Hand Jive: High-Tech Glove Turns Gestures into Music

If you find yourself tapping your hand to a beat while sitting at your desk, in the car or on a park bench, a high-tech glove might be just the gadget to help you turn the tunes in your head into music you can record.

The glove, called the Remidi T8 wearable instrument, is loaded with pressure-sensitive sensors along the fingertips and palm. Its wristband controls how the combination of sounds from each sensor are translated as a user moves his or her hand, according to a post on Kickstarter announcing a project to produce the glove, which is not yet available.
The glove aims to be a very intuitive device for music artists, enthusiasts and disc jockeys to use, according to the company. [Gallery: Futuristic 'Smart Textiles' Merge Fashion with Tech]

Users of the glove will be able to compose music, play and perform on the go, said Mark DeMay, co-founder and chief technology officer at Remidi. It can be thought of as a wearable MIDI controller, DeMay said, referring to the music synthesizers found in recording studios that let producers combine tracks, tweak vocals and adjust tempos.

But the glove is actually much more adaptable than the large synthesizer machines, and can be personalized to create new, custom sounds or remix existing ones, depending on how a user programs it.

"We wanted to give people a fun way to express themselves and start pushing the boundaries of what we can do with musical instruments," DeMay told Live Science.

The idea for the wearable music instrument was born when Remidi founder and CEO, Andrea Baldereschi, and DeMay met while working at Livid Instruments, an Austin, Texas-based company that designs MIDI controllers and mixers for DJs. Baldereschi had been a DJ for a number of years and would always tap out new beats whenever they were working together, DeMay said.

But he often forgot the new melodies before he could get around to recording the music, so Baldereschi decided he wanted to invent a way to record riffs on the go, without being limited to working in rooms with bulky, burdensome digital music systems.

"The digital world has gotten a little bit stagnant in terms of the MIDI controllers," DeMay said. "They all kind of do the same stuff, in the same way. They're all buttons, knobs, LEDs and faders, just in a different arrangement," he said. "The T8 glove is something truly different."

With the T8, a user could start jamming on any surface — a desk, wall, subway seat, park bench, car window, or on their own body. The data from the glove can then be sent to the Remidi app or to other recording software, DeMay said.

The T8 creates different sound intensities and rhythms based on which of its eight sensors you press, what combinations you press, and how long or how hard you press down on each point. And a tiny spinninggyroscope and accelerometer in the glove's wristband measures how fast your hand moves up and down or left and right, and adjusts the tone and tempo of the music you create in real-time.

"The glove's really adaptable as far as what is does," DeMay said. A prototype of the glove won a number of awards for its features and design, including the Marzotto CLN Corporate Price in Milan, and the Jury's Special Prize at the Wearable 2016 Awards in Paris.

Remidi's Kickstarter campaign raised more than $130,000 — nearly triple its original goal of $50,000. People can purchase a T8 for $349 through the company's pre-sale until September, DeMay said. After that, Remidi plans to sell the T8 for $399.

Whoa! Mind-Controlled Arm Lets Man Move Prosthetic Fingers

A new mind-controlled prosthetic arm was used to help a patient wiggle the device's fingers simply by thinking about it, and required very little training on the patient's part, according to a new study.

The research, though still in its nascent stages, could potentially help people who have lost arms due to injury or disease regain some mobility, the researchers said.

"We believe this is the first time a person using a mind-controlled prosthesis has immediately performed individual digit movements without extensive training," study senior author Dr. Nathan Crone, a professor of neurology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said in a statement. "This technology goes beyond available prostheses, in which the artificial digits, or fingers, moved as a single unit to make a grabbing motion, like one used to grip a tennis ball." [Body Beautiful: The 5 Strangest Prosthetic Limbs]

However, the man in the experiment was not missing an arm or a hand. He was at the hospital for epilepsy treatment, and was already scheduled to undergo brain mapping so that doctors could determine where the seizures started in his brain, the researchers said. 

