First responders, pay attention, because you might be able to save some MORE lives with what I’m about to hit you with next.  Some engineer managed to take ten dollars worth of electronic parts–available off the shelf pretty much anywhere–and modify his mobile phone into a cell phone that does double duty as a microscope.

This is no ordinary engineer; he’s an assistant professor of electrical engineering at the University of California, and he’s actually started up his own company to market the cell phone microscopes.

Not that this is just great for the medical and scientific communities–now any putz can check a blood sample for signs of tuberculosis, malaria, or anemia!

It’s conceivable that, from here, the phone would then be able to remotely send the images back to actual medical professionals for diagnosis before the patient was even put on an ambulance.

No idea when they’ll be available, but they really should do a whole lot of good when they’re done.

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Remember how we just finished talking about the Tele Scouter, which interprets every language and translates automatically?  Well, it’s a bit of a misnomer because there’s one language it won’t interpret–American Sign Language.

That’s right, folks–Ameslan is completely out of the Tele Scouter’s bailiwick.  But now, we may have the answer for that one–the Sign Language Interpreter.

Basically, what this is is a camera connected to a microprocessor that “sees” the motions of sign language, matches them against its own internal systems, translates them, and announces the word or letter that the gesture is the equivalent of.  I’m doing a bit of interpolation there as the read link wasn’t exactly clear on if it can handle words and letters or only letters, but either way, a sign language interpreter gadget will change the lives of deaf people everywhere.

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Maybe, just maybe, we spoil our pets a bit too much.

Oh, sure, we don’t think twice about the occasional chew bone or some such, but some dogs today eat better than some people do.  Plus there’s the add-ons–clothing lines for pets, Xbox Live subscriptions (when do they PLAY??), dog houses made of crystal, even health insurance for pets!  It’s crazy!  And it only gets weirder when I start talking about the electronic dog door.

Dubbed the Plexidor Pet Door, it’s an electronic dog door with a vertical sliding door that slides up when your pet, who’s wearing an RFID chip in his or her collar, gets sufficiently close to it.

It’s a great measure for folks concerned about burglars using the pet door as a means of entry (a la Home Alone), but still wanting your pet to have the maximum amount of freedom.  They cost a whopping eight hundred bucks a pop, and that’s before you add on the cost of professional installment.  This thing has to be HARDWIRED into your house’s electrical system.

Still, it’s terribly awesome, and if you like even having the latest gadgets for your dog, then this one should be on your list.

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If you or someone you love has chronic heart problems, like the kind that took my grandfather, then you might well be interested to hear about the results of the three month test that’s currently in its second month for a kind of portable heart monitor that can send data back to medical professionals automatically on a regular basis.

In a partnership with Gen-i and Alcatel-Lucent, the gear in question uses a Bluetooth system (ah, Bluetooth–what can’t you do?) to, with the press of a button on the control unit, take blood pressure and weight readings from an electronic scale at the patients’ houses and sends them to hospital staff.

The technology in question is easily portable, allowing patients to continue living fairly normal lives while getting treatment, and allows medical professionals to free up hospital rooms and also keep themselves from getting tied down to their own offices.  In fact, the guy you see above is one of the current test subjects, and he’s reporting a whole lot of positives from the new technology.

The trial is expected to finish up in December and results released early 2010.

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It might shock you to know there’s a Cyberdyne corporation in Japan.

But what only might shock you is to discover that they’re into robotics…but the helpful kind.  For instance, they’re working on a robotic suit that functions almost like an exoskeleton, augmenting weak limbs with outside mechanical help.  The really interesting part?  Since Japan’s population is getting older at a greater rate than the United States’, what I’m describing here could well become a “shape of things to come” sort of article for baby boomers right here.

The Japanese company is actually putting together other robots, too–not just walkers. How about a robot pet called the Paro?  It looks like a seal but is covered in fur, designed to offer the same benefits of a pet but without the difficulty and expense.  Holding and petting it causes sensors to form a “reaction”, while audio sensors allow it to “respond” to its name and neglecting it causes it to cry out, thus simulating a live pet.

One of the lead developers described it thusly:

“You forget it’s a robot. Some people think it’s almost a baby, and that’s a good thing, as it elicits a few little memories” from residents’ younger days.”

