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Discoblog

Posts Tagged ‘baldness’

Me First! Flesh-Harvesting, Hair-Transplanting Robot Gets FDA Approval

Some bald men are willing to go to great lengths to grow hair, including paying a robot to punch holes through their scalp skin. Recently approved by the FDA, a new robot takes out tiny pieces of your flesh in order to harvest hair follicles that can then be manually implanted into your bald spots.

Dubbed the ARTAS System, this automated robot images your head to single out a follicular unit, and then uses its robotic arm to make 1 mm-diameter “dermal punches” into your scalp. It continues extracting hair follicles from parts of your head that have sufficient amounts of hair (a process known as follicular unit extraction, or FUE), and these bits of flesh and hair are then stored until a doctor implants them into your bald and thinning areas. Within a few months, these newly-planted hairs start growing just like your other ones.

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April 25th, 2011 Tags: baldness, gadgets, male pattern baldness, robots, technology
by Patrick Morgan in Diseases, Injuries, & Other Ailments, Technology Attacks! | No comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

Balding Penguin Gets a Neoprene Toupee

penguin.jpgAt 25-years old, Pierre the penguin was starting to see his glory days as the California Academy of Sciences alpha male fade away. 25 years is a lot to ask for a species that usually only makes it to 20, and the elderly penguin had a rather awkward problem: His waterproof feathers were falling off, leaving him bald (with an “embarrassingly exposed, pale pink behind”). But the main problem wasn’t aesthetics—not that the comb-over is really an option for him—it’s that the penguin paddock is freaking cold. Heat lamps didn’t work, and the poor little guy “was unwilling to plunge into the academy’s penguin tank and ended up shivering on the sidelines while his 19 peers played in the water.”

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April 25th, 2008 Tags: baldness, penguins
by Lizzie Buchen in Diseases, Injuries, & Other Ailments, The Wide (& Strange) World of Animals | 3 Comments | RSS feed | Trackback >





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      Discoblog is DISCOVER's compendium of quirky, funny, and surprising science news from the edge of the known universe. It's written by Veronique Greenwood and Valerie Ross. Email tips and suggestions to vgreenwood [at] discovermagazine [dot] com.

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