Doctors surgically implanted electrodes into the man's brain to track his seizures. But they also mapped and found the specific areas of his brain that move each finger, from the thumb to the pinkie.

That was no easy feat. A neurosurgeon carefully placed an array of 128 electrode sensors — all on a rectangular film the size of a business card — on the region of the man's brain that controls hand and arm movements. Each sensor covered a small, circular spot on the brain that measured 0.04 inches (1 millimeter) in diameter.

After the implantation, researchers asked the man to wiggle different fingers. The team noted which parts of his brain "lit up" when the sensors detected neural electrical activity from each finger movement.

The team also noted which parts of the brain were involved in feeling touch. They gave the man a glove that vibrated at the tip of each finger. Again, the researchers identified the different areas of the brain that "lit up" when the man felt the vibrations on his fingers.

After collecting the motor (movement) and sensory data, the researchers programmed the prosthetic arm, which was developed at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Whenever a certain part of the man's brain expressed electrical activity, the prosthetic would move a corresponding finger.

This turned the electrode sensors into the ultimate mind-reading machine. Researchers connected the electrodes to the prosthesis, and asked the man to think about moving his fingers one at a time. Within moments of when the man moved his real fingers, the fingers on the prosthetic arm moved, too.

"The electrodes used to measure brain activity in this study gave us better resolution of a large region of cortex than anything we've used before and allowed for more precise spatial mapping in the brain," said Guy Hotson, a graduate student and lead author of the study. "This precision is what allowed us to separate the control of individual fingers." [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies]

Handy accuracy

At first, the mind-controlled arm was accurate just 76 percent of the time. But then, researchers coupled the ring and pinkie fingers together, which increased the accuracy to 88 percent, they said.

"The part of the brain that controls the pinkie and ring fingers overlaps, and most people move the two fingers together," Crone said. "It makes sense that coupling these two fingers improved the accuracy."

Moreover, the device is easy to use, and doesn't require extensive training, the researchers said.

Yet, the technology is still years away from clinical use, and it will likely be expensive, the researchers said. But it would undoubtedly help many people. There are more than 100,000 people living in the United States with amputated hands or arms, according to the Amputee Coalition of America, a Virginia-based nonprofit organization that represents people who have experienced limb loss or amputation.

There are already myriad technologies designed to help people with missing limbs. For instance, advances in prosthetic limbs and artificial skin are helping to restore a sense of touch for people, even if they've lost extremities. 

New Diagnostic Device "Smells" Prostate Cancer In Men's Urine

A new device has successfully detected prostate cancer through "smelling" the illness using a gas chromatography sensor, a new study has shown.

Researchers from the United Kingdom hope that their findings could pave the way for a urine diagnostic test that could make invasive diagnostic procedures a thing of the past.

The study involved 155 men, 58 of which were diagnosed with prostate cancer, 24 with bladder cancer, and 73 with hematuria, which is characterized by blood leaking into urine. Results from the GC sensor system indicated that through detectable patterns of volatile compounds, urine samples can show the presence of urological cancers.

The GC sensor system, known as Odoreader, was developed by professors Chris Probert of University of Liverpool and Norman Ratcliffe of University of the West of England Bristol, and employed especially developed algorithms in measuring urine samples.

"There is an urgent need to identify these cancers at an earlier stage when they are more treatable as the earlier a person is diagnosed the better," said Probert in a statement.

After sample testing, the researchers seek to fund a full clinical trial and commercially develop the device, allowing the technology to be used at hospitals and doctors' clinics for fast, inexpensive and accurate diagnosis, added Probert.

The prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test — the current primary screening for the disease — can sometimes lead to unnecessary biopsies and risks of infection and even missing cancer cases, warned Ratcliffe.

Odoreader, he said, is an "electronic nose" that can smell prostate cancer in the urine in a non-invasive way.

The Odoreader was developed a few years ago to detect bladder cancer, as inspired by studies showing that dogs could sniff out the Big C.

The device features a 30-meter (98-feet) column that allows compounds in the urine to move at various rates, thus producing a sample in a readable format. It then reads the patterns that surface — the prostate gland's proximity to the bladder, for instance, results in a different algorithm if there is cancer present.

Urologist Raj Prasad of Southmead Hospital said that an accurate urine test could spare men from undergoing prostate biopsy, which is usually recommended if a man has an enlarged prostate or abnormally high PSA levels.

"Even with detailed template biopsies there is a risk that we may fail to detect prostate cancer in some cases," Prasad added.

The findings were published in the Journal of Breath Research.

Studies continue to underscore the importance of early cancer detection.

A recent study from Vanderbilt University discovered that heart disease is the most common non-cancer cause of death among survivors of prostate cancer.

In 2010, the American Heart Association also found a possible link between a prostate cancer treatment known as androgen deprivation therapy (ADT) and cardiovascular conditions.

Wearable Sweat Sensors Could Track Your Health

Blood tests allow doctors to peer into the human body to analyze people's

health. But in the future, there may be a less invasive way to obtain valuable 

information about a person's health: wearable sensors that use human sweat 

to look for signs of disease.

Sweat is a rich source of chemical data that could help doctors determine 

what is happening inside the human body, scientists explained in a new study. 

Perspiration is loaded with molecules, ranging from simple electrically charged 

ions to more complex proteins, and doctors can use sweat to diagnose certain 

diseases, uncover drug use and optimize athletic performance, they said.

"Sweat is pretty attractive to target for noninvasive wearable sensors, 

since it's, of course, very easy to analyze — you don't have to poke 

the body to get it — and it has a lot of information about one's health in it,"

said study senior author Ali Javey, an electrical engineer at the University 

of California, Berkeley. [Bionic Humans: Top 10 Technologies]

Commercially available wearable sensors, like the Fitbit and the Apple 

Watch, track users' physical activities and some vital signs, such 

as heart rate. However, they do not provide data about a user's health 

on a molecular level. Now, scientists say "smart" wristbands and 

headbands embedded with sweat sensors could sync data wirelessly

in real time to smartphones using Bluetooth.

Previously, studies of sweat largely relied on perspiration collected off 

the body in containers that was later analyzed in a lab. Now, researchers 

have devised a soft, flexible, wearable sensor array to continuously monitor

changes in four molecular components of sweat and to provide real-time 

tracking of a person's health.

These devices might one day help athletes track their performance and

enable doctors to continuously monitor the health of their patients to better

personalize their medication, the scientists said.

"This could help tell athletes to take liquids or warn them they are going

through heat shock," Javey told Live Science.

The invention uses five sensors to simultaneously track levels of glucose, 

lactate, sodium and potassium, as well as skin temperature. This data is 

fed to a flexible board of microchips that processes these signals and 

uses Bluetooth to wirelessly transmit data to a smartphone. All of these 

electronics could be incorporated into either a wristband or headband.

"We have a smartphone app that plots the data from sweat in real time," 

Javey said.

The researchers tested the device on 26 men and women who 

pedaled indoors on stationary bikes or ran outdoors on tracks and trails. 

Sodium and potassium in sweat could help check for problems such as 

dehydration and muscle cramps. Glucose could help keep track of blood 

sugar levels. Lactate levels could indicate blood flow problems, and skin 

temperature could reveal overheating and other problems.

In addition, the skin temperature sensor helps adjust the chemical sensors

to make sure they get proper readings, the researchers said. For instance,

higher skin temperatures increase the electrical signals from glucose,

which can make it look as if people are releasing more glucose in their

sweat than they actually are.

Previous wearable sweat monitors could track only a single molecule at a 

time, which could generate misleading information, the researchers said. 

For example, if a lone sensor showed a drop in a molecule's level, it might 

not be because that molecule's level is actually falling in a person's sweat, 

but rather because sweating has stopped, the sensor has detached from 

the skin or the sensor is failing. The inclusion of multiple sensors could help

shed light on what is happening to a person and the sensor array as a whole.

In the near future, the researchers hope to shrink the device's electronics 

down and boost the number of molecules it monitors. Such molecules 

could include heavy metals such as lead, which recently made news for 

appearing in dangerously high levels in the water of Flint, Michigan,

Javey noted.

In the long term, the researchers hope to conduct large-scale studies 

with their device on many volunteers. The data such work gathers could 

help researchers better understand what levels of various molecules 

in sweat mean for athletic performance and human health, Javey said.

The researchers have filed a patent on their work, although they are

not currently collaborating with anyone to commercialize the sensors,

Javey said.

The scientists detailed their findings in the Jan. 28 issue of the

journal Nature.

Optical magnetometer performs first-ever noninvasive detection of nerve impulses

It’s surprisingly difficult to pinpoint what a given nerve is doing at any given moment. The electrochemical dance of neuronal function never stops, and it’s synced to the beat of the default mode network more strongly than to any external clock. Neurons are constantly receiving and transmitting information, but an electrical action potential is measured in millivolts and only changes the magnetic field around a neuron by a few picoTesla.

Up ’til now, this tiny variance has meant we needed invasive methods to get any information whatsoever about the function of living nerves. Now, scientists from Denmark have used a game-changing device for an all-new neuronal imaging technique: an optical magnetometer that can measure a single nerve’s function from outside the body — with quantum-level precision.

Today’s best methods of discerning a nerve’s function are still pretty invasive. Either we have to stick an electrode into a nerve, which is pretty disruptive, or we have to actually dissect a creature and thread one of its neurons through a tiny conductive coil on a machine called a SQUID. Either way, we’re not very good at getting information out of nerves in vivo. And neuroscience has needed another way of looking at nerves in real-time from outside the body, preferably at room temperature.

That’s where the optical magnetometer comes in. These devices work because they use a laser that detects the change in polarization of gaseous cesium atoms when they’re subjected to a changing magnetic field. The flux induced by an electric action potential causes a flutter in the polarized light, which the magnetometer can detect. And the sensitivity of these devices is unparalleled: Their resolution is limited only by quantum effects like the quantum shot noise of light.

The breakthrough here is in the application. This kind of magnetometry has never before been applied to living cells, in part because the magnetic flux generated by an action potential is so very small: nine orders of magnitude smaller than your average fridge magnet. That kind of precision is pretty hard to get at all, to say nothing of using it in vivo. But the combination of how it uses the laser and the tiny size of the sensor end means this device can point at a nerve and see what that particular nerve is doing, to the exclusion of fibers around it. Jensen and co. tried it out on a frog, and used the magnetometer to detect when its sciatic nerve was firing.

A discovery like this has the potential to change the entire brain-imaging field. The team that did this project notes “The magnetometer [is] perfect for medical diagnostics in physiological/clinical areas such as cardiography of fetuses, synaptic responses in the retina, and magnetoencephalography,” or presumably anything else that requires noninvasive brain imaging in the time domain. And it won’t be long until we’re using this technique on humans. This is a clear step forward for both basic research and the biomedical sciences alike.

Satellite launched to monitor sea level, global warming

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket thundered away from a foggy California coast Sunday and boosted a $364 million science satellite into orbit Sunday, the latest in a series of spacecraft designed to precisely measure sea levels around the world -- a key indicator of global warming -- and to monitor ocean conditions responsible for extreme weather.

It was the second SpaceX launch in less than a month and the second in a row to attempt recovery of the Falcon 9's first stage. During a launching Dec. 21 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, a Falcon 9 first stage carried out the company's first successful touchdown on land.

Because environmental impact requirements at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California are still being worked out, SpaceX used a landing barge -- the "Just Read the Instructions" -- for Sunday's recovery. SpaceX founder Elon Musk said the descent proceeded smoothly, but one of four landing legs did not lock in place and the rocket tipped over after touchdown.

"Definitely harder to land on a ship," Musk tweeted. "Similar to an aircraft carrier vs land: much smaller target area, that's also translating & rotating. However, that was not what prevented it being good. Touchdown speed was ok, but a leg lockout didn't latch, so it tipped over after landing."

