Welcome! We like gadgets. We like international development. We really like medical technology.
Researchers at the University of Illinois have created a silver-inked rollerball pen to write out electrical circuits.
Our group is divided into three main sub-groups with a rich and overlapping set of interests:
(1) Complex Fluids - We investigate the phase behavior, structure, and rheology of colloidal suspensions using a broad array of techniques, including light scattering, rheological measurements, in situ drying stress measurements, and direct visualization approaches, such as confocal microscopy and high speed imaging. Our current focus includes microsphere-nanoparticle mixtures, biphasic colloid mixtures, colloid-filled hydrogels, polyelectrolyte complexes, and photoresponsive colloid systems.
(2) Colloidal Assembly - We employ directed assembly approaches including colloidal epitaxy, evaporative lithography, and microfluidic devices to create precisely patterned colloidal films, granules, and other 3D forms.
(3) Direct Ink Writing - We are designing novel inks for direct-write assembly of planar and 3-D structures with locally tailored composition and architecture. A myriad of ink designs are under development, including colloidal, nanoparticle, fugitive organic, polyelectrolyte and sol-gel inks. Complex 3D structures h ave been produced with minimum feature sizes ranging from ~ 0.2 µm to 300 µm
From Hackaday:
Researchers at the University of Delaware are helping disabled kids by designing robot transportation for them. Exploring one’s environment is an important part of early development. Disabilities that limit mobility can prevent young children from experiencing this. Typically children are not offered a powered wheelchair until they are five or six years old, but adding intelligent technologies, like those found in the UD1, makes this possible at a much younger age. Proximity sensors all around the drive unit of the robot add obstacle avoidance and ensure safety when used around other children. When confronted with an obstacle the UD1 will stop, or navigate around it. The unit is controlled by a joystick in front of the rider but it can also be overridden remotely by a teacher, parent, or caregiver.
[via Robot Gossip]
Designer Jihye Lee proposes a different look for blood collection bags featuring a more solid construction, large labeling of blood type, and a look as though it's meant for sale on 5th Avenue.
different objects like prosthetics, medical devices and even houses! Excellent article in today's New York Times about the varied applications and players involved in this exciting new arena.
Now, a team at MIT's Media Lab has come up with a much quicker, simpler and cheaper way to get the same information — a method that is especially suitable for remote, developing-world locations that lack these expensive systems. Two billion people have refractive errors, and according to the World Health Organization, uncorrected refractive errors are the world's second-highest cause of blindness, affecting some 2 percent of the world's population; all these people are potential beneficiaries of the new system. The team is preparing to conduct clinical trials, but preliminary testing with about 20 people, and objective tests using camera lenses, have shown that it can achieve results comparable to the standard aberrometer test.
The team will be field-testing the device in the Boston area this summer and will later test it in developing countries. The team already has applied for a patent on the system, named NETRA (Near-Eye Tool for Refractive Assessment), and team members won a prize this year in MIT’s annual IDEAS competition — a contest for inventions and business ideas that have a potential to make a significant impact in the developing world — and were finalists in the 2010 student-run MIT $100K Business Plan Competition.
Big Data: Exascale Astronomy
Open-source drug discovery: possible or not?
The Joys and Sorrows of Blogging on a Network
Do We Live in a Multiverse?
What is the minimum publishable unit? And should we start doing it?
Automating Science
Motivating People to Help the World's Poor
Lab Books 2.0
Disney World turns into a Black Friday frenzy as folks dash to two-day scheduling board to secure session spot. Here's where I am awed the controlled chaos that the SciFoo team creates: Small details like blocking of certain hours for people arriving late. Printing every single
“to bring together researchers from both the public and private sectors, largely working in India, to develop innovative new devices, diagnostics, medicines and vaccines that will reach the greatest numbers of beneficiaries, without compromising on quality.”I hope that includes researchers in other countries, and institutions currently working in the area so that our Indian colleagues won’t have to reinvent the wheel and instead open up their initiatives to co-discovery. I also hope that it can lead impact on the ground and in remote areas and not just a gateway for Indian exports to wealthier markets. That model has been done before, and we sincerely need one that addresses patients living in the lowest economic levels of the pyramid.
I’ve yet to read the book. As a designer a lot of the descriptions on Design Thinking seem to be obvious in what I do. I’m sure there is more it. In the meantime, The New York Times has a short analysis on how Designs Thinking and Six Sigma (I’m not necessarily a fan) can co-exist successfully.
Chuck Jones at Whirlpool tells the NYTimes:
“Design thinkers, he says, are like quantum physicists, able to consider a world in which anything — like traveling at the speed of light — is theoretically possible. But the majority of people, include Six Sigma advocates in most corporations, think more like Newtonian physicists — focused on measurements along three well-defined dimensions.
Analysis of case studies are great, but as SELCO Solar’s Harish Hande says, go out and create your case study. So whether it’s reengineering, agile management, Six Sigma, or Design Thinking, let’s be on the lookout for groups that leave the best model out there—the one that delivers an impact to the customer (or the patient).
