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Researchers at École polytechnique fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) and Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich have developed a technique for building “mobile micromachines” inspired by origami that can be controlled and powered remotely using magnets. The goal is to eventually use the technology to create diagnostic and therapeutic devices that can travel through the body and perform specific actions, reaching areas and doing tasks that are difficult with existing techniques. The investigators’ approach allows for a wide variety of tiny robots that change shapes in different ways and respond…

Withings has announced a new touchless temporal thermometer that also connects to smartphones to keep track of the temperature trends. The user of the Withings Thermo simply holds down its sole button and scans the thermometer across a person’s forehead around the temporal artery. As that is done, an array of sensors on the tip of the device takes hundreds of measurements, identifying the hottest temperature during the scan. The results are displayed on the nifty white light-up screen, which also acts as a touchpad which you can use to change…

Computed tomography (CT) is benefiting from research to lower radiation dose, while maintaining or improving the quality of the images. Analogously, scientists at the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering (NIBIB), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the University of Chicago have developed a new microscope that doubles the resolution of images without exposing the sample to an increased amount of light or prolonging the imaging process.   Fluorescence imaging is generally inefficient, as the majority of the light emitted from the biological sample does not…

At Ohio State University a small team of researchers has been working on creating cheap paper strips that could be kept by people at home, used to sample blood in case of disease, and shipped to a lab for diagnosis. The original goal of developing the technology has been the detection malaria, but the researchers writing in the Journal of the American Chemical Society are reporting that it can probably be used to detect any disease that results in the release of antibodies. These include certain cancers and other diseases that are not necessarily infectious.…