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This is a very large recap of my tour of Vancouver. Back at Maker Faire 2009 a gentleman came up to our booth and showed us
his amazing cape costume using LEDs and LilyPad parts. I was
really impressed so we gave him a SparkFun T-shirt and thanked him for
all the great work he had done. It's amazing what such a simple
connection can turn into!
Bruce Lau is a prolific costume builder, hacker, electronic bicyclist, and engineer. Among his many pursuits, Bruce co-founded Zaber Technologies,
a highly technical and advanced linear actuator and stepper motor
control company. I really don't know how I get myself into these
amazing situations, but from this chance meeting at Maker Faire, Bruce
recommended me to Jon Nakane at the University of British Columbia.
One of Jon's students from years previous (undergrad turned grad student) by the name of Tim Leaver took us on a tour of the microfluidics
lab at UBC. I had no idea such a thing existed! Let me try to describe
what you are seeing in the photo (I should have taken so many more!):
Imagine a flexible polymer with channels in it. Stack another polymer
layer on top with a thin layer in between channels. If you pump some
fluid into one of the channels, it will expand, pushing up on the layer
above it. This expansion cuts off a channel stacked above it -
basically forming a gate! On the monitor, you can see a dozen of these
gates. The slide under the microscope was the size of a quarter and had
hundreds of gates.
What can they do with this? The gates and channels are
roughly on the scale of human cells. By pumping cells into the channels and
controlling the actuators with Labview and a gaggle of actuators, individual
cells can be isolated and analyzed. Using different biological techniques, they
can amplify DNA and perform tests for genetic defects, cancers or other conditions.
Working on this small scale, hundreds of single cells can be analyzed at a low
cost and in a short amount of time. Why study single cells? As it turns out, up
until now biologists have looked at bulk samples of cells, and assumed they are
all similar (all the cells from a cancer tumor for example). As it turns out,
this is not the case, and so new techniques like this will help them see what
is going on a finer scale.
The take-away of Nates trip for me is to never forget that unlimited possibilities exist for applied science. Robot spiders and flashing LED capes are great fun but beyond that, look at the outcome of what Nate saw: blood testing, DNA testing... stuff that really can improve life and enhance civilization - or even bring it about.
For folks out there building fun stuff from Sparkfun products, always keep in mind that you can make your own career out of thin air with sheer geekery.
To Nate: thanks for sharing your trip with us!
It was great meeting you here Nate :-)
Robin/robbat2 (the Gentoo/IsoHunt guy).
Truly amazing Nate, but you need to take a trip to MIT sometime! I bet the have a robotic spider the size of King-Kong!
Sure you will get to see a different world and a whole lot of places to visit !
I did my PhD in microfluidics at UCSD. Hollar if you have any questions about it :)
Hey Nate,
That looks great !
I would be happy to invite you to India as well to explore this part of the world !
India? Wow. That would be a great trip! Thank you for the invite. I'll have to find another crazy connection like I did to Vancouver.
http://www.batteryspace.com/
Wow, nice spider! Slightly bigger than normal; just think about what your neighbor would say if you parked one of those in your driveway. That SF flame looks really cool as well. I think that you should hook up a couple bright red LEDs behind/beneath it to get a nice red glow and hang it up on a wall some where.
Small world...
I'm a PhD student at UBC in geophysics, and if you're ever in town again, I'd recommend getting in touch with the Thunderbird Robotics team at UBC. I'm only peripherally involved, but they do autonomous robotics on a variety of levels, and have quite a bit of experience with CV processing as well.
Lee's Electronics is a great place, and definitely the best electronics store I know of in Vancouver.
Woah! There is so much eye candy.
The first part of the microfluidics lab setup reminds me of Flow Cytometry and the second part reminds of DNA Electrophoresis. Much cooler though.
Andrew, are you related to Amanda?
That thing is awesome!!!! Is there a joke in the picture of the geese?
http://www.evworks.com.au/index.php?category=5 sell them in Australia (well the more advanced LiFePO4 ones anyway)
Where can you even buy those monster batteries? I'd imagine they cost a fortune
http://www.evcomponents.com/
:D