"Robobaby" gives teens an idea of what parenting is really like

There's a popular educational exercise in which teens are required to take care of a bag of flour for several days, as if it's a baby. The idea is that by having to lug that bag around with them everywhere they go, while keeping it from getting damaged, the kids will realize how much responsibility is involved in raising an infant. As any parent will tell you, however, there's a lot more to baby-raising than just safely lugging them around. That's why products like Realityworks' RealCare Baby were created.

We recently spotted the latest version of the interactive mannequin, RealCare Baby 3, at the International Robotics Exhibition in Tokyo. Although it's not the only device of its kind, it is one of the most recent to hit the market, and definitely among the most technologically-advanced.

The mannequin (or robot, or doll, or whatever you want to call it) is designed to be used in a training program for teens or other people, who either want to get ready for having their first child or need to be made aware of the sacrifices that would be involved in doing so. As such, it comes with a lesson plan that can be administered by someone such as a counselor.

The baby itself weighs about the same as a real infant of its size, and contains various sensors and other electronics. It will spontaneously start crying at any time of the day or night, and must be tended to by one of its "parents" within no more than two minutes – any longer, and their tardiness will be noted in an onboard data logger.

Once the parent gets to the baby, they must pick it up in a gentle manner, supporting its head as they do so. If they're rough with it, it will start crying louder, and the logger will once again make a note of their transgression. They then need to determine why it's crying – it could need changing (it comes with two sets of diapers), it could need feeding (it also comes with a bottle and breast-feeding device), it could need to be burped, or it could simply be fussing and need to be gently rocked.



Along with responding properly to its cries, parents can't just forget about the baby when it's quiet. If it's allowed to get too hot or too cold, if it's left too long in one item of clothing, or if it's kept in its optional car seat too long, parents will earn demerits. Additionally, they can't just pawn off its care on someone else. For the duration of the lesson, they're required to wear a tamperproof RF bracelet. A receiver in the baby recognizes the signal of that specific bracelet, and won't respond to the actions of anyone not wearing it.

When the lesson period is over, data is downloaded from the logger to a PC or Mac, to be assessed by the administrator with the parent. Should students need some specialized education, Realityworks also offers a Drug-affected Baby, a Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Baby, and a Shaken Baby.

Imperial College develops cancer-sniffing Intelligent Knife

Dr. Zoltan Takats of the Imperial College London has developed one very sharp knife – and we're not referring to its keen edge. The Intelligent Knife (iKnife) is equipped with a nose and a brain that can sniff out cancer as it cuts. Using a mass spectrometer to detect chemical profiles associated with tumors, it enables instant identification of cancerous tissue and helps surgeons to make sure that all of a tumor has been removed.

Cancer is obviously something you want to catch early and get rid of completely at the first opportunity. Removing tumors is the simplest and often the least harmful way, but surgeons need to ensure they've removed all of the cancerous tissue to prevent the disease from reestablishing itself.

Unfortunately, cancerous tissue isn't always obvious by sight and laboratory tests are needed. During an operation, this means leaving the patient waiting under anesthetic while the tests are run. Even then, the results aren't always reliable. According to Imperial College, one in five breast cancer patients must undergo surgery a second time.

The iKnife uses electrosurgery; a common technique developed in the 1920s designed to reduce bleeding in particularly bloody operations, such as liver resectioning. The knife is subjected to an electric current, which heats tissue so fast and at such a temperature that the knife cuts through and cauterizes the tissue to prevent bleeding. Not surprisingly, this produces a cloud of unpleasant smoke, which is sucked away.

However, this cloud also contains all sorts of useful information about the tissue being burned through, so Takats hit on the idea of hooking an electrosurgical knife to a mass spectrometer, which would analyze the smoke and produce a profile of the chemicals that make it up. Some of these chemicals or their combinations are indicative of cancerous tissue.

Once the prototype iKnife was constructed, the next step was to teach it what to look for. This involved using the device to burn tissue samples collected from 302 surgery patients and building up a library of profiles of thousands of cancerous and noncancerous tissues from various organs of the body. As the iKnife cuts through tissue, it matches what it “smells” against this library and alerts the surgeon as to what it finds in about three seconds. This is a considerable improvement over the half hour needed for conventional laboratory tests.

The iKnife has been used in tests in 91 operations, where it showed 100 percent accuracy when compared to conventional tests. According to Imperial College, the next step will be clinical trials where the surgeons will be allowed to see the results in real time instead of after the operation, as was the case in the tests.

“These results provide compelling evidence that the iKnife can be applied in a wide range of cancer surgery procedures,” Dr Takats says. “It provides a result almost instantly, allowing surgeons to carry out procedures with a level of accuracy that hasn't been possible before. We believe it has the potential to reduce tumor recurrence rates and enable more patients to survive.”

Takats sees the iKnife as having broader applications beyond cancer surgery. Mass spectrometry is a rather general tool and Takat says that it could be used to identify tissues with inadequate blood supply, the presence of certain bacteria, and might even be of use to the local butcher in telling beef from horsemeat.

The results of the iKnife project were published in Science Translational Medicine.