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Issue no. 34, 2008 Published: Oct 31, 2008
French scientist unveils artificial heart
Artificial gravity could keep space pendulums swinging
Bug-eyed lens shrinks wide-angle cameras
Optical textile tests MRI patients from afar

French scientist unveils artificial heart
French scientists funded by the European space and defence group EADS, have unveiled a working prototype of a fully artificial heart which is based on the technology of satellites and airplanes. The device could save millions of lives and beats almost exactly like the real thing using electronic sensors to regulate heart rate and blood flow. The same tiny sensors that measure air pressure and altitude in an airplane or satellite are also in the artificial heart. This should allow the device to respond immediately if the patient needs more or less blood. The design has so far only been tested in animals, and now needs approval from its authorities before starting clinical trials. The heart is very lifelike, with two pumps to send the blood into the lungs and the rest of the body. The model is made from natural materials including polymer and pig tissue, which have already been used in heart valves implanted into people. The artificial heart would initially be for patients who had suffered a massive heart attack or who had heart failure, but might eventually be used in patients who are less sick. The artificial heart is expected to cost about EUR 150,000.
CNN Oct 29, 2008	back to top

Artificial gravity could keep space pendulums swinging
Can a pendulum swing in space? It might if it is quantum powered - a fact that could be exploited to build tiny timepieces that exploit an unusual force that occurs on the smallest scale in a vacuum. The Casimir force is an effect that pushes two parallel conducting plates together when the distance between them is tiny. The force arises because the gap between the plates is filled with virtual photons popping in and out of existence. As the plates come closer together, fewer photons can fit within the gap. On the outer sides of the plates, however, the photons are unconstrained, causing a pressure difference that pushes the plates together. Now researchers at the University of Qom, Iran, hope to exploit a similar force that occurs between a polarised atom and a flat conducting plate. The plan is to hang the polarised atom at the end of a short string of atoms above a conducting plate and set it swinging. The device then works like an ordinary pendulum, but with the Casimir-like force playing the role of gravity. The researchers call their device a Casimir Atomic Pendulum and calculate that it should have a period of about a tenth of a microsecond. They say that such a device could possibly be built with today's technology.
New Scientist / Physics Letters Oct 29, 2008	back to top

Bug-eyed lens shrinks wide-angle cameras
A prototype of a tiny bug-eyed camera that provides a field of view six times that of the conventional camera it's designed to replace, has been tested. The new system, called BugEye, is intended for use on missiles to keep track of targets but is also small enough to be used on endoscopes, giving an improved field of view in keyhole surgery. An insect's eye provides a wide field of view as it contains many lenses, each angled in a slightly different direction. The insect's brain pieces together images from each lens into one big picture, covering a wide angle. To gain a similarly wide field of view, cameras have had to be either mounted on a moving platform that scans the scene, or fitted with fisheye lenses that focus details from a wide area. A team at defence company BAE Systems in the UK has created an array of just nine lenses, each looking at a different part of the scene. The lenses are polished on to the end of a bundle of millions of glass fibres that have been fused together. The fibres direct the images onto separate areas of a flat light-sensitive chip, and image-processing software is used to stitch them together. The resulting wide-angle assembly can be made smaller and lighter than an equivalent fisheye lens because it uses less glass. The BugEye is roughly the size of a sugar cube and one-tenth the weight of systems using fish-eye lenses or moving platforms.
New Scientist Oct 30, 2008	back to top

Optical textile tests MRI patients from afar
Researchers in Europe have developed a wearable textile fitted with optical sensors that could be used to remotely monitor a patient's breathing patterns while they undergo magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. The new textile will allow medical staff to keep an eye on children and other vulnerable patients who often have to be calmed with sedatives or anaesthetic drugs to keep them still during a scan. The technique will be particularly useful if proposed EU legislation that is designed to protect medical staff from being exposed to the high magnetic fields of MRI systems comes into force in 2012. The new rules would prevent nurses from being in the room where the scan is taking place. Developed by members of the EU funded OFSETH project, the textiles are plastic optical fibres woven into an elastic bandage that is worn around the chest and abdomen. In the part of the bandage that surrounds the abdomen, fibres are aligned sinusoidally with each other. As the patient breathes, the material expands and contracts causing the radius of the sinusoid to alter. This then changes the intensity of light being emitted from the fibre, which in turn reveals the breathing rate.
PhysicsWorld Oct 30, 2008	back to top