Month: March 2016

(credit: NEC Corporation of America)

As telecommunication with doctors—telemedicine—is an increasingly popular way to skip a trip to the doctor’s office, one group of patients may be clamoring for screen-time even when a doctor is right in front of them.

For 88 patients preparing for surgery, a short medical video viewed on an iPad was overwhelmingly preferred for explaining the procedure and ensuring informed consent over actual face-time with the doctor. The randomized, controlled trial, presented at the annual European Association of Urology Congress being held this week in Munich, suggests that technology may be an effective tool for doctors to better prepare patients for treatments.

“Often doctors work within busy practices and clinical environments with time limiting the quality of a consult and or verbal consent for a procedure,” lead researcher Matthew Winter of the Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney, Australia, said in a statement. “Through the use of portable video media, a doctor can present his/her own practice and procedural technique in an innovative, dynamic, and engaging manner.”

DUBAI—As the dust settles on Dubai’s World Drone Prix, the first truly global drone-racing event, it’s one of the youngest pilots on the scene who walks away with the top prize. 15-year-old Luke Bannister, flying for the UK-based Tornado X-Blades team, out-performed 150 global teams here in Dubai to become the first World Drone Prix champion, netting a cool $250,000 (£175,000) in the process.

British teen Luke Bannister, who went on to win the grand prix and claim a $250,000 prize. (credit: David Stock)

Chad Nowak, of team Rotor Riot (credit: David Stock)

The event, held on Dubai’s Gulf coast, saw 150 pilots battle through the week for just 32 spots in the finals, which were held last Friday and Saturday on a custom-built, outdoor track. "Luke was always a threat," says Australian pilot Chad Nowak who won a major tournament in Sacramento, USA, last year and flies for Rotor Riot here in Dubai. "He’s so fast, and doesn’t have the fear or the nerves that the older pilots can have," he says.

Nowak lost out to Bannister in an exciting semi-final race, where four evenly matched pilots jostled for position throughout. Pushed to their limit, three of the four pilots eventually crashed, leaving Bannister the only pilot holding his nerve to complete the course. Despite losing, Nowak wasn’t too upset. "That was a great race," he enthused afterwards. "It felt like we were really pushing the limit of what each other could do, and the crowd were responding, too. They were loving it. I was loving it," he says.

Fly your drone for 1.87 million years, and a plane might hit it once. (credit: Kevin Baird)

The Federal Aviation Administration has pushed forward strict rules for the operation of small consumer drones. Drones weighing more than 250 grams (a little more than half a pound) will have to be registered with the FAA, and there are restrictions on where they can be flown. The regulations are largely prompted by fears that the toy-sized flyers will pose a danger to commercial and civil aircraft—fears that new research suggests are unfounded. That research, shown in a study just published by George Mason University's Mercatus Center, was based on damage to aircraft from another sort of small, uncrewed aircraft—flying birds.

Much of the fear around drones hitting aircraft has been driven by FAA reports from pilots who have claimed near-misses with small drones. But an investigation last year by the Academy of Model Aeronautics (AMA) found that of the 764 near-miss incidents with drones recorded by the FAA, only 27 of them—3.5 percent—actually were near misses. The rest were just sightings, and those were often sightings that took place when drone operators were following the rules. The FAA also overcounted, including reports where the pilot said explicitly that there was no near miss and some where the flying object wasn't identified, leading the AMA to accuse the FAA of exaggerating the threat in order to get support for its anti-drone agenda.

There hasn't yet been an incident in which a drone has struck an aircraft. But bird strikes (and bat strikes) do happen, and there's a rich data set to work from to understand how often they do. Researchers Eli Dourado and Samuel Hammond reasoned that the chances of a bird strike remain much higher than that of an aircraft hitting a drone because "contrary to sensational media headlines, the skies are crowded not by drones but by fowl."

(credit: CSPAN)

With a tiny change to the rules, the Food and Drug Administration made it a bit harder for Martin Shkreli and his ilk to make a killing by jacking up the prices of off-patent drugs.

The regulatory tweak now allows a “priority” or expedited review process for any generic drug that would compete with an off-patent drug that is only made by one company—the kinds of drugs that have seen skyrocketing price tags of late. The faster review process could cut the window for a pharmaceutical company to have a monopoly over the drug from years to months, sharply cutting profits from potential price gouging.

In an e-mail to Bloomberg, FDA spokesperson Sandy Walsh wrote that the agency expects as many as 125 generic drug applications will now be fast-tracked due to the change. The agency previously expedited reviews of generics that would compete with newly off-patent brand name drugs.