3D printers have been all the rage lately. In the past few years, we’ve started to see mainstream uses of the technology as the price of 3D printers (while still not cheap) fall. One of the potentially greatest uses for this technology is the implications it has for the medical community; from hard casts for broken bones to heart valves printed with bio materials, the possibilities are endless, but many are still in the developing stages. But in the field of prosthetics, huge advances are already being made largely due to these printers.

E-Nable is an organization that describes itself as “a global network of passionate volunteers using 3D printing to give the world a “Helping Hand.” Founded in 2013 by Rochester Institute of Technology by research scientist Jon Schull, E-Nable began as an online network providing locations of centers that had the capabilities to print prosthetic limbs using open-source blueprints. This way, people with missing limbs could get in contact with the centers and request a limb for far less than a traditional prosthetic would cost (a comparable, traditionally-made limb would run between $6,000 and $10,000) . It has since evolved into the area of designing limbs to make them as efficient as possible. Patients can receive one of these 3D printed limbs for no charge (the material cost is about $35, but can be covered by donations), making it a life changer for some, especially children. In the past, it was very uncommon for children born without hands or forelimbs to have prosthetics, because they were too costly to refit and replace every year as the child outgrew them. With 3D printing and E-Nable, the limbs become so cheap that families have that financial burden lifted. They plan to give away over 6,000 limbs over the next two years. While these E-Nable devices have not (at least, not yet) brought an end to demand for traditional prosthetics, it’s focus on underserved communities around the world have made it a viable option for many.

3D printing is also inspiring researchers to build cheaper robotic prosthetics as well. Joel Gibbard of Open Bionics is developing a 3D printed robotic arm that can be made in 40 hours and will sell for around $2,000 (compared to a traditional robot arm that would cost anywhere from $50-100,000). He too hopes that these limbs will especially serve children who can’t afford to replace a high functioning prosthetics often. 

What other medical problems do you think 3D printers could be useful in solving?

You can check out a video of an E-Nable limb in action below!

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In class, we’ve talked a lot about the “internet of things”; a network of everyday objects outfitted with sensors that could seamlessly work together to make our lives better. I’ve thought about the internet of things mostly in terms of household objects–it never crossed my mind to think of the internet of things on a smaller (but potentially more impactful) scale. Digital medicine could be the new frontier in the medical and tech fields, and are inching us ever forward to a completely technology-integrated lifestyle.

This week, Proteus Digital Health and Otsuka Pharmaceuticals announced that the FDA has accepted their new drug application (NDA) for a hybrid drug/digital device that would work with the antidepressant Abilify. If approved, it would be the world’s first digital medicine. This isn’t quite the magic-school-bus-esque medical solution that you may be thinking of–it’s not a bunch of microscopic nanobots that enter your body attack germs. It’s actually much simpler. This system would consist of an ingestible “smart pill” with a sensor that would sync with a wearable patch. Data from the pill would be able to sync with any bluetooth-enabled device, allowing the patient and (with consent) medical professionals to access the information. The patch and the sensor would be able to track exactly when the medication has been ingested, which is the system’s main purpose, and why the depression and schizophrenia medication Abilify was chosen to be the smart pill’s guinea pig. A major struggle for people with serious mental disorders can be adhering to a medication schedule. According to a press release from Otsuka,

“an estimated average of 50% of patients with chronic diseases in developed countries do not take medicines as prescribed, possibly limiting the effectiveness of those medicines. In the U.S., this may result in an estimated $100-300 billion in avoidable healthcare costs due to direct costs such as unnecessary escalation of treatment as well as indirect costs.”

