In this fascinating video, Professor Blunn, discusses his groundbreaking prosthetic implants that give amputee humans and animals improved mobility

When I was a kid, I sometimes watched the television show, The Bionic Man. Even though the stories were silly, the technology was fascinating and the writers' predictions were inspiring for what those bionic limbs might be capable of doing. But bionic limbs are not the stuff of science fiction any longer; they are becoming reality, thanks to the work of Professor Gordon Blunn, Head of University College London's Centre for Bio-Medical Engineering, and his colleagues, including Dr Noel Fitzpatrick, a veterinary surgeon. Professor Blunn has been developing groundbreaking metal prosthetic implants that provide comfort and improved mobility for amputee humans and animals.

The key development in this new technology was learning how to fuse skin to metal so a biological interface would develop that prevents infections. This advance came from earlier research by Professor Blunn and a colleague, Dr Catherine Pendegrass, into how skin forms itself naturally around deer antlers. They found that in antlers, the bone structure under the skin is very different to that of the exposed bone.

"It was very porous, with lots of tiny holes, which the dermis [the inner layer of skin] webs its way into", explained Professor Blunn.

This observation led to their breakthrough development, known as Intraosseous Transcutaneous Amputation Prosthesis (ITAP), which uses a layer of porous and bioactive (hydroxyapatite-coated) surfaces that encourage adhesion by living tissues. This living "seal" prevents bacterial infections, thereby allowing surgeons to provide amputees with securely-attached limbs that carry weight in a natural way.

Currently, battery-powered sensors allow human amputees to consciously control the movement of downstream portions of the prosthetic limb, such as flexing the hand on a prosthetic arm. But even that is only a passing phase; already, the researchers have developed the ability to attach tendons to metal, allowing muscles to attach to and move the metal prosthetic "bone" just as they attached to and moved the original (replaced) bone.

Encouraged by these successes, Professor Blunn and his colleagues predict that within just five years, ITAP could provide the basis for fully functioning bionic limbs that are linked to the patient's nervous system.

In this fascinating video, Professor Blunn discusses his groundbreaking prosthetic implants that give amputee humans and animals improved mobility:

You can visit UCL's website and they also have a twitter account @uclnews.

Read more about Professor Blunn, and learn more about Noel Fitzpatrick's pioneering work with animals (especially dogs and cats) on this wonderful website.

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email: grrlscientist@gmail.com
twitter: @GrrlScientist

An old technology could make hybrid cars much cheaper.

The automakers Volvo and Jaguar  are testing the possibility of using flywheels instead of batteries in hybrid electric vehicles to aid acceleration and help engines operate more efficiently. The devices could reduce fuel consumption by 20 percent and would cost a third as much as batteries. Volvo will begin road-testing a car with the technology this fall.

A startup wants any Web page or mobile app to recognize faces, and claims users are becoming less sensitive about the technology.

A startup is working on technology that could give any website or app the ability to recognize peoples' faces, and even to identify their facial expression. While some see the technology as creepy, Face.com, the company behind it, argues that most users don't mind being recognized automatically online.

As computer vision software gets better, facial recognition software is becoming more common. With millions of images uploaded to services like Facebook every day, this technology can make social services more convenient, and could lead to completely new kinds of services and apps—but it also has obvious privacy implications.

For over a year, Face.com has made its technology available to software developers, enabling them to build it into a website or Web-connected apps. Technology allows a website or app to sends photos, which may be uploaded by users, to Face.com's servers for processing and receives details that include the location of any faces, their gender, and whether they match other photos stored by Face.com. Last week, the service was upgraded to allow it to gauge a person's mood, classifying them as happy, sad, surprised, angry, or neutral. It could already spot smiles, but now it's gained the ability to classify whether a person's lips are sealed, parted, or making a kiss. These features could perhaps be used to automatically add more detailed tags to images.

Within three days of the launch of these new features, one website had has begun using Face.com's mood recognition feature. Moodbattle is a website that asks visitors with webcams to compete to pull the most extreme expressions associated with particular emotions (browse the results here).

"Last month, we processed more than two billion different photos," says Face.com's CEO Gil Hirsch, who adds that usage is growing. Some 20,000 developers have signed up to tap into Face.com's technology; they can process 5,000 photos per hour for free, or pay for the ability to process more.

Hirsch says the four-year-old company recently became profitable, but he acknowledges that facial recognition still raises privacy concerns with many.

An international centre for developing intelligent transport systems (ITS) has opened for business in Britain's West Midlands.

A graduating Royal College of Art student has displayed a final project that could revolutionise the way we store food.

Published : 13-07-2011

The recovery in manufacturing output continues, but at a more moderate pace than in the previous months.
Recent declines in business confidence indicate that the pace of industrial recovery is normalising.
The Japanese earthquake has also had some temporary impact on output and exports in some sectors, notably autos.
Some signs of a

 Monthly Note on Economic Recovery in Industry, July 2011   (1057 KB)

Horn thought to be of a triceratops found in sedimentary rock was deposited shortly before mass extinction 65.5m years ago

The ancient remains of a horned beast uncovered by fossil hunters in Montana belong to the last known dinosaur to walk the Earth and give weight to the theory that the creatures were wiped out by an asteroid.

A brow horn of the creature was found in sedimentary rock deposited shortly before the mass extinction 65.5 million years ago.

