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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 applying a small electrical current.

“The polymer, PEDOT, assembles from a solution of monomers that assemble into polymer chains in response to electric current.

After testing that the monomer solution was not toxic to cells, the team allowed it to soak into cultures of mouse neurons, and living slices of brain tissue containing wires around which scar tissue had already formed.

Running a small current through the wires caused the monomers to form rubbery conductive polymer in a close-fitting web around the cells.”

Link

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 to a data recorder, worn on a belt around the waist.

I wonder how long before one of these shows up on a Justin.TV clone. Looks like esophagus.tv is already taken by a squatter…

Link

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. Cool!

Watch the video. Next I want to see interactive Discs of Tron…

Link

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 believe the technology could be used to harvest waste heat from electronics and other sources, and turn it back into electrical power.

“Symko expects the devices could be used within two years as an alternative to photovoltaic cells for converting sunlight into electricity. The heat engines also could be used to cool laptop and other computers that generate more heat as their electronics grow more complex. And Symko foresees using the devices to generate electricity from heat that now is released from nuclear power plant cooling towers.”

The article doesn’t mention the efficiency of energy transfer, but if they expect to compete with photovoltaic technology they will have to beat 30% or so. And construction of solar heat collectors and thermomechanical piezoelectric transducers could be much cheaper than making solar cells.

Link

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 artist Heidi Estey.

We’re also very happy to announce that the Bellwether series now has its own official website! Keep watching that space for announcements, launch events, and upcoming titles from more fabulous Seattle artists.

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 human settlement? By zooming in and panning around on Google Maps, I found these people. Near this itty-bitty port. On this teeeeeeny island, less than ten miles across. This place is so tiny and remote that I half expected to find the plane crash from LOST somewhere on the coast. There is no map data available, but there are some beautiful aerial photos, all the way down to zoom 18.

The island is so small, in fact, that Google doesn’t even give it a name. But there are obviously at least a few people there! The nearest island to the east doesn’t seem to have human traces, but it does have a couple of active volcanoes. Had I found some kind of mad scientist secret headquarters? Or possibly some sort of illicit penguin smuggling operation?

After poking around for literally several seconds on Wikipedia, I had my answer: They’re French!

Yes, I had found Base Alfred-Faure on l’île de la Possession in the Crozet Islands (a territory of France). This meteorological base has been manned continuously since 1963. They even have their own virtual tour (complete with pictures of the buildings from Google’s aerial photo!) If only they had a network connection I could ping them and my little infogeek orgy would be complete. I think they should declare independence and get their own TLD.

Anyway, now that I’m done exploring the French Southern and Antarctic Islands, I’m left to ponder the original problem that got me here: what is the greatest distance that you can separate yourself from another human being while still on Earth? Even though the Crozets are roughly 12,500 away as the crow flies, it’s still only about 8,000 miles away as the mole digs.

There’s an interesting thread here about the problem, but no resolution. What you want is a place that has high altitude, is near the equator, and whose antipode is also well above sea level. My guess is that it would be somewhere in the Andes, probably in Argentina or Chile. The other side of the world from there is China, also in the mountains.

Your thoughts? Post a guess in the comments.

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 having ordinary skill in the art” would consider it an obvious design.

“The results of ordinary innovation are not the subject of exclusive rights under the patent laws,” Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the Court. “Were it otherwise, patents might stifle rather than promote the progress of useful arts.”

Word. While the existing patent system still needs a great deal of work, this seems to be a step in the right direction.

This decision could have very wide-reaching effects in the tech community. For example, Ars points out that the patents being debated in the ongoing Verizon vs. Vonage drama might just fail the obviousness test, too. Hopefully we are finally on the road to avoiding ongoing 1-Click debacles.

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, and B values into X, Y, and Z. Nurbilicious.
For more juicy screen shots, see Torley’s Flickr stream.