However, this is not always the case, as some colaborations end up in frustration, tears, and ultimately, some occasional "dude, I can't do this anymore..."

With that said, I feel the Oatmeal has illustrated this process of enthusiasm's decline, best.  I'm impressed with how he captures the desparage between designer (technical) with the customer's expectations.

Yum!

This is the Logo to the Southern Arizona Limb Salvage Alliance.  With the sheer number of research nerds and academic weenies, it was only a matter of time before someone made a downloadable, printable, SALSA-man!

All you need is a 3D Printer and you are well on your way.

-Nicholas Giovinco

There are 26 proper bones in the human foot; 28 if you consider the sesamoids of the 1st metatarsal phalangeal joint complex. That's over 25% of your body's total musculo-skeletal anatomy, hitting the ground every time you go for a walk or run! Quite impressive, really.

Read More:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foot
learnbones.com/foot-bones-anatomy

This anatomic foot model was designed in Newtek's Lightwave 3D, as part of the podcast @ YouTube.com/DrGlassDPM

Anatomic study models can be quite expensive, search.anatomywarehouse.com/search?keywords=foot&x=0&y=0 so I wanted to share my printable version with the Thingiverse crowd and give a big shout out to Freeside Atlanta's Hackerspace!

Instructions

I've included the individual bones with a straightforward naming convention. These parts will be replaced, as I continue to add more detail and such; for now, enjoy!

Additionally, there are FootBones.stl and FootSkin.stl, for those of you Duel Extruding.

Otherwise, I'd be impressed to see some of the techniques towards printing this and having a clean separation from support material. This (and deriviatives thereof) will hopefully rival things like: molded study models search.anatomywarehouse.com/search?keywords=foot&x=0&y=0

Freesiders are continually tinkering with robotics and other such machinery.  Many of these embedded processors and firmware are becoming open source and every-more diversified in the wake of the modern Maker movement.

One notable boost to the hackerspace arsenal is the Arduino (an like platforms).  This offers designers an incredible power to devise not just individual devices but even the emergence of complex, integrated systems.



This evolutionary pace of modern technological systems may be significantly faster the biologic system development, but there may be a few well learned tricks yet to be mastered.  It seems that studying how nature has managed to solve many development challenges will aid in designing robotics, where efficiently counts just as much.

One  challenge, that is particularly interesting, is data processing.  Artificial intelligence is labored with processing data and producing a meaningful and useful output.  When considering the increase in sensory and input devices available to robot hackers, AI technology may not be able to simply apply Brute Force for all scenarios.

How does the human brain sort through data and minimize apophenia, in real time?  It delegates.

This, unfortunately is not a perfected system but it is still, (currently), better than anything man has managed to hacked together.  What's important to remember about these systems is that they are subject to some strange exploits, which we call "Illusions".  Optical illusions are centuries old and have often uncovered the curiosity within us all.

A recent study in the science journal, "Perception" has illustrated this point well.  In this, they illustrate the error of duplication.  Some such duplications do not appear to throw off any red flags in the observer.  However, try causing an irregularity to someone's face and it's a totally different story.

The human face is one of the most instant and profound "appliances" of human interaction.  Humans have evolved a very acute sense of facial recognition, which plays a vital role in our day to day goings on.

The difference between a smile and a frown, could mean the difference between a successful mate and a fight to the death.   Other mild variations in not so useful things don't trigger the same primal response.  This assumptive processing center of the brain acts somewhat comparably to a natural checksum, operating autonomously in the subconsciousness like a daemon. 

Often, Makers and Hackers share their knowledge and designs in a very "open" manner.  Nature itself has many lessons to teach designers as well.  A better understanding of these such integrated systems and their exploits may better help us to design technological systems which are both sophisticated and efficient.

-GlassDPM

Awesome Fun!  Music by:

1. Foster the People - Call it What You Want
2. Fun. - We are Young

This is a fantastic video, by TED-ED.  In this, the reality of observation and thought are shown to be the means of pushing human knowledge and scientific discovery.  In such, it is the "unknown" that is the most intriguing area to play.

