Category Archives: science

The Lung Flute, a fun and easy way to remove built up phlegm!

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All you have to do is press the opening of the lung flute to your mouth and blow into it about ten times (short breaths, like blowing out birthday candles), and viola!  The enclosed reed that “flaps back and forth” when you blow into the tube manages to send vibrations into your chest which in turn dislodge excess mucus.  Neat-o!

Today, doctors in Japan use the $40 Lung Flute as a tool to collect sputum from patients suspected of carrying tuberculosis, and in Europe and Canada it’s used to help test phlegm for lung cancer. Clinical trials in the U.S. have shown that it is at least as effective as current COPD treatments. At press time, Hawkins expected the device to receive FDA approval any day, and says the reusable device could also provide home relief for patients with cystic fibrosis, influenza and asthma.

[Via Gizmodo; PopSci]

NASA finds wa-wa on our lunar sphere

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Project Scientist Anthony Colaprete on the matter: “I’m here today to tell you that indeed, yes, we found water. And we didn’t find just a little bit; we found a significant amount.”

NASA shares: “If the water that was formed or deposited is billions of years old, these polar cold traps could hold a key to the history and evolution of the solar system, much as an ice core sample taken on Earth reveals ancient data.”

And my personal favorite: “In addition, water and other compounds represent potential resources that could sustain future lunar exploration.”

Future exploration means potential living spaces outside our own planet.  Just the idea of expanding Earth’s population onto other planets (or moons) provokes massive amounts of excitement.  To infinity and beyond!

[Via NASA]

Wireless body monitoring system tracks vital signs, sends to phone

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Clinical trails have begun for Sensium, a wireless body monitoring system that “monitors multiple vital signs, including skin temperature, heart rate and respiration.”  Basically, Sensium is a “disposable digital plaster,” or Band-Aid-like patch, that is applied to a patient’s body.  The patch contains a power source and sensors inside it that track a patient’s health and sends the gathered data to the doctor’s PDA or smartphone.  Sensium is being described as cheap, disposable, long-lasting, intelligent, and efficient way for doctors to keep track of the patient’s health.  What differentiates this product from the current way of monitoring patients is that it allows patients to be much more mobile and free to move around the hospital (compared to the bulky, expensive, and wired methods of today).  Check out the full press release after the break.

[Via Engadget; SingularityHub]

Continue reading Wireless body monitoring system tracks vital signs, sends to phone →

Human gives birth to a giant baby

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Earlier this week an Indonesian woman gave birth to a 19.2 pound baby boy.  After a successful Caesarian section the child cried unusually loud, screaming for, you guess it, his first cheeseburger.

According to LemonDrop.com: “The baby is probably the size it is because his mother is diabetic, a condition which could have raised her glucose levels and thereby the baby’s, giving him more sugar than he needed and making him grow like a superhero fetus.”

[Via LemonDrop]

3D renders of cities created from thousands of Flickr photos; awesome!

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Scientists from the University of Washington’s Graphics and Imaging Laboratory, with the help of over 150,000 Flickr users, managed to create 3D digital models of three different cities.  According to PopSci.com, “each video includes clusters of small diamond shapes, which represent each photographer and his or her vantage point.  ..  The team built a new algorithm that proceeds in two steps — first, by matching the photos by what they had in common, puzzle-style, and then by determining the scene and each photographer’s pose.”  One of the scientists, Steve Seitz: “This is one of the main intellectual challenges here.  We want to see how much of the city can be reconstructed from people’s tourist photos.”

Their next task: to create a 3D rendering of an entire city using at least one million photographs.  So keep taking pictures people, and upload them to your Flickr accounts.  Check out more 3D renderings the team is working on at their YouTube page.  Cool stuff, huh?

[Via Gizmodo; Popsci]