The Haversian Canal

Obstetric forceps throughout history have been used to rescue babies during vaginal delivery. They aren't used unless the obstetrician feels they're necessary because they tend to cause complications and babies almost invariable show signs of facial injury. Here's an idea I had for some obstetric forceps that could be more easily inserted compare to standard forceps, and at the same time could distribute forces over a wider and more customizable area. The key would be to make sure it holds the baby's head safely and firmly, that is, that the articulated inner spine, which would have to be made of a harder plastic, would have to be able to withstand the tension. I think a mechanical stop on the tension and a safety tension release on the cable (release) would do that. I'm not exactly a big fan of forceps, but if they're necessary, better to do the least damage possible.

Here's a 10 second recording of a normal 5 year-old boy's heart, recorded over the left sternal border, and two visualizations of it: the raw waveform, and a Fast Fourier Transform of that waveform. The original recording was made with Sound Recorder, the waveform and mp3 conversion were made with Audacity (and lame) and the FFT was made with Amarok. All done in Ubuntu.

I captured the sound with a stethophone I made out of a Littman Classic II SE stethoscope head, a piece of tubing from a lab, and a lapel microphone from Radioshack.