Information Blanket

Da BMB (Beattie McGuinness Bungay)

Lançado inicialmente em Uganda, o cobertor serve como proteção para crianças e um guia de informações sobre questões de saúde recém-nascido. Traz informações sobre amamentação, vacinas, a temperatura do corpo e sinais de alerta de doenças, todos impressos no idioma local. A BMB tem uma parceria com o Uganda Shanti Society, uma organização sem fins lucrativos dedicada a melhorar a saúde infantil e materna para ajudar a distribuir os cobertores. O público pode apoiar a iniciativa doando dinheiro no site. A proposta é levar o projeto a outras partes do mundo.

Via UoD

Kinect + WoW

This middleware, with some tweaks, lets FAAST quickly facilitate “integration of full-body control with games and VR applications,” via a clever processing server that streams the user’s skeleton pattern, including body position and gestures which can be mapped onto keyboard controls.

The code is free for non-commercial use, because the Institute has big plans for it–including simple, medically inspired games for rehabilitation of motor-skills after a stroke, and even for reducing childhood obesity through “healthy gaming”

Via Fast Company

 

Diabetes nos EUA

A Slate fez um puta infográfico sobre a “viralização” da diabetes nos states.

As três imagens são, na ordem, 2004, 2006 e 2008.

By now, a clear pattern is emerging: Diabetes is spreading like a virus across the south and Appalachia, across regions known for weak economies. The map is perhaps the most bracing confirmation possible that low incomes and diabetes develop in lockstep.

Via Fast Company

Pillbox

Palmas, muitas palmas.

Via Mashable

Microscópio: U$10

Mobile phones have become one of the most universal pieces of advanced technology in the world, and they are about to become even more vital. Aydogan Ozcan of UCLA has developed a microscope attachment for a cell phone – turning the device into a sort of mobile medical lab. It’s both lightweight (~38g or 1.5 oz) and cheap (parts cost around $10). As described in the journal Lab on a Chip, the cellphone microscope can analyze blood and saliva samples for microparticles, red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets, and water borne parasites.

LUCAS’s main advantage over other systems is that it uses no lenses or lasers, so its very cheap and can fit into a small space with little weight. For just $10 you can put a microscope on a cellphone and turn it into a medical testing platform. A nurse or aid giver in the field takes a blood or saliva sample, places it into the device and sends the picture to an automated database which will return data on the required information (such as red blood cell count). That information can be used to diagnose the patient.

 The LUCAS attachment for cellphones looks like one of those rare technologies which could make a significant impact quickly and effectively. Ozcan has already secured enough funding to field prototypes of the device around the world. It should start testing trials in the next year, allowing medical professionals in remote (and not so remote) places in Africa to analyze patients for diseases such as malaria. In Lab on a Chip, Ozcan’s team also demonstrated that LUCAS can identify a water borne parasite (in that case Giardia lamblia) which opens up even more possibilities for its use on the continent. If successful in its early trials, expect to see this $10 device popping up all over the globe.

Brasil-sil-sil!

E foda-se a Copa!

Uma lente de US$ 1 que, ligada a um smartphone qualquer, faz complexos exames de vista em menos de dois minutos – e sem a necessidade da presença de um médico especializado. Ao final do teste, um aplicativo mostra o seu problema na tela do celular.

Foi essa a invenção que garantiu ao estudante brasileiro Vitor Pamplona (foto) o segundo lugar no MIT Ideas, uma competição de ideias inovadoras para o serviço público. “Você consegue fazer o teste sozinho. Ele detecta miopia, hipermetropia e astigmatismo”, explica, em entrevista ao Link.

Cursando o doutorado em computação na Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Vitor Pamplona é desde outubro um dos pesquisadores visitantes do Media Lab do Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Um mês depois de sua chegada, começou o projeto da Netra (ou EyePhone, como a revista Fast Company apelidou a lente). A ideia era fabricar um equipamento oftalmológico com materiais acessíveis para todos.

Para desenvolvê-lo, ele contou com a ajuda de seu orientador, o professor Manuel de Oliveira, e também com sugestões de Ankit Mohan e Ramesh Raskar, acadêmicos do MIT. Já em janeiro deste ano, os primeiros testes já haviam sido finalizados e o projeto aceito para a Siggraph, a maior conferência do mundo de computação gráfica.

No programa usado com o equipamento, o usuário vê duas linhas: uma vermelha e uma verde. No atual protótipo, elas são projetadas em diferentes ângulos e a tarefa do paciente é movê-las, com os botões do smartphone, até que se sobreponham. Se o usuário possuir uma visão perfeita, as linhas já estarão sobrepostas e ele não precisará fazer nada. Em casos de miopia, astigmatismo ou hipermetropia, elas estarão separadas – e cabe ao software identificar o problema e quantos graus o óculos terá.

Do caralho, essa idéia merece muitos aplausos.

Via Gustavo Mini, que escreve um post melhor que o outro.

GE e os hospitais americanos

Nem preciso escrever nada…

Projeto louvável da GE, via Pentagram

Calando a boca do Letterman

Jamie Oliver foi ao programa do David Letterman, que ridicularizou a tentativa do chef britânico de conscientizar os americanos sobre os perigos da obesidade:

Embora eu goste do Letterman, ele foi um bom de um filho da puta nessa entrevista.

Mas ainda bem que o The Guardian fez justiça ao brilhante trabalho de Jamie Oliver nas escolas inglesas:

Today an audience of prestigious economists was told that the healthier school dinners introduced by the celebrity chef had not only significantly improved pupils’ test results, but also cut the number of days they were off sick.

Michèle Belot, of Oxford university’s Nuffield College, and Jonathan James from the University of Essex, monitored results and absences in five neighbouring local authorities – chosen for their socio-economic similarities to Greenwich — as a control. They looked at figures from 2002 to 2007 – skipping the school year 2004/5, when the new menus were introduced.

The effects seen, they said, were particularly impressive given that they emerged within a relatively short period of time, and that the campaign was not even directly targeted at improving educational outcomes.

“Sex, drugs and HIV: let’s get rational”

Nada como a boa e velha lógica.

Armed with bracing logic, wit and her “public-health nerd” glasses, Elizabeth Pisani reveals the myriad of inconsistencies in today’s political systems that prevent our dollars from effectively fighting the spread of HIV. Her research with at-risk populations — from junkies in prison to sex workers on the street in Cambodia — demonstrates the sometimes counter-intuitive measures that could stall the spread of this devastating disease.

Peepoo

Idéia absolutamente fantástica.

For Pennies, a Disposable Toilet That Could Help Grow Crops

A Swedish entrepreneur is trying to market and sell a biodegradable plastic bag that acts as a single-use toilet for urban slums in the developing world. Once used, the bag can be knotted and buried, and a layer of urea crystals breaks down the waste into fertilizer, killing off disease-producing pathogens found in feces.

He plans to sell it for about 2 or 3 cents — comparable to the cost of an ordinary plastic bag.

In the developing world, an estimated 2.6 billion people, or about 40 percent of the earth’s population, do not have access to a toilet, according to United Nations figures.

It is a public health crisis: open defecation can contaminate drinking water, and an estimated 1.5 million children worldwide die yearly from diarrhea, largely because of poor sanitation and hygiene.

Do NYT