There are even more that are currently in development–robot housekeepers and walking PCs that surf the web at your voice command–so the future looks like it’s full of robots…at least for the Japanese.

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The Punjab police, ladies and gentlemen, have stepped boldly into twenty-first century law enforcement technology by receiving a consignment of Tasers, the first of their kind in India.

They’ve become both ubiquitous and infamous in the United States, the devices fire a pair of darts connected to the base unit by thin cables with transmit an electrical current into the subject, thus incapacitating him.

The Punjab police have apparently ordered enough Tasers to outfit two entire battalions.

Tales of gross misuse of Tasers follow them literally everywhere, with the classic cry of “Don’t tase me, bro!” intermingling with stories of the devices being used for torture as they don’t leave marks on the body.  Considering the sheer amount of bad press these things have taken over the years, it’s a wonder any police department is actually looking at them.

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The ADE 651 is a device with an impressive marketing angle.  Over in Iraq, it’s being used to sniff out everything from bombs to guns to drugs and beyond, and detect them all from a distance of up to half a mile.  It’s a handheld device, easy to carry, the Iraqi military swears by it…there’s just one problem.

It doesn’t actually work.

ATSC, the company that makes the ADE 651, claims that they work via “electrostatic magnetic ion attraction”, which if I remember my collegiate physics courses correctly means “a bunch of sciencey terms strung together almost at random”.  Independent testing of many similar devices by the Department of Defense shows none of them work much better than pure chance.  And here’s the part that’ll kill you–they sold the Iraqi military fifteen hundred of these things at prices ranging from $16,500 to $60,000 dollars EACH.

And there you go.  The Iraqis bought at least $24 million worth of bomb detectors that don’t detect.

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All right, road warriors, pay attention–because this is some really awesome news, especially if you have to do a lot of time-zone hopping in the course of your travels.  This is also awesome for anyone with a hugely variable schedule that requires you to work, and sleep, at different times every day.

We’re talking about Daylight Savers from Flinders Tech, glasses with a pair of bright blue LED lights that shine directly into your eyes, causing a delay in your circadian rhythm.  Now, circadian rhythms are those things that generally cause you to get tired at the same time every day, or wake up at about the same time every day, or even get hungry at certain times.

There are literally dozens of different uses for this product, though I have to wonder about the long term effects of artificially altering your circadian rhythms. However, for people whose time clocks are already out of whack, this could be the answer to your prayers.

They’re not yet ready for market, so there’s no pricing or release data, but they hope to have them available within the next year.

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Now this is actually a really fun idea–you know how, when you were a kid, you probably used to imagine various household objects as race cars?  Well, now you can do it for real with the RC Driver Tissue Box.

This isn’t just a fun idea, either.  It’s also highly useful.  I remember when I had the flu…I was on my back, barely able to move, and even something like getting up to go get a tissue to try and clear my nose sufficiently to breathe was like the labors of Sisyphus.  But the thought of being able to snag a remote and DRIVE my tissues to my sick bed makes me feel almost…happy, somehow.

But still, the idea of driving your tissues around the house is probably at least a minor freakout, so be careful.  It’d be terrible trying to, say, explain to the vet that you ran over your cat’s foot with a box of tissues.  They’re taking pre-orders on them now for $44, so get them before someone else does!

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It’s always pretty interesting to see other things besides the Wii get controlled via Wiimote.  Some have hooked it to Airsoft guns or what have you, but today I’ve dug up a little something interesting.

Thanks to the Casmobot lawn mower, developed by scientists at the University of Southern Denmark, you can now use your Wiimote to tackle lawn chores.

The mower is synced to the Wiimote with Bluetooth, and allows you to not only steer the device, but also engage the cutting action (just tilt the Wiimote forward) or set the device on autopilot where it makes passes inside a previously established zone.

The grass cutting equivalent of a Roomba is a sweet enough idea, but tying it to your Wiimote?  Now that’s just entertaining!  Plus, for all the kids in the audience, next time mom and dad get all bent out of shape about your gaming time, just tell them you’re getting in practice for lawn mowing season.

