sexta-feira, 7 de novembro de 2014

'Aging well' must be a global priority, experts say

 

November 5, 2014 

The Lancet

Worldwide, life expectancy of older people continues to rise. By 2020, for the first time in history, the number of people aged 60 years and older will outnumber children younger than 5 years. By 2050, the world’s population aged 60 years and older is expected to total 2 billion, up from 841 million today. 80% of these older people will be living in low-income and middle-income countries. However, although people are living longer, they are not necessarily healthier than before, experts report.


Worldwide, life expectancy of older people continues to rise. By 2020, for the first time in history, the number of people aged 60 years and older will outnumber children younger than 5 years. By 2050, the world's population aged 60 years and older is expected to total 2 billion, up from 841 million today. 80% of these older people will be living in low-income and middle-income countries.

The increase in longevity, especially in high-income countries (HICs), has been largely due to the decline in deaths from cardiovascular disease (stroke and ischaemic heart disease), mainly because of simple, cost-effective strategies to reduce tobacco use and high blood pressure, and improved coverage and effectiveness of health interventions.

However, although people are living longer, they are not necessarily healthier than before -- nearly a quarter (23%) of the overall global burden of death and illness is in people aged over 60, and much of this burden is attributable to long-term illness caused by diseases such as cancer, chronic respiratory diseases, heart disease, musculoskeletal diseases (such as arthritis and osteoporosis), and mental and neurological disorders.

This long-term burden of illness and diminished wellbeing affects patients, their families, health systems, and economies, and is forecast to accelerate. For example, latest estimates indicate that the number of people with dementia is expected to rise from 44 million now, to 135 million by 2050.

"Deep and fundamental reforms of health and social care systems will be required," says Dr John Beard, Director of the Department of Aging and Life Course at the World Health Organization (WHO), and co-leader of the Series with Dr Ties Boerma and Dr Somnath Chatterji, also from WHO. "But we must be careful that these reforms do not reinforce the inequities that drive much of the poor health and functional limitation we see in older age."

"While some interventions will be universally applicable, it will be important that countries monitor the health and functioning of their aging populations to understand health trends and design programmes that meet the specific needs identified," adds Dr Ties Boerma, Director of the Department of Health Statistics and Informatics at WHO. "Cross-national surveys such as the WHO Study on Global Aging and Adult Health (SAGE), the Gallup World Poll, and other longitudinal cohorts studies of aging in Brazil, China, India, and South Korea, are beginning to redress the balance and provide the evidence for policy, but much more remains to be done."

However, the responsibility for improving quality of life for the world's older people goes far beyond the health sector, say the Series authors. Strategies are needed that better prevent and manage chronic conditions by extending affordable health care to all older adults and take into consideration the physical and social environment. Examples include changing policies to encourage older adults to remain part of the workforce for longer (e.g., removing tax disincentives to work past retirement age), emphasising low-cost disease prevention and early detection rather than treatment (eg, reducing salt intake and increasing uptake of vaccines), making better use of technology (eg, mobile clinics for rural populations), and training health-care staff in the management of multiple chronic conditions.

According to Dr Chatterji, also from the Department of Health Statistics and Information Systems at WHO, "Collectively, we need to look beyond the costs commonly associated with aging to think about the benefits that an older, healthier, happier, and more productive older population can bring to society as a whole."

A series in The Lancet dedicated to aging can be found at: http://www.thelancet.com/series/ageing


Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by The Lancet. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


 

Teens close to high number of tobacco shops more likely to smoke

 


Teenagers are much more likely to take up smoking if they live in neighborhoods with a large number of shops that sell tobacco products, a study suggests.

Adolescents with the most tobacco outlets in their neighborhood are almost 50% more likely to smoke than those with no outlets nearby, researchers say.

The study also found that teenagers living in areas with the highest density of retailers are 53 per cent more likely to try smoking at least once.

Based on their findings, researchers argue that anti-smoking strategies among teenagers should include reducing the overall density of tobacco retailers. They say that limiting teenagers' access to tobacco products is vital, as long-term smoking usually begins in adolescence.

