Wearable device treats wounds

An Office of Naval Research programme seeks to embed a field hospital-on-a-chip that could monitor a soldier's injuries and administer medications, reports The EE Times.

If successful, the four-year, $1.6 million programme would provide US soldiers with a wearable device to constantly monitor vital signs and help treat wounds.

Microfluidic laboratories-on-a-chip are being crafted for a variety of special-purpose devices that would allow unskilled personnel to perform specialised tests in the field.

EPV Solar has produced its first amorphous silicon thin-film modules at its Senftenberg, Germany factory, says PV Tech.

Commercial volumes of the thin-film solar modules will be available for sale in January 2009.

The facility has a 30MW capacity, equal to 500 000 55W-modules per year that will be used in large solar parks and photovoltaic arrays in Germany and southern Europe.

The State of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Electric Company have endorsed an effort to build an alternative transportation system based on electric vehicles, with swappable batteries and an intelligent battery-recharging network, reports The New York Times.

The plan, the brainchild of former Silicon Valley software executive Shai Agassi, is an effort to overcome the major hurdles to electric cars, slow battery recharging and limited availability.

By using existing electric car technologies, coupled with an Internet-connected Web of tens of thousands of recharging stations, he thinks his company, Better Place of Palo Alto, California, will make all-electric vehicles feasible.