Breath test may be able to detect common cancers

An "electronic nose" could be used as a simple breath test to detect lung, breast, bowel and prostate cancers, Israeli scientists said Wednesday.

Using the sensor to pinpoint chemical variations, the team found they could not only distinguish between healthy and malignant breath but also identify the four different common tumor types.

While more work is needed to develop the technology, the early success could lead to the development of a cheap, easy-to-use and portable test to help diagnose cancer earlier.

"If we can confirm these initial results in large-scale studies, this new  technology could become a simple tool for early diagnosis of cancer along with imaging," said Abraham Kuten of Technion Israel Institute of  technology.

Kuten and his colleagues studied the breath of 177 people, some healthy and some with various types of cancer, to detect the different chemicals emitted from the surface of cancer cells as they grow.

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WHO: Mobile health goes global

Sony Develops Film-Thin Display

Sony Develops Film-Thin Display

A Japanese electronic company has developed a razor-thin display that bends like paper while showing full-color video.

In the race for ever thinner displays for TVs, cell phones and other gadgets, Sony may have developed one to beat them all.

According to a video of the new display, it is being held up by a hand that"s squeezing the 0.3 millimeter, or 0.01 inch, display, while showing color video of a bicyclist stuntman, picturesque lake and other images.

The display combines an organic thin film transistor, or TFT, technology, which is required to make flexible displays, with another kind of technology called organic electroluminescent display.

The latter technology is not as widespread for gadgets as the two main display technologies now on the market--liquid crystal displays and plasma display panels.

Although flat-panel TVs are getting slimmer, a display that"s so thin it bends in a human hand marks a breakthrough.

The company will present the research and video at an academic symposium in Long Beach, California, for the Society for Information Display this week.

Sony said plans for a commercial product using the technology were still undecided.

Some analysts have said Sony had fallen behind rivals in flat-panel technology, including Samsung Electronics Co. of South Korea and Sharp Corp. of Japan.

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WHO: Mobile health goes global

More than 80 percent of countries across the globe are using mobile phone technology in different ways to improve their health services, WHO says.

A survey conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) showed that only 19 of the 114 studied countries have no mobile health initiative, known as “mHealth.” Many of the government adoptions, however, are at the pilot stage.

While eighty-three percent of the studied countries were involved in a minimum of one mHealth project, most of them had several projects running, said Misha Kay, Manager at the Global Observatory for mHealth at WHO.

The report showed that mHealth has become a point of interest in not only rich and developed countries but also nations with the lowest incomes. Reportedly, 77 percent of the less affluent countries reported mHealth programs compared with 87 percent of high-income nations.

Southeast Asia, the Americas and Europe were benefiting from the related services and programs while about 75 percent of the studied African nations were also among the technology users.

The most popular mHealth programs globally were mobile technology call centers, cited by 59 percent; emergency services management, 54 percent; and telemedicine, 49 percent, the report says.

The most common services used in the low-income countries were the use of mobile networks for conducting health surveys; these programs, however, were the least common programs globally.

mHealth call centers, toll-free numbers and mobile communications for emergencies are among the programs most easily incorporated into the health systems.

There are more than five billion cell phone subscribers in the world and 85 percent of the planet is covered by a commercial wireless signal, noted WHO urging further approach toward using the technology for health improvement.

Speaking at a conference on mobile health in Cape Town, Kay called for a "more strategic approach to planning, development and evaluation to increase the impact of mHealth, and also prove that mHealth does work."

"So what we’re seeing is a fairly healthy groundswell of activity, also considering that we believe that a lot of the reports were understated," he added.

The UN health body cited competing health system priorities as the greatest barriers to mHealth adoption.

"Health systems worldwide are under increasing pressure to perform under multiple health challenges, chronic staff shortages, and limited budgets, all of which makes choosing interventions difficult. In order to be considered among other priorities, mHealth programs require evaluation," the report concluded.

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Needle-Less device injects without pain

Needle-Less device injects without pain

Scientists have developed a new needle-less device which injects medications through the skin at the speed of sound without causing a notable pain.

The high-speed jet injector, developed by researchers of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the US uses a small, powerful magnet and electric current to administer drugs. 

“We were able to fire the drug out at almost the speed of sound if we need to the speed of sound in air is about 340 meters per second,” said Professor Ian Hunter. “It's capable of pressurizing the drug up to 100 megapascales (MPas), and we can do that in under a millisecond.” 

The new technology can deliver different sorts of medications with less pain and more accuracy compared to syringes and hypodermic needles. 

The prototype injector’s nozzle is only about as wide as a mosquito’s proboscis which is far lower in the pain scale compared to needle injections. 

Another advantage of the new technology is that the velocity of the delivery of a drug can be adjusted by controlling the current applied to the actuator. 

“There's a magnet in the center of our jet injector that's surrounded by a coil of wire, and when we apply a current to the coil, we create a Lorentz Force that pushes this piston, which forces the drug out of the ampoule,” said Dr. Catherine Hogan. 

“This gives us a tremendous amount of control depending on how much current we put in, so that we can successfully deliver a wide variety of volumes of drug at a wide variety of velocities with a very low degree of error, something a needle can't do,” she added. 

The new device has also found to be successful in delivering drugs directly to the middle or inner ear and even can be used for injecting directly to very tiny tissues such as the retina, the light-sensitive tissue lining the inner surface of the eye. 

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Japan Builds Brain Machine tech

Japan Builds Brain Machine tech

Forget the clicker: A new technology in Japan could let you control electronic devices without lifting a finger simply by reading brain activity.

The "brain-machine interface" developed by Hitachi Inc. analyzes slight changes in the brain's blood flow and translates brain motion into electric signals.

A cap connects by optical fibers to a mapping device, which links, in turn, to a toy train set via a control computer and motor during one recent demonstration at Hatoyama, just outside Tokyo.

"Take a deep breath and relax," said Kei Utsugi, a researcher, while demonstrating the device on Wednesday.

At his prompting, a reporter did simple calculations in their head, and the train sprang forward -- apparently indicating activity in the brain's frontal cortex, which handles problem solving.

Activating that region of the brain -- by doing sums or singing a song -- is what makes the train run, according to Utsugi. When one stops the calculations, the train stops, too.

Underlying Hitachi's brain-machine interface is a technology called optical topography, which sends a small amount of infrared light through the brain's surface to map out changes in blood flow.

Although brain-machine interface technology has traditionally focused on medical uses, makers like Hitachi and Japanese automaker Honda Motor Co. have been racing to refine the technology for commercial application.

A software for predicting bone loss risk

Iranian researchers have managed to develop software that predicts the risk of osteoporosis, the silent bone disease associated with fragile fractures, with high accuracy.

Osteoporosis is the thinning of bone tissue and loss of bone density over time. The silent disease, which is more common in women older than 50, is often diagnosed too late when the patients suffer severe bone loss or related fractures.

Physicians usually diagnose osteoporosis through measuring bone mass using different techniques including Bone Mineral Densitometry (BMD) which exposes the patients to certain amounts of x-ray radiation.

The Dual-emission X-ray absorptiometry (DXA), which is considered as the most common and standard method in this regard, lacks desirable accuracy especially in studying lumbar spines.

The new software developed by Amirkabir University of Technology researchers showed promising results in determining the risk of bone loss as well as diagnosing patients with osteoporosis, said lead researcher Maede Mohammadifar.

The accuracy of the new software in predicting the risk of osteoporosis is higher than 97 percent, said Mohammadifar, adding that the new method can also help physicians detect individuals who need to undertake BMD as a screening test.

According to the evaluation study, the software, which provides the radiography images of the five lumbar spines, has also showed 81 percent accuracy in diagnosing individuals suffering from the disease.

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Internet could help encourage exercise

Internet could help encourage exercise

People who spend their days in front of a computer may want to check out some fitness-related Web sites, according to a study published Monday.

Researchers found that internet-based exercise programs worked as well as printed advice in getting sedentary adults to take up regular physical activity. One year into the study, the internet users were getting 80 to 90 minutes of exercise each week.

The findings are important, say the study authors, because they suggest that millions of sedentary Americans could be reached through one of the modern conveniences blamed for keeping them chair-bound.

In 2006, 147 million American adults were internet users," lead study author Dr. Bess H. Marcus said in a statement.

"If sedentary individuals are at least as likely as active individuals to use the internet, this means roughly 80 million under-active adults are online and might be reached via Web-based interventions," said Marcus, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University Medical School in Providence, Rhode Island.

She and her colleagues report their findings in the current issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

The study included 249 sedentary adults who were randomly assigned to one of three groups. One group used a Web site developed by the researchers to support participants" exercise efforts. A second group was provided with links to six Web sites run by professional medical and fitness organizations. The third group received printed materials by mail.

Participants in all of the groups kept daily activity logs and completed questionnaires designed to keep them on track with their exercise regimens. The difference was that the group using the specially tailored Web site got immediate email feedback.

One year later, all three groups were doing similarly well, Marcus and her colleagues found. Those who used the tailored Web site were getting an average of 90 minutes of exercise per week, as were men and women in the group that received help by mail.

Study participants who used a Web site program they picked out were getting 80 minutes of exercise per week, on average.

In general, experts recommend that adults get at least 30 minutes of moderate exercise, such as brisk walking, on most days of the week.

According to Marcus"s team, more studies should investigate the power of the internet to reach the legions of inactive Americans sitting in front of a computer screen.