Amazon-founder Jeff Bezos, whose company Blue Origin also is focused on recovery and reuse of rocket stages, tweeted: "Impressive launch and @SpaceX will soon make Falcon 9 landings routine - so good for space! Kudos SpaceX!"

By recovering, refurbishing and eventually relaunching rocket stages, Musk hopes to dramatically reduce launch costs. The rocket stage that landed in Florida last month was mounted on SpaceX's launch pad at Cape Canaveral last week and its nine-first stage engines successfully test fired Saturday.

But given the mixed results Sunday, SpaceX still has work to do. The company's record now stands at one success on land, and three failures, or near misses, at sea.

But Sunday's landing try, like the ones that preceded it, was a strictly secondary objective. The primary goal of the launch was to boost the Jason-3 satellite into orbit for NASA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the French space agency CNES and EUMETSAT, the European agency that manages weather satellite data.

Jason-3 is the fourth in a series of satellites that use state-of-the-art radar altimeters to measure the distance to the ocean surface below with extraordinary accuracy, allowing researchers to calculate ocean elevation, deep ocean temperatures, the velocity of currents, wave height and wind speed.

Jason-3 is "designed expressly for monitoring sea level rise, one of the clearest symptoms of global warming," said Laury Miller, NOAA's Jason-3 program scientist.

"It's now generally understood we've entered into a new era, a new norm, marked by rapid and persistent changes to the entire whole Earth system. What may not be widely understood is the role of the ocean in this complex process. More than 90 percent of all the heat now being trapped in the Earth system due to the greenhouse effect is actually going into the ocean.

"This makes the ocean perhaps the biggest player in the climate change story," he said. "Jason allows us to get the big picture in terms of sea level change in the years to come."

Jason-3's instruments also will collect data helping weather researchers and forecasters improve modeling of extreme weather, from hurricanes to tropical storms.

"In terms of severe weather, you don't have to look very far to find examples," Miller said. "Heavy rainfall, flooding, tornadoes out of season, droughts, all of these might seem like separate, isolated events, but many, if not all, of these are actually connected, linked to changes in the ocean occurring half a world away. The massive, turbo-charged El Nino that's currently battering the U.S. is perhaps one of the best examples."

Data from Jason-3 and its predecessors are "incredibly useful, especially to NOAA," Miller said, "because it allows us to not only track the sea level change that is impacting our coastal features right now but also to help forecast extreme weather."

Flying through heavy fog, the Falcon 9 climbed away from Space Launch Complex 4 at Vandenberg, on the California coast northwest of Los Angeles, at 1:42:18 p.m. EST (GMT-5; 10:42 a.m. local time), arcing away to the south toward a steeply inclined orbit around Earth's poles.

The Falcon 9's nine Merlin 1D first-stage engines shut down about two-and-a-half-minutes after launch and the single engine powering the rocket's second stage ignited for the first of two "burns" to continue the boost to orbit. A 12-second burn 55 minutes into flight finished the job, putting Jason-3 into its planned preliminary orbit.

Over the next 17 days, Jason-3 will be maneuvered into an nearly identical orbit with Jason-2, launched in 2008. Both spacecraft will fly over the same points, at the same time, allowing engineers to precisely calibrate Jason-3's instruments so its data are consistent with Jason-2's.

After about six months of flying in tandem, Jason-2 will be moved to a different orbital slot to improve global coverage.

"Jason-3, much like its predecessor Jason-2, will be able to measure the height of the ocean in an area that's about six miles across from 800 miles up with an accuracy of about one inch, so about the width of a quarter," said Josh Willis, Jason-3 project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"It's really quite an amazing feat. And if you average the data from one of these cycles of the Jason-3 or Jason-2 missions, you can actually get an accuracy for the levels of the oceans as a whole to better than half a centimeter, so really small. So we can really see the rise of the global oceans."

