Monday, October 25, 2010

Small But Mighty

Celebrating the development of the telemicroscope, CellScope, Aardman animators produced, at 4 seconds-a-day, The Story of Dot.
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Here is Dot: Pursued by an unraveling world, 9mm high Dot races through a landscape of damask and pin heads, pencils, and pence - it looks just like Surrey. With tiny gasps and oophs, she runs. She jumps. She fences. She knits!

It's a dotty bunch at Aardman fusing art and mad-science - painting its dress blue without knocking off its head or losing an arm. The science part they showcase is CellScope, which, as you know, is half Nokia cellphone and half microscope developed by Dan Fletcher's lab at UC Berkeley. In places where it's difficult for a sick person to get to a hospital, the image of a sample, like blood, from a patient can be transmitted to a physician - anywhere in the world - for diagnosis. The optical power can transmit information about skin diseases, ear aches, sore throats, and now malaria.

It's what you do with science, isn't it.