A calming spin

One of the most debilitating and demoralizing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease is an uncontrollable shaking of the hands that makes ordinary tasks, such as tying a shoelace or drinking a glass of water, difficult or impossible.

But a new device that patients wear like a glove and that uses the physics of spinning gyroscopes could restore function to sufferers of hand tremors. London medical student Faii Ong invented the device, called GyroGlove, after caring for a 103-year-old Parkinson’s patient who could not bring her soup spoon to her mouth because of her severe tremors.

According to Ong and his team, the fingerless, elasticized glove under development will have a tiny housing mounted on the back of the hand containing gyroscopes spinning at 15,000 revolutions per minute. Anyone who’s tried to move a spinning gyroscope knows that it resists motion—a phenomenon the GyroGlove incorporates to dampen the tremors.

The gyroscopes should allow the wearer to experience smooth motion. Ong’s initial tests using a motorized hand that simulated the shaking due to Parkinson’s showed an almost 90 percent reduction in tremors, according to the website Medical Daily. Human testers reported that the sensation of wearing the GyroGlove is like moving one’s hands in a thick liquid.

Doctors who specialize in musculoskeletal diseases believe the GyroGlove could help many of the estimated 10 million Parkinson’s sufferers and the more than 200 million people who suffer from “essential tremor,” another neurological disorder, lead more normal lives.

“Being able to control or manage the tremor associated with Parkinson’s can make a range of daily tasks we all take for granted achievable, from writing a letter [and] putting a key in the door to dressing and feeding yourself,” Alison McGregor, professor of musculoskeletal biodynamics at Imperial College London, told Medical Daily.

According to Fast Company, Ong’s business, GyroGear, is launching a crowd-funding campaign and plans to offer the GyroGlove for sale early next year at a price of between $550 and $850.

Deep web

The internet generates a lot of heat. The data centers that power social media networks and video streaming host racks of servers that also “rack up” a sizeable air-conditioning bill.

But a radical new experiment by Microsoft Corp. could lead to data centers that are cooled by the ocean and perhaps even powered by ocean currents.

The company recently completed a successful 105-day trial of an ocean-cooled, prototype server rack sealed in an 8-foot-long steel capsule placed 30 feet under the Pacific Ocean near San Luis Obispo, Calif. The experiment worked so well that Microsoft engineers extended the time and even routed some of Microsoft’s commercial cloud services through the system.

“When I first heard about this I thought, ‘Water … electricity, why would you do that?’” Ben Cutler, a Microsoft computer designer who is working on “Project Natick,” told The New York Times. “But as you think more about it, it actually makes a lot of sense.”

Future undersea data centers likely won’t boil the surrounding water, as engineers say the vessel only heated water a few inches away. —M.C.