Research

Technology to the rescue again

Two Indian origin researchers have invented a device that can help people with extremely restricted movement, control a wheelchair or computer more easily. According to its inventors, engineers Ravi Vaidyanathan and Lalit Gupta of Southern Illinois University, US, the device detects ear-pressure changes because of the way the Eustachian tube connects the middle ear to the back of the mouth, to determine how a person in moving his/her tongue.

“Our results validated that idea extremely well. We can identify different movements with 97% accuracy,” said Vaidyanathan, now at Southampton University, UK. In initial tests, eight people were asked to perform four basic tongue movements up, down, left and right - one hundred times each.

While making these gestures, they wore a custom earplug containing a microphone pointing into the ear. This microphone is capable of picking up subtle pressure changes inside the ear caused by the tongue forcing air around, like when a person blows on a microphone. According to the two, each movement creates a distinctive signal that can be mapped to a computer command or a wheelchair control.

Now, a US company, Think-A-Move has plans to releases a wheelchair that can be controlled using the device to wards the end of 2007. Think-A-ove has refined its wheel-chair control system to cope with swallow and coughs, although users must train it to recognise their tongue movements the first time they use it.

According to New Scientist, the company’s wheelchair will be primarily aimed at quadriplegics who must currently use steering devices that go inside the mouth and are operated by sucking and blowing, or tongue. “This system avoids the hygiene and irritation problems they cause, and also keeps the mouths free for talking,” said Vaidyanathan.

Source: NRIs make tool that uses tongue to control PC, The Times of India, New Delhi. 2.July 2007.

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The effect of Omega 3 fatty acids on eyesight

Increasing the dietary intake of Omega 3 fatty acids, found in certain kinds of fish, nuts and vegetable oils, may protect one from blindness, suggests a study conducted on mice.

Scientists in Boston found that they have a protective effect against blindness resulting from abnormal blood vessel growth in the eye, according to the study publishing in the online journal Nature Medicine. Human clinical trials will soon begin at a children’s hospital in Boston to test the effects of Omega 3 supplementation in premature babies who are at risk for vision loss, the researchers were quoted as saying by science portal EureKAlert.

Omega 3 fatty acids are already known to be beneficial for heart and brain functions. Short-term studies have indicated that taking dietary supplements of omega 3 could also lower blood pressure in people with hypertension. Abnormal vessel growth is the cause of retinopathy - an eye disease that leads to the eventual loss of vision. It begins with a loss of blood vessels in the retina, which becomes oxygen starved, sends out alarm singles and spurs new vessel growth. But the new vessels grow abnormally and are malformed, leaky and over-abundant.

The abnormal vessels finally pull the retina away its supporting layer, and this retina detachment ultimately causes blindness. The researchers, led by Lois Smith and Kip Connor of Children’s Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School, and John Paul San Giovanni of the National Eye Institute (NEI) studied retinopathy in mice, feeding them a diet rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. Mice on the Omega 3 diet had less initial vessel loss in the retina than those fed with Omega 6 fatty acids. The area with vessel loss was 40-50 percent smaller. “Our studies suggest that after initial loss, vessels re-grew quickly and efficiently in the Omega-3 fed mice,” Connor said. “This increased the Oxygen supply to retinal tissue, resulting in a dampening of the inflammatory ‘alarm’ signals that lead to pathologic vessel growth.”

Source: Omega 3 acids could protect from blindness. Free Press Journal, Daily, Mumbai, 26 June 2007.

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