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Ultrasound pill helps the medicine go down
TECHNOLOGY
CONEYL JAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Insulin by ultrasound
would send ultrasound waves through the patient’s gut to aid absorption. It would then pass through the digestive system, as a camera pill does. The device was An ultrasonic pill could spell the end for painful daily injections presented at the IdeaStream conference at MIT in May. Animal tests are now being carried out to see if the device can pass through the digestive system safely. “The key thing here is the miniaturisation technology we are using to make an already small device a lot smaller,” says George Lewis, co-founder of Zetroz and lead engineer for the uPill. The firm previously developed an ultrasound patch to deliver drugs through the skin. “We are developing the smallest ultrasound system in the world.” Anderson hopes the uPill could hit the market in the next couple of years. “It is far too early to claim victory but we are excited about the potential applications,” he says. “It could create an entirely –Wishing for a needle-free future– new class of drugs.” Such a device would be “an Ultrasound has been used for been applied to a pill. Designed enormous help for patients”, Will Ferguson years to accelerate the transfer by biomedical engineering says Nader Saffari at the DAILY injections are a painful of drugs through skin and can company Zetroz, the uPill will ultrasonics group at University fact of life for many people with increase drug absorption by a use ultrasound to increase the College London. “If they can diabetes or cancer. Pills are an factor of 10. The method works by absorption rate of drugs through manage to develop something easier and more pleasant heating up molecules inside skin tissue in the gastrointestinal like this it is going to be a major treatment method but substances tissue, making cell membranes tract, says Daniel Anderson at jump in the field.” like insulin do not penetrate more permeable. It is particularly the Massachusetts Institute of The pills won’t come cheap – tissue quickly enough to be good for delivering protein-based Technology, who is part of the each one will cost $20 to $30. effective when taken orally. drugs such as some cancer team developing the device. But while the device is, in theory, Now a pill that uses ultrasound medicines, insulin and various The required drug would be reusable, Anderson admits this to speed up drug delivery could vaccinations. applied as a coating to the uPill probably won’t be a hugely remove the need for needles. This technique has now and, once swallowed, the device popular option. n
Virtually whack it with a responsive tennis racket VIRTUAL tennis might soon become a lot less virtual. A game controller that can twist, deflect and vibrate could bring a new level of realism to video-game tennis by simulating the impact of a ball. In a real game, when a player hits the ball, the racket recoils with an equal and opposite reaction – in 20 | NewScientist | 23 June 2012
accordance with Newton’s third law of motion. With the advent of motion- and gesture-based controllers, video games that simulate tennis have become popular. But they have mostly ignored the physical interaction of the ball and racket. Now Fong Wee Teck and colleagues from the Institute for Infocomm Research at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore have developed a haptic controller that looks a lot like a normal tennis racket.
Its head moves and twists, creating opposite forces on the handle that make it feel as if a ball is hitting the head. Connecting the head to the handle are two actuators that can push and pull each side in different directions, generating up to 60 g, a force equivalent to 60 times the gravitational pull of Earth, a bit less than the 100 g routinely generated
“Maybe the ball was hitting harder, or your racket string is of different quality. We can simulate this”
during a tennis match. A vibration element enhances the feeling of realism by changing its frequency depending on how the virtual ball “strikes” the racket. In a real game, Fong says, the human “sensory system can discern the variations in these vibrations”. “Maybe the ball was hitting harder or maybe your racket string is of different quality. We can simulate this,” Fong says. The team will present their research in August at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles. Michael Slezak n
CONEYL JAY/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Insulin by ultrasound
would send ultrasound waves through the patient’s gut to aid absorption. It would then pass through the digestive system, as a camera pill does. The device was An ultrasonic pill could spell the end for painful daily injections presented at the IdeaStream conference at MIT in May. Animal tests are now being carried out to see if the device can pass through the digestive system safely. “The key thing here is the miniaturisation technology we are using to make an already small device a lot smaller,” says George Lewis, co-founder of Zetroz and lead engineer for the uPill. The firm previously developed an ultrasound patch to deliver drugs through the skin. “We are developing the smallest ultrasound system in the world.” Anderson hopes the uPill could hit the market in the next couple of years. “It is far too early to claim victory but we are excited about the potential applications,” he says. “It could create an entirely –Wishing for a needle-free future– new class of drugs.” Such a device would be “an Ultrasound has been used for been applied to a pill. Designed enormous help for patients”, Will Ferguson years to accelerate the transfer by biomedical engineering says Nader Saffari at the DAILY injections are a painful of drugs through skin and can company Zetroz, the uPill will ultrasonics group at University fact of life for many people with increase drug absorption by a use ultrasound to increase the College London. “If they can diabetes or cancer. Pills are an factor of 10. The method works by absorption rate of drugs through manage to develop something easier and more pleasant heating up molecules inside skin tissue in the gastrointestinal like this it is going to be a major treatment method but substances tissue, making cell membranes tract, says Daniel Anderson at jump in the field.” like insulin do not penetrate more permeable. It is particularly the Massachusetts Institute of The pills won’t come cheap – tissue quickly enough to be good for delivering protein-based Technology, who is part of the each one will cost $20 to $30. effective when taken orally. drugs such as some cancer team developing the device. But while the device is, in theory, Now a pill that uses ultrasound medicines, insulin and various The required drug would be reusable, Anderson admits this to speed up drug delivery could vaccinations. applied as a coating to the uPill probably won’t be a hugely remove the need for needles. This technique has now and, once swallowed, the device popular option. n
Virtually whack it with a responsive tennis racket VIRTUAL tennis might soon become a lot less virtual. A game controller that can twist, deflect and vibrate could bring a new level of realism to video-game tennis by simulating the impact of a ball. In a real game, when a player hits the ball, the racket recoils with an equal and opposite reaction – in 20 | NewScientist | 23 June 2012
accordance with Newton’s third law of motion. With the advent of motion- and gesture-based controllers, video games that simulate tennis have become popular. But they have mostly ignored the physical interaction of the ball and racket. Now Fong Wee Teck and colleagues from the Institute for Infocomm Research at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research in Singapore have developed a haptic controller that looks a lot like a normal tennis racket.
Its head moves and twists, creating opposite forces on the handle that make it feel as if a ball is hitting the head. Connecting the head to the handle are two actuators that can push and pull each side in different directions, generating up to 60 g, a force equivalent to 60 times the gravitational pull of Earth, a bit less than the 100 g routinely generated
“Maybe the ball was hitting harder, or your racket string is of different quality. We can simulate this”
during a tennis match. A vibration element enhances the feeling of realism by changing its frequency depending on how the virtual ball “strikes” the racket. In a real game, Fong says, the human “sensory system can discern the variations in these vibrations”. “Maybe the ball was hitting harder or maybe your racket string is of different quality. We can simulate this,” Fong says. The team will present their research in August at the SIGGRAPH conference in Los Angeles. Michael Slezak n