Welcome to the latest installment of my bi-weekly newsletter, covering some of my favorite new developments in the fields of biotech, data science, engineering, and more. If this is your first issue, it's great to have you! For everyone else, thanks for coming back!
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Notes
I didn’t take a close look at the stats from the last edition (an unplanned, and unprecedented Sunday afternoon edition) but from the cursory look I had at the report from Substack, you all may have been even better than usual about opening and reading the newsletter? It’s not going to stop me from continuing to share M&D on Friday afternoons, but it was interesting to see.
As far as fonts go, this edition’s is called MV Boli.
Hardware, Prototyping, and Fabrication
👃 Tired of wasting your time smelling things? Build this artificial nose to go the work for you.
🕹☢ If the incredibly long battery life of a standard GameBoy isn't enough for you, try running it on nuclear power instead, for a solid century's worth of gaming.
🌊 Maybe we shouldn't have replaced all the flip-board displays in airports and train stations with digital screens. Yes, they can also make fluid-like animations, but it's much more impressive when a flip board does it.
Software and Programming
🔁 Once you're done with that, you can take the shortcut.
🥪 After those other two links, enjoy this augmented reality sandwich.
👨💻 Gizmodo asks: What's the most significant hack in history?
🔡 If you're not reading too carefully, you might not even realize the paragraphs being churned out by EleutherAI are AI-generated from a prompt that's only a sentence or two long.
Science, Engineering, and Biomedicine
🔉🔊👂 Apparently, a 10dB increase in noise can noticeably impact work performance, even though the volume increase itself is usually undetectable.
🦠 The delta variant of SARS-CoV-2 might be getting all the attention right now, but where do we stand with respect to all of the other variants circulating around right now?
Mapping, History, and Data Science
🏠 Via The Prepared: A dingbat is more than an old-timey insult, it's also a type of house.
📊 What do people from around the world think about major social issues?
🥇🥈🥉 As I'm sure we've all observed at least passively, success at the Olympics is correlated to countries' size and wealth. If we normalized for those things, how might that change who ended up on the podium most often?
Events and Opportunities
Wednesday, 8/25 The Secret Science Club: Music, Math, and Mind. At the next Secret Science Club, neuroscientist and co-founder of the Thai Elephant Orchestra David Sulzer artfully investigates the science behind music, hearing, and sound. Looking at the intersections between emotions, mathematics, zoology in the realm of music, this discussion promises to be as entertaining as it is informative.
Tuesday, 8/31 De-risking Biotech: Non-Traditional Approaches to Capital Raise. Capital fundraising in biosciences in the time of soaring stock markets remains a red hot pursuit. Where does crowd funding fit into de-risking capital raising? Join the BioLabs and Design Technologies teams, and hear the story of NY orthopedic surgeon and CFO co-founded Monogram Orthopedics, who leveraged crowd funding and raised the largest medical device round in history. Hear from the founders and fundraising team as they lay out the pros and cons of crowdfunding in this ground breaking emerging company launch.
Wednesday, 9/8 The Science Behind Design. In the healthcare realm, the importance of design can often end up tossed to the side or outright ignored, but in many cases good design with decent health policy is better than great health policy and no design. In this event hosted by Moss Design and the Healthcare Club, Moss co-founder Sarah Gear will discuss how compliance, the scientific method, and the care model all come together in designing for healthcare.
Tuesday, 9/21 New York Bio Pharma Networking Group Networking Event. For their next networking event, the NYBPNG is teaming up with Rutgers iJOBS for a virtual meeting that brings together biotech professionals, students, and researchers from across the NJ and NY life science communities.
Map of the Month
Here's a map of all the lighthouses in the world.