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Bukit Lawiang, Malaysia |
Test tubes holding plants line shelves in a Malaysian laboratory, the heart of a breeding programme for dwarf palm oil trees which scientists hope will cut costs and limit the environmental damage caused by the controversial industry.
Palm oil has become a key ingredient in everyday goods from biofuels to chocolate, leading to a production boom in the world's top two growers, Indonesia and Malaysia.
But green groups blame rapid expansion of plantations for laying waste to jungle that is home to orangutans and other animals, as well as tribespeople's lands, and sustained environmental campaigns have damaged its image in the West.
The adverse publicity, combined with rising stockpiles and sluggish demand from key importers, has led to precipitous falls in prices.
Now the Malaysian Palm Oil Board hopes an initiative to breed smaller trees could go some way to improving industry woes.
"With this smaller variety, we can improve yields, maximise land use and improve palm oil sustainability," plant scientist Meilina Ong-Abdullah told AFP in the lab in the town of Bangi, as other women in white gowns and facemasks sliced at plants and transferred them into test tubes.
But the plan faces huge challenges, not least the relatively high price of the newly created trees, which may make them too expensive for many of the country's hard-pressed farmers.
- Smaller space, more trees -
The dwarf trees, which are about 30 percent smaller than regular ones and have shorter fronds, are the fruit of a decades-long research programme by the palm oil board, which is a government agency.
Their small size makes it easier and quicker for the bunches of red berries from which the oil is extracted to be collected, and means fewer workers are needed for harvesting.
A greater number of the trees can be packed into a smaller space, and they produce about 37.5 metric tonnes of palm oil fruit per hectare -- twice the current per hectare average.
This should mean that less rainforest needs to be logged to cultivate the world's best-selling vegetable oil, and could make more productive use of land that is being replanted after previous clearances.
The plan may help address the problem of land scarcity for cultivation caused by voracious growth of plantations.
In Malaysia alone, palm oil plantations already cover some 5.8 million hectares (14.3 million acres) -- roughly the size of Croatia.
- 'Killer' price -
As part of the palm oil board's breeding programme, the dwarf trees have been planted in several areas, including on an estate in Bukit Lawiang in southern Johor state. The dwarf trees there are about five metres (16 feet) tall, compared to an average of about 7.5 metres for conventional trees in the area.
The dwarf trees went on sale in 2017 but take-up has been slow. At about 30 ringgit (seven dollars) each, the seedlings are around twice the price of conventional varieties.
Mohamad Isa Mansor, who has a five-hectare palm oil plantation, said he wanted to buy them -- but the cost was a "killer".
"Smallholders are poor and sustaining our daily life is a challenge due to depressed prices of crude palm oil," he told AFP.
He added: "To replant a hectare with the new variety will cost about 6,000 ringgit. Where are we going to find this huge sum of money?"
Nor does the government appear ready to step in and help. Minister Teresa Kok, whose portfolio includes the palm oil sector, told AFP that the cash-strapped government "doesn't have funds to assist smallholders to do replanting at the moment".
Using smaller trees is unlikely to be enough to take the sting out of environmental campaigns and growing opposition to palm oil, particularly in Europe.
The latest challenge facing Indonesia and Malaysia is a move by the European Parliament to ban the use of palm oil in biofuels, which industry groups claim would devastate the livelihoods of millions of small farmers.
Environmentalists were positive about the dwarf tree programme, but said it needed to be accompanied by efforts to reforest areas already stripped bare for plantations.
"My biggest concern about the palm oil sector is the destruction of biodiversity -- there should be no more clearance of forests," Mohideen Abdul Kader, from Friends of The Earth, told AFP.
"And if possible cleared jungles should be rejuvenated."
jsm/sr/lto
Austin, United States |
They may never be able to fill a stadium for a rock concert, but computers are making inroads in the music industry, capable of producing songs -- and convincingly so -- as illustrated at the South by Southwest festival in Texas.
Already, an album featuring eight tracks has been produced entirely with artificial intelligence, an unprecedented feat.
