Posts tagged technology
Articles and news from the latest research reports.
Home-Based Assessment Tool for Dementia Screening
Georgia Tech researchers have created a tool that allows adults to screen themselves for early signs of dementia. The home-based computer software is patterned after the paper-and-pencil Clock Drawing Test, one of health care’s most commonly used screening exams for cognitive impairment.
“Technology allows us to check our weight, blood-sugar levels and blood pressure, but not our own cognitive abilities,” said project leader Ellen Yi-Luen Do. “Our ClockMe System helps older adults identify early signs of impairment, while allowing clinicians to quickly analyze the test results and gain valuable insight into the patient’s thought processes.”
Georgia Tech’s ClockMe system eliminates the paper trail and computerizes the test into two main components: the ClockReader Application and the ClockAnalyzer Application. Click here to see a video demo.
The New Medicine: Hacking Our Biology is part of the series “Engineers of the New Millennium” from IEEE Spectrum magazine and the Directorate for Engineering of the National Science Foundation. These stories explore technological advances in medical inventions to enhance and extend life.
You, robot?
Technology and regulation: A research project considers how the law should deal with technologies that blur man and machine
SPEAKING at a conference organised by The Economist earlier this year, Hugh Herr, a roboticist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, described disabilities as conditions that persist “because of poor technology” and made the bold claim that during the 21st century disability would be largely eliminated. What gave his words added force was that half way through his speech, after ten minutes of strolling around the stage, he unexpectedly pulled up his trouser legs to reveal his bionic legs, and then danced a little jig. In future, he suggested, people might choose to replace an arthritic, painful limb with a fully functional robotic one. “Why wouldn’t you replace it?” he asked. “We’re going to see a lot of unusual situations like that.”
Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Tufts University say they have invented functional electronic implants that can dissolve after programmable time periods. To demonstrate the system, which could aid in healing during the first few crucial days after an operation, they implanted one in a rat. It created a temporary temperature increase to sterilize a wound, and then it dissolved after 15 days. The researchers reported the development this week in the journal Science.
Biomedical researchers are turning to the idea of “programmable degradation” because it is difficult to develop materials that remain compatible with human tissue over the long term. Medical implants or drug-delivery systems that do their work and then disappear are ideal. To develop the electronic implants, the researchers encased them in silk. That material’s characteristics, particularly its crystallinity, can be adjusted so that its degradation time can be anywhere from seconds to years.
The electronics inside the silk were based on nanometers-thick sheets or ribbons of silicon, called silicon nanomembranes. The materials have been previously used to make experimental transistors, diodes, complementary logic devices, and photocells for flexible surfaces. Whereas a conventional silicon wafer or a chip would take about a thousand years to dissolve in biofluids, says John A. Rogers, who led the research at the University of Illinois, a nanomembrane is gone in a couple of weeks.
Robots paint hotel guests’ sleep patterns
Global hotel chain Ibis is transforming the nightly tosses and turns of its guests into works of modern art, painted by robots.
"Our masterpiece is to make your sleep a true work of art," the promotional video gushes, after putting a far more interesting point to viewers: "What does sleep look like?" To find out, the budget chain is installing thin grids covered in 80 heat, pressure and sound sensors on mattresses in select guestrooms, kicking off on 13 October in Paris. Data gathered by the sensors will be fed wirelessly throughout the night to the studio, where it is then fed through an algorithm that converts information on a guest’s movement, sound and temperature into colour and movement.
This video shows the robot, much like an assembly line arm, reacting in sequence, tracing acrylic paints onto a black canvas in a visual and physical interpretation of sleep cycles and patterns.
Only 40 participants can take part — anyone who wants to try it out can enter a competition on the Ibis Facebook page. When the project is wrapped up in Novemeber there will be an online gallery of the artworks and guests will get an original to take home.
Parkinson’s could be detected by telephone call
A simple telephone call could help spot the early signs of Parkinson’s disease by tracking subtle changes in patients’ voices years before more severe symptoms emerge, researchers claim.
New technology being developed in America analyses tremors, breathiness and other weaknesses in people’s voices which are believed to be one of the condition’s earliest symptoms.
Experts at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology claim that their computer programme can pick out Parkinson’s sufferers with 99 per cent accuracy simply by analysing their speech.
Dr Max Little, a British researcher who is leading the initiative at MIT, now hopes to determine whether the same results could be produced from a patient speaking over the telephone.
By recruiting Parkinson’s patients and health volunteers to take part in a three-minute telephone call where they will say “ah”, speak some sentences and answer a few questions, he said the system could be programmed to diagnose people remotely, allowing earlier treatment.
He said: “Science tells us voice impairment might be an early sign of Parkinson’s. It sounds counterintuitive as Parkinson’s is a movement disorder but the voice is a form of movement.
"Neurologists look at changes in the ability to move, which is done with the limbs, but we are looking in the vocal organs – the sounds that come out of the mouth. We are fairly confident we can detect the disease over the telephone."
Concordia student collaborates with Australian neuroscientist to create music based on raw emotions
What does anger sound like? What music does sorrow imply? Human emotion is being given a new soundtrack thanks to an exciting new collaboration between art and neuroscience.
Concordia University researcher Erin Gee is taking feelings to a new level by tapping directly into the human brain, delivering music powered purely by the human body and its emotions. Using data collected from physiological displays of emotion, Gee is creating a software and hardware system that incorporates a set of experimental musical instruments that will perform a symphony of sentiments.
This research could have significant therapeutic benefits for those who have difficulty expressing emotion. Individuals with autism disorders, for example, often struggle to understand the emotions of others. Gee’s robotic technology could be used to teach them how to identify feelings by externalising and exaggerating them into such forms as music.
A robot developed by Computer Science Ph.D. candidate Justin Hart GRD ’13 at the Social Robotics Lab may pass a landmark test by recognizing itself changing in a mirror.
Self-awareness, the ability to recognize oneself as distinct from one’s surroundings, is a mark of higher-level cognitive skills. This test was first developed to test the presence of self-awareness in animals, and requires the subject to recognize a change in its appearance by looking at its reflection.
In the mirror test, developed by Gordon Gallup in 1970, a mirror is placed in an animal’s enclosure, allowing the animal to acclimatize to it. At first, the animal will behave socially with the mirror, assuming its reflection to be another animal, but eventually most animals recognize the image to be their own reflections. After this, researchers remove the mirror, sedate the animal and place an ink dot on its frontal region, and then replace the mirror. If the animal inspects the ink dot on itself, it is said to have self-awareness, because it recognized the change in its physical appearance.
Only a few species of animals, including chimpanzees, bottlenose dolphins, magpies and elephants, have passed the test.
An artificially intelligent virtual gamer created by computer scientists at The University of Texas at Austin has won the BotPrize by convincing a panel of judges that it was more human-like than half the humans it competed against.
A 30cm (1ft) snake slowly moves through the body of a man on a spotless table, advancing its way around the liver. It stops, sniffs to the left, then turns to the right and slithers behind the ribcage.
This is a medical robot, guided by a skilled surgeon and designed to get to places doctors are unable to reach without opening a patient up. It is still only a prototype and has not yet been used on real patients - only in the lab. But its designers, from OC Robotics in Bristol, are convinced that once ready and approved, it could help find and remove tumours.
The mechanical snake is one of several groundbreaking cancer technologies showcased at previous week’s International Conference on Oncological Engineering at the University of Leeds.