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The skin gun appears to be a computer controlled Air Brush that, instead of spraying paint, sprays skin stem cells over a burn. As you watch this video, the results are incredible: The burns on his arm and face are completely, seamlessly healed. The technology has been under development for some time, as this 2008 [...]
Invention – Beer cups with holes that fill from the bottom – How?
by Marshall Brain | January 14, 2011
This video says it all – it’s a beer dispenser that fills its cups from the bottom rather than from the top. The advantage is that the bartender can fill far more cups per minute with this machine than would ever be possible with a fill-from-the-top tap: How is this possible? How can there be [...]
If you have ever looked at the prosthetic marketplace, you know that things like prosthetic arms are expensive. This page lays out the cost factor like this: Depending on the degree of amputation, today’s state of the art prosthetic arms can cost patients about $100,000 or more. DEKA’s goal is to keep the cost of [...]
Invention – an app that lets you write a ticket like a cop would
by Marshall Brain | December 20, 2010
You can now give anyone on the highway a “ticket”, just like a police officer would. And anyone can give you a ticket too. This is either one of the greatest ideas in the world because it will create much safer roadways, or one of the worst because it will be the end of privacy [...]
The Ig Noble Prizes are awarded to people or teams in various fields of academia each year for research that is both thought-provoking and delightfully absurd-sounding. The Igs (as they’re commonly known) are given out by Improbable Research, an organization that supports and enriches the academic community in a number of ways, such as with its publication “Annals of Improbable Research,” which comes out bimonthly. But back to the Igs. There are 10 awards given out each year in categories such as engineering, medicine, transportation planning, physics, peace, public health, economics, chemistry, management and biology…
Invention – How Synthetic Life Works and what it means for the future
by Marshall Brain | November 23, 2010
In this 60 Minutes segment, Craig Venter describes his synthetic organism at the 3:40 point: It’s alive and self-replicating. It can grow and indefinitely make copies of itself. Did you design this to do anything in particular? No. We designed this just to see if we could do this whole experiment using synthetic DNA, and [...]
Inventions – Time magazine names the top 50 inventions of 2010
by Marshall Brain | November 12, 2010
It’s coming to be that time of year, when magazines, web sites and news outlets start publishing their “best of” lists for 2010. Here’s one of the first and it is in a HSW sweet spot – Time’s list of the best inventions: The 50 Best Inventions of 2010 The list is broken into sections: [...]
The first laptops featuring Intel’s new Wireless Display technology are just starting to appear. Here’s how it works: You buy a laptop with the Intel Technology built in. The Thinkpad T410 and the Dell Inspiron 15R are typical. You buy an adapter for your HDTV. The NetGear Push2TV box is typical. Configure the laptop and [...]
For more than a hundred years, people have been using the hook as the grapser on the end of a wooden or plastic prosthetic arm. Here’s how it works: According to users it is surprisingly useful. But it is obviously not a hand. The state of the art in prosthetic arms is moving rapidly forward, [...]
Invention – An amazing fresh lettuce factory for a restaurant
by Marshall Brain | October 20, 2010
Imagine that you own a restaurant, and you serve lettuce in your salads and as garnishes. Lettuce is kind of a pain in the neck from a produce standpoint because it has a very short shelf life. Now there is a solution – a restaurant can install a small lettuce factory that produces fresh lettuce [...]
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