Inspiring developments in science/technology
I’ve always liked building things, and recently came across some really cool developments in technology. Personally, I find it super inspiring, because these advancements “decentralizing” science away from those who have expensive resources, enabling more researchers to pursue what they want.
Octopi: Open configurable high-throughput imaging platform for infectious disease diagnosis in the field
This one sentence summary from the authors themselves tells you all you need to know: “We developed a low-cost ($250-$500) automated imaging platform that can quantify malaria parasitemia by scanning 1.5 million red blood cells per minute.“
You can find more detailed information on their preprint here, but yeah, this is game changing for several reasons. Most importantly, it’s a cost-effective, practical solution to a real life problem in global diagnostic medicine. The Prakash group, who developed Octopi, went to Uganda and identified the need for this kind of technology, so they put their minds together and came up with it. More about the development in this twitter thread by their official lab account. The project and the story behind it perfectly captures what most scientists want to do: make the world a better place by solving real life problems. Unfortunately, there’s sometimes a disconnect in academic research: if you want to keep doing research, you have to show productivity, in the form of grants and publications, the main signs of a successful career. The authors were able to do really cool science, advance their careers, and (hopefully in the near future) have an impact on the global scientific and medical community.
High NA single-objective light-sheet
Another cool development I came across in this twitter thread (more info can be found on GitHub here.) Again, decentralizing science in the sense that you don’t need to rely on insanely expensive equipment (confocal microscope) that a single laboratory can’t purchase alone. The authors make everything available to anyone interested in building the setup themselves, Again, perfectly capturing the spirit of science and promoting the idea that really cools science should be available to anyone and everyone.
Raspberry Pi 4: a $35 Computer
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 1GB available here for $35. Image from Chicago electronics distributors website.
Getting a computer changed my life when I was a kid. I remember scouring garage sales for electronics and computer parts. When I was 10 we finally got a computer: an HP Pavilion. It couldn’t burn CD’s (until I swapped out the drive) and flash games crashed often, but I loved it nonetheless, and immediately became a computer nerd, demanding dial-up (then broadband) internet, reading computer magazines, and trying to tear apart and rebuild electronics, not always successfully. Less than 20 years later, a $35 computer comes out that’s the size of a deck of cards with two HDMI ports. Again, I learned about it on twitter while getting ready for lab in the morning, and I had to stop what I was doing cuz my mind was blown. I immediately started thinking about all the things you could do/automate in lab with it.
Then I thought back to when I volunteered as a science fair judge for Bravo Medical Magnet School in Los Angeles and saw a lot of kids using Arduino boards in their science fair projects. Admittedly, when I was judging those students, I was the layperson, since my scientific training has mostly focused on biology/chemistry. To be honest, that’s the best kind of science fair to judge: when you as the judge are the one learning and asking questions. I disagreed with some of the other judges’ ideas that students should have data to be considered for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place. Several students had really amazing projects with no data because of a tiny coding/design issue that was totally fixable. I thought, “Wow, these kids are way smarter and more advanced in science then me when I was their age. If they stay in science, the future looks really bright.”
The 2019 Research Society on Alcoholism conference
I presented my research at the 2019 RSA conference, and got the chance to see what other alcohol researchers were up to. A lot of really cool advances in understanding how brain circuits play a role in reward/addiction using optogenetics, a technique that involves injecting a virus into the brain that codes for a light-sensitive receptor that can then be used shut-off/turn-on via laser stimulation. Last year I attended the conference, and understood less than 10% of what was going on, and I gotta say, it was really tough. This year I was able to really understand what was going on, thanks to my training in Dr. Mark Brodie’s lab at the University of Illinois, Chicago and the tireless work of my mentors Dr. Daryl Davies and Dr. John Woodward.
