Throughout history, humans have always tried to improve the tools they use. Animals were bred to be larger, means of locomotion engineered to become more powerful, etc. Until recently, bigger was thought to be better. However, today it seems the opposite is true: Every day we experience pressure for buying smaller cameras, computers, cell phones, and even cars. It is clear that size reduction is an important facet of our lives.

Obviously, science is inherently involved in this move towards smaller devices. In fact, the word “nano” (a billionth of a standard size) is so hip right now, it seems like any trend-setting scientist should use it with high frequency. And one of the latest developments toward the realm of the small is the so-called “lab on a chip” (LOC) – a device about the size of your palm, able to perform a myriad of tasks associated with a standard laboratory. This idea has been around for a while; and certainly the idea of fitting a lot of equipment on a portable device is convenient, whereby the LOC is envisioned to be a simple tool, that is both easy to operate, and also offers a way to do things where very small amounts of sample are required. As well, such devices are deposable, which make them extremely useful for clinical procedures. For instance, it is possible to conceive of a device that needs only a small sample of bodily fluid to diagnose a patient’s illness. LOC’s are also of great interest to safety and military departments, who would greatly benefit from having portable chemical detection systems.

Although the concept of scaling down a system seems simple, the operation of LOC devices is quite complicated. Different rules apply at small scales: viscous friction (or the resistance to flow) dominates the micro world. The media that a molecule such as a protein moves in, is in effect incredibly dense, because the atomic size of the fluid molecules is comparable in size to the protein itself. Every time a macroscopic object moves, it will displace millions of other molecules in the fluid: but for a microscopic entity dislodging similar sized molecules this movement can be especially challenging. (think of swimming and how you displace the water when you move, and then think of swimming and how you have to displace other swimmers if the pool is very overcrowded). Therefore, gravity and inertial effects no longer matter at this scale. Instead, a molecule has to primarily confront viscous forces and random Brownian motion. For these reasons, the design of a device intended to be very small and yet precise is not easy. From an engineering standpoint, it is essential to keep in mind how differently the system is going to behave compared to the macro scale.

One of the main players in the lab on a chip industry is the microfluidics platform. Micro stands for a unit of measure that is a millionth of the normal scale, i.e. a micrometer is a millionth of a meter. For a sense of scale this is about 100 times smaller than a human hair. The volumes of fluid transported in microfluidic channels can be as little as few nanoliters (a nanoliter corresponds to a billionth of a liter), and sometimes even smaller. In order to handle a large number of samples in small fluid volumes, microfluidic chips contain thousands of channels connected to form a micro fluidic circuit. This setup allows not only the use of tiny reagent volumes but also a high task parallelization since several procedures can processed and physically be fitted on the same chip.
In microfluidic channels the flow of liquid is completely laminar: all of the fluid moves in the same direction and at the same speed. Unlike turbulent flow this allows the transport of molecules in the fluid to be very predictable.

Microfluidic devices are generally made in glass or plastics but several laboratories utilize PDMS, a type of silicone. Some advantages of PDMS are that it is very cheap, optically clear and permeable to several substances, including gases. Since air can quickly diffuse out, the latter aspect is very convenient, making it possible to inject fluid into a channel that has no outlet.

Let’s say we want to make a very simple branched channel, as outlined below.

In this top view, the dark lines represent the flow channels, and let’s define that each channel is to be 100 micrometers wide. First, it should be noted that such features are not very easy to physically carve out in order to make a mold. A machine with high precision on such minute details would be very expensive and would require a lot of time to perform its task. We therefore rely on another method: soft lithography.

For PDMS devices, soft lithography is based the utilization of substances that become soluble to particular solvents when exposed to UV light. These substances are called photoresists and they appear to be very dense transparent liquids. Upon baking their consistency becomes harder. This technique allows the production of countless features in the same time needed for one (essentially by shining the appropriate pattern of light). Unlike machining the time required does not scale with increased number of elements.

If we were to print the design from the above onto a transparency slide we could use it to make our mold as follows. We can place the slide on top of the baked photoresist (made of the thickness required), and then expose the entire setup to UV light. Under the dark drawing lines the photoresist will not be exposed to the light, while in the exposed areas the photoresist will become vulnerable to the solvent. Upon washing it will dissolve and come off. We will then be left with a cast of the initial design where the dark lines have become solid photoresist 3D lines. You can see that the level of complexity of the chip depends only on the design, and the time required to make the features depends only on the UV scan and the wash step.

We have now completed the first step towards the fabrication of our chip. If we wanted to add more features to our chip we could do it by following the same procedure as outlined above. We would need to start over with new photoresist. Several layers with different patterns can be made and stacked on top of the previous ones to form a complete microfluidic chip. Layers can be connected vertically by perforating the membrane separating each layer. Of course it is essential to have accurate alignment of each layer. In order to achieve this, alignment marks are made on each one of the layers so that it is possible to position each part correctly.

We are now ready to coat our mold with PDMS – the remaining photoresist lines will become the hollow channels.

The procedure outlined here is a simplification of the protocol used to make microfluidic devices, but it should give you an idea of how the manufacturing works.

If we wanted to control the fluid through the different channels by forming a valve, we would need to design an additional layer for our chip. For instance, we might want the fluid to go through the third branch only some of the time.

To do this, we can design a control layer and place it in contact with the existing flow layer. If the membrane separating the two layers is thin enough we can easily use the control layer to affect the fluid movement in the flow layer. In fact, if we pressurize a fluid in the control layer the thin PDMS membrane that separates the two layers will deflect and completely block the flow channel.

For the valve to be effective, it is essential that the two layers are separated by a thin membrane: if it was too thick, pressurizing the control channel would not affect the flow layer while if there was no membrane the fluid in the control layer would directly circulate in the flow layer.

The details of fabrication of the control layer are very similar to the ones outlined for the flow layer. When more complicated chips with several layers are made, different types of photoresist are usually employed to vary the thickness or some other property of the layer: the procedure can vary slightly with the different types of materials used.

By combining valves and channels in different configurations, scientists have been able to develop peristaltic pumps, fluid mixers and filters: they have essentially achieved the miniaturization of numerous tools towards the development of the Lab On a Chip. Microfluidic devices are currently employed in a large variety of fields, from medicine to biology and chemistry. Some of the great advantages of these devices lie in operating at such small scales, where experimental sensitivity and precision are much easier to achieve thanks to laminar flow and the well-defined physics of these systems. But even more advantageous is the parallelization that can occur when operating at such small scales. While the amount of reagents needed for the experiments is greatly decreased, the multiplexing of the experiments allows for much higher throughput. These efforts are ultimately resulting in a product that is in very high demand not only in pharmaceutical and biotech research, but also environmental monitoring and security applications.

