This is soooo fricking cool...

I think it's a home-made E-meter. :-)

Actually, some good might come out of this project. But the "on the cheap" angle is spot on.

Designed by the same folks who brought us OpenEEG?

I think this is something that Ng is involved in. Also, the image is called "macgyver.jpg."

It's the Q80, world's first quantum computer in a kit from Radio Shack.

I don't think it's anything to do with an EEG - there's no obvious input device. Two cables with crocodile clips will not be enough. And quantum computer is silly. Not nearly enough containment apparatus. My attention is focused on the metal box thing, really.

I'm going to hazard a wild guess. Once upon a time, I read an article about chaos theory being used to model turbulence in convective flow of heated liquids. I suspect that this is such an apparatus. I.e. the box would be the one containing the liquid, with the red/black wires powering the heating circuit. The top wire would be a temperature sensor. The only problem is that the rest of the gizmos seem unneccessarily complex...

My second theory is that it is some sort of organic semiconductor testing rig.

Now hang on - Ng is Director of the "Advanced Moelecular Biology Lab." You think it has anything to do with that sort of stuff. That does look like one of those centrifuge tubes.

Great go at trying to work out the identity of this contraption. At this point in time, all I can say is that this collaboration between my lab and colleagues from the Eng Phys Department will appear in the next issue of MAKE magazine.

Agh! I called it! Before I got to that last comment, I was going to say, "I dunno what it is, but I bet it's a project from MAKE magazine." I wouldn't have guessed, though, that you're making something *for* the magazine rather than *from* it. You're a bunch of stone geniuses, aren't you?

This Macqyver contraption may be a 48-well electroporator - a way of putting DNA into living cells. Dave, are you secretly working on cloning yourself?

Ooh... Electroporator is a good guess, but not the answer (although maybe something worth trying for?)

You've done it! Your progress in miniaturizing the flux capacitor will revolutionize time travel.

...the electronic part could be pretty much everything; but the metal cube with the fins seems to be a device to heat or chill or even both... and as I read something about bio and as far as only bios utilize Eppendorf-tubes; I guess it's a PCR-cycler...but all this electronic gadget is a bit startling; probably this guy isn't very well versed in electronic design... I'd set this thing up with a microprocessor and not even a fifth of the elecetronic parts he needed...8D

Random Number Generator

homemade pcr is :P