Tobacco control policies often prioritise the reduction of outlets in specific areas, such as neighborhoods near schools. However, researchers found no evidence that adolescents attending schools in areas with high numbers of tobacco shops are more likely to smoke.

The study of Scottish teenagers -- the first of its kind in the UK -- examined the relationship between adolescent smoking habits and tobacco outlet density in teenagers' home and school neighborhoods.

Teenagers living in all neighborhoods -- not just those with levels of high poverty- were found to be affected. Researchers at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow created a map of tobacco retailers for every postcode in Scotland. They examined the links between the number of outlets and teenage smoking habits using responses from a survey of more than 20,000 school pupils aged between 13 and 15.

Dr Niamh Shortt, Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at the University of Edinburgh, who led the study, said: "The Scottish Government has signalled its intent for a 'tobacco-free' Scotland by 2034. Our research shows that as part of this plan we need to consider regulating the number of retailers selling tobacco in our neighborhoods."

Professor Richard Mitchell, Professor of Health and Environment at the University of Glasgow, said: "We were surprised by how strong an influence the retail environment was on teenagers' smoking behaviour. The results are good news because they offer a new tool with which to try and reduce smoking rates."


Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by University of Edinburgh. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. N. K. Shortt, C. Tisch, J. Pearce, E. A. Richardson, R. Mitchell. The density of tobacco retailers in home and school environments and relationship with adolescent smoking behaviours in Scotland. Tobacco Control, 2014; DOI: 10.1136/tobaccocontrol-2013-051473

 

Corrigindo a palavra “SUICÍDIO”

 

Eu já corrigi o título e a postagem “ O suicídio assistido da jovem dos Estados Unidos” diversas vezes, mas sempre aparece no G+ sem a devida correção. A palavra “suicídio” é paroxítona, tem o acento agudo na penúltima sílaba, que é a sílaba tônica.  Vejo agora que a postagem no G+ está correta, sendo que eu excluí a que estava incorreta. Na verdade está havendo um problema com a minha conexão da Internet, (DNS) causando esses pequenos desacertos.

Jose S de Melo

Will a Breakthrough Solar Technology See the Light of Day?

 

A startup that might have a record-breaking solar cell is in danger of going out of business.

Why It Matters

Solar needs to get far cheaper to compete with fossil fuels on a large scale.

The power unit is a rectangular slab about the size of a movie theater screen. It’s mounted on a thick steel post, and equipped with a tracking mechanism that continuously points it at the sun. The slab is made of over 100,000 small lenses and an equal number of even smaller solar cells, each the size of the tip of a ballpoint pen. This contraption is part of one of the most efficient solar power devices ever made.

Semprius, a startup based in Durham, North Carolina, claims that the next generation of this power unit will make solar power the cheapest option for utilities installing new power plants. With fields of over 1,000 of these devices, utilities would produce electricity at less than 5 cents per kilowatt-hour. That is even cheaper than today’s least expensive option: a new natural gas plant.

The technology originated in the lab of John Rogers, a professor of chemistry and materials science and engineering at the University of Illinois. Semprius has raised $45 million from investors including Siemens, and has set records for solar-cell efficiency—meaning the amount of energy in sunlight that is converted into electricity. This year it demonstrated that it could use a version of its technology to make a novel kind of solar cell that, some believe, could convert half of the energy in sunlight into electricity, about three times better than conventional solar cells.

Yet for all the promise of the technology, Semprius is in a tough financial spot. For its technology to be cost-effective, Semprius must scale up the production of its solar cells significantly. Right now it can make enough solar units to produce six megawatts of power per year, but it needs to raise that to at least 200 megawatts. The company is raising $40 million in hopes of doing this. Its current investors say they’ll contribute, and for now they’re loaning the company money to keep it in business, but they won’t do so forever. The company needs a new investor soon. Otherwise it could go under.

Semprius’s predicament has become a familiar one for solar startups. Founded in 2005, Semprius was part of a wave of venture capital investments a couple of years later that funded hundreds of new solar companies (see “Alta Devices: Finding a Solar Solution”). It’s one of only a few of those companies still standing. Many of the others failed or were acquired for pennies on the dollar. Investors lost more than $1 billion. The resulting backlash has made it difficult for any solar companies, regardless of their merits, to get the investments they need to prove their technology.

