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You're listening to Computer America. Hello, and welcome everyone into the Computer
America Show. We are the nation's longest running, Nashally syndicated radio talk show
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upon us, and lais gentlemen. We're happy to be here with you,
and we are happy to be here with you. With Ralph Bond. He
is our science and tech trends correspondent. He handles everything cutting edge, bleeding
edge, and leis gentlemen. You know, really a good variety of everything
from construction, medical, so on and so forth, we'll get into more
of what he does. But safe to say, hey, it's a great
high note to kind of end the week on and go into this. So
with that being said, Computer America dot Com that's real find everything including passion
shows, future show show notes, articles, reviews, videos, stuff like
that, and lay Jeman. With that being said, let's go ahead and
just bring Ralph on and we'll talk a little bit and then get into the
stories. So, as I said before, a longtime Computer America contributor and
of course our science and Tech Trends correspondent. Now, Ralph, welcome back
onto the program. How you doing. I'm doing great, and it's going
to be a real fun, mixed bag of stories this week. And again,
as you alluded to folks, you're going to leave the show today feeling
positive and encouraged about the future of humanity thanks to science and technology. So
that's part of what Ben and I do. We leave you feeling better than
you might be feeling at the beginning of the show given this week's news cycle.
Absolutely, and so with that, I think, will you kind of
jump into story number one. But Ralph, hope that you're doing well and
everyone out there is doing well as well, you know, of course,
just to give a little shout out to you know, spend some time in
Texas recently with family and stuff like that, and good luck to everyone out
there in Texas. I know, tornadoes or nothing new and tornado alley,
but still, you know, stuff like that. We haven't really come up
with a magical technology solution to tornadoes. But maybe one day, you know,
we'll figure out all of our problems with technology. But until then,
we have a few solutions for you in today's stories. So Ralph, I
think straight number one is a great way to you know, kind of uplift
people, because you're going to get a lot of uplift with what you can
make with this kind of thing. There you go, my pun for the
morning. There you go. And before we jump in, just to remind
everybody every one of the stories we have here. I look for stories in
the community of articles about technology and science. We put together show notes.
So come out to computer america dot com. Find the Ralph Bond tab at
the top of the page. You're going to find the show notes at a
link to the video and all that good stuff. And if you want to
die burnt to any one of these stories. You can do that so easily
through the show notes. So once again Computer America dot com and look for
the Ralph Bond tab at the top. So with that said, first story,
So every once in a while we do avionics or aviation technology news,
and this one really caught my eye. Headline here first fully three D printed
jet engine showcases designing for additive manufacturing breakthrough. There's a mouthful there, but
we'll get it done and explain everything. And I saw this article in Forbes,
a story by Carolyn schwar and we've got the link to the show or
pardon me, that linked to the article of course. Also I have a
link to the company that developed this, their link and their press release if
you will on this topic, and if you have the show notes, if
you're watching the video here, you can see an image of this amazing three
D printed jet engine. It's a mini jet engine cut in have to illustrate
the inside, so it doesn't look like those normally. It's virtually cut in
half so you can see the internal components. So let's jump into this a
little bit of background today micro turbine, so we're talking about small scale jet
engines. Microturbine engines require complex assembly processes involving many expensive parts, which puts
customers directly in the crosshairs these days of supply chain dependencies, limited availability of
materials and so forth, and their manufacturers maintaining the right employee expertise to complete
the assembly. So this is a non trivial kind of process to make little
jet engines. Okay, So to overcome these challenges. Recently, Boston based
software company PTC displayed a prototype and I want to stress proof of concept fully
three D printed in one piece let that sink in fully three D printed in
one piece microturbine jet engine at its company product launch event. It was the
middle part of last month, so not that long ago. The microturbine engine
in weighs about eight pounds and is three D printed as a single component all
at once, including all rotating and stationary parts. And frankly been I just
can't figure out how they did this, but that's what they say they've done.
It's just a blind blowing Yeah. The the the cross sections and the
pictures that you know that of course can be in the show's really really emphasized
just how like I guess some people think of three D printing. They kind
of think of like you know, little figurings, like you know, the
little the little army soldiers, and it kind of goes layer by layer up
this as holds as scaffolding and has you know, like you said, rotating
parts. I don't know how they do. It's incredible, it is.
