Student invention grows hundreds of ‘mini-brains’ at once | Hacker News Reader

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

spectrumnews.org

79 pointschc214924 comments

>“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.

agreed, I had a rough time of it, I started working in computing at 13 and only got the job because my mom hired me to automate data entry at the local college.

I was actually pretty lucky to be able to work with the places that I have, but it was a lot of applying everywhere and hoping they didn't ask how old I was on the phone interview.

I actually had to grow a beard before people stopped asking me how old I was and focused on asking me technical questions :D

it does seem to be taking a turn, I have seen a lot of kids hanging out at the local tinker mill working on cool projects and talking about starting their own companies. which seems like a much more accessible thing than it was when I was a kid.

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 ground-swell.

It may be, but I'm more concerned with the poor treatment the kid got initially, getting ignored like that. Even if you didn't think he was serious, would it have killed you to refer him to what you thought would have been a more appropriate channel rather than ignoring him?

He didn't pass the right signaling… maybe they're better off by not working with those who dismissed them so easily?

I don't know. I think I understand the viewpoint. I get emailed by random people all the time. I usually reply to them, and try to be encouraging, unless I'm super harried and it just slips through the cracks. But, as far as I can tell, none of them have really turned into anything. Usually, they end up ignoring my email. There's been dozens over the years and it probably would have been a better use of my time to ignore them.

Could you send a form letter inviting them to verify that they are serious?

I sympathize with your sentiment, but the amount of mails academics get from people who says they want do work in their group is just overwhelming. Mostly it is Chinese and Indians who want to do a PhD or a postdoc in the group. Those who doesn't make it clear that they understand more than superficially what your position is and what the research group is doing will be rudely ignored.

That's like saying every software engineer in the Bay Area should respond helpfully to every email from recruiters, directing them to more appropriate candidates rather than ignoring them.

OTOH, it is a groundswell in the engineering community to notice the medical application. Interdisciplinarians are the hugely valuable applied scientists who unlock the power of ideas.

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.

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

Earlier this year, someone from Reddit asked me for advice on classifying some tricky medical image data (CT/MRI/SPECT of healthy vs Parkinson's patients), an area somewhat related to my PhD research. The guy was very knowledgable and had already made a lot of progress. I asked him which lab he was doing his thesis in. He replied to say he was a high school student.

I'm seriously impressed with what these students are capable of these days.

That's... amazing. He just took something from the artisinal to mass production stage so quickly! I wonder how many applications like this will emerge in the next decade, that no one has even considered?

>"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.

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.

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.

> but considering the fights against abortion in US, I wonder if law makers approve of this.

Probably some law maker since nothing is really immune from them on any subject, but I don't think the anti-arbortion crowd is really going to care.

Taking the comments from an article link[1]

The advent of human induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells, which allow researchers to ultimately transform any cell into a neuron, has opened a new avenue for the study of complex neuropsychiatric disorders, including autism.

In principle, iPS cells can be derived from cells anywhere in the body, and maintain the individual’s unique genetic background. This is important, as complex diseases are caused by mutations in multiple genes, which would be reflected in the iPS model.

Since, its not embryonic stem cells, it should go over fine and has nothing really to do with the pro-life agenda. I tend to start with the example of skin grafting when describing this type of thing to give the context of starting with existing non-embryonic cells and working your way to treatments. I guess there might be those opposed to using your own cells to research or fix you, but I think that's a very, very small sliver of the population.

1) https://spectrumnews.org/opinion/viewpoint/promise-and-pitfa...

>“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.

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.

And they're certainly going to be doing it now!

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