Hospital

The culprit probably wasn't what doctors were expecting when a 57-year-old man in Hong Kong came to the hospital. The patient was admitted to the intensive care unit in critical condition. A clue to the cause of the infection would lie in the man's profession—he was a butcher. ...more

With Microsoft's release of the Kinect SDK, things seem to have slowed down a bit in the world of Kinect development. Have developers exhausted the uses of Kinect already? No way! Four researchers at Cornell University have created an AI-based system on the Kinect that can rec ...more

Having bills to pay is one of the worst parts of life, especially around the holidays. And if you're extremely unlucky, you might also have to pay some hefty medical bills. This can put a heavy damper on plans, wants and needs. What's worse? The people that you owe money to ar ...more

Not content to merely assist surgeons via the HoloLens, Medivis has expanded its augmented reality suite to Magic Leap One with an app for medical students. On Thursday, the medical software company unveiled AnatomyX, an enterprise-level augmented reality platform for the Hol ...more

With a death rate of one in five, sepsis is a fast-moving medical nightmare. New testing methods might improve your odds of survival if this infection ever hits you. While we usually think of a deadly medical condition as the result of infection with a bacteria or virus, seps ...more

Jostled in the airport, someone is coughing in line. The air looks empty but it is loaded with microbes that make their way into your body. You get sick. You give it to your family, and that's pretty much it. But what if you were so contagious that you spread it to your entire ...more

HoloLens developers have created some useful solutions for visualizing building models and viewing construction plans overlaid on the job environment. Instead of investing in new (and, at this point, relatively expensive) hardware, Danish software company Dalux is proposing t ...more

More bad news for patients who have undergone heart surgery in the past five years. A new study suggests about one-third of heater-cooler units used in cardiac procedures remain contaminated with a slow-growing, potentially fatal bacteria. Heart failure is the leading cause o ...more

For about a million Americans each year, a joint replacement brings relief from pain and restored mobility. But, 5–10% of those people have to endure another surgery within seven years, and most of those are due to an infection in their new joint. If doctors could treat infect ...more

The search is on to find antibiotics that will work against superbugs — bacteria that are rapidly becoming resistant to many drugs in our antibiotic arsenal. By carefully choosing antibiotics that killed bacteria in different ways, a team of researchers found that combination ...more

Add breathing in your house as another possible danger to your health. If your home is sick, it's possible you could get sick too. The term "sick building syndrome" hit the airwaves years ago as a one size fits all reference to homes and buildings that are just too efficient ...more

Parkinson's disease, a condition that can impair movement and coordination, affects over 10 million people worldwide. And with around 60,000 Americans being diagnosed every year, we're on track to see almost one million Parkinson's afflicted Americans by 2020. Thankfully, the ...more

As researchers from Yale searched our environment for compounds to aid in the battle against drug-resistant bacteria, they got an unlikely assist from ticks. Ticks are best known for being the nasty bloodsuckers that spread dangerous infections like Lyme disease, the Powassan ...more

The growing list of dangerous antibiotic resistant organisms has just acquired three new members. Researchers have discovered three new species of Klebsiella bacteria, all of which can cause life-threatening infections and have genes that make them resistant to commonly used a ...more

It's fitting that students at the University of Washington can catch a glimpse of the new, 135,000 square-foot computer science building in augmented reality before construction is completed. The university's contractor for the project, Mortenson Construction, has built a mob ...more

The search for a cancer treatment that selectively finds and kills only the cancerous cells has just made a giant leap forward. A new study published in Nature Communications, by a group of researchers from the August Pi i Sunyer Biomedical Research Institute, Barcelona Insti ...more

Could your fever, body aches, cough, and sore throat be the flu? Soon, finding out may not involve a trip to the doctor. Right now, diagnosing the flu is something done at your doctor's office or hospital and involves a gag-inducing brushing inside your nose to collect cells ...more

While Magic Leap has gained attention for its ability to raise capital, the company (now with an actual product on the market) still faces an uphill climb against the titans of the industry. Namely, there's the looming presence of Apple, who 18 months ago didn't even have an ...more

Despite mounting scientific evidence that viruses can cause changes in learning and memory, the reasons have remained elusive. In a new study, scientists reported finding that viruses affect the immune system in a way that results in loss of connections between nerve cells in ...more

It feels like someone reached into your chest and squeezed. Your head throbs in unison with your heartbeat. Clammy dread coats your body in sweat. Whether you call 911 or someone does it for you, the ER is your next stop. Stable but still scared on the gurney, you are heading ...more

