Archives: 2/2009

Net News

New e-Version of Taber’s Cyclopedic Dictionary Released

by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 6, 2009 • 10:31 am

tabers21 m graphic New e Version of Tabers Cyclopedic Dictionary ReleasedUnbound Medicine has released the 21st edition of Taber’s Cyclopedic Dictionary for Mobile and Web. The software package features things like audio recordings of pronunciations, diagrams, and images of various conditions.

Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary defines 30% more terms than any other health science dictionary. With over 60,000 entries, 1,000 illustrations and 30,000 integrated audio pronunciations, the new 21st edition of Taber’s is the most complete medical dictionary available today.
For one price you can download Taber’s to your mobile device and receive 1 year of access to Tabers.com. Unbound Medicine supports all of the popular mobile platforms including iPhone/iPod touch, BlackBerry, Palm and Windows Mobile. Now students and clinicians can refer to the new edition of Taber’s to find the quick answers they need at the bedside, in the classroom, and at home using the web or the mobile device of their choice.
Includes:

  • 60,000 definitions – 9,000 new and revised terms
  • 1,000 full color photos and illustrations
  • Integrated audio pronunciations for nearly 30,000 terms
  • 600 Patient Care sections
  • Personalized favorites
  • 1-year access to www.tabers.com

    • Tabers Medical Dictionary Demo on iPhone…
    Product page: Taber’s Medical Dictionary for Mobile and Web

    Neurology / Rehab

    Smart Chair Turns The Paralyzed Into Robowarriors

    by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 6, 2009 • 9:55 am

    32234rty1 Smart Chair Turns The Paralyzed Into Robowarriors
    Many people in this world suffer from severely debilitating syndromes leaving them paralyzed and completely dependent on the assistance of others. Some advances, like automated wheelchairs that use special input devices, have helped to increase the quality of life for these folks. To push the assistive technology even further, the University of South Florida researchers are working on refining a wheelchair that has its own mechanical arm. The system uses EEG to read one’s brain waves and sends translated signals to the roboarm, directing it to move accordingly.
    32234rty2 Smart Chair Turns The Paralyzed Into Robowarriors
    From the USF news office:

    The BCI system – developed, used and modified by USF psychology professor Emanuel Donchin and colleagues – captures P-300 brain wave responses and converts them to actions. Donchin and colleagues harnessed the P-300 brain signal to allow the user to “type” on a virtual keyboard by thinking with the P-300 response serving as the virtual “finger” for patients who cannot move, such as those with locked-in syndrome or those with Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS). Researchers in the USF Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Center for Rehabilitation Engineering and Technology, in collaboration with the Cognitive Psychophysiology Laboratory in the Department of Psychology, modified the BCI further to fit a specific WMRA requirement.
    “We modified the BCI system to display a matrix of several options that include actions or directions that the user would like to have the WMRA perform,” said Redwan Alqasemi, a researcher in the USF Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Center for Rehabilitation Engineering and Technology. “The user wears a head cap fitted with electrodes to measure P-300 electroencephalogram (EEG) activities in the brain. While the movement options intensify on a screen and flash at certain frequencies, the user concentrates on the option desired to trigger the desired P-300 brain signal. The electrodes detect the signal, relate it to the desired action, then, the WMRA control system translates the brain signal to the robotic arm, which carries out the desired movements,” said Alqasemi.

    32234rty3 Smart Chair Turns The Paralyzed Into Robowarriors

    Early testing by human users has shown that the WMRA can be controlled “without the user moving a muscle.” The WMRA does not use any pre-programmed movements unless chosen by the user.
    According to Rajiv Dubey, professor and chair of the USF Department of Mechanical Engineering, and director of the Center for Rehabilitation Engineering & Technology, the design of intelligent therapeutic and assistive robotic systems such as the WMRA is based on sensor-fusion technology that is used to map limited human input into complex motion using “sensor-assisted scaled teleoperation.”
    “Our Rehabilitation Engineering & Technology Program is aimed at designing and developing rehabilitation robotic systems that maximize the manipulation and mobility functions of persons with disabilities,” said Dubey. “The result will be that mobility-impaired persons can live more independently, with improved quality of life and even better employment outcomes.”
    The WMRA holds particular promise for persons suffering from “locked-in syndrome,” a totally paralytic condition that leaves people unable to move but intellectually normal, a condition that has gained greater attention thanks to the book and subsequent movie The Diving-Bell and the Butterfly. Even in its development stage, the WMRA offers hope for a better quality of life for people with all levels of mobility challenges.