"I Am AI" was released last fall by YouTube star Taryn Southern, who doesn't know how to play any instruments.
"For my first music video in 2017, I had a lot of friction as a non-musician," the young artist told a panel discussion. "I wrote lyrics, I had a melodic line but it was difficult to compose and record the actual music."
The pop artist said she began experimenting with AI two years ago, working with Amper, an artificial intelligence music composition software.
"In two days, I had composed a song that I could actually feel was mine," Southern said. "It means that I don't necessarily have to rely on other people."
Founded in 2014 in New York by a group of engineers and musicians, Amper is part of about a dozen start-ups using artificial intelligence to break with the traditional way of making music.
The company's co-founder and CEO, Drew Silverstein, said the aim is not to replace human composers but rather to work with them to reach their goal.
He said the company relies on tons of source material -- from dance hits to classical music -- to produce custom songs.
"The idea of Amper is to enable everyone to express themselves (through) music regardless of their background and skills," Silverstein said.
The Amper app allows a user to pick a genre of music (rap, folk, rock) and a mood (happy, sad, driving) before spitting out a song. The user can then change the tempo, add instruments or switch them out until the result is satisfactory.
Two songs created by Amper at SXSW -- using the public's choice of pop and hip hop as the genres and tender or sad for the mood -- clearly aren't likely to top the charts. But the pieces were pleasant enough to the ear and perfectly usable as background music to illustrate a video or a computer game.
Such songs are described by Amper as "functional music" as opposed to "artistic music."
- "A creative tool" -
Southern said she reworked the music in her own album dozens of times before she got the right tune.
"For me, it's just a tool I can use in my creative process: I'm still the editor, I'm still in the driver's seat," she said.
She acknowledged, however, being terrified her album would be panned when it came out, as was the case with other innovations in music, like synthesizers or software to help artists sing right.
Jay Boisseau, a computing technologies leader and strategist, predicted that more and more music will be generated by computers in the future but the machine was unlikely to totally replace the human touch.
"We're going to hear a lot of music composed by computers and there's nothing wrong with that," he said. "But computers are not very good at creativity ... they are 0 and 1.
"They can find patterns, but they're not, like humans, particularly good to go beyond what they've been trained for. They are tools."
For Lance Weiler, an American filmmaker and writer who uses AI in his work, the collaboration between machine and artist should not be sneered at.
"It mainly enables you to improve the way you work, to augment your skills in expressing creative thoughts," he told the panel discussion.
He added there was no question that AI had its limits and inevitably fails somewhere.
"It's like interacting with a toddler," he joked. "It can be very temperamental. You need to put patterns so it doesn't hurt itself."
Silverstein underlined that while AI was useful to experiment with an objective goal, "a yes or no answer," when it came to artistic experimentation, it was far from perfect.
For some, such arguments are not convincing, as attested by a British musician at SXSW who didn't appear happy with the competition and questioned whether the word creativity even applied when speaking about music generated by a computer.
"It's still an algorithm," Boisseau conceded. "It's doesn't mean people won't enjoy it, but it's not completely new.
"With the current state of the art, it cannot be 'creative,'" he added.
To which Silverstein quickly replied: "Not yet."
ban/jz/dw
Chiba, Japan | In a small workshop just outside Tokyo, mechanics hammer, weld and measure as they craft "the Porsche of wheelchairs" for the world's top Paralympic athletes ahead of the 2020 Games.
Paralympians using wheelchairs built by OX Engineering, a small company in the city of Chiba, have won a total of 122 medals since 1996 -- making them the gold medal champion among Japan's main manufacturers.
Since Tokyo won the bid to host the 2020 Olympics and Paralympics, orders have flown in, increasing by around a fifth every year. The firm now makes about 500 sports wheelchairs a year for athletes from 21 countries.
"We have the technology to make a wheelchair fit perfectly for each athlete and to help them perform at their best," company president Katsuyuki Ishii told AFP.
