DARPA seeks ultrasonic auto-scab tourniquets

@Ash

Small chance of DVT or a significantly higher risk of not having any blood left in you. Your choice :-)

Civilian applications

Ok, so, this has great potential in military use. Definitely a good place to do the initial research, and to get it working.

But what about civilian usage, too? Think about it. Every construction site should have certain first aid kit components on hand to staunch significant bleeding and such, so why not have one of these? Expensive, probably, but realistically, if you're in a high risk environment, it could be the difference between life and death, or keeping that arm or not. Any environment where you run a significant risk of losing a limb if something goes wrong, it would be worth having one. Just having one in 50 being used would make it worthwhile in most people's minds. Hell, loggers would love these things, as would anyone in a remote area.

How about on ambulances? How many people die or lose a limb because you can't staunch bleeding in time? Gunshot wounds? Knife injuries (Accidental and otherwise)?

If these pan out, I might just fork over the extra cash to keep one in my medical kit for when I go camping. (In case you're wondering, my definition of camping involves being so far past civilization that cell phones tend to have been completely non-functional for the last twenty+ miles and the likelihood of someone hurt getting any kind of speedy rescue is effectively nil)

Re: Joker alert

Said Kate Bush song title was Experiment IV, as I recall, & seemed to follow Monty Python's "Killer Joke" skit, in said researchers were trying to find "A sound that could kill someone from a distance ...".