Anya Pogharian never thought her high school science fair project would bring her international attention and job opportunities from around the world.

"India, Australia, Russia, Armenia — like everywhere, just everywhere. South America. You name it, I got a message from there," said Pogharian.

Ontario-based health-care firm Baxter Corp. offered to sponsor her and provide her with filters.

Pogharian said she heard from dialysis patients right across Canada, congratulating her and wishing her success.

She was 17 when she invented a cheap, portable dialysis machine.

CBC News first published her story in February. Pogharian was inspired by volunteering at a hospital dialysis unit.

Dialysis is the process of cleaning waste from the blood. It's typically used for people who have kidney disease. The treatment takes about four hours a couple of times per week.

CBC's story received tens of thousands of hits, and the international exposure pushed Pogharian to take her invention to the next level.

• Anya Pogharian invents $500 dialysis machine with at-home potential

?Pogharian said she's been working non-stop to improve her portable machine, which costs about $500 to build. Currently, dialysis machines cost about $30,000.

"To date, I have been working crazy hours on this project...I've stopped counting."

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Héma-Québec, the non-profit organization that manages the province's blood products and human tissue and ensures the safety of blood supply, offered her an internship, allowing her to try her prototype on real blood.

Pogharian and her team hoped it would filter four litres of blood in two and half hours. It took only 25 minutes.

She said its efficacy, simplicity and portability make it ideal for the developing world and in disaster zones.

It could also help people closer to home.

Patient Philippe Ouaknine said dialysis treatments, which often took several hours every other day, kept him from working and seeing his family.

"My mother lives outside the city. So we had to time [it to] make sure that I was coming back for my treatment."

Home units do exist but are expensive and rarely available through Quebec's health care system.

Ouaknine said Pogharian's invention would revolutionize patients' lives.

That's exactly what Pogharian is hoping for.

"I just know how difficult it is. And I can't even imagine having to live with that," she said.

Pogharian expects her machine to hit the market in a couple of years.

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An earnings surprise is the calculated difference between a firm’s expected earnings numbers provided by Wall Street analysts and the actual reported numbers. A significant surprise factor often triggers sharp movements in the share price following the earnings release. For the most recent quarter, Rockwell Medical, Inc. (NASDAQ:RMTI) reported earnings per share of $-0.05 for the fiscal period ending on 2015-06-30, an earnings surprise factor of 50%. The actual number was $0.05 away from the brokerage firm consensus estimates. The sales surprise factor in per share dollar terms was $2.096 for the most recent quarter or 19.3%.

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(HealthDay News) — Smoking is a risk factor for clear cell and papillary renal cell carcinoma, but not for the chromophobe subtype, according to a study published in the September issue of The Journal of Urology.

Neel H. Patel, MD, from the State University of New York in Buffalo, and colleagues examined the correlation between smoking and renal cell carcinoma subtype. Data were collected from 816 patients with nonfamilial renal cell carcinoma (705) or benign pathology (111) undergoing nephrectomy.

The researchers found that 51% of patients reported smoking, including 21% active smokers and 30% former smokers. Compared with benign histology, active smoking was more common with clear cell or papillary cell carcinoma (23 and 26%, respectively, vs. 14%; P<0.05 each). Active smoking was less common with chromophobe renal cell carcinoma (6%; P<0.05 vs. clear cell or papillary). Any smoking history was also less common with chromophobe vs. clear cell or papillary histology (26% vs. 53% [P=0.003] or 58% [P=0.001]). For clear cell and papillary histologies, but not chromophobe histology, independent associations with active smoking persisted after multivariable adjustment (odds ratios, 2.2 and 2.4, respectively; both P<0.05).

"These findings underscore distinct carcinogenic mechanisms underlying the various renal cell carcinoma subtypes," the authors write.

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3 Stocks Pulling The Health Care Sector Downward TheStreet.com KGaA, a kidney dialysis company, provides dialysis care services related to the dialysis treatment a patient receives with end stage renal disease (ESRD); and other health care services. Fresenius Medical Care AG & Co. KGaA has a market cap of $25.5 ... and more »

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