Author: John

Plant life of Mars a la Disney Style

I remember this film when it was shown on ‘The Wonderful World of Disney’ and a fantastic speculative book on space exploration that had stills from this on it. Man, I loved that book! I remember the plant that used a clear membrane to focus the sun light into a killing beam of death that it used to zap passing critters. I tell you, it that don’t set a child’s mind spinning with ideas I don’t know what will.
The entire clip can be bought on the DVD set "Walt Disney Treasures – Tomorrowland: Disney in Space and Beyond"
[via Boing Boing]
Plan Life On Mars (1957 Disney Animation)

DCA (Sodium Dichloroacetate) Cancer Treatment for Pets

Special agent Greg on detachment in the Interzone had this to say recently:

It has begun: this link is to a site that is ostensibly to sell Sodium Dichloroacetate for experimental use in pets with terminal cancer. This compound has received much press recently due to some encouraging preliminary lab test results. Obviously, desperate people are going to be purchasing and using this compound long before clinical trials even begin.
It may very well interfere with conventional treatments, be harmful in itself, or be ineffective. DCA is known to cause peripheral neuropathy (tingling and numbness of the extremities) with chronic use.
On the other hand, if it proves to be the miracle cure that some are hyping, we will begin hearing reports in the next couple months of people with untreatable conditions making miraculous recoveries.

I think he is absolutely right. Expect to see more and more people rolling their own treatments with DCA in the near future. For better or for worse.

Buy DCA – DCA Sodium Dichloroacetate Cancer Treatment for Pets

An AVR-based Analog Plotbot with an E-Paper Display

This is just perfect! Using a Magna Doodle as an output device for a computer is just brilliant.

What do you get when you mix a 1970’s style analog chart recorder, an 8-bit microcontroller, and a Fisher-Price Doodle Pro? A truly 21st century toy: An analog PlotBot with e-paper display technology!
Our machine is based around a vintage analog X-Y data recorder. Its original purpose in life was to perform basic laboratory data collection, plotting two voltages against each other, and was one of the primary tools for that purpose right up until computers took over that job in the 1980’s. Because they were once so common and are now generally obsolete, it’s quite easy to get one of your own. There are usually several under $50 on eBay at any given time, and that’s where we got ours. …
The other major modification that we’ve made is that we’ve replaced the pen and paper with what seems like out of reach technology: an inexpensive and readily available e-paper display: the panel from a Doodle Pro. …
The Doodle Pro is a descendent of the Magna Doodle, a classic children’s toy dating to 1974. (I’m not sure what makes this a “Pro” anything, however.) It uses a simple magnetophoretic display, where ferromagnetic particles are suspended with near-neutral buoyancy in an opaque, viscous white liquid. Using a magnetic stylus, you can attract the black particles to the top surface, or with a magnetic “eraser” on the bottom side, pull the particles away, leaving only the white liquid visible.

Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories – An AVR-based Analog Plotbot with an E-Paper Display

Cassini Spacecraft Images Seas on Saturn’s Moon Titan

Lake in TitanVery nice, I hope the powers that be sign off on a Titan lander soon.

Instruments on NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have found evidence for seas, likely filled with liquid methane or ethane, in the high northern latitudes of Saturn’s moon Titan. One such feature is larger than any of the Great Lakes of North America and is about the same size as several seas on Earth.

NASA – Cassini-Huygens: Close Encounter with Saturn

Microelectromechanical Systems Image Gallery

MEMSMicroElectoMechanical Systems (wiki). Yep, these little suckers are going to be big one day, so to speak. I found a page full of examples of gears, racks, mirrors, shutters and drive trains all in beautiful electron microscope vision.

What is it? Well, Wikipedia has this to say about them and quite frankly it does a good job:

MEMS generally range in size from a micrometer (a millionth of a meter) to a millimeter (thousandth of a meter). At these size scales, the standard constructs of classical physics do not always hold true. Due to MEMS’ large surface area to volume ratio, surface effects such as electrostatics and wetting dominate volume effects such as inertia or thermal mass.
They are fabricated using modified semiconductor fabrication technology (used to make electronics), molding and plating, wet etching (KOH, TMAH) and dry etching (RIE and DRIE), electro discharge machining (EDM), and other technologies capable of manufacturing very small devices.
Companies with strong MEMS programs come in many sizes. The larger firms specialize in manufacturing high volume inexpensive components or packaged solutions for end markets such as automobiles, biomedical, and electronics. The successful small firms provide value in innovative solutions and absorb the expense of custom fabrication with high sales margins. In addition, both large and small companies work in R&D to explore MEMS technology. Complexity and performance of advanced MEMS based sensors are described by different MEMS sensor generations.

I do know that there are some of these wonderful devices in the new Nintendo Wii (shameless plug, can’t fault a man for trying to get some extra cash can you?).
(image Courtesy of Sandia National Laboratories, SUMMiTTM Technologies, www.mems.sandia.gov)
Sandia MEMS: Image Gallery

Tumblr, Simple Blogs For Your Fast Paced Life

TumblrYou think to yourself, "gee, I wish I could have a nifty cool blog like this one but I’m too lazy.. All that writing and linking of stuff really gets me down." Not to worry, now there’s ‘Tumblr’! Yes, with all the things you need to do in your hectic life how can you be expected to make fully formed thoughts and still keep in touch with your adoring fans via web 2.0 technology? That cat’s not going to wash itself is it? No sir! But with Tumblr you can! With it’s easy to use click and post web interface you can post photos, links, text, video, conversations, and even quotes to your Tumblr web blog. It’s fast and easy, easy and fast. Get your’s today!
Oh yeah, I built one of my own, I figure if anyone reads it they might get back here and might click on the donation button on the right.

With a rush and a push…