As a soldier in Iraq, he lost both legs and his left hand, making it difficult to use your everyday type of wheelchair. Luckily designer Mark Veljkovich created this super lightweight and minimal wheelchair, which allows Bryan to represent Quantum Rehab, a sector of Pride Mobility, traveling the US "delivering his message of perseverance and determination in major rehab facilities."

Stripping back the wheelchair to the bones, you'll notice this design is literally just four wheels, a slim carbon fiber seat and lightweight skeleton. Looks like a work of art to me. [Bryan Anderson via Yanko Design]

UPDATE: The designer and Pride Mobility have both been in touch with me, turns out there was some confusion over this story and it's not actually in production—and Pride Mobility is keen to stress that Bryan doesn't actually use this wheelchair, as he's the spokesman for Quantum Rehab and uses a Liestream Manual chair instead.

The system utilizes a palatometer, a device traditionally used in speech therapy, to track the movement of the tongue. A cluster of 118 pressure sensors collect the data and send it off to be reproduced by a small sound sythesizer that's kept on the person. The device can also be calibrated to recognize inflection, which helps to generate a voice that is far more natural than the raspy or robotic sounds of current devices. Plus, it doesn't require any surgical implants.

Of course, several problems need to be addressed before this technology is ready for prime time. Accuracy can be as high as 94.4 percent, but the library of recognizable words needs to be vastly increased. The system also needs to be converted to wireless and the processing speed needs to be improved. At the moment, there is a one second delay between when the word is mouthed and the sound is produced—making it seem like you are acting in a bad kung-fu movie dubbed in English. The good news is that it probably won't be long before those issues are corrected. [Technology Review via PopSci]

The INFLU is like any of the others masks the paranoid public is wearing to combat H1N1, except that it's not for total pussies:

Plan your sickness, develop antibodies for the flu and strengthen your immune system the natural way. The INFLU flu collector mask increases the prospect of getting the Swine flu (H1N1) as well as the regular seasonal flu with several hundred percent.

Your planned immunity comes by way of a battery-powered fan, which "increases the intake of viruses in ambient air through the respiratory system."

There is no flaw with this: the plan, or the joke. [INFLU via Nerdcore via Neatorama]

The problem lies in the main tool used to sniff out the man's supposedly active brain, a technique called facilitated communication. Facilitated communication, in which a helper assists a physically disabled but mentally capable person to type out his or her thoughts, has been widely discredited for decades, after independent tests revealed that the technique is totally unreliable and often the result, conscious or not, of the assistant typing, not the patient. Basically, assistants would often pick up a patient's hand and jam the patient's finger into the keyboard, which I think we can all agree is not the most reliable form of communication.

If facilitated communication is part of this, and it appears to be, then I don't trust it," said Arthur Caplan, director of the University of Pennsylvania's Center for Bioethics. "I'm not saying the whole thing is a hoax, but somebody ought to be checking this in greater detail. Any time facilitated communication of any sort is involved, red flags fly.

Ultimately, there is definitely more brain activity in this particular case than was first thought; the patient, Rom Houben, is able to indicate yes and no with a slight movement of his foot. But the elaborate, heartbreaking and eloquent notes he supposedly wrote through facilitated communication could well be totally bogus. [Wired]

The company is testing the implementation of their lighting technology alongside their medical technology in Ambient Experience suites across the world.

And luckily, the other 9 modes appear far more serene than the "Australia" theme in our lead shot. Patients, in fact, are allowed to choose their own color palette, along with accompanying sounds and video that will surround them during procedures. In fact, this media environment can be so relaxing (or simply distracting) that it was said to reduce sedation needs by 28% in one Chicago-based study.

Actually, on second thought, that pink freaks me out even more than the red. [Philips via CNET]

My ex-boyfriend Josh was born mostly deaf, but had some hearing in one ear thanks to a cochlear implant—a spiral of electrodes threaded into his cochlea to stimulate the auditory nerve, bypassing damaged parts of the ear. The surgery, which is irreversible, wipes out any residual hearing in the operated ear. (It's a major invasive procedure—fortunately a one-time thing—that puts the patient at risk of facial paralysis.) A microphone connects to a removable external processor that converts sound to digital code; the code is transmitted to the implanted mechanism by way of a magnet. When fed through the cochlea, the decoded digital information is perceived as sound.

Josh wore the external part of the CI during most of his waking hours and we got by with lipreading and basic signing whenever he took it off. He never once complained about my snoring. If I wanted to have a private conversation with him in the room, I could just detach the magnet on the side of his head. It was also a fun party trick to announce that my boyfriend's head could stick to the fridge.

Not everyone likes a cyborg, however. In fact, many deaf people would be offended at the suggestion that they do something so drastic to artificially augment their hearing. Last year at Gallaudet, the federally chartered university for the deaf in DC, Josh and the writer Michael Chorost co-taught a class designed to address the deaf community's division regarding the use of cochlear implants. There's concern that the technology will eventually render an entire language—American Sign Language—obsolete.

