Smartphones are revolutionizing medicine

Smartphones are revolutionizing the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses, thanks to add-ons and apps that make their ubiquitous small screens into medical devices, researchers say.

"If you look at the camera, the flash, the microphone... they all are getting better and better," said Shwetak Patel, engineering professor at the University of Washington.

"In fact the capabilities on those phones are as great as some of the specialized devices," he told the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) annual meeting this week.

Smartphones can already act as pedometers, count calories and measure heartbeats.

But mobile devices and tablets can also become tools for diagnosing illness.

"You can use the microphone to diagnose asthma, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder)," Patel said.

"With these enabling technologies you can manage chronic diseases outside of the clinic and with a non-invasive clinical tool."

It is also possible to use the camera and flash on a mobile phone to diagnose blood disorders, including iron and hemoglobin deficiency.

"You put your finger over the camera flash and it gives you a result that shows the level of hemoglobin in the blood," Patel said.

An app called HemaApp was shown to perform comparably well as a non-smartphone device for measuring hemoglobin without a needle. Researchers are seeking approval from the US Food and Drug Administration for its wider use.

Smartphones can also be used to diagnose osteoporosis, a bone disorder common in the elderly.

Just hold a smartphone, turn on the right app in hand and tap on your elbow.

"Your phone's motion picture sensor picks up the resonances that are generated," Patel said.

"If there is a reduction in density of the bone, the frequency changes, which is the same as you will have in an osteoporosis bone."

Such advances can empower patients to better manage their own care, Patel said.

"You can imagine the broader impact of this in developing countries where screening tools like this in the primary care offices are non-existent," he told reporters.

"So it really changes the way we diagnose, treat and manage chronic diseases."

Lower costs

Mobile smartphone devices are already helping patients manage cancer and diabetes, says Elizabeth Mynatt, professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

"Someone who is newly diagnosed with diabetes really needs to become their own detectives," she said.

"They need to learn the changes they need to make in their daily lifestyle."

For women newly diagnosed with breast cancer, researchers provided a tablet that allows them real-time access to information on the diagnosis, management of their treatment and side effects.

The technique also helps patients who may not be able to travel to a medical office for regular care, reducing their costs.

"Our tool becomes a personal support system," Mynatt said. "They can interact to get day-to-day advice."  Research has shown this approach "changes dramatically their behavior," she added.

"The pervasiveness of the adoption of mobile platform is quite encouraging for grappling with pervasive socio-economic determinants in terms of healthcare disparities."

A growing number of doctors and researchers are turning to smartphones for use in their daily work, seeing them as a useful tool for managing electronic health data and figuring out the most effective clinical trials, said Gregory Hager, professor of computer science at Johns Hopkins University.

Clinical trials currently cost around $12 million to run from start to finish, he said.

"The new idea is micro-randomized trials, which should be far more effective, with more natural data," he said.

Although the costs could be dramatically lower, too, the field is still new and more work needs to be done to figure out how to fully assess the quality and the effectiveness of such trials.

Source: https://phys.org/news

Electrical engineers create tiny but powerful medical devices

Battery-operated medical devices implanted in human bodies have saved countless lives. A common implant, the cardioverter defibrillator, sends a jolt of electricity to the heart when needed, preventing a heart attack or heart failure. While patients' lives are improved by this technology, if the device causes an infection or the battery needs to be replaced, more invasive procedures are necessary.

Mehdi Kiani is seeking a better solution. The assistant professor of electrical engineering in the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Penn State is making the implantable devices smaller, which decreases the chances of infection, and more powerful, eliminating the need to replace the battery.

"We're developing novel wireless power transfer techniques and integrated power managements," said Kiani. "We're working to power these implantable devices wirelessly while keeping their size fairly small—about a millimeter and below, which is quite challenging."

Kiani's work, "An adaptive reconfigurable voltage/current-mode power management with self-regulation for extended-range inductive power transmission," was presented at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco.

The conference, which has only a 30 percent acceptance rate from both industry and academia, is the foremost global forum for the presentation of advances in solid-state circuits and systems-on-a-chip. ISSCC offers a unique opportunity for engineers working at the cutting edge of IC (integrated circuit) design and application to maintain technical currency, and to network with leading experts.

