From the article at The Scientist: Coating hospital surfaces, surgical equipment, patient implants, and water-delivery systems with nanoscale patterns and particles could curb the rise of hospital-acquired infections. Picture a hospital room: white walls, stainless steel IV poles and bedrails, scratchy bedsheets. For more than 100 years, this has been the standard hospital environment, and [...]
Loss of Bone Density and Mass under Microgravity Another significant area of concern for human space travel relates to the loss of bone density and mass under microgravity. The bones of humans under the 1g gravity of Earth are in a continual state of flux as bones are constantly being renewed [...]
(Image credit: 123RF) In 2004, NASA released its Bioastronautics Critical Path Roadmap (BCPR), with an aim to “establish tolerance limits to the space environment and develop countermeasures to overcome these problems.” The BCPR listed close to 50 space-related medical risk factors, which included those associated with the potential for serious cardiac dysrhythmias (from [...]
Ocular Anomalies Microgravity induced ophthalmic anomalies were observed by Mader et al in seven astronauts who were involved in long-duration (six month) space missions to the ISS. An additional 300 astronauts were asked to complete a questionnaire in regard to in-flight vision changes. For the seven astronauts under study, the ophthalmic results indicated disk [...]
Incremental progress has been made on several fronts that may employ nanomedical strategies, to potentially counteract the deleterious effects of galactic cosmic rays and microgravity on human physiology The implementation of these strategies and the enhancement of their preventative, diagnostic, or therapeutic effects for future orbital, planetary, and deep [...]
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Nanomedicine was initially brought to the world’s attention by Dr. Robert Freitas Jr. through his visionary and exquisitely comprehensive Nanomedicine book series. Freitas was the first to conceptualize, describe, and conduct thoroughly detailed analyses of a diverse range of advanced autonomous nanomedical devices comprised of diamondoid materials, including his conceptual [...]
The earliest mention of nanotechnology and nanomedicine is ascribed to Dr. Richard Feynman in his 1959 talk at Caltech entitled “There’s Plenty of Room at the Bottom”, during which he proposed that we might manufacture progressivelysmaller machines, and in the medical realm, “swallow the surgeon.” Nanotechnology was popularized by Dr. Eric Drexler’s in [...]
Future nanomedical devices and systems will have strong potential to enable a broad range of aerospace and space applications. With further dimensional reductions in conjunction with the increased capabilities of nanoelectronics and artificial intelligence (AI), nanomedicine may facilitate the development of a wide array of advanced nanomedical diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities dedicated to the health [...]
