Keeping track of how quickly deep wounds heal usually involves nothing more high-tech than a ruler. If the wound hasn鈥檛 halved in volume in four weeks then there鈥檚 a 95 per cent chance it won鈥檛 heal, indicating the need for a change in treatment. But such methods carry a risk of infection, so Aranz Medical in Christchurch, New Zealand, has developed a contactless, hand-held scanner to do the job. The device, called Silhouette, uses lasers and a digital camera to accurately record the length, width and depth of a wound.
IBM is bringing together computer scientists, neurobiologists and materials scientists in a bid to produce nanoscale devices that act like synapses and neurons, and then put them together to make computers that mimic the way brains work. The idea is to use them for tasks traditional computers struggle with, such as pattern recognition.
