Solar powered autoclave sterilizes medical equipment in off-grid locales

Solar powered autoclave sterilizes medical equipment in off-grid locales

Solar powered autoclave sterilizes medical equipment in off-grid locales

Sterile medical equipment is crucial in preventing infection, and something we take for granted with our powerful, industrial autoclaves. But in the thousands of off-the-grid clinics and health stations around the world, creating sterile equipment isn't so easy. That's why The Little Devices group at MIT choose it as a challenge, and their solution was a solar concentrating system that sterilizes medical tools using locally sourced materials and the sun.

The SolarClave uses the build up of the sun's power to heat and pressurise a chamber filled with medical equipment, killing any dangerous microbes. The system suspends an insulated "cooker" in a bucket over an array of 140 pocket sized mirrors. On a clear day, the mirrors concentrate the sun's power over 45 - 60 minutes to 250 degrees Fahrenheit - the temperature needed to sterilze the equipment. The sterilization cycle then takes 20 minutes.

The system meets U.S. Centers for Disease Control standards.

One of the critical measures for the team at MIT was that the system not be developed in the vacuum of laboratory conditions. They worked with nurse practitioners and health care workers in the field in Nicaragua to get feedback on how the device would best work in real world conditions - and how it could be sustainable in remote locations.

The team at MIT are the first to point out the input from the users in the field helped create a simpler, more effective solution in the end. First attempts used a boiler suspended over foil reflectors and a system of tubing to power a sterilization chamber a few feet away. This proved complicated to build, operate and fix in the field. 

The current solution with the mirror array uses a simpler "pressure cooker" over the mirror array, which is easier to fix if there is damage to one of the mirrors. It doesn't knock out the entire system, and replacement mirrors are more readily available than specialized foil or large mirror panels. 

Currently, remote clinics in Nicaragua and around the world have to rely on existing kerosene powered autoclaves or in more dire conditions, boiling medical tools. In many cases, the only solution is transporting a patient to one of these clinics or more sterile hospitals - incurring added time and risks a patient may not be able to bear. 

The SolarClave could prove to be a viable first line of defense against infection for those treated in local off-the-grid clinics. The system will be tested in three locations in Nicaragua over the summer and a search for local producers will follow. 

SolarClave via SmartPlanet, MIT News

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Facebook's News Feed: Behind the scenes of site's changes

Facebook's News Feed: Behind the scenes of site's changes

Facebook's News Feed: Behind the scenes of site's changes

On Thursday, when Facebook announced the first major redesign of its popular News Feed, the announcement was the culmination of one long year of work by 70 engineers and designers.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg said, "News Feed is one of the most important services that we build."

Product marketing manager Kate O'Neill has been logging long days trying to get things just right. "News Feed hasn't changed very much since 2006, when it started, and this is just really about making News Feed more enjoyable for people," she said. "We just don't have the option of not moving forward, not modernizing and making the experience better."

At least, that was the message from Facebook members. The social network surveyed hundreds of thousands of users, and many responded with the same request.

Jane Justice Leibrock and her team of researchers also conducted dozens of face to face interviews on the Facebook campus to get feedback from users. "The number one thing that people said they wanted to see was a News Feed that was less cluttered," said Leibrock. "The clutter was this feeling that there was all this different type of news mixed together."

One of the users Leibrock's team met with was Alex Liu. He's been on Facebook since 2004 and says he's "addicted to it".

Liu said his biggest complaint about the social networking site was that he wished "the things that came through on my Facebook feed were just the people that I cared about. I wish I could not see all these different things."

Satisfying heavy users involves a lot of heavy lifting, and that task falls on Facebook's vaunted engineers, like Chris Struhar. "We've been working on this for about a year, working 12-16 hour days just sitting in front of our computers and writing code and throwing together these prototypes," Struhar said.

Zuckerberg and vice president of product Chris Cox were updated weekly, and the final result is a News Feed that takes up a larger part of the screen, with bigger pictures and content, while moving everything else to the side.

"Any time that you have a billion people using a product, and many of those people using it every day, you're going to see a diversity of opinion. We know that change can be difficult for people. We're taking a very measured approach here," O'Neill said.

For Facebook, a measured approach means rolling out the News Feed to only a fraction of its users, which still means that several million people are experiencing what 70 Facebook employees have devoted the last year of their lives to creating.

"It's not a question of huge budgets or lots of people, it's a question of really, really focused effort over a year for a very small group of people that did this design," said O'Neill. "But we're just so glad to be at a place where we can start releasing it to people and seeing how they're using it and how they feel about it."

