Dǝve Derıso

WHEN MY BIKRAM YOGA TEACHER IS HEADED MY WAY

Dear Mr Dave, I am Kyaw who is newbie for blood pressure and I would like to know is there any relationship for HRV and BPV. Is there any good examples for Blood Pressure and I am looking forward to hearing from you.
--Anonymous

Hi Kyaw,

By HRV and BPV, I assume you mean “blood pressure variability” and “heart rate variability.” I am not an expert in this area, but this paper suggests that systolic blood pressure has a short lag before influencing heart rate changes by about 2-3 beats. I only glanced at the abstract, but I’m sure theres a regression somewhere that will better elucidate the relationship.

Cheers,
Dave

(Source: typosaur)

I love the laser cutter!

evosyn: (via rosarioflorio)

R is the cats pajamas..

Visual Programming

We wanted to give a group of visiting high school students a feel for problem solving using robotics and programming -without having enough time to teach them either. Everyone in the lab was instructed to come up with a few ideas.

I had an idea to replace programming with tangible objects that represented code for controlling the robot, a sort of “visual programming” language where code is replaced by color. For example, if the robot ran over a red piece of paper it would turn right, blue would turn left, green would speed up, yellow would slow down, etc. This was difficult to develop and TinFan Wu, a PhD student in the lab, was instrumental in getting the robots and the color sensors to work together.

The visual programming system encompassed the basic concept of representing physical changes as discrete commands that could be arranged to solve problems. We then introduced obstacles that they were asked to navigate around, which introduced the notion of using programming to overcome environmental constraints. The other lab members had the idea to use line avoidance, where the robot could not cross lines and therefore would have to stay within the bounds of the track. This led to the development of a large poster-board race track that had several difficult areas to navigate through.

The teams were given these tracks and instructed to use the colored squares to “program” the robot to navigate the maze. There were a few races where all teams competed over who could navigate the entire maze 3 time. The fastest teams got ribbons. A good amount of the students expressed interest in the robots and there was some bonding between the students and their team mentors, which is great for encouraging them to pursue science.

The event was written up by CalIt2: http://www.calit2.net/newsroom/article.php?id=1879

The lab bought some robots to teach junior-high students how to think about programming. It basically runs on an ATMega328 with an Arduino bootloader, 2 motors, and 5 line sensors. It has a buzzer that plays classical music too. If you want to get the included AVR programmer to work with OSX, prepare for some gnarly firmware updates. This is my first test run after uploading the included line-following example code.

Next step, integrate color sensors!

Pololu 3Pi Robot + AVR Programmer
http://www.pololu.com/catalog/product/1306

Hi Dave: Perfect template for our start up project. I understand this uses the wiki format. How do I delete your entries in the calendar so I can replace with ours? I also noted when it syncs with my Gmail calendar; I don't want group participants to view that information. Any thoughts? Thanks again for designing such a great workspace! Best to you in your research, and future work endeavors. Terri Hansen
--Anonymous

Hi Terri,

Thanks for the kind words! The calendar on the template is just an example. To put your own events in, you need to completely replace the calendar with your own. To keep others from seeing your personal calendar, make a new calendar just for the site at the Google calendar page. When you do, follow this tutorial to getting the calendar into the google site.

Google Sites Calendar Tutorial

Best of luck with your project!

Cheers,
Dave

Putting Your Own Calendar In Google Sites

Google sites is intended to simplify the process of making a web site. However, the documentation can actually make the process harder than it needs to be. For example, changing the calendar on a pre-made template can drive people crazy. This example will hopefully make the process of changing site features easier.

A while back, I shared a Google site template that allows people to organize group projects.

This example will involve changing the calendar page on this site.

Step 1

Go to the site and click on the calendar page.

Step 2

Look for the “Edit Page” Button at the top right-hand corner.

Step 3

Notice that the calendar turns into a ‘placeholder’ and that a save button appears in the top right-hand corner of the screen.

Step 4

Whenever a widget (like a calendar or checklist) turns into a placeholder (ie light brown box), you can click on it. When you click on it, a little bar menu pops up on the top or bottom of the calendar. Look for the icon that has a gear or sprocket or whatever (it means ‘settings’). Click this.

Step 5

In the properties menu, a variety of options are available. At the top, you should see “Display another Calendar.” Click this.

Step 6

If your calendar doesn’t show automatically, paste a link to your calendar here. (For instructions on getting a link to put here, see the Google Calendar Documentation)

letterheady:

Frank Lloyd Wright, 1946 | Source

A sheet of architect Frank Lloyd Wright’s personal stationery; a much larger version of which is here. His studio letterhead has been featured on Letterheady previously.

Great, so this is the GDP of freedom?

takeactionunite: The tear gas used against demonstrators in Tahrir was made in the USA. This makes me feel really ashamed… :’(
Photo by: @TravellerW

(Source: sothisisanotherblog)

Two awesome mentors!

Hi!
I find your idea about Open Sensors very nice and hope you (and other) will contribute meterial very soon. I had a similar idea, to make a blog for collecting all medical and health related projects that are based on open hardware and specifically Arduino. My question is if you would like to share some of the material you got and your own creations (e.g., the EEG electrode). The blog is at medicarduino(dot)wordpress(dot)com Thanks!
--Anonymous

Hi Charalampos,

Thanks for reaching out! The OpenSensors Project is growing behind the scenes. The goals of the project are to develop biomedical sensors using open source tools and to make them available for third world countries and the open source community. To implement devices at the clinical level requires a very high set of standards for validation and peer-review. Though this process is much slower, the integrity and impact of each sensor is much higher. Consequently, I cannot release any sensor schematic or code until it has passed at least one round of review and validation. However, I imagine that some material will have met this criteria and be made available, along with the raw validation data, near the fall of 2011.

As the project grows, I encourage you and your colleagues to take part in the design and validation process.

Cheers,

Dave Deriso

PS. I have to say, I loved your article on Open PCR. Keep up the great work!

(Source: inconcertwithmonsters)