Since NOAA's first ocean altimetry mission in 1992 -- Topex/Poseidon -- and the first two follow-on Jason missions, global sea level has risen by about three millimeters per year, or about 2.8 inches over the past 23 years. It is expected to increase more rapidly in the years ahead.

"This is one of the most important yardsticks we have for human-caused climate change," Willis said. "With all the extra heat that's being absorbed by the oceans, the waters are expanding and of course, they are collecting the extra runoff from melting glaciers and ice sheets, which are also reacting to the warming climate.

"So these two things together cause global sea levels to rise. And in fact, that global rise is really our most powerful tool for measuring human-caused climate change."

Jason-3 is an international project with $177 million in funding from NOAA, which pays NASA for launch services, $119 million from EUMETSAT, the European Organization for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, and $68 million from the French space agency CNES.

Self-filling bottle converts humid air into drinkable water

When water is scarce, why not pull it out of thin air? An industrial designer in Austria is hoping to do just that (well, sort of).

Kristof Retezár, a designer based in Vienna, invented a device that can extract humidity from the air and condense it into drinkable water. The handy gadget, dubbed Fontus, can be attached to a bike so that cyclists can generate water during long-distance rides through the countryside, where pit stops may be few and far between.

Fontus works using the basic principle of condensation, which can be easily demonstrated by taking something out of a refrigerator (for instance, a can of soda) and leaving it on the kitchen counter for a bit. Eventually, you'll notice moisture collecting on the sides of the object.

"This is simply condensation of the humidity that is contained in the air," Retezár told Live Science. "You always have a certain percentage of humidity in the air, it doesn't matter where you are -- even in the desert. That means you would always potentially be able to extract that humidity from the air."

The solar-powered device consists of a condensator (which functions like a cooler) that is connected to a series of hydrophobic surfaces that repel water. As the bike-mounted gadget takes in air, and these surfaces get cold, you're left with condensation, Retezár said.

"Because they're hydrophobic, they immediately repel the condensed water that they created, so you get a drop flow [into the bottle]," he explained. "Basically, you're taking air in a vapor state and converting it into a liquid state."

Fontus can produce 0.5 quarts (0.5 liters) of water in 1 hour in what is considered "really good" conditions, with temperatures between 86 degrees and 104 degrees Fahrenheit (30 to 40 degrees Celsius) and between 80 percent and 90 percent humidity, Retezár said.

The prototype includes a filter at the top to keep dust and bugs out of the water, but currently it does not include a way to filter out potentially harmful contaminants.

"The water you get is clean, unless the air is really contaminated," Retezár said. "We're thinking about making a bottle that also has a carbon filter, and this one would be for cities or areas where you might think the air is contaminated. But originally, this water bottle was thought to be used in nature, and places where you wouldn't have contaminated air."

Retezár is also working on a stand-alone version that uses an inverted ventilator to suck air into the system (rather than relying on the airstream created from a moving bike). This next-generation version could be used in regions of the world where humidity is high, but water is scarce.

"The idea was to solve a global problem: water issues in areas of the world where there is very little groundwater but very high humidity," Retezár said. "My intent was to invent a machine or device that would be able to filter the humidity in the air and turn it into drinkable water."

The initial Fontus design was shortlisted for the 2014 James Dyson Award, which helped Retezár gain exposure for the project, he said. Since then, he has received funding from the Austrian government that will help cover the technical development phase. The designer is also aiming to launch a crowdfunding campaign in March to cover the cost of mass-producing the devices. Retezár said he is aiming to keep the retail price for the Fontus under $100, and if all goes according to plan, the self-filling bottles could be commercially available in about nine or 10 months.

Bigger, louder, longer lasting: Kube Bluetooth cooler gets new look for 2016

The Kube, the big cooler that doubles as a giant Bluetooth speaker, still in prototype stage and was expected to hit the shops in May of 2015.