OX Engineering was founded in 1988 by Ishii's father Shigeyuki who used to sell motorbikes until his life was turned upside down by injury.
Road-testing a new bike, he had an accident that caused spinal injuries and left him paralysed.
He tried out several wheelchairs and, unable to find a suitable one, finally decided to create his own model.
"My father wanted a wheelchair with a cool design like a motorbike but there was nothing like that around at the time," Ishii said.
"Then he decided to make one himself."
- 'Everything is tailored' -
Manufacturing sports wheelchairs is high-precision work -- they have to be specially designed for speed and agility, depending on the sport.
Tennis wheelchairs, for instance, have two large, angled wheels for stability in quick turns, with two casters wheels at the front and one at the back.
Racing wheelchairs, on the other hand, look completely different, with two large rear wheels and one small front wheel connected by a long shaft.
The detailed process of designing and manufacturing wheelchairs at OX Engineering remains top secret, but one of the ways the company pioneered to enhance athletes' performance was to boost the durability of the vehicle.
Over the years, the company has refined the shape of their pipes to strengthen the equipment. The ability to create personalised equipment is also key, said Ishii.
"Each athlete has a different body shape and type of disability. They all play and race differently."
"The way the pipes are shaped, the way parts are assembled... everything is tailored" precisely to each athlete, Ishii said.
- 'Stability at high speed' -
Shingo Kunieda, who has won 26 Grand Slam tennis titles and three Paralympic gold medals, said a wheelchair must "feel like a part of the athlete's body."
"My wheelchair is my feet. So changing a wheelchair is like replacing my feet," the 35-year-old Japanese star told AFP.
"A wheelchair is made delicately. We feel something is wrong even with a millimetre change," he said.
It is not the lightness of the equipment that counts but the stability, he explained.
"What I like about my wheelchair is that I have full control of it."
For Masayuki Higuchi, a middle-distance athlete who competed at the 2016 Rio Paralympics, the most important aspect of the wheelchair is "stability at high speed."
"We race at a speed of more than 35 kilometres per hour, so it's important to have stability when cornering in a group," said the 40-year-old, who started working with OX Engineering three years ago.
As athletes compete for gold on the track, so wheelchair companies are forever trying to outdo each other with cutting-edge technology.
At Rio, US athletes used what auto giant BMW claimed was "the world's fastest wheelchair".
The machine, created by BMW's California-based firm Designworks and individually customised, was made from carbon fibre, making it lighter and more shock-absorbent -- but also much more expensive.
- 'Not very profitable' -
"Such a wheelchair could cost 3 million yen ($28,000). An ordinary athlete can never afford that," Higuchi said.
His own wheelchair costs more than 800,000 yen as it also contains carbon fibre.
Higuchi stressed the need to keep costs down to expand the popularity of Paralympic sport.
"If we cannot win without such wheelchairs, only a handful of athletes will be able to compete," he said.
OX Engineering strives to keep costs down as much as possible -- between 200,000 and 500,000 yen.
"It's not very profitable... but our mission is to provide wheelchairs ordinary people can buy," said Ishii, adding that he wanted the best for Japanese Paralympians as they competing on home turf.
"We know they want to win no matter what. So our job is to help improve their performance" with the wheelchair, he said.
"My goal is to win gold in Tokyo," Paralympian Kunieda said.
"There's pressure, definitely, because it'll be held in my home country. But I want to use this opportunity to show to more people how fun wheelchair tennis is."
On board the San Raffaele, Colombia | As a white ship chugs through the muddy waters of the San Juan River, pirogues from the jungle glide toward it almost reverently, bringing their sick to healers they liken to angels.
For hundreds of miles along Colombia's Pacific coast, with its thick, lush jungle, there are no hospitals, and medics and medicine are rare.
And so, the San Raffaele hospital ship, when it arrives, is treated like a ghostly miracle by the poor indigenous and Afro-Caribbean communities that dot this violent region.
"The proper medicines are not coming in. They are too expensive," says Yenny Cardenas, weaving a basket as she waits in her hut, which is built on stilts over the riverbank. Its roof thrums under heavy rain.
