According to a news release posted at EurekaAlert, researchers at the University of California, San Diego have used an innovative 3D printing technology they developed to manufacture multipurpose fish-shaped microrobots. These proof-of-concept synthetic microfish swim around efficiently in liquids and could inspire a new generation of “smart” microrobots with diverse capabilities such as detoxification, sensing and directed drug delivery.

The research, led by Professors Shaochen Chen and Joseph Wang of the NanoEngineering Department at the UC San Diego, was recently published in the journal, Advanced Materials.

There’s an emerging marketplace for an Uber approach to medicine. Several startup companies, including Doctors Making House Calls (North Carolina), Pager (New York City), Heal (Los Angeles), Go2Nurse (Chicago and Milwaukee) and MedZed (Atlanta), are enabling patients to have a doctor or nurse come directly to their homes at the flick of an app. The on-demand approach to medicine is still in its infancy and there are signs it is converging with traditional medicine, not breaking away from it. The sector’s oldest company, Medicast, founded in 2013, recently abandoned its direct-to-consumer model in favor of collaborating with large hospital networks. The company recently helped Providence Health & Services — a medical system in the Pacific Northwest — launch its own house call app for the Seattle area.

There’s an endless list of apps that track your health, but MyBehavior is the first mobile app to include a suggestion engine that learns a user’s physical activity and dietary behavior in order to provide finely-tuned, personalized suggestions. Developed by researchers at Cornell’s Interaction Design Lab, MyBehavior continually adapts its suggestions by exploiting the most frequent healthy behaviors, while sometimes exploring non-frequent behaviors, in order to maximize the user’s chance of reaching a health goal. The researchers have been working on MyBehavior for more than two years and recently conducted a 14-week study with 16 people using the app on Android smartphones. The Interaction Design Lab is expected to launch the app sometime in September of this year.