Free Republic

(University of Cambridge) Scientists have revealed a fascinating new design for an incredibly tiny, inflatable spinal cord implant, suited for treating severe chronic back pain that doesn't respond to medication. The inflatable electronic device is part of a spinal cord stimulator (SCS) setup, a type of well-established therapy that delivers mild electric currents to a person's spinal cord via implanted electrodes. That current is sent by a small, implanted pulse generator device, and the whole thing reduces pain because the electrical pulses help to mask pain signals traveling to the brain via the spinal cord. If that all sounds rather...

  Niles, Mich. You can take a tour through an inflatable colon on Friday. It will be on display at Niles High School from 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. The public is invited to come check it out. It is an interactive display and students will be on site to educate visitors. The giant colon is being presented by Michiana Hematology Oncology. Colorectal cancer is the third most common cancer in men and women. It is estimated that nearly 127,000 new cases will be diagnosed this year alone.

HOUSTON (KTRK) -- A fire on Houston's south side is being blamed on an unusual suspect. Firefighters say an inflatable gorilla is to blame. The flames sparked around 2am off Cullen near the South Beltway. Firefighters found a small fire. After they put it out, they spotted the problem.

You've seen them in Million-Dollar Baby, Be Cool, and Ocean's 13: stands crammed with spectators cheering for the hero. But in the movies, sometimes not even the extras are real. To cut costs, filmmakers dress up inflatable vinyl torsos to intersperse among real people in crowd scenes. Now the two startups in the market are squaring off in court. Crowd in a Box (crowdinabox.com), which holds patents issued in 2004 and 2005 for the use of inflatable humanoid figures in background scenes, is suing Inflatable Crowd for patent violation. Joe Biggins, owner of Inflatable Crowd (inflatablecrowd.com), declines to comment on...

HOLTSVILLE, N.Y., Dec. 19 — On a recent quiet afternoon, with few witnesses around, Homer Simpson, Santa Claus and a penguin perched on an igloo suddenly appeared here on the Long Island landscape as if from nowhere, unfolding slowly like Frankenstein monsters lurching to life on the table. As Homer’s extremities reached full size, his pink nylon fist puffed into Mr. Snow Man’s face — an involuntary attack, to be sure. Bop. Such is the phantasmagoric, Disney-esque experience of the new Christmas custom sweeping the suburbs. Whatever else Christmas in America means — the birth of Jesus, holly wreaths, the...

LONDON (Reuters) - Two women died and 13 people were injured when they fell from a huge inflatable sculpture after it broke its moorings and flew into the air in a park in northeastern England, police said Monday. Up to 30 people were inside the walk-in exhibit, which has been shown around the world, when a gust of wind blew it 9 metres above the park in Chester-le-Street Sunday. "All of a sudden it just started rising like a balloon," witness Mark Spooner told BBC television. "(It was) flinging people all over. Then it just seemed to flip over in...

LOS ANGELES – An unmanned, inflatable spacecraft launched by a Las Vegas real estate mogul on Thursday beamed back the first images since it slipped into orbit and expanded itself. Genesis I sent back several photos taken by its dozen cameras showing sections of the craft, according to its builder Bigelow Aerospace. The company declined to publicly release the images. The experimental spacecraft rocketed into space Wednesday from Russia on a mission to test technology that could be used to build an inflatable commercial space station. Genesis I was healthy with functional onboard computers, solar panels, battery power and pressure...

Police are looking for an oversized but rather limp gorilla. Owner Mike McDaniel said the 25-foot blue and yellow inflatable animal was cut from its tether at the Viking Village shopping center after the air was let out because of high winds last Friday. The overgrown ape, which was being used to advertise a hot tub sale at the mall, was more vulnerable to thieves because they could make an instant getaway, McDaniel said. "If it's fully inflated, it does take five or 10 minutes for it to fully drain out," he said. According to a police report, the last...

An inflatable re-entry vehicle that could be used to return cargo and even astronauts from the International Space Station is to undergo flight tests next month. If the tests are successful the lightweight spacecraft could be used to transport payloads from the ISS within two to three years, according to Dr Stephan Walther, chief executive of developer Return & Rescue Space Systems (RRSS), a joint venture between EADS-Space Transportation and the Russian Babakin Space Centre. The craft, which resembles a shuttlecock, is being developed with support from ESA as a cheaper alternative to the US Shuttle for transporting cargo from...