It looks like that future we have heard about has arrived is in the concept phase. At the Greener Gadgets Conference in New York, there was a Bluetooth enabled touch screen that is designed to be inserted between the skin and the muscle. That's right, an animated and interactive tattoo. But that is not the awesome part.

The basis of the 2x4-inch "Digital Tattoo Interface" is a Bluetooth device made of thin, flexible silicon and silicone. It´s inserted through a small incision as a tightly rolled tube, and then it unfurls beneath the skin to align between skin and muscle. Through the same incision, two small tubes on the device are attached to an artery and a vein to allow the blood to flow to a coin-sized blood fuel cell that converts glucose and oxygen to electricity. After blood flows in from the artery to the fuel cell, it flows out again through the vein.

It runs off energy from your blood. How cool is that.

Tags: engineering, medicine, research, science
Current Mood: impressed
Current Music: Styx: Mr. Roboto

Just in time to make the rest of us feel better about the cold temperatures around here, the National Science Foundation opened the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.



Just to make the single digit temperatures here feel like nothing, take a look at the webcam of the site, and note the current weather.

Tags: engineering, research, science
Current Mood: happy
Current Music: Pink Floyd: Comfortably Numb

I have noticed something about my personality lately. I suffer from Experimental Depression (the other ED).

While I am preparing an investigation, I continually raise my expectations of the results. The whole time I am building test fixtures, writing protocols, or any of the experimental steps that come prior to collecting data, I go over everything in my head and I am totally convinced that I am going to get definitive results the first time out. During all the careful preparation I am positive that I have predicted and prepared for anything that could possibly go wrong, so I should collect pristine data. I am filled with optimism and confidence. Then the first day of data collection comes along...

When the initial data sets come in, and they not as clear as I expected (too noisy, no measurable difference when there should be, etc.) I get frustrated too easily. Then as I leave the lab after that first day, I definitely start getting depressed about it.

Now every time this has happened things have worked out in the end (so far, knock on wood). Changing the test parameters or protocol provides a change that is measurable, where it might have been too small to see before, or the additional insight from the initial data collection leads toward what is really going on. Success is to be found in both of these directions.

If experience shows me that it will work out in the end, and there is no way to cover all the bases in preparation, why do I still get down about it?

Tags: research
Current Mood: disappointed