Media Watch Archives
Shrinky Dinks Inspire Wearable That Predicts Oncoming Asthma Attacks
ECN Magazine -
When UCI biomedical engineers went to work on creating a sensor for the device, they decided to use Shrinky Drinks. "The current standard of care in respiration monitoring is a pulmonary function test that's often difficult to perform and limited in terms of the snapshot it provides of a patient's respiratory health—meaning problems can sometimes be missed," said Michael Chu, UCI graduate student researcher in biomedical engineering and lead author of a paper on the innovation published today in npj Digital Medicine.
Wearable Respiration Sensors Made from Shrinky Dinks
Medgadget -
Engineers at University of California, Irvine have now developed a cheap and easy to use respiration monitor based on Shrinky Dinks, a popular children’s craft toy. It consists of two piezo-resistive sensors that are stuck around the ribs and abdomen, and which measure the strain on the tissues they’re pressed against.
Could this smart sticker save asthmatics from attack? Patch measures movement of the ribs and sends warning to your PHONE if your breathing gets worse
The Daily Mail -
A sticker asthmatics wear on their skin could warn when an attack is looming, research suggests. When worn on the abdomen, sensors in the sticker measure the strain being put on a user's rib cage. … The research was carried out by the University of California, Irvine, and led by Michelle Khine, a professor of biomedical engineering.
California’s ‘smart’ energy future glows on the horizon—but how to get there?
CALmatters -
Gene Tsudik, a UC Irvine professor and one of the participants, is a computer scientist specializing in privacy and security. … “We are surrounded by smart devices all over the place. Of course, they violate your privacy.” … One takeaway for Scott Samuelsen, director of UCI’s Advanced Power and Energy Program, which ran the project, is that while the adoption of smart home devices is growing fast, regulation and consumer protections that should accompany them are not keeping pace. “The market is out of control with respect to regulation (of devices),” Samuelsen said. “We are in a free-for-all.”
Smart skin sticker could detect asthma attacks before they happen
NewScientist -
The device is made using Shrinky Dinks – plastic sheets that shrink to a fraction of their original size when heated. They are popular among children because they can be coloured and cut into shapes before shrinking. … It could be a useful tool for monitoring people with chronic lung conditions, such as asthma and cystic fibrosis, says Michelle Khine at the University of California, Irvine, who led the team. People will use the device by sticking it to their lower ribs.
Nurturing Talent
Lab Manager -
Susan Seestrom, chief research officer and associate laboratories director for advanced science and technology at Sandia, will be mentoring the first two fellows—Mercedes Taylor, who earned her doctorate in chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, and Chen Wang, who completed her doctorate in materials science at the University of California, Irvine.
An unexpected side effect of drought: Higher carbon emissions.
National Geographic -
Most of the time, the researchers found, the utilities fell back on carbon-emitting sources like natural gas and coal to fill their power needs. It’s not ideal, but it makes sense, says Amir AghaKouchak, a civil and environmental engineer at the University of California, Irvine. “Under drought conditions, the priority is to use water for people and cities, and managers might prefer to burn gas for energy,” he says. “Because you have alternatives for getting energy from different sources—but you don't have alternatives for water.”
Scientists Engineer a Better Way to Direct Evolution
LabRoots -
Earlier this year, three researchers shared the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for pioneering a process called directed evolution … The process was considered painstaking and laborious; however, scientists at the University of California, Irvine have now streamlined the process. … Arjun Ravikumar, a recent recipient of a biomedical engineering Ph.D. at UCI [said] "Our work has reduced evolution to be an extremely rapid, straightforward and scalable process."
New Cancer Immunotherapy Technique Can Specifically Target Tumor Cells
Inquisitr -
Researchers at the University of California at Irvine have developed a new immunotherapy screening technique that will allow doctors to target tumors without the side effects of standard cancer drugs, giving specialists the opportunity to create individualized cancer treatments. The tracking and screening system identifies T-cell receptors with 100 percent specificity for individual tumors, according to Lab On A Chip.
It’s time cellphone signal jammers were installed in people’s steering wheels
Los Angeles Times -
The trick, said A. Lee Swindlehurst, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at UC Irvine, is “to find a sweet spot where only the driver’s device is jammed,” regardless of where he or she holds their phone. This is technically feasible, he said, “but it would be a challenging design.” [Subscription required, you can request an electronic copy of the article by sending an email to communications@uci.edu.]