I hope you’re feeling well today, and for those who aren’t, science, medicine and technology are working on that in lots of exciting ways.
Like this project out of Purdue University, that uses sound waves to find out when a disease has started to invade our body cells.
The story starts with the extracellular matrix, material that I’ve seen described as sort of like a biological scaffolding for our cells.
One of the indicators that a disease like cancer has gotten into body cells is that the extracellular matrix stiffens up.
That’s useful knowledge for oncologists trying to track how the disease is moving through a patient’s body, but the challenge has been finding a way to detect those changes without harming the matrix.
The Purdue team built a little chip with a transmitter and receiver that can send sound waves through the material and detect pretty tiny changes.
This shows once again that one of the best things caregivers can do is listen to their patients, even if in this case it’s more about listening to their cells than their words.
And now that we’ve done some listening, we’re gonna do some talking, about a video posted on Twitter by sports commentator Nick Heath.
Like so many in his field, Heath is waiting for sports to start up again.
While he waits, he’s practicing his commentary on non-sport activity.
In this video, he does play by play for a person out for a walk with two dogs, in his full-on sports commentary voice.
It’s a joyous thing to hear, and I hope it’s one of many things that bring you joy today.
Device could ‘hear’ disease through structures housing cells (Science Daily)
Mundane Walk. (Nick Heath on Twitter)