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So I was digging around when I found DARPArama, kind of a clearinghouse of prototypes and ideas and whatnot out of DARPA, or Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

And I started reading about the Phraselator…and frankly, you’re not going to believe this.

The Phraselator is a voice recognition based translator device.  Basically, you speak it at the Phraselator and it tells you the equivalent of what you want to say in another language, much like the Universal Translator devices of Star Trek fame.  The Phraselator starts out with an onboard six languages, but this is only a starting point as the Phraselator can be taught many more.  In fact, the Los Angeles Police Department, which bought several of them, taught their Phraselators a whopping 224 languages.

It may well be only a matter of time before we can slip on a Bluetooth-style headset, go anywhere in the world, and be absolutely certain we speak the native language no matter what language we actually speak.

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Remember how yesterday we were talking about tracking your children with a simple USB device from Insignia?  Well, apparently, the child tracker phenomenon is really taking off because another device has stepped up to challenge, the ET3500 GPS Tracking Bracelet.

It’s a bracelet that attaches to a child’s wrist–or anyone else’s, for that matter–and allows you to track at virtually any time where exactly the bracelet is.  It comes with an emergency alarm system, an emergency two way radio, journey logging up to one hundred thousand locations, and plenty more.

Basically, you can preset a route and see, at a glance, whether or not the route is being followed.  The bracelet will even point out the route for the wearer, showing them exactly where to go, stop, turn and not to go, stop, or turn on a handy LCD display.

Great for parents, a nightmare for civil rights groups, it’s the kind of thing that’s a bit tougher to misuse as it generally requires the wearer actually WEAR the thing, but still–one quick toss in an open car window and you know exactly where the car is at all times.

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It’s…um…about ten thirty AM.  Do you know where your children are?

If you can’t answer yes to that, and even if you can, you may still want to get your hands on a Little Buddy Child Tracker from Insignia.

The Little Buddy Child Tracker does pretty much what it says on the box, and it tracks your children.  Relentlessly.  Like non stop.  You can get the location of the unit at pretty much any time from your cell phone.

Yes, it’s a homing device.  For children.  Now, you may want to start getting cranked up about how children aren’t branded cattle to be tracked relentlessly, though you’d probably love to have this on hand if something happened to Junior.  My concern, however, comes into play in the “misuse” category.  Like instead of, say, tracking Junior someone decides to track Tammy Stalkerbait down the street by slipping it in her car.

Are we as a society ready for tracking devices?  I’m not sure.  But we’ll find out if you can shell out a hundred bucks for your very own Little Buddy Child Tracker.

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So originally I was going to write about India’s newfound fascination with the road spike, but then I thought better of it and discovered that Boston Dynamics was actually well on its way to making Terminators.

Aren’t you glad I didn’t go with the road spike story?

Anyway, Boston Dynamics has developed a class of robot, the Petman, that “closely mirrors human physiology”.  It’s currently being used to test chemical warfare suits, and therefore controls movement, humidity, and even a kind of sweating to get the closest possible approximation of how the gear will work with humans.  Here’s word direct from Boston Dynamics:

“Natural, agile movement is essential for PETMAN to simulate how a soldier stresses protective clothing under realistic conditions. The robot will have the shape and size of a standard human, making it the first anthropomorphic robot that moves dynamically like a real person.”

I don’t know whether to be impressed or horrified, so I’m going with both.  It MOVES…like a real PERSON.  I’m always a little squeamish when people talk about robots that look, act, or behave like people.  Too much bad science fiction growing up, I suppose, but it always seems like robot assassins are never too far behind that development.

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If you’ve seen a Wallace and Gromit cartoon lately, chances are you’re familiar with at least something vaguely like what I’m about to point out today–the Breakfast Machine.

Breakfast Machines aren’t exactly new.  There was one in the old Pee Wee Herman movies.  Doc Brown had one in Back to the Future, even if it didn’t work right.  But now, thanks to two design artists at the Royal College of Art, there is now a real live Breakfast Machine.

The Breakfast Machine cooks omelettes, toast with butter and / or jam, coffee and fresh-squeezed orange juice all within the confines of its own framework.  Even better, the Royal College of Art folks claim that this project can actually be replicated, at home, for less than two thousand dollars.

