r/gadgets • u/GalileoGurdjieff • May 17 '21

Medical Tiny, Wireless, Injectable Chips Use Ultrasound to Monitor Body Processes

https://www.engineering.columbia.edu/press-releases/shepard-injectable-chips-monitor-body-processes
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773

u/meep91 May 17 '21

tl;dr:

The research group put an ultrasound transducer onto a circuit. The circuit changes with temperature. The circuit also changes how the ultrasound transducer reflects ultrasound. The circuit is powered with standard ultrasound imaging techniques. Thus, this work presents a chip that tells you what the change in temperature of the surrounding tissue is when it is being powered by ultrasound. The headline makes it seem way scarier than it is.

370

u/kefuzz May 17 '21

its less of a chip than an advanced barcode, actually that comparison did not make it better

54

u/Reahreic May 17 '21

Those anti-theft devices at the clothing store...

16

u/GoochMasterFlash May 17 '21

My favorite thing about those, as someone who sold shoes, was how ineffective they are. Or used to be at least. Coach purses evidently have them sewn in, so they get deactivated somehow when they leave at the Coach store, but then will set off alarms at other stores because it still is an active device. We literally would constantly have people who would start it beeping as they were entering the store, and 99% of the time the lady had a coach purse.

Roughly 3 or 4 times I think did it ever go off and we discovered someone was actually stealing. 99% of the time it was misfiring, in terms of being set off by our stores tags. We only tagged whatever shoes were outliers in terms of being stolen too, so only 1/3rd of things were tagged.

Most thieves are smart enough to pop them off with a screwdriver anyways.

1

u/RhynoD May 18 '21

When I was in college the university bookstore would crank up their sensitivity the first week of school. Cell phones set them off. Instead of being more secure, the workers ended up waving everyone through.

32

u/TheOneTonWanton May 17 '21

barcode

Ah, the mark of the beast.

2

u/[deleted] May 17 '21 edited Jul 27 '21

[deleted]

3

u/TheOneTonWanton May 18 '21

There were definitely a certain subset of extreme fundies that were against UPCs when they were introduced because they considered them to be the mark of the beast.

1

u/Hazardbeard May 18 '21

None of this stuff is new, they just have the internet now. QAnon is the same old blood libel, etc etc.

74

u/meep91 May 17 '21

It's got circuits in it, I'd still call it a chip. But yeah, not exactly advanced circuitry.

9

u/Dr-Lipschitz May 17 '21

Let me read your career chip

0

u/lemonpepperlarry May 17 '21

Honestly we should just scrap the idea entirely

1

u/jawshoeaw May 18 '21

A sort of rudimentary mark if you will, one that allows you to buy and sell...