With the kind of tolerance that Amy Winehouse has built up over the years, you’d think she’d be able to inject nuclear waste directly into her eyeballs and at worst come down with a case of the giggles. But no, it seems that prescription drugs are her Achilles’ heel. CNN reports:

Winehouse, 25, went to the private London Clinic on Sunday, said her spokesman, Chris Goodman. He said Winehouse’s medication made her ill and her doctors asked her to come in so they could investigate.
Goodman did not disclose what type of medication was involved, saying only it is part of her “ongoing treatment.” It was not clear Tuesday whether she had been discharged.

And here I was going to challenge her to a Ny-Quil chugging contest. What a letdown. This is like finding out that Superman wears lingerie under his costume. Or that Lindsay Lohan’s crotch doesn’t host a collection of STDs so powerful that it’s actually on the FBI’s terrorism watch list. Luckily, we still have my ability to bend steel girders with an intense gaze to cling to. Otherwise Thanksgiving would be totally ruined.

With the kind of tolerance that Amy Winehouse has built up over the years, you’d think she’d be able to inject nuclear waste directly into her eyeballs and at worst come down with a case of the giggles. But no, it seems that prescription drugs are her Achilles’ heel. CNN reports:

Winehouse, 25, went to the private London Clinic on Sunday, said her spokesman, Chris Goodman. He said Winehouse’s medication made her ill and her doctors asked her to come in so they could investigate.
Goodman did not disclose what type of medication was involved, saying only it is part of her “ongoing treatment.” It was not clear Tuesday whether she had been discharged.

And here I was going to challenge her to a Ny-Quil chugging contest. What a letdown. This is like finding out that Superman wears lingerie under his costume. Or that Lindsay Lohan’s crotch doesn’t host a collection of STDs so powerful that it’s actually on the FBI’s terrorism watch list. Luckily, we still have my ability to bend steel girders with an intense gaze to cling to. Otherwise Thanksgiving would be totally ruined.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

While the scientists that developed these newfangled ingestible microgrippers call them minimally invasive, we’re not so sure that swallowing minuscule devices that can cut and grab tissue when chemically activated fits our definition of keyhole surgery. Nevertheless, tiny “handlike grippers” are currently being shown off to highly intelligent professionals in the medical realm, and if proven feasible, they could one day be used to perform biopsies from within. More specifically, the devices could reportedly “react to the biochemicals released by infected tissue by closing around the tissue, so that pieces can be removed for analysis.” Yeah, we reckon this is a bit less painful than actually going under the knife, but the mere thought of having blade-wielding microorganisms floating around our innards spooks us just a wee bit. Go on, fling your “pansies!” this way — we can take it.

[Via medGadget]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Here’s one straight from the bizarro chapters. Dozens of individuals that attended an all night dance party near Moscow have been “partially blinded after a laser light show burned their retinas,” according to Russian health officials. Apparently someone responsible for erecting the equipment decided to aim a few lights powerful enough to brighten the night sky down at the crowd (after rain necessitated a makeshift roof, we’re told), with some of those who stared too long losing up to “80%” of their vision. We’re not exactly sure what will happen to the promoters of the event, but at least now you have a valid excuse to rock those face-engulfing sunglasses (or a welding mask, if you’re really paranoid) in every night club you waltz into.

[Image courtesy of iGouGo]

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Filed under: Wireless

RFID has long since been a pretty common find in your modern day hospital, but now GE and CenTrak are teaming up to make the technology even more useful in those long, winding hallways. Simply hailed as RFID “virtual walls,” the creation enables venues to “track tagged mobile medical equipment down to a portion of a single room.” By providing sub-room-level distinction, personnel can locate hardware within a monitored area as tiny as 6- x 8-feet, and although it’ll likely be used to locate cardiac defibrillators and portable ultrasound machines, patients could theoretically be tracked, too. The new tech will be shown off at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Conference in San Jose next week, though there’s no word on how soon the duo will roll this stuff out en masse.

[Via medGadget]

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Filed under: Gaming

Here’s your heartwarming story for the day. Microsoft has teamed up with Companions in Courage in order to bring “hundreds” of Xbox 360 kiosks to children’s hospitals across the nation, and the gaming stations have already been installed at Morgan Stanley Children’s Hospital of New York-Presbyterian, Children’s Hospital & Regional Medical Center of Seattle and the Children’s Hospital of Orange County, California. The customized units are “hospital-friendly” and come pre-loaded with a variety of E and E10+ rated games, Y-rated television programs, G-rated movies and the Xbox Live headset / Vision camera in order for gamers to play online. Speaking of, each kiosk is wired to a private Live network which “allows hospitalized children across the country to play games and chat” with each other. There’s no word on where the stations are slated to arrive outside of the three venues already mentioned, but those interested in broadening the reach of the endeavor can feel free to donate to the cause.

[Via OhGizmo]

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

The stumbling blocks keep piling up as the white space networking struggles to get off the ground: it looks like the manufacturers of healthcare equipment are set to join NAB in opposing the technology. Wireless medical telemetry devices like heart monitors have been operating in broadcast white spaces since the late 80s, and manufacturers like GE Healthcare say that the Microsoft- and Google-backed white space networking initiative could potentially “directly interfere” and “prevent patient monitoring.” For its part, the FCC has set aside all of channel 37 for medical telemetry devices in 1998 after interference from a nearby TV station shut down the system at Baylor University Medical Center, but it wasn’t mandatory, and hospitals that haven’t made the switch could face millions of dollars in upgrade costs. That’s not say that medical telemetry concerns are a problem that can’t be solved — the new Google push includes a channel 37 exception, for example, and there are some other compromise solutions on the table — but it’s seems like there’s no end of issues for a technology that hasn’t really even been demonstrated working yet.

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Filed under: Laptops

During the recent Greener Gadgets Conference in New York, former OLPC CTO (and XO challenger) Mary Lou Jepsen discussed the real-world difficulties with using the kid-friendly laptops, including the creation of an XO “hospital” used to repair broken computers. Apparently, in the crowded conditions of schools in places like Nigeria, the little green laptops have a tendency to be jostled around and even knocked on the floor from time to time. As there’s typically no repair shops nearby, the kids have learned to fix the systems themselves, setting up a “laptop hospital” where they can repair what’s broken using simple tools and cheap replacement parts. Mary Lou says the company designed the systems to be easily fixable, including extra screws embedded in the computers themselves, and allowing for quick changes of the LCD backlight and other components. The in-house repairs cut down on shipping, promote reuse, and increase kids’ understanding of ownership and responsibility, thus furthering the OLPC mission, and making everyone generally want to hug.

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Circulating tumor cells, which are more commonly referred to as CTCs, have thus far remained practically useless when it came to aiding in clinical decision making, but a new development could enable these rare cells to finally be used for guiding treatment. Reportedly, a crew of investigators from the Massachusetts General Hospital have crafted a “microchip-based device (dubbed CTC-chip) that can isolate, enumerate and analyze CTCs from a blood sample,” which has the “potential to be an invaluable tool for monitoring and guiding cancer treatment.” Additionally, researchers can look forward to “better understanding the biology of cancer cells and the mechanisms of metastasis,” but there’s still quite a bit of work to be done before the device can be put to clinical use.

[Via Physorg]

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Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Household

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