Fingertip tingle enhances a surgeon's sense of touch

OUR fingers are precision instruments, but there are plenty of things they are not sensitive enough to detect. Now we can augment their talents – using wearable electronic fingertips that provide tingling feedback about whatever we touch.

John Rogers of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and colleagues have designed a flexible circuit that can be worn over the fingertips. It contains layers of gold electrodes just a few hundred nanometres thick, sandwiched between layers of polyimide plastic to form a "nanomembrane". This is mounted on a finger-shaped tube of silicone rubber, allowing one side of the circuit to be in direct contact with the fingertips. On the other side, sensors can be added to measure pressure, temperature or electrical properties such as resistance.

 

People wearing the device receive electrotactile stimulation – a tingling sensation caused by a small voltage applied to the skin. The size of the voltage is controlled by the sensor and varies depending on the properties of the object being touched.

Surgical gloves are one potential application. Rogers, who worked with colleagues at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, and Dalian University of Technology in China, says gloves fitted with the nanomembrane could sense the thickness or composition of tissue via its electrical properties. A surgeon could also whittle away at the tissue using a high-frequency alternating current supplied by a battery attached at the wrist and delivered via the nanomembrane itself, says Rogers.

Fiorenzo Omenetto at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, is impressed. "The work sets the stage for a new generation of devices," he says.

There are applications beyond surgery, too. MC10, the company commercialising the technology, is running animal trials of a nanomembrane "sock" that can be wrapped around the heart. This provides a 3D map of its electrical activity, useful in treating irregular heartbeat.

MC10 is also working with medical device company Medronic to use the membrane inside the heart, sending it in on a limp balloon, which is then inflated to push the membrane onto the heart's interior walls.

Rogers says MC10 is also collaborating with sportswear firm Reebok on a product to be launched by the end of this year. The aim is to build a "body-worn piece of electronics" designed for contact sports, although Rogers declined to say exactly how it will be used.

Steve Jobs was 'receptive' to 7-inch iPad

There is increasing speculation, now backed up by some evidence, that Apple is -- or at least was -- interested in developing a 7-inch version of its groundbreaking iPad tablet.

Thanks to an increasingly vitriolic, ongoing intellectual property trial between Apple and Samsung, documents reveal that Apple was considering a 7-inch iPad back in 2011, and that former Apple co-founder Steve Jobs 'receptive' to the idea before his death. 

"I believe there will be a 7-inch market and we should do one," wrote Apple senior vice president of Internet Software and Services, Eddy Cue, in an email to now Apple CEO Tim Cook and other senior Apple executives on January 24, 2011.

"I expressed this to Steve several times since Thanksgiving and he seemed very receptive the last time. I found email, books, Facebook, and video very compelling on a 7-inch. Web browsing is definitely the weakest point, but still usable," Cue said in the email.

Problems relating to the usability of 7-inch tablets were highlighted by the Nielsen Norman Group. According to the December 2011 report, small tablets such as the Kindle Fire are a compromise because the user interface elements are too small and content isn't optimized for a screen that's bigger than a smartphone yet smaller than that of the iPad.

The email was submitted as evidence in Samsung's cross-examination on Friday, as reported by AllThingsD.

While there is a great deal of evidence to suggest that Apple is working on the next-generation iPhone, an iPad 'Mini' rumors have been far more speculative. Prior to this mention, there have been no official acknowledgement, component leaks or anything to go on beyond rumor and tech gossip. The justification for the iPad Mini seems to revolve around the success of 7-inch tablets such as Amazon's Kindle Fire and Google's Nexus 7. Amazon and Google both have a 7-inch tablet, so Apple needs one too.

However, this leaked email suggest that Apple was thinking about a 7-inch iPad before either the Amazon Kindle Fire or Google's Nexus 7 hit the market, both of which start at the budget price of $199.

The problem with the iPad Mini is that while it is technically possible for Apple to design and build a 7-inch tablet, the problem is pricing the device. It has to be competitive in the face of the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7, but not priced so low as to cannibalize sales of the higher-priced full-sized iPad.

One way that Apple could bring an iPad to market that could compete with the likes of the Kindle Fire and Nexus 7 is by getting the carriers to subsidize the tablet.

Anti-dengue mosquitoes released in Australia

Some 300,000 mosquitoes with the potential to block the spread of dengue fever have been released in Australia, in a large-scale trial of one of the most promising techniques to rid the world of the disease.Dengue fever infects around 100 million people in the tropics each year, killing 40,000 people annually. Insecticides and nets provide the most effective means to control the disease at present, says Scott O'Neill at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, but the dengue virus's range continues to grow. In 2009, for instance, it reached Buenos Aires in Argentina for the first time, while France reported its first locally acquired case of dengue fever in 2010

.Last year, O'Neill and colleagues announced plans to release Aedes aegypti mosquitoes infected with a fruit-fly bacterium called Wolbachia. The bacterium makes the mosquitoes less able tocarry the dengue virus, and it could therefore limit dengue transmission if it were to become widespread in the mosquito population.

Billionaire college dropouts

 Bill Gates talked about how Mark Zuckerberg and he have a few things in common. "We both dropped out of Harvard.", Mr. Gates said. "I actually even gave a lecture at Harvard that said, if you have a great idea, don't worry about dropping out and he attended that lecture. So it is a funny connection there."Here's a look at 8 very successful dropouts.

