Archive for the ‘Health’ Category

Vioguard Introduces Self-Disinfecting Keybaord

By Chris Scott Barr

How often would you say you clean your keyboard? I know that it’s a rare thing to do for me, and probably not something most people do on a very regular basis. Sure, we’ve seen keyboards that can be put in a dishwasher, but what about a keyboard that actually cleans itself? Well now there is one of those.

The Vioguard UVKB50 doesn’t clean itself, so much as it disinfects. Whenever you are finished typing, the keyboard retracts into an enclosure and is blasted with a 50W UV light. This will supposedly kill 99.99% of viruses and bacteria. Mysophobes will no doubt rejoice at the introduction of this keyboard next month. However, they may actually fear the $899 price tag more than the germs on their keyboard.

[ Vioguard ] VIA [ SlipperyBrick ]

With Robot-Performed Virtual Autopsies It’s Like You’ve Got A Stunt Double Corpse [Robots]

Virtual autopsies create 3D images of the deceased’s bodies to be used for examination. Save for having robots make micro-incisions for tissue samples, real bodies can rest at peace while the virtual stunt corpses are chopped apart. Goodbye, CSI-induced nightmares!

Basically a bunch of stereo cameras are used to record the external structure of a body while a CT scan takes care of the innards. A 3D image is created from the images and the pathologists can get to work without worrying about deforming a deceased body. If need be, minor incisions into the real body can be made by robots while still keeping damage minimal.

Aside from being far neater than a traditional autopsy, virtual autopsies allow for archiving of the 3D bodies for later medical analysis or case comparison in the event of criminal trials. Not to mention that there’d never be an “Oops. I didn’t mean to make that incision” again. [New Scientist via Pop Sci]

Bill Gates Seeks To Cure Malaria With Candy [Charity]

Bill Gates is on another charitable streak through the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation with a $100,000 investment to find a way to fight childhood malaria with chocolate and gum.

The gum would be used to test, painlessly, for malaria in children while the chocolate would serve as a way of getting some of the disease-feeding fat out of a patient’s body. There’s already some promise in these methods and the Gates contribution should certainly keep research going. [Telegraph]

Philips DirectLife shows you exactly how much time you spend sitting

Think you’re active because you walk around the office all the time on your way to meetings? Well, now there’s a way to actually track that and know for sure if you’re REALLY getting all that much exercise when you’re strolling through the cubicles.

Philips just announced the new DirectLife product. It’s an activity monitor that you throw in your pocket, clip to your belt, or wear around your neck. It then senses all your movements, and tell you exactly what your daily energy expenditure is. The sensor (and the software that reads the information out of it) will help you to determine how much energy you expend on a daily basis, and how much you should be expending on a daily basis.

I’m curious about this one, since living the blogger lifestyle has me expending as little energy as possible, moving from my chair to the mini-fridge for a can of Mt. Dew or Monster(tm) every so often.

The system is available from the DirectLife online store now, and will run you $79 (until October 30th) and includes a 4-month membership. After the initial 4 months, membership will run you $12.50 a month. This product is available in the US and the Netherlands only at this time.

Optogenetics hold the key to future brain disease cures, still creep us out

Those mad neuroscientists, they’ll never learn, but maybe in the end we’ll all be better off for it. Wired has put together an extremely intriguing write-up of the short history of optogenetics — featuring a German pond scum researcher, a Nobel Prize winner, and rat brains controlled by beams of light. Optogenetics is a relatively new technique for communicating with the brain, which involves the implantation of particular light-sensitive genes into animals with the purpose of repairing neurological ailments through light therapy (no, not that kind). By hooking up fiber-optic cables to the affected area of the brain, researchers have been able to completely restore movement in mice with Parkinson’s disease and their current efforts revolve around developing a less invasive method that doesn’t go deeper than the outer surface of the brain. Most revolutionary of all, perhaps, is the eventual possibility for two-way traffic (i.e. a machine being able to both send and receive information from the brain), which brings all those cyborg dreams of ours closer to becoming a reality than ever before. Hit up the read link for the full dish.

Filed under: Science

Optogenetics hold the key to future brain disease cures, still creep us out originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 21 Oct 2009 10:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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