MIT Develops Needle less Injection

One of the commonest phobia of the public to the doctor's office is getting a shot because it's mostly painful. This phobia might soon become a lot less common if the Jet Injector developed by the MIT researchers finds way to your doctors office.

This device delivers a tiny, high-pressure jet of medicine through the skin without the use of a hypodermic needle. The device can be programmed to deliver a range of doses to various depths.

“If you are afraid of needles and have to frequently self-inject, compliance can be an issue,” says Catherine Hogan, a research scientist in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering and a member of the research team. “We think this kind of technology … gets around some of the phobias that people may have about needles."

Mechanism:

The design is built around a mechanism called a Lorentz-force actuator - a small, powerful magnet surrounded by a coil of wire that’s attached to a piston inside a drug ampoule. When current is applied, it interacts with the magnetic field to produce a force that pushes the piston forward, ejecting the drug at very high pressure and velocity (almost the speed of sound in air) out through the ampoule’s nozzle  as wide as a mosquito’s proboscis.

The speed of the coil and the velocity imparted to the drug can be controlled by the amount of current applied; the MIT team generated pressure profiles that modulate the current. The resulting waveforms generally consist of two distinct phases: an initial high-pressure phase in which the device ejects drug at a high-enough velocity to “breach” the skin and reach the desired depth, then a lower-pressure phase where drug is delivered in a slower stream that can easily be absorbed by the surrounding tissue.

Through testing, the group found that various skin types may require different waveforms to deliver adequate volumes of drugs to the desired depth.

“If I’m breaching a baby’s skin to deliver vaccine, I won’t need as much pressure as I would need to breach my skin,” Hogan says. “We can tailor the pressure profile to be able to do that, and that’s the beauty of this device.”

Advantages:

• Less Pain.
• Controlled exact dose injected.
• Controlled Depth.
• Another advantage of this method of drug delivery over the old hypodermic syringe is that it can reduce the potential risk of accidental needle-stick injuries. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 385,000 accidental needle-stick incidents occur each year among hospital-based health care workers in the U.S.

Source: MIT

A Day In The Internet : Infographic

As we use the internet as part of daily lives have you ever though/wanted or wondered that how many videos are uploaded to youtube in a single day? or How much time everybody spends on Facebook daily? or How many status updates happen? If you have ever thought or wanted to know or just curious just look at the infographic below and get to know even more amazing stuff that happen on internet every single day and how would they compare to the alternatives.


Source: MBA Online

Huawei Ascend D Quad: Release Date, Specs and Price

Huawei Ascend D Quad Features:

The Ascend D quad is Huawei's first true attempt at competing with the android big boys like Samsung, HTC and Motorolla. The device is being billed as the "world's fastest quad-core smartphone" with the company's own K3V2 CPU, clocked at 1.5GHz with 16 GPU cores, powering the unit which is said to be 49 percent faster in purely CPU-powered tasks and uses 30 percent less power than its competitors . It's built around a 4.5-inch IPS+ display rocking a 720p (1280x720 pixels) HD resolution ,330 ppi pixel density, 8 megapixel rear camera, Dolby 5.1 surround sound, support for LTE and an 1,800mAh battery supported by a proprietary energy management software that they claims will last for up to two days. The actual hardware design is similar to Nokia's Lumia 800, with a screen that blends into the device's edges, creating an "infinity feel." Huawei claim the display is sunlight legibility which is awesome.

Huawei Ascend D Quad Specs:

• 1.5 GHz Quad-Core Huawei K3V2 Processor.
• 1 GB Ram.
• 4.5-inch IPS+ LCD 720 x 1280 pixels ( 330 ppi ).
• 8MP Auto-Focus with Dual LED Flash Camera (1080p Video Recording).
• Front Facing 1.3MP Camera (720p).
• Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich OS.
• 8GB Storage with MicroSD up to 32GB.
• microUSB port with MHL.
• Wifi 802.11 a/b/g/n and Bluetooth v3.0.
• 1,800mAh battery.
• Dimensions 129 x 64 x 8.9 mm.
• Weight 178 g.

