Mindblown: a blog about philosophy.
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Device Design competitions:
Device companies often try to fulfill a need in the market. For example if the need in the market is irregular heartbeat then the companies are tempted to create pacemakers in collaboration with doctors which enable them to create devices that would regulate that heartbeat electronically. However, last year MDDI online came up with a…
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Automatic blood pressure measurement development.
A very concise description of automated blood pressure measurement. When new medical doctors are taught to take blood pressure, they are taught to listen to the sounds through their stethoscope while inflating and then slowly deflating the arm cuff. This instrument is called the sphygmomanometer. There are distinct sounds that one hears as the artery…
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Device and Design
There are many companies that develop kits for diagnostics that are primarily made for diagnostic laboratories. There are a smaller range of kits that are available for direct to consumer use. The kits that are available have to be certified and have to be simple enough to use. For example, a pregnancy test is a…
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Detection methods : Retroreflectors
There are several methods to detect analytes in the microscale. These vary from characterizing some specific property of the analyte being measured. One interesting method that has been used by Dr Richard Wilson of University of Houston is to create retroreflectors that are bound to specific antibodies or ligands. Retroreflectors normally reflect all the light…
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Criteria for choosing projects
Dean Kamen is an inventor who has more than 440 patents, has started many successful companies and is an accomplished serial entrepreneur. He probably has started more companies and developed more devices than many other people. His continuing accomplishment is FIRST robotics, that aims to develop robots by school children and help in their development.…
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Car racing and Microscopy
There are several reasons why people spend so much time and money on cars. It goes beyond just transportation. If it was just transportation then people would buy the most efficient form of transportation. People spend their own money and time on making the transportation better and sometimes, even very showy. Would scientists spend as…
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3D printing, surface materials and cell fate
It is well known in literature that the surface topography has a profound effect on immune reaction – for example some rough surfaces of implants can create some very bad adverse reactions. Similarly, there is good published literature from 1978 (Folkman and Mosconna) that showed that different concentrations of poly(2-hydroxethyl methacrylate) influenced the cell shape…
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Know Thy Customer
The “know your customer” is an often repeated slogan that is repeated in almost all marketing books. Yes, it is very important to know your customer but do you know who the customer sells to ? If the customer is selling to another business, it behooves you to know that other business too. After all,…
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3D printing using paper sheets
When we were acquiring the 3D printer, we evaluated several other printing technologies. The most convenient and colorful appeared to be simple technique that was the most novel. Mcor techonologies has created a printer that prints design on sheets of paper using conventional ink jet printer in color. These individual colored sheets are then glued…
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Difficult Quantitative Science for Biologists
Sometimes, Biology is difficult. There are so many factors that are not understood, things that cannot be controlled and complex systems that are hard to predict that it is difficult to understand the full consequences of common things like food, diet, exercise and all the other complicating factors in health. However, one area that gets…
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