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A few issues plaguing Google’s self-driving car

A few issues plaguing Google’s self-driving car

A few issues plaguing Google’s self-driving car

Self-driving cars are the future and various groups are currently working on perfecting their self-driving cars and preparing them for the masses. Oxford University tested out their own self-driving car system recently to much success. It’s able to perform well on regular commutes and in traffic jams, and the team is currently working on a system that will allow their car to easily map surrounding areas. Google’s self-driving car system is doing well too, being able to perform daily tasks with ease, and most of time being able to drive better than humans. A few reports from Google’s team, however, state that there are a few flaws that need to be worked on. While Google’s self-driving car may be able to handle normal driving tasks, it can hit a few roadblocks under certain circumstances. These problems are fixable, but will require much creative thinking amongst the Google team (something they are obviously pretty good at). The 3 issues plaguing the self-driving car system include: Driving in snow, driving in areas with unsuspected changes in the road, and driving in areas where a human is directing traffic.

While driving in the snow, the car’s sensors have a hard time analyzing the lane markers on the road, which it needs to be able to do in order to stay correctly in its lane. When the cars come across an unexpected change in the roads that is not recorded in its mapping system, it becomes lost and is unable to find its way around, or find an alternate route to its destination. And last, while driving through areas where traffic needs to be directed by a human, such as construction zones, the car is unable to analyze the traffic director’s gestures and thus becomes confused.

The engineers are currently working on fixes for these problems, and it may require some out-of-the-box thinking. Development of self-driving cars is advancing further and further and I can’t wait for them be available to the masses. Currently, the prices of self-driving car systems are speculated to cost an arm an a leg, but the teams are working on reducing those costs down to a much more affordable price tag.

[via Business Insider]

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Samsung reveals Passbook rival called Wallet

Samsung reveals Passbook rival called Wallet

Samsung reveals Passbook rival called Wallet

Samsung is taking its cue from Apple for a new mobile app.

Dubbed Wallet, the app is basically Samsung's version of Apple's Passbook. As described on the app's API page for developers, the app "allows users to store and manage event tickets, boarding passes, membership cards, and coupons all in one place."

The app lets providers integrate their apps with Samsung Wallet so that mobile device users can add their electronic tickets and coupons. Those tickets display bar codes that can then be scanned at terminals. Demoing the app at Mobile World Congress today in Barcelona, Spain, Samsung showed how a person could add an electronic airplane ticket from a provider such as Lufthansa into the Wallet app.

Like Passbook, Wallet uses push notifications to alert people when they're in the right location to use one of their stored coupons or tickets. Wallet users can also receive updates to their boarding passes and membership card points.

So far, Samsung has signed up Walgreens, Major League Baseball, Expedia, Booking.com, Hotels.com and Lufthansa as Wallet partners. The API (application programming interface) for developers is still in beta and available only to select partners. But Samsung will open up the playing field to everyone starting in May.

Samsung Wallet doesn't support near-field communications, so mobile tap-to-pay payments aren't part of the picture, at least not yet. The company told the Verge that it decided not to include an NFC option as retailers still prefer bar codes because no additional hardware is needed. But Samsung didn't rule out the feature for some future date.

Below is a video about Samsung Wallet: http://youtu.be/qXSQicmVOtg

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China to launch its first solid fuel rocket before 2016

China to launch its first solid fuel rocket before 2016

China to launch its first solid fuel rocket before 2016

China plans to launch its first solid fuel rocket by 2016, marking a strategic shift from liquid fuel rockets, which so far has been used in over 170 successful launches in the last two decades.

China's first solid-fuel rocket Long March-11 is expected to make its first launch before 2016, said Liang Xiaohong, deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology.

The rocket will be easy to operate and cost-efficient to launch. It can remain in storage for long periods and reliably launched at a short notice, Liang said.

China has launched more than 170 liquid-fuel rockets successfully, but is yet to make breakthrough in developing solid-fuel rockets, which analysts say can be applied in missiles as well.

"The development of Long March-11 will greatly improve China's capabilities to rapidly reach space and meet any emergency launching demand in case of disasters and emergencies," Liang told state-run Xinhua news agency.

The Long March-11 rocket will use China's largest solid-fuel rocket engine and a brand new launching support system, Liang added.

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Y-Drum- Portable Bluetooth Drum System

Y-Drum- Portable Bluetooth Drum System

Ever caught yourself doing the air-drums in the middle of a song? It is kind like inevitable behavior when you are so immersed in your beloved music. However, the traditional drum set is probably one of the least portable musical instruments. Thanks to Kévin Depape, who comes up with a wonderful concept of portable drum system – Y-Drum. It consists of 9 pads, 2 cymbals, a Bluetooth module and a companion app, either mobile or desktop. Just lay out the pads, link them to the app, select a drum kit and you’re ready to practice. All of the hardware is stored in a box that doubles as an amplifier. Too bad it is still a concept

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