Paralysed man walks again thanks to Robocop-style exoskeleton

Paralysed man walks again thanks to Robocop-style exoskeleton

A man who has been paralysed for the past 20 years is able to walk again thanks to a revolutionary electronic exoskeleton. Radi Kaiof, 41, now walks down the street with a dim mechanical hum as the system moves his legs and propels him forwards.

‘I never dreamed I would walk again. After I was wounded, I forgot what it’s like,’ said Kaiof, who was injured while serving in the Israeli military in 1988. ‘Only when standing up can I feel how tall I really am and speak to people eye to eye, not from below.’

The device, called ReWalk, is the brainchild of engineer Amit Goffer, founder of Argo Medical Technologies, a small Israeli high-tech company. Something of a mix between the exoskeleton of a crustacean and the suit worn by Robocop, ReWalk helps paraplegics - people paralysed below the waist - to stand, walk and climb stairs.Goffer himself was paralysed in an accident in 1997 but he cannot use his own invention because he does not have full function of his arms.

The system, which requires crutches to help with balance, consists of motorized leg supports, body sensors and a back pack containing a computerized control box and rechargeable batteries….

‘It raises people out of their wheelchair and lets them stand up straight,’ Goffer said. ‘It’s not just about health, it’s also about dignity.’

Kate Parkin, director of physical and occupational therapy at NYU Medical Centre, said it has the potential to improve a user’s health in two ways. ‘Physically, the body works differently when upright. You can challenge different muscles and allow full expansion of the lungs,’ Parkin said. ‘Psychologically, it lets people live at the upright level and make eye contact.’

[via slashdot]

The 100-Year Gap in Understanding - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

This is an interesting post. I’m anti-nuclear, though for my own strange reasons, not really the environmental ones.

The 100-Year Gap in Understanding - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog

A 1,000-megawatt coal plant is fed by a 110-car coal train arriving every day. A nuclear reactor is replenished by a single tractor-trailer bringing new fuel rods once every 18 months. Over the course of a year, the coal plant will release 400,000 tons of sulfur and fly ash. Some of this ends up in landfills, but most escapes into the atmosphere where it kills 30,000 people annually, according to the E.P.A. Then there’s the carbon dioxide — seven millions tons annually from each plant — which is the principle cause of global warming.

By comparison, the “wastes” of nuclear power can once again be contained in a single truck. I recently watched one of these spent fuel assemblies being lifted into the receiving room at France’s nuclear reprocessing center in La Hague. It is an eerie sight — the most radioactive object in the solar system emitting double what you would have received standing at ground zero in Hiroshima. Yet a three-foot wall separated us, and the emissions didn’t even register on our badges. More than 95 percent of the spent fuel rod can be recycled. That is why France is able to store all its “waste” (from 30 years of producing 75 percent of its electricity) beneath the floor of a single room.