Scott Burroughs stands in front of one of Semprius’s solar power systems in Henderson, North Carolina.

“In 2007, venture capitalists were throwing money at solar companies. All you’d have to have is solar in your name. Or at least start with the letter S,” says Scott Burroughs, Semprius’s chief technology officer. “Now it’s the exact opposite,” he says. “Instead of throwing money at companies, they’re not even considering one if it’s associated with solar.”

That raises a disturbing possibility—might a breakthrough technology that could make solar power truly competitive never see the light of day, not because of any lack of technical merit, but because investors have been scared off?

Magic Stamp

Semprius is not actually asking for that much money. In the heyday of the solar technology bubble, the ill-fated startup Solyndra raised about $1 billion from venture capitalists and got another half billion from the U.S. government in the form of a loan to build a large factory to prove its technology. A few years ago, Semprius would have had no trouble raising $40 million so that it could increase capacity and lower costs to the break-even point. Unlike many earlier solar startups that gambled on developing entirely new manufacturing equipment, Semprius mostly uses inexpensive, off-the-shelf equipment, some of it from the LED industry. It could grow simply by using excess capacity at existing LED manufacturing facilities.

The company wouldn’t be possible without one key bit of new manufacturing technology, but that, too, is remarkably simple. At Semprius’s pilot factory in Henderson, North Carolina, that technology can be found inside two glass-enclosed devices, each not much bigger than an office copier. At the end of a robot arm, and kept deliberately out of view, is a rubber stamp embossed with a pattern. This stamp is what makes Semprius’s high-efficiency, low-cost solar power possible.

The stamp, developed in Rogers’s lab, allows Semprius to improve upon a type of solar power called concentrated photovoltaics, which has been around for decades (see “Ultra-Efficient Solar”). The idea is that you can increase the amount of energy any solar cell gathers by putting lenses over the cell to focus light into it. Existing versions of this technology might use a lens with an area of about 400 square centimeters and focus it on a one-centimeter solar cell, for a concentration ratio of 400.

Semprius’s stamp makes it possible to make arrays of solar cells that are far smaller and thinner than the ones that had been used in concentrating photovoltaics. For the concentrating technology to work, the solar cells need to be picked up and arranged in an array so they can be paired with an array of lenses—and that’s where the rubber stamp comes in. It can pick up and transfer thousands of the tiny solar cells at once without breaking them, completely changing the economics of using small solar cells.

Small cells have many advantages; because they require little material, they can be made of expensive types of semiconductors that are far more efficient than silicon. What’s more, they dissipate heat well and can operate under very concentrated sunlight. That makes a 1,600-to-1 concentration ratio possible rather than 400-to-1. You’d need far less material and real estate to generate the same amount of power as a typical solar cell.

These advantages, and some clever lens designs, allowed Semprius to break a solar power efficiency record in 2012. But Burroughs says another advance, made this year, would allow the company to go even further. Semprius demonstrated another advantage of the rubber stamps—their ability to quickly and very accurately stack cells made of different semiconductors on top of each other. Researchers have wanted to do this for some time, since it would allow them to match semiconductor materials to each part of the solar spectrum. Some wavelengths of light would be absorbed by one material, and the rest would pass to the semiconductors below, and so on.

Physically stacking cells wasn’t practical with conventional manufacturing equipment. Semprius’s rubber stamp and extremely thin layers of semiconductor make it relatively easy to align the cells and electrically connect them.

Burroughs predicts that next year Semprius will break the current record, then quickly break the new one as it optimizes the technology. If the company can survive until next year, that is.

Valley of Darkness

Siemens acquired its stake in Semprius in June 2011. After a detailed examination of its technology, says Thomas Mart, the global head of solar activities at Siemens, “What we saw is a way to get to very low costs of electricity.”

The plan had been for Siemens and Semprius to work together, with Semprius producing its concentrated photovoltaic devices and Siemens drawing on its expertise in building solar power plants. But 15 months after Siemens invested in Semprius, everything fell apart.

“Given all the stuff that’s happened in the solar industry over the last two to three years, including implosions of other small startups, our investors have every reason to head for the hills.”

