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Microfluidic Chips Made With Shrinky Dinks
SoyChemist writes "When she started her job as a new professor at UC Merced, Michelle Khine was stuck without a clean room or semiconductor fabrication equipment, so she went MacGyver and started making Lab-on-a-Chip devices in her kitchen with Shrinky Dinks, a laser printer, and a toaster oven. She would print a negative image of the channels onto the polystyrene sheets and then shrink them with heat. The miniaturized pattern served as a perfect mold for forming rounded, narrow channels in PDMS — a clear, synthetic rubber."
I get a Shrinky Dink when I go swimming :-(
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
When she started her job as a new professor at UC Merced, Michelle Khine was stuck without a clean room or semiconductor fabrication equipment
I hate when that happens.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
**WACK WACK WACK**
*obligitory family guy joke*
http://slashdot.org/articles/06/04/01/1526216.shtml
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Ironically, the sensitive guy act is a lot more likely to result in permanent virginity.
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
Fact: On the 1st day, God created MACGYVER. On the 2nd day, God created knives and paperclips. On the 3rd day.. MACGYVER created everything else.
Fact: MACGYVER can invent 1000 different things using a ball of yarn and a pair of sunglasses. 999 of these things can kill a man. The remaining thing can kill a planet.
Fact: MACGYVER invented genocide using only blankets and smallpox.
Fact: The only thing that MACGYVER cannot produce with a soda can and an extension cord... is mercy.
Fact:One time, MACGYVER built a time machine out of an old refrigerator and a pocketwatch, and used it to travel to the ancient paradise of Atlantis. However, while there, he went on a drunken bender with with a magnifying glass and a book of matches. This area is now known as the Sahara.
Fact: Chuck Norris is an android built by MACGYVER in an attempt to find a worthy opponent.
Fact: Some crazy people claim that MACGYVER was just a TV character, played by Richard Dean Anderson. In actuality, Richard Dean Anderson was played by MACGYVER, and the show was a documentary, the events of which REALLY HAPPENED.
And the final Fact: Necessity is the mother of invention but... MACGYVER is the father.
Oh come on... it's first post. At least it wasn't a soviet russia joke or something about women professor overlords.
/. knows the insightful posts always come in the 3-5 position... they take longer.
Anyone who knows anything about
Women can laugh at penis jokes too, ya know.
Misogyny it aint.
covered in greygoo created in someone's kitchen with toys from Matel?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
This professor, who also happens to be a woman,
Who cares if she is a man or a woman? She is a person, like the rest of us.
makes semi-conductors in her kitchen and all she gets is penis jokes?
And she didn't make semiconductors, she made microfluidic devices. Yes, she is brilliant, you apparently are not.
I'm not using microfluidic chips until they're immune to gravimetric distortions.
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
You saw it here first folks, a new anonymous literary masterpiece born right here on the dot.
Sam ty sig.
that used fine grooved plastic(?) to combine methenol and vegetable oil to make pure bio diesel with out all the messy steps. I wonder if shrinky dinks would work to produce those same grooves?
Si vis pacem, para bellum! For evil to succeed good men need only do nothing!
A former professor of mine works with lab on a chip stuff. She really stressed the point that computer and mathematical modelling is extremely important in engineering, particularly her research, because microfluidic chips are extremely expensive. I can't remember the exact number, but it was somewhere above $1000/chip.
Sure, the name "shrinky dinks" is funny, but being able to make these lab-on-a-chips affordably is a big deal.
This is pretty neat.
As a kid I never understood the appeal of the Shrinky Dink as a toy. You draw on some plastic and then put it in the oven and it comes out smaller. Big whoop. Why not just draw it smaller to begin with.
But this is actually a functional (and cool technology) use/hack for the toy.
I tip my hat.
"Kittens give Morbo gas!"
Another of her colleagues managed to come up with a workable Supersymmetry model using a Pet Rock, a Toss Across, and a Slinky.
Microfluidic Logic Gates
I can't explain it; this story made my day. Dupe or no dupe. Very cool.
I know nothing about this area of science, but holy cow! This simple technique already seems to accomplish so much, and to be so useful. Think what it will be when they've created advanced inks and molding materials to create smoother "walls" and which let you control the "shrink" factor more precisely! Imagine specially designed printers to enable chip printing-- even if it's just a more precise tray to hold the shrinky dink media.
