José Gómez-Márquez builds strange-looking medical equipment: pregnancy tests that look like Lego kits, inhalers inspired by plastic toy helicopters, and centrifuges made from toilet plungers. His inventions aren’t destined for high-tech hospitals——they’re headed to poor countries where electricity, high-tech medical materials, and health personnel are often scarce.

Gómez-Márquez’s innovative work earned him a spot in Technology Review’s TR35, the magazine’s annual list of innovators under 35: He’s their 2009 humanitarian of the year.

His designs are practical, functional, and innovative, and one of his new projects aims to spread that spirit around. “He is now creating development kits for medical technolog­y—sort of like Erector sets for medical professionals—which will initially be used in Nicaragua,” writes Technology Review. “The kits will enable doctors and medical students to devise diagnostics, drug delivery devices, microfluidic chips, and more.”

Read more about Gómez-Márquez’s incredible story, which involves lots of childhood visits to doctors’ offices in his home country of Honduras, and watch him demonstrate some of his inventions in this short video.

Source: Technology Review

Imagine a contact lens that could connect you to the internet, providing information about what you see in a format invisible to other people. Or a contact lens, powered by radio frequencies or solar power, that could monitor cholesterol or glucose levels for diabetics. Babak A. Parviz, writing for IEEE Spectrum, is already working on the technology, and has successfully tested early versions on live rabbits. Parviz envisions the contact lens turning into a platform like an iPhone, where developers create new applications and inventions to improve the human eye.

Source: IEEE Spectrum 

For the past two years, tech-geeks around the country have applied to the Sunlight Foundation’s Apps for America contest with new ideas to make government data useful. This year, the judges have narrowed the field down to three government-transparency boosting, accountability-promoting web applications. The finalists are:

GovPulse.us – This website makes the information from the Federal Registrar comprehensible. Users can track all the rules and notices from federal agencies and executive orders and presidential documents. The application breaks the information down by agency or place mentioned.

ThisWeKnow.org – Every city in the United States is made a little more transparent by this site. Users can type in a zip code and find information including demographic numbers, environmental pollutants, and employment statistics. The website also tracks how many bills were introduced about any given location, including what the bill was about and who introduced it.

DataMasher – When people make connections between seemingly disparate sources of information, the result can be illuminating. DataMasher lets people compare gun ownership numbers to high school graduation statistics or health care coverage to age demographics, and then it maps the results by state.

Users can now vote for their favorite application, and the winners will receive up to $10,000 as a prize.

Source: The Sunlight Foundation 

It’s time to limit the love and attention lavished on iPhones, Lisa Katayama argues on Boing Boing Gadgets. At first, “I pretended not to care while [my boyfriend] lay in bed smoothing his finger across the unlock bar, and sat stoically at the other end of the dinner table as he and the iPhone whispered sweet nothings to each other,” Katayama writes. “I get it. It’s exciting to be in love with something new.”

“But after several months of this, I started to question whether something was being lost because of my boyfriend’s intense iPhone infatuation. Did we still have stuff to talk about other than new apps and ATT’s shitty cell phone signal in our neighborhood? Was I just hating because I subconsciously want an iPhone, too?”

Their solution: ground rules. No iPhones in bed. No iPhones at the dinner table. On that second count, though—because a little understanding never hurt anyone—“I usually let a short half-minute peek slide every now and then, so he can scratch what itches,” Katayama admits.

(Thanks, @chuckumentary.)

Source: Boing Boing Gadgets

The Pope wants his flock to get online and start blogging. In a recent announcement, Pope Benedict XVI extolled the virtues of the world wide web saying, “Young people in particular, I appeal to you: bear witness to your faith through the digital world!” A recent article in the Smart Set points out that religion’s embrace of emerging technologies extends back further than the current, blog-loving pontiff. The Gutenberg bible was cutting-edge media for its time, and the clothespin, the wheel-driven washing machine, and the circular saw were all invented by the industrious Shaker Christians. (Though their sex-adverse beliefs, rather than their ingenious inventions, were likely what doomed the sect.) Golberg also shows how the story of Noah’s ark could be considered a parable for the benefits of embracing technology, before it’s too late.

Source: The Smart Set

Thirteen-year-old Scott Campbell recently gave up his iPod for a week, opting instead to use his dad’s clunky old Sony Walkman. He writes about his week with the Walkman for the BBC News Magazine, offering quite a few spot-on (and often very funny) observations from the perspective of a digital-music native.

On the plus side, he notes, the Walkman’s enormous play button "engages with a satisfying clunk, unlike the finger tip tap for the iPod." For the most part, however, he finds the Walkman inconvenient (who wouldn’t?), though he is surprisingly gentle, and generally very technical, in his discussions of its shortcomings.

Another notable feature that the iPod has and the Walkman doesn't is "shuffle," where the player selects random tracks to play. Its a function that, on the face of it, the Walkman lacks. But I managed to create an impromptu shuffle feature simply by holding down "rewind" and releasing it randomly—effective, if a little laboured.

I told my dad about my clever idea. His words of warning brought home the difference between the portable music players of today, which don't have moving parts, and the mechanical playback of old. In his words, “Walkmans eat tapes.” So my clumsy clicking could have ended up ruining my favourite tape, leaving me music-less for the rest of the day. 

Source: BBC News Magazine 

Image by nextartist, licensed under Creative Commons.

Bohnam's auction house in New York City will be taking bids on hundreds of tiny treasures from the glory days of NASA's space program. If it weren't for this damn recession, I'd have me one of those lunar rock box thingys. Here's a sampling from the catalog (pdf):

LUNAR ROCK BOX COVER

Lunar rocks were placed in an aluminum storage box that was vacuum sealed on the lunar surface. The crew then placed the box inside the container covers of this type for the journey back to Earth, to prevent lunar dust from spreading inside the Lunar and Command Modules.

$2,000 - 3,000

ASTRONAUT CHARLES DUKE’S SPACE SUIT CUFF CHECKLIST

The cuff checklist used by Lunar Module Pilot Charles Duke, Jr. was exposed directly to the lunar environment for over 12 hours during those exploration periods. Apollo mission planners were well aware of the importance of making every minute productive while astronauts explored the lunar surface. In order to make certain the lunar explorers did not overlook planned tasks, spiralbound cuff checklists were created to provide a detailed script of each task or activity. The crew of Apollo 16 found a special drawing on the next leaf. It features a drooling space-suited astronaut melting away in the arms of a buxom nude woman. The astronaut says: “Happy Birthday Whatever Your Name Is.” This gag illustration continued the tradition started on Apollo 12 with the cuff checklists that had small images of Playboy pinups and Snoopy cartoons.

$200,000 - 300,000

MAN’S FIRST CELESTIAL MEASUREMENTS MADE WHILE ON THE MOON

The navigational chart used by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to determine their exact position on the lunar surface just after their historic lunar landing. From Buzz Aldrin: On the back of the star chart, there is a square velcro patch. It has an overall tint of gray with darker grayish material embedded within. Those gray areas are most likely lunar dust that came off our space suits or from various equipment such as the sample return container.”

$70,000 - 90,000

(Thanks, Hrag Vartanian.)