In the past when I have needed a crown over a root canal, it has taken over a week to have it fabricated at some remote location and mailed to my dentist for installation. In the meantime I have had to have a temporary crown in place that has to be glued on and then pried off (which is not a comfortable process!) so that the permanent crown can be installed. This time, Union Street Dental Care's Dr. Dintcho was able to design and fabricate the crown in about half an hour using a CEREC 3 system. This is a combination of a CAD/CAM workstation called the Acquisition Center, which is used to photograph and model the patient's teeth and to design a restoration, and a milling machine that fabricates the restoration from a small ceramic block.

I think this system is fascinating, and so I dug up aCEREC crown video that shows the whole process (this video includes a glazing step that wasn't used in my case), and a separate video that more clearly shows the CEREC milling machine in action. (Incidentally, this system is also an NVIDIA case study.)

XKCD is so good. I have this nightmare about once a month, for as long as I can remember.

I love TED talks. My favorites: Bonnie Bassler on how bacteria "talk", Sheila Patek clocks the fastest animals, and Paul Rothemund: The astonishing promise of DNA folding.

Related to this is this amazing kinesin video. The Inner Life of the Cell is here. The "Slow Speed Version " (in the top row of clips) has commentary instead of the annoying repetitive music. The Kinesin animation is just before the halfway point in the video (immediately following the green microtubules animation).