Hopefully I have convinced you how convenient and widely applicable microfluidic chips are. LOC microfluidic platforms have been used from miniaturized fuel cell to DNA sequencers and it seems like the range of applications is constantly growing. Maybe it won’t be too long until we will all be able to have our own lab on a chip at home: you feel sick one day and maybe you can know what is wrong by simply loading a sample of saliva into a microfluidic device…

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES

1. The S.R. Quake group (assessed November 2006)

2. C L. Hansen et al. 2002. A robust and scalable microfluidic metering method that allows protein
crystal growth by free interface diffusion. PNAS. 26: 16531 – 16536.

3. Stanford Microfluidic Foundry, 2005. “Multilayer Soft Lithography” (Oct 10, 2006)

4. Wikipedia, the free Encyclopedia., 2006. “Lab-on-a-chip” (Oct 2, 2006)

6. Yager Group UW, 2004. “Microfluidic Tutorial – A Highly Biased Primer.” (Sept 30, 2006)

Many science fiction writers have developed tales regarding mankind’s attempts to surmount the forces of nature that separate man from God. These works often portray the human species as a newcomer to Earth and as a brash and shortsighted community working feverishly towards its own demise. The history of this story has its modern roots in the late 1800s with the Transcendentalism movement in New England. Writers such as Edgar Alan Poe and Herman Melville, as well as their counterparts in England such as Mary Shelley, began examining the human spirit’s desire to conquer nature in their literature and the ramifications such an undertaking could entail. Throughout the 20th century, Moby Dick and Frankenstein’s monster have been replaced with robots and nanotechnology, but the underlying story remains; will mankind’s zealous pursuit for knowledge result in his rightful ascension to the throne of God or will nature whisk away his noisy, but insignificant existence? Kadath in the Cold Waste, a short story written in 1995 by Edward Keyes, tackles one of the newest facets of scientific progress, nanotechnology. The accuracy of the nanotech applications which Keyes describes, as well as the tone in which he writes, elucidates his view regarding nanotechnology as the next possible key in mankind’s pursuit of divinity.

Kadath in the Cold Waste follows the story of a young boy named Gavin who lives on a Martian colony in the year 2103. The Martian colony that Gavin lives on is home to the last surviving human population: an escape mission from Earth to avoid a plague which caused the extinction of humankind from the face of the planet in the year 2045. Gavin observes the Earth, in association with a mentor Dr. Johan, from the surface of Mars using telescopes. On a routine observation, Gavin notices an enormous metal ring in orbit around the circumference of Earth. Gavin and Dr. Johan are astonished as the discovery means that not only did humans survive the plague, but they are advanced enough to construct such an awesome piece of architecture. They steal a ship from the colony, as any sort of communication attempt with Earth is forbidden by the local leadership, and set off for Earth.

En-route, a small metal ball attaches to the hull of their ship and begins eating its way through the thick plastic composite. Gavin and Dr. Johan don space suits before the hull is breached, but the metal glob soon attacks and kills both of the characters. However, Gavin immediately regains consciousness and comes to discover that the metal clump that killed both himself and Dr. Johan was actually a cluster of nano-machines called Nanites, and upon consuming his brain, actually mapped and digitally duplicated its structure inside of a computer program. Gavin finds himself in a virtual existence, but one that is in every sense as real as what he had known while physically alive. Gavin learns that the plague that had caused the extinction of mankind from Earth was actually the result of self-replicating Nanites consuming and assimilating the minds of humans into their computer world. Gavin is guided throughout the computer world by a Kadathan named Calvin, a resident of the computer world who had been assimilated years before during the original Nanite outbreak. Calvin enlightens Gavin on the benefits of being a digital entity, from instant access to any knowledge available, to generating anything one wishes simply by commanding it.

The computer program, powered by the large metal solar collecting ring in orbit around Earth, links every mind that it has assimilated to every other mind into a large single entity called the collective. Gavin is able to meet with people by accessing their simulated location in the program, and he is escorted at his wish to the site where the original creator of the Nanites, Dr. Meredith, lives. After meeting with Dr. Meredith, who expresses great regret about the devastation that he unleashed upon the mortal world, Gavin decides that he would like his biological body reassembled and to be provided with a shuttle back to Mars. The computer system complies and reassembles Gavin, granting his request. However, upon being removed from Kadath, it is revealed that the entire existence that Gavin had known prior to being converted into a digital form was already a part of the system, but just a simulation to study the minds of people who were unaware of being part of the collective. The actual Martian colony that had existed years before had long since been destroyed before Gavin came into existence.

Kadath in the Cold Waste touches on many aspects of nanotechnology, including how it may be applied to assist humans in the future. Nanotechnology is characterized by the manipulating and manufacture of materials less than 100nm. By compacting everyday items into these proportions, large cumbersome objects can be streamlined and integrated into more efficient forms. An early example of this process is seen as Gavin and Dr. Johan wear small re-breathing and water collection devices while on the shuttle to Earth. Although nanotechnology isn’t explicitly mentioned regarding these tools, the idea of having microscopic devices that can perform functions like converting exhaled carbon-dioxide back into oxygen is precisely what nanotechnology may be able to accomplish. Devices such as water filtration systems that use nanotechnology to purify contaminated water are already on the drawing board for companies like KX Industries, the developers of Brita water filters.

Another facet of nano-technology was portrayed as Gavin and Dr. Johan prepare sensors to be deployed into the atmosphere of Earth before they discard their space suits and walk upon its surface. The sensors were designed to detect and inform Gavin and Dr. Johan of harmful toxins that may have accumulated in the air since humans left Earth. The technology of sensing chemicals on the nanoscale is on the forefront of nanoscience today. Currently proposed methods of this detection use highly sensitive nanotube electronic devices that are able to form very specific interactions with biological proteins (Chen 2003). These devices are being engineered to detect antibodies as well as other proteins in order to increase the accuracy and speed of disease diagnosis. This use of nanotechnology as a method for chemical identification is portrayed very realistically, as the use of such nano-sensors has already shown promise in biological settings.

The Nanites that attack and assimilate the two characters also has roots in current nanotechnology research, but Keyes develops this aspect of the science with an ominous tone and perhaps with some literary license. These self-replicators were able to supply themselves with building materials for replication by disassembling portions of biological structures and reassembling them into forms identical to themselves. The original catastrophic outbreak of Nanites in the story involved self-replicators being programmed to evolve and then being released into the environment. This “grey-goo” scenario, uncontrolled self-replication of nanomachines, is plausible, but current research points out that steps can be taken that can prevent self-replicators from becoming uncontrollable. Chairman of the Institute for Molecular Manufacturing Neil Jacobstein and law professor at the University of Tennessee Glenn Reynolds have collaborated on a paper titled Foresight Guidelines for Responsible Nanotechnology Development, which provides guidelines for government, professional and industrial nanotechnology use.

