A friend of my dad, Paul Robinson, who is also a professor here at Purdue, has just reported that he has successfully climbed Mt Everest to raise awareness and funds for a cheap, low-tech diagnostic test he is developing to diagnose HIV/AIDS. Read his blog here, and about his preparation here. Even better -- donate some money to his non-profit organization's cause.
More like this
There are a lot of high-tech tools that are absolutely essential to the functioning of my lab. The diode lasers I use are a couple hundred bucks each, and only available from a handful of companies.
I usually try to stay out of religious wars, but there's one that is affecting my teaching this term, and it struck me as a good topic for a blog poll:
Here's how Michel Gondry - director of the Science of Sleep,* and cinematic master of low-tech effects - created the illusion of solving a Rubiks Cube with his feet. Hint: it involves time.
Back when I was a grad student at NIST, we had a large frame argon ion laser that put out 10-15 watts of green light that we then used to pump a Ti:Sapph laser to produce the infrared light we used for laser cooling.
Awesome. Just absolutely awesome. Thanks for sharing the blog and hooray for JPR!