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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: July 1st, 2023

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  • This isn’t going to be accurate, it’s ignoring a key aspect of the heat that will be generated, friction. When designing materials for prosthetics we have to be aware of how much friction occurs between the material and skin. If the amount of friction is too great, the material can create enough heat to damage tissue.

    The formula for the skin friction coefficient is cf=τw12ρeue2, where ρe and ue are the density and longitudinal velocity at the boundary layer’s edge.



  • Yeah… This is a bit sketchy. Pharmaceuticals aren’t just something that an amateur can make by following step by step instructions. Even something as simple as baking a cake requires some basic experience to know when things are going right or wrong.

    Even maintaining the calibration on a CLR requires some background experience, let alone building and programming one all on your own. With your actual reactor being as small as a mason jar, it means the margin for error is going to be small as well.

    This is neat for people with a background in chemistry, but I don’t really see it as anything but dangerous for the general public. They also are fudging their math a bit to make things seem a lot cheaper. Reagents can be really cheap at bulk prices, but you have to spend the time looking for them, and they aren’t equating the cost of a trained chemist making these medications.




  • Don’t. I already did a little write up about this a while ago, I work in orthotics and prosthetics.

    This device was created by an 3d printer artist and tested by a cognitive science lab. It’s really not a medical device, and wasn’t tested to the same degree that medical devices are subjected too.

    When testing devices that are actually made to help the disabled, the criteria isn’t just that the pt can utilize it, but that the utilization the device provides is greater than what the patient would be able to do without it.

    None of the actions done by the second thumb are things you wouldn’t be able to do as an amputee in the first place. People are highly adaptive and will figure out ways to utilize their body or what’s left of their amputated limbs.

    There are a few reasons this will never be utilized by disabled people. The largest one being that foot controls aren’t ever used in upper limb prosthetics, mainly because they only work when you are sitting, or standing still. If this has been made by a prosthetic lab they would have used myoelectrics, the same tech we’ve had for like 40 years.

    Secondly, how is an amputee or disabled person going to don this device by themselves. A medical device that’s meant to give you more independence also requires help to put on?

    And lastly, the main benefit of having a thumb in the first place is that it is opposible. The thumb isn’t really useful by itself, it’s meant to work in conjunction with other fingers for manipulation. If you wanted another place to hold or pin something in place you would just stick it in the crease of your elbow.

    It’s a neat art project, but pretty limited as far as a prosthetic device. My main criticism is for the cognitive lab that partnered with the artist in the first place. The university is using this as a marketing device for their department, and shouldn’t be claiming it’s a medical device. If they were serious about it they would be partnering with actual orthotist or prosthetist or a biomedical engineering department, not cognitive science.