It's it's a triumph of three D printing, to say the least. So
a little more background. A typical micro turbine jet engine contains upwards to thirty
three parts that are normally individually machine and then assembled. Okay, that makes
sense. Although the PTC that again is an aim of the company that did
this. That although the PTC prototype three D printed micro turbine engine looks solid
from the outside, inside our lattice structures to minimize weight and channels to enable
airflow and fuel flow. And again you just showed the cutaway show view rather
of this engine. And then here's a quote from Steve dirty And the PTC's
chief technology officer. He said, there are there really are no other components
required for this engine to function other than the housing. Everything else from the
bearings to the seal to the cooling is designed in And again I just I
would love to see this thing in person. I would love to see it
just believe it's even realized. I would love to see a time lapse,
because these things are they're not very fast. But I'm sure that even just
three you know, three D printing this thing, even if it takes a
week, you know, is still probably better preferable to machining thirty three different
parts. Yeah, but here is a real kind of reality check. Lots
of excitement here, but this is kind of interesting. PTC says this additively
printed engine would would fire up like any other micro turbine engine, although it
hasn't actually been tested in this way now. This is as of a publication
a few weeks ago, so maybe they have by now. But again I
just want to stress this, this is a proof of concept, Okay,
So as a non commercial research project, PTC does not plan to sell this
particular engine, which is curious also, but there is no shortage of companies
looking to make compact turbines more affordable for applications such as lighter, moderate sized
unmanned aerial vehicles. And if you think of what's going on in the war
in Ukraine right now, boy, unmanned aerial vehicles or the name of the
game. So a monolithic three D printed a turbine engine offers the potential to
dramatically bring down costs, speed up production, and introduce new efficiencies not possible
with traditional manufactured jet turbine engines. And here's something I really like. Also
with three D printing, also called of course additive manufacturing, there's no tooling
required for molding or machining parts. It eliminates the need to weld or join
parts, which can introduce weakness. And this part band I think is really
interesting. And there's also the possibility of on demand manufacturing on site since there's
no need to ship any components from elsewhere or have skilled labor on hand to
assemble those said components. Think about a war situation, Think about Ukraine.
What if they could on site manufacture the little turbine jet motors they need engines
rather for their drones or something like that. Right, So this part really
blew my mind, the idea of you could do things on demand on site.
And the engine took thirty you talk about time laps. The engine took
thirteen hours to print on a metal laser powder bed fusion three D printer that's
a mouthful from a company called EOS and it happens to be the Model three
hundred. I look that up. It's kind of interesting and it uses a
material metal material called inconel, and I hope I'm saying that right. I
n conel and I thought I got to know more about that. What's that?
So Inconel is an extremely strong and heat resistant metal that's very difficult to
machine. So in traditional manufacturing it's often only used for exhaust parts of a
turbine engine. But these guys were using this material to three D print this
little engine. Now, other manufacturers, including California based Sierra Turbines, are
also in pursuit of the monolithic three D printed economical and efficient micro turbine jet
engine. So I want to qualify the PTC is not the only company on
earth thinking this is an interesting possibility. These guys, Sierra Turbines, and
there's a link to them as well in the show notes if you want to
learn more about them, are also on the same path to achieve this as
well. So an interesting development in avionics or aviation technology. Yeah. I
one of my favorite, um, you know, kind of guests that we
had on the show a while ago that really highlighted the possibilities of this um.
Her name was Bathsheba and she did she did artwork. She did three
D mathematically inspired artwork and she uses three D printing to kind of get it
done. And Ralph, she really liked the three D printing because she was
able to print interconnected parts that are found in you know, kind of math
concepts and things like that that do not naturally occur. So like you know,
normally if you put them together you have like a weld spot you have
to put you know, cut one put them together and linking together. She
was able to create her art all interconnected with no cuts, no welding,
no no anything, so gave it a much more finished look. And I
guess this is just taking it to the nth degree because obviously the precision you
need for jet engines is much more, but it's still very very h it's
neat we can do because you you you couldn't do this before, and I
guess the tolerances for I was just looking at EOS, the people that do
the three D printing. I was looking at their their m their YouTube channel
and which is all the videos. I was kind of poking through and one
of them was for uh like NASA and and uh you know kind of space,
you know, kind of stuff where tolerances have to be very very fine.
So uh, it's it you know, great that it's faster, cheaper,
and easier, but it's also great that you know you're going to get
even better precision than what you could get before. So it's just a win
win win all around. So I agree, I agree, And again I
want to stress that little factor of making it possible on demand, on site
to make a turbine a little turbine jet engine is profound. I mean,
this kind of wildly democratizes something that before was very much limited to a few
handful of companies that had that expertise. So something to think about there.
