History of Contraception

A 650+ collection of historical contraceptives donated by Percy Skuy, the former president of Ortho-Macneill, is on view at the Dittrick Medical History Center at the Case Wester Reserve University. Percy Skuy’s collecting began in 1965 and encompassed all manner of contraceptive devices, from a broad variety of cultures and time periods, and eventually developed into a “History of Contraception Museum”.

via Medgadget | boingboing

Dermal Nanotech Display

Robert A. Freitas‘ dermal display concept functions as a medical nanorobot control center to keep one’s health in check. His book, Nanomedicine, Volume I: Basic Capabilities, is the first technical design study of nanotechnology in medicine and medical nanorobotics. Watch Gina Miller‘s animation of the dermal display concept. [video (qt)]

via Medgadget

IMing GOD

God will always be there for you. [launch igod]

Sensing Babies Counting

Dr. Andrea Berger and her colleagues are continuing Dr. Karen Wynn’s study on young babies and their grasp on mathematical concepts. Berger connected her 50 baby subjects to a ‘geodesic-net’ sensor cap, that measures the electrical activity produced by the brain. “Babies can process quantity data very, very early in life and can even perform very basic mathematical operations like addition and subtraction.” Using the ‘geodesic-net’ ERP (event-related potential) tool she is “able to identify the exact millisecond when the baby is presented with an impossible event, and we can examine the brainwaves and the pattern of activity.”

via MedGadget | Israel21c

InVision Guide to a Healthy Heart

The InVision Guide to a Healthy Heart beautifully illustrates how a healthy heart works and why it sometimes fails with highly detailed images and a few 3d models with interactive layers.

Spray-on Skin Cells

The first controlled clinical study to examine the effectiveness of sprayed cultured skin cells to close the wounds of burns victims is being undertaken at the Queen Victoria Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (QVH), East Grinstead. “We have seen what I can only describe as miraculous results using spray on skin with patients surviving 90% burns who otherwise had very little chance of survival.” [press release]

via MedGadget | BBC

'Miracle mouse' grows back damaged organs

A”miracle mouse” that is capable of regenerating its own organs has been discovered by a Ellen Heber-Katz, professor of immunology at the Wistar Institute.

via Times Online | KurzweilAI

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Lifestraw

Lifestraw is a $2 water filtration device contained in a straw currently under development by Torben Vestergaard Frandsen, Rob Fleuren and Moshe Frommer. The straw is composed of two textile filters and iodine impregnated beads. There are several similar devices on the market like the Frontier™ Emergency Water Filter System , but none as efficient or with profoundly world changing potential as the Lifestraw.

Thanks, Pete.

Manhattan Air Flow Mapping

Urban Dispersion Program‘s 180 “tracer” boxes and 6 vans have been/are tracking air flow patterns of deliberately released harmless gas in NYC to create a computer simulated model in preparation for chemical attacks. [real-time VRML simulation (West Village)] [gallery]

via Wired

Remote-Controlled Humans

NTT Communication Science Lab is showcasing a human-controlling device at SIGGRAPH 2005, appropriately titled Shaking the World: Galvanic Vestibular Stimulation as a Novel Sensation Interface. Simply put, this is “a device that controls a person’s movement by remote control.” [article] [video]

National Geographic article on remote controlled rats (2002)

via slashdot