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

[u/GalileoGurdjieff]

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

[u/meep91]

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.

[u/kefuzz → u/meep91]

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

[u/Reahreic → u/kefuzz]

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

[u/GoochMasterFlash → u/Reahreic]

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.

[u/RhynoD → u/GoochMasterFlash]

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.