    Press release: Researchers Develop "Brain-Controlled" Wheelchair Robotic Arm

    Public Health

    Johns Hopkins Releases Software That Calculates Effects of WMD

    by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 6, 2009 • 12:57 am

    emcaps Johns Hopkins Releases Software That Calculates Effects of WMDThe Johns Hopkins Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR) has released a standalone Windows application to help hospitals calculate the potential casualties in their area after a WMD attack. The application takes input things like type of pathogen or chemical used, wind speed, and population density, and provides guidance as to what to expect in terms of types and numbers of casualties.
    From Johns Hopkins:

    Called EMCAPS (Electronic Mass Casualty Assessment & Planning Scenarios), the software program is believed to be the first that generates the anticipated outcomes of disaster planning scenarios developed by the Department of Homeland Security. The scenarios include patient estimates by injury type, estimated level of care required, and the need for decontamination facilities.
    Developed by CEPAR and programmed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, EMCAPS’s details are reported in the February edition of the Annals of Emergency Medicine. The program is available for download free of cost from Johns Hopkins’ CEPAR Web site, http://www.hopkins-cepar.org/
    “Comprehensive disaster preparedness planning requires the ability to expand care capabilities in response to sudden or prolonged demand,” says James J. Scheulen, lead investigator for the EMCAPS project, executive director of CEPAR and chief administrative officer of the Johns Hopkins Department of Emergency Medicine.
    “While the planning scenarios developed by the Department of Homeland Security form a good basis for constructing disaster exercises, EMCAPS adds value by giving hospitals a platform for providing a needed level of detail and accounting for local conditions that influence health care demand and response in their regions,” says Meridith Thanner, Ph.D., a CEPAR research associate and program manager with the National Center for the Study of Preparedness and Catastrophic Event Response.
    When designing the program, EMCAPS developers selected eight of 15 Department of Homeland Security scenarios that could result in large-scale health effects: inhalation anthrax; plague; food contamination; blister, nerve and toxic agents; dirty bombs and improvised explosive device (IED) attacks. The remaining scenarios, including natural disasters and cyber attacks, were excluded from the program because of either insufficient information for computer modeling or low casualty probability as a result of an attack.

    Free download and info page: Electronic Mass Casualty Assessment & Planning Scenarios – EMCAPS
    Press release: JOHNS HOPKINS OFFERS FREE SOFTWARE TOOL FOR LARGE-SCALE DISASTER "SURGE" PLANNING

    not funny

    A Happy Toilet?

    by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 6, 2009 • 12:48 am

    Its not clear who is responsible for this invention, but this singing toilet seat may just make your kids get excited about pooping in the commode.


    (hat tip: Engadget)

    Society

    A Long, Difficult Future Foreseen for Personalized Genetic Medicine

    by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 6, 2009 • 12:26 am

    dnapeople A Long, Difficult Future Foreseen for Personalized Genetic MedicineScientists at the University of Pittsburgh are throwing a serious dose of skepticism into the personalized medicine industry. While using genetic tests to determine one’s susceptibility to a disease and/or treatment sounds like a great idea, in practice we’re a long ways away from effectively implementing the technology.
    From a statement by the University to Pittsburgh:

    The study focused on single nucleotide polymorphisms, or SNPs — variations in short DNA sequences that have been linked to the presence of particular diseases, and that exist in the millions in the human genome. A number of companies currently offer individualized estimates for disease risks based on genome-wide SNP genotyping. These tests typically scan 500,000 to 1 million SNPs, searching for only a handful associated with a specific disease.
    Dr. Weeks and colleagues focused their study on diseases for which there are strongly associated genetic variants: age-related macular degeneration, type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, cardiovascular disease and Crohn’s disease. They found that a strong genetic association did not guarantee they could accurately discriminate between actual disease cases and controls in both mathematical models and real-world examples.
    Part of the problem may be a statistical one. To provide meaningful insights, a test for disease risk needs to accurately identify positive cases and, at the same time, provide a low false positive rate. One of the challenges with current approaches to genetic testing is that they are based on a very small number of common variants, “making it likely that you will identify people at high risk who may not be at risk at all,” said Dr. Weeks. “With such a small pool of variants, it’s difficult to develop a very meaningful test for predicting disease risk.”
    In addition, he said, few health care providers have adequate genetics training to make sense of the risk calculations now commercially offered and to advise their patients accordingly.

    Press release: Are we selling personalized medicine before its time?

