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thinking linking

Bookmarks for February 21st

  • Implantable, wireless sensors share secrets of healing tissues – Following an orthopedic procedure, surgeons usually rely on X-rays or MRIs to monitor the progress of their patient's recovery. The new sensors, created by Rensselaer faculty researcher Eric Ledet, would instead give surgeons detailed, real-time information from the actual surgery site. This in vivo data could lead to more accurate assessments of a patient's recovery, or provide better insight into potential complications.
    The wireless sensor measures only 4 millimeters in diameter and 500 microns thick. It needs no battery, no external power, and requires no electronics within the body. Instead, the sensor is powered by the external device used to capture the sensor data.
    "Our new sensor will give surgeons the opportunity to make personalized, highly detailed, and very objective diagnoses for individual patients," said Ledet, assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Rensselaer. "The simplicity of the sensor is its greatest strength. The sensor is inexpensive to produce, requires no external power source, yet it is robust and durable. We are very excited about the potential of this new technology."
    What else could these be used for?
    Tags: tech research story

  • Toward better electronics: Researchers develop new way to oxidize promising graphene –
    Tags: research tech
Politics

Help Stop ACTA and TPP: Sign the Petition

Stop ACTA & TPP: Tell your country’s officials: NEVER use secretive trade agreements to meddle with the Internet. Our freedoms depend on it!

For European users, this form will email every MEP with a known email address.
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6 Reasons to oppose ACTA

ACTA locks countries into obsolete copyright and patent laws. If a democracy decides on less restrictive laws that reflect the reality of the internet, ACTA will prevent that.
ACTA criminalizes users by making noncommercial, harmless remixes into crimes if “on a commercial scale” (art 2.14.1). Many amateur works achieve a commercial scale on sites like Youtube. ACTA, like SOPA, could mean jail time for the Justin Biebers of the world.
ACTA Criminalizes legitimate websites, making them responsible for user behavior by “aiding and abetting”. (art 2.14.4). Like SOPA, the founders of your favorite sites could be sued or (worse) thrown in jail for copyright infringement by their users.
ACTA will let rightsholders use laughably inflated claims of damages (based on the disproven idea that every download or stream is a lost sale) to sue people. As if suing amazing artists, video makers and websites for millions wasn’t hard enough!
ACTA Permanently bypasses democracy by giving the “ACTA Committee” the power to “propose amendments to [ACTA]” (art 6.4). In other words, voting for ACTA writes a blank check to an unelected committee. These closed-door proceedings will be a playground for SOPA-supporters like the MPAA.
Trade agreements are a gaping loophole, a backdoor track that, even though it creates new law, is miles removed from democracy. It’s a secretive process that’s tailor-made to serve politically connected companies. And the movie studios behind SOPA? They’re experts at it. If we can’t make secretive trade agreements harder to pass than US law, our internet’s future belongs to the lobbyists behind SOPA.

From La Quadrature du Net

research

Does this sound like a synopsis of a horror movie to anyone else?

Russian scientists prepare to explore the most alien lake on Earth

Buried over two miles beneath the East Antarctic Ice sheet lurks Lake Vostok — an isolated body of subglacial water, removed from the rest of the world for more than twenty million years. Now, Russian researchers are just a few meters of ice away from entering an environment unlike any we’ve ever seen… at least, not here on Earth.

via Russian scientists prepare to explore the most alien lake on Earth.