November 2013 – From the mind of Dan Black

Robo Doctor

I was thinking today about diagnosing a patient and how it would be cool for doctors to wear some sort of Google Glasses type device linked to a computer. The headset could have a heads up display showing the vitals like heart rate, blood pressure, etc. Of course it would also monitor commands given by the doctor and show contraindications where appropriate. For instance a doctor might order a certain drug be administered and the computer would compare that against medications the patient was taking. Then if it found a problem it could vibrate and flash a warning on the screen.
Speaking of voice commands, the doctor could instantly call up symptoms of any disease and ask the computer to compare that to those of the patient. All the while watching the results or progress on his heads up display.
Such a system could also theoretically show a surgeon the appropriate place for an incision.

Even better the system might pull up images from previous surgeries the patient had to compare any changes.
Of course this would be a dream come true for a Dentist. The system automatically overlaying past images over real-time captures. Take that a step further and imagine the patient smiling into a camera at home and having the computer recommend adjustments to braces or signing off that things look good. Remember images coming from across town from a remote camera would appear live in the same headset thing.
Now take it a step further and the headset camera could help a surgeon map out an area of cancerous material, superimposing over it in varying colors to indicate boundaries.

Liquid Healing

Watched a movie last night where a guy is stabbed and it got me to thinking, why couldn’t we create a substance that you could literally pour onto a puncture wound to not only seal it but do rudimentary repairs as well? So the sealing part is simple enough, heck with enough superglue you could close just about any wound, but that’s not what I’m proposing. Instead create a solution with an intelligent matrix that would seek out the disconnected tissue/organs and pull them back together. Okay saying that sounds nuts but think about it for a second. Everything in the body has a unique structure. Kidneys are kidneys not just because of their shape but because of a certain structure on a molecular level. Why couldn’t a compound be created that could flow into a wound and do simple repairs?

If nothing else how about something that would stop the flow of blood. Now there’s a nice segue, maybe the short term answer isn’t to fix the damage but to simply stop the blood loss. The substance in question could simply react with the blood and cause it to instantly coagulate. Of course how do you stop it from simply coagulating ALL of the blood in your system? What would make it stop right inside of the broken/damaged vessels? Maybe the bodies own reaction to such damage could be the inhibitor. The body tries to do essentially the same thing right? Blood vessel is damaged so it moves to close it off if possible. Our wonder sludge could simply trigger on that process and halt stoppage where and when the body directs it. Of course the next request/requirement would be a substance or device that could quickly reverse the effects. So a doctor for instance could simply move around the damaged area and undo the fix as needed, then repair that portion and move on to the next.

Not Cool, Not Hot, But Just Right

Why is it that home temperatures seem to be at odds with the surrounding weather and most of the time counter intuitively? Example; It’s a nice October day here in Arizona it’s about 80 degrees during the day which means the AC runs to keep my house at around 76. No big deal, but then at night it starts cooling off dramatically and the outside temperature quickly plummets to around 60. But not my house, instead it starts shedding all of the residual heat it built up from being baked by the sun all day and takes another 4 hours to normalize.

My point is this, why don’t homes have a system where they automatically detect the outside temperature and somehow vent the internal air and replace it with the outside air to bring the temperature either down or up as one desires? To me this could be as simple as have air transfer points high and low on the structure for air transfer.

On a side but related note, if the ground remains an almost constant fixed temperature why couldn’t we simply sink metal rods deep into the ground and have them come up in the walls of the house? Wouldn’t these rods at as a natural heating/cooling system of sorts?

Speaking of cooling, everyone knows things under shade are about 10-15 degrees cooler, so why not build giant tarp type shades over homes? Wouldn’t this in effect cool them down naturally? Sure it would look funny as heck but not once they got their first electric bill in summer and realized it saved them 20% or more.