For people with memory-degrading conditions like Alzheimer’s, it’s not always easy, or even possible, to remember to take one’s medicine. Yet forgetting to take your meds-or perhaps worse, forgetting that you already took them and doubling up-can derail a dosage schedule and in worse cases be detrimental to your health. So a couple of University of Texas students have come up with a smart digital system that helps the forgetful among us remember to pop our pills and verifies visually that we’ve done so.
By the students’ own admission their Project Smart Pill Box is somewhat rudimentary, which in certain respects is an advantage because the only hardware it requires is a computer and a Web cam, two pieces of technology that are already present in most homes these days.
With telepresence robots serving as stand-ins, there’s no reason for sick kids to miss school. Some children may prefer to skip class, of course, but for those with serious immune system disorders, telepresence ‘bots are a lifeline to the outside world.For the past three weeks, a new telepresence robot has allowed Knox City, Texas, high school freshman Lyndon Baty to interact with classmates, attend lectures and feel like a regular student. He suffers from polycystic kidney disease and had a kidney transplant at age 7. He attended school until last year, but when he started showing signs of transplant rejection, he was forced to stay home because of his suppressed immune system. He wears a surgical mask and must avoid almost all social interactions just to stay healthy.
In December, school district officials heard about the Vgo telepresence robot, a new platform released last year,
Most dermatologists still decide which moles require a biopsy by good old fashioned eye-balling, but a new device developed by researchers at British Colombia Cancer Agency (BCCA) could remove that guesswork, using a handheld laser to quickly identify problem spots that require closer examination.
Called the Verisante Aura, the device employsRaman spectroscopyto identify the molecular makeup of moles by changing the vibrational state of the molecular bonds in a skin growth. Shining a particular laser light on those bonds causes a shift in the kind of light that is reflected back to a sensor, and that shift belies exactly what kinds of molecules are there and in what concentration they exist.
