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Gizmorama - March 2, 2015
Good Morning,
Mind-controlled prosthetics are becoming a reality thanks to the Medical University of Vienna and three Austrian men that have undergone the bionic reconstructive surgery. This is a tremendous breakthrough. Just think of the possibilities.
Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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*-- Three Austrian men first to get bionic hand reconstruction --*
VIENNA (UPI) - Three men in Austria are the first to have so-called bionic reconstruction, surgery to replace lame hands -- rendered useless by injury -- with mind-controlled prosthetics.
The surgeries took place three months ago, and the men are already performing tasks like picking up small objects, preparing food with a kitchen knife, unlocking doors with their keys, undoing shirt buttons and more.
The three men are able to control the hand with neural impulses that travel via nerves and muscles taken from their legs and transplanted onto their arm along with the metal hand.
"Existing surgical techniques for such injuries are crude and ineffective and result in poor hand function," Dr. Oskar Aszmann, a surgeon at the Medical University of Vienna, who helped develop the new technique, said in a release.
"The scientific advance here was that we were able to create and extract new neural signals via nerve transfers amplified by muscle transplantation," Aszmann explained. "These signals were then decoded and translated into solid mechatronic hand function."
The three men also say they are in less pain than they were before.
But the technique isn't perfect -- or at least not without drawbacks. The men will have to take anti-rejection meds for the rest of their lives. And medical experts say a true verdict on the technique can't be offered until long-term results are observed. A prosthetic's response to neural impulses has been shown to fade over time in past experiments.
The hand transplant surgeries are detailed in the latest issue of the medical journal The Lancet.
* Your eyelashes are fine as they are, it's math *
ATLANTA (UPI) - Stop with the extensions. There's a reason your eyelashes are the length they are. A new study claims a mathematical formula adopted by evolutionary biology offers eyes the perfect amount of protection from the elements.
According to researchers at Georgia Tech, the ideal eyelash length is one-third the width of the eye. And it's not just the human genome that's adopted this perfect formula. Researchers found that 21 other species, in addition to Homo sapiens, utilize the ratio -- including sheep, giraffes and hedgehogs.
In addition to analyzing animal hides from the American Museum of Natural History in New York, scientists constructed a model eye and put it inside a wind tunnel to better understand the reasoning for the dimensions. Researchers varied the eyelash length to see what effects it had on wind turbulence around the eye.
It turns out, anything shorter or longer than standard (one-third the width) length increases the odds of getting dust and debris in the eye.
"Eyelashes form a barrier to control airflow and the rate of evaporation on the surface of the cornea," lead study author Guillermo Amador, a researcher in mechanical engineering at Tech, explained in a press release.
"When eyelashes are shorter than the one-third ratio, they have only a slight effect on the flow," Amador said. "Their effect is more pronounced as they lengthen up until one-third. After that, they start funneling air and dust particles into the eye."
The medium length (again, one-third), on the other hand, reduces air flow just enough to allow water moisture to form a protective layer, shielding the eye from debris and dust.
While the fake eyelashes aren't ideal when they extend eyelashes longer than necessary, they are certainly recommended if a person can't grow their own. Any eyelash is better than none, researchers say.
Additionally, Amador and his colleagues say the newly identified ratio could potentially have industrial application. Eyelash-like protectors could be used to protect solar panels and other lens-like surfaces that exist in dusty environs.
The new study was published this week in the journal Royal Society Interface.
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