Category Archives: Education

Mental Pick-Me-Ups: The Coming Boom

I am not a fan of lifestyle drugs. People seem to forget that drugs have side effects that are quite large. Being surprised when a drug has adverse consequences shows a failure to understand the risks. You should assume adverse effects and take them only when that risk is outweighed by significant tangible benefits. A Boom in Memory-Enhancing Drugs?

A whole generation has come of age using attention-deficit drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin, a category valued at nearly $4.7 billion in 2007. A lot of teenagers have used them casually as study aids, often buying them on the Internet. And now, overworked professionals are seeing the appeal.

And when they almost certainly have significant adverse effects on many people, then people will get upset. Granted the drug companies pushing sales for negligible benefits do deserve condemnation. However, the larger problem is people that choose to risk their health as though they don’t have the ability to learn and can just ignore evidence of risks.

Study Finds Obesity as Teen as Deadly as Smoking

A Swedish study has found obesity is as deadly (increasing adult mortality) as smoking for teens. Combined effects of overweight and smoking in late adolescence on subsequent mortality: nationwide cohort study

Regardless of smoking status, overweight and obesity in late adolescence increases the risk of adult mortality. Obesity and overweight were as hazardous as heavy and light smoking, respectively, but there was no interaction between BMI and smoking status. The global obesity epidemic and smoking among adolescents remain important targets for intensified public health initiatives.

Obesity Just as Risky for Teens as Heavy Smoking

Dr. Martin Neovius of the Karolinska Institute and colleagues analyzed data from more than 45,000 18-year-olds who underwent military conscription tests in which their body mass index (BMI) and smoking status were recorded. The men were followed for an average of 38 years.

During the follow-up period, 2,897 of the men died. The incidence of death was highest among obese men and lowest among those of normal weight. Compared with those who had a normal weight at age 18, those who had been overweight were about a third more likely to die early, whereas those who were obese were more than twice as likely to die prematurely.

Cell Culture Lab Tour

Joanne Loves Science includes many webcasts on science, take a look for yourself. She contacted me through the post ideas page. She teaches mammalian cell culture techniques and the concepts of stem cells and tissue engineering in the Bioengineering Department at the University of Illinois. In this webcast she provides a tour of the cell culture lab.

Monoclonal Antibodies Found That Stop All Flu Types

Universal Flu Drug Stops All Flu Types

A new kind of drug cocktail kills all types of flu bugs and could protect against pandemic or seasonal flu. “I certainly believe that a therapy for all kinds of influenza may be within our grasp,” study researcher Robert Liddington, DPhil, director of infectious diseases at the Burnham Institute in La Jolla, Calif., said at a news conference announcing the finding.

The treatment is based on new monoclonal antibodies that attack flu viruses in a shared Achilles heel. Of the many different subtypes of flu, there are only two basic patterns for this vulnerable, essential part of the flu virus.

And despite heroic efforts, researchers could not breed a flu strain resistant to the treatment — suggesting that there’s only a very small chance that mutated viruses could render the treatment obsolete. The breakthrough finding is a joint effort from labs at the Burnham Institute; Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston; and the CDC in Atlanta.

Like many breakthroughs, the finding was partly accidental. The researchers were, at first, trying only to create a treatment to stop the H5N1 bird flu virus, the most likely candidate for igniting the next worldwide flu pandemic.
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While monoclonal antibodies against flu are new, a wide range of drugs are based on this technology. That means the new, fully human anti-flu antibodies could become new human drugs relatively quickly…

“We hope these antibodies are in clinical trials during the 2011-2012 flu season — maybe earlier,” Marasco said. “This really is an important advance in the field of antiviral therapy. The possibility of having a universal therapy for flu is made more real and possible because of these discoveries.”

The Second 5,000 Days of the Web

The web has been around for 5,000 days. In this talk at TED, Kevin Kelly on the next 5,000 days of the web.

Magenta is a Color

Electromagnetic spectrum chart from the Wikimedia Commons

Yes, Virgina, there is a magenta by Chris Foresman

There is a nasty rumor making its way around the interconnected series of tubes we call the Internet.
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As visible light enters the eye and strikes the cone cells, the cells send electrical signals along the optic nerve to the brain. This is how our body “senses” light. Our brain interprets those three separate sensations to produce the perception that we call “color.”
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The truth is, no color actually exists outside of our brain’s perception of it. Everything we call a color—and there are a lot more than what comes in your box of Crayolas—only exists in our heads. We define color in terms of how our brains process the stimuli produced by a mix of wavelengths in the range of 400–700nm hitting specialized cells in our eyes—”one, or any mixture, of the constituents into which light can be separated in a spectrum or rainbow,” says the OED. Elliot’s article might be better titled, “Magenta is not a single wavelength of electromagnetic radiation in the ‘visible’ spectrum, but our brain perceives it anyway.”

This is a great article that uses science to explain interesting details about our brains and how we perceive the external world.

Gene Duplication and Evolution

Roughly 10 million years ago, a major genetic change occurred in a common ancestor of gorillas, chimpanzees, and humans. Segments of DNA in its genome began to form duplicate copies at a greater rate than in the past, creating an instability that persists in the genome of modern humans and contributes to diseases like autism and schizophrenia. But that gene duplication also may be responsible for a genetic flexibility that has resulted in some uniquely human characteristics.

“Because of the architecture of the human genome, genetic material is constantly being added and deleted in certain regions,” says Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator and University of Washington geneticist Evan Eichler, who led the project that uncovered the new findings. “These are really like volcanoes in the genome, blowing out pieces of DNA.”

Eichler and his colleagues focused on the genomes of four different species: macaques, orangutans, chimpanzees, and humans. All are descended from a single ancestral species that lived about 25 million years ago. The line leading to macaques broke off first, so that macaques are the most distantly related to humans in evolutionary terms. Orangutans, chimpanzees, and humans share a common ancestor that lived 12-16 million years ago. Chimps and humans are descended from a common ancestral species that lived about 6 million years ago.

By comparing the DNA sequences of the four species, Eichler and his colleagues identified gene duplications in the lineages leading to these species since they shared a common ancestor. They also were able to estimate when a duplication occurred from the number of species sharing that duplication. For example, a duplication observed in orangutan, chimpanzees, and humans but not in macaques must have occurred sometime after 25 million years ago but before the orangutan lineage branched off.

Eichler’s research team found an especially high rate of duplications in the ancestral species leading to chimps and humans, even though other mutational processes, such as changes in single DNA letters, were slowing down during this period.

Samsung Transparent OLED Display

The webcast shows another cool TV display. This transparent OLED display could for example be used for displaying directions and GPS information to someone driving a car.

Toyota Software Development for Partner Robots

Toyota Discusses Software Development for Partner Robots

Yamada: What was unique about the software development for the partner robots exhibited at Aichi Expo was the fact that Toyota entirely disposed of its assets from the past.

Toyota owned some software assets because it had been developing partner robots for some time before developing the robots for the exposition. But those assets were all one-offs. No one but the developers themselves could comprehend their architectures.

As Toyota was developing more than one partner robot for the exposition, the number of developers involved increased. Considering that we can never complete any development if we use the past assets that rely on an individual developer’s skill, we made everything, including the platform, from scratch again.

Toyota developed the platform focusing on promoting design review by visualizing the control logic. Therefore, the company thoroughly separated control sequences and algorithms. To be more specific, it used state transition diagrams.

Each algorithm is stored in a different block in a state transition diagram. With such diagrams, developