According to the International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery (ISHRS), at least 35 million men in the United States are affected by male pattern baldness or androgenic alopecia. By age 50, approximately 50% of men will experience some degree of appreciable hair loss. Approximately one in four men suffer from male pattern baldness (MPB), which has psychological, professional and social consequences.

Hair transplant surgeries are lengthy and painful; both for the patients and surgeons. However, in recent years we have seen several advancements and inventions in the field of hair transplantation that have improved the entire aspect of the procedure. The most eagerly asked or wondered about question though, is which invention will become the perfect solution for hair loss patients who search the world for a better solution.

In a surgical hair transplant techniques lost hair is replaced with patient’s own fuzz from donor areas on the back and sides of the scalp by either the follicular unit extraction (FUE) or strip harvesting. FUE uses a small, 1mm dermal punch to pluck small tufts of hairs directly from the scalp. Strip harvesting relies on cutting out a strip of scalp and manually excising the follicles from the flesh using a microscope. These follicles are then carefully grafted onto the bald patch, known as the recipient area.

ARTAS, the first and only FDA cleared, physician controlled interactive, computer assisted system that allows safe and effective FUE. The procedure utilizes image-guidance to enhance the quality of hair follicle harvesting. Through its design and ease-of-use, ARTAS has the potential to solve most of the technical challenges inherent in the manual FUE technique. The System is operated under the direction of a physician. This technology allows patients to permanently regain the vitality of their appearance affected by hair loss.

The ARTAS System combines several features including an interactive, image-guided robotic arm, special imaging technologies, small dermal punches and a computer interface. After the System is positioned over the patient’s donor area of the scalp, ARTAS is capable of identifying and harvesting follicular units. The follicular units are stored until they are implanted into the patient’s recipient area using current manual techniques.  For more information, please visit ARTAS official site.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5XiepRXC1D0

The holiday season is upon us and there is chocolate everywhere; in the office, at home, and the stores are packed full of this stuff.  Add this awesome Star Wars Han Solo in Carbonite chocolate bar to your shopping list; it would make a perfect gift for that special Star Wars fan on your holiday shopping list.

Made out of gourmet dark chocolate, the Han Solo in Carbonite chocolate bar weighs 4.5 ounces and measures 6 inches in length.  Order it online from think geek for $11.99 each.

This year’s hit HBO TV series Game of Thrones was one of the best shows I’ve seen in a long time, I was pretty disappointed when the season ended and I can’t wait until the second season; I’m sure I’m not the only one anxiously waiting.  In the meantime, here is a look at some amazing artwork from the 2012 Song of Ice and Fire calendar, the TV show was based on the book (for those that don’t know).

The calendar features artwork by John Picacio and each month represents a different character(s).  We’ve met most of the characters in season and one or two of these characters will be introduced in the second season of Game of Thrones.  Hit the jump to see more of the amazing artwork.

[Via: Blastr]

Well, we’ve hit a few snags over the past few days … but overall things seem to be working well.  About 8400 of our 8500 articles and posts were migrated correctly and the sites visual changes are being implemented piece by piece.

With a few tweaks we’ll have the 100 or so missing articles migrated over in the next day or so and the rest of the visual changes should be in place by mid-week.

As many can see, we’re doing a bit of an extreme makover here at geekE — the entire site has been redesigned and a number of other changes are taking place behind the secret curtain of techno-geekery.  So please pardon the dust and the ever-changing landscape over the next week as we tidy up and put on the finishing touches.   

InPhase Technologies, an offshoot of Lucent Technologies ‘ research arm Bell Labs, will be showing the first commercial holographic video recorder at the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) Show this week in Las Vegas. The device uses the company’s Tapestry technology to hold 100GB of data on a single CD-sized write-once disc as a succession of 1.3MB holograms. That’s enough for 20 full-length movies, or 30 minutes of uncompressed high-resolution video.

InPhase says that in addition to very high data densities–the initial product will store twice as much as the theoretical maximum DVD can cope with–the system will be more secure than ordinary storage as the data is distributed throughout the disc, instead of at just one layer or on the surface.

Before the site went to hell in a handbasket, I told you about the Tech-Report’s Folding@Home team, a distributed computing project by the same folks who brought you the Genome@Home project. If you’re interested in giving those guys at Stanford a hand in determining how proteins fold and how they get mangled, causing diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s, I urge you to download either the regular client or the handy screensaver client and donate some spare CPU cycles, and give the Tech Report guys some small recognition and join their team. It’s all for the great cause of someday curing or preventing certain debilitating diseases.

The Tech Report has an interesting read on the possibility that the AMD Thoroughbred will have 512k L2 Cache. Interesting, since AMD has been insisting that it would only have 256k cache.

We’re BACK — Sortof.
We’ve had some technical problems, and some things have (obviously) changed, but we’re still committed to giving you that heavily GEEKY experience.

Please excuse us while we hack away at the new GeekExtreme interface.