Huge investments in conventional silicon solar power, especially in China, had lowered costs of production but also flooded the market with cheap solar panels. Given the supply of cheap solar panels, it became nearly impossible for companies with alternative technologies—such as thin film solar or concentrated photovoltaics—to compete.  Dozens of promising solar startups failed and the projected market for concentrated photovoltaics shrank, convincing Siemens to get out of the business, ending the partnership and marking the beginning of hard times for Semprius.

Semprius’s solar devices are best suited for use in solar power plants. Having the backing of Siemens would have helped convince utilities to take a chance on novel technology. Without such a partner, that job is much harder.

Making matters worse for Semprius, conventional silicon solar panels still have room to become significantly cheaper and more efficient. New ways of manufacturing silicon wafers, the most expensive part of a solar cell, could cut wafer costs in half or more (see “Praying for an Energy Miracle”). New solar cell designs are edging up their efficiencies. Such advances might eventually make solar power cheaper than fossil fuels, even without Semprius’s technology.

But silicon-based solar power is not yet there, and that’s the opportunity for Semprius. The U.S. Energy Information Administration estimates that new solar power plants will produce power at just under 15 cents per kilowatt-hour—far higher than the 6.5 cents per kilowatt-hour for natural gas power. Thus, if Semprius is right that it will soon have technology to make solar panels capable of producing electricity at around 5 cents per kilowatt-hour, its technology could be attractive to those planning new power plants. “No invention is required, just good, solid engineering,” Burroughs says.

So Semprius continues its search for a new investor to scale up its technology. It has leads in sunny places, where its systems work best, like Saudi Arabia and parts of Mexico. At least one potential investor in China is interested, says Burroughs.

“Given all the stuff that’s happened in the solar industry over the last two to three years, including implosions of other small startups, our investors have every reason to head for the hills,” says Semprius CEO Joseph Carr. “But our customers and partners—everybody says we live up to what we say we’re going to do. That convinces our current investors that if we can get through this valley of darkness, there’s an opportunity at the end.”

Those investors are hopeful that a strategic investor can be signed soon. They’ve been keeping the company funded while it raises more money “not because we’re into giving charitable gifts,” says Semprius investor Clinton Bybee, a venture capitalist at ARCH Venture Partners. “We believe this could be very big.”

Antibiotics: On-the-spot tests reduce unnecessary prescriptions

 


Fast, on-the-spot tests for bacterial infections may help to reduce excessive antibiotic use. A systematic review published in The Cochrane Library, found that when doctors tested for the presence of bacterial infections they prescribed fewer antibiotics.

Antibiotics treat infections caused by bacteria but not those caused by viruses. Most patients who visit their doctors with acute respiratory infections are suffering from viral infections like the common cold. However, because doctors usually have no immediate way of knowing whether an infection is bacterial or viral, they may still prescribe antibiotics for these patients. Unnecessary use of antibiotics gives bacteria more opportunities to develop resistance to the drugs, meaning that common antibiotics are increasingly powerless in treating serious bacterial infections when they do occur. One way to tackle this problem is to offer on-the-spot tests that can help doctors to better target antibiotic use in people who have bacterial infections.

The researchers looked at evidence from randomised trials on use of the C-reactive protein test, which is currently the only on-the-spot kit available to general practitioners intended to guide antibiotic prescription. It involves testing a single drop of blood collected by pricking the patient's finger and takes about three minutes. C-reactive protein acts as a so-called 'biomarker' of inflammation and low levels may effectively rule out serious bacterial infection, meaning that use of antibiotics would be unnecessary.

Data on the use of the test was available from six trials involving a total of 3,284 predominantly adult patients. Overall, 631 out of the 1,685 people who took the biomarker test were prescribed antibiotics, compared to 785 out of the 1,599 people who did not take the test. Antibiotic use was 22% lower in the group who took the test. However, the results varied considerably between studies, possibly due to differences in the way they were designed. This makes interpretation of the findings more difficult. The review found no difference between the two groups in terms of how long patients took to recover.

