Cheater!

I stumbled across a report yesterday on Nightline about a guy who is an aspiring Olympic runner. The catch - he doesn't have any feet. He uses special "Cheetah" prosthetic feet, which have a very high efficiency in transmitting the spring energy stored in them. You might have also seen one of these on a recent season of The Amazing Race. Unfortunately, whereas the human ankle is 88% efficient, the Cheetah foot is 91% efficient, so the Olympic officials have barred this guy from eligibility for using performance aids. I say just customize his feet to be a bit less efficient and let him run. He's obviously naturally fast and would be with natural feet or prosthetics. Anyone else with me on this?

Congrats

Congratulations are in order!
David successfully defended his PhD dissertation yesterday and will soon be known as Dr. Dave. And kudos to Mrs. Miller on her chocolate chip cookies.
Also, congratulations to Christy for the ongoing success of her fundraising efforts in behalf of Autism Speaks and Walk Now for Autism. There are still plenty of days left in Autism Awareness Month for those who want to help out. I'm looking forward to the big event May 24. (More details on Christy's blog.)
Oh yeah, and happy Earth Day. Congratulations to all those earth-lovers out there.

Biomimetics

This is a fascinating article on biomimetics and touches on some research already mentioned in a previous post.
Thanks to Chi Min for sending this article my way.
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2008/04/biomimetics/tom-mueller-text