What if research labs didn't have to reinvent the wheel all the time?

Rodents like mice and rats play a pivotal role in neuroscientific research. Through a process known as 'head fixation', scientists surgically implant cannulas and electrodes to measure neurophysiological activity. As mice share roughly 95% of our DNA, head fixation experiments greatly contribute to advancing our understanding of the human brain and diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's.

While head-fixation is common in many labs, proprietary systems are often expensive and inconsistent. This leads many labs to create ad hoc DIY systems at the risk of causing harm to the research animals and impeding the results.

In this episode, we sit down with Zack (Isaac) Weaver, PhD, to explore the ethical and design-specific considerations behind his open-source head gear fixation system. With animal well-being in mind, we explore the multi-stakeholder benefits of open-source hardware in research.

Open-source hardware is a collaborative effort. A special thanks to co-authors Michael R. Tadross and S. Aryana Yousefzadeh and all the labs and members who contributed to the design by trying and testing various iterations.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Did you know that our understanding of basic functions such as memory, learning and sleep is largely thanks to a giant sea slug?

For more than 50 years, Aplysia Californica, a type of slug also known as the California Sea Hare, has been important for understanding how the nervous system works and for investigating the cellular and molecular basis of behaviour. As an essential resource for neurological disease research across the globe, there are large incentives to preserve the species, including sampling and storing its genetic material.

This is easier said than done, as the Sea Hare's genetic material is both delicate and complicated to handle. Cryopreservation methods are simultaneously advancing too slowly, leaving researchers worrying that the field of neurophysiology is running out of time.

Together with Marine Biologist Jack Koch, we take a look at a standardised open-hardware solution that allows for easy sampling and packaging of genetic material for cryopreservation research. Diving into the world of Aplysia Californica, we explore open-source hardware as a revenue stream, and how going open can benefit more than one species.

The design published in HardwareX was made possible through work partly funded by the United States National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Research Infrastructure Programs (ORIP) and completed in partnership with the NIH National Aplysia Resource.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Urgent needs require urgent solutions, but is open-source always the answer?

The UN aims to eradicate malaria in all countries by 2030. However, in some parts of the world, incidents are increasing as the parasites transmitting the disease grow increasingly tolerant to treatment drugs.

A novel treatment method using microwaves to kill the parasite shows promising results. One that could save both lives and economies in Africa, where a majority of malaria incidents and deaths are registered each year. With the release of an open-source portable device for studying the malaria parasite’s growth inhibition via microwave exposure, researchers hope to accelerate the development of a deployable treatment device sooner rather than later.

In this episode of HardwareX, Biochemist and researcher Dr Carmenza Spadafora joins us from her home in Panama as she explains how quantum physics and technological innovation have paved the way for a potentially groundbreaking new method for malaria treatment. A patented method, Dr Spadafora shares her thoughts on why open-source might not always be the best choice.

This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt and ComaStudio via Pixabay.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

How inclusive are advanced prosthetics technologies?

The global demand for prosthetics and orthotics is only expected to rise. Yet, access to affordable and innovative solutions varies greatly at local, national and international levels. And while 3D printing has greatly contributed to making prosthetics available in low-income and developing regions, the benefits that robotics and technological innovation bring users remain highly exclusive.   

This may be about to change. In an attempt to make high-tech prosthetics solutions more accessible, Professor in Biomechatronics at the University of Agder in Norway, Filippo Sanfilippo, along with his colleagues (Martin Økter, Jørgen Dale, Hua Minh Tuan, Muhammad Hamza Zafar, Morten Ottestad) have published an open-source, low-cost sensorised elastic actuator design that promises to shift innovation from the market to the commons.

This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt and ComaStudio via Pixabay. 

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

What does it take to make research catch up with climate change?

The Arctic regions hold crucial information about the environmental impact of rising temperatures. Calving glaciers and treacherous territories make it a life-threatening mission to collect it though.

As autonomous technologies improve, drones, boats and rovers are increasingly being deployed in place of humans to sample, monitor and manage marine and aquatic systems. However, as costs can range in the millions, the value these technologies can provide researchers is relevant to their cost. That is why Daniel F. Carlson and Claus Melvad put it to a group of engineering students at Aarhus University in Denmark to design a low-cost, lightweight and replicable drone for accompanying them on missions to Greenland. In this episode, we take a look at the Naval Operating Research Drone Assessing Climate Change (NORDACC) and discuss how open-source principles coupled with citizen science could accelerate climate change research - and results.