We all know you are what you eat—or so the expression goes—but it's good to remember that what you are (at least intestinally) is mainly bacteria. A new study has shown that what you eat, and how your gut microbiome reacts to that food, might be a key player in your risk of de ...more

This coming Friday, November 11th, 2011 is Veterans Day and everybody's celebrating! But only veterans and active military personnel can get the great deals being offered at restaurants and retail outlets across the country. If you need help locating some of those deals, below ...more

More prescriptions for antibiotics are written for ear infections than any other type of infection. A new study comparing the incidence and causes of ear infections in children between the ages of six months and three years found that the incidence of ear infections over the l ...more

Legionnaires' disease is named after 1976 outbreak in Philadelphia that sickened 221 people and killed 34. More often striking adults over the age of 50, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently reported two cases where newborns contracted the often fatal ...more

When you think ticks, one of the first things to come to mind is Lyme disease. However, as terrible as Lyme disease is, there's another threat from ticks rising in rank in Connecticut and the Northeast — one that is spreading and that hospitals are not prepared for — the Powas ...more

Can you tell when your friends are serving up a bunch of BS, or are you constantly oblivious, unsure if they're spinning a valid story? With so many ways to lie and fake information floating around, it can be impossible to tell what's the truth from what's complete BS. Here's ...more

For anyone who has spent an entire afternoon attempting to assemble a set of IKEA chairs, these wooden masterpieces probably seem pretty appealing. British furniture maker Gavin Munro has found a way to create interesting, yet functional pieces by planting tree shoots, guidin ...more

Pertussis, or whooping cough, is a highly contagious disease that can be life-threatening for young children. New research backs a recommendation that all pregnant women receive a pertussis booster with each pregnancy, as it can help their infants fight off the infection. Cau ...more

A new case of the still-mysterious Bourbon virus was confirmed in Missouri, likely originating within the state, local authorities said in a June 30 press release. The virus, which researchers think is spread by ticks, was unknown until 2014, and both knowledge and treatment ...more

Growing evidence suggests that neurodegenerative diseases like Parkinson's may develop in part due to environmental factors, including infections that can cause inflammation in the nervous system. New research from investigators from Jude Children's Research Hospital and Thoma ...more

With the height of the flu season ahead, there are some good reasons to keep a flu vaccination in mind. In the United States, the flu season lasts from autumn through late-winter. As many people know, influenza, or the flu, is a contagious respiratory virus that targets the l ...more

Colorado State University scientists have developed new tech that quickly identifies the presence of Zika virus in mosquito populations — and in human body fluid. For hard-hit nations like Brazil and Nicaragua, a field-ready test that not only identifies Zika, but also the st ...more

Antibiotics are one of our main weapons against infections. The problem is that many bacteria are becoming resistant to most of the antibiotics we use to treat them, and those 'superbugs' have created an urgent threat to our global health. A research group found a new way to h ...more

In this Tuesday's Brief Reality report, there's a trio of stories from the healthcare world where augmented reality is helping out with surgical microscopes, asthma treatment, and other diagnostic and treatment tools. There's also something for all of you AR/VR storytellers ou ...more

Most of us equate feeling cold with catching a virus—but we've also heard plenty of debunkers proselytizing that being cold isn't what gives you the flu. Still, we know that cold and flu season always falls during the winter, so exactly what is the relationship between winter ...more

When the climate changes, so do all the things that rely on the climate, including people, plants, and pathogens. A European study recently took a broad look at what kind of microorganisms are most likely to be affected as climate change heats, cools, dries, and wets the world ...more

Dengue fever is a danger to anyone living or visiting tropical or subtropical regions. It can be hard to detect the infection in its earliest and most treatable phase, especially in children. Luckily, new research highlights better techniques for triaging the disease in infect ...more

Everything that has a beginning has an end. This week marked the end of the long wait for the reveal of Magic Leap's first product and the beginning of the wait for more substantive details. Likewise, Google Tango will meet its end in March 2018, when ARCore will officially b ...more

Lighthouses and signal fires may have been the first social media. Without the ability to share language, a distant light meant "humans here." A new study from the University of California, San Diego, finds that bacteria can also send out a universal sign to attract the attent ...more

A dangerous bacterial disease is infecting dogs in northern New Jersey, forcing owners to keep their pets inside. The dogs came down with leptospirosis, a potentially fatal infection found in at least five dogs in the Paramus borough in northeastern New Jersey so far. NBC rep ...more

Shopping at a thrift store can be a fun adventure, a daunting task, a way to save money, or a combination of any or all of those. There's no question that buying secondhand is almost always cheaper and buying at a thrift store undoubtedly so. But it can also be a lot of work. ...more