Category Health/Medical

Finger Wrap uses Sweat to provide Health Monitoring at your Fingertips

This finger wrap is powered by the wearer’s fingertip sweat—and also monitors levels of glucose, lactate, vitamin C and levodopa in that same sweat. Credit: Shichao Ding

A sweat-powered wearable has the potential to make continuous, personalized health monitoring as effortless as wearing a Band-Aid. Engineers at the University of California San Diego have developed an electronic finger wrap that monitors vital chemical levels—such as glucose, vitamins, and even drugs—present in the same fingertip sweat from which it derives its energy.

The advance was published Sept. 3 in Nature Electronics by the research group of Joseph Wang, a professor in the Aiiso Yufeng Li Family Department of Chemical and Nano Engineering at UC San Diego.

The device, which wraps snugly around the fin...

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Seeing the Future: Zebrafish Regenerates Fully Functional Photoreceptor Cells and Restores its Vision

A microscopic image displaying a field of small, round shapes against a dark background. The shapes are predominantly green. Some shapes have magenta-colored spots or protrusions, creating a mixed pattern of green, white, and magenta. The image is overlaid with a rectangular inset, zooming in on a section of the shapes, where the same color patterns are visible, but in greater detail.
Zebrafish photoreceptor cells stimulated with blue light show correct electrical activity. The picture was taken using the microscope that was custom-built for this study.

Blinding diseases lead to permanent vision loss by damaging photoreceptor cells, which humans cannot naturally regenerate. While researchers are working on new methods to replace or regenerate these cells, the crucial question is whether these regenerated photoreceptors can fully restore vision. Now, a team of researchers led by Prof. Michael Brand at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) of Dresden University of Technology has made an important step forward...

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A Person’s Intelligence Limits their Computer Proficiency More than Previously Thought, say Researchers

man and computer
Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A new study has found that intelligence, in the form of general cognitive abilities such as perception, thinking and remembering, is more important than hitherto thought at predicting a person’s ability to complete common tasks with a PC. The study was published in the International Journal of Human-Computer Studies in August 2024.

“Our research findings are the first clear proof that cognitive abilities have a significant, independent and wide-ranging effect on people’s ability to use a computer. Contrary to what was previously thought, cognitive abilities are as important as previous experience of computer use,” says Aalto University’s Professor Antti Oulasvirta, who studied human-computer interaction extensively with his team.

The findings ha...

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Research cracks the Autism Code, making the Neurodivergent Brain Visible

UVA professor Gustavo Rohde’s technique uses mathematical equations to extract mass transport information from medical images, creating new images for visualization and further analysis. (Rohde Lab, UVA Engineering)

Model grounded in biology reveals the tissue structures linked to the disorder. A researcher’s mathematical modeling approach for brain imaging analysis reveals links between genes, brain structure and autism.

A multi-university research team co-led by University of Virginia engineering professor Gustavo K. Rohde has developed a system that can spot genetic markers of autism in brain images with 89 to 95% accuracy.

Their findings suggest doctors may one day see, classify and treat autism and related neurological conditions with this method, without having to rely on...

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