Cardenas, an ethnic Wounaan, is waiting to board a skiff that will speed her across to the ship with her baby boy, her fifth child. She's worried about his skin which, for months now, has been covered in sores.
"My son was fine, nice and chubby, but now he's not eating," said Cardenas, 44, a teacher in nearby Balsalito, an indigenous reserve on the banks of the San Juan where it sweeps down from the Andes to the sea.
On the other bank is the wharf at Docordo, a majority Afro-Colombian town lost in the country's poorest department, Choco -- where nearly 50 percent of the population live in extreme poverty, compared to 17 percent nationally.
Dozens of patients have gathered around Docordo's wooden wharf since dawn. The area has just one medical dispensary, supplying 16,000 people.
-2,000 waiting for care-
For that reason, all eyes are trained on the ship. Bearing a white cross on its hull, it's anchored mid-river, as if honoring its neutrality between these two neighboring communities -- indigenous and Afro-Colombian -- which do not mix.
Another sign -- featuring a machine gun with a 'X' over it -- warns that carrying firearms on board is prohibited.
People line up, waiting their turn to be seen by the doctors and nurses. Some have their hands on their stomachs, some are bent over with age, some are young pregnant women with their kids in tow -- all wait to tell their woes and receive free treatment. Locals call the medical staff their "Angels of the Pacific."
"Some of these people have not been able to see a doctor for years," said Ana Lucia Lopez, 51, director and co-founder of the Monte Tabor Foundation, which operates this 80-foot (24-meter) hospital on the water.
On Docordo's teeming pontoon, Lopez manages the anxious crowd from behind a school desk on the wharf that doubles as the hospital's reception area.
For a 12-day mission she has a list of 2,000 people for appointments and 150 patients for surgery that a forward party of medics screened in a triage operation two weeks previously.
It's a mountain of work for the little ship with a big heart, but on Colombia's west coast, there is no alternative.
The ship features 25 doctors and nurses, some paid and some volunteer, including a gynecologist, a dentist, a pediatrician and a psychologist. A crew of seven operates the ship itself.
Hailing from the port of Buenaventura, the San Raffaele has been plying the 865 mile (1,300 kilometers) length of Colombia's Pacific coast all year round since 2009, from the Panamanian border in the north to Ecuador in the south.
"Already over the past few years, 65,000 people have been seen and more than 4,000 operations have been carried out," said Diego Posso, 49, a paramedic expert in trauma and the founding president of Monte Tabor.
Posso himself designed the ship with help from a naval architect. All it has ever been is a floating hospital.
- Neutral amid conflict -
It's a risky business, coming here.
The local communities had to negotiate with several armed groups to ensure safe passage for the San Raffaele.
Gunmen of one kind or another have held sway here for decades -- from National Liberation Army rebels to narco-trafficking gangs like the feared Gulf Clan -- effectively making it a war zone.
Three years on from a landmark peace agreement with FARC rebels, peace is far from being a reality on this coast, strategic to cocaine-shippers and clandestine gold miners alike.
Local security forces patrolling the river with outboard-powered boats attest to frequent firefights, bodies floating in the river, wounded locals and displaced families terrorized by violence.
"Sometimes it has been difficult to reach the villages where there have been clashes, bombs," says Lopez.
She recalled a group of wounded taken hurriedly aboard one evening, including a paramilitary guy with his arm hanging off.
A few months later, in the village further up the coast, someone grabbed her by the shoulder. "I was startled. But it was him! And he said, 'Thank you. Thanks to you I still have my hand.'"
-Contamination, infections -
From dawn until late into the night, small skiffs ferry people to and from the riverbank.
Eventually, it's Cardenas' turn to climb onto the deck, holding her son close. Up on the ship, shaded by a plastic sheet, the waiting room is overflowing.
There is no let-up for pediatric surgeon Carlos Melo, 55. He follows surgery with surgery, and not only for children.
