Researchers working at Purdue University and Princeton University have developed a proof-of-concept device, called MedMon, that blocks hackers from hijacking or interfering with wireless medical devices, like pacemakers, insulin pumps, or brain implants. The researchers were motivated to work on the problem after discovering how easy it was for hackers to break into current wireless medical systems.
The researchers believe that hundreds of thousands of people using wireless insulin pumps or wireless-enabled pacemakers are currently vulnerable. Other devices, not yet in the market, like brain implants that manage epilepsy and “smart prosthetics” could also be hacked. Despite the potential for hacking, the researchers admit the chances that any given would be hacked is low.
Larry McIntire, Wallace H. Coulter Chair and Professor, spoke to students on November 3rd regarding the past, present, and future of the biomedical engineering department at Georgia Tech. With ‘Wallace H. Coulter’ referenced everywhere in BME, where did it actually come from? As a student studying electronics at Tech in the early 1930s, Wallace Coulter spent two years at Tech before going on to found Coulter Corporation based on his influential work in developing the industrial fine particle counting principle referred to as the Coulter Principle.
New measurement technologies and techniques provide researchers more complete look at neurological activity
In 1991, Carl Lewis was both the fastest man on earth and a profound long jumper, perhaps the greatest track-and-field star of all time in the prime of his career. On June 14th of that year, however, Carl Lewis was human. Leroy Burrell blazed through the 100-meters, besting him by a razor-thin margin of three-hundredths of a second. In the time it takes the shutter to capture a single frame of video, Lewis’s three-year-old world record was gone.
This is a preview of Engineers Redefine How Movements are planned by Brain.
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By altering the genetic makeup of normally “unexcitable” cells, Duke University bioengineers have turned them into cells capable of generating and passing electrical current.
This proof-of-concept advance could have broad implications in treating diseases of the nervous system or the heart, since these tissues rely on cells with the ability to communicate with adjacent cells in order to function properly. This communication is achieved through the passage of electrical impulses, known as action potentials, from cell to cell.