It's an interesting development. Yeah, And obviously the the the equipment itself is
still you know, kind of prohibitive for individuals, but you know, and
again, how how many how many individuals do you want printing jets? But
for you know, for for countries, for you know, even larger companies.
Uh yeah, in military having that capability and Ralph, I've just gotta
say that being able to share the plans, you know, you you worked
with oDesk for a long time and you know kind of CAD and you know,
computer aided design. Uh. Once someone put in the work and you
know, artists of all kinds deserve you know, kind of royalties and all
that kind of thing. But still you make it one and CAD and then
you uh, you know, you can print it a million times like that.
That's a great part. So anyone with a plan, anyone with the
machine, can suddenly come out with something very very cool. That that was
always the dream of three D printing is that you put the manufacturing in everybody's
hands, not just you know, a few. So yeah, this further
highlights set. So yeah, it's great. So story and again the pictures
are wild. You gotta go check this out. Story number one, story
number two, and this hits close uh close to home for you. And
uh yeah another story about Intel. And you know, with with as much
as they've been, uh, I've been following them. They were of course
huge supports of the show, uh you know, a couple of years ago
and they've since I've been trying to pivot. You know, they were they
were the industry leader and still are the industry leader, you know. By
miles. But they've definitely been working on research and development in the past couple
of years. That's been their thing, you know, putting out cutting edge
products. They still do that, but trying to do more research stuff has
really been Intel's focused the past couple of years. And story number two kind
of highlights that it's not just about making your computer a little bit faster,
it's you know, all parts of the technology sphere have an influence from Intel.
So story yeah, yeah, Story number two is fun and again,
as you alluded to, this has a very personal kind of alma maud or
heart string connection for me because I spent fourteen years, fourteen wonderful years with
Intel Corporation here in Oregon, and we could ride a bike to the location
where this research is going on at the Hillsboro, Oregon But let's get the
story. Let's get the headline here. So potential game changer in a Hillsboro,
Oregon lab, Intel is immersing data center computers in fluids that dissipate heat
more effectively than air cooling. And I got from our local Portland, Oregon
based newspaper, The Oregon in a story by Mike Rogeaway, and we've got
the link and images and all that good stuff, and the show notes again
come out to Computer America dot com for that. And even before we jump
into this, Ben, I want to stress to the audience what we're not.
We're not talking about the world's first ever attempt to liquid cool computer systems.
No, but it's a little twist on that story that reflects some very
good research that Intel's doing this, trying to make this more practical, safer,
and so on. So I'm kind of given away the punchline, but
let's just dive into this. So a little bit of background first though.
Data centers, This is an amazing statistic. Data centers in the United States
account for approximately two percent of total US electricity consumption. Two percent. Now,
that may not out sound like a lot, but think about it,
that's a lot. Yeah. Well yeah, and while data center cooling can
account for up to forty percent of data center energy use overall. So this
is kind of the problem, right Pat Kelsinger and everybody at Intel right now
is going, wait a minute, that's not acceptable for a long term future.
And by the way, another thing about Hillsboro, Oregon. We are
just this incredible complex society of data centers. There's a bunch of data centers
right I could walk to them from my house right now. So this is
a real important story for me personally and all of my neighbors anyway. Side
note how our data centers typically kept cool. Data centers use large amounts of
water for their cooling system, which includes cooling towers, chillers, pumps,
piping, heat exchange and condensers, and computer room air conditioner units of course,
and there's a source there in the data show notes to give you all
the background if you want to dive deeper. In fact, the cooling systems
in a data center can use as much electricity as the computers themselves, so
it's a huge, huge energy drain. Brow to find a new way to
dramatically cut the cost of cooling data centers, Intel is experimenting. So this
is research with submerging data center computers in a bath of synthetic oil that doesn't
conduct electricity. Now, time out, This is not the world's first time
liquid has been used for cooling. But this is the twist here, this
synthetic oil, and we'll get into this here a little more. By not
conducting electricity, the bath of synthetic oil does not cause the computers to shore
it out. They thrive, in fact, because the fluid absorbs the heat
from the computers much better than the air does. Now a little historic note.
