Declining science funding in the US
Posted in Uncategorized
Pixy for easy Arduino machine vision
Posted in Hardware
Carnegie Mellon is a magical place for robotics, and their CMUcam, an open source hardware project for machine vision, has recently culminated in Pixy. This is a wildly funded Kickstarter project (funded…
Nature subscriptions are cheap right now
Posted in Tips
You just pay the impact factor right now for a subscription to Nature.
Converting them all into USD for comparison:
US: $38 (19% of the usual price)
Europe: $51 (18% of the usual price)
UK and…
Touchscreen display for Arduino and more
Posted in Hardware
4D Systems sells screens and touchscreens for Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and other systems. Importantly, the code is portable (mentioned in the video above), they have good support, and the hardware plugs right into the boards. It doesn’t get much easier than this. They have resellers…
Actually, a pretty good sale
This isn’t an advertisement. I wasn’t asked to post this. I just want to let you all know in case it’s useful. Newport is having a sale on optics and many of the discounts…
X-ray crystallography of cookies
Posted in Uncategorized
This is perhaps the most exhilarating patent I’ve ever read:
Search for patent 4455333 at this link.
Here’s a excerpt:
When the cookie dough enters the oven, the water in the dough is saturated with sugar and appears to be evenly distributed throughout the dough. As the water temperature…
Pulsed laser power part 2
Posted in Tips
In a previous post, we discussed how peak power is computed. Although Ti:Sapph laser manufacturers typically quote the average power, peak power is the more relevant quantity for two photon excitation. Here’s a graph…
Optogenetics scattering iOS app
Posted in Software
Here’s an iOS app which is basically a scattering calculator to help plan optogenetics experiments. There are also some plates from a brain atlas.
(via the OpenOptogenetics blog)
…
Waterloo graphics for MATLAB
Posted in Software
Undocumented MATLAB has another post on improving graphics in MATLAB (previously). Waterloo is an easy-to-install package that generates nice graphics using Java. It can be used with MATLAB, R, and other software.
…
GNOOM for spherical treadmill VR
Posted in Software
Mice can learn to navigate virtual reality environments using a spherical treadmill, and this behavior drives place cell and grid cell activity.
Christoph Schmidt-Hieber has started uploading his code to Google….
Superhydrophobic spray-on coating now available
Neverwet is now available for about $20.
This is a spray-on, 2-part superhydrophobic coating (translucent when dry). What would it be useful for in a lab? For starters, spraying it on anything that needs to be cleaned regularly might make it easier to clean. Also, it can…
Local cross corr images
Posted in Software
One key step in analyzing data form calcium imaging experiments is segmentation (i.e., drawing regions of interest, ROIs). There have…