Doctors have to rely on their patients to tell the truth when it comes to whether or not they’ve been taking their medication, which can lead to unnecessary new treatments and misdiagnoses. With this technology, doctors will be able to monitor exactly when their patients take their medication. Wiliam H. Carson, M.D, President and CEO of Otsuka Pharmaceutical Development and Commercialization has high hopes for this technology, saying that “We believe this new digital medicine could revolutionize the way adherence is measured and fulfill a serious unmet medical need in this population”.
What do you think other applications of this technology could be? Would you take a “smart pill”?

http://www.teslamotors.com/sites/default/files/blog_images/hyperloop-alpha.pdf

I love to travel. By that I mean that I love going to different places; getting there, however, can sometimes be less than enjoyable. I’ve had the best experiences taking high speed trains in Europe, especially on France’s TGV that can hit speeds in excess of 300 mph, because it’s a relatively cheap and quick option to get from point A to point B. While these trains are commonplace throughout Europe and places like Japan and China, the US is not as up to speed. If you want to get from, say, New York to Los Angeles, you’ll most likely be buying a plane ticket (unless you’re down for 41 hours of straight driving). While it is possible to get a train for that trip, you’ll be in for a three day journey with multiple stops. Of course, there is a glaring reason that the US doesn’t have the connectivity of other regions: the sheer geographical size of our country. But in the next few decades, we could looking at a revolutionary mode of long-distant transportation: the Hyperloop.

A longtime brain-child of SpaceX and Tesla Motors’ Elon Musk, the Hyperloop is a transportation system consisting of low-pressure above-ground tubes that will transport pods of people at speeds double the average gate-to-gate times of flights. In 2013 Musk published a 57 page concept outlining the “the initial route, preliminary design, and logistics of the Hyperloop transportation system” for a San Francisco to Los Angeles route that would take approximately 35 minutes (a 382 mile journey). While it would cost an estimated $6 billion for two 1-way tubes and 40 pods, Musk states that it could transport 7.4 million people a year, the costs would be amortized over 20 years and the average passenger would pay $20 per one-way ticket (compared to flights starting at around $150). While this is an exciting concept, the outline doesn’t specify the aerodynamic system under which the hyperloop would operate. Navigating to SpaceX.com/hyperloop reveals the following message:

“Neither SpaceX nor Elon Musk is affiliated with any Hyperloop companies. While we are not developing a commercial Hyperloop ourselves, we are interested in helping to accelerate development of a functional Hyperloop prototype.”

So I guess Elon Musk has a lot on his plate (never would’ve guessed). But rather than SpaceX sponsoring this endeavor, they’ve announced an “open competition, geared towards university students and independent engineering teams, to design and build the best Hyperloop pod”, and will construct a one-mile test track at their California headquarters in time for the competition weekend next June (by the way, if anyone is interested, the deadline for submitting an intent to compete form is September 15, so hurry up!).

An interesting development in the Hyperloop saga was announced Aug. 20, when it was announced that Hyperloop Transportation Technologies had signed agreements to work with Oerlikon Leybold Vacuum and engineering design firm Aecom, and said that it already has 400 team members from NASA, Boeing, SpaceX working on the project in their spare time in exchange for stock options. These companies getting involved indicates that what might have been considered Elon Musk’s pipe dream only a few years ago could be creeping closer and closer to reality.

What do you think? Could this be the future of transportation, or is the idea still too far-fetched?

http://observationdeck.kinja.com/elon-musk-looks-to-texas-for-hyperloop-deployment-1679785425