"These people have nothing. Everything is so far away. We're talking six, eight hours by canoe. There are no doctors," says Melo, a pioneer of minimally invasive abdominal surgery known as laparoscopy, who has volunteered on the ship for the past five years.
At the end of the corridor, in a small pastel-colored room, Maria Isabel Lozano examines Carderas' baby and diagnoses a skin infection. It's a common diagnosis here, where communities are exposed to the polluted waters of the San Juan.
Posso says the pollution is caused by chemical waste from cocaine production and run-off water from illegal mining.
Many also suffer from diarrhea and respiratory illnesses, said Lozano.
The San Raffaele is a small white speck on an ocean of despair, bringing with it specialist doctors and nurses on 12-day missions every second month.
Now, thanks to a 350,000 euro grant from the European Union, it can take to the seas every month, at least for another year.
"There are many projects, huge dreams," says Posso.
One of them is to bring a bigger and better equipped ship from the United States, given to them by entrepreneurs,
It already has a name: "Archangel."
Tel Aviv, Israel |
Scientists in Israel unveiled a 3D print of a heart with human tissue and vessels calling it a first and a "major medical breakthrough" that advances possibilities for transplants.
While it remains a far way off, scientists hope one day to be able to produce hearts suitable for transplant into humans as well as patches to regenerate defective hearts.
The heart produced by researchers at Tel Aviv University is about the size of a rabbit's.
It marked "the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles and chambers," said Tal Dvir, who led the project.
"People have managed to 3D-print the structure of a heart in the past, but not with cells or with blood vessels," he said.
But the scientists said many challenges remain before fully working 3D printed hearts would be available for transplant into patients.
Journalists were shown a 3D print of a heart about the size of a cherry, immersed in liquid, at Tel Aviv University on Monday as the researchers announced their findings, published in the peer-reviewed journal Advanced Science.
Researchers must now teach the printed hearts "to behave" like real ones. The cells are currently able to contract, but do not yet have the ability to pump.
Then they plan to transplant them into animal models, hopefully in about a year, said Dvir.
"Maybe, in 10 years, there will be organ printers in the finest hospitals around the world, and these procedures will be conducted routinely," he said.
But he said hospitals would likely start with simpler organs than hearts.
- Producing 'ink' -
In its statement announcing the research, Tel Aviv University called it a "major medical breakthrough".
Cardiovascular disease is the world's leading cause of death, according to the World Health Organization, and transplants are currently the only option available for patients in the worst cases.
But the number of donors is limited and many die while waiting.
When they do benefit, they can fall victim to their bodies rejecting the transplant -- a problem the researchers are seeking to overcome.
Their research involved taking a biopsy of fatty tissue from patients that was used in the development of the "ink" for the 3D print.
First, patient-specific cardiac patches were created followed by the entire heart, the statement said.
Using the patient's own tissue was important to eliminate the risk of an implant provoking an immune response and being rejected, Dvir said.
"The biocompatibility of engineered materials is crucial to eliminating the risk of implant rejection, which jeopardises the success of such treatments," said Dvir.
Challenges that remain include how to expand the cells to have enough tissue to recreate a human-sized heart, he said.
Current 3D printers are also limited by the size of their resolution and another challenge will be figuring out how to print all small blood vessels.
But while the current 3D print was a primitive one and only the size of a rabbit's heart, "larger human hearts require the same technology," said Dvir.
3D printing has opened up possibilities in numerous fields, provoking both promise and controversy.
The technology has developed to include 3D prints of everything from homes to guns.
dms-mjs/dv
Athens, Greece |
A team of Greek and Spanish doctors announced the birth of a baby using DNA from three people after a controversial fertility treatment that has provoked intense ethical debate.
The team used an egg from the infertile mother, the father's sperm and another woman's egg to conceive the baby boy, transferring genetic material with chromosomes from the mother to the egg of a donor whose own genetic material had been removed in a process its creators hailed as a medical "revolution".
A similar DNA-switching technique was used in Mexico in 2016 to avoid transmission of a mother's hereditary illness to her child.
