Before I started going live with the TechBandits and GameBandits, I was conducting these sessions in private Zoom meetings…these are the notes.
Wow! What was that!? A month! Where did that June go? Yikes!
This week we’ll be checking in with inventor Tony Ellis about the status of the Bandits’ N.O.H! (No Outbreaks Here) COVID Distancing Sensor prototype! and his new fabulous Face controlled robotic wheelchair. I’m hoping we’ll also get to see the STEAM sisters and maybe even their jello brains…no really, they have brains that they made out of jello…to demonstrate the impact of concussions on your noggin, I’m guessing!
In the meantime, here’s a few other COVID related Tech tidbits for you to look at before we meet! Looking forward to your thoughts on all this!
The problem with testing people for COVID is that you need to get within a swab’s distance of them…and a lot of the time these are people you probably want to avoid because they’ve been exposed to the virus! What about giving that job to a remote controlled medical robot? Robots are all about doing jobs that could injure or harm us mere mortals so what about this one? How comfortable would you be using something like this?
Last summer, I had the pleasure of speaking at The Odin’sBiohack The Planet Conference in Las Vegas. I could not get over how exciting this burgeoning DIYBioTech and body modding community was. Their passion and their knowledge and the old school hacker mentality of sharing and collaboration was electric. The idea of BioTech, even genetic engineering tools like CRIsPR, becoming accessible to everyone in the same way that electronics kits are commonplace today was intoxicating!
Using their BioHacking knowledge, a few of my BioTech friends are trying to design their own DIY Covid vaccination…not only that, they are testing it on themselves!
A Vaccination is when a dead, or severely weakened version of the virus you want to protect against, is injected into the body. The body then learns to identify these wimpy versions of viral “invaders” and creates antibodies to attack them. So when the real deal shows up, your body’s immune system is ready to kick its virus butt!
The particular vaccination they want to use is based on a new discovery that targets the COVID19 virus’ “spikes” to alert the body to the virus and trigger our immune systems to handle it. This approach has been tested on monkeys and it’s looking pretty good…at least for the monkeys. However, the vaccination still needs to be tested on humans. They are not alone in this…here are currently more than 100 experimental coronavirus vaccines being developed worldwide…though most through more established research facilities.
What do you think about “DIY bio tech”, or “bio hacking”, as it is sometimes called? What are the potential benefits and pitfalls of citizen scientists forging their own path with BioTechnologies, like gene modification and genetic engineering? What BioTech creations would you want to work on?