A majority of deaf children are born to hearing parents, many who would sooner opt for insurance-covered implants for their kids than years of sign education, audiologist visits and hearing aids, which are pricey and usually are not covered by medical insurance. Those against CI argue that sign language is categorically better than oral language, and that orally educated deaf children with CIs are missing out on gaining entrance into a rich community and culture. If the CI business "cures" all deaf people, the implications for the signing community are dire.

Gallaudet is a signing university with a vociferous pro-ASL population. In 2006, a newly appointed president was voted out of office ostensibly because she had been educated orally and didn't learn sign until her twenties. Mike and Josh's class looked at how other minorities have dealt with "threats" to their communities and tried to apply the lessons from those experiences to suggest ways that signing deaf people can survive the increase use of CIs.

The other day I asked Mike—who wrote Rebuilt and the amazing cochlear implant story in Wired—what he thought was the most exciting stuff happening in the world of CIs right now. Really, I was fishing for things that would improve my life, should I ever date another half-bot: How about solar-charged receivers that don't require batteries (which used to die so conveniently during fights)? A line of accessories that could keep the thing in place during snogging? A remote control that could allow me to manipulate his every move, want and desire?

Mike didn't think there was that much to report—I was a little disappointed he didn't mention cat CIs! The future, according to Mike, is technology that facilitates two-way communication. Hearing people who dream of super-human auditory abilities probably won't be lining up to get CIs any time soon.

"The engineering is too difficult and the risks are too great," Mike told me. He sees implantation surgery going in a more practical direction. "People might be willing to get them to facilitate new forms of communication that to us would seem like telepathy," he said. "I don't mean the transmission of speech; there's no point to that, since we can do that. I'm talking about the transmission of brain states—fear, alertness, anger—and, in a certain sense, of memories."

In short, CI technology, as crazy science-fiction-esque as it seems, is already looking like the old grandpa in the rocking chair, nodding knowingly while the pro-CI and anti-CI groups still battle on like so many Hatfields and McCoys. "The real breakthroughs in neurotech will come not from doing existing things better, but from doing entirely new things," he said. From an outside perspective, it seems that, if the two sides were to unite and embrace implant technology, the deaf community could come out at the forefront of cyborg-ology. The deaf community has already been profoundly effected by neurotechnology. It's a point of view Mike argued elegantly in a much-debated 2007 speech he gave at Gallaudet:

We are heading into a future where the technology is opening up profoundly new possibilities for communication and group awareness...Cochlear implants are the cutting edge of a field called neurotechnology—the science of developing completely new kinds of ways of interfacing with the body and the brain...Who better than the deaf community to actively seize the lead in developing communications technologies that interact directly with the nervous system? And to experiment with new social forms to explore their uses? We already have one foot—more than one foot—in that world.

Tomorrow, I may get a brain implant that will help me not repeat myself or remember where I put my keys. Or remember where I put my keys. A large part of the deaf community, however, have already ventured farther down that road than I may ever see. Or, for the matter, hear.

Anna Jane Grossman is the author of Obsolete: An Encyclopedia of Once-Common Things Passing Us By (Abrams Image) and the creator of iamobsolete.net. Her writing has appeared in dozens of publications, including the New York Times, Salon.com, the Associated Press, Elle and the Huffington Post. She has a complicated relationship with technology, but she does have an eponymous website: AnnaJane.net. Follow her on Twitter at @AnnaJane.

Since the levels of exposure faced by the factory workers are about fifty times that of the average person, we definitely need those extra studies to figure out what the safe threshold for BPA exposure would be, if there is one. So until there are numbers applicable to you, feel free to cringe every time you near anything containing BPA. Like your keyboard. Or that mouse. Or your glasses. [Oxford Journals via NPR]

Photo by Florida Dude

Basically the the virtopsy bot (yes, "Virtibot") manipulates and dots the body with markings in order to measure and take a bunch of stereo images with its array of cameras. While the external structure and markings of a body are being documented, a CT scan takes care of the innards. The final 3D image is created which pathologists then use and abuse without worrying about deforming a deceased body. If need be, the Virtibot can use a needle to extract fluid or perform minimally intrusive biopsies.