    Uncategorized

    Microscopy Technique to Peer Under The Surface

    by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 5, 2009 • 10:09 am

    silvertops Microscopy Technique to Peer Under The Surface
    Using microscopes to view beneath the surface of opaque structures like tumors and bone tissue has been a long sought goal of scientists. At the University of Utah, a technique has been developed that uses a tiny mirror made of silver nanoparticles and an infrared source to peer through the scales of the “photonic beetle“.
    From the University of Utah:silvermirror Microscopy Technique to Peer Under The Surface

    “A normal light microscope generally won’t do the trick,” Lupton says, because visible light is easily scattered by the scales, thwarting efforts to view their internal structure.
    “We found that we can put silver nanoparticles – a fancy word for a silver mirror – beneath the beetle,” he adds. “When illuminated with very intense infrared light, the silver starts to emit white light, but only at very discrete positions on the mirror.”
    Those “beacons” of intense light were transmitted upward through the beetle scale, allowing scientists to view the scale’s internal structure, including tiny differences in the angles of crystal “facets” or faces and the existence of vertical stacks of crystals invisible to other microscope methods.
    To the untrained eye, an image created using silver nanoparticle beacons – say, the image of the photonic beetle’s scale – looks like a blotchy bunch of spots.
    But Lupton says that each of those spots contains a spectrum of colors that reveal information about the scale’s internal structure because the light has interacted with that structure.
    “There really does not appear to be any other useful technique to look at these natural photonic crystals microscopically,” Lupton says. “The silver nanoparticle approach to microscopy potentially could be very versatile, allowing us to view other highly scattering samples such as tumor cells, bone samples or amorphous materials in general.” Amorphous materials are those without a crystal structure.
    Lupton says the structure within the beetle’s scales scatters light very strongly, like driving through a snowstorm: “Once your windshield gets wet, headlights appear all fuzzy, and different features get mixed up.”
    Using the tiny silver nanoparticles as light sources to see crystal structure within the beetle’s scale is like “peering through your smudged windshield at a tiny white spot,” Lupton adds. “It would not appear smeared out.”

    Press release: Beaming New Light on Life
    Images: Side: 1) In this image, a tiny portion of a scale from a “photonic beetle” is viewed using a conventional fluorescence microscope. When blue or ultraviolet laser light is aimed at the scale, most of the light is absorbed, but some is re-emitted as fluorescence. Thus, the microscope sees only the surface contour of the scale. The brightest area in the upper right is the thickest part of the shell and emits the most light. 2) This image shows the same portion of a beetle scale as the previous image. However, this image was made by a fluorescence microscope using a new method. A mirror-like plate containing silver nanoparticles was placed beneath the scale, and an infrared laser excited the silver nanoparticles so they act as beacons of white light. The spots in the image are places where the light passed through the scale, providing researchers with information about the scale’s internal structure. Almost no light from the beacons passes through the thickest part of the shell (black shadow in upper right) that was the brightest area using a conventional fluorescence microscope.

    Dermatology / Oncology

    Gold Nanoparticles Help in Fighting Skin Cancer

    by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 5, 2009 • 9:28 am

    goldnanopartc Gold Nanoparticles Help in Fighting Skin CancerUniversity of Texas scientists have created a technique that utilizes gold nanoparticles to increase the efficiency of photothermal ablation when treating melanoma. During photothermal ablation, infrared light is used to burn suspected tumor tissue, but often the healthy stuff gets cooked too. Now, by injecting highly light absorbing gold nanoparticles that have a high affinity for tumors, the efficiency and specificity of photothermal ablation is increased.
    From the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center:

    With hollow gold nanospheres inside melanoma cells, photothermal ablation destroyed tumors in mice with a laser light dose that was 12 percent of the dose required when the nanospheres aren’t applied, Li [Chun Li, Ph.D., professor in M. D. Anderson's Department of Experimental Diagnostic Imaging] and colleagues report. Such a low dose is more likely to spare surrounding tissue.
    Injected, untargeted nanoparticles accumulate in tumors because they are so small that they fit through the larger pores of abnormal blood vessels that nourish cancer, Li said. This “passive targeting” delivers a low dose of nanoparticles and concentrates them near the cell’s vasculature.
    The researchers packaged hollow, spherical gold nanospheres with a peptide – a small compound composed of amino acids – that binds to the melanocortin type 1 receptor, which is overly abundant in melanoma cells. They first treated melanoma cells in culture and later injected both targeted and untargeted nanospheres into mice with melanoma, then applied near-infrared light.
    Fluorescent tagging of the targeted nanospheres showed that they were embedded in cultured melanoma cells, while hollow gold nanospheres without the targeting peptide were not. The targeted nanospheres were actively drawn into the cells through the cell membrane.
    When the researchers beamed near-infrared light onto treated cultures, most cells with targeted nanospheres died, and almost all of those left were irreparably damaged. Only a small fraction of cells treated with untargeted nanospheres died. Cells treated only with near-infrared light or only with the nanospheres were undamaged.
    Most of the targeted nanospheres in the treated mice gathered in the tumor, with smaller amounts found in the liver and spleen. Most of the untargeted nanospheres gathered in the spleen, then in the liver and then the tumor, demonstrating the selectivity and importance of targeting.
    In another group of mice, near-infrared light beamed into tumors with targeted nanospheres destroyed 66 percent of the tumors, but only destroyed 7.9 percent of tumors treated with untargeted nanospheres.
    The researchers used F-18-labeled glucose to monitor tumor activity by observing how much glucose it metabolized. This action “lights up” the tumor for positron emission tomography (PET) imaging. Tumors treated with targeted shells largely went dark.

