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| There's progress in SciTech despite grade school-playground bully politics |
New solar panel integrates battery storage, inverter, and smart software into a single unit
“Home solar has the potential to reduce, and even eliminate, electricity costs for many people, but even with the rapid advancements we're seeing in solar technology, there are still weak points that can be addressed and overcome, such as energy storage and 'smart' home integration. But a newcomer to the residential solar scene believes it has the answer, in the form of a standalone solar and battery unit which can be used singly or connected in an array, and which may be able to lower the overall costs considerably.”
“SunCulture's SolPad solar device integrates solid state batteries directly into the solar panels themselves, offering its users the ability to not only generate their own clean electricity, but to also store if for use after dark or during peak demand times, when electricity costs are higher.”
Smart solar panel innovation I’ve been waiting for to reduce cost by 50%. SolPad Home Connect system connection is a wire-free system that links two or more SolPad Home panels together on roof, completely eliminating the need for any complicated cabling or wiring, simplifying the installation and greatly reducing cost and installation time. - RB
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New ‘Artificial Pancreas’ Could Seriously Improve Life For Diabetics
“This will mean a whole lot fewer finger pricks for people with type 1 diabetes.”
“Medtronic Plc won U.S. approval on Wednesday for an “artificial pancreas” that is the first device to automatically deliver the right dose of insulin to patients with type 1 diabetes, freeing them from continually monitoring insulin levels throughout each day.”
“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration, in its approval of the device, the MiniMed 670G, hailed it as a breakthrough.”
“The device offers type 1 diabetics “greater freedom to live their lives without having to consistently and manually monitor baseline glucose levels and administer insulin,” Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA’s medical device division, said in a statement.”
“Analysts said the FDA approved the device six months sooner than expected. However, it will not be available until the spring of 2017.”
“The MiniMed 670G is the first device that allows a glucose sensor to communicate with an insulin pump and automatically regulate the insulin flow. The device is approved for those aged 14 and older.”
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Camera-loaded catheter streams live from inside arteries, removes plaque at same time
“The impact of ever-miniaturizing electronics can be felt right across the spectrum of technological advancement, but as we are beginning to see, one place where it can have a truly profound impact is in the human body. The latest example of this is a tiny camera no bigger than a grain of salt, which can be fixed to the end of a catheter and fed into arteries to provide surgeons tasked with removing plaque a live view from within.”
“The buildup of plaque inside blood vessels can lead to all sorts of health problems, the most extreme of which are life-threatening events like heart attacks and strokes. Doctors try to intervene before things get this bad by cutting plaque from the artery to improve blood flow, after first imaging the clogged vessel using techniques like x-ray to size up the job at hand.”
“But the trouble with this approach is that it only provides doctors with a cross-section view of the vessel. You could think of it like trying to clear a blockage in a pipe while only being able to see that pipe from the side. But lately, scientists are coming up with tiny technologies that allow us to venture inside for a look around.”
“Earlier this year we reported on a new 3D-printing technique that allowed scientists to produce a complex optical lens system for medical imaging that was around the size of a grain of salt and could be loaded into a syringe. And back in 2014, scientists developed a tiny catheter-based sensor that could provide a real-time view from within blood vessels to offer doctors a better vantage point.”
“And now, this approach is finding its way into the clinic as part of real-world procedures. The Pantheris Lumivascular atherectomy system device one ups the aforementioned solutions because it not only provides live images from inside, but doctors can use it to clear out the vessels at the same time.”
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Iron nanoparticles make immune cells attack cancer
“Stanford researchers accidentally discovered that iron nanoparticles invented for anemia treatment have another use: triggering the immune system's ability to destroy tumor cells.”
“Iron nanoparticles can activate the immune system to attack cancer cells, according to a study led by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.”
“The nanoparticles, which are commercially available as the injectable iron supplement ferumoxytol, are approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat iron deficiency anemia.”
“The mouse study found that ferumoxytol prompts immune cells called tumor-associated macrophages to destroy cancer cells, suggesting that the nanoparticles could complement existing cancer treatments. The discovery, described in a paper published online Sept. 26 in Nature Nanotechnology, was made by accident while testing whether the nanoparticles could serve as Trojan horses by sneaking chemotherapy into tumors in mice.”
“It was really surprising to us that the nanoparticles activated macrophages so that they started to attack cancer cells in mice," said Heike Daldrup-Link, MD, who is the study's senior author and an associate professor of radiology at the School of Medicine. "We think this concept should hold in human patients, too.”
“Daldrup-Link's team conducted an experiment that used three groups of mice: an experimental group that got nanoparticles loaded with chemo, a control group that got nanoparticles without chemo and a control group that got neither. The researchers made the unexpected observation that the growth of the tumors in control animals that got nanoparticles only was suppressed compared with the other controls.”
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