Top TechTop Tech #113: Detect Veins, Destroy Clots, Fly Hyper-Sonic
Important innovations in science and technology, every day
By Paul Worthington
Friday’s Top Tech:
(Whoops, published on Sunday evening!)
• Device detects Veins
• Device destroys clots
• Airbus developing hyper-sonic cruiser
Device detects veins
It can at times be difficult for medical personal to find a patients vein for a shot or blood draw. Now a near-infrared device does the detection for them, clearly showing exactly where a vein is located.
The VeinViewer, designed by Christie Medical Holdings, “can find the veins and then project them onto the arm in real time,” Mental Floss reports. The light is either absorbed by blood hemoglobin or reflected by skin, and so the device shows veins up to 0.4 inches deep.
Device destroys clots
Clots can trigger strokes and heart attacks — but now technology can seek out and destroy those clots, either in advance as a preventative, or after an event to mitigate damage.
The nano-sized device “starts working within minutes,” Science Alert reports. Made at the Baker IDI Heart and Diabetes Institute, it releases medication in areas where a clot is growing exponentially and blocking a vessel” — which prevents the current troubles caused when the intravenous treatment runs throughout the body.
Airbus developing hyper-sonic cruiser
“A revolutionary aircraft that leaves every other supersonic jet far behind” has been patented by Airbus.
Popular Science reports it has a cruising speed of Mach 4.5, but produces small sonic booms thanks to “two ram-jets under its delta wings, and a pair of turbo-jets under the front part of the fuselage and a rocket engine at the rear end of the fuselage.”
YouTube channel Patent Yogi first reported on the patent and produced cool video images here.