    Press release: Targeted Nanospheres Find, Penetrate, then Fuel Burning of Melanoma
    Image: Gold nanoparticles from an unrelated project. Credit Annie Cavanagh, Wellcome Images

    Informatics / Telemedicine

    IBM Links At-Home Medical Devices with Google Health

    by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 5, 2009 • 12:51 am

    googibm IBM Links At Home Medical Devices with Google HealthUnder the guidance of the Continua Health Alliance, an industry group promoting compatibility between medical devices and online health systems, IBM has developed a set of interface tools for Google Health. Using the new package, at-home medical devices, such as glucose meters and blood pressure monitors, will be able to stream live data directly into Google Health’s personal health record management system. This data can then be accessed in real time by medical professionals and family caretakers for immediate analysis.
    From the press release:

    IBM integrated the capabilities of Information Management, Business Intelligence and the WebSphere Premises Server sensor event platform with Google Health. The new IBM solution will be able to:

  • Support a wide variety of use cases, including chronic disease management, health and wellness, and elderly care, both in the United States as well as in countries and health-services enterprises around the world.
  • Leverage the power of Services-Oriented Architectures, so that the partners can quickly build increasing volumes of flexible solutions for healthcare consumers and services providers based on modular components.
  • Support the rapid growth of open standards through the power of the Continua Alliance, which is dedicated to enabling interoperable healthcare products and solutions.
  • Support the development of solutions using the Google Health open platform.

    • Press release: IBM Teams With Google and Continua Health Alliance to Move Data From Remote Personal Medical Devices Into Google Health and Other PHRs
    Continua Health Alliance…

    Oncology / Radiology / Surgery

    Electrocuting Cancer Cells to Death with NanoKnife

    by Gene Ostrovsky on Feb 5, 2009 • 12:34 am

    microsurgerrrr Electrocuting Cancer Cells to Death with NanoKnife
    Killing tumor cells with sniper precision is a difficult task, as most contemporary clinical therapies tend to injure healthy tissue as well. AngioDynamics, a company out of Queensbury, New York, has developed a device, called the NanoKnife, that implements technology called irreversible electroporation to electrically target and kill specific tumor cells. This radiofrequency interstitial tissue ablation system one day could be used either during open tumor resection procedures, laparoscopically, or even percutaneously. The company is currently undergoing trials and developing targeting criteria and defining what settings to use on various types of tumors.
    antgiodevice Electrocuting Cancer Cells to Death with NanoKnifeIEEE Spectrum Online explains the device:

    The NanoKnife delivers quick bursts of energy through a set of electrodes inserted into and around the tumor. The pulses can last up to 100 microseconds and create an electrical field of up to 3000 volts per centimeter. A cell within range of the electric field will form pores in its fatty membrane, allowing ions to rush through. When electroporation is performed with a lower voltage than the NanoKnife delivers, and with single pulses instead of a train of pulses, the pores will eventually close as the electric potential of the cell stabilizes. Microbiologists have used this kind of reversible electroporation, among many other things, to transport genetic material into stem cells. When exposed to higher voltages and longer pulse duration, however, the pores in the cell membrane remain open and cause the cell to initiate a programmed suicide, known as apoptosis.
    The electroporator works with both unipolar and up to six bipolar electrodes. Proper placement largely determines how successful the ablation will be, especially with the bipolar electrodes, which must be spaced correctly in order to produce a spherical electrical field. Complicating things further is the fact that the conductivity of tissue varies from organ to organ.

    More at the IEEE Spectrum Online…
    NanoKnife device brochure…
    Device page: NanoKnife

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