Tag: Mobility

Drinking water can be continuously filtered from brackish water. People whose kidneys no longer clean their blood must undergo dialysis every 2-3 days, a trying 4-6 hour process which also creates large amounts of fluid waste. A research team from South Korea is aiming to change this with its wearable device for peritoneal dialysis. Here, dialysis fluid is introduced...

Call of nature? Say it with flowers. For people with limited mobility, however, toilet trips can be challenging, even in built-up areas. And it’s trickier still at festivals, concerts or during times of crisis or natural disaster. Which is why a California-based startup is converting vans into mobile toilets which organisations can hire - with caregivers included. Accessed by...

Dragonflies offer a blueprint for treating sprains. Healthy cartilage, meanwhile, is important for knee and hip joints - but once damaged it can’t heal of its own accord. Enter a US research team and its new biopaste made from a special bioactive peptide and modified hyaluronic acid. When injected into damaged cartilage, the paste morphs into a structured growth...

Thanks to innovative lung models, testing new medication on animals could soon be ancient history. Human lungs are usually examined by X-ray or ultrasound scans. But now a Canadian startup is working on a modern, mobile solution. Around 120,000 ultrasound clips were analysed, with 270,000 individual images extracted, each annotated with details on healthy and sick tissue and with...

An electric one-seater offers people with limited mobility freedom of movement at the airport. But what if steering is impossible? Enter a Canadian startup which has developed smart earbuds for people with a range of disabilities. Integrated gyroscopic and muscle and brainwave sensors capture the smallest head movements made by the wearer. Like a language, these micro-gestures - a...

New schools are being built from old plastic; new chipboard from the waste from cocoa crops. Now, two graduates from Denver University want to do something about the 80 million used tyres residing nearby. They have reversed the thermoplastic process by which rubber is made into synthetic plastic. During the so-called devulcanization process, toxins and sulphur components are broken...

Maintaining a low room temperature can reduce MS symptoms. During chemotherapy, meanwhile, a cool head can - literally - help prevent hair loss. The blood vessels under the scalp constrict in the cold, meaning they are reached by fewer chemicals. Minimising damage to the roots. Hair loss is one of the most feared side-effects associated with chemo, and existing...

Seawater provides for nomads and makes lamps shine bright. Miniature wind turbines in the ocean are equally productive. A Swedish company is using waves of 50 cm and higher to generate electricity. For environmental reasons, floating elements are attached to old jetties or breakwaters, and then connected with hydraulic pistons. The biodegradable liquid in the pistons is compressed by...