The eye's power station is the retina, where rod and cone cells convert visible light into electrical impulses. Diseases such as macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa damage the cells and have left millions of Americans blind.

But light-sensitive ceramic films could soon power bionic retinas, restoring lost vision to many people within the next decade.

Alex Ignatiev and his team at the University of Houston's Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center have created Space Age retinas made from 100,000 rod- and cone-like detectors. The futuristic sensors are only one-twentieth the width of a human hair and made from a light-sensitive ceramic film. The researchers learned how to make the films from experiments conducted on the Wake Shield Facility, a 12-foot-wide disk that is periodically deployed into space to create vacuum chambers thousands of times stronger than on Earth.

Cancer begins when one cell starts to replicate uncontrollably. Early on, tumors develop only in that area, yet chemotherapy radiates the entire body. Out-of-control cells are killed along with healthy hair cells, and nausea and weakness are often overwhelming.

To create a weapon that stages a pinpointed battle, NASA scientists are creating a nano-sized capsule to seek out cells with damaged DNA, the molecule that controls cellular activities. Once the compromised cells are located, the capsule will either repair the damage, or influence the cell to commit suicide by inducing apoptosis, the cell's natural death process.

NASA plans to use the capsules in space as a counteractive measure against harmful radiation outside the Earth's protective electromagnetic shield.

Radiation can zip through a spacecraft and through the cells in the astronaut's bodies. Sometimes this radiation knocks out portions of DNA along the way. NASA-funded researchers at three universities plan on powering the nanocapsules with the enzymes of organisms that can survive high levels of radiation.

A NASA-designed bioreactor has been used to grow tiny patches of beating heart tissue. MIT scientists Lisa E. Freed and Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic hope to eventually grow a full-sized heart from a patient's cells in this highly experimental program.

Organ implants are often rejected by the host, so a heart made from a patient's own cells would likely have a higher success rate.

So far the tissue grows only to 1 millimeter thick and 5 millimeters in diameter. It is created from 5 million human heart cells added to the bioreactor, along with an oxygen-carrying fluid and scaffolding made of dissolving thread. The cells congregate on the scaffolding while the bioreactor, which looks much like a can on its side, rotates.

The rolling keeps the cells in a state of constant falling. This allows the tissue to develop three-dimensionally.

The cells eventually coalesce into real heart tissue by forming communicative bonds called gap junctions. As the junctions form, a distinctive pulse develops, although it is extremely sensitive, "jumping" at temperature and air current changes and even when doors slam.

The scientists say that much research is still needed. Getting blood vessels to grow within the heart tissue will be a major hurdle.

A highly sensitive detector originally designed for infrared detection in the Reagan-era Star Wars program will soon be snuffing out breast cancer.

The Quantum Well Infrared Photometer is so sensitive to heat it's able to "see" heat differences between normal and cancerous breast tissue as blood supplies are rerouted toward malignant cells.

Tumors need blood to grow, and rerouting surrounding blood vessels is an early step in cancer formation. Compared to mammograms that find telltale calciferous deposits that are formed later in tumor development, the new system finds breast cancer at an earlier, more easily treatable stage.

Developed by OmniCorder Technologies of Stony Brook, New York, the technique has FDA approval and will in use in the United States and abroad as the BioScan System by late 2002.

This is good news: One out of eight US women develop the disease.

While building X-ray detector chips for high-energy X-ray astronomy studies, the European Space Agency also developed a newfangled X-ray machine that looks and works like a hand held video camera.

The detector is so accurate it can find certain cancerous tumors when an X-ray emitting dye is injected into the body.

It's imagined that the device will be used during tumor removal surgery. While a surgeon extracts malignant tissue, images will be updated in real time.
 
"It will be completely digital, so the surgeon will study the whole lymphatic system and the potentially cancerous parts on his monitor. He then decides which parts he removes," said Dr. Tone Peacock, of ESA's Science Payloads Technology Division.

Surgeons often use tiny cameras called endoscopes and tiny tools to perform delicate operations without having to cut the body wide open. Requiring incisions the size of a pencil eraser, the technique slices healthcare costs and healing time but requires steady hands for holding the instruments.

But the work requires delicate precision often near or beyond the limits of a physician's capabilities.

Now, researchers under contract with NASA at Computer Motion in Santa Barbara have created a robot to hold the endoscope and the instruments as well. A surgeon then controls the robot's movements via joystick-like devices and watches the progress on a computer screen.

The technology powering the Automated Endoscopic System for Optimal Positioning, or AESOP, will also be used soon to inspect payloads on the Space Shuttle and repair satellites.

This device could be awarded a prize for most creative use of aerospace technology. A flexible material originally used to measure airflow over aircraft wings at NASA's Langley Research Center will soon monitor the heartbeat of babies still in the womb.

The material was once part of the wings of experimental aircraft, but cooperation between NASA and physician Donald Baker in Spokane, WA, has placed it over expectant mothers' stomachs.

The device is shaped like a dish. It's attached to a monitor that can find the baby's heartbeat by being tuned like a radio. The reading can be sent from home, to a doctor, over a phone line.

The monitors, made by Baker's newly formed company, Baby Beats, will be tested in Los Angeles first. The relatively low-cost device is expected to benefit women in remote locations and those carrying high-risk pregnancies.