"These results suggest that antibiotic use in patients with acute respiratory infections could be reduced by carrying out biomarker tests in addition to routine examinations," said lead researcher Rune Aabenhus who is based at the Department of Public Health at the University of Copenhagen in Copenhagen, Denmark. "Going forward, it would be useful to see more evidence on the size of the reduction and cost-savings, as well as how these tests compare to other antibiotic-saving approaches."

The researchers conclude that the test seems to be safe in its current form. However, in one of the six trials, based on a small number of cases, those who took the biomarker test were more likely to be admitted to hospital at a later date. "This result may have been a chance finding, but it does remind us that general practitioners need to be careful about how they use these tests" said Aabenhus.

Cochrane is an independent, trusted producer of research in to the effects of healthcare treatments and interventions. Trusted evidence, made available to everyone, can help improve decision-making, reduce treatment costs and drive better health.


Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by Wiley. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


Journal Reference:

  1. Rune Aabenhus, Jens-Ulrik S Jensen, Karsten Juhl Jørgensen, Asbjørn Hróbjartsson, Lars Bjerrum. Biomarkers as point-of-care tests to guide prescription of antibiotics in patients with acute respiratory infections in primary care. The Cochrane Library, November 2014 DOI: 10.1002/14651858.CD010130.pub2

 

U.S. preterm birth rate hits Healthy People 2020 goal seven years early

 


About 450,000 babies were born premature in 2013, compared to 542,893 in 2006 when the rate was at its highest. The March of Dimes estimates that since 2006, 231,000 fewer babies have been born preterm because of sustained interventions put in place by states, saving $11.9 billion in healthcare and other costs.

The national preterm birth rate fell to 11.4 percent in 2013 -- the lowest in 17 years -- meeting the federal Healthy People 2020 goal seven years early. Despite this progress, the U.S. still received a "C" on the 7th annual March of Dimes Premature Birth Report Card because it fell short of the more-challenging 9.6 percent target set by the March of Dimes, the group said today.

"Achieving the Healthy People 2020 goal is reason for celebration, but the U.S. still has one of the highest rates of preterm birth of any high resource country and we must change that," said March of Dimes President Dr. Jennifer L. Howse. "We are investing in a network of five prematurity research centers to find solutions to this still too-common, costly, and serious problem."

More than 450,000 babies were born premature in 2013, compared to 542,893 in 2006 when the rate was at its highest. The March of Dimes estimates that since 2006, 231,000 fewer babies have been born preterm because of sustained interventions put in place by states, saving $11.9 billion in healthcare and other costs. Medical expenses for an average premature infant are about $54,000 compared to just $4,000 for a healthy newborn.

The sustained improvement in reducing premature births shows that when infant health becomes a priority, babies benefit. Bold leadership and policies implemented by state and local health departments, hospitals and health care providers will encourage continued health improvements for newborns, Dr. Howse added.

Preterm birth is the leading cause of newborn death, and babies who survive an early birth often face serious and sometimes lifelong health challenges, such as breathing problems, jaundice, developmental delays, vision loss, and cerebral palsy. Even babies born just a few weeks too soon have higher rates of death and disability than full-term babies.

With its "Healthy Babies are Worth the Wait Campaign," the March of Dimes has encouraged women and their health care providers to avoid scheduling an early elective delivery before at least 39 weeks of pregnancy. Based on quality improvement programs at hospitals, there has been dramatic reduction in early elective deliveries. Other factors driving improvement of preterm birth rates are fewer women smoking, and improved access to maternity care.

The March of Dimes Premature Birth Report Card compares each state's preterm birth rate to the March of Dimes goal of 9.6 percent of all live births by 2020.

On the 2014 Report Card, 27 states and Puerto Rico saw their preterm birth rates improve between 2012 and 2013, earning better grades for five of them: Iowa, Virginia, Arkansas, Nevada and Oklahoma. Five states earned an "A," including California, Maine, New Hampshire, Oregon and Vermont. Twenty states earned a "B," 20 states received a "C," two states and the District of Columbia got a "D," and only three states and Puerto Rico, received an "F" on the Report Card. The Report Card information for the U.S. and states are available online at: marchofdimes.org/reportcard.

The Report Card also tracks states' progress toward lowering their preterm birth rates by following three principle risk reduction strategies:

  • 30 states and the District of Columbia reduced the percentage of uninsured women of childbearing age;
  • 34 states, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico reduced the percentage of women of childbearing age who smoke;
  • 30 states and Puerto Rico lowered the late preterm birth rate, babies born between 34 and 36 weeks gestation.

The March of Dimes Prematurity Campaign is guided by a Steering Committee of six leadership organizations: the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP); the American College of Obstetricians(USA),  and Gynecologists (ACOG); the Association of Maternal and Child Health Programs (AMCHP); the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials (ASTHO); the Association of Women's Health, Obstetric & Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN); and the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).

3-d printed heart created

 


The new 3D printed heart technology will be showcased at EuroEcho-Imaging 2014, the official annual meeting of the European Association of Cardiovascular Imaging (EACVI), a registered branch of the European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Held in cooperation with the Austrian Working Group of Echocardiography, the congress takes place during 3-6 December in Vienna, Austria, at the Reed Messe Wien GmbH congress centre.

EuroEcho-Imaging is the leading congress for clinicians and scientists to present and discuss the latest research and clinical findings on echocardiography and other cardiovascular imaging techniques.

New frontiers in cardiovascular imaging will be explored through presentations on three-dimensional imaging, which is a main theme of the congress. Experts will reveal the latest developments in the technology that uses imaging data to print a 3D model of the heart.

Professor Patrizio Lancellotti, EACVI President, said: "The heart is a 3D structure that we traditionally analysed using 2D imaging including echocardiography, cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (CMR) or cardiac computed tomography (CT). But with the advent of 3D imaging, now we can clearly evaluate the structure of the heart in different planes."

He added: "An amazing advance in this field is the ability to print a 3D model of the heart. This will help clinicians doing surgical and percutaneous interventions on the mitral or aortic valve to choose the perfect size of device and plan the procedure according to the patient's anatomy. Also new is the ability to create a 3D computational model of the heart which will assist with interventions but also improve our understanding of the heart's physiology. With this novel technology we will gain insights into the interactions between the valves and the ventricles, the valves and the aorta, and the valves and the left atrium."


Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by European Society of Cardiology (ESC). Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


 

The world’s most advanced bionic hand

 


NEBIAS

A prosthetic hand, which provides a sense of touch acute enough to handle an egg, has been completed and is now exploited by the NEBIAS project after 10 years of EU-funded research. The world's most advanced bionic hand was tested with the help of amputee Dennis Aabo Sørensen who was able to grasp objects intuitively and identify what he was touching, while blindfolded.

Researchers have created a new neural interface to provide sensory information from an artificial hand to the brain. This interface is able to link the patient's nervous system with the artificial sensors, embedded in the prosthesis, enabling the user to control complex hand and finger movements.

Mr Sørensen, whose hand was amputated ten years ago, has been participating in the project's experiments, 'They gave me a baseball to hold and for the first time in a decade I could feel I was holding something round in my prosthetic hand.'

To make it possible for Mr Sørensen to feel the shape of the object he was holding, the researchers first had to develop a selective, implantable neuro-interface. 'Selective means, for example, that when I'm talking to you in a crowd, I'm not talking to a guy sitting close to you. In other words, the electrodes have an interface with some areas of the nerves and not with others close by,' explains project coordinator Dr Silvestro Micera . Micera and his team enhanced the artificial hand with sensors that detect information about touch, which is sent in real time to the patient, allowing for the natural control of the hand.

With the prototype passing its initial tests with flying colours, the next stage is to identify two or three people to test the prosthesis over some years, with all the elements being portable, wearable or implanted. If that works, in five or six years from now the final stage would be a large-scale clinical trial to establish if the prosthesis can be used widely. Dr Micera firmly believes the prosthesis will be available in ten years time.

Necessity of long-term funding

NEBIAS is a continuation of intensive multi-disciplinary research in this field which started many years ago with the CYBERHAND  (Future and Emerging Technologies) (FET) FP5 Project (2002-2005). While CYBERHAND was able to demonstrate a mechanical hand, the task of direct interfacing to the nervous system to enable natural control proved to be beyond the project's reach. Efforts to connect robotic artefacts to the nervous system were pursued notably under FP6 and FP7, with successful testing of a prototype electrode without sensory feedback and investigation on how electrodes could be implanted into a patient's nerve. The sensory feedback challenge was overcome only recently, and NEBIAS, also an FET funded project, is now fully exploiting the prosthesis and further developing the technology to bionic arms.