Adam Savage walks through two spectacular examples of profound scientific discoveries that came from simple, creative methods anyone could have followed -- Eratosthenes' calculation of the Earth's circumference around 200 BC and Hippolyte Fizeau's measurement of the speed of light in 1849. (Launching a series on Inventions that Shaped History)

My goal with this thread is an attempt to get a better use of rendering and lighting with LW, especially now that I've just upgraded to LW 11. I'm working on some images/video for some lectures on lower extremity surgery. After watching this video from the guys/gals at ghOst http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67eTwSCJC_Y I was inspired to say the least.

This scene is some anatomy layers, (bones, nerve, arteries, muscle, and skin), as well as a Logo (for the hospital I work). It is lit with a single white area light, Monte Carlo radiosity, and a plain white background. I have not used the new SSS in Lightwave 11, but if anyone has any pointers, I'd love some advice.

Source: Wikipedia Femur Article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Femur)

This is very inspirational.  Dr. Berry is showing his love and appreciation for art itself, as a means to scientific discovery and advancment.  Doodling and the ability to work out conceptions of the information presented are a fundamental way we humans learn and share information.  His work is very neat, indeed.

We have no ways to directly observe molecules and what they do -- Drew Berry wants to change that. At TEDxSydney he shows his scientifically accurate (and entertaining!) animations that help researchers see unseeable processes within our own cells.

As part of a continual appreciation, this is another great example of Open Source medical technology applied.  Using a handful of parts and components, (cheap), this lecture details the uses and story behind something very amazing.

The nerve disease ALS left graffiti artist TEMPT paralyzed from head to toe, forced to communicate blink by blink. In a remarkable talk at TEDActive, entrepreneur Mick Ebeling shares how he and a team of collaborators built an open-source invention that gave the artist -- and gives others in his circumstance -- the means to make art again.

This is a very well spoken piece on the value of leadership.  General Stanley McChrystal's: Listen, Learn ... and then Lead lecture at TED Global.

Four-star general Stanley McChrystal shares what he learned about leadership over his decades in the military. How can you build a sense of shared purpose among people of many ages and skill sets? By listening and learning -- and addressing the possibility of failure.

Daoud, Adam I.; Geissler, Gary J.; Wang, Frank; Saretsky, Jason; Daoud, Yahya A.; Lieberman, Daniel E.

This is an article published in the Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports and Excercise.  In this, comparitive study, a scenario is presented whereby Forefoot strikers suffered nearly 50% less injuries than Rearfoot strikers.

Foot Strike and Injury Rates in Endurance Runners: a retros... : Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise:

Purpose: This retrospective study tests if runners who habitually forefoot strike have different rates of injury than runners who habitually rearfoot strike. Methods: We measured the strike characteristics of middle and long distance runners from a collegiate cross country team and quantified their history of injury, including the incidence and rate of specific injuries, the severity of each injury, and the rate of mild, moderate and severe injuries per mile run. Results: Of the 52 runners studied, 36 (59%) primarily used a rearfoot strike and 16 (31%) primarily used a forefoot strike. Approximately 74% of runners experienced a moderate or severe injury each year, but those who habitually rearfoot strike had approximately twice the rate of repetitive stress injuries than individuals who habitually forefoot strike. Traumatic injury rates were not significantly different between the two groups. A generalized linear model showed that strike type, sex, race distance, and average miles per week each correlate significantly (p<0.01) with repetitive injury rates. Conclusions: Competitive cross country runners on a college team incur high injury rates, but runners who habitually rearfoot strike have significantly higher rates of repetitive stress injury than those who mostly forefoot strike. This study does not test the causal bases for this general difference. One hypothesis, which requires further research, is that the absence of a marked impact peak in the ground reaction force during a forefoot strike compared to a rearfoot strike may contribute to lower rates of injuries in habitual forefoot strikers.

 The website VivoBarefoot.com is very bullish on these sorts of publications, in support of their (obvious) business http://www.vivobarefoot.com/us/community/?p=3238.

Although I am a fan of this, I cannot consider this "Proof".  Once again, forefoot strike peak pressures continue to be a dominant hypothesis in the considerations of health and wellbeing for runners bodies.  More research is definitley needed.

Barefoot running with Lee Saxby from VIVOBAREFOOT on Vimeo.

I am a fan of Vivobarefoot.  They make quality shoewear.  This is a promotional advertisment, but serves a purpose of perspective.