Whether you are instructed to put the strings in the front or the back of the faded, wrinkled, rag of a gown, if there's one thing you won't have once you've donned the thing, it's your dignity....

Learning to walk again after breaking a leg or hip, having a stroke, prosthetic, or partial paralysis depends on a lot of persistence and an excellent rehabilitation program that can guide you through gait training.  Movement scientist Dr. Melvyn Roerdink from The Netherlands has developed a super smart, oversized treadmill that helps rehab patients gain confidence in their new gaits, with bells, whistles, and even light shows.

The National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA) has announced the winners of the 2011 BMEidea Competition. Awards have gone to three college groups for the invention of much needed biomedical devices and applications that will aid patients in the future: an internal bleed detector, a new therapy for dry eye disease, and a superior broad spectrum antibacterial dressing for infected wounds.

The story starts when auto mechanic Tom Ramies shares his crazy idea for an iPhone bottle opener with industrial designer Clay Baker, a former tech developer. Baker, who first laughed at the idea, soon saw its potential - a gadget linked to a beer app that would totally reinvent social networking.... How?

A team of researchers from Delft University of Technology,  the Netherlands Defence Academy and TNO Defence, Security, and Safety are working on a little black box which can distinguish just how much of an emergency a caller has.  In other words, you call 911 to report that your house is on fire, and a 'trained' computer figures out how desperate you are.

Would you wear recycled plastic bottles to work?  Aparently millions of healthcare workers are about to, as Cintas, a major player in the uniform business, is launching its EcoGeneration scrubs. Each set of scrubs saves seven plastic bottles from landfills and weaves their material into threads, blending them with cotton and polyester fibers.

NASA has recognized inXitu, Inc. with its 2010 Invention of the Year Award for inXitu's invention of the powder vibration chamber  The chamber is used in inXitu's portable X-ray scattering device (XRD) and represents such a 'leap forward' in materials analysis technology that it has been chosen to launch on the Mars Science Laboratory later this year.

A doctoral student at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) has won the 2011 Lemelson-MIT Student Prize for developing a new technique for detecting hidden explosives, chemicals, and other dangerous materials from a safe distance.

The DiabetesMine, a web resource for diabetics, is calling for innovative solutions to better the lives of persons with diabetes in its 2011 DiabetesMine Design Challenge.

Prior to now, it has been almost impossible to track latent prints from discharged cartridge cases.   But a new invention in the field of forensics technology was unveiled last week  that will send uncaptured criminals scrambling, for it has the technology to reveal fingerprints on spent bullet cartridges.