Created by Jean Octobon, pictured above is a mammoth wall-mounted electronic dynamic luminous analyzer that displays sound from ambient noise. Dubbed ON, the giant equalizer screen displays a graphic re-transcription of the sounds emanated nearby. The concept is inspired from the hi-fi systems of the 80s that shows both the arty movement of gigantism and the budding fad of electronic art.

ON can run for about 4 hours on a battery or can be connected to the power supply. The object is activated as soon as you bring your finger in contact with the glass. Even the softest notes are captured with ON while the louder sounds are not at all distorted. For the 8-bands ON version, they are asking $8200. What are they gonna charge for 32-bands?

via Gizmodo

(Image: Map of Africa coloured according to the percentage of the Adult (ages 15-49) population with HIV/AIDS)

The key to the rampant spread of HIV in the poorest parts of the world, like Africa, is the unavailability of cheaper ways of monitoring the killer disease.

To counter the un-affordability of the poor Africans and the poor health facilities in the country, a Harvard Medical School team of researchers have come up with a new device that looks like a business card and can measure T cells count in the infected patients in both an inexpensive and easy way.

The new affordable device will soon be used to measure T cells in HIV patients in Rwanda, by which the doctors can decide on when to start medication and also assess how well the medicine is working.

Rwanda will be the first to see the new simple looking, but life-saving device. Yes, the device can help practice HIV medicine dramatically.

Knowing what it means not having an accurate T-cell count for the patient, Bill Rodriguez, an infectious-disease expert at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, in Boston said,

It’s almost impossible to manage the disease.

The person can look reasonably well clinically even when the immune system is wiped out. Then one opportunistic infection can take over and have a devastating effect.

Hope this device once accepted well by the world, would surely be a relief-booster for the poor countries with high rates of HIV cases.

The leading cause of blindness among elderly adults — macular degeneration – is increasingly becoming a matter of concern for the American medical fraternity, with it being the leading cause of ‘central vision loss’ in the ... (Continue)

Who has the upper hand in the ongoing fight against HIV/AIDS, this deadly virus or we. Throwing up such intricate question, the White House’s top adviser on AIDS has warned that the world is losing the fight, aimed at controlling HIV/AIDS and that too when developing countries have access to anti-AIDS drugs.

This is quite a serious issue that has put a question mark on the credibility of the ongoing fight against HIV/AIDS, stressing on the need of revamping it so that propitious results could be drawn out. It is quite shocking that where on one end, we are moving ahead, conquering the strongholds of HIV/AIDS, unfortunately,on the other end, more cases of HIV/AIDS are tumbling out. Expressing similar concern, Dr Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infections Disease in the US, remarks:

For every one person that you put in therapy, six get infected. So we’re losing that game, the numbers game.

It is true that male circumcision has come out with positive results against HIV/AIDS, however, this fact could also not be ignored that each year this deadly virus manages to creep into around 600,000 lives, elongating the path of achieving dream of a world-free from HIV/AIDS. Following are some of the examples, which come out propping the claim made by the White House’s top adviser on AIDS:-

• There has been noticed an alarming rise in HIV/AIDS in Asia, which according to UNAIDS’ 2006 Epidemic Update led to around 630,000 AIDS-related deaths.

• There has been noticed surge in HIV/AIDS in the Middle East that alone in the year 2003 managed to engulf around 75,000 people there.

• In many countries of Eastern Europe & Central Asia, HIV/AIDS is fast encroaching upon that could be cited from the fact that in the year 2006 alone, around 270,000 people were newly infected with HIV.

These facts are enough to show that AIDS epidemic continues to devastate around the world, which confirms that final destination called ‘HIV/AIDS free world’ is still nothing more than a dream and in order to let this dream come true, it is pertinent to fuel the ongoing fight against HIV/AIDS further.

This form of blindness is referred to as Leber’s congenital amaurosis and it affects around one in eighty thousand children in Britain. These people become totally blind by the time they turn twenty. If the trials turn out to be successful then it could give a new vision to the people suffering from this defect.

Under the treatment patients would be injected with a virus modified for carrying correct version of the faulty gene and when it reaches the eye the virus would take the healthy gene to the cells and reverse the damage. Let’s hope the treatment turns out to be successful and offers life to number of blind people around the globe.