This is terribly exciting. It puts microfluidic experimentation within the reach of any hobbyist, college class, or high school! Great breakthroughs will come of this, I just know it.
From what I've learned (yes they now teach patents in some research class here around), the application of a process is included in the patent application. If you invent a new application of an ancient method you could try to apply for a new patent (...now we found you can also do that with it...), as long as nobody has published about this new usage.
In this cases : Sorry, too late ! Prof. Khine has already published the paper, so there's no way Shrinky Dink's creator could patent a new use of their product.
Beside, as pointed out by other
Beside a patent is only useful if you want to sell your method to the industry. In this case the industry already has photo lithography, which isn't expensive for them given their production scales, so they don't really need the "kitchen"-made technique.
Probably for the same reason the not-wrong transparency film don't melt :
Shrinky dinks probably happen to tolerate higher thermal energy before starting to change shape.
I mean they are supposed to be cooked in an oven in order to shrink. Not just somewhat heated.
According to the paper, they cooked the plastic sheets for 5min at 163C in the ovens, in order to achieve the desired shrinking. Probably the couple of seconds the sheets spends in contact with the laser drum don't transfer enough thermal energy (besides, this article has also measured a lower temperature of 145 C, thus making the total heat exchange even lower inside the printer).
But probably, if there's a paper jam (or a plastic jam in this case) and the plastic sheets stay for several minutes against the heated drum, then probably you'll have to remove the jam using a magnifying glass and tweezers.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Just for kicks, I clicked through your posts, all the way back to what started this. For this, I had to wade through 2 additional "I was unfairly modded down" posts before I got to the post you thought was modded unfairly. All I can say is... you deserved every last one of your troll ratings.
To wit:
1) There was no information of any kind in that initial post. Unless you count "You're stupid!" as informational.
2) It led off with a spelling correction. Spelling corrections, especially when used in the context of determining IQ, are karma killers. With good reason - they contribute nothing and are designed to insult.
3) You invoked group-think. Accusing nerds on Slashdot is like accusing cats of being herd animals - it flies in the face of observation. Not to mention that you conveniently accused everyone who disagreed with you of group-think. That indicates that it is merely a cop-out to avoid facing the fact that you're plain wrong.
4) You brought an entirely irrelevant fact into the discussion - the user's sig.
5) Finally, your solution to your perceived problem is idiotic. IQ has nothing to do with whether guidelines are read or even adhered to. I suspect that you think that's an appropriate solution just because you scored above 100 on some IQ test, and think that that makes you special.
Here's something else: my post should be modded to -1 for being off-topic. Do I care? No. Why? Because I know that:
1) Karma is just a number that means nothing - people modded me up when I was posting at 1, and people modded me up when I had been modded down to -1.
2) On average, I contribute more than I flame. I know that a -1 mod here and there does nothing to my Karma.
Here's a suggestion: realize that your initial post was completely and utterly useless, and mods were correct in telling you so. Realize that the only way out of Karma hell is to contribute useful commentary. I suggest to start by reading the article, providing links in your posts, avoiding insults, etc.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
I agree that "I agree" / "I disagree" comment voting is a problem. My idea:
* Make it clear to meta-moderators that their job is to judge whether the moderation was based on quality, not on purely emotional agreeal.
* Give moderators the option to enter a short reason why the posting is of high/low quality. For example:
"-1, factually wrong: $person was born 1970, not 1986"
"+1, poster is clearly an expert on the subject"
"+1, well-reasoned argument that changed my view on the subject"
"+1, hot grits joke" (j/k)
(You might ask: "why not write a reply instead in these cases?"
A posting does not replace moderation; moderation scores are needed for filtering. Moderation reasons are also expected to be shorter. Maybe the reasons should be publicly visible (but not the moderator name - to prevent metamod abuse)).
* Make Overrated and Underrated metamoderatable. Moderators should give reasons like "the posting is not bad, but is not a +5 since these arguments have been said and answered many times and the user was apparently just upvoted because he sounds confident/smart".
Sure, this is not watertight; we can't expect moderators to write a paper on the subject to justify their vote. But I suppose that a large majority of the agreeal vorters would not bother to fake a reason and that's good enough. Meta-moderation would also be more fun. Your thoughts?
Medium cat is MEDIUM.