Joe Landolina: This gel can make you stop bleeding instantly

Written by David S. Wills · August 13, 2017

Forget stitches — there’s a better way to close wounds. In this talk, TED Fellow Joe Landolina talks about his invention — a medical gel that can instantly stop traumatic bleeding without the need to apply pressure.

Listening

Watch the TED talk, listen carefully and answer the questions below:

Comprehension Questions

1. What does he want you to imagine?

2. How many years has he been working on developing smart biomaterials?

3. What tells your cells how to behave?

4. Where was he a freshman?

5. What does fibrin produce in less than 10 seconds?

Gap – fill

Watch the video again from 03:44 to 04:18 and fill in the blanks:

Now, this is a simulated (60 _______ bleed at twice human artery pressure. So now, this type of bleed is incredibly (7) _________ , and like I said before, would actually take five minutes or more with pressure to be able to stop. Now, in the time that it takes me to introduce the bleed itself, our (8) _________ is able to stop that bleed, and it’s because it actually goes on and works with the body to heal, so it reassembles into this piece of (9) _______, and then the blood actually recognizes that that’s happening, and produces fibrin, producing a very fast (10) ______ in less than 10 seconds.

True or False?

Listen to the material again and answer true or false to the following statements:

11.A traumatic bleed can kill you in less than 3 minutes.

12. He’s been working for 6 years to develop smart biomaterials.

13. The cell is the most basic unit of life.

14. The ECM in skin is the same as the ECM in a liver.

15. A scar is a poorly formed extracellular matrix.

Answers:

1. that you are a soldier running through a battlefield
2. 4 years
3. the ECM
4. at NYU
5. a blood clot
6. arterial
7. traumatic
8. material
9. meat
10. clot
11. (T)
12. (F) it was 4 years
13. (T)
14. (F) they are different
15. (T)