Apple Inc recently introduced a new Apple Watch that monitors blood oxygen, kicking off a fall product line-up for a holiday shopping season that will be unlike any other due to Covid-19. Apple was expected to update several products including iPads and headphones at an event recently broadcast from its Cupertino, California, headquarters. Its biggest seller - the iPhone - is expected to be announced next month after executives have said its launch will be delayed by several weeks because…
Researchers at the City University of Hong Kong have developed a face mask containing laser-induced graphene that can kill bacteria and has demonstrated potential in deactivating coronaviruses. The graphene layer has antibacterial properties and can generate heat when exposed to sunlight, which may underlie its ability to deactivate coronaviruses. The researchers hope that such masks could help to reduce viral transmission and infection during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Face masks are an important part of our arsenal in the fight…
Soft exosuits that provide assistive force during movement could be a game changer for patients with mobility issues. Such devices can help enhance rehabilitation and assist patients while they perform everyday tasks. The idea with such technology is that the soft suit feels almost like a piece of clothing and applies force gently and evenly to affect natural movement. This latest suit, the ReStore exosuit from ReWalk Robotics, has been FDA cleared for use in patients who have experienced a stroke…
The pupil of the eye allows light to reach the retina, and a number of vision disorders are related to irregularities in the iris that surrounds the pupil. People with aniridia, for example, have some or all of the iris missing, exhibiting a large pupil that results in unfocused vision. Now, a collaboration between Imec, a Belgian research institution, Ghent University, Spain’s Instituto de Investigación Sanitaria Fundación Jiménez Díaz, and Holst Center in The Netherlands, has led to the development…
Robotic surgical assistants, such as the da Vinci systems from Intuitive Surgical, are now routinely used during laparoscopic procedures to improve operative precision, flexibility, and to manipulate multiple tools at once. Such devices can be quite complex inside and so they tend to be quite large, often taking up much of the space of an operating room. Moreover, they are still too cumbersome to operate on particularly fragile tissues and smaller anatomical structures. Now, a pair of researchers from Harvard’s…
