A wheelchair-mounted robotic arm controlled by thought alone has been created by scientists at the University of South Florida.
The device could give people with amytrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) or full body paralysis the ability to perform simple day to day functions that would otherwise be impossible.
“We aren’t reading people’s thoughts,” said Redwan Alqasemi, a scientist at the University of South Florida who, along with Rajiv Dubey and Emanuel Donchin of USF, helped develop the software and hardware. “This is the first time a person with severe disabilities like ALS can perform daily activities for themselves.”
The nation’s second set of live-born octuplets were all breathing on their own Wednesday, 48 hours after a woman gave birth to the surprising bunch in Southern California.
Two of the babies were still receiving supplemental oxygen but were inhaling and exhaling on their own.
“They’re doing amazingly well,” said Socorro Serrano, spokeswoman for Kaiser Permanente’s Bellflower Medical Center, where the babies were born nine weeks premature.
Dr. Maria Siemionow, head of plastic surgery at the famed Cleveland Clinic, led a surgical team that recently performed the first face transplant in the United States.
Siemionow and CNN chief medical correspondent Sanjay Gupta talked with CNN’s Larry King about the reconstructive procedure and the prognosis for the patient. The following is an edited transcript of the interview.
Larry King: Dr. Siemionow, what caused the patient to need a new face?
Doctors hailed a groundbreaking transplant to replace 80 per cent of a woman’s face, saying it is a means for the severely disfigured to “face the world” without humiliation.
It was the world’s first near-total facial transplant and the fourth known facial transplant to have been successfully performed to date.
Incoming search terms:
- it is a womans world
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CLEVELAND (AP) — A woman so horribly disfigured she was willing to risk her life to do something about it has undergone the nation’s first near-total face transplant, the Cleveland Clinic announced Tuesday. Reconstructive surgeon Dr. Maria Siemionow and a team of other specialists replaced 80 percent of the woman’s face with that of a female cadaver a couple of weeks ago in a bold and controversial operation certain to stoke the debate over the ethics of such surgery.
The patient’s name and age were not released, and the hospital said her family wanted the reason for her transplant to remain confidential. The hospital plans a news conference Wednesday and would not give details until then.
LONDON (Reuters) – Four genetic variations appear to determine the speed at which people burn up food, researchers said on Thursday, a finding that could one day see doctors offer their patients more individual care.
Differences in metabolism can make some people more susceptible to diseases such as diabetes and explain why response to diet, exercise and drugs to treat certain conditions varies from person to person.
Surgeons in Spain have carried out the world’s first tissue-engineered whole organ transplant – using a windpipe made with the patient’s own stem cells.
The groundbreaking technology also means for the first time tissue transplants can be carried out without the need for anti-rejection drugs.
Five months on the patient, 30-year-old mother-of-two Claudia Castillo, is in perfect health, The Lancet reports.
She needed the transplant to save a lung after contracting tuberculosis.
Engineers in Wales have helped to develop micro technology which could lead to a bionic man becoming reality.
It is hoped their micro-needle array sensors, which are around the size of a matchstick head, will help amputees move artificial limbs with brain power.
The sensors, which were developed and manufactured by Cardiff University firm MicroBridge Services, comprise of 100 needles just thicker than a human hair.
A sterile woman is to give birth to the world’s first baby conceived after a full ovary transplant.
The 38-year-old was rendered infertile when her ovaries failed at the age of 15, causing her to suffer an early menopause. After receiving an ovary transplanted from her twin sister, the woman, who lives in London, is expected to give birth this week.
The pioneering surgery will give hope not only to more than 100,000 British women who suffer an early menopause, but also to those undergoing chemotherapy or radiotherapy for cancer. They could now freeze an ovary before beginning the treatment.
A former US Marine has become the first woman in the world to be fitted with a “bionic” arm that she can control by her thoughts alone.
Claudia Mitchell lost her left arm at the shoulder in a motorbike accident.
Her new arm works by detecting movements of a chest muscle that has been connected to the remains of nerves that once went to her real arm.
The first prototype was fitted to double amputee Jesse Sullivan four years ago.