Hesam Sedeghi Gougheri, a doctoral student advised by Kiani, said the work they are doing is an important piece of a bigger technology and can affect various aspects of our lives beyond their medical uses, such as in cell phones and portable computers.

According to Kiani, they are creating an adaptive voltage/current-mode integrated power management that, unlike conventional voltage-based power managements, can reconfigure its structure based on its input voltage to efficiently provide a stable power supply for implantable devices from sub-volts incoming signals. This will allow Kiani and Sadeghi Gougheri to power the device wirelessly and meet their millimeter size goal.

This device, Kiani said, will be able to send signals from different organs so we can learn more about their underlying functional mechanism. For example, implanting such a device in the brain can enhance our understanding about the brain functions and pave the way toward solutions for brain disorders.

Source: https://phys.org/news

5 Lies the World Tells Entrepreneurs

Hard work and persistence are not enough -- true success hinges on another factor (and it's not luck).

It's common knowledge that 90 percent of startups die. So what do the 10 percent have that the 90 percent don’t?

We are taught that succeeding as an entrepreneur is all about working ridiculously harder than anyone else and persisting beyond the challenges. Then, and only then, will you “make it.” That is a big bunch of hooey.

I believe there is one factor above the others that allows for great success: brutal honesty. Unfortunately, we are fed lies in the form of inspirational quotes and fairytale stories about entrepreneurship, which tempt us not to engage in brutal honesty.

What is brutal honesty? Brutal honesty is about being excruciatingly self-aware so that you can hear the real feedback the market is telling you, and correct course before it is too late. This is the true test of entrepreneurship, since tearing down the walls you built with your blood, sweat, tears (and limited funds) is not for the faint of heart.

Here are the top five lies they feed you as an entrepreneur and how to combat them with the right mindset:

1. Listen to the data.

Whether it is Eric Reis’ Lean Startup or the countless other modern entrepreneurial books on agile/lean approaches to building businesses, the emphasis on data can be dangerous. Many entrepreneurs interpret this as logging into your Google Analytics or Mixpanel dashboards, often ignoring underlying assumptions and often simply reinforcing your existing beliefs (i.e. confirmation bias, or reading into data to prove out what you already believe). While data is essential, the data that is most important is the one spit out by your brain, not by the computer. The data on the screen is full of shoddy underlying assumptions. The only way to be brutally honest is to take this digital data and force yourself to create real-world, self-critical human conclusions about what the data means. Without that, you will agile or lean yourself out of existence.

2. Follow your dreams

Am I really going to argue with this? Yes, I am. I completely agree that one must follow their dreams, no matter how crazy and unrealistic they may be, but it is absolutely critical to your success to make an important distinction about which aspect of the dream you will follow. This is the part that takes brutal honesty. In my experience, success tends to follow entrepreneurs who have a wild idea that they want to make happen, but they remain totally open to the specific paths they will take to get to that destination. The difference is “I want to change this industry” vs. “I want to change this industry but it must start with this thing.” Being too specific about the path too early on could be your downfall.

3. Market it and they will come

Many early-stage entrepreneurs try to bulldoze their market with jazzy marketing. This cannot work without brutal honesty. Honesty is about perpetually asking your audience about why they need you and not simply investing money in marketing and believing that your market “will come around.” I’ve seen too many companies run out of capital pouring money into marketing tactics without first listening to their audience. This doesn’t mean that you aren’t being patient with marketing tactics. It just means that you are listening intently to “micro-reactions” from your audience so you can adjustments and optimize for the limited capital you have.

4. Do tons of market research by talking to your potential customers

This is another myth that you are constantly fed by the entrepreneurial expert community. The brutally honest truth is that conducting traditional market research with surveys, focus groups and open-ended conversations, while being helpful in some ways, could actually mislead you to build a business on top of a weak foundation. The reality is that market research requires the power of context. To succeed, you need the brutal truth from your market and the only way to get the real feedback is by trying to pitch a product while asking your audience to pay for it. Only when the product feels real to your audience, will you get the critical feedback you need to succeed. Even if you’re not sure what the product is going to be, you’ve got to “make it real” as early as you can and ask people to pay for it.