This was really fun because and this is where I add value to these
articles. Okay, this is my little contribution because normally I'm just picking up
articles and just reflecting them back. But the historic note here is immersion cooling
has been around since the nineteenth century, long before computers, when non conductive
fluids were used to cool early electrical transformers and ben you know this, this
is something you know supercomputers starting way back in the nineteen sixties used immersion cooling
as far back as the nineteen sixties, but the technology remained, of course,
highly specialized. Now computers can operate in a variety of non conductive fluids
whose properties have various advantages and disadvantages for data center operations. So reality check,
as I said before, we're not talking about. What we're not talking
about is the world's first implementation of immersion cooling for data centers. Instead,
the key to this news story and this work by Intel is the development by
Intel of a safer immersion fluid alternative to current solutions in use today, and
let me explain. For example, one category of immersion cooling today employs liquids
that boil from heat, cool on a coil, and then rain back into
a tank when they return to a liquid state. And frankly, this is
a very efficient way to cool computers. But some of the fluids best suited
for this purpose are so called forever chemicals also known as per and polyfluorinated substances
the acronym pfas, which unfortunately, ding ding ding, have potentially harmful health
effects and comfort and can persist in nature for many years. They don't degrade
very quickly at all. Right, So a little side note more about this
because I had to, I had to find out way to know one of
this pfas stuff. So per and polychlorinated substances are a group of chemicals used
to make fluoropolymer coatings and products that resist heat, oil stains, grease,
and water. Fluoropolymer coatings can be used in a variety of products. And
I have a link here to the CDC website describing and explaining what these are
all about. So these guys are worked great, They're kind of gives for
the environment, it's kind of like the stories they hear of like ancient Rome,
and you know nowadays it's like, oh, they had lead water pipes.
How innovative. Nowadays you're like, that's really bad. So, you
know, just the more that we learned about these chemicals, the better.
It's true. That's true. My daughter and son in law's house built in
nineteen forty eight in Portland, Oregon. They had to have all the Yeah,
you're right, you don't have to go back to ancient room for that.
Yeah, no, they had to have them all replaced. Of course.
Anyway, so back to the story. In their Hillsboro, Oregon lab,
Intel's engineers are using less hazardous liquids. These are petrochemicals made by companies
like Exxon and Chevron with properties analogous to motor oil. Now, a little
personal stop time out here for a second. It is very encouraging. It's
a step forward. It's good. But unfortunately we're still talking about something derived
from fossil fuels. But maybe they can get a plant based version someday,
who knows. We'll see the clear fluid in question. The clear fluid in
question looks like water flowing gently through the tank that holds the servers pumped up
from underneath and then spilling over the top like an infinity pool for cooling before
cycling back through the tank. And then you're going to love this. With
filtering, Intel says the chemicals it chooses can cool computers for fifteen years without
having to be replaced. Fifteen years. Okay, Well, a little concluding
reality check here, as skeptics pardon me, caution that it may be difficult
or prohibitively expensive to overhaul existing data centers to adapt to liquid cooling, but
advocates of the shift, including Intel, say a transition is imperative to accommodate
data centers growing thirst for power and the growing development of more and more data
centers. So interesting development. Yeah, it's interesting. And I was trying
to reinargle quick that Ralph flake. Yeah it's made with petrical um, with
petro chemicals. But I'm also curious because you know, just like you said,
fifteen years before you have to replace that. And I'm trying to think
of like, you know, while we know that drilling and mining and all
that stuff is bad for the environment, don't get me wrong. Uh,
you know, most places we recycle like car fluid or car oil. You
know, we if we're not directly burning it, there are ways to recycle
it, capture it, and you know, make it not you know,
as bad for the environment this being fifteen years, maybe even find some way
to then you know, kind of process it again and you know, make
it good for another fifteen years. Uh. You know it's it's still a
step in the right direction, like you said, and it's still not you
know, it's not as bad as other as other chemicals. All that aside,
I gotta say, this is such a you know, this is going
to help it in a lot more ways. I know, forty percent for
the cooling route, but also think that data centers, like if you've ever
seen engineers who kind of work in them, they have to wear you know,
the covers over there, you know, kind of like hair nuts over
their heads. I have to wear boot covers over their boots so they don't
track dirt in. They're almost uh they're not as bad as like NASA clean
rooms when they're you know, designing stuff for space, but they're they're darn
close because you know, normally they use big old vans that will draw air
in. And if you can minimize the amount of dirt, you minimize the
amount of cleaning, you minimize the amount of you know, kind of maintenance
these things have. So by taking it liquid and you know immersion, you
are taking out the need for you know, potential cleaning hazards and smoke and
other air debris that may get into these these systems as well, because if
it's a completely closed loop, that's just going to be better for everything.
So yeah, this is a great win. And Ralph, I gotta say
that I don't think data centers are really going out of style anytime soon.
If anything, we're going to be more and more and more of them as
more of our lives go online. So you know, heyt of the of
the entire electrical cost of these data centers is a huge, huge win for
the environment, no matter which way you cut it. So very uplifting story
and very cool because hey, you know we're alph you know, data centers
today. Maybe one day we'll buy just these these boxes that will have our
computer of submerged and these liquids as well, you know, just so we
get it at home. Maybe maybe one d Yeah, So and Ben one
last parting comment sort of alluded to it a little bit at the beginning of
this story. Folks, if you think Intel is just making the chips that
are you know, the brain chip if you will, inside your laptop,
think again. Intel has an immense research organization. When I joined Intel in
nineteen ninety three and moved to Hillsboro, Oregon, I was so fortunate.
I was the technology press rep presentative for the Intel Architecture Labs, which is
kind of think of it like the M I T or the Bell Labs of
Intel. And there's a litany of amazing technologies that Intel had very important influence
on. Note one comes to mind USB. I mean, there's so many
things that we take for granted that you find out, oh Intel was involved
with this, or oh Intel co collaborated this, or Intel invented this technology.
So if you're interested, go out and learn more about the research part
of Intel Corporation. It's a fascinating and very important historic story. Yes,
there's lots of just oh, another CPU, but there's also a lot of
oh they created you know, kind of the facial scan that we all enjoy
to unlock our computers, you know, for instance, stuff like that.
You know, Intel definitely pioneered a lot of it. So with that being
said, story number two very very cool, and well, very very well.
I guess cool now because it's not as warm. Story number three is
going to go over to sculptures, and this is really cool, you know,
kind of what was old is new again. And I don't know,
just hey, I guess we're we're mixing AI and I'm assuming three D printing
or something of the nature. But anyways, AI sculptures. What what's happening
here? Yeah, this is fine. I got this from techexplore dot com.
There was no author associated with the story, but anyway, the headline
here is Artificial Intelligence sculpture based on the works of five art masters on display
at Stockholm's National Museum. And you know, there's so much controversy about the
writers Guild in our country on strike and part of their their grievance or concern
as AI taking the place in writing scripts and so forth. And there's so
much concern in the art world, music world, you name it, right,
about AI being this this scary thing that's gonna put people out of work
and so forth. So you could add a little controversy to this story.
On the other hand, it's so fascinating, I thought, and I wanted
to share it with everybody. And if you have the show notes or you're
watching the video, you can see the sculpture we're talking about. So let's
get into this story here. Images of the works of five master sculptors,
including Michelangelo and Rodan and Takamura, have been used by Swedish machine engineering group
a company called Sandvic san d Vik, to train an artificial intelligence system to
design a sculpture they named the Impossible sculpture, now on display at Stockholm's National
Museum of Science and Technology. Now the Impossible it's called the Impossible statute.
Why the impossible name for this statue relates to the fact that it represents a
virtual collaboration or synthesis of the styles of five deceased master sculptors, and we'll
get into that a little more in detail here. The stainless steel statue depicts
an a thank you, stumble over that word person with the lower half of
the body covered by a swath of material, holding a bronze globe in one
hand. And I don't I don't know. I think it's more male looking
to me than just kind of equal male female. But yeah, I definitely
wouldn't call it and and let me pull it the picture here right here,
but that definitely looks more male to me. Yeah, and the proportions aren't
exactly I would say really human either. Don't get me wrong. I'm going
to the gym and I've been working out, but like to have a back
like that, you know, you would take a incredible work out. But
still it's a very very and ralph. I guess like androgens. Um.
I guess they're talking about the face, which you can vaguely see here on
the picture. U. The face is definitely neither really male or female,
and of course the hair kind of goes down to the shoulders. Everything else
though it I mean vaguely human, I guess is why they say, and
yes, yeah it's and Again, if you're just listening to us in a
podcast, come out to computer America america dot com, get the show notes.
Then you can see the picture and get the link and see what we're
talking about. But anyway, the statue measures one hundred and fifty centimeters that's
four feet eleven inches tall and weighs five hundred kilograms, which is one thousand
or one hundred pounds. So this is a beast. And the idea behind
this was what if. It's a great what if scenario? What if we
took the styles of five famous sculptors who made their mark on their era.
