Make way for smart bandage, which can heal better and faster. Researchers from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Harvard Medical School and MIT have designed a smart bandage that could eventually heal chronic wounds and even battlefield injuries. The bandage consists of electrically conductive fibres coated in a gel, which can be individually loaded with infection-fighting antibiotics, tissue-regenerating growth factors, painkillers or other medications. The postage stamp size microcontroller, which could be activated by a Smartphone or other wireless device, will send small amounts of voltage through a chosen fibre to heat the fibre and its hydrogel, releasing the medication it contains.
Battery based on sodium
With global warming making a move towards renewable solar and wind energy a necessity, industrial observers are predicting a growing need for battery farms to store power and provide electricity – at viable prices. It has already been established that battery based on sodium may offer more cost-effective storage than lithium and now researchers in Stanford have developed a sodium-based battery (based on a compound related to table salt) that can store the same amount of energy as a state-of-the-art lithium ion. Researchers believe their approach has the price and performance characteristics to create a sodium ion battery costing less than 80 percent of a lithium ion battery with the same storage capacity.
Smart Glasses for Deaf Theatre fans
London’s National Theatre is using augmented reality to make its performances more accessible for hard of hearing customers, with the help of Epson’s latest smart glasses. It launched a trial, in which deaf and hearing-impaired customers were supplied with the eyewear, which displays subtitles in their field of vision wherever they are sitting. The trial will run for a year with the support of tech consultancy Accenture. The always-on service will run in all three of the organisation’s theaters, and will be supplemented by always-on audio description for visually impaired customers by April 2019.