Huawei Ascend D Release Date and Price:

As of now, there’s no clear info on the phone’s exact date of release. Although it will be made available sometime within the second quarter of this year. The phone will be initially released in China before it gets released in Australia, Asia-Pacific, Europe, Middle East, North and South America. Most importantly, the smartphone will cost 20 to 50 percent cheaper than its high-end competitors.

83-year Old Patient gets her bite back thanks to Worlds First 3D Printed Lower Jaw Implant

The ability to create your own replacement curtain rings, door knobs or even a custom chess set at home using a 3D printer is a great thing indeed . Such advances are certainly impressive but not quite in the same league as those being made in the field of medicine. As an 83-year old patient with a serious jaw infection has become the first person to receive a full 3D-printed titanium lower jaw implant. Amazingly, the combined effort by researchers and engineers from Belgium and the Netherlands is said to have allowed the patient unrestricted mandibular movement within a day of surgery.

Researchers say that the implant's recipient had suffered from the progressive infection for some time, which had caused a large wound on her face. Microsurgical reconstruction was considered as a possible solution, but would have meant long hours on the operating table followed by an extended stay in hospital. Removal of just the damaged bone was also an option but there would have been so little remaining in this case that the jaw could not have functioned properly. It was therefore deemed necessary to remove the entire lower mandible and replace it with an implant.

Prof. dr. Jules Poukens, Prof. dr. Ivo Lambrichts, and Dr. Ingeborg van Kroonenburgh from the Functional Morphology research group of the University of Hasselt's BIOMED research institute worked with Dr. Ir. Michäel Daenen from the Xios University College (Belgium), Prof. dr. Jos Vander Sloten from the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium), Maikel Beerens from Xilloc Medical BV (the Netherlands) and engineers from the Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons of the Orbis Medical Center (the Netherlands) on the design and implementation of the implant. The actual 3D-printing used additive laser melting technology and was undertaken by LayerWise NV of Belgium. Other implant production methods are said to take days before an implant is ready to be used, whereas a 3D-printed implant is ready to go in a couple of hours.

The patient-specific 3D-printed lower jaw was fabricated from titanium powder and weighs approximately 107 g (3.77 ounces), which is a little heavier than its bone equivalent. It was coated with plasma sprayed artificial bone (a hydroxy-apatite bone substitute compound) and sites for fixing future prosthetics were incorporated into the design. The patient underwent surgery in June 2011, where the inflamed mandible was removed and the custom implant slotted in. The contour of the patient's face was then restored. The patient is reported to have shown normal function the day after surgery, although full healing took longer.

Source: University of Hasselt

Azerbaijan Set to Claim The World's Tallest Building

The Azerbaijan Tower would be 3,445 ft (1,050 m) high and form the centerpiece of the Khazar Islands development (Image: Architizer)

The Burj Khalifa, which has held the title of world's tallest building with a height of 2,717 ft (828 m) since its completion in 2010, may have its crown stolen by a new building proposed for an artificial archipelago under construction on the shores of the Caspian Sea southwest of the Azerbaijan capital, Bakou. The proposed Azerbaijan Tower would reach 3,445 ft (1,050 m) into the sky, making it even taller than Saudi Arabia's proposed Kingdom Tower by 164 ft (50 m).

According to News.Az, the Azerbaijan Tower would boast 189 floors and be built by Avesta Consern as part of the Khazar Islands development. The tower would form the centerpiece of the development, which will consist of 41 artificial islands spread over an area of 2,000 hectares (2,942 acres). The tower alone is expected to cost US$2 billion, while the city, which is designed to house one million residents and will contain everything a modern city needs - plus a Formula One racetrack - is estimated to cost $100 billion.

The announcement might come as a bit of a surprise given the current world economic climate.

Avesta plans to begin construction of the Azerbaijan Tower in 2015 with a planned 2018 - 2019 completion date. The entire Khazar Islands are due for completion by 2022.

A video from Avesta showing how the Khazar Islands development will look upon completion can be viewed below.