Again we mentioned Michelangelo or Michelangelo if you prefer, August Rodana, Kathy Kolowitz,
Kotaro Takamura, and AUGUSTA Savage or Savage a US sculptor. So they
all these folks are long gone, and sometimes not too terribly long gone,
but nonetheless all deceased. And they said, what if we took their styles
and synthesize them through artificial intelligence. And one to note the author makes is
that the pscular body inspired by Michaelangelo, in the hand holding the globe inspired
by Takamura. So again it's again it's the synthesis. So Vix engineers trained
the artificial intelligence by feeding it a slew of images of sculptures created by the
five artists in question. The software then proposed several images in two D which
it believed reflected key aspects from each of the artists in question. As one
of the Sandvic Machine Engineering Group team members noted, in the end, we
had two D images of the sculpture in which we could see the different masters
reflected. Then we put these two D images into three D modeling. Well,
I went out to their website. Their website deviated from the article in
question and started saying, you know, how has this done? Who let
them tell me more about this Sandvic bunch and than how they did this.
So the statue was fabricated by Sandvic, which is a global high tech engineering
group based in Stockholm, Sweden, and the company's announcement Sandvis world leading metal
cutting tools. This is what they do and expertise are used in a wide
range of industries from aerospace to general engineering, automotive and medical industry. The
impossible statue was made possible through an innovative use of AI modeling and the latest
cutting edge manufacturing solutions. It's crafted from stainless steel, and the complexity and
precision required to make the statue a reality put Sandvis advanced digital manufacturing solutions and
cutting tools to the test. This is what they wanted to do. They
wanted to show the world this extreme example of what their technology and solutions could
do. And for more on how it's made, I've got a link in
the show notes. You can really get into that a combination of different AI
programs resulted in a three D mesh model. The mesh consisted of nine million
polygons. Wow. The mesh model was then converted into a solid model that
the team's computerated design and computerated manufacturing programs could work with. After this conversion
was achieved, the team started programming the CNC machines used using mastercam software Okay
winning a time out. CNC stands for computer numerical control, and these machines
play an important role in the manufacturing industry these days, as one of the
developers from Sandvik noted, originally we planned to make it in one piece,
but we realized the size made it impossible. We had to adapt the parts
to fit our CNC machines, so we sectioned the model into seventeen components.
Each of these had to be designed and programmed, along with interfaces between them.
This is a triumph of computerated manufacturing and CNC and all the rest of
It's a pretty great story on many levels. But again their motivation was to
show the world how sophisticated their technology is, and it's a great, uh
you know, kind of mix and to throw AI, not just to throw
a because they can, but Um, Ralph I had like, this is
a very I guess, kind of like harmless way to use AI. Like
it's no one who's lived, really, you know, a couple of people
died, you know, about eighty eighty ninety years ago. But to to
resurrect their style using artificial intelligence and then come up with the statue that you
know they're able to to then print, I mean, it's it's very cool.
Um. I don't see sculptures going out of business anytime soon, or
artists who you know kind of woudraw these things, but if they needed something
to really highlight how good their uh, their tools are, this was a
very innovative use of AI to you know, highlight that. So I guess
you know, Ralph like when we talk about AI stories, it's like,
well that's kind of sketchy, but not this. This is a good use
of AI and definitely a very cool use of their technology. Yeah, and
Ben, I'll pick up on that a little bit too. I thought to
myself, I guess you could say the ethics of this again, think about
the writers guilds concerned about musicians concerns if they had if they had a sculpture
and just said, we're going to look at Michelangelo and we're just gonna,
you know, show the AI a whole bunch of Michelangelo sculptures and make a
fake Michelangelo or a pseudo Michelangelo's statute. That's going to fool everybody. Experts
would look at it and say where did you find this MICHELI. That could
be kind of sketchy on the ethical edge. But again, what they did
here, who I thought was fun and okay, if you want to say
that is saying, let's take five deceased master sculptures. Let's show the AI
images of all of their works and see have fun and see what. So
nobody's trying to tell you this is a Michelangelo sculpture or a dance sculpture.
It's more the synthesis. And I think this is where I can be really
cool and fun in the world of the arts and not be a violation of
somebody's will, be legitimate works or whatever. But you get pressure. They're
not putting, you know, everything Michelangelo ever created into one machine and saying,
you know, make me a new Michelangelo. Now they're they're blending a
little bit of everything, which you know, that's what humans do. That
that's what people do, and and that's where the creativity kind of comes from.
Again, you know, no one's losing their job over this one.
But the finished statue looks amazing, so definitely go check if that is fun.
