Staff Writer
Over the past few days,
a number of odd news stories have cropped up on the websites of several leading
news agencies. Ranging from technological innovations to medical developments,
these stories are making headlines this week.
UK’s first newborn organ
transplant
Doctors in the United
Kingdom performed the country’s first successful organ transplant from a
newborn earlier this week, with the baby girl’s kidneys going to a patient who
was in renal failure and her liver cells being given to another by transfusion.
When the unidentified
baby was born, she was full-term and weighed six pounds, but due to the oxygen
starvation she experienced in the womb, her heart stopped and she suffered
brain damage. After finding out the baby was sick, doctors gave her parents the
option to donate her kidneys and liver cells.
The Royal College of
Pediatrics and Child Health is working to develop new guidelines that are
expected to help standardize newborn organ donations. In the United States,
there is no age limit for organ donors, and, according to the United Network
for Organ Sharing, only 21 donors between 2008 and 2013 were less than one week
old.
California teen builds a
Braille printer out of Legos
Thirteen-year-old Shubham Banerjee is helping to make the lives
of visually-impaired people around the world a little bit easier. After
wondering how the visually-impaired read, Banerjee built a Braille printer out
of Legos for a science-fair project. He has now improved his product and is
working with Intel Corp. to further develop the project.
Current Braille
printers cost at least $2,000, a price that is much higher than a standard
printer. In addition, current models of Braille printers weigh more than 20
pounds. Banerjee hopes to make his printer available for just $350 and weigh
just a few pounds, making them much more attainable for visually-impaired
people around the world.
College basketball
player dies after choking on gum
