Ultrasound is an effective way for physicians to see inside the body, but the machines are clunky and require a trip to the doctor's office or hospital. Now though, MIT researchers have demonstrated a small ultrasound sticker for your skin that produces a live, high-resolution ultrasound image. The sticker consists of two layers of an elastic material. Inside are the tiny transducers that generate and sense the sound waves that penetrate the body. along with a dollop of hydrogel, the gooey stuff that helps improve the signal transmission. From MIT News:
If the devices can be made to operate wirelessly — a goal the team is currently working toward — the ultrasound stickers could be made into wearable imaging products that patients could take home from a doctor's office or even buy at a pharmacy.
"We envision a few patches adhered to different locations on the body, and the patches would communicate with your cellphone, where AI algorithms would analyze the images on demand," says the study's senior author, Xuanhe Zhao, professor of mechanical engineering and civil and environmental engineering at MIT. "We believe we've opened a new era of wearable imaging: With a few patches on your body, you could see your internal organs."
Similar to what it might be like for someone living in the 1980s to stumble across an iPhone from the future, Chicago's ABC7 meteorologist Greg Dutra was utterly amazed to find out, while reporting live, that his weather map was actually a touch screen. (See video below.) "What? No waaaaay?" he said when his map… READ THE REST
Smartphones are my least favorite part of modern society. I hated cellphones the minute they practically became mandatory in the 2000s, and I've only become more disgusted by them every year. There are too many reasons to list, but for the purposes of this article, let's consolidate it to one: it's a pain to stay… READ THE REST
USB has been with us for 26 years. At the time, the technology's co-developer Ajay Bhatt thought it would just be a "[one-off] $40 million opportunity" for Intel. And without his persistence, it wouldn't have happened at all. From IEEE Spectrum: In the early 1990s, Bhatt told his boss about his idea of developing a… READ THE REST
We thank our sponsor for making this content possible; it is not written by the editorial staff nor does it necessarily reflect its views. Remember the days when telling time didn't require you to remember to charge anything each night? Well, those old timepieces didn't allow you to check the weather, read texts, or keep… READ THE REST
We thank our sponsor for making this content possible; it is not written by the editorial staff nor does it necessarily reflect its views. There are holidays that simply inspire shopping: Christmas, Halloween, Easter … and National Knife Day? Yep, National Knife Day (aka August 24) is here, and it's an opportunity to celebrate one of the… READ THE REST
We thank our sponsor for making this content possible; it is not written by the editorial staff nor does it necessarily reflect its views. There's hardly anything better than a beautiful wristwatch, but sometimes the price can make you want to run the other way. And if you're a student who needs to keep track of the time… READ THE REST
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