Source: Gizmag

Tips and Tricks on How to Get More out of Google ( Infographic )

We know people spending hours on google to get the desired search result however using few simple tips can greatly improve the time spent on google looking. The following infographic was made by the folks at HackCollege for student researchers but these tricks can be used by anyone to improve there Google searching skills and saving time. The infographic reminds student researchers that you can use Google as a calculator and unit converter, how to find papers by a specific author in Google Scholar, and basic operators you can use. Here's the full infographic:

(HackCollege)

For the First Time Lab Grown Blood Transfused in Patient

The dependance on donor blood used for all kinds of medical purpose may be decreased now finally thanks to RED blood cells generated in a lab that have been successfully injected into a human volunteer for the first time. Luc Douay, of Pierre and Marie Curie University, Paris, extracted hematopoietic stem cells from a volunteer's bone marrow, and encouraged these cells to grow into red blood cells with a cocktail of growth factors. Douay's team labeled these cultured cells for tracing, and injected 10 billion of them (equalling 2 milliliters of blood) back into the marrow donor's body.

After five days, 94 to 100 per cent of the cells remained in circulation, while after 26 days, 41 to 63 per cent remained - a survival rate comparable to normal red blood cells. The cultured blood cells also gave every indication of being safe to use: they didn't transform into a malignant cell type, for example. Instead, they behaved like normal red blood cells, binding to oxygen and releasing it

This is great news for international health care. "The results show promise that an unlimited blood reserve is within reach," says Douay. The world is in dire need of a blood reserve, even with the rising donor numbers in the developed world. This need is even higher in parts of the world with high HIV infection rates, which have even lower reserves of donor-worthy blood.

Previously a type of synthetic blood was used to save a life but that was derived from cow's blood. The advantage it has that it doesn't require matching and can be stored without refrigeration for upto three years.

The stem cell method has its own pros, though. "The advantage of stem cell technology is that the product will much more closely resemble a red cell transfusion, alleviating some of the safety concerns that continue around the use of the current generations of artificial products," says Cooper.

Douay's next challenge is to scale up production to a point where the cultured blood cells can be made quickly and cheaply in sufficient quantities for blood transfusions. The 10 billion cells his team made wouldn't go very far - a transfusion typically requires 200 times that number. With his existing technology, Douay estimates that a single transfusion would require 400 litres of culture fluid, which is clearly impractical. "We are still a long way from the vision of dropping a couple of stem cells into the broth and making endless units of blood," says John Hess of the University of Maryland in Baltimore.

Douay believes that it may take several years to scale up the technology. Another possibility is to use embryonic stem cells instead, as Lanza did in 2008. "We can generate up to 100 billion red blood cells from a single six-well plate of stem cells," Lanza says.

Samsung Galaxy Note: Release Date, Specs and Price (Update)

After such success of the galaxy lineup for samsung specially the galaxy S and galaxy S2 it is no wonder that samsung wants to enhance the galaxy line up and seeing as the trend is going towards bigger and more powerful smart phones Samsung has announced the Galaxy Note a 5.3-inch handset with a pen for notetaking and drawing. It blurs the line between a phone and a tablet. Already many are regretting buying a galaxy S2 after seeing this phone. At this time Samsung has only officially announced the black color Samsung Note but i expect the company will also release a White Galaxy Note after some time just like they did with the White Galaxy S2.

Galaxy Note Features and Specs:

Samsung Galaxy Note will run Android OS most probably OS v2.3 at the time of release as Android Ice Cream Sandwich v4.0 will not be available at the time of release. It will come with TouchWiz on top of Android thus having seven home screens and a touch optimized interface dubbed "S Pen" designed to take advantage of that pen. These include S Planner, a native calendar and to-do list app, from which you can drag and drop appointments, changing time slots without having to open an entry. S Memo for note-taking, meanwhile, accepts voice, photo, text and handwritten input. Samsung also says that it's releasing S pen SDK to third party developers and it's hoping for more apps for note taking, organizing photos and drawing as well as other things.

