Biological warfare is scary and something of an actual threat. A new portable device could remove viruses or other toxins from a person’s bloodstream in the event of a biological disaster. The nearly pocket-sized Hemopurifier was created by Aethlon Medical and recently received FDA approval to treat Hepatitis C patients.

The small tube resembles a dialysis cartridge and fits into a standard dialysis machine, but it is actually the last line of defense in a worst-case scenario. Its mechanics are simple: after it is inserted into the arm at a specific site, the body’s natural blood pressure acts as a pump to filter out nasty things like smallpox or Ebola. The thought kind of makes us want to faint, but then again we’ve never been through anything like dialysis before.

Aethlon believes that the Hemopurifier could be used to treat all kinds of diseases and infections, including AIDS and Hepatitis C. Several working examples of the Hemopurifier have been shipped to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. Although it hasn’t been tested on Americans, a trial-run in India has been completed. No word yet as to whether or not it works on this virus.

The post Pocket-Size Blood Purifier Could Save Thousands of Lives first appeared on Gajitz.

A camera on a pair of glasses is nothing new on the technological landscape. They’ve been used for surveillance and various consumer needs for years. The OrCam, however, is intended to help the visually challenged.

It attaches to your glasses with a magnet, so it sees what you see. With a mere point of your finger it scans the subject and sends the information to a very powerful computer that fits in your pocket.  It can remember and recognize faces, read words and even watch traffic lights.

The OrCam also uses a bone conduction earpiece, which is vital for delivering the converted text to speech to the wearer, or to describe whatever they point at. If only it would expose secret messages and alien races.

The post Camera Glasses Help Visually Impaired See Vital Details first appeared on Gajitz.

Everyone fears a bee sting, but recently researchers at Washington University have found that bee venom could have a potentially life-saving application: it can kill HIV. A toxin called melittin is found in bee venom, and somehow it is able to penetrate the little protective envelope that surrounds the HIV virus and destroy it. Ordinarily this wouldn’t be newsworthy since there are plenty of ways to kill persistent viruses – but most of those methods also destroy the surrounding normal cells.

The researchers at Washington University figured out a way around this by loading melittin onto nanoparticles. The nanoparticles are equipped with “protective bumpers” that cause them to harmlessly bypass normal cells. But the HIV virus is smaller than the nanoparticles, so it comes into contact with the melittin and is destroyed. Because the method attacks the physical structure of the HIV virus, there is no way for the virus to adapt to become immune to this type of treatment. The amazing discovery could lead not only to the prevention and cure of HIV, but to the successful cures of other viruses like Hepatitis B and C.

(top image via Treesha Duncan/Flickr)

The post Un-Bee-Lievable! Toxin in Bee Venom Kills the HIV Virus first appeared on Gajitz.

The awesome science of microfluidics has the potential to revolutionize diagnostics, particularly in developing countries where well-equipped labs are hard to come by. Small, inexpensive and accurate diagnostic tools like this one from Columbia University researchers could save countless lives by detecting deadly diseases like HIV without the need for complicated equipment.

The credit card-size device is called mChip. It requires only a tiny drop of blood to detect HIV – and maybe most exciting of all is the fact that the device only costs around $1. Conventional HIV tests require a skilled person to draw blood and lab equipment to test it, but the mChip is like a self-contained lab that detected 100% of HIV and syphilis cases in studies.

While the availability of drugs to treat HIV and other STDs has been improving in recent years, the professor who spearheaded the mChip project says that the real challenge lies in the diagnosis. Many people in developing nations live too far away from hospitals to travel for the tests; and if they do, many of them don’t return for the results. The mChip offers reliable results in just 15 minutes. In undeveloped and developed countries alike, detection of serious diseases is the first step toward treatment, making the mChip a very important innovation.

The post Dynamic Diagnostic: Tiny Plastic Card IDs HIV in Minutes first appeared on Gajitz.