What would you do if you were to grow an extra limb? Embrace the oddity as well as advantage of it all, of course! Jason Barnes from Atlanta who had his right arm amputated from below the elbow two years back was on the receiving end of a robotic prosthetic arm, thanks to a certain Profession Weinberg, where this particular robotic arm is capable of manipulating a pair of drumsticks. The first stick will be controlled with electrical signals emitted from his upper arm muscles, while the other stick can tune in to the music being played, where it will then have an algorithm that helps it improvise on its very own beat. Not quite General Grievous in the Star Wars universe, but we’re on our way there.
Robotic Prosthesis Turns Man Into Extra Skilled Drummer original content from Ubergizmo. 
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If there is one thing that kids hate, I would suppose it would be receiving a vaccination. Anything with needles, whether large or small, is scary, and I think eating one’s vegetables would come in a close second. What if there was a way to deliver vaccines without instilling the fear of needles into the recipient? This particular painless patch could usher in a new future, where one could eventually apply a vaccine patch to themselves without having to drop by the doctor’s clinic. Of course, this would also mean more self-management, and there are folks who are not that great when it comes to keeping a meticulous track record of their previous vaccination (or those of their kids), so that is something to look out for.
A heart attack is a silent killer, but are there ways to be able to figure out a preventative step before it happens? Apparently so, as a 3D printed implant might just be able to predict when a heart attack is going to happen. Biomedical engineers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have come up with a custom-fitted, 3D printed implant that boasts of embedded sensors which could very well lay out a rather accurate prediction of cardiac disorders. This could very well lead to a change in the way that heart attacks are treated.
In order to run a blood test, one would need to have sufficient amount of fresh blood. The thing is, what happens when one is unable to draw enough blood, or the circumstances do not permit it? A certain Elizabeth Holmes is curious to see a future where old-fashioned phlebotomy is reinvented so that a new dawn of comprehensive superfast diagnosis and preventive medicine can be ushered in. Having founded a company known as Theranos, she has worked on a radical blood-testing service that requires just a pinprick and a drop of blood. That single drop of blood is enough to run hundreds of tests, which range from standard cholesterol checks to sophisticated genetic analyses.
Pain – it is one aspect of life that some of us would prefer not to live with, and yet it is essential in helping us know that something is wrong with our bodies when we feel a certain amount of pain somewhere. I guess some pain is all right, but how about the excruciating one that would actually make folks pass out? A team from Stanford University has come up with a new technique which enables them to modulate the amount of pain. This particular technique would rely on optogenetics, which is a method that will introduce genes which code for light sensitive proteins into animals.
What are some of the necessary evils in life? Can you lump whole body scans in a cancer screening process under that category, especially when we are talking about kids? Traditional radiation scanners such as PET and CT do a pretty good job when it comes to locating the presence of cancer, they are also double edged swords since they would expose patients to radiation which could be potentially harmful, not to mention being a trigger for cancer many years down the road. This is especially true in younger patients, simply because their cells are still dividing at an accelerated rate, with so many more theoretical years ahead of them, the risk of being exposed to additional radiation in due time also increases. Is there a safer alternative? Perhaps, as it will involve merging MRI scans with a “contrast agent” (or diagnostic dye). This solution seems to be as effective as locating cancer sans the risks that radiation carries.
