At the beginning of 2015, Ray Flynn couldn’t see a thing in front of him. The 80-year-old suffered from a common disease called dry age-related macular degeneration (AMD), which caused him to lose his central line of sight and required him to rely on his peripheral vision instead. Flynn couldn’t use ATMs and had trouble distinguishing weeds from flowers in his garden. But in June, Flynn received the world’s first retinal implant to treat AMD, a procedure that left the patient with a bonafide bionic eye.
Now, engineers from the University of Minnesota have made another significant step in the development of bionic eyes. In a paper published this week in the journal Advanced Materials, the researchers describe how they 3D printed a prototype for a synthetic eyeball, equipped with photodetectors that allow the device to pick up light. The prototype could help usher in more advanced devices for visually impaired people.
“Here we demonstrate a fully 3D-printed hemispherical photodetector array that can sensitively detect images with a wide field-of-view,” Ruitao Su, a research assistant at the University of Minnesota who worked on the project, told Digital Trends. “The high efficiency of the photodetectors and the ability to readily customize the size and layout of the design render this approach … promising for the creation of bionic eyes.”
To make the device, the researchers began with a hemispherical glass cone, which they used as a sort of canvass to 3D print an array of photodetectors. Silver nanoparticles were used as conductive interconnections, and a couple layers of semiconductive components helped convert light into electricity. Finally, liquid metal was used to print cathodes on top. The whole process, which took about an hour, is pretty complicated but still generates a relatively primitive prototype.
Ideally, the researchers want to be able to print on a soft material, such as tissue, that can be implanted into a real eye. That means they have a lot of work ahead. Their next steps will include scaling down the size and improving the performance of their 3D-printed photodetectors, such that they can compete with commercial ones, and develop the image sensors to support a comprehensive vision system.
Google has been finding more ways to make Gemini a part of your daily routine, from putting together playlists to ordering groceries through your favorite apps. Now it's expanding those capabilities to more services, with Google Search joining in, too.
The company has announced a new Connected Apps Platform that makes it easier for developers to bring their services to both Gemini and Search. Alongside this, Google is adding new partners to its growing lineup, bringing more of the apps people already use into its AI ecosystem.
In the broad context of AI and its perceived harms, health and medical risks often pop up in the conversation. The warnings even come from frontier AI labs, such as ChatGPT-maker OpenAI and Anthropic, both of which have warned about misusing AI to cook up bioweapons. Security experts have already spotted a few such incidents in the wild, especially with the usage of AI models without any solid guardrails.
Well, it appears that the risks run deeper. As per an analysis appearing in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), AI bots are now being deployed to influence public policies governing health risks to citizens. In this instance, an attempt was made using AI bots to thwart regulations that aim to restrict the sale of disposable vapes, all while disguising the manipulation efforts as a response from real humans.
What if checking your drinking water for dangerous chemicals were as simple as plugging a tiny gadget into your smartphone? Researchers in Japan have developed a compact sensor that could make that possible, potentially bringing sophisticated water contamination testing out of expensive laboratories and into people's hands.
Scientists at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology (OIST) have created a portable device capable of detecting extremely low concentrations of PFAS, commonly known as "forever chemicals." The findings were published in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics, which demonstrate how an inexpensive sensor and a smartphone could make identifying potentially harmful chemicals in water a lot easier.