Erick Peralta's Blog

Wednesday, March 19, 2014

How it Works: An Electronic Cigarette (Are They Safe?)

Since electronic cigarettes hit the market in 2007, yearly sales have reached $1 billion in the U.S. Although they're popular, it's still unclear how safe they are. Last year, a study from an international group of scientists showed that the toxins in e-cigarette vapor are 9 to 450 times lower than in tobacco smoke. The Food and Drug Administration is still determining its regulatory stance. It's sponsoring more research while sorting out its position.
Labled Parts: A. LED, B. Sensor, C. Battery, D. Heating Element, E. Nicotine Liquid, F. Mouthpiece.
http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/how-it-works-electronic-cigarette?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=8&con=how-it-works-an-electronic-cigarette

Slug-Inspired Glue Can Heal a Broken Heart

When it comes to mending a broken heart, researchers say they may have found the key. And it comes in the form of a slug-inspired glue. Most heart defects today are fixed via surgeries that involve stitches or staples, but these sutures can do damage to the heart's fragile tissue, especially because the heart still has to stretch and strain to pump blood as it heals. And while surgical glues do exist, they are mean to close up skin wounds---some are toxic while others simply can't stick to a wet, beating heart.
The slug-inspired glue could lead to less-invasive surgeries and faster healing times, which is good news for the 40,000 babies born with congenital heart defects in the U.S. each year. The researchers say it could be used on other slippery moving parts like the intestines, as well as emergency surgeries where quick sutures are necessary to take care of trauma.
The paper, published in Science Translational Medicine, suggest this stuff could be ready to roll out to market in two to three years, assuming long-term trials and human testing prove successful.
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2014/01/09/slug-inspired-glue-can-heal-a-broken-heart/#.UyIiYvldUpY

This Pacemaker Membrane can Keep a Heart Beating Perfectly

You're looking at what might be the pacemaker of a decade from now: a custom-made membrane, developed by researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Washington University in St. Louis, that slides over a heart and keeps it regulated by a network of sensors and electrodes.
This is a rabbit's heart, but the building process would be similar for people: a team computer-modeled the heart, 3-D printed a mold, and created a membrane tailored to the organ. The sensors make sure the heart stays beating at a proper rate, and the the electrodes automatically correct any discrepancies, like an arrhythmia. And, yes, unlike this one, a real one stays inside your chest.
http://www.popsci.com/article/science/pacemaker-membrane-can-keep-heart-beating-perfectly

R.I.P. CAPTCHA

Say good-bye to CAPTCHA, the boxes of warped text that separate humans from bots online. Al company Vicarious claims to have developed an algorithm that can pass the test about 90 percent of the time. What will save us from spam now? These alternatives could come to a site near you:

Two-step verification: validate your user name with a confirmation code sent to your phone or e-mail.
Games: solve puzzles, draw shapes, or describe pictures.
Timers: if a form is filled out and submitted faster than is humanly possible, the bot is denied access.
Honeypot: programming hidden to humans but visible to bots tricks a nefarious algorithm into identifying itself and eventually blocks it.
Motion: using a device's camera, a program analyzes gestures to determine whether you're flesh and blood.

http://www.popsci.com/article/technology/rip-captcha?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=1&con=rip-captcha

Olympic Ring Fails Spectacularly During Sochi Opening Ceremony

Sochi has been fraught with problems in the days leading up to the Olympics, but no one issue has been quite so telling of Russia's hosting struggles as a malfunction at its opening ceremony that lead to an incomplete set of Olympics rings going up on display. While the ceremony was supposed to feature all five rings growing from small snowflakes into the Olympic logo's five intersecting circles, the top-right ring failed to expand alongside the others, leaving four circles beside what looked almost like an asterisk. Although that may have been a glaring mistake in the ceremony, the overall show was very well executed and quite impressive.
http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/7/5390152/olympic-ring-malfunction-sochi-opening-ceremony

Finally, A Super-Simple Modular Robotics Kit

The robot of the popular imagination, whether it's R2D2 or Rosie, just works. But in reality, making a robot just work takes a lot of hard work. Many would-be roboticists give up when faced with a soldering iron, an Arduino board, and lines of code. The EZ-Robot kits make constructing and coding modular, so anyone can build a custom bot in 30 mins or less.
Builders assemble their EZ-Robots physically and digitally. They attach motors and appendages to a controller board that contains a processor and a Wi-Fi radio. Alongside their creation, users configure their robot with the Wi-Fi. Advanced users can code their own robotic quirks and even download plans to 3-D print custom appendages for specific tasks. After all, who wouldn't like a personal snow shoveler in February?
http://www.popsci.com/article/gadgets/finally-super-simple-modular-robotics-kit?dom=PSC&loc=recent&lnk=9&con=finally-a-supersimple-modular-robotics-kit