Andrew R Gross

Last month, I joined a makerspace called HexLab.  It's been around five years or so, but the founder concluded that he no longer has the time to manage it, so he transferred ownership to Allen Pan, a YouTuber I follow.  At the same time, HexLab is moving to a new location. I've been volunteering weekly for the last four weeks, so I've gotten to see something old become new again and then take shape.  Last Saturday, HexLab had its first member meeting since I joined, and I volunteered as the interim facilities and safety coordinator.  For the next three months, I'll be responsible for setting up the equipment.  Equally exciting, though, is the opportunity to promote the ideal environment.  I think most tinkerers dream of getting to work in a place like Tony Stark's garage , or Shuri's lab , or  the batcave .  I want this to be a space with flavor, and as interim facilities coordinator, that's what I'm going to try to do.

Last week, the hospital I work at hosted a conference on the role of Virtual Reality in medicine. After strolling through demo booths, here are the top five companies and products that blew me away. Number Five: AppliedVR appliedvr.io/ AppliedVR is a startup that provides VR equipment and support for hospitals to use to manage pain. It’s a simple business, but it makes sense. Virtual Reality is incredibly immersive, which studies have shown can effectively calm patients and distract them from anxiety and even physical pain during procedures like blood draws. Setting up and maintaining equipment and software is something most hospitals are unlikely to be prepared to manage, so AppliedVR encourages them to outsource it. Regardless of AppliedVR’s future, the future of VR to transport patients away from their bodies during medical procedures and to provide mental stimulation to patients confined to a hospital is all but certain to assume a place in hospitals in the future. Numb...

Last week, SpaceX launched the Falcon Heavy, a rocket capable of lifting cargo beyond Earth's orbit, to the Moon or Mars.  Along with presumably thousands of other people, I watched the live feed with baited breath.  So I was surprised when I encountered friends online who respectfully questioned why this was really of any consequence.  Sure it's thrilling.  So was the Eagles' Superbowl victory.  But does a billionaire sending a sports car into interplanetary space really have any more significance than a sports victory? I think it does. Although the stated goal is distant, I think that the technologies developed to explore space are usually of the most benefit here on Earth.  Life support equipment in particular is always designed with the goal of making humans healthier and more comfortable while using the least resources.  There isn't anything of that is designed to provide humans with clean water and food on Mars that isn't of use in the un...

Here is a timelapse of the 3D printer I built for work:

Tomorrow is my 31st birthday, and I'm blessed with incredible health.  Which makes this a fitting time to make a statement that I feel needs to be said about my mortality.  I believe that it is most likely that when I die, it will be due to cancer.  And furthermore, I don't consider this a bad thing. I went to a doctor for a general checkup last week, and asked to get my genome screened or sequenced in order to assess what hereditary diseases I'm at elevated risk for.  The doctor told me I was about five years early and that it wasn't an affordable or covered service yet, so I guess I'll just have to wait.  When I mentioned that I was fairly confident I'd die of cancer, she was taken aback.  "Why would you say that?" she asked.  Her tone was respectfully professional but without an effort to hide her disapproval that I would prognosticate my own cause of death.  Did she think I was being disrespectful to people with cancer?  Did she think I...

This will be a quick one. For a few weeks I've been working on the general plan for the ROV, and demoing various strategies for collecting video and temperature data, and sending signals to it from a computer.  Recently, I though, I moved on to working on the thrusters.  These are ducted propellers which propel the ROV through the water. This kind of design is pretty complicated.  The shape of a propeller isn't easy to calculate or just guess, and propellers aren't easy to build either.  Fortunately, there has been a lot of open-source development on other projects, which will likely be the topic of my next ROV update. Based on what others have found, I purchased the following propeller: I also bought a motor to drive it.  The next step is to buy an electronic speed controller (ESC) that will deliver power to the motor as commanded by and arduino micro controller.  Before I buy the ESC, though, I need to make some decisions about what kind of...

I first started planning to build an underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) around two years ago, shortly after leaving grad school.  Oceanography had scratched an itch for the adventure of exploration. Earth scientists travel to the inhospitable places.  They sail across oceans and climb mountains.  They go to Antarctica.  And using probes, they also send their presence even further.  Into the abyssal ocean, into volcanoes, even onto alien planets. I didn't want to lose that excitement, and designing and building a submersible ROV was a way of continuing that exploration without the need of wider logistics out financing. For over a year, this was purely an intention. Late in 2016, though I finally began to work on it seriously, although gradually. I have some limited familiarity in the process of designing hardware to penetrate inaccessible places.  I was in a satellite design club in college. Designing a mission to search for life is a common ...

My brother and I were talking about the fears of automation and it led to him searching for articles arguing against those who were concerned.  Among them he found this one: "Opinions: The robots aren’t threatening your job" [Washington Post].  It offers the general dismissals of a journalist living in Washington DC in 2015. The Great Robot Freakout of 2015 has begun, and it looks a lot like the robot freakouts that came before it.   In a new survey by CNBC, Americans were asked how concerned they were, if at all, that their jobs could be replaced by technology in the next five years. The level of automation angst was astonishing: About 1 in 8 workers indicated was worried about being displaced. Among those earning less than $30,000, it was a whopping 1 in 4.    ...  Then, as now, such premonitions embraced the so-called   Luddite Fallacy : that technological developments would permanently reduce or even eliminate the need for human ...

Recently I've read several articles that excite me regarding climate change. If you know me, you probably know that I have a pet peeve for climate alarmists.  There is a famous scene in Aaron Sorkin's show "The Newsroom" in which a scientist informs the protagonist that the literal apocalypse has occurred, and we are now living in the brief delay between when it happened and when the events foretold in the Book of Revelations unfold.  The concept of the scene is clear: Sorkin is trying to shock his audience with the knowledge that global warming is not something which is coming, it is something which has come.  And that's true.  It's effects have already begun, and by all projections it is too late to shift course before we see catastrophic weather events that may kill thousands.  Which sucks.  But 1.25 million people died in car accidents last year, so lets not confuse what's coming with the literal end of humankind. Panic among those concerned a...

Recently headlines have declared that Zika has been confirmed to cause microcephaly.  If you haven't been following, Zika is a viral infection similar to Yellow Fever or Denguy Fever that has broken out in Brazil over the last year.  At the same time, Brazil has witnessed an epidemic of a severe birth defect called microcephaly.  It's alarming both for it's consequence and it's mystery.  Microcephaly is a terrible birth defect in which babies are born with small, malformed brains.  But although it seems likely that the microcephaly epidemic is the result of an outbreak of another virus occurring at the same time, we don't actually know how Zika causes microcephaly or how often microcephaly occurs in women with Zika.  This is a huge question. In order to firmly establish that Zika is actually CAUSING birth defects that are occurring, researchers in Brazil grew neruons in a dish and then infected them with Zika.  When they did, the neurons died. What...

I've been working on a lot of projects lately.  I haven't finished  anything substantial recently, but I've got ambition.  So I've started several personal projects.  Mostly electrical.  And I'm excited, because recently some tasks at work have dove-tailed with the personal projects I've been working on in remarkable ways. The two main ones are these: 1) An Underwater Remotely Operated Vehicle (ROV) 2) A wearable replica of the Arc Reactor used by Tony Stark in the Iron Man movies The ROV has been this long-time goal of mine.  ROVs are used to explore the bottom of the ocean.  I saw one in operation on an expedition back when I was studying oceanography.  Here is a picture of the one we used: it's a widely popular one used by most of the field of deep sea biology called Jason 2 . I miss the exploratory aspect of natural science.  I've always liked space and the ocean.  The thing is, there are ways to enjoy a pursuit like thi...

Last week I saw a cool gif of the earth from space. It's a time-lapse of one day in incredible resolution.  It was taken by the Himawari-8 satellite on August 5, 2015.   The Earth If you look in the middle you can see a swirl of clouds. I wondered: how special are those clouds?  Are we looking at a big storm? Regular cloud patterns over the Pacific? Did it have a name?  Fortunately, I have a meteorologist friend, Brad Schaaf. Brad lives in Medford, OR, where he works for the National Weather Service traking weather and dealing with crazy harassing phone calls from conspiracy theorists.  Apparently the only people who care about weather and the skies as much as meteorologists are lunatics.  Here is Brad's response. Andrew, I got your message and did a bit of investigating into the storm. You are quite correct that it is quite a remarkable system, and that it is named. (Fun fact: only systems like this are named. The winter storm name...

The other weekend my neighbor Elizabeth invited me to a regional conference held by the Citizen's Climate Lobby (CCL).  I mentioned the CCL in an earlier post.  It's a climate action group which lobbies individual representatives to support a particular strategy for phasing out the production of carbon dioxide (CO2), which has been slowly raising the temperature of our planet over the last two hundred years. The conference really impressed me because it offered an uncommonly realistic strategy for addressing climate change.  If climate change action is something to which you don't pay much attention, you can be forgiven on the grounds that it's a depressing topic with very little new news.  It periodically appears in the news when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) releases an update on how much CO2 has been released and what effects we expect to occur on what time frame, but other than that it just marches along quietly. Occasionally but rar...

I want to share two things that I think are very cool.  The first is this article about Congressman John Culberson and his passion for extraterrestrial exploration.  The second is a set of tools for picking attractive colors for charts. John Culberson and the Icy Moon I recently read an article in Ars Technica ( "Attempt no landing there? Yeah right—we’re going to Europa" ) that described the state of NASA's mission to the moon Europa.  It said that remarkably, it's being cheered along by the Chairman of the House of Representative's Appropriations Subcommittee, John Culberson.   I shouldn't bother repeating the whole article.  It's worth reading.  The gist is that John Culberson is a Texas Republican fighting to assist -- and even push -- NASA into planning a super-expensive kick-ass science mission to the moon of Jupiter, Europa.  Why?  Because he thinks Europa is just that fucking awesome. I relate.  It's probably all I rel...

I wanted to make a post on two things -- Europa and picking colors that go well together -- but the Europa part got long, so I moved the color thing to a separate post.  This one. This probably won't excite or impress you unless you've found this to be a problem, but I found several tools for picking out optimal sets of colors for making attractive diagrams. I remember seeing the following figure several years ago.  Every day.  Because I printed it out and taped it next to my computer.  The specific bars don't matter so much, to tell the truth, but those citations listed next to each one make up an incredible list of sources that I wouldn't have been able to put together myself otherwise.  I relied on it for checking up on a lot of things when working as a deep-sea marine biologist.  It's from a review from 2012 that remains an outstanding piece of scientific writing.  Dense as hell, but super, super, informative. "FIG. 7. Composition of bacte...

There is a very public discontinuity between the federal ban of marijuana and the many states which have decriminalized it in one form or another.  This is about something else, though.  A friend posted an article highlighting the irrationality of the Drug Enforcement Agency declaring cannabis to be without any known medical benefit while the National Cancer Institute includes information on its website recognizing benefits attributed to cannabis.  Here is the article: "National Cancer Institute Quietly Confirms Cannabis Can Cure Cancer" It's a pretty sensational headline, so I followed it.  What I found was worth making a blog post about.  The short version is that the article is predictably misleading, but there is an element of truth it it.  Remarkably, this truth is somewhat encouraging. Some quick context: the DEA rates drugs in "schedules" based on their potential for abuse versus their potential for benefit.  Marijuana has long been a...

A friend recently asked me whether stem cells could be grafted into a brain to repair damage from a stroke.  I didn't know the answer, so I went looking for it. This reminded me of an episode of South Park from a long time ago.  In it, Cartman lobbies for the use of stem cells in order to save Kenny's life, only to reveal that all he wanted all along was to use them to clone a Shakey's Pizzaria. The reason I bring this up is because it harkens back to the first layman explanation of stem cells I ever heard back in 2001.  The explanation given was that stem cells turn into whatever they're around.  For many, this is still the extent of what is known. If this is true, stroke treatments make a lot of sense.  To my knowledge, there are no real treatments for a stroke.  A whole bunch of brain cells die and you lose the function of whatever they were needed for.  Sometimes you can go through rehab to find new ways to rely on other parts of the brain, b...

I'd like to give a quick plug to a colleague, Mike Lee, who appeared on the podcast Talk Nerdy with Cara Santa Maria in episode 67 last week.  In it, Cara asks Mike to explain what we might expect life to look like on other worlds and how diving to the bottom of the ocean on Earth informs those predictions.  Mike is a graduate student at USC and a collaborator, and he speaks very well.  Follow the link and have a listen. In related news, NASA has approved the Europa Clipper mission to proceed.  Europa is a moon of Jupiter which has been considered by many to be the most likely home to extraterrestrial life in our solar system.  This reputation was built on the results of a flyby by the Galileo spacecraft two decades ago which provided evidence of a gigantic ocean beneath the surface of the moon.  Finally, a dedicated mission will provide us with new information on which to improve our predictions.  You can find more info at the links below: https:...

Unfortunately, Julie's hedgehog Kali had to be put down recently.  Kali had breast cancer.  It was identified in October of 2014, the same week Julie reluctantly adopted the hedgehog.  A friend of a friend unloaded the creature on Julie when he felt in over his head caring for this deceptively exotic animal.  It turned out that he was right, because he wasn't aware that she had a large tumor. This isn't really a negative story, though.  Instead of focusing on her death, consider how well her life was extended.   First, a vet performed a mastectomy to remove the primary mass.  Although they were thorough it was clearly already malignant.  It had spread and it would be back.  No surgery could change this.  The vet suggested that we consider a  Deslorelin implant.  This is a device that slowly releases a chemical that instructs a body to cease releasing estrogen.  Though primarily intended as a birth control device, the ve...

Last week, I went through an odd illness.  What I initially assumed were pangs of hunger began on Tuesday night and then persisted for the rest of the week.  It wasn't a constant ache.  In fact, it didn't feel like a typical pain.  It was just a series of uncomfortable, acute pangs that waned and waxed through the day.   By the end of the week, I was more perplexed than uncomfortable.  Most stomach ailments I've felt cause some kind of digestive trouble, but my digestion was unaffected.  Was it a chemical intolerance to something I ate?  Some kind of stomach flu?  I don't really know, but it made me think about my stomach more than I normally do. My biggest wonder was this: why did I experience any given stomach pang specifically when I did?  Why not five minutes earlier, or later?  If you burn your hand, the pain is dull and continuous.  If you have a sore muscle, it barks when touched or used.  What made my stomac...