The focus of the paper revolves around specific actions that can be taken to avoid a situation where self-replicating nanomachines become out of control. They propose many insightful ideas that would limit both the ability of nanomachines to replicate as well as the designing of such machines. They suggest setting industrial guidelines which limit not only the displacement of self-replicators, but also the schematics of their design. This would create a sort of barrier to disallow self replicators access to the outside of a lab setting, including in the hands of potential terrorists. They also suggest limitations be set for the amount of onboard instructions that selfreplicators can possess. By remotely controlling the data needed for self-replication, with radio signals for instance, a safety switch is put in place which gives a great deal of power to human operators over nanomachines. I believe that the Kadath in the Cold Waste also overlooks the overwhelming complexities in writing a program which mimics evolution to the degree that would result in a sense of self-awareness in machines. Nanomachines would most feasibly be programmed like machines of today: with instruction sets designed to carry out focused tasks with great efficiency. A great deal of time and energy can be saved by developing numerous nanomachines for specific tasks than one nanomachine for a multitude of tasks. This trend is evident in modern forms of mass production involving automated systems.

In addition to physical characteristics of nanomachine implementation, Kadath in the Cold Waste examines the ethical and moral ramifications of integrating technology and biology. Gavin notices many things about being digital that were not present in his human form, such as the ability to access past memories instantly and with perfect clarity. The physical characteristics of metal surpass the biological brain’s ability to store and access information. Kadathan entities are able to do interesting things once free from the tether of biology, including the ability to communicate while avoiding the immense drawbacks of verbal communication. Gavin experiences others thoughts as well as their emotions just as they were being felt by the other individual. The ability to convey complete thoughts allows Kadath to be a very ethical place where the misunderstandings created across class and cultural lines are dissolved through education and complete human to human communication.

Gavin also relishes new forms of art in which the experience of emotions are coupled with unimaginable sensory stimulations such that he found himself, “experiencing the raw emotive concepts of the piece, at the level of thought and thought alone.” It was interesting to see a contrasting perspective to the general notion that integrating machines into a human body would detract from emotional experiences as well as the moral gain that experiencing such emotions could impart on the viewer. Gavin’s guide points out how much better art is when any possible barrier between the artist and his or her audience is removed, something that integrating nanotechnology into the brain may accomplish. The piece of art that Gavin experienced was written by a non-human source, which also has provides interesting insights into the ability of mankind to communicate directly with other biological forms in nature such as animals. The thought patterns of animals were valued and assimilated by Nanites into the collective, as these minds provided an even greater amount of information on which the Kadathan society was built. Keyes provides a balance to the negative aspects of nanotechnology by portraying unique and positive ethical and moral gains that may be available once the limitations of biology are overcome.

Kadath in the Cold Waste directs the reader to consider the shortcomings to society that may occur with nanotech integration. Keyes portrays the cummultive thinking of the construct as limited by many of the same things that make it so powerful. All of the individuals that are in the system are linked to each other in a way best described in the story as dreamers dreaming a common dream. However, new thoughts and different perceptions no longer exist between individuals, and this limits uniqueness of ideas. For this reason that above all, Kadathans value the people that are most different. The very reason for Gavin’s creation into an existence that kept him ignorant of being in the system was to benefit from his unique ideas. This process of sewing and harvesting thought patterns from people like a crop disregards the moral rights of people to exist as free entities. By generating people in a computer program, the true essence of human creativity is inherently undermined. I feel that although Gavin didn’t know about being in the system, the fact that he was still “wired” to it limits the successfulness of such an experiment. His ideas were still produced through a computer program and that alone under minds the concept of uniqueness.

However, this has some interesting implications considering that one could just as easily argue that real human thoughts are generated from the hardware that is our brain, and that this hardware is a result of the hardware that our parents possessed and “programmed” us with. Being connected to a huge number of other people also presents shortcomings that Gavin must wrestle with. As a member of the construct, he is susceptible to sharing his thoughts and ways of thinking with anyone whom wishes to access them. He feels violated that not even his thoughts can be kept private in a system that relies on the cumulative thoughts of everyone to exist. Inequities surprisingly still exists in Kadath as the speed at which Kadathans think is based on the physical computer that exists on Earth and its allocation of processor power to individuals. The more that an individual’s ideas are valued in Kadath, such as those of engineers and physicians, the more processor power is allocated to their minds compared to others whom are deemed less important. Its surprising how a community of such individual to individual interconnection could have what I believe to be the greatest ability to separate have and have-nots; the capability to limit the ability to think.

What I believe to be the most interesting and scary ethical and moral infraction on mankind created in the age of the Nanites was touched on with some of Gavin’s first thoughts upon regaining consciousness in the digital world when he considered, “…what kind of afterlife is this?” By becoming digital, Gavin becomes effectively immortal. He can no longer perish unless he chooses to be erased from the system and therefore commit suicide. By denying the right to die of natural causes and live a life governed by the laws of nature compared to the artificial laws of a computer program would have strong negative religious consequences for individuals that were also denied the choice whether or not to be apart of that system in the first place.
Kadath in the Cold Waste identifies both plausible and creative uses for nanotechnology in everyday circumstances, while also developing some very unique ethical benefits and shortcomings of nanotechnology use. Kadathan society evolved out of mankind’s desire to pursue a complete dominance over the laws of nature. By doing so, Keyes shows that mankind’s new role of God may cost too high of a price for its benefits, possibly even the right to be human.

Citations:

1. Edward Keyes, Kadath in the Cold Waste.. Available online. (December 1995)

2,. Neil Jacobstein, “Foresight Guidelines for Responsible Nanotechnology Development.” Draft Version 6 Unpublished. (April 2006)

3. Robert Chen et. al, “Noncovalent functionalization of carbon nanotubes for highly specific electronic biosensors.”

Last night I had a dream in which I very nearly died;
All round me raged a gruesome hoard of mad nucleotides.
The sugars and the bases put the phosphates into flight,
And SN2 reactions were occurring left and right.

Then BF₄ came sweeping in with hydride ions grim.
From then on, all carbonyl groups had chances very slim.
The poor hydroxys all around me begged, alas, in vain,
As all their sigma bonds with carbon friends were cut in twain.

When lithium di-isopropyl amide entered in,
It brutally removed all of the alpha hydrogens
And left the alpha carbons with their two electrons bare,
Which sat there waiting for some weaker compound they could snare.

Then nitric acid stole protons from H₂SO₄,
And thus was dehydrated, making NO₂s galore,
Who promptly kicked off hydrogen from aromatic rings,
Nitrating them at carbons numbers one and five and three.

A UV photon hit and made the pi electrons high,
And got them so excited that they thought that they could fly.
But while they were off soaring, the whole ring destabilized
And fell apart, exploding in a blinding flash of light.

I thought, as the expanding wave approached, “You’re out of luck.”
But then of course, for dreams can’t kill, I promptly woke right up.
But as I lay, I felt the gloom descend onto my chest,
For chemistry’s much safer dreamt than taken as a test.

Once upon a time, I was working in lab late into the night. Late I say. So late that I was having trouble focusing both eyes in the same focal plane at the same time. Of course it also could have been from staring into the fluorescence microscope for 26 hours strait, and getting ready for the big conference that was coming up.

The new drug I was studying, Revivarin, was not working consistently, and I was beginning to think that my presentation at the upcoming meeting would be a festival of laughter and ridicule, rather than the prelude to a Nobel Prize. Figure 1 shows the cellular atrocities facing me at 2:45 in the AM. Not only did Revivarin not revive my cells; it turned two of them into multinucleate blobs and two of them into some kind of corn-husk looking things.

I felt like a rug had been pulled out from under me. I felt alone in a snowy wilderness full of dead trees and devoid of useful data (see Figure 2). I walked into the white death, all the while dreaming of the glittering metropolis where the scientific conference was to take place just days from now (see Daydream Figure 3). I thought that I would be floating on air at that conference (see Metaphorical Figure 4). I thought I would be jumping for joy (see also Figure 4) as thousands came to hear my talk on the marvels of Revivarin – the drug that can bring dead cells back to life! I thought I would be on TV (seen Figure 5), and on the radio, and in the newspapers, and so on.

But, alas, I had put the chicken before the egg (see Figure 6). I had daydreamed of success, but not obtained the proof needed for it. My ass was grass and Revivarin was the lawnmower (see also Figure 6). The logic of the process was perturbed. It was all wrong. The wiring in my brain was crossed and short-circuited in ways that were almost impossible to untangle (see Figure 7). I tried to see things clearly, to follow what seemed like a logical, organized process (see also Figure 7), but the connections were anything but logical. I was in despair. My only daydream now was one of loneliness (see Figure 8.): a vision of walking away from it all, alone, while the rest of the scientists at the conference chortled and sniggered about the joke that was my Revivarin.

But, perhaps logic was not the answer. The clear, mathematical, orderly thought sequence of the physical chemist might not be the correct process to use for cell biology. I envisioned a wholly different wiring diagram for my brain; one based less on order and logic, and more on emotion, and free association, and randomness (see Figure 9). Soon my 3 AM fog actually began to clear, and I felt, starting from within my solar plexus, the egg of an idea (see Figure 10). By re-wiring my thought process I had reversed the chicken-egg dilemma that had thwarted my progress.

I could bearly contain myself (Figure 11: a fine pun, surely, but also a sensitive dendrite on the neuron of Revivarin: for as all Revivarin researchers know: the drug works best on polar bear fibroblast cell line: PBF-101). The answer, of course, was not to increase the concentration of Revivarin, but to reduce it to 0.7% (see Figure 12). The opposite of how one might logically proceed! I had hit the nail on the head! I had found the diamond on the end of the weird brown stick thing (see Figure 13)! I felt like I had seen the glowing outline of a Christ-like figure emerging from an ice cave (see Figure 14).

My brainwaves went crazy with excitement (see Figure 15), and I started the experiments with the 0.7% Revivarin solution immediately. Within minutes the cells revived (see Figure 16)! They were alive again, and so was my career as a cell biologist! My daydream of floating on my success (from Figure 4) came back to me, but it was different now, it was changed: now there were dinosaurs (see Figure 17). And that’s when I knew – at 3:22 AM in the morning, with my right eye and my left eye focusing in different optical planes — that two days from now, I would be giving the most important scientific presentation of my career.

FIGURE LEGENDS

Figure 1. PBF-101 cells treated with 1.0% Revivarin. Magnification scale is “large,” and green fluorescence signifies “alive”. Fluorescent staining was accomplished by breaking open one of those glow-in-the-dark tube-things and carefully adding 100 microlters of whatever that stuff is to each liter of cell culture.

Figure 2. Winter. Cold. Death. Walking in ankle-deep snow. Shoes and socks will be wet for the rest of the day (for the next four months, actually). Depression. Lack of sunlight. Need sleep. Need potatoes. Starch.

Figure 3. Helicopter Tours of the City For Only $149.99! Zip across the water! See the sights! Ride in air-conditioned comfort with up to four of your friends in a fully refurbished, and 100% safe, vintage US Military Huey Helicopter (please note that the unfortunate midair helicopter collision last year did NOT involve our company). Call and reserve your spot today for the ride of your life! (Night flight rates are slightly higher, call for details).

Figure 4. An unnamed biological researcher floating in microgravity on NASA’s astronaut training plane. The white patches over each “titty” (NASA technical bodypart designator # EE70822-102) are plastic vomit bags, open and ready for use.

Figure 5. A television antenna, circa 1964. Before cable companies took over the world by purchasing every animate and inanimate object on the planet with their vast, almost unfathomable wealth, television signals used to be freely broadcast through the air.

Figure 6. WTF ? In this figure it can be clearly seen that there are some large chickens with lawnmowers. Approach with extreme caution.

Figure 7. Blueprint for the first successful rewiring of a human brain using old stereo speaker wire. The left and right panels show the before and after surgery diagrams, respectively and/or vice versa. This historic operation was performed in a makeshift, partially sterile facility constructed in Room 48 (Second Floor) of the North Dallas Super-8 Motel (from Interstate 10, take the FM180 exit and go right for 0.5 miles). Speaker wire was provided gratis by Radio Shack (store # 4188, Steel-Horse Shopping Plaza, North Dallas, TX, next to the Dave & Busters’ Sports Bar).

Figure 8. Don’t you hate it when some moron takes a random, subject-less picture with your camera? Or maybe you do it yourself: you know, you’re taking the thing out of its case and you accidentally snap a picture of who knows what, and you’re thinking “Crap, I wonder what that’s going to look like?” Well, it’s going to look something like this, except not in focus.

Figure 9. Analog brain wiring diagram. This diagram was adapted from several figures published by Swasher and associates at the University of Berlin. Swasher, et al., conducted a meta-analysis of over 280 brain wiring diagrams published in the scientific literature over a ten year period and concluded that a two or three year old child could deduce the wiring of the brain with almost as much accuracy.

Figure 10. A nest of the elusive Ebony-billed Woodpecker (which sometimes cross-breeds with the Ivory-billed Woodpecker). The Ebony-billed Woodpecker (EBW) lives entirely indoors, most commonly in older condominiums and apartments. They frequently build their nests on the windowsills in their apartments so that the egg gets a lot of sunlight. It is believed that this warms the egg, which frees up the bird from having to sit on it all day. This adaptive behavior is theorized to have allowed the EBW enough free time to find gainful daytime employment, which, in turn, allows it to pay its rent.

Figure 11. Charles, an 11 year old polar bear, and the primary source of Polar Bear Fibroblast cell line PBF-101. First successfully cultured by Ansen and associates, the PBF-101 cell line is widely used in research on drugs that are believed to restore life to the dead. When this picture was taken, Charles was living at the St. Louis Zoo, in St. Louis, Missouri. Due to his high biotechnological value, however, Charles is frequently moved from zoo to zoo around the world, and his current whereabouts are known to only a select group of researchers.

Figure 12. The number “0.7%” turned on its side. A 90-degree clockwise rotation solves the clever, unbreakable code that prevents this number from being read in its sideways conformation.

Figure 13. WTF 2, the sequel. Question: What is long, brown, and sticky? Answer: A stick.

Figure 14. An ice cave with Jesus or an angel coming out of it. After wandering in the icy dark of winter for many hours (see Figure 2), the brain begins to freeze. The alternating hard (partially frozen) and soft (still not frozen) portions of the brain can induce significant rewiring of neural circuits (see also Figure 9), such that the snowbound wanderer can experience religious visions, alien abductions, solutions to differential equations, and strategies to achieve world peace and the end of poverty. Upon thawing, these aberrant neural circuits usually return to normal.

Figure 15. Brainwaves. Duh.

Figure 16. PBF-101 cells after treatment with 0.7% Revivarin. As before (Figure 1), magnification level is “large,” and the green fluorescence indicates “alive”.

Figure 17. Floating. Duh.

“Biology? That’s unusual.” This is something I’ve been hearing a lot lately, usually from my friends when I tell them about the courses I’m taking this term. I’m in the home stretch of my Engineering Physics degree, which is the point where I’m supposed to choose some technical electives and become a specialist. Most Engineering Physics students take traditional electives, like fluid flow, power transmission, or aerodynamics. But there is a growing group of students, like myself, who are looking to apply their engineering knowledge to less-traditional areas, and biology is perhaps one of the most popular.

But how exactly can an engineer do anything useful in biology? That was a question I tried to answer last summer when I went to go work at the BC Cancer Agency’s Genome Sciences Centre (GSC), in Vancouver. The GSC is unique in that it has an embedded engineering group, with two full-time engineers, who do on-site technology development for the life scientists at the GSC. Technology development is quite a broad term, but what it means in this context is designing and building devices to make life science experiments faster, better, and less expensive.

On my first day of work I was plunked into an environment full of life science and life scientists, neither of which I had much experience with. My challenge was to build useful new devices for this lab, and fortunately all of the life scientists were enthusiastically on board with this idea. So I plunged ahead into the work term, starting with meetings between the senior scientists and engineering group about what they wanted done. Immediately, I noticed some differences in the approaches the two groups took.

I found that the engineers often wanted to approach a problem from the ground up, and do things completely differently, which is understandable because we wanted to create novel devices, not just make slight improvements. Life scientists, on the other hand, were extremely concerned with keeping experimental conditions as constant as possible between the old method, and the engineers’ new method. This is also understandable because the GSC is (for the most part) a production sequencing and mapping facility – it is simply not an option to have production grind to a halt because the new method turns out to be inequivalent to the old method.

Sometimes there would be disagreement, but for the most part the engineers and life scientists were able to find a balance between massive overhaul and “not messing too much with the experiments, “ and you’d end up with a really useful device that does all the things the old method did, but faster, better, and for less money. I think that the project I worked on for most of the summer is a great example of how collaboration between engineers and life scientists can result in something that neither group would be able to accomplish alone.
My project involved agarose gel. If you’ve ever prepared agarose before, you know that it can be time consuming, boring, and messy. If you’ve never prepared agarose before, you’ll have to take my word that it can be time consuming, boring, and messy. For most people who use agarose, a few gels a day is the most they’ll probably ever need, and preparing it by hand (add agarose powder to buffer, microwave, stir, add water, microwave, stir, add water, microwave, stir, add water, cool to 60 degrees, pour) is an acceptable way of doing things. This is woefully inadequate at the GSC, where (in the past) two technicians had to spend their entire morning preparing and pouring the day’s 18 gels. When I arrived, a decision had just been made to expand to 54 gels per day. Well, hand preparation is a good technique on a small scale, but on a large, production scale this is a problem crying out for technology development. I undertook the project to build an automated gel-pouring device.

The biggest concern the life scientists had was ensuring that gel made with the new device was exactly equivalent to handmade gel; in other words, “we found a way to make this experiment* work with handmade gel, let’s not mess with it too much.” So I had to be certain that this device would spit out gel with the correct temperature, volume, percent agarose, and pour speed. Of course, if this device was going to become part of the gel production “pipeline,” I would have to ensure that it would be reliable as well, because a failure would shut the whole pipeline down.

The first part of the device was a commercial mixing unit, designed for preparing agarose. We decided to purchase it outright because a German company had already gone to the trouble of engineering it, so why duplicate their work? In this unit, you could simply dump a large amount of (measured) agarose powder and buffer in, and it would automatically heat, dissolve, and mix over 30 batches of gel at once, and hold it all at a particular temperature to boot! This was pretty good, but I hadn’t done any engineering yet, we had just spent a lot of money. The real trick was getting the gel from the mixing unit to somewhere useful.

For this I designed a custom pump system, which was essentially a large syringe. When the syringe aspirates, gel is drawn in from the mixing unit. When the syringe dispenses, gel gets pushed out of a dispensing hose. The syringe could be moved up and down by a computer-controlled motor, which had very fine speed and position control. With this setup, I was able to get highly repeatable volume and pour speed for the gel.

Of course, everyone knows (and if you don’t you’ll have to take my word again) that agarose solidifies when it cools. There were quite a few valves and hoses between the mixing unit (where the gel was kept heated) and the end of the dispensing hose. If you simply let agarose run through these elements, without thinking about its temperature, then pretty soon you’re going to end up with a system jammed full of solidified gel, which isn’t much use to anybody. To get around this, I used heated hoses, and cloth heating elements on the syringe and valves. A particularly nice feature of these heaters was their adjustable temperatures, so that the gel was kept at the same temperature no matter where it was in the system. Thus, no matter how long the system was left sitting, the temperature at the outlet hose was always the same ideal pour temperature.

The final part of the system was control, so I rigged up a simple, sealed control box next to the hose. After creating a batch of agarose in the mixing unit, the operation of the system was quite straightforward – press the dispense button, and 350mL of 60ºC agarose was dispensed from the hose in exactly 10 seconds. Press dispense again to repeat, up to about 35 times. The gel was exactly what you would get from handmade agarose, minus the repetitive weighing, mixing, microwaving, water replacement, and cooling. With only one technician, three times the number of gels could be poured in the same amount of time.

Actually implementing this device at the GSC was an adventure in itself. Life scientists, it seems, are accustomed to buying commercial instruments that have been extensively tested before ever being put on the market. As an engineer, however, I know that it’s very hard to get a prototype like this to work perfectly the first time; there’s always initial troubleshooting and “teething problems” that are smoothed out within a week or two. When these bugs invariably came up, it would lead to a tense day where the life scientists were forced back to handmade gel and I would be hurriedly trying to fix the bug so the machine could be used the next day. Fortunately, these bugs were quickly ironed out, but I found it interesting how the life scientists and engineers had different expectations for bugs in a prototype. Life scientists (as end users) understandably viewed bugs as a bad thing, while as engineers, we seemed to view finding and eliminating bugs as an inevitable step in making a reliable product.

Collaboration with life scientists and technicians was particularly important in making this device useful to them, as I changed quite a number of things because of their feedback. One example is the pour speed: too fast, and the gel splatters, too slow, and the gel can solidify before it’s all poured, sometimes leading to uneven slabs. Another example is the presence of bubbles in the gel. I won’t go into the details of the solution to that problem, but the feedback from life scientists on exactly what size and number of bubbles could be tolerated was invaluable.

In my time at the GSC I also observed some other interesting differences between the engineers and life scientists. To a life scientist, placing a massive shaker on a cantilevered table seems completely reasonable, but to an engineer it screams “resonance” and “broken table.” On the flip side, the colour of a table top seems cosmetic at best, and irrelevant at worst to an engineer. To a life scientist, a black tabletop can mean being able to see bubbles in gel, while a white tabletop makes seeing those bubbles nearly impossible. In general, it seemed like there were a lot of things that seemed basic to engineers that weren’t obvious to life scientists, and there were a lot of things obvious to life scientists that would never have crossed an engineer’s mind.

The automated gel machine is now used on a daily basis at the GSC, and is (as far as I know) bug free and reliable. The shaker is on a table with proper supports, and the tabletop is black, and all is well in the world. In my short four months at the GSC, I certainly found that engineers and life scientists approach technology differently. However, by working together and combining expertise, I think that we were able to create some truly useful new devices.

*Slab electrophoresis for physical mapping, in this case.

(This paper was presented as an April Fools Joke in Nature, 1993)

TITLE:
Dorian Gray Mice (by Robin A. Weiss)

FIRST PARAGRAPH
Newly generated transgenic mice appear to be able to grow indefinitely without ageing, yet with programmed death. This dramatic developmet is the work of several groups, and has been accomplished in three stages…

When I work as a pharmacist in a retail pharmacy, I get a lot of questions from customers on which painkiller is best for them. Unfortunately, the answer is usually not black and white: it really depends on their medical conditions. That’s why pharmacists are here to recommend products using their professional judgment. Thank god the BC provincial bylaw states that a retail pharmacy must not be open for business unless a pharmacist is in the pharmacy. Consumers can take advantage of having a pharmacist to recommend painkillers for them.

However, some non-prescription painkillers, such as Tylenol, Advil and Aspirin are also available in non-pharmacy settings. Moreover, say when you’re in pain in the middle of the night, you may just want to take a painkiller from your medicine cabinet, or find one in a convenience store nearby ASAP. What should you do then?
This article will serve as a guideline for consumers to know what medications they can take for pain relief, and also the difference among the non-prescription painkillers available on the market.

I would like to start off with a case scenario here:

Mrs. Smith is a 26-year old pregnant woman who experiences headache in the middle of the night. She goes to look for a non-prescription painkiller in 7-11, which has no pharmacist. Mrs. Smith is in the 7th month of pregnancy and has no known allergy and other medical conditions. She wants a drug that is effective and has minimal side effects. Which medication should she take?

Don’t fret if you can’t answer the question right now. After reading this article, you’ll be able to answer this without the help of a pharmacist.

What are the non-prescription painkillers available on the market? Tylenol, Advil, Motrin, and Aspirin – that’s it! So, what are the differences among them? I’ll now discuss their characteristics one by one.

Tylenol

The chemical name of Tylenol is acetaminophen. You may see other brands of the product (e.g. Tempra, Panadol, house brands) that also have acetaminophen as its sole medicinal ingredient. They are virtually the same thing as Tylenol, and it’s your choice on which brand to use. If cost is a concern for you, you may want to buy the house brand acetaminophen, which is generally cheaper than the brand name Tylenol.

Tylenol is used for pain or fever relief, but it has no anti-inflammatory action. However, it is safe and effective for fever relief in any age group; in addition, we have years of clinical experience with this product. Tylenol reduces pain and fever by inhibiting the production of brain prostaglandins, which are chemical substances that sensitize pain and elevate the body temperature regulation set point.

The usual adult dose of Tylenol for pain or fever is 325 – 1000 mg every 4 to 6 hours as needed (maximum 4 g/day). The children dose is 10 – 15 mg/kg every 4 – 6 hours as needed (maximum 5 doses/day or 65 mg/kg/day). For children, you can give them the liquid form of Tylenol instead of the tablets; the dose conversion to volume is listed on the package.

Tylenol is usually well tolerated and has minimal side effects. It rarely causes stomach upset or allergic reactions. Nevertheless, it can lead to liver damage if you overdose yourself on Tylenol or if you have taken high doses for long term. Heavy drinkers are more prone to Tylenol-induced liver damage because alcohol limits one’s capacity to metabolize Tylenol (maximum 2 g/day).

It is relatively safe to take Tylenol in all trimesters of pregnancy compared to taking other painkillers. Although Tylenol is detected in the breast milk of nursing mother, adverse effects in infants are not reported. Therefore, it is considered to be the first choice painkiller in pregnancy and lactation.

Advil and Motrin

Did you know that Advil and Motrin are actually the same drugs? They both have ibuprofen as their sole medicinal ingredient. There are house brands, such as Life Brand and Pharmasave, which are the same drugs too. Similar to Tylenol, Advil is used for pain or fever relief. Unlike Tylenol, Advil provides anti-inflammatory action as well! So, you may want to take Advil rather than Tylenol if you have a painful AND inflamed wound with swelling.

Advil belongs to the class non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug, commonly known as NSAID. This class of drugs works by inhibiting cyclo-oxygenase-1 (COX-1), which catalyzes production and release of prostaglandins (pain sanitizers and fever inducers). In addition, it inhibits cyclo-oxygenase-2 (COX-2), which is responsible for inflammatory response. Note that most NSAIDs reversibly alter platelet function and thereby prolong bleeding time. So, it may not be a good idea if you’re still bleeding and wants to take Advil for pain relief!

The usual adult dose of Advil for pain or fever relief is 200 – 400 mg every 4 to 6 hours as needed (maximum 3.2 g/day). For children, the dose is 5 mg/kg every 6 – 8 hours for temperature less than 39oC, and 10 mg/kg every 6 – 8 hours for pain or temperature greater than 39oC (maximum 4 doses/day or 40 mg/kg/day).

Advil is as effective as Tylenol in fever relief, but is considered a second line agent. It’s because we have less experience with Advil than Tylenol, and Advil has more adverse effects than Tylenol. However, Advil is less toxic in overdose, provides greater temperature reduction and has longer duration of action.

Common side effects of Advil include stomach upset, ulcer and bleeding. They are just side effects most commonly reported and do not happen to everyone. It is recommended not to take Advil during pregnancy. We currently don’t have any safety information on its use during lactation.

Aspirin

The chemical name of Aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid (or ASA in short). There are also other brands available such as Entrophen and house brands. Similar to Advil, it provides fever or pain relief with anti-inflammatory action. In addition, Aspirin is used as a blood-thinner for prevention of stroke and heart disease, which Tylenol and Advil cannot do.

Nevertheless, Aspirin should be avoided in children less than 18 years of age with viral illness, such as flu and chicken pox. There is an association between children in this category taking Aspirin and the occurrence of Reye’s syndrome – a rare but serious condition that consists of acute brain degeneration with water retention in the head, fatty liver and disorder in metabolism, such as low blood sugar. Since pharmacists and consumers can hardly diagnose if a child has a viral infection or not, it is generally recommended that children less than 18 years of age to avoid taking Aspirin, unless it is really necessary to do so (e.g. other options do not work).

Notice there is a product called “Baby-Aspirin” or “Low-dose ASA” on the market. This is actually a blood-thinner used for prevention of stroke and heart disease and is still unsafe for children to take!

Similar to Advil, Aspirin belongs to the class NSAID, which inhibits COX-1 and COX-2 to provide pain, fever, and inflammation relief. Unlike other NSAIDs, Aspirin irreversibly and permanently inhibits platelets for their lifespans (8 – 10 days). So, you may be more prone to unstopped bleeding after taking Aspirin!

The usual adult dose for Aspirin for fever or pain is 325 – 1000 mg every 4 to 6 hours as needed (maximum 4 g/day). The children dose is 10 – 15 mg/kg every 4 to 6 hours as needed (maximum 5 doses/day or 65 mg/kg/day).

Aspirin and Advil have similar side effects: stomach upset, ulceration, and bleeding. If you have ringing in the ears or hearing loss after taking Aspirin, it may indicate you’ve overdosed yourselves – contact the emergency department ASAP!

Aspirin is relatively safe in intermittent doses during 1st and 2nd trimesters of pregnancy (i.e. the first 6 months). It should be avoided in the 3rd trimester (i.e. 7th to 9th month) since it can harm both the mother and the newborn. Furthermore, Aspirin is detected in breast milk. As a result, Tylenol is still a safer option in pregnancy and lactation.

Going back to the case scenario, should Mrs. Smith take Tylenol? Of course yes! It has minimal side effects, is safe in all trimesters of pregnancy, and will relieve her headache, which has no inflammation involved.

Should she take Advil? No! Although Advil will relieve her headache, it should be avoided during pregnancy. Moreover, it has more side effects than Tylenol.

Should she take Aspirin? DON’T take it! She is already in the third trimester of pregnancy, and Aspirin may harm her and the newborn. Similar to Advil, Aspirin will relieve her headache but may cause more side effects than Tylenol does.

Think I’m cramming too much stuff in your heads? I hope this summary table may help:

Anyhow, this article serves only as a guideline for self-treatment of pain in some common situations. It’s always wise to ask a local pharmacist for recommendations, or dial the 24-hour BC Nurseline at 604-215-4700 (within greater Vancouver) or 1-866-215-4700 (elsewhere within BC). Like I said before, the answers are not always black and white. That’s what we are here for!

References:

Anderson, Philip. Handbook of Clinical Drug Data 10th ed., p. 16-21.

College of Pharmacists of British Columbia. Bylaws of the Council of the College of Pharmacist of British Columbia. Bylaw 5, section 25 (1).

Gray, Jean. Therapeutic Choices 4th ed., p.128-137.

Repchinsky, Carol. Patient Self-Care 1st ed., p. 67-90.

This month’s Hot Science-y Guy really sucks. Okay, James Dyson doesn’t suck, but his inventions sure as heck do. Just ask my friend, Bob, who recently purchased the Dyson Animal Model No. I-Don’t-Know−Exactly-but-It’s-a-Lovely-Shade-of-Purple.

And boy-oh-boy! I sure would like one of these bad boys for myself. And this time, when I say “bad boy”, I don’t mean that in my usual way (see previous “Sparky” references). I mean I really want one of Mr. Dyson’s vacuums! Vacuuming is something I really like doing in the way of household chores. There’s a lot of bang-for-your-buck with vacuuming. It’s a mild workout, sort of like mowing the lawn indoors, and you get to see immediate results – especially if you don’t do it for a few months and eat a lot of chips and crackers and Top Ramen straight out of the package. And while the Swiffer Carpet Flick is truly a must-have (as are most things in the Swiffer line of home maintenance – trust me!), I dream of one day owning a Dyson.

I first became acquainted with this fabulous appliance at last year’s Interior Design Show. There I was on Trade Day, scarf-tossing with the best of them, when I noticed my dear friend, Bob, was missing from my side. Was he mesmerized by a supplier of indoor water features (always a big draw) or grabbing an $8.75 plastic-wrapped turkey sandwich? No! He had stopped to watch a demo at the Dyson booth. I was gobsmacked. Having just purchased a new house, Bob was supposed to be on the lookout for reasonably-priced cork flooring and closet organizers – not a vacuum cleaner. But there he was, a rapt one-man audience far away from the cork floor and closet exhibits, listening in earnest to a middle-aged Dyson Toronto Representative pouring her honey-sweet palaver into his captive earhole. I thought at first that he was just trapped into habitual politeness and was, perhaps, hoping I’d arrive to pull him away – but not so. Ms. Dyson Rep was not your usual Electrolux yammerer. Ms. Dyson Rep was into her thing! And how could she be otherwise? Dyson vacuums rock! No bags. No suction-loss. Easy disposal of sucked-up crap. Awesome hose extension. Etc., etc. Listen, you don’t need me to sell you on the fine points of an iPod or a PlayStation or a 50″ plasma television. They’re all lovely things to have and covet and steal if you can get away with it. But, me, I am so saving up for a Dyson vacuum.

And as for Mr. Dyson himself, he’s certainly not an unattractive. That finely-polished Brit accent of his is as smooth and lush as Bob’s newly-installed cherry hardwood flooring. Plus, it would seem, for all his multi-multi-millions of pounds sterling and super-engineering science-y know-how, Mr. Dyson actually helps out around the mansion with the day-to-day clean-up.

Word to Mrs. James Dyson: You lucky woman, you – you’ve got a hot one!

We have been getting some lovely haikus for our phylogeny project, and hope to continue getting more (need a good large data set to make this phylohaiku tree impressive looking).

Anyway, here are some that work:

THE NAIADS
bottom of a row-
boat, in a pool of rainwater,
the mayflies orgy
~Nathan Smith

BABY PENGUIN
Warmed against the wind
by the sky-grey coat of fur
later shed and smoothed
~Robert Isenberg

See insectica
Seven Lepidopterae
Spotted Danaidae
~Nan Spiers

SPIDER
Eight legs pirouette
Spinning a muted music:
Arachnid ballet.
~George Motisher

A raucous gray wedge,
Purposeful, splits the pale sky.
Once again, the geese.
~George Motisher

AGROUND
Coral, grows real slow
Beautiful colors rising high
Boat prop, the end is real quick
~Elizabeth Prata

O’ C. elegans,
You blueprint organism,
From you come my plans.
~Leah Prentice

COW
Content flantulance
Their only conversation
Unknowing burgers.
~Mark Langford

Toothy dinosaur.
The Tyrannosaurus Rex
Ate the herbivores!
~Dave Kristof

…Some that don’t

I hate ligations
Failure is a common theme
Let someone else try
~Kaan Biron

Why not a pixie,
For haiku phylogeny,
They exist to me.
~Leah Prentice

BRAIN BUSTER
Avogadro’s rule
So incomprehensible
But not by Perrin
~Elizabeth Prata

EUREKA
Tens of synapses,
firing erractically.
A new thought arises.
~Peter B. Reiner

The chilling winds whirl.
Microbe civilizations
Rise in fallen leaves.
~George Motisher

My phylogeny
From goofy infant nonsense
To enlightenment
~Nan Spiers

…an example of one that sort of works

COMMON INTERFACE
Warm, dew-soaked earth that
Beckons both robin and worm
Latter pounced, consumed
~Kathleen Miglia

…and an example of one which is not even close

Kitten kitten, frosty iced kitten
bear meat, extra extra gooey
slick slick Samoen kick out the jams kid!
~Timber Masterson

…keep them coming…

Thank you all for coming. As you can clearly see, I’m no longer the person I once was. In fact, I’m no longer a person at all.

Some may be tempted to call me an android. You’d be mistaken. An android is a robot with a human appearance, but when I got the chance to have my brain implanted into a robotic body, I opted for the bulky, box-like design. Why? Because, frankly, I could never stand you people and had no desire to continue looking like you. When I say “you people,” by the way, I’m not speaking of you people specifically, but “all” people.

Don’t get me wrong. Now that I’m a robot, I’m not going to go crazy and start “killing all humans.” (Unless, of course, you force me to. But that seems unlikely.)

Some of you assembled here today knew me long before my transformation. You remember me as a puny weakling, no doubt, incapable of defending myself. Now I’m constructed from a titanium alloy. I’m not sure what that is exactly, but I _am_ certain that if anyone ever tried to punch me in the back of the head again, he’d break every bone in his hand. And when he cried out in pain, holding his destroyed hand, I’d laugh a deep robot laugh and then shoot electricity out of my titanium fingertips and fry you…that is, “him”…right there on the spot.

But again…not a killer robot. I have no wish to harm anyone, even though I may be dying to try out my laser beam eyes. (I have a feeling they could instantly reduce a person to ash, but have no way of knowing. Yet.) Technically, they’re not eyes anymore but optic sensors. They can tell me exactly how many pores are on each of your noses, yet they’re incapable of shedding even a single tear. Not that I’ll have any need for tears anymore, unless they’re tears of joy. Tears of joy might actually be appropriate at this moment, but I’d definitely sacrifice them to keep the lasers.

In addition to the laser beam eyes and electricity-shooting fingers, I’m now incredibly strong. My bench press has gone from 115 pounds to somewhere in the vicinity of 14.9 metric tons. But obviously I no longer have any need for exercise.

That brings me to my next point. Since I don’t need to exercise and you all do, I’ve come up with a plan that calls for you to fetch anything I may need from now on — books, keys, priceless artwork, gold. Whatever. This will keep you in good shape, but more importantly it will keep me happy. And believe me, you want to keep me happy.

If any of you are thinking of becoming as happy as I am — in other words, if any of you are thinking about also becoming robots — I should inform you that the pair of scientists who worked on me have been killed in a tragic car accident, and they were the only ones with the required knowledge and skill. Their car was crushed into a tiny square, the kind you see in auto wrecking yards. This was an accident, of course. I was merely trying to open the car door for them. Unfortunately, I misjudged my new super strength and… well, no one else will be getting a robot body until other scientists can be trained. And you never know if they might suffer an accident as well.

I’ve forgotten to mention my ears. Excuse me — my auditory sensors. Like my optic receptors, they’re a thousand times more efficient than the ordinary human’s, meaning I can hear every word spoken in this auditorium. When I dismiss you all momentarily I would like the gentleman in the nineteenth row, wearing the gray sport coat, to stay behind. I heard what you muttered and would like to assuage your concerns in private. I see that 24,352 beads of sweat have suddenly erupted from your brow, friend, but I assure you there will be little pain. At least, I “think” there will be little pain. I’m new at this.

As for the rest of you, and humanity in general, I’m sure we’ll get along fine. You’ll all be staying weak pathetic humans and I’ll be staying a super-powerful robot with laser beam eyes and such. As soon as we all accept that, the better off we…that is, “you”…will be.

End communication.