This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt and ComaStudio via Pixabay. 

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Why did high-tech farming go bust?

Vertical Farming was one of the big new technologies of the early 2010s. By growing crops vertically with less water and no pesticides, big vertical farms promised to revolutionise food production. So why are the same vertical farms going bust across Europe and the US just ten years after they boomed?

In this episode, we journey to Cambridge University in England to meet Vijja "Pat" Wichitwechkarn. An AI researcher working on agricultural robotics, he has developed a fully automated and scalable indoor farming system - MACARONS - published on HardwareX. In this episode, we address why vertical farming keeps missing the goal, and how open-source technologies could propel it to become the food tech solution we all hoped for.

This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt and ComaStudio via Pixabay. 

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

Welcome to a new HardwareX podcast series: Open Hardware Talks.

In addition to our regular episodes exploring open-source hardware projects, we're launching a new deep-dive series. Open Hardware Talks explores key concepts of open-source hardware in casual conversations with experts and practitioners from across the ecosystem.

For the first episode in this new series, we ask: How do you validate the openness of a given hardware? To explore this, we're joined by Sid Drmay and Lee Wilkins from the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA) which maintains the open-source hardware certification recognised by practitioners globally, including us here at HardwareX. As a bonus, Martin Häuer from Open Source Ecology Germany (OSEG) joins to present the DIN SPEC-3105; the world's first open-source standard.

Don't forget! OSHWA is also behind the annual Open Hardware Summit, the world’s first comprehensive conference on open hardware. A hybrid event, most talks and discussions are also available online.

2024 Open Hardware Summit
May 3rd-4th
Montreal, Canada

For more info on how to join, check out the links below.

• Attend the Summit: https://2024.oshwa.org/attend-the-summit/
• Open Hardware Summit YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/user/opensourcehardware
• OSHWA Discord: https://discord.com/invite/bMK7NqFWG9

This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt via Pixabay.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

How can we make life-saving medical equipment more accessible in areas under blockade, with low infrastructure, or with limited resources?

In a time where almost every region in the world is seeing a rise in conflict, tourniquets have become increasingly necessary for avoiding excessive civilian casualties. Yet, proprietary tourniquets remain largely geared toward male military personnel, not women and children. Even if this changes, proprietary tourniquets remain expensive and largely inaccessible in regions where they are needed most.

In this episode, Dr Tarek Loubani of Glia and Victoria Jaqua of Open Source Medical Supplies (OSMS) take us from Gaza to Ukraine as we explore the development, testing and scaling of the open-source tourniquet and the open-source tourniquet tester published on HardwareX.

This episode is researched, produced and edited by Miriam Gradel, Journalist and Media Editor at HardwareX. The music is provided by Kammerin Hunt and ComaStudio via Pixabay. 

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

In this episode, we talk to the creators of Studio HILO that offers open source technologies for local yarn production, along with remote workshops and vocational training to facilitate user-driven experimentation. Our three guests are Sara Diaz Rodriguez (co-founder of Studio HILO, textile design and technologies consultant), Natalija Krasnoperova (co-founder of Studio HILO, innovation and coaching consultant), and Lukas Schattenhofer (member of Open Source Ecology in Germany managing the certification program for open source hardware).

The host and content creator is Dr. Sanli Faez who is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Utrecht University. The post-editing and production was handled by Dr. Santosh Pandey who is an Associate Professor in Electrical Engineering at Iowa State University. The theme music is provided by Oleksandr Savochka from Pixabay.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.

In this fourth episode of HardwareX Season 2 podcasts, our guest is Chet Udell who is an Assistant Professor of Biological and Ecological Engineering at Oregon State University (USA). Dr. Udell is the Director of the Openly Published Environmental Sensing (OPEnS) lab at his university. His lab is an NSF and USDA funded Makerspace led by a staff of over 30 undergraduate researchers across Electrical and Computer Engineering, Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering, Biological and Ecological Engineering, and Humanitarian Engineering. Dr. Udell is also the co-founder and CEO of Stratos Instruments, LLC and an Associate Editor of the journal HardwareX. For this episode, the host and content creator is Dr. Sanli Faez who is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Utrecht University. The post-editing and production was handled by Dr. Santosh Pandey who is an Associate Professor in Electrical Engineering at Iowa State University. The theme music is provided by Oleksandr Savochka from Pixabay.

HardwareX is a peer-reviewed scientific journal about open-source hardware. For more info, visit HardwareX.