Thursday, May 2, 2013

Take Flight



Although I have no time to join the robotics club, I found a cool article about a tiny robot as small as a quarter hovering the way actual insects do. Weighing under 80mg, it is now being conducted to try some ways of finding a power source light enough to hold. If the robot has artificial material to mimic the wings and muscle of a real insect, then the invention of micro robotics is in a near future in my opinion. I have linked the article below and attached a video above for further reading


I finished a seven page report, and need to modify my final presentation poster by tomorrow. Although the outlook looks excellent in my favor, I hope to finish tonight and post it to Dropbox by tonight. The semester looks good to the current grades I have been getting. The grades look like 5 “A’s” and 2 “C’s.” the C’s come from my view as sacrificed courses until I get back on schedule. I wanted to sample the cafeteria and library computers before I submitted the poster, but it looks like I’m going to have to settle with what I got. There hasn’t been much I did instead of preparing for the project paper and poster.

Since I haven’t identified any of the microorganisms in my project, I have noticed that the colonies I’m counting can just be resident flora of the hands. The men’s bathroom, for example, may have more of an average CFU count to the women’s bathroom, but the colonies observed can just be resident flora microbes. I haven’t identified if the colonies observed were coliforms/enteric bacteria that are picked up and spread around the campus. Staphylococcus species like S. epidermis live on our skin. Even though you wash your hands, the amount of epidermis will never completely come off. Scrubbing with a brush will just spread them all over your fingers and palms. The only removal of bacteria is transient bacteria. Transient bacteria are the microbes picked up in the bathroom or other places of contact. Thus, I should in my modified project identify the microbes being sampled.
The project gave me insight that microorganisms are everywhere, and the hands are the main transmission of contacting a disease causing bacteria. The individual with a good immune response is the reason for being healthy every day.