But the case in Greece is the first time an IVF (in vitro fertilisation) technique using DNA from three people has been deployed to allow a mother otherwise unable to conceive to have a child.
The baby, born Thursday and weighing in at 2.96 kilos (6.5 pounds), was delivered by a 32-year-old Greek woman who had undergone several unsuccessful attempts at in vitro fertilisation, Greece's Institute of Life said in a statement.
Institute of Life president Dr Panagiotis Psathas, stated: "Today, for the first time in the world, a woman's inalienable right to become a mother with her own genetic material became a reality.
"As Greek scientists, we are very proud to announce an international innovation in assisted reproduction, and we are now in a position to make it possible for women with multiple IVF failures or rare mitochondrial genetic diseases to have a healthy child."
Dr Psathas added: "Our commitment is to continue to help even more couples facing fertility issues to have children with their own DNA, without having recourse to egg donors."
- 'Will help countless women' -
His scientific collaborator of the Institute of Life, Dr Nuno Costa-Borges, also hailed the news.
"The completely successful and safe implementation of the Maternal Spindle Transfer method -– for the first time in medical history -– is a revolution in assisted reproduction," Dr Costa-Borges said.
He added that "this exceptional result will help countless women to realise their dream of becoming mothers with their own genetic material."
In the Mexican case, the mother had been suffering from Leigh syndrome, a rare illness which affects the developing nervous system and can be fatal. In her case, the disorder had previously caused the deaths of two of her children.
Using the triple DNA technique to aid in infertility cases raises complex ethical issues, however.
Tim Child, Oxford University professor and medical director of the Fertility Partnership, expressed his concern.
"I'm concerned that there's no proven need for the patient to have her genetic material removed from her eggs and transferred into the eggs of a donor.
"The risks of the technique aren't entirely known, though may be considered acceptable if being used to treat mitochondrial disease, but not in this situation," said Child.
chv/hec/cw/rmb
Washington, United States |The kidney of a 35-year-old HIV-positive woman has been transplanted into another patient with the virus that causes AIDS, US surgeons announced, in a major medical breakthrough.
The surgeons at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore performed the operation , calling it the first in the world of its kind.
"I'm feeling good," said the donor, Nina Martinez, at a news conference following the surgery.
The recipient, who has not been identified, is doing "beautifully," said Christine Durand, associate professor of medicine and oncology at Johns Hopkins.
They are "incredibly grateful for this gift and now we just monitor for the long term outcomes," Durand said.
Martinez initially wanted to donate the kidney to a friend, but after that friend died, she pursued her wish to be an organ donor, Johns Hopkins said.
The Atlanta resident, who was inspired to donate her kidney by an episode of "Grey's Anatomy," said she was excited to be part of a medical first.
"I knew that I was the one that they had been waiting for," she said. "For anyone considering embarking on this journey, it's doable.
"I've just showed you how and I'm very excited to see who the first follow-on might be."
Before this transplant operation, doctors had believed it too risky to leave an HIV-positive patient with only one kidney.
The decision to move forward with the transplant highlights the confidence scientists have in current anti-retroviral medication, which allows those with HIV to lead normal, productive lives.
Thousands of people die each year in the United States awaiting organ transplants.
- 'Doors are now open' -
Dorry Segev, an associate professor of surgery at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said about 500-600 HIV-positive patients could donate organs each year, benefiting about 1,000 people with the virus.
Until now, HIV-positive patients could receive organs from dead HIV-positive patients but not from anyone living with the virus.
They could also previously receive an organ from someone who was not HIV-positive.
The possibility of using organs from living donors would significantly change the equation.
Johns Hopkins University Hospital received authorization in 2016 to move ahead with the first transplant from a living donor with HIV. Surgeons had been waiting to find compatible patients.
Martinez and the recipient of her kidney will have to keep taking their anti-retroviral medication.
"The doors are now open for people living with HIV to become kidney donors," said Segev. "Now anybody can do this anywhere in the world, provided that they screen the patients accordingly.
