Technology, Medical | featured news

Scientists in Tanzania turned an iPhone into an amateur microscope to check schoolchildren for intestinal worms.

Scientists reported Thursday that they succeeded in creating tiny medical devices sealed in silk cocoons that did the work they were designed for, then dissolved in the bodies of lab mice. It's an early step in a technology that may hold promise not only for medicine but also for disposal of electronic waste.

Ten months after becoming the first person to get a full face transplant in the U.S., a man marvels at recovering the ability of expression.

Watson, the IBM supercomputer that defeated the world’s best “Jeopardy!” playersthis year, has found a job in medicine. It won’t be consulting with patients, but a version of the game-show champion could appear in examination rooms, offering assistance to flesh-and-blood physicians. But how soon might you see Dr.

Whether the most technologically advanced way to check for colon cancer will become the standard screening method of the future does not appear to be a slam-dunk. The method, known as virtual colonoscopy, combines X-ray and computer technology to create three-dimensional views of the full length of the colon, the large intestine. It allows doctors to look for polyps, or pre-cancerous growths, or other signs of cancer or other intestinal disease. According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, virtual colonoscopy can be done with computed tomography (called a CT or CAT scan) or with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).

“For the first time we can clearly see the mechanics of a vaginal delivery,” he said. “For years, obstetricians have relied on very crude methods of understanding complications like cephalopelvic disproportion (CPD), which translates when the baby fails to descend into the birth canal and there is a rest in cervical dilatation, which ultimately leads to a C-section.”

Blindness first began creeping up on Barbara Campbell when she was a teenager, and by her late 30s, her eye disease had stolen what was left of her sight.

They're ready to sting, and they know where they're going. They're called "nanobees," and they're not insects -- they're tiny particles designed to destroy cancer cells by delivering a synthesized version of toxin called melittin that is found in bees.

The nation's first double hand transplant patient can wriggle his new fingers a litte bit now and grab a tennis ball, but what he really wants to do is be able to feel his wife's hands when he holds them.

When Connie Culp heard a little kid call her a monster because of the shotgun blast that left her face horribly disfigured, she pulled out her driver's license to show the child what she used to look like. Years later, as the nation's first face transplant recipient, she's stepped forward to show the rest of the world what she...