Aside from being far neater than a traditional autopsy, virtual autopsies allow for archiving of the 3D bodies for later medical analysis or case comparison in the event of criminal trials. Not to mention that there'd never be another "Oops, I didn't mean to make that incision" hilarious coroner moment again. [New Scientist via Pop Sci]

The gum would be used to test, painlessly, for malaria in children while the chocolate would serve as a way of getting some of the disease-feeding fat out of a patient's body. There's already some promise in these methods and the Gates contribution should certainly keep research going. [Telegraph]

Technically the GE Vscan is not a cellphone, but it certainly resembles any old lamshell on the market today. Instead, the Vscan a pocket-sized ultrasound intended to reduce the amount of patient referrals (and thereby expenses) by making ultrasounds convenient enough to be performed in-house (and by house, we mean individual doctor's offices, not your house...yet).
I can't speak to the healthcare logistics at work, but I do know that moms love seeing photos of kids on their cellphones. Now if only this bad boy were linked to Picasa we'd really have something. [GE Reports]

Scientists in Georgia and China developed Hobbie-J's superior brain by modifying the NR2B gene, which in turn increased NMBA receptor sites on the brain's individual neurons (which are sort of like pores). Bigger pores equals every so slightly increased transfer duration of neuron-to-neuron messages, allowing Hobbie-J learn things more efficiently. But Hobbie-J also has a better memory as well, remembering novel toys up to 3 times longer than peers.

Apparently the super rat processed complex situations better, but Hobbie-J wasn't capable of any sort of higher level cognition associated with larger-brained mammals. Or we just weren't smart enough to notice. [Physorg via PopSci]

Good God, I'm happy that this story is finally coming out, but it's so heart wrenching to see Kanzius' struggle, desperation, and utter drive to find a way to zap leukemia despite doctors' cautions to the very end. [CBS via Make]

Basically what researchers at the University Medical Centre Hamburg-Eppendorf in Germany did was tell a bunch of volunteers that they were going to be given a pain-relieving cream while a painful amount of heat was applied to their arms. Instead what the lab coats did was use an inactive cream and reduce the heat to a tolerable level, at least on the first go. In subsequent tests, the heat was set at a painful level and, despite still only receiving the inactive cream, volunteers stated that they felt less pain than without it.

Basically, the volunteers were expecting to feel less pain, just as they did in the tolerable heat test. The very basis of the Placebo Effect. What's of interest to scientists is the activity they were able to observe along the dorsal horn, a section of the spine, during these tests. Observing this activity is leading them to believe that the cells located in that region of the body are connected to deadening pain and that knowledge could allow for better pain management treatment. Except in spineless creeps, of course. [New Scientist via PopSci]

The plasma knives are vaguely similar to tools currently used in radiosurgery, but rather than heating tissue directly and damaging it, they penetrate and cauterize it safely. While tools like this are great because they have the potential to save many lives in situations where proper hospital care is not an option, let's be honest: most of us just plain want some mini lightsabers. [Wired]

The issue only affected the scans of stroke patients so damage was limited to affecting about 200 individuals over the course of the 18 months during which the error in programming went unnoticed. While those patients are experiencing symptoms of radiation poisoning, such as hair loss, there's at least good news in that the FDA has finally issued alerts to hospitals to read the freakin' manuals before fiddling with their equipment. [LA Times via Slashdot]

Photo by Akira Ohgaki

Fast Company says that the heart app can shoot your heart rate over social networks, meaning that people can try and send you photos (imagine your favorite gross-out surprise picture) to try to get your heartrate up. The winner would be the one who could make your heart jump the most.

You could also imagine other apps like keeping track of yourself when watching movies, playing games, or engaging in otherwise pleasurable activities and graphing how your day looks. You'd assume that a followup device would be able to measure your breathing rate as well as your heart rate too. [Fast Company]

The basic idea is to use nanoparticles to deliver a gene into stem cells which will "encourage new blood vessels to grow so that the tissue stays alive." The results in mice certainly do sound encouraging:

When the modified cells were injected into mice whose hind limbs had been injured, the tissue that regrew to repair the damage had three times the blood vessel density of similar tissue in mice given unmodified cells. Four weeks later, only 20 per cent of the mice given modified cells had lost limbs, compared with 60 per cent in mice that received unmodified cells

The trouble with injecting modified cells like this is that the effects seem to drop off after a period of time. Scientists are looking for other methods, such as using a virus to transmit the gene, but "the viral approach is not without risks–viruses can integrate into the genome of cells and linger permanently, potentially causing cancer or immune reactions." I guess I won't be dashing around town playing heroine anytime soon, but maybe they'll sort out the whole thing in a few generations. [Discover]

What researchers did to come to those conclusions is generate a "small electrical current in the brains of 14 healthy volunteers using scalp electrodes. The current increased the activity of normal beta waves." Bit freaky, but those folks volunteered for the research. What's truly freaky is this:

The current increased the activity of normal beta waves, and slowed the volunteers' reaction times by 10 percent.

So, how is all of this good news for Parkinson's patients? This study and result might actually lead to improvements on already existing "brain pacemaker" by using "oscillating current that more closely mimics normal brain waves, as opposed to constant brain stimulation." Those "brain pacemakers" help limit involuntary movements as well as improving on the ability to make voluntary ones. Here's hoping that this research will continue to improve the quality of life for those suffering from Parkinson's and similar degenerative disorders. [Discover]