The device is currently disassembled, but its creators are hoping to take it on a world tour for exhibition and then bring it to London.

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There’s a startup company out there called Backyard Brains, run by a pair of neuroscientists who are marketing a piece of equipment they designed and built themselves called the SpikerBox.  And when you hear what this thing can do, you might be interested in becoming a shade tree neuroscientist yourself.

So what does a SpikerBox do?  Well, basically…it lets you read the minds of insects.

With a SpikerBox, you can effectively “eavesdrop” on the patterns of neurons firing in a bug’s mind by inserting metal probes into that insect’s leg.  The probes then transmit back data on the bug’s neural activity, called “spikes”, which can then be translated into sounds you can hear on the device’s onboard speaker or seen on your PC.

Admittedly, there’s not a whole lot of practical use for the SpikerBox, but it’s still a pretty sweet idea.  You ever read the mind of  a bug before?  SpikerBox is counting on your desire to do exactly that, and they’re looking for grant funding right now.

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Admittedly, the Amio is a pretty awesome robot, but it takes the Japanese to make something truly creepy with their robot and blow the Amio clean out of the water.

The Japanese, you see, built a fully functional robot…that simulates SWINE FLU.

Unveiled at the recent gathering of the Security and Safety Trade Expo in Tokyo, the Swine Flu Robot simulates fully a patient experiencing swine flu. Everything.  That includes sweating, moaning, and convulsing.  Plus, if the symptoms aren’t properly treated, they start to diminish until eventually the robot stops “breathing”.

For a society that gave us games about doctors, this isn’t terribly surprising.  Perhaps one of the greatest illness simulators ever devised, this robot is bound to help someone with their swine flu training.

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The folks out at Dell have given us a pretty sweet gadget to check out.  Now, chances are, you’ve heard about a LOT of solar powered whatnot, especially right here.  And some of it is pretty strange.  Solar powered jackets, solar powered cars…well, now Dell’s going to bring you what may be the strangest solar powered device of all.

The solar powered parking lot.

I kid you not, ladies and gentlemen–Dell has put together a series of solar panel-laden paviliions in its parking lot designed to provide not only shade to the cars beneath in the hot sun, but also to take that sun and convert it into electrical energy by which employees can charge, at no cost to them, their plug-in hybrids and full-on electric vehicles.

The equivalent of free gas is a pretty nifty perk, and the crew out at Dell has to be feeling some love off of this one.

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I’m stunned to be able to even discuss this, but apparently, Toshiba’s Dynario actually represents the first ever fuel-cell gadget charger.

If you take a fuel cell filled with methanol and ambient oxygen, and inject it into a charger package about the size of your palm, the combination of methanol and oxygen interacts with a lithium-ion battery inside the charger to power the battery and discharge sufficient juice to power TWO cell phones.  This means that most of your typical portable gadgets can now, thanks to Toshiba’s Dynario, be powered by a mix of air and chemicals.

Toshiba claims it takes the battery fully twenty seconds to charge after injecting the gas mix into the charger, and the costs on this beauty aren’t too steep for what you get.  The charger itself runs roughly $325, while the fuel cells themselves go for about $35 for a pack of five.  Oh, sure, it’s not exactly Rayovac Renewal battery affordable, but for a fast and easy charge that runs on thin air?  It’s not a terrible price.

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Well, here’s an interesting note to kick off the morning.

Attention Taser Owners: if you have one, don’t shoot someone in the chest with them.  You could kill them.

According to an October 12th training bulletin, Taser International–the company that makes the new must-have law enforcement gadget–says that firing one into a subject’s chest has an “extremely low” risk of causing–get this–an “adverse cardiac event”.

If you’re thinking “makes heart stop / explode / turn into a blackened lump in your chest”, you’re thinking about the same way I am.  This is the first time Taser International has ever suggested that there’s any risk of fatality with the Taser at all, and frankly, it’s downright terrifying.  The chest is a vastly bigger target than any limb–they call it the “center of mass” shot for a reason–so to claim that every time someone uses a Taser, the target just might DIE, is a reason to rethink the whole concept of issuing Tasers to cops.

Don’t tase me, bro…it takes on a whole new meaning when you know it might kill you.

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