Hasta La Gadget!

An international team of researchers has devised a way to embed tiny LEDs into the human body. The LEDs can be molded into flat, stretchable mesh sheets and safely placed in or next to human tissue. The network of diodes–which are about the width of a human hair–can almost be though of as a kind of “rubber stamp” or ink. The hope for these organic-based LED systems is that they will offer patients feedback on biological processes inside their bodies or even usher in a wave of photo-activated medications. All good stuff.

The researchers involved with this project surely have dreams of winning that Nobel prize for giving diabetes patients a powerful new way to monitor their blood sugar. And we hope they do. But inevitably, this technology will lead to one thing: high-tech glowing tattoos.

In the future, no singles bar will ever be dimly-lit again–not against the warm aura of incandescent midriffs, glowing Japanese symbols, and blinking inspirational song lyrics.

In theory, these fleshy LED displays could be customizable. Forget Facebook, now you can update your “status” on your face. This new technology might also prove to be an economic boom for the young and attractive. Get a lot of unwanted, creepy glares on the subway? Well, why not put it to good use and give a visual shout-out to the new AXE body wash or remind people to tune in to tonight’s special episode of How I Met Your Mother.

Billboards won’t stand a chance.

via Discover, Scientific American

If you’re running a little low on space for all of your music, movies, and photos, or you’re planning on building a NAS to keep all of your files backed up, Western Digital’s new 3TB Caviar Green Hard Drive brings you storage space and energy efficiency all in the same package. The drive is a 5400RPM model, which doesn’t sound that special until you hear it also features four 750 GB platters and WD’s proprietary Advanced Format technology which lets them squeeze every possible GB out of those platters without losing too much to formatting data.

The new 3TB drive is a 3.5-inch model, perfect for desktop systems and external storage arrays. The new drive will set you back $239 list price, but if that’s a little out of your price range Western Digital also offers a 2.5TB version for $189 retail. Both versions are available now from select retailers. You can read more about the announcement at PCMag.com!

Face it, some day you, me and everybody else will be working along-side robots. They’re already in our factories and starting to arrive in our homes. Despite everyone’s irrational fear of “our robot overlords,” this is as it should be. The only problem is that robots today are not nearly as smart as we think they are and a powerful manufacturing bot could, without meaning to, take your head off if you get in its way.

No, robots are not trying to harm us, but programming them to understand our emotions, needs and reactions to, say, pain is pretty darn difficult. Over in Slovenia, scientists are seeking to overcome this android deficit by teaching robots how humans react to varying degrees of human-robot collisions. To do so, researchers took a standard Epson manufacturing robot arm and programmed it to “punch” someone’s arm as many as 18 times with dull and then increasingly sharp instruments. Punchees were asked to record the severity of their pain. This ranged from “painless” to “unbearable”.

If our future is literally filled with robots, it’s unlikely we’ll be able to work alongside them without occasionally bumping into each other. As a report in New Scientist explains, the data will be used to program future robots and ensure that they slow down when sensors indicate they’re in the proximity of a human. No word on if the scientist will also program robots that do bump into humans to say, “My bad.”

Have you ever wondered if the naked stranger on Chatroulette had too much cholesterol in their diet? Well, soon that worry will be a thing of the past thanks to one MIT Grad student. Ming-Zher Poh has devised a way to automatically (and accurately) read basic vital signs using technology as simple as a built-in laptop webcam.

The tech works by measuring and analyzing slight variations in brightness produced by the flow of blood through blood vessels in the face. When compared to a commercially-available, FDA-approved blood-volume pulse sensor, the system produced pulse rates that agreed  within three beats-per-minute.

Which is not bad for a dinky webcam. Conceivably, this technology could be developed into an app utilized by any smart phone with a camera.

In other real-world applications, Doctors could help diagnose patients around the globe via the internet.Vitals could be remotely detected in patients where the very process of taking readings might
be uncomfortable such as with burn victims or newborn babies. Poh has even put forward that this tech might one day be used in a bathroom mirror that could tell the mirror-gazer various vital signs including heart rate, blood pressure, and blood-oxygen levels.