Specs:

• 1.4GHz Dual-Core ARM Cortex-A9 processor.
• Mali-400MP GPU
• Samsung Exynos Processor
• 5.3-inch Super AMOLED Display 1280x800.
• 8 Megapixel LED Flash Camera with HD 1080p videos recording Back.
• 2 Megapixel Camera Front.
• LTE and HSPA+.
• Removable 2,500mAh battery.
• Dimensions 146.9 x 83 x 9.7 mm.
• Weight 178 g.

Samsung Galaxy Note Release Date:

According to sources the release date of Samsung Galaxy Note will be Late November 2011 in UK. Rest of the places around the world will probably be getting it around the same time as well however if you are in US looking at how long it took Galaxy S2 to reach there its not sure when it will be available there.

Samsung Galaxy Note Price:

According to the source the Galaxy Note will have an approximate price of £500 ($773) + VAT in UK. So other places around the world will also have a similar price.

Update:


Samsung has just announced the official release date for the Galaxy Note at the Battersea Powerstation in London. The Galaxy Note will start its roll-out from Germany on October 29 with the Netherlands, Belgium, the UK and France following in the next few days. By the end of November most of Europe should have already received the Gingerbread-running tablet-slash-phone.

Samsung also announced that there will be a white version of the Galaxy Note, complete with a white S Pen. The company will also be releasing a bunch of nice accessories for the Note, including a cool-looking leather carrying case.

Nokia Windows Phone Lumia 800 and Lumia 710: Features, Release Date and Price

Nokia has finally announced its first Windows Phone 7-based smartphones at Nokia World 2011 in London, in the form of the Lumia 800 and Lumia 710, both featuring 3.7-inch touchscreen displays and 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm CPUs.


Now lets see each of them individually below.

Nokia Lumia 800

The Lumia 800 is similar to the MeeGo-based Nokia N9 in terms of design. The 800's polycarbonate unibody comes with the same dimensions and curved glass screen coating as the N9, while the main differences are hardware buttons on the Lumia's front (Back, Start and Search) and a physical camera button. 

Features:

• 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255.
• 512 MB of RAM.
• Windows Phone Mango.
• 3.7-inch curved AMOLED ClearBlack display.
• 800 x 480 resolution.
• 8-megapixel camera equipped with Carl Zeiss optics.
• dual LED flash.
• HD 720p 30fps video recording.
• 16GB of built-in memory.
• Injection-molded polycarbonate skin that's designed to optimize antenna function
• 1450mAh battery.
• 13 hours talktime in 2G, 9.5 hours in 3G and 335 hours of standby time.
• 116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1mm

Running Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) with browsing provided by Internet Explorer 9, the Lumia 800 comes with Nokia-specific software including Nokia Drive turn-by-turn free offline navigation with in-car user interface, MixRadio music-streaming app offering channels with "locally-relevant music," as well as Gigfinder, allowing users to search for live local music, share discoveries on social networks and buy concert tickets.


Offered in cyan, magenta and black, the Nokia Lumia 800 is priced at EUR420 (US$584) before taxes. It's scheduled to be rolled out in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the UK this November, as well as in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan by the end of the year. Other markets will obtain the 800 in early 2012.

Nokia Lumia 710

The second Windows-based Nokia arrival, the Lumia 710, comes with a 3.7-inch 800 x 480 ClearBlack TFT display. It will be offered in black or white with choice of black, white, cyan, fuchsia and yellow interchangeable back covers to suite the user's preferences. Smartphone photography enthusiasts can use its 5-megapixel snapper with autofocus, LED flash and 30fps HD 720p video recording.

Features:

• 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255.
• 512 MB of RAM.
• Windows Phone Mango.
• 3.7-inch 800 x 480 ClearBlack TFT display.
• 8 GB Built in Memory. ( No SD slot for expansion )
• 5 megapixel camera with LED flash.
• 30fps HD 720p video recording.
• 6 h 50 min talk time on 2G , 7 h 40 min on 3G and 400 hours of standby time.
• 119 x 62.4 x 12.5mm.
• 1300mAh battery.
• Weighs 126 grams.

