Scientific inventions, new tech ideas, etc

even though you need to be over non ferrous metal this is pretty cool!

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I imagined a full-body hardsuit like this many years ago, after playing one of the super-cheesy early 90s VR games in a fancy arcade. At the time I figured it would be hydraulics and levers and pulleys attached to the suit to create the haptics (?). Essentially trying to replicate the movement of muscles, but having to attach them externally, where they would all get in the way of each other. If smart fabrics/materials that had shape-memoryā€¦ or other alterable material propertiesā€¦ all of the haptic action could happen within the skin of the suit.
Younger me only thought of the gaming/entertainment/escapist applications, while slightly more mature me (bwahahaha) realizes the potential application for physical therapy and a totally new form of prosthetics.

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This is interesting. I once experienced depression where there was no obvious cause. Any drama or strong emotions I was exposed to during this time was very destabilizing and terrifying. It disappeared immediately after I began an herbal treatment to boost testosterone levels. Upon helping others with the same, I have proposed that dropping testosterone levels in men and women might relate to depression. I also had a young female friend that was crippled with night terrors. A few days treatment with melatonin and camomile tea seemed to reset her brain and the terrors were gone.

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I saw this when it came out years ago. Iā€™m still wanting the pink version from Mattel.

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Yes exactly. Another application I thought of is using them in space to maintain muscle and skeletal integrity. It would double as a control system for robot space walks

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There was a recent Scientific American article about exoskeletons helping paraplegic patients actually walkā€¦ I wasnā€™t able to find it quickly in the online search, but looking at sciam.com, searching on exoskeleton resulted in the above link (and other cool stuff).

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Iā€™ve seen/read most of it itā€™s all so stinking cool. I went to school for biomechanical engineering and wanted to get into exoskeleton and prosthetics design. I build space ships instead which is also cool. Some day Iā€™ll get enough money together to attempt a serious exo build

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I donā€™t work on this project, but know several people that do. The gist of it is we are trying to develop hardware solutions to mental disorders such as PTSD.

https://transformdbs.partners.org/?q=overview

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wow, thatā€™s great. Sadly, thereā€™s still a lot of stigma associated with mental illness. Itā€™s great to see it treated as a health problem related to structure and function of the brain. Yes, a bodily organ. Thanks for the link!

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Small world, I build spacecraft also.

@jbv @volivaa @cynzu
http://www.lockheedmartin.com/us/products/exoskeleton.html

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A friend in college was hired straight out of the engineering dept by Lockheed. When we asked him what he did at work, his response was:
ā€œI work in a building with no windows, and thatā€™s about all I can say.ā€

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On the flip side of this, The Broad Institute down the street has the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research. They were given $100 million in 2007 and another $650 million in 2014. It is definitely a health problem, and there are people spending a lot of money trying to solve it.

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An old friend had a great idea: Minimals. Miniature animal pets. Like, imagine having a 2 pound pet hippo or giraffe.

Aaawww, Iā€™d pay a lot for that!!

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My latest experiments are centered on making an explosive char forming fire extinguisher for large scale fires. The concept is a formula that when dropped from the air, would react violently with the heat to form a stable blanket of char to suffocate the fire. A follow up drop of water would further cool the char. I have identified some candidate formulations and am tweaking to make something that is biodegradable.

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Iā€™m not one of those guys. Iā€™m working on the Orion spacecraft.

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Sweet! Could you work in some reactants that degrade to CO2 to help lower the oxygen concentration in the char itself or is that even necessary

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Yes! This is all in my wheelhouse, constantly.
In fact I just had a 3 hour long rabbit trail conversations with some friends last night that started with how professional sports is destroying the human species and quickly evolved into space travel, colonization, quantum computing, A.I., room temperature superconducting, material science breakthroughs, and time/relativity.
love it!

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I know from scary experience how slippery the red air-dropped fire-retardant can be on roadways. Hopefully your concept solves that issue as well!

(unpleasant memories of coming around a corner on a hot dry day, seeing red everywhere, suddenly finding myself counter-steering and shifting-into 4x4ā€¦)

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The University I work at just started a masters in biomed a couple years ago. I could pass it along if you want?

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Intumescent materials are the char formers. There is a very fine line between forming a stable suffocating char and blowing it to bits and providing more fuel to the fire. Produce the char too slow and it burns, too fast and it is fragmented and burns. Just right and it displaces oxygen long enough for a stable char to form. Additives can be added to remove heat or suppress radical flame spread.

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