Month: November 2019

Enlarge / Once you're done testing, you can set the transmitter to "roast." (credit: Brandon Zeman)

Although pacemakers led the way, I think it's reasonable to expect that our human bodies are going to end up containing many more active devices. These might mean long-term implants that provide aid to problematic organs, or they could be temporary devices that provide evidence to diagnose a condition or deliver medicine to a specific location. Many of these devices would need to be able to communicate with the outside world, which has proven to be more difficult than expected. The solution, however, may be as simple as changing your shirt.

I was surprised to learn that internal medical devices consume relatively high levels of power as they communicate with the outside world. It’s not that things like low-energy Bluetooth don’t work, but they use far more power when transmitting from inside the body than they do outside of the body. The problem turns out to be something called "total internal reflection."

Totally into reflection

You may remember learning about Snell’s law and total internal reflection at school, but if not, don’t worry—I’m a trained explainer. When light travels across an interface between two materials, its direction of travel will change. Going from something like air to glass will result in a light ray traveling closer to perpendicular to the interface. But going from glass to air results in a light ray ending up with an angle closer to parallel. If the angle of the ray in air is already close to parallel to the interface, the light ray in the glass cannot bend far enough; instead, it's reflected. Since the light wave is inside the glass, we refer to this as total internal reflection.

Enlarge / Once you're done testing, you can set the transmitter to "roast." (credit: Brandon Zeman)

Although pacemakers led the way, I think it's reasonable to expect that our human bodies are going to end up containing many more active devices. These might mean long-term implants that provide aid to problematic organs, or they could be temporary devices that provide evidence to diagnose a condition or deliver medicine to a specific location. Many of these devices would need to be able to communicate with the outside world, which has proven to be more difficult than expected. The solution, however, may be as simple as changing your shirt.

I was surprised to learn that internal medical devices consume relatively high levels of power as they communicate with the outside world. It’s not that things like low-energy Bluetooth don’t work, but they use far more power when transmitting from inside the body than they do outside of the body. The problem turns out to be something called "total internal reflection."

Totally into reflection

You may remember learning about Snell’s law and total internal reflection at school, but if not, don’t worry—I’m a trained explainer. When light travels across an interface between two materials, its direction of travel will change. Going from something like air to glass will result in a light ray traveling closer to perpendicular to the interface. But going from glass to air results in a light ray ending up with an angle closer to parallel. If the angle of the ray in air is already close to parallel to the interface, the light ray in the glass cannot bend far enough; instead, it's reflected. Since the light wave is inside the glass, we refer to this as total internal reflection.

Enlarge (credit: Tesla)

On Thursday, Tesla showed us its take on the pickup truck. Instead of the tried and tested approach of a frame construction like every other full-size pickup truck out there (not to mention the Tesla Models S and X), Musk's team has gone for a monocoque chassis design. Its body is made from naked stainless steel, the same grade alloy that SpaceX uses for its now-destroyed prototype rocket. The reveal was disjointed and unpracticed; supposedly unbreakable glass broke when it was hit in a demonstration of how unbreakable the Cybertruck is. But we expect no less from one of Musk's reveals.

The Cybertruck definitely has an out-there look, but then I had been forewarned by a friend with advanced knowledge to expect "something like a stealth fighter." And I'll be honest, I rather like it, although I think it would be more at home outside a built-up, human inhabited environment. I could certainly imagine these driving around Mars, but that might just be down to having seen some of The Expanse season 4 recently. But like I say, I was forewarned. My coworkers didn't stay up late to watch actors dressed for the Thunderdome pose on stage next to a concept car; instead, they all got to wake up to the news. It would be an understatement to say that there were some strong opinions, and so we've decided to air them here, in the hope that everyone gets it out of their system.

The reaction was overwhelmingly negative. "That thing looks like they couldn't afford an actual CAD software package," said Science Editor John Timmer. Science writer Chris Lee was no kinder: "Side view: uh, okay… Views at an angle: my word, exceeds expectations, troll-level 11 unlocked," he told me.

Enlarge / The disinfection begins. (credit: Getty | Portland Press Herald)

A violent stomach bug has exploded in Colorado’s Mesa County Valley School District 51, leading to the swift shutdown of the entire district, which includes 46 schools and programs that serve more than 22,000 students.

The outbreak first struck a high school, which was closed down Thursday, November 14. In the subsequent days, the outbreak took out five other schools and led to more than 5,000 absences in others (due to either illness or fear of the outbreak). On Wednesday, November 20, district officials made the bold decision to close down the entire district through the Thanksgiving holiday.

Health officials have not officially identified the pathogen causing the outbreak but suspect it is norovirus—a highly contagious germ that causes vomiting and diarrhea, typically for one to three days. Norovirus is the leading cause of such stomach illnesses in the US.

Enlarge

It's almost December, but Google's 2019 product bloodbath isn't done yet! The latest product to receive a death sentence this year is Google Cloud Print, an excellent printer-to-cloud bridge service that launched in beta in 2010. According to a new Google support page and emails sent out to GSuite Admins, Cloud Print will die December 31, 2020, at which point it will no longer be supported, and "devices across all operating systems will no longer be able to print using Google Cloud Print."

Cloud Print is—well, was—pretty cool. Printers are some of the dumbest, most archaic "tech" devices on Earth, but Cloud Print was the missing link, allowing your dumb printer to work with more modern devices. You could print from Chrome and Chrome OS, or print from a phone, or even print remotely over the Internet. The idea was that the Cloud Print server was built into every copy of the Chrome browser, and your printer probably connected to a computer running Chrome at some point, either over a local network or USB cable. Once your printer hit a computer running Chrome and you registered it to your Google account, Google took care of the rest. The printer was accessible from pretty much anywhere via your Google account, as long as the local computer was turned on. Chrome OS and Chrome on the desktop would automatically list Cloud Print printers alongside your local ones. Android supported cloud print throughout the operating system, and on iOS, Cloud Print was built into Gmail, Chrome, and the whole Google Docs suite.

Cloud Print was a huge success, as far as printing services go, and it even ended up being built-in to traditional printers. Google has a list of hundreds of cloud-ready printer models that connect directly to Google's service, no intermediate computer needed. So much for that.