Anti Depression Guide

The tiniest chest movements, caused by breathing and even the beating of the heart, can be monitored using doppler radar. Just like road-speed radar systems, this works by bouncing a radio wave off the chest and measuring any change in frequency caused by chest movement.

In theory, the technique could be very useful since it allows a patient to be monitored from a distance without fitting them with ECG leads. It can even record a heartrate through a person's clothing. But the signals can be easily swamped by noise caused by small movements of the patient or of other people around them, for example in a busy hospital ward.

Now Olga Boric-Lubecke, an electrical engineer at the University of Hawaii, US, has found a way to solve such problems.

She and colleagues have developed a radar device with several transmitters and receiving antennas that produce multiple signals that can be picked up and processed in a way that removes any random noise from other sources of movement.

The resulting signals are analysed by a computer to tease apart the various movements of a patient, including their heart beat and breathing pattern.

Read the full heart beat radar patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

3D printers have been around for a few years now. They work by printing a structure in layers, one on top of the other, to form complex 3D shapes. Now James Yoo at the Institute of Regenerative Medicine at Wake Forest University in North Carolina, US, says he can do the same thing with living cells.

Yoo uses a standard inkjet printing mechanism to create layers of viable cells, which can then be built into 3D structures. He says the structures may comprise of several different types of cells, just as conventional image printers use several different colours of ink.

The system could also print dyes to make the structure easily visible and growth factors to encourage healthy development. Yoo says his printer can make almost anything from skin and bone to pancreatic or nerve tissue – an exciting idea with huge potential.

Read the full tissue printer patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

Light-sensitive chips that sit at the back of the eye have great potential to help people with certain types of vision loss. They work by converting light into an electrical signal that can then be fed directly to the brain via nerve cells at the back of the eye.

The eye's lens normally projects an image onto a curved surface called the retina at the back of the eye. This creates problems for light-sensitive chips since they have to be flat.

One way around this is to use a camera outside the eye to record images and send them via a wire to the chip at the back of the eye.

But Armand Tanguay and Patrick Nasiatka at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, US, say a better idea is to implant the camera directly within the eye, but avoiding the retina.

They and colleagues have come up with a design that is small enough to be implanted within the lens of the eye, and takes into account the effect of the cornea on incoming light.

The device transmits images to a chip at the back of the eye, which passes the image signals on to the nerve cells.

Read the full intraocular camera patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist consultant

One property of tumour cells is that they tend to be slightly acidic compared to the rest of the body. This has given Jean Frechet and colleagues at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, US, an idea for a new kind of drug delivery system.

Most materials for drug delivery systems are based on polyesters that gradually break down inside the body, releasing the drug they hold slowly and consistently over time. Instead, Frechet and colleagues has designed a polymer that is synthesized using monomers with bonds that are acid-degradable.

At the body's normal pH, the polymer is stable. But in mildly acidic conditions, like those found in tumours, the drug-carrying polymer breaks down releasing its load into the surrounding tissue.

Read the full acid degradable drug delivery system patent application.

Justin Mullins, New Scientist contributor

The increased use of nanomaterials in everything from consumer goods to medicines highlights the need to understand the toxicity of these substances better. Various nanomaterials such as fullerenes and carbon nanotubes are known to be toxic in cells at high concentrations but nobody quite understands the molecular and cellular mechanisms behind the effects.

Frank Chen, a biologist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Labs in California, US, believes that quantum effects play an important role in the interaction between nanomaterials and the molecular machinery within cells. And now he has built a machine for testing these effects on gene expression.

The machine works by measuring how various biological pathways associated within inflammation and cell death are triggered when biological cells are exposed to nanomaterials.

In tests, Chen says the idea works well and provides a reliable way to measure the toxicity of nanomaterials that would otherwise go unnoticed, and to work out how the material may be doing its damage.

Read the full quantum nanotoxicity patent application.

Justin Mullins

Automated defibrillators that zap the heart to reestablish a rhythmic beat are becoming more common. Many paramedics use them and they are increasingly found in public places too.