conservativebyte.com

I started having some issues with the wifi on my computer a few days ago (psu wireless, amiright?), so like any millennial I asked my friend Google (mobile) what I could do to fix it. The first thing to catch my eye wasn’t the wireless help results that popped up, but rather a news article with the startling title “Parents Say School’s Wifi Signal Making Son Sick”. It captured my attention enough to make me temporarily abandon my troubleshooting and read on. A couple is suing their 12-year-old’s school over claims that the wifi signal is causing their son’s electromagnetic hypersensitivity syndrome (EHS), a condition caused by electromagnetic radiation and results in symptoms including headaches and nausea. This is despite the fact that the school had a third party analyze the signal emissions and found that they were “substantially less than 1/10,000th of the applicable safety limits”.  At first, I just assumed they were crazy; I mean, physical reactions to wifi? But after researching it a little more, apparently electromagnetic sensitivity is a real thing– sort of. The WHO has a dedicated webpage to electromagnetic fields and public health, and describes the prevalence, symptoms, and studies done on EHS; however, it ultimately concludes by saying that while the symptoms patients suffer are real and can be a huge burden on them, there is “no scientific basis to link EHS symptoms to EMF exposure”, and that it is not considered a medical diagnosis. It actually advises physicians that “treatment of affected individuals should focus on the health symptoms and the clinical picture, and not on the person’s perceived need for reducing or eliminating EMF in the workplace or home”. In spite of this, these parents are able to bring up this lawsuit for $250,000 in damages and the removal of wifi in the school– and this isn’t that unique of a case. Earlier this year, French courts awarded a monthly disability benefit to Marianne Richard, who claims to suffer from EHS and had moved to the countryside to avoid wireless signals. Michael Thompson filed a complaint with the Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario against the utility provider who runs cables underneath his home, “asserting discrimination with respect to goods and services because of disability” (it was eventually dismissed).

While I personally think that there are probably a host of other things that are way more likely to be causing these symptoms than wifi is, you have to consider how essential wifi has become to our society. What if it truly did have adverse side effects, and what if those side effects became worse or more common? How would the global community react? Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist, but would the public even be aware? Remember that there was a time when people believed smoking was fine for your health.

I’ll be following the parent’s case to see how it turns out for them.

http://www.wcvb.com/money/mass-schools-among-best-online-colleges-in-us/32867624

Stellar academics, honors classes, great SATs. Sports, clubs, leadership positions, community service. Letters of recommendation, flawless essays. This is how I stood out on my college applications– or at least, what I was taught that I needed to have in order to have a shot at getting a spot at the university of my dreams. As institutes of higher education get increasingly competitive, ambitious high school students are looking into everything and anything they can do to stand out, and massive online open courses are catching their attention.

MOOCs (as their name suggests) are online college-level courses that are generally free to enroll in and are usually tied to universities (like Harvard and MIT, to name a few). There can be thousands of students in each course, and while actual college credits cannot be earned one can purchase a certificate upon completion (the rates of which are, on average, low). These courses draw the big appeals from those who already have graduate education and are keeping up with changing areas in their field, as well as students from universities in places like the UK where higher education is very specialized. They are now capturing the curiosity of students like Dan Akim, a junior at a competitive high school in New York who wanted to do something with his summer in between family vacations and debate camp. While high schoolers and universities alike have begun to take notice of this growing trend, it’s not clear just how many students are putting MOOCs on their applications and how universities are factoring them into to their final decisions. The Common Application does not currently have a designated space to include MOOCs on applications, and therefore cannot gauge how many students have included them in additional information sections. Pomona’s dean of admissions Seth Allen has said that at the moment, they’re seen as an indication of curiosity on behalf of the student, rather than an academic achievement. This appears to be the case in many admission offices, because there are major hurdles in counting MOOCs towards a student’s actual academic performance (such as the inability to catch or combat cheating).

While growing, the number of students including MOOCs on their college applications is still small; that being said, what if universities started requiring prospective student to enroll in a MOOC? One could argue that they are a better indication of performance than GPA or ACT scores as they are bona fide college-level courses. Students could take a Stanford MOOC to get an idea of the rigor and expectations a college course requires. Taking it a step further, what if employers starting putting a similar weight on MOOCs as they did college degrees? We’re probably a long way off from that, but with online education ever-growing in popularity, it can beg the question of which is worth more: the certified completion of 30+ business MOOCs from Harvard University’s free edX, or a business degree from an online for-profit like the University of Phoenix? Think of the societal consequences if MOOCs became mainstream and respected by university admissions and employers: low-income students could get an education free of financial worry, students in low-performing high schools could supplement their under-funded learning with university classes. In a way, MOOCs level the playing field.

What are your thoughts?