<
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/high-schooler-invented-color-changing-sutures-detect-infection-180977345/>
"Dasia Taylor has juiced about three dozen beets in the last 18 months. The
root vegetables, she’s found, provide the perfect dye for her invention: suture
thread that changes color, from bright red to dark purple, when a surgical
wound becomes infected.
The 17-year-old student at Iowa City West High School in Iowa City, Iowa, began
working on the project in October 2019, after her chemistry teacher shared
information about state-wide science fairs with the class. As she developed her
sutures, she nabbed awards at several regional science fairs, before advancing
to the national stage. This January, Taylor was named one of 40 finalists in
the Regeneron Science Talent Search, the country’s oldest and most prestigious
science and math competition for high school seniors.
As any science fair veteran knows, at the core of a successful project is a
problem in need of solving. Taylor had read about sutures coated with a
conductive material that can sense the status of a wound by changes in
electrical resistance, and relay that information to the smartphones or
computers of patients and doctors. While these “smart” sutures could help in
the United States, the expensive tool might be less applicable to people in
developing countries, where internet access and mobile technology is sometimes
lacking. And yet the need is there; on average, 11 percent of surgical wounds
develop an infection in low- and middle-incoming countries, according to the
World Health Organization, compared to between 2 and 4 percent of surgeries in
the U.S."
Via Muse, who wrote "So cool!"
Share and enjoy,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
