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Part of the challenge of designing a man-machine interface at the cellular level is coming up with an electrode that doesn’t damage living tissue. Neuroscientists at the University of Michigan have had some success by pouring liquid conductive polymer directly onto slices of mouse brain tissue, and getting it to set in place by [...]

Finally, a camera for your esophagus.
The PillCamâ„¢ ESO video capsule is specifically designed to view the inner lining of the Esophagus. The capsule is equipped with miniature cameras on both ends and is about the size of a multi-vitamin, which can be swallowed easily.
Three sensor arrays are strategically placed on the patient’s chest and connected [...]

Eric and I have been talking about building a human pong machine, using a laser beam to project the ball and a camera (or ultrasonics) to track human movement for the flippers.
Looks like someone beat us to it. But rather than using a laser, they’ve got a couple of projectors and multidimensional bipedal tracking. [...]

Physicists at the University of Utah are developing a way to produce electricity from heat by making sound. Heat is forced through a cylinder or ring, where it heats up the air and generates a sound wave. The sound then comes in contact with a piezoelectric device that produces electricity as it vibrates. They [...]

xkcd has outdone themselves again. This one will be useful for next year’s wireless school…

The Monsters have arrived!
Monsters are sometimes cute, often creepy, always inspiring. Bellwether No. 2 gives you 160+ pages of the little beasties, with enough space left over for your own notes and scribbles. Use it as a notepad, sketch book, or dream journal. Or just smile at the weird and wondrous art work of Seattle [...]

This is why I love teh Internets.
I was wondering about the antipode of Seattle– If you were to draw a line from Seattle straight through the middle of the Earth, where would you pop out again on the other side?
Obviously, somewhere in the Indian ocean, near Antarctica. But what would be the nearest [...]

Behold: the Map of Online Communities and Related Points of Interest. xkcd has outdone themselves this time.
Stallman’s Airship made me laugh out loud.

Ars Technica reports that the Supreme Court has invalidated Teleflex’s patent on a self-adjusting gas pedal in KSR v. Teleflex. The Supremes ruled that the Federal Circuit court that heard Teleflex’s appeal did not appropriately apply the test for obviousness. The obviousness test says that an invention cannot be patented if a “person [...]

Sculpted Prims are coming to Second Life. While the recently released 1.15.0.2 viewer doesn’t yet support them, the FAQ mentions that they might be available in the beta viewer as early as next week.
It looks like the sculpted shapes are made by deforming a sphere according to a “sculpt texture” that maps R, G, [...]