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Wireless Energy Transfer Possible

Wireless Energy Transfer Possible

US researchers have developed a wireless energy transfer technology that could charge a computer or cell-phone battery from across a room.

Massachusetts Institute of technology scientists said their innovation may soon eliminate wires that tether our machines to wall sockets, or may keep batteries topped up and ready to go.

They made a 60-watt light bulb glow by sending it energy wirelessly -- from a device two meters (7 feet) away.

The fledgling "WiTricity" technology is potentially heralding a future in which cell phones and other gadgets get juice without having to be plugged in.

Six MIT researchers worked four years on the problem.

The technology has already piqued the interest of some big names in consumer electronics.

Venture capitalists have been lining up with offers for the researchers who are now figuring how to turn their pet project into a marketable commodity.

Aristeidis Karalis, a member of the team Said, "This invention could free us from power cables and ideally replace batteries to a good extent, at least in the context of a home or office setting."

Marin Soljacic, a professor of physics at MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts who led the six-person research team explained the technology is simple.

It is based on resonance, which causes an object to vibrate when energy of a certain frequency is applied to it, he said.

Nokia, Microsoft to boost mobile entertainment

Mobile-phone giant Nokia will start to use Microsoft's copy protection software to boost the use of wireless entertainment, like music and videos, the two companies said on Monday. The world's largest cell-phone maker Nokia will license. Microsoft’s Play Ready digital rights management (DRM) technology, and build it into its S60 software, the most widely used software platform in cell-phone industry. Microsoft’s technology allows people to share protected pieces of content -- like music, games or videos -- between mobile phones, PCs and other devices.Nokia's S60 software is used extensively in Nokia's line-up, but also in advanced cell phones of LGElectronics and Samsung Electronics. Its closest rival is Microsoft's own Windows Mobile. In 2005 the two companies signed their first co-operation agreement to take Windows Media player on to Nokia phones, raising many eyebrows as the two had been fierce competitors in the mobile software industry. As cell-phone prices decline, handset vendors are looking for new revenue from potentially lucrative software operations, while at the same time Microsoft is looking for new revenue from the mobile space. In June, Nokia said it would reshape its whole organization to better focus on software and services.Nokia said it expects many S60 and its lower-tier Series 40 phones, which are also included in the deal, using Play Ready technology to hit the market in 2008.

$20 BILLION INDUSTRY

Major computer viruses over the last 25 years

ELK CLONER, 1982: Regarded as the first virus to hit personal computers worldwide, "Elk Cloner" spread through Apple II floppy disks and displayed a poem written by its author, a ninth-grade student who was designing a practical joke.

BRAIN, 1986: "Brain" is the first virus to hit computers running a Microsoft Corp. operating system — DOS. Written by two Pakistani brothers, the virus left the phone number of their computer repair shop.

MORRIS, 1988: Written by a Cornell University graduate student whose father was then a top government computer-security expert, the virus infected an estimated 6,000 university and military computers connected over the Internet. Although viruses had spread over the Internet before, until "Morris" none was widespread.

MELISSA, 1999: "Melissa" was one of the first to spread over e-mail. When users opened an attachment, the virus sent copies of itself to the first 50 people in the user's address book, covering the globe within hours.

LOVE BUG, 2000: Also spread via e-mail attachment, "Love Bug" exploited human nature and tricked recipients into opening it by disguising itself as a love letter.

CODE RED, 2001: Exploiting a flaw in Microsoft software, "Code Red" was among the first "network worms" to spread rapidly because it required only a network connection, not a human opening an attachment. Although the flaw was known, many system operators had yet to install a software patch Microsoft made available a month earlier to fix it.

BLASTER, 2003: "Blaster" also took advantage of a known flaw in Microsoft software and, along with the 2003 "SoBig" outbreak, prompted Microsoft to offer cash rewards to people who help authorities capture and prosecute the virus writers.

SASSER, 2004: "Sasser" exploited a Microsoft flaw as well and prompted some computers to continually crash and reboot, apparently the result of bad programming. Although "Sasser" is hardly the last malicious software, the ones since then have generally received less attention as networks install better defenses and profit-minded virus writers try to avoid detection and removal of their works.

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Zuckerberg and Chan in honeymoon

After their unexpected wedding party, Zuckerberg and his bride Priscilla Chan, traveled to Rome for the weekend to spend some time together, as their honeymoon.

Mark Zuckerberg doesn't really believe in privacy for the rest of the world, so it's not much of a surprise that the world doesn't believe in privacy for Zuckerberg.

Although they tried to blend in with the crowd, Zuckerberg and Chan were spotted by onlookers as they toured the Sistine Chapel and dined at Pierluigi's restaurant. Meanwhile unfortunately Mark’s Facebook fortune tumbled three billion dollars last week after the stock softened.