07.15.10
Posted in health at 8:23 pm by site admin
Check out this article about one man’s quest to put diabetics on auto-pilot. Although all the components are out there, there has been a gap in connecting the dots.
Manufacturers were afraid of liability, academics were bent on achieving perfection, and the Food and Drug Administration was downright jumpy at the thought of letting a computer control a mechanism with life-and-death responsibilities.
Yet most of the components for what researchers were calling an artificial pancreas — an external device the size of an iPod that would duplicate the insulin-secreting and -regulating functions of that organ — were already in place. An insulin pump had been approved back in the late 1970s, and a continuous glucose monitor that read the output of a sensor implanted under the skin was nearing approval. (The first one would hit the market in 2005.) The trick was to connect the two via software, letting the monitor’s information on blood-sugar levels — high or low, rising or falling — serve as the basis for calculating exactly how much insulin to release.
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Posted in science at 10:55 am by site admin
Check out this wired.com article about a semi-natural biotech hack that makes bones heal 3 times faster.
The experiment, published April 28 in Science Translational Medicine, is rooted in two decades of research on Wnt genes and proteins, which play a variety of regenerative roles. They help embryonic stem cells make copies of themselves, keeping a body’s supply fresh, and guide the maturation of stem cells into specific cell types.
Wnt proteins are found throughout the animal kingdom, from sponges and flatworms to mice and humans, and their function seems to be consistent. When tissues are injured, Wnt genes in surrounding cells become more active, pumping out extra Wnt proteins. Arriving repair cells divide faster and grow more rapidly.
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07.14.10
Posted in society at 8:54 am by site admin
Check out this article thats says obese men die about eight years earlier than non-obese men. While the article is pretty much your normal read of being overweight can be bad for your health, I found the following part quite interesting:
“As the obesity epidemic is still progressing rapidly, especially among children and adolescents, it is important to find out if obesity in early adulthood has lifelong mortality effects,” said the study’s leader, Esther Zimmermann, a researcher at the Institute of Preventive Medicine, Copenhagen University Hospital and the Institute of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Copenhagen.
The “obesity epidemic”? While I do agree obesity is fairly widespread these days, I find it odd to lump it with communicable traits and diseases (with which traditionally associate the concepts of spreading and epidemics. Point being is how do you spread obesity? Everyone has the innate ability to be obese (a combination of heredity, upbringing, lifestyle, and life view). When an obese person becomes skinny, do we say the disease has gone into remission? And if we are making value judgements on what is healthy and not, we should make judgements on fast food, junk food, sweets, lack of exercise, excessive television, etc.
I decided to take a quick look at dicitonary.com, and found there is a second definition that is applicable (even though there are multiple denotations, I believe the implied connotation gives us the wrong view).
- Also, ep·i·dem·i·cal. (of a disease) affecting many persons at the same time, and spreading from person to person in a locality where the disease is not permanently prevalent.
- extremely prevalent; widespread.
I think we need to take a step back and start re-evaluating our lifestyle decisions from the ground up. Lets focus on eating healthy, and teaching our kids good eating habits. There is no concept of full and mileage with food. We need to reframe how we eat and why we eat. Eat to live, and not live to eat.
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07.07.10
Posted in society, technology at 9:15 pm by site admin
Check out this article about how to camouflage yourself from facial recognition technology. The gist is that these technologies rely on general facial pattern with very specific composition and contrast of colors.
If you change the contrast in certain parts of your face — either through a watermark or by wearing a strategically-placed sticker or facepaint, recognition technology can’t identify that your face is a human face.
“It breaks apart the gestalt of the face,” he said. “That’s what original camouflage was supposed to do.”
Harvey said he got his idea from studying camouflage methods use during World War I and World War II. His project, CV Dazzle, is based on the original dazzle camouflage used by the military to hide ships in the 1940s.
While the flashy geometric patterns don’t seem like they could obscure a thing, they thwarted the enemy’s ability to tell the make or size of the ship. Similarly, zebra camouflage does little to blend the animal into the background of the savannah. But when zebras are in herds, predators like lions have difficulty picking out animals from the herd. (Dazzle camouflage was eventually phased out by the military as aviation technology and rangefinders improved.)
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07.06.10
Posted in Environment, Restaurants at 2:29 pm by site admin
Check out this article at nytimes.com titled Tuna’s End. Gist is: Man is over harvesting the oceans. Shallow water fishing has given to deep sea fishing. Countries now compete for fishing quotas in every major body of water, leaving no quarter for fish to thrive. Not many fish species left…
Here are two reasons that a mere fish should have inspired such a high-strung confrontation reminiscent of Greenpeace’s early days as a defender of whales. The first stems from fish enthusiasts who have for many years recognized the particular qualities of bluefin tuna — qualities that were they land-based creatures would establish them indisputably as “wildlife” and not just another “seafood” we eat without remorse. Not only is the bluefin’s dense, distinctly beefy musculature supremely appropriate for traversing the ocean’s breadth, but the animal also has attributes that make its evolutionary appearance seem almost deus ex machina, or rather machina ex deo — a machine from God. How else could a fish develop a sextantlike “pineal window” in the top of its head that scientists say enables it to navigate over thousands of miles? How else could a fish develop a propulsion system whereby a whip-thin crescent tail vibrates at fantastic speeds, shooting the bluefin forward at speeds that can reach 40 miles an hour? And how else would a fish appear within a mostly coldblooded phylum that can use its metabolic heat to raise its body temperature far above that of the surrounding water, allowing it to traverse the frigid seas of the subarctic?
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07.05.10
Posted in business at 10:16 am by site admin
Check out this article about solopreneurs (sole-proprietor entrepreneurs) who bring in $100,000+ a year. Its a short read, with no magic formula for success, but it may give you an insight or two that you can incorporate in your own affairs.
Q. Sue, what was the key motivating factor in your drive and determination to become your own boss?
A. I always wanted to be my own boss and I don’t like being told what to do! I was tired of the Corporate America thing. In my mind there was a lot of wasted money and time and I knew I could run my own company better. I just didn’t know what kind of company I was going to start. The type of product and the way I got into it all kind of happened by chance. If you want to read more about this, check out the Dallas Morning News Article in the Press section of my website—she said it nicely and concisely.
And also,
Q. Do you have a “top strategy” for success that you’d like to share?
A. Don’t ever expect anything to happen without a lot of hard work.
Q. Sue, entrepreneurs are idea machines, and that’s great. But sometimes too many good ideas can clutter the picture and stop progress. How did you harness your best ideas and bring them to fruition?
A. For me, I give the customer what they want. If ever something is a slow seller, I discontinue it. It’s nice to have a lot of products to offer customers, but too many is confusing as well. Listening to the customer is very important.
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