Other dinosaur fossils are either much older, or were unearthed after being washed from their original graves into much younger sediments, long after they died.

The discovery adds to growing evidence that the dinosaurs were wiped out when a comet or asteroid crashed into Earth at the end of the cretaceous.

The animal, most likely an adult triceratops, was not the last dinosaur standing, but the last survivor of their impressive reign to be identified by palaeontologists. Adult triceratops grew to around 9 metres long and weighed up to 12 tonnes.

Researchers spotted the 45cm horn while hunting for fossils in the Hell Creek Formation, a 100m-thick slab of mudstone in south eastern Montana. The region is one of the few in the world that preserves fossils before and after the period of the mass extinction.

"This is the youngest dinosaur that has been discovered in situ. Others can be found in younger deposits, but those have been put there by geological processes and are actually much older," said Tyler Lyson, a palaeontologist at Yale University.

The discovery undermines a theory that gained ground in the 1980s, which claims that land-dwelling dinosaurs died out long before an asteroid slammed into the planet to produce what is known as the Chicxulub crater on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. One explanation claims the dinosaurs were killed off by climate change or a change in sea level.

The theory carried some weight until now, because no fossils had been found within three metres of the K-T boundary, the geological line in sedimentary rock that signifies the impact of the asteroid. The latest fossil was discovered a mere 13cm below that line.

"This demonstrates that dinosaurs did not go extinct prior to the impact and that at least some dinosaurs were doing very well right up until we had the impact," Lyson told the Guardian. The study appears in the journal Biology letters.

On spotting the dinosaur horn, the researchers dug a trench next door to the fossil and removed rock samples from various depths. These were sent to Antoine Bercovici at the China University of Geosciences, who analysed pollen grains in the rocks to identify the K-T boundary. When the asteroid hit, the existing plant life died out, and was later replaced with a growth of ferns.

While the impact at Chicxulub is largely uncontested, the manner in which it killed the dinosaurs is still open to debate. "The impact may have kicked up dust and blocked out the sun and caused a nuclear winter that killed off the plant life.

"Another idea is that the collision produced a thermal pulse, a microwaving effect of the entire Earth, so anything that was out on the surface, that couldn't burrow in the ground, or go underwater, was fried," Lyson said.

Customizable tools will let patients, and their doctors, track various health metrics.

A new set of tools could help patients with chronic illnesses track their condition and monitor  how they respond to different treatments.

Robots have been considered too unpredictable and dangerous to work alongside humans in factories—advances in artificial sensing and motion could change that.

Last winter, NASA technicians sent a humanoid robot dubbed Robonaut 2 to the International Space Station. R2, which has only a torso, sophisticated arms and fingers, and a head full of sensors, was the result of a joint effort by NASA and General Motors to create a robot that could operate safely alongside humans. Robots like R2 could carry out dangerous or tedious tasks on space missions, but they'd also be useful on the ground, where they could assist factory workers. Robots have typically been segregated from humans for safety reasons, but improvements mean they're now poised to take on a wider variety of tasks.

A survey suggests fewer than half of chiropractors always discuss the risks of cervical manipulation with patients

Most consumers seem to think all alternative treatments are natural and therefore safe. I have repeatedly pointed out that this is not necessarily true. Some alternative therapies are associated with very significant risks. Chiropractic, for instance, has left many patients in wheelchairs and some have even died.¹ Yet most chiropractors vehemently deny any responsibility.

A recent article by researchers from the Anglo-European College of Chiropractic in Bournemouth started with the telling statement that "the risk associated with cervical manipulation is controversial".² This is certainly true. About every second patient experiences transient adverse effects after chiropractic, and several hundred cases of permanent neurological deficits or death are on record.^1,3,4 Most of these serious complications are caused when an artery in the neck gets damaged during extreme manipulations of the upper spine. When this happens, the patient suffers a stroke and, as we all know, one can die of a stroke.

The Bournemouth team sent questionnaires about risk-related issues to 200 randomly selected UK chiropractors and received 92 responses. Their results show, among other things, that "only 45% indicated they always discuss [the risks of cervical manipulation] with patients ... "²

In plain language, this means that the majority of UK chiropractors seem to violate the most basic ethical standards in healthcare. If we assume that the 92 responders were from the more ethical end of the chiropractic spectrum, it might even be the vast majority of UK chiropractors who are violating the axiom of informed consent.

I applaud the authors for their courage in publishing their findings. They conclude that, "notwithstanding legal obligations, reluctance to disclose risk ... still remains, despite acknowledgement of moral and ethical responsibility."² There is nothing to add to this clear message.

References
1. Terrett, AGJ (2001). Current Concepts in Vertebrobasilar Complications Following Spinal Manipulation. Iowa, USA: NCMIC Chiropractic Solutions.

2. Langworthy, JM, Forrest, L (2010). Withdrawal rates as a consequence of disclosure of risk associated with manipulation of the cervical spine. Chiropractic and Manual Therapies; 18: 27.

3. Stevinson, C, Ernst, E (2002). Risks associated with spinal manipulation. American Journal of Medicine; 112: 566-570.

4. Ernst, E (2010). Deaths after chiropractic: a review of published cases. International Journal of Clinical Practice; 64(8): 1162-1165.