5. Luck is a myth.

Also known as “I make my own luck” or “The harder I work, the luckier I get.” All of these statements are false. The concept of luck does exist, but the real word for it is timing. Timing determines if the right door opens exactly when you need it, or the key person walks into your life or if your product resonates with your customer given all the other factors in the world at that time. And despite our best attempts, most often, timing is outside of our direct control. The only thing we can do is to stay alive long enough, with the broad delirious vision of where we want to go, and open tactical plan, and attempt to increase our timing-based probabilities. It is true that “the harder you work, the luckier you get,” but that is because with hard work, you are increasing the probability that your efforts will intersect with opportunity at exactly the right time. It takes brutal honesty to separate mystical notions like “luck” and call it out for what it really is -- the spontaneous intersection of your efforts with the right moments in time.

These are some common myths I’ve come across in popular entrepreneurial and motivational ideology. The core solve for these myths is perpetual commitment to brutal honesty. It is the hardest thing you have to do as an entrepreneur. For example, maybe you’ve spent millions to build a product and now your honest ears are telling you the real market feedback, that you need to rip down all your efforts, and rebuild it (again). Now, will you do this hardest of all hard things -- or will you keep putting money and time into your current product simply hoping that hard work and persistence will change the tide?

That decision means everything.

Source: Ron Shah, founder and CEO of Bizly, an enterprise software company focused on corporate meetings and events.

Device Turns Air Pollution Into Printing Ink

An MIT spinoff company in India is proposing a novel solution to air pollution problems in Asia — turning vehicle exhaust into ink.

It involves attaching a device, called a Kaalink, to the business end of a standard automobile exhaust pipe. The Kaalink filters and captures unburned carbon emitted by incomplete engine combustion. The technical details of the process are secret, but officials at Gravinky Labs, a spinoff company from MIT Media Lab, said the process is largely mechanical and relatively straightforward.

"Our device is designed as a clever fusion of electronic sensors, mechanical actuators and a collection system," company co-founder Anirudh Sharma told Seeker in an email exchange from India. "It is retrofitted to the exhaust pipe of vehicles and mounts through a triangulated screw/clamp-set."

According to tests at Graviky Labs, the Kaalink device can capture up to 93 percent of the emitted pollution from standard internal combustion engines. It takes about 45 minutes of exhaust filtering to produce an ounce of ink.

But how does the captured carbon get turned into ink? Well, that's under wraps too, but Sharma said the captured carbon comes out the other end of the process as a high-quality printing ink that can be sold in both the consumer and industrial markets. The company has a new crowdfunding campaign to refine its development.

Right now, Kaalink devices have to be individually and manually installed by drivers. When the collection apparatus is full, the device can be traded in at Graviky Labs facility in India. Sharma said each unit typically collects carbon for about two weeks of city driving before it needs to be swapped out.

To really be effective, the system needs to scaled up significantly, and supported by more processing facilities in more areas. The company's new Kickstarter campaign, launched today, is structured to provide funds for a gradual roll-out and expansion of the technology.

"At present, we are harvesting and collecting pollution on a small scale in Bengaluru, India," Sharma said. "Currently our collection mechanism involves emptying the units at our own garage."

The Air-Ink system has been in development for more than three years already. In fact, Graviky Labs recently partnered with the popular Asian brand Tiger Beer to launch a proof-of-concept awareness campaign in Hong Kong. Fine art painters and street artists were provided with Air-Ink pens, markers and spray paint, then cut loose to literally make art out of air pollution. The demo video is pretty slick, you can check it out below.

Sharma said that, down the line, the company hopes to radically expand the system, and not just for vehicles, either. Variations on the Kaalink device could potentially be attached to chimneys, smoke stacks and other industrial exhaust systems.

"At this stage, the Kaalink device is still undergoing several rounds of testing and eventual certifications," Sharma said. "We intend to deploy it on cars, trucks and chimneys of various sizes and scales, and help individuals, organizations, and governments capture their own pollution and recycle it."