But recent research has found that, if a patient's heart has stopped beating for a relatively long period of time, he or or she has a better chance of recovery if cardiopulminary resuscitation (CPR) is first applied to the body to reestablish oxygenated blood flow around the heart.

So the consumer electronics company Philips has designed an advanced defibrillator that tells paramedics whether CPR is needed. The device includes an accelerometer to place on the patient's chest, which also measures how well CPR is being given. Philips is also improving the device with a display that shows paramedics how well the lungs are filling and emptying with air.

Read the full improved CPR patent application.

Justin Mullins

Apply an electric field to a cell and the permeability of the cell membrane increases significantly, a process known as "electroporation". Researchers have used this technique for some time to inject cells with drugs and even pieces of DNA, but will only work in a lab dish.

Now Marlin Mickle and Michael Lovett, both at the University of Pittsburgh, US, have come up with a device that does a similar kind of thing for cells inside the body.

The machine is a hand-held electrical stimulator that incorporates a syringe. The idea is that the DNA to be inserted into cells is injected into the body, which is then zapped with an electric current, allowing the DNA to travel across cell membranes.

Mickle and Lovett say the device can also be used to improve wound healing and to stimulate peripheral nerves that have suffered damage.

Electrical stimulation can kill cells, though, so the machine will need careful testing before it is proven safe to use.

Read the full DNA syringe patent application.

Justin Mullins

As many as 500,000 people die each year from ordinary flu, so preventing its spread is a priority, particularly in hospitals where patients may have a greater susceptibility to the disease.

Stephen Michielsen, a textiles scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, US, and colleagues have come up with a way to kill flu viruses using dyes that release highly reactive oxygen atoms.

These dyes, such as porphyrins and fluoresceines, release oxygen radicals when bombarded with light. Radicals have the ability to deactivate viruses, and even have some anti-bacterial properties.

Michielsen's idea is to embed the dyes in fibres that can then be woven into textiles. The textiles could then be used to kill viruses in the filters of ventilation systems of hospitals, and in surgical masks. He proposes other applications too, such as waiting-room wallpaper, military uniforms, and aircraft cabin upholstery.

Read the full virus-killing fabrics patent application.

Justin Mullins

Pharmacists use various mechanisms to control the release of drugs from a pill. For example, the pill may have a coating that is designed to be dissolved in a particular part of the digestive tract or after a certain amount of time.

But this does not always work since the rate of passage through the body can vary, and some individuals have higher levels of digestive enzymes than others. So the electronics company Philips has come up with a remote-controlled pill with a cavity for carrying a drug which can be opened by a remote signal.

The passage of the pill can be followed by MRI or ultrasound and the drug dispensed with an electronic trigger at the appropriate location.

The drug can also be released according to other external factors. For example, if atmospheric pollen reaches a certain level or the patient's blood pressure hits a predetermined number.

Philips hopes the pills can be made cheaply enough to be disposable, so they need not be collected and recycled after use.

Read the full remote controlled pill patent application.

Justin Mullins

Most bacteria contain a number of "suicide"' genes in their genomes which produce toxins that kill the cells. However, these bacteria also have genes for producing an anti-toxin that binds to the toxin, rendering it harmless. In normal circumstances this balance ensures that the cell stays healthy. But the anti-toxins are much less stable than the toxins and break down more easily. So any stress to the cell can cause the balance to change in a way that increases the concentration of toxins, triggering cell death.

"The study of these toxins has very important implications in infectious diseases and medical sciences," says Masayori Inouye, a biochemist at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey and colleagues.

The group says this mechanism suggests a powerful new way of identifying antibiotics. Inouye and colleagues suggest isolating the bound toxin-antitoxin complex from a particular bacteria for testing in the lab. Anything that breaks the toxin-antitoxin bond would trigger suicide in the the cell itself and is therefore a potential antibiotic that can then be tested more rigorously.

Read the full cell suicide antibiotics patent application.

Justin Mullins.