Building on the results of successive projects allows to overcome the various challenges and to refine the technology, resulting in ground breaking innovation that may well enhance the lives of amputees across Europe and beyond.

Innovation through collaboration

This multi-disciplinary research brought together researchers from materials, computer and neuro-sciences, biomedical microtechnology and electronic engineering. Over these different EU funded projects, scientists from 29 different institutions, involving 7 EU countries (and even a participation from USA) worked together with just one goal -- to make a prosthetic hand that can enable natural sensation and motion.

'This is one of the things I love about the EU,' says Dr Micera. 'These transnational projects are amazing. You can draw on a pool of over 500 million inhabitants to find the best researchers in different fields.'

NEBIAS, also, was launched at the start of November 2013 and will run for four years. It receives EUR 3.4 million from the European Commission's 7th Framework Programme .


Story Source:

The above story is based on materials provided by European Commission, CORDIS. Note: Materials may be edited for content and length.


 

With $100 Million, Entrepreneur Sees Path to Disrupt Medical Imaging

 

Will ultrasound-on-a-chip make medical imaging so cheap that anyone can do it?

Why It Matters

Portable, cheap, and high-quality ultrasound could make medicine’s most commonly used imaging technique accessible to more people.

illustrated portrait of Jonathan Rothberg

Jonathan Rothberg

A scanner the size of an iPhone that you could hold up to a person’s chest and see a vivid, moving, 3-D image of what’s inside is being developed by entrepreneur Jonathan Rothberg.

Rothberg says he has raised $100 million to create a medical imaging device that’s nearly “as cheap as a stethoscope” and will “make doctors 100 times as effective.” The technology, which according to patent documents relies on a new kind of ultrasound chip, could eventually lead to new ways to destroy cancer cells with heat, or deliver information to brain cells.

Rothberg has a knack for marrying semiconductor technology to problems in biology. He started and sold two DNA-sequencing companies, 454 and Ion Torrent Systems (see “The $2 Million Genome” and “A Semiconductor DNA Sequencer”), for more than $500 million. The profits have allowed Rothberg, who showed up for an interview wearing worn chinos and a tattered sailor’s belt, to ply the ocean on a 130-foot yacht named Gene Machine and to indulge high-concept hobbies like sequencing the DNA of mathematical geniuses.

The imaging system is being developed by Butterfly Network, a three-year old company that is the furthest advanced of several ventures that Rothberg says will be coming out of 4Combinator, an incubator he has created to start and finance companies that combine medical sensors with a branch of artificial-intelligence science called deep learning.

Rothberg won’t say exactly how Butterfly’s device will work, or what it will look like. “The details will come out when we are on stage selling it. That’s in the next 18 months,” he says. But Rothberg guarantees it will be small, cost a few hundred dollars, connect to a phone, and be able to do things like diagnose breast cancer or visualize a fetus.

Butterfly’s patent applications describe its aim as building compact, versatile new ultrasound scanners that can create 3-D images in real time. Hold it up to a person’s chest, and you would look through “what appears to be a window” into the body, according to the documents.

Concept drawings filed with the patent office by Butterfly Network show ideas for a small, 3-D ultrasound imaging device.

With the $100 million supplied by Rothberg and investors, which include Stanford University and Germany’s Aeris Capital, Butterfly appears to be placing the largest bet yet by any company on an emerging technology in which ultrasound emitters are etched directly onto a semiconductor wafer, alongside circuits and processors. The devices are known as “capacitive micro-machined ultrasound transducers,” or CMUTs.

Most ultrasound machines use small piezoelectric crystals or ceramics to generate and recieve sound waves. But these have to be carefully wired together, then attached via cables to a separate box to process the signals. Anyone who can integrate ultrasound elements directly onto a computer chip could manufacture them cheaply in large batches, and more easily create the type of arrays needed to produce 3-D images.

“The vision for this product has been around for many years. It remains to be seen whether someone can make it into a market-validated reality.”

