An international team with Taiwanese members recently submitted to the journal Scientific Reports its finding that a thin metallic glass coating on needles not only reduces pain when puncturing skin, but also increases the durability of the needle.
According to National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) professor Chu Jinn (朱瑾), metallic glass has an absence of grain boundaries, a smooth surface morphology and low surface free energy, qualities that led to the application of the substance to cellphone cases by manufacturers.
The team began research on the application of metallic glass on needles in the hopes of making injections less painful, Chu said.
Needles cause pain upon insertion because of friction, Chu said, adding that the deeper a needle is inserted, the more applied force is needed to overcome friction.
The research found that the required insertion force was reduced by 66 percent, while retraction force was reduced by 72 percent in tests using polyurethane rubber blocks, Chu said, adding that the coating achieved a low coefficient of friction of 0.05.
Experiments conducted by the team, which also included members from the University of Tokushima in Japan and the University of New Mexico in the US, found that the coating reduced friction by as much as 80 percent.
The coating also enhanced durability, with needles remaining sharp after 10 uses, the team said.
The technology could also be applied to smaller needles commonly used for local anesthetics in dental clinics or surgical needles used for sutures after surgery, Chu said, adding that larger gauge needles are lubricated to reduce friction, but smaller needles are not.
The technology could also find industrial applications outside the field of medicine, he added.
NTUST has long cooperated with the the University of Tokushima, Chu said, adding that the research combined NTUST’s expertise in mechanical engineering, materials science and electronic engineering with the Japanese university’s specialties, biology and medicine.
NTUST president Liao Ching-jung (廖慶榮) said the journal expected the research to garner an impact factor — a measure of yearly citations to an article, which can reflect its relative importance — of five, demonstrating its influence in the field.
The university plans to publish the research in other channels and seek cooperation with hospitals and factories to put the technology to use, Liao said.
FLU SEASON: Twenty-six severe cases were reported from Tuesday last week to Monday, including a seven-year-old girl diagnosed with influenza-associated encephalopathy Nearly 140,000 people sought medical assistance for diarrhea last week, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said on Tuesday. From April 7 to Saturday last week, 139,848 people sought medical help for diarrhea-related illness, a 15.7 percent increase from last week’s 120,868 reports, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The number of people who reported diarrhea-related illness last week was the fourth highest in the same time period over the past decade, Lee said. Over the past four weeks, 203 mass illness cases had been reported, nearly four times higher than the 54 cases documented in the same period
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching