Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

spectrumnews.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 25 posts

Re: Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

#11

Post by koluft »

moron4hire wrote: post #3

I don't mean to belittle what the kid has done. It's an actually amazing accomplishment, for anyone of any age. But it calls to question a problem. Is there a major issue with cross-disciplinary collaboration within the medical and academic spaces? I would think a mechanical or electrical engineer would consider this to be a fairly trivial application of the tech, yet the medical community seems to be hailing it as a…

This is just a hype article. The invention is a cost saving redesign of an existing device. The wholesale wholesale price ($400) is lower than the retail price of existing devices ($200), which is nice -- more competition, but not particularly technically amazing.

Re: Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

#12

Post by GFK_of_xmaspast »

koluft wrote: post #7

>“My thought was, okay, let’s just wait. If he is serious, he’s going to ask me again,” says Song, professor of neurology This is a horribly destructive attitude, that promotes salesmanship over technical talent.

You might be amazed at the level of flakiness among high school students.

Re: Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

#13

Post by T-A »

moron4hire wrote: post #3

I don't mean to belittle what the kid has done. It's an actually amazing accomplishment, for anyone of any age. But it calls to question a problem. Is there a major issue with cross-disciplinary collaboration within the medical and academic spaces? I would think a mechanical or electrical engineer would consider this to be a fairly trivial application of the tech, yet the medical community seems to be hailing it as a…

There is some supporting evidence: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1964613

Re: Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

#15

Post by tluyben2 »

abc_lisper wrote: post #14

Is this ethical. I know there are other people who are growing mini(should call them micro, by their size) brains, but considering the fights against abortion in US, I wonder if law makers approve of this.

I am wondering that as well. More like is it considered ethical than is it ethical though: the bacon on your plate comes from an animal with more brain power than a fetus and the religious people their ideas that one creature from is more important than another is interesting.

Re: Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

#16

Post by giarc »

>“They [high school students] know more than we do about programming and 3D printing, all that cool stuff,” he says. “They can make a design in a very different way than how we were trained.”

I think this is an important statement. Kids tinkering in their basement have knowledge to do great work, but are often overlooked because of their age or education.

Re: Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

#17

Post by deegles »

>"But unencumbered by the constraints of a doctoral thesis, high school students have the time and energy to innovate"

Does that seem sad? Maybe doctoral programs should include a year of lab-time after your thesis so you can work on innovative projects.

Re: Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

#18

Post by patall »

abc_lisper wrote: post #14

Is this ethical. I know there are other people who are growing mini(should call them micro, by their size) brains, but considering the fights against abortion in US, I wonder if law makers approve of this.

Well, its just another example why the eSC = human argumentation is BS. A human is a fully developed nervous system, not some cells. Given some vectors, we could create iPS from pretty much any body cell and then probably a human from that (if we had a sufficient bioreactor). You can also let them divide, seperate them and now you have 2 - (some big number) humans. Cells or organs are no humans. People that think that cells are the same as a grown human may have a ethical problem here, but honestly, thats their problem.

Re: Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

#19

Post by patall »

koluft wrote: post #7

>“My thought was, okay, let’s just wait. If he is serious, he’s going to ask me again,” says Song, professor of neurology This is a horribly destructive attitude, that promotes salesmanship over technical talent.

I totally agree (and at the same time assume that just the story he tell now, he probably just ignored it because he gets hundreds of emails a day. When he got the third he may have thought: I should say something before he spams me the whole day). Its a typical strategy that works as long as not everyone is doing it.

Re: Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once

#20

Post by jayhuang »

giarc wrote: post #16

>“They [high school students] know more than we do about programming and 3D printing, all that cool stuff,” he says. “They can make a design in a very different way than how we were trained.” I think this is an important statement. Kids tinkering in their basement have knowledge to do great work, but are often overlooked because of their age or education.

This exactly.

Back when I first started taking client work, I had plenty of trouble securing contracts because owners/execs saw a kid at the table, not someone who was going to solve their problems for a respectable amount of money. This was always the result of prospective clients insisting to have a video call/meet prior to any work being done.

Quickly after, I strongly refused any situation that would give away my age. I'd be lying to say I didn't receive a lot of opposition but when your chance of securing a deal is sub 10% and tons more time wasted, it's easy to just drop the prospect.

By now, my age is (for the most part), no longer a deal-killer, but I still usually do the same thing unless they're referred by an existing client. It's a huge timesaver.

Post reply on HN