Yeah, so story number four, Ralph, let's go ahead and skip
on down to, you know, as as is your tradition, a little
bit of medical technology. So starting on before yes, yes, yes,
yes, this is great. Ben. We like to end each Friday segment
technology trends and science trends and so forth with usually not always something from the
world of medicine. And this is so touches all of our lives and this
story certainly touched my life. I very recently had an ultrasound for just a
routine Thank goodness, it wasn't scary. But the headline here is new wearable
Wait a minute, new wearable ultrasound system can monitor deep tissues, folks,
if you need to refresh ultrasound. The classic thing the woman is lying on
the table, she's pregnant, and they put the gel on her tummy and
they take the little wand and they go that's ultrasound. Okay, So immediately
you know we're talking about, but you know that that's a big piece of
equipment, right and in the doctor's office or in the hospital or in the
er. We're talking about a wearable ultrasound system that's been developed that can monitor
deep tissues. Got this from me gadget dot com, which if you're if
you're into medical technology, this is a wonderful website story by Con Hastings and
Ben you and I've done stories from him many many times over the last few
years. Again, come out to computermeric dot com. Get the show notes.
We've up the link and there's also a link to the research team's paper
they published, which was titled a fully integrated wearable ultrasound system to monitor deep
tissues in moving subjects. Not only the saying wearable, but that moving subjects
will get into this. The show notes have some great images. Of course,
they had this groovy male model showing off this thing. I think that
would have just used a more regular normal person, but anyway, shows what
this thing is like and shows its flexibility and so forth. Well, let's
get a little background. Ultrasound imaging or sonography, uses high frequency sound waves
to view inside the body. Because ultrasound images are captured in real time.
They can also show movement of the body's internal organs as well as blood flowing
through blood vessels. And I've got the FDA government site source there for that.
If you want to learn more. Now here's the story. Researchers at
the University of California, San Diego have created a wearable ultrasound system that can
monitor deep tissues as far as sixteen point five centimeters or six and a half
inches deep in the body wow below the surface of the body, and the
device is flexible, allowing good skin contact and comfort for the user during use.
And the team employed a machine learning algorithm ding ding ding AI there ego.
The team employed a machine learning algorithm to reduce the noise associated with movement.
So it's you know, well, usually when you have an ultrasound like
my recent ultrasound, or every woman listening to this who's been pregnant and had
an ultimately you're supposed to lie still while they move the wand over you and
so on and over. The My ultrasound was the same way. So the
team employed a machine learning algorithm to reduce the noise associated with movement, helping
to obtain reliable readings while the user goes about their day. So we're talking
about an opportunity periodically or continuously monitor while you're wearing this thing and live in
your life. Because that's yeah, I'm not the most familiar with with how
exactly it works, but I'm guessing it's kind of like a cat scan something
like that, where it takes like a little slices of an image and then
you put all those images together to get more of a you know, more
of a three D picture than you would if you just kind of use that
I'm assuming or maybe it's more like a big blank I really don't kind I
apologize that. Yeah, if you think about it's the sound bouncing, bouncing,
bouncing constantly off of the of the matter inside your body, right and
it's bouncing back, and you're just getting like a movie, a continuous movie.
Think of it's sort of kind of like a colonoscopy or endoscopic thing where
you have a camera that goes down the I got you, Okay, but
it's just like a movie. Okay. So that's where the movement would really
hinder it, because you know, it'd be like kind of watching like a
shaky cell phone video. It's not at all. But then of course you
see, like the stabilizing cell video, it's much better. Okay, that
makes sense. I think you're kind of sort of analogous to the stabilization technology
to develop for video cameras which transform the cinema world and elsewhere. Right.
So this so again, it can work with movement, obtaining reliable readings while
the user goes about their normal life. The sensor can evaluate cardiovascular function in
motion. That's the key. This is important as abnormal values of blood pressure
and cardiac output at rest or during exercise are hallmarks of heart failure. So
time out. As a cardiac patient myself, I totally get this. It's
one thing to lie down still in the doctor's office or the er or the
hospital and have a reading of your heart, blood pressure and so forth.
It's another thing to what's what's going on when I'm moving around, when I'm
walking or exercising, or just even sitting here talking to you. Medical medical
diagnostics would like to have the total picture, and that's that. This wearable
ultrasound device gives them the opportunity to have something they haven't really had before,
wearable ultrasound that can give me a total picture of what's going on with roush's
hard or you're hard, or whatever the case may be. So the deep
tissue functionality and twelve hour battery life mean that the wearable is suitable to monitor
a variety of physiological parameters including cardiac output, blood pressure, and heart rate.