If you've been seriously pestering your local electronics store wondering when it'll be in stores, slow your roll: the Kube might finally be out of prototype stage, but it's not going on sale until later this year.Last year the ballpark figure was $1,100 but for 2016 Kube Sound isn't talking price, although the founder and CEO Russell Williamson jokingly assures it'll be "under $5,000"

It's simply the same product on display last year: a cooler (aka an 'esky' in Australia) that keeps your beer while releasing 400 watts of sound from your Bluetooth connected device.

The storage capacity of the ice chest is a little larger than the prototype, 35 quarts compared to 33 (39 litres and 37.5) and the carrying straps have been replaced by more robust anodized metal handles. It's still "weather proof", with most of the components rated to IP67 in terms of their ability to resist water,that means you can hold it underwater for sometime, but that not adviseable.

The sound is the major change. Originally designed to release 100 dB max,now up to 125 dB, which is officially believed as the volume where "pain begins". The Bluetooth range is now 500 ft, more than the prototype version.

If you do actually want to play music at 125 dB maybe during a enhanced interrogation, you may get five hours of battery life. Reduce it to a less ear-splitting 94 dB and the Kube will give you 20 hours of play. Williamson tells me that if you drain the battery,after four hours you a full charge.

Magnetic Device Allows Smartphones Test Your Blood

Smartphones fitted with portable devices that magnetically levitate cells may assist diagnoses of diseases in the home, clinic or lab, researchers say.

Recently, smartphones are incredibly powerful portable computers that include handy devices such as multimegapixel cameras, and they can be found in both developing and developed countries. Recently,researchers are looking for ways  smartphones could be used not only forposting selfies and playing video games, but also to help save lives by rapidly performing medical tests anywhere there are smartphones — that is, virtually anywhere around the world.

A typical medical test includes measuring the levels of red blood cells and white blood cells in the blood. Standard methods for classifying and counting blood cells are either complex and expensive or labor-intensive and time-consuming. Now, scientists have developed a lantern-size device that measures blood-cell levels using magnetic levitation. They also say their device can be fitted with smartphones to carry out this medical test rapidly, easily and affordably. [10 Technologies That Will Transform Your Life]

To use the portable imaging magnetic levitation system, dubbed i-LEV, a smartphone is placed on top of a lens so that the device's camera can look down on tubes filled with finger-prick-size volumes of blood — say, 30 microliters, or about the volume of a single grain of rice. Mirrors and an LED light help users see the specimens. The entire kit is just 6.3 inches by 4 inches by 7.9 inches (16 by 10 by 20.5 centimeters).

The blood samples are laced with a chemical known as gadobutrol, which is paramagnetic — that is, it is slightly attracted to magnetic fields. These samples are placed between two long, thin magnets about the size of toothpicks, and whatever is within buoys up in this magnetic field, the researchers said.

Cells float up to different heights in the magnetic field depending on their density, which, in turn, depends on their type. This helps the device easily separate red and white blood cells in about 15 minutes, the researchers said.

"Here, we develop a method to measure cell densities accurately at a single-cell level and separate them based on a balance between their weight and magnetic forces," said study co-author Utkan Demirci, a bioengineer at Stanford University.

The smartphone could see individual blood cells using i-LEV. Computer programs could then automatically count the number of blood cells seen in less than 30 seconds, the scientists explained.

Most portable biomedical devices designed to work with smartphones require extensive preparation of medical samples beforehand, and many need dyes and other labeling compounds to distinguish, for example, one cell type from another, Demirci and his colleagues said. In contrast, the researchers said i-LEV forgoes these steps and is therefore much simpler and easier to use.

The researchers noted that i-LEV could do more than just measure blood-cell levels. For example, their previous research found that cancer cells and infected cells levitate differently from the way healthy cells do. The invention could also help monitor the effects of drugs on cells for research applications.

The i-LEV is patented, and Demirci noted that it has already drawn lots of commercial interest. Still, "it won't be at the clinic the next day," Demirci said. "As with any other technology, this technology will take years of development and further commercialization to see it as a product on a shelf."

The scientists detailed their findings online in the journal Small on Nov. 2, 2015.