
formed. Before the bedsores beginning to show itself even
the area turning pink or showing maybe that something would
happen, we can detect some electrical change in the tissue.
DENA HEADLEE: The team says the system can be miniaturized to
fit into a pen thermometer and sees it being carried around by
nurses for spot-checking target areas on a patient, or being
incorporated into a wound dressing to regularly monitor
how it's healing. The team says the Smart Bandage may provide an
easy early-warning system before permanent damage occurs.
Our brain sees familiar words as snapshots rather than individual
letters. That's the finding from Georgetown University
researcher, Maximilian Riesenhuber. He says that
neurons in a small part of the brain called the visual word
form area respond differently to real words, like "turf", rather
than nonsense ones, such as "turt". Our brain remembers how
the whole word looks, using something like a visual
dictionary. The National Science Foundation-funded study involved
asking adult participants to learn a set of 150 novel words.
Using a specific functional magnetic resonance imaging
technique, the team found that the visual word form area
changed as the participants learned the nonsense words.
After training, the neurons responded to them as if they
were real words. The team says this is the first study of its
kind to show how neurons change their tuning with learning
words, demonstrating our brain's flexibility. The visual word
form area ignores how the words sound, just how the letters of
the word look together. The team says this research could
lead to ways to help people with reading disabilities.
At Vanderbilt University, a team of mechanical engineers has
discovered a way to use magnets to make minimally invasive
surgery even easier, with fewer incisions. Using magnets
outside the patient's body, the National Science
Foundation-funded team's technique guides small surgical
devices within the abdomen. Today, simple abdominal surgery
needs three to five incisions.
PIETRO VALDASTRI: So this would reduce the number of incisions
required for adults down to a single incision and also will
provide the very large workspace for the surgeon to be effective.
DENA HEADLEE: The fountain-pen-sized device acts
as a retractor, moving organs out of the way when needed
during an operation. The larger external unit placed on the
patient's stomach, not only delivers more power to internal
robotic surgical tools, but allows better positioning within
the abdomen than the current "tools on a stick" method
permits. Researchers are taking energy to new heights. Altaeros
Energies is developing a balloon that can lift a wind turbine to
heights of 2,000 feet. The novel Buoyant Airborne Turbine
or BAT hovers higher than current tower mounted wind
turbines to take advantage of more powerful winds. Its
helium-inflatable shell channels wind through a lightweight wind
turbine, generating more than twice the energy of a
tower-mounted turbine. The first model will provide enough
quick, affordable, electricity for a small rural community, or
about a dozen American homes. It can also be outfitted with
Internet and sensory equipment alongside the turbine to provide
additional services to customers.
With funding from a National Science Foundation's Small
Business Innovation Research Grant, the BAT can be installed
in 24 hours, substantially reducing the cost of energy and
time to reach customers' energy needs. Altaeros CEO Ben Glass
hopes to deploy the BAT in the future alongside first
responders in emergency situations when access to an
electric grid is unavailable. The team feels this technology
has the potential to avoid many of the key challenges facing
traditional wind turbines.
For more information about these stories, visit us at NSF.gov.
This is NSF Science Now, I'm Dena Headlee.
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