Ultrasound is used more often by doctors than any other type of imaging test, including to view a baby during pregnancy, to find tumors in soft tissues like the liver, and more recently to treat prostate cancer by heating up cells with sound waves.

The idea for micromachined ultrasound chips dates to 1994, when Butrus Khuri-Yakub, a Stanford professor who advises Rothberg’s company, built the first one. But none have been a commercial success, despite a decade of interest by companies including General Electric and Philips. This is because they haven’t functioned reliably and have proved difficult to manufacture.

“The vision for this product has been around for many years. It remains to be seen whether someone can make it into a market-validated reality,” says Richard Przybyla, head of circuit design at Chirp Microsystems, a startup in Berkeley, California, that’s developing ultrasound systems that let computers recognize human gestures. “Perhaps what was needed all along is a large investment and a dedicated team.”

Rothberg says he got interested in ultrasound technology because his oldest daughter, now a college student, has tuberous sclerosis. It is a disease that causes seizures and dangerous cysts to grow in the kidneys. In 2011 he underwrote an effort in Cincinnati to test whether high-intensity ultrasound pulses could destroy the kidney tumors by heating them.

What he saw led Rothberg to conclude there was room for improvement. The setup—an MRI machine to see the tumors, and an ultrasound probe to heat them—cost millions of dollars, but wasn’t particularly fast, more like a “laser printer that takes eight days to print and looks like my kids drew it in crayon,” he says. “I set out to make a super-low-cost version of this $6 million machine, to make it 1,000 times cheaper, 1,000 times faster, and a hundred times more precise.”

Rothberg claims there’s a “secret sauce” to Butterfly’s technology, but he won’t reveal it. But it may have as much to do with clever device and circuit design as overcoming the physical limits and manufacturing problems that CMUT technology has faced so far.

One reason to think so is that the company’s cofounder, Nevada Sánchez, previously helped cosmologists design a much cheaper radio telescope with a signal-processing trick called a butterfly network, also the origin of the startup’s name. Also working with the company is Greg Charvat, who joined it from MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory, where he developed radar that can see human bodies even through thick stone walls (see “Seeing like Superman”).

During a visit to 4Combinator’s headquarters, which sits inside a marina in Guilford, Connecticut, Charvat and Sanchez showed off a picture of a penny so detailed you could read the letters and numbers on it. They’d taken the image this spring using a prototype chip. “The ultrasound [industry] is basically back in the 1970s. GE and Siemens are building on old concepts,” says Charvat. With chip manufacturing and a few new ideas from radar, he says, “we can image faster, with a wider field of view, and go from millimeter to micrometer resolution.”

Ultrasound works by shooting out sound and then capturing the echo. It can also create beams of focused energy—and chip-based devices could eventually lead to new systems for killing tumor cells. Small devices might also be used as a way to feed information to the brain (it was recently discovered that that neurons can be activated with ultrasonic waves).

“I think it will become better than a human in saying ‘Does this kid have Down syndrome, or a cleft lip?’ And when people are pressed for time it will be superhuman.”

Rothberg says his first goal will be to market an imaging system cheap enough to be used even in the poorest corners of the world. He says the system will depend heavily on software, including techniques developed by artificial intelligence researchers, to comb through banks of images and extract key features that will automate diagnoses.

“We want it to work like ‘panorama’ on an iPhone,” he says, referring to a smartphone function that steers a picture taker to pan across a vista and automatically assembles a composite image. But in addition to recognizing objects—body parts in the case of a fetal exam—and helping the user locate them, Rothberg says the system would also reach preliminary diagnostic conclusions based on pattern-finding software.

“When I have thousands of these images, I think it will become better than a human in saying ‘Does this kid have Down syndrome, or a cleft lip?’ And when people are pressed for time it will be superhuman,” says Rothberg.  “I will make a technician able to do this work.”

Rothberg says his incubator has started three other companies in addition to Butterfly, and he’s given each of them between $5 million and $20 million in seed capital. They include a biotechnology firm, Lam Therapeutics, working on treatments connected to tuberous sclerosis; Hyperfine Research, a startup in stealth mode that hasn’t said what type of technology it is developing; and another company that’s unnamed.