Biological USB Drives of a Sort

The great thing about the 21st century is that with the help of computers,
we have access to technology at our fingertips. But what if we had access to
technology that was actually Inside of our fingertips? Researchers at the
University of Tokushima’s Department of Optical Science have managed to encode
data on to the human fingernail. A femtosecond laser is used to encode the data
which in turn creates microscopic sections that emit fluorescence levels that
can be read by observational technology, such as blue-laser diode illumination,
CCD sensors, or imaging lenses. Ok, yes it is all very technical and
scientific… Anyway, an average of 5mb of data can be encoded and unfortunately
the data will only last about six months, or the amount of time that it takes a
fingernail to grow out completely. Next on the agenda will be an attempt at
repeating this process with skin, teeth and other biological parts.

So lets get this straight,
recently I posted about a printer in Japan that uses technology to print
images onto our fingertips, and then there is that usb thumb drive that stores
files and looks like a real
finger, and now they’re working on putting technology into our actual
fingertips… anyone else overwhelmed? (Source: PC Mag, September 6
2005)