And for healthy populations, people who are chronic health the issue people,
but just everybody. The new University of California, San Diego device can measure
cardiovascular responses to exercise in real time and thus provide insights into the actual workout
intensity exerted by each individual person, which can guide the formation of personalized training
plans. This is profoundly important potentially for physical therapy and other things of this
nature, right or even for physical activity nuts nuts, you know, real
enthusiasts who someday might have a smartphone app that's talking to this thing and it's
on their chest and showing them, you know, really interesting information about what's
going on and with their heart. For example, during exercise. I'm sure
that if you know, if you did suffer some kind of cardiac issue,
and if you're an athlete, you know, the person wants to get back
to it as fast as they can doctors saying, probably don't do any exercise
for you know, a year plus and let your body heal, um,
you know, and finding kind of a middle ground ralfe of you know,
how much is too much and then you know, kind of backing away from
that line, but still getting the exercise that the body needs. Uh,
you know, very important. Yeah. I can't stress enough how profound this
story is in its possibilities for monitoring real time with no restrictions. It's just
gotta love it anyway. Fun they've kind of wrapped this up. A little
fun fact about this story, the author put forth the researchers had originally intended
to design a blood pressure monitor. That's it blood pressure, okay, but
realized but they realized the technology may have greater functionality, and it sure does,
including monitoring cardiac output, arterial stiffness. This is something that we kind
of don't think about a lot. But that's a biggie volume of exhalation of
air from the lungs and more, all of which are essential parameters for daily
healthcare, in daily healthcare, pardon me, or in hospital monitoring. Wow,
I just I love it. It's such a great upbeat way to end
today's show. I'm so curious and clearly this thing could do blood pressure as
well as other monitoring. Like you can see the technology there, you know,
in the article, you can see the pictures. It's uh, I
would say, not not that much bigger than the first thing comes to my
mind is like a game Boy cartridge. But what would be a better uh,
like about half the size of like a cell phone, uh, you
know, on this person's chest. And Ralph, I'm kind of curious,
Like you know, Apple has been making a lot of inroads with the Apple
Watch into continuous monitoring patients, you know, so that when you go to
your doctor, your doctor has you know, a thirty day, sixty day
kind of health record of you, not just like you said, when you're
in the doctor and they do measurements in that kind of thing instead of spot
checking, they have like a full overview. Ralph, I'm curious if whatever
technologies in here may one day make it into either our cell phones, you
know kind of have the cell phone and you know, be able to kind
of take this or exactly or your smart watch. And Ralph, imagine if
you could take your smart watch off your wrist and kind of hold it up
to your chest and you know, kind of check for you know, either
rhythmia or blood pressure or maybe even you know, any of these issues that
this article already talked about. I'm wondering if this can be cheaply and safely
integrated into a fitness watch or even even not every fitness watch may be very
specialized for you know, outpatients, smart watches that could then double as that
technology at home. A lot of fun ideas. Oh yeah, absolutely,
or I think probably more likely for the near term if this goes on and
further development, would be a little patch that you would comfortably and that's what
they keep emphasizing this as comfortable, flexible, and so forth that you do
wear on your chest. And but but to your point, it's communicating with
your smart watch or communicating with your smartphone. And then what I just just
to personalized this for a moment, not recently, I finished two weeks my
cardiologist and I have a blood pressure machine at home, taking twice a day,
different times of the day, blood pressure readings and so forth, and
then had to document it in a little word documents over and then I sent
it to him after two weeks. Wouldn't it be neat if I had this
device, this flexible thing on my chest, it's linked to my smartphone,
it's documenting everything continuously, and my cardiologists could pop in at any time and
kind of get a like a graph of showing, you know, what's going
on with Ralph's heart over this period of time or at any time. Or
I could provide the cardiologists with an output report, all online, all on
the cloud. I mean, that's that sort of thing. Just again,
because I've been a heart patient for so many years, the implications of this
technology for that field are absolutely incredible. Little stuff and and and even with
that aside, that's the next level of healthcare is Ralph, you start managing
by exception, which means that if let's say Ralph's readings are out of line
or they're trending upward, then you know, the doctor wouldn't even have noticed
it. The computer would go, hey, doctor, check out, Ralph.
He's you know, things are getting a little a little wonky, and
you'd get care immediately, faster and better. And ladies and gentlemen, everyone
is going to benefit from little innovations like this over time. So Ralph,
I want to thank you for turning us on to these, this story and
all the others if you want any of them, Computer america dot com,
Ralph's website, and of course our tab over at computer america dot com will
have all of Ralph's segments. Until next time, have a great day,
Thank you so much, catch next time by everyone.