As with the Lumia 800, the 710 runs Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango) and comes equipped with Nokia Drive turn-by-turn free offline navigation. The unit is powered via the same 1.4GHz Qualcomm CPU, while it offers less built-in storage at 8GB. When it comes to connectivity, 3G up to HSDPA 14.4Mbps, WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 are available. Equipped with a 1300mAh battery, the smartphone weighs in at 126 grams (4.4 oz) and it measures 119 x 62.4 x 12.5 mm (4.7 x 2.4 x 0.5 in).


Priced at EUR270 (US$375) before taxes, the Nokia Lumia 710 will appear first in Hong Kong, India, Russia, Singapore and Taiwan by the end of the year.

Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 Plus: Release Date, Specs and Price.

Those of you waiting anxiously for Samsung to reveal when their Honeycomb powered Galaxy Tab 7 Plus tablet would hit U.S. shelves can finally chill out. As samsung has announced the release date and price for the Galaxy Tab 7 Plus which is here to succeed the original GALAXY Tab, which pioneered the 7-inch tablet form factor back in 2010.

Features and Specs:

Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus will be featuring Peel Smart Remote TV application. Peel allows users to instantly find and watch their favorite TV shows and discover new shows based on their preferences, all with the tap of a screen. It will be running Android 3.2 HoneyComb OS out of the box with Samsung's very own TouchWiz interface.

Specs:

• 1.2 GHz Dual-Core Processor.
• 1 GB Ram.
• 7-inch 1024 x 600 WSVGA PLS LCD.
• 3 Megapixel LED Camera with 720p Video Recording Back.
• 2 Megapixel Camera Front.
• 21Mbps HSPA+ radio.
• MicroSd Slot.
• 4000 mAh Battery.
• Dimensions 93.6 x 122.4 x 9.9 mm.
• Weighs 345g.

Release Date and Price:

The Wifi only Galaxy Tab 7 Plus 16GB version will be available starting November 13th at select retailers including Best Buy and Amazon for $399 and the 32GB version for $499. Pre-orders will begin October 23rd with select partners.

There’s no mention of the 3G version of Galaxy Tab 7.0 on the site of the seller that brought the news, but the usual practice is the 3G version to come out later for about $100-$130 on top of the Wi-Fi-only edition.

European pricing for the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus in Italy for the 16GB HSPA-enabled version of the tablet will be going for €499.

Ultrasound Used to Heal Bone Fractures By Stimulating Bone Regeneration

Doctors in Scotland are using ultrasound to help patients with severe bone fractures, and finding it speeds recovery time by more than one-third. The ultrasonic pulses induce cell vibration, which doctors say stimulates bone regeneration and healing.

The technology is similar to the type used on pregnant women to image growing fetuses, but it uses a different sound frequency and a different pulse rate, according to the BBC. Patient Gary Denham received the treatment for a shattered ankle he sustained after falling 20 feet. “It's got a wee strap and that goes round where the break was,” he told the BBC.

A water-based gel is applied to a transducer like the type seen above, which then goes inside the strap and stays there for 20 minutes. The patient doesn’t feel anything, but the sound waves penetrate tissue to stimulate cellular activity.

Typically, Denham’s type of injury would take six to 12 months to heal properly — if it does at all — but his foot healed after four months, according to his physician, Dr. Angus MacLean. He said evidence suggests the ultrasound speeds up healing by about 40 percent.

Scottish doctors first developed ultrasound as a diagnostic tool in the 1950s, using adapted sonar technology from Glasgow’s Western Infirmary, the BBC explains. It’s now used commonly for a wide range of diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. But it is only now, 50 years later, that its potential for aiding the healing process is being unlocked.

Apparently the treatment remains fairly expensive ( around £1,000 per patient ! ) , so for now it’s only being used in complex fractures like Denham’s, the BBC says. But as ultrasound devices get smaller and cheaper, It might become a part of regular treatment.

[BBC]

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