New Delhi, July 5 -- blood loss from a deep or irregular wound where a tourniquet cannot reach and where pressure alone is not enough. Soldiers, paramedics, and emergency physicians have worked around that gap for decades with limited success. A research team at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology has built something that may change that calculus: a powder, carried in a canister and sprayed directly onto a wound, that reacts with blood and forms a sealing gel in approximately one second.

alginate, gellan gum, and chitosan. All three are biocompatible, meaning the body does not treat them as foreign tissue. Alginate comes from seaweed. Gellan gum is produced by bacteria. Chitosan is extracted from crustacean shells and ...