A businessman, designer and inventor. Steve Jobs is best known as the co-founder, chairman and CEO of Apple.Net worth at the time of his death: $8.3 billion

Mark Zuckerberg wrote a program called Facemash in his dorm room at Harvard, that went on to be known as Facebook, the world's largest and most popular social networking site today. Zucker berg dropped out of Harvard University and moved to Palo Alto with Dustin Moskovitz to officially start Facebook.Net Worth: $17.5 billion

Ranked as the world's youngest self-made billionaire, Moskovitz attended Harvard University as an economics major for two years and dropped out to work full time on Facebook with Mark Zuckerberg.Net worth: $3.5 billion 

Chairman and CEO of Dell, Michael Dell became the youngest CEO at the age of 27 to have his company ranked in the Fortune 500 list.Net worth: $15.9

Larry Ellison dropped out of the University of Illinois at Urbana -Champaign due to the demise of his adoptive mother. He is the co-founder and CEO of Oracle.Net worth: $36 billion

Azim Premji was voted among the twenty most powerful men in the world by Asiaweek. Forbes lists him as the third richest Indian and the 41st richest in the world.Net worth: $15.9 billion

A business tycoon, computer programmer and philanthropist, Bill Gates is the Chairman of Microsoft and was ranked as the wealthiest man in 2011. He dropped out of Harvard to join Paul Allen at Honeywell in 1974.Net worth: $61 billion

Sensors in touch..

Motion sensors... the future...

ICE touch display

Future tech... 

USB stick can sequence DNA in seconds

It may look like an ordinary USB memory stick, but a little gadget that can sequence DNA while plugged into your laptop could have far-reaching effects on medicine and genetic research.

The UK firm Oxford Nanopore built the device, called MinION, and claims it can sequence simple genomes – like those of some viruses and bacteria – in a matter of seconds. More complex genomes would take longer, but MinION could also be useful for obtaining quick results in sequencing DNA from cells in a biopsy to look for cancer, for example, or to determine the genetic identity of bone fragments at an archaeological dig.

The company demonstrated today at the Advances in Genome Biology and Technology (AGBT) conference in Marco Island, Florida, that MinION has sequenced a simple virus called Phi X, which contains 5000 genetic base pairs.

Proof of principle

This is merely a proof of principle – "Phi X was the first DNA genome to be sequenced ever," says Nick Loman, a bioinformatician at the Pallen research group at the University of Birmingham, UK, and author of the blog Pathogens: Genes and Genomes. But it shows for the first time that this technology works, he says. "If you can sequence this genome you should be able to sequence larger genomes."

Oxford Nanopore is also building a larger device, GridION, for lab use. Both GridION and MinION operate using the same technology: DNA is added to a solution containing enzymes that bind to the end of each strand. When a current is applied across the solution these enzymes and DNA are drawn to hundreds of wells in a membrane at the bottom of the solution, each just 10 micrometres in diameter.

Within each well is a modified version of the protein alpha hemolysin (AHL), which has a hollow tube just 10 nanometres wide at its core. As the DNA is drawn to the pore the enzyme attaches itself to the AHL and begins to unzip the DNA, threading one strand of the double helix through the pore. The unique electrical characteristics of each base disrupt the current flowing through each pore, enough to determine which of the four bases is passing through it. Each disruption is read by the device, like a tickertape reader.

Long strands, and simple

This approach has two key advantages over other sequencing techniques: first, the DNA does not need to be amplified - a time-consuming process that replicates the DNA in a sample to make it abundant enough to make a reliable measurement.

Second, the devices can sequence DNA strands as long as 10,000 bases continuously, whereas most other techniques require the DNA to be sheared into smaller fragments of at most a few hundred bases. This means that once they have been read they have to be painstakingly reassembled by software like pieces of a jigsaw. "We just read the entire thing in one go," as with Phi X, says Clive Brown, Oxford Nanopore's chief technology officer.

But Oxford Nanopore will face stiff competition. Jonathan Rothberg, a scientist and entrepreneur who founded rival firm 454 Life Sciences, also announced at the AGBT conference that his start-up company, Ion Torrent, will be launching a desktop sequencing machine. Dubbed the Ion Proton, it identifies bases by using transistors to detect hydrogen ions as they are given off during the polymerisation of DNA.

This device will be capable of sequencing a human genome in 2 hours for around $1000, Rothberg claims. Nanopores are an "elegant" technology, he says, but Ion Torrent already has a foot in the door. "As we saw last summer with the E. coli outbreak in Germany, people are already now using it," he says.

Pocketful of DNA

The GridION will take several hours to complete a human genome, by contrast. The MinION, while not designed for full human genome sequencing, will be marketed for use in shorter sequencing tasks like identifying pathogens, or screening for genetic mutations that can increase risk of certain diseases. Each MinION is expected to cost $900 when it goes on sale later this year.

"The biggest strength of nanopore sequencing is that it generates very long reads, which has been a limitation for most other technologies," says Loman. If the costs, quality, ease of use and throughput can be brought in line with other instruments, it will be a "killer technology" for sequencing, he says.

As for clinical applications, David Rasko at the Institute for Genome Sciences at the University of Maryland in Baltimore, says the MinION could have huge benefits. "It may have serious implications for public health and it could really change the way we do medicine," he says. "You can see every physician walking around the hospital with a pocketful of these things." And it will likely increase the number of scientists generating sequencing data by making the technology cheaper and more accessible.