Source: livescience.com

Robots Could Aid Insects with Pollination Duties

Mini drones sporting horsehair coated in a sticky gel could one day take the pressure off beleaguered bee populations by transporting pollen from plant to plant, researchers said.

Roughly three-quarters of the world’s flowering plants and about 35 percent of the world's food crops depend on animals to pollinate them, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Some of nature's most prolific pollinators are bees, but bee populations are declining around the world, and last month, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service listed a native species as endangered for the first time.

Now, researchers from Japan said they've taken the first steps toward creating robots that could help pick up the slack from insect pollinators. The scientists created a sticky gel that lets a $100 matchbox-size drone pick up pollen from one flower and deposit it onto another to help the plants reproduce.

"This is a proof of concept — there's nothing compared to this. It's a totally first-time demonstration," said study leader Eijiro Miyako, a chemist at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science in Tsukuba, Japan. "Some robots are expected to be used for experiments in pollination, but no one has tried yet."

A happy accident

The key innovation of the new study, published today (Feb. 9) in the journal Chem, is the so-called ionic liquid gel, but according to Miyako it was more down to luck than design. The gel was actually the result of a failed attempt to create electrically conducting liquids and had sat forgotten in a desk drawer for nearly a decade.

But after eight years, it still hadn't dried out, which most other gels would have done, and was still very sticky, Miyako said. Fortunately, this discovery coincided with Miyako watching a documentary that detailed concerns about insect pollinators.

 "I actually dropped the gel on the floor and I noticed it absorbed a lot of dust, and everything linked together in my mind," he told Live Science.

The gel has just the right stickiness, meaning it can pick up pollen but is not so adhesive that it won't let the grains go.

The scientists next tested how effectively the gel could be used to transport pollen among flowers. To do so, the researchers put droplets of the material on the back of ants and left the insects overnight in a box full of tulips. The next day, the scientists found that the ants with the gel had picked up far more pollen grains than those insects that lacked the sticky substance.

In a side experiment, the researchers found that it was possible to integrate photochromic compounds, which change color when exposed to UV or white light, into the gel. Scientists stuck this material onto living flies, giving the bugs color-changing capabilities. This, Miyako said, could ultimately act as some kind of adaptive camouflage to protect pollinators from predators.

Real solutions?

But while improving the ability of other insects to pollinate flowers is a potential solution to falling bee numbers, Miyako said he was not convinced, and so began to look elsewhere. "It's very difficult using living organisms for real practical realizations, so I decided to change my approach and use robots," he said.

The hairs that make insects like bees fuzzy are important for their role as pollinators, because the hairs increase the surface area of the bees' bodies, giving pollen more material to stick to. In order to give the smooth, plastic drone similar capabilities, the scientists added a patch of horsehair to the robot's underside, which was then coated with the gel.

The researchers then flew the drones to collect pollen from the flowers of Japanese lilies and transport this pollen to other flowers. In each experiment, the researchers made 100 attempts at pollinating the flower, achieving an overall success rate of 37 percent. Drones without the patch of hair, or with uncoated hair, failed to pollinate the plants.

Miyako said there are currently limitations to the technology, because it is difficult to manually pilot the drone. However, he added that he thinks GPS and artificial intelligence could one day be used to automatically guide robotic pollinators.

Before these robo-bees become a reality, though, the cost of the drone will have to come down drastically and it's 3-minute battery life will need to improve significantly, Miyako said. But he added that he is confident this will happen eventually.

Dave Goulson, a professor at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, said he sees the intellectual interest in trying to create robot bees, but he's skeptical  about how practical they are and worries about distracting from more vital pollinator conservation work.Goulson specializes in the conservation of bumblebees but was not involved with the new research.

In a blog post, he wrote that there are roughly 3.2 trillion bees on the planet. Even if the robo-bees cost 1 cent per unit and lasted a year, which he said is a highly optimistic estimate, it would cost $32 billion a year to maintain the population and would litter the countryside with tiny robots.

"Real bees avoid all of these issues; they are self-replicating, self-powering and essentially carbon-neutral," Goulson wrote in the post. "We have wonderfully efficient pollinators already. Let's look after them, not plan for their demise."  

Source: livescience.com