"For us, this is not only a celebration of transplantation but a celebration of the progress of HIV care," he said.
"And the fact that 30 years ago, a disease that was basically a death sentence has been so transformed, that today somebody with HIV can save somebody else's life."
Like other countries, the United States suffers from a shortage of donor kidneys and there is a waiting list of around 100,000 people, according to the Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network.
Durand said about 10,000 HIV-positive patients are currently suffering kidney failure and on dialysis.
ico/sst-cl/ft
Washington, United States | Parents of premature babies who spent time in neonatal intensive care units (NICUs) remember all too well the burdensome vital sign sensors stuck on the infants' tiny bodies -- linking them through a mess of wires to monitoring equipment.
An innovation in sensor technology by a team of US engineers and doctors could make it far easier for parents to cuddle their babies in the NICU -- a simple gesture with major health benefits for the children.
The researchers who developed new ultra-light silicone sensors that are flexible and wireless have unveiled their invention in Friday's edition of the journal Science.
In a traditional set-up, five electrodes and sensors are placed on a baby to monitor heartbeats, breathing, temperature and oxygen in the blood.
But here, the researchers created sensors just two and 0.8 inches (five and two centimeters) long for the chest and the foot that operate without batteries and use a water-based adhesive gel that is 10 times lighter than the standard fare.
A minuscule antenna sends data to a transmitter under the incubator and transfers power.
The sensors used in today's incubators are basically the same those used in the 1960s, said John Rogers, professor and director of the Center for Bio-Integrated Electronics at Northwestern University.
Around 2016, his team -- which specializes in integrating electronic components in the human body -- started working with pediatricians in the neonatal service at Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago.
"We were drawn to the neonatal health monitoring area, because we felt like our devices would add maximum value in that context," Rogers told AFP.
"Premature babies are at a fragile health status, they require a lot of monitoring, and at the same time, their skin is underdeveloped -- it's very sensitive, it's easily damaged and disrupted."
The researchers compared the quality of the data transmitted by their system to the data yielded by the traditional one for 80 babies so far -- and results showed the technology was just as precise.
Now, they need to secure approval from the US Food and Drug Administration, which likely won't come until next year, according to Rogers.
- Skin-to-skin -
"This is a phenomenal breakthrough," said Kelli Kelley, who had two premature children, including a boy who weighed only about 1.5 pounds (700 grams) at birth and stayed in intensive care for four months.
"It is very very difficult to feed your baby so tiny and small and hooked up to so many machines. It causes a barrier in being able to hold and bond with a medically fragile child," said Kelley, who founded the family support group Hand to Hold.
Her son is now 18. But she said one of his nipples was damaged so severely by the sensors' adhesives that a portion had to be removed.
A premature baby born after a 24-week gestation period has skin 40 percent thinner than a full-term child. Many premature babies grow up with scars from the sensors.
Current adhesives need to be resistant to the powerful tension exerted on the wires that are pulled as soon as the baby moves, is held or changed.
Wireless sensors avoid that problem entirely. They can even adhere to the skin naturally without an adhesive, even though a hydrogel 10 times weaker than conventional ones was used in the study.
In American hospitals, doctors strongly recommend skin-to-skin contact between parents and their children, but with all the wires in conventional incubators, it is challenging to sit comfortably with the baby in your arms, and movements are confined to the immediate proximity of the incubator.
"We know that skin-to-skin contact is so important for newborns -- especially those who are sick or premature," Amy Paller, a pediatric dermatologist at Lurie Children's, said in a statement.
"It's been shown to decrease the risk of pulmonary complications, liver issues and infections."
The new sensors are still being tested in Chicago.
They will be distributed in a pilot program in Zambia starting in April, followed by similar initiatives in India and Pakistan thanks to support from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Save the Children.
The sensors will even include an accelerometer to track the baby's movements.
"You can study how the baby's vital signs change when it's being held, and you can really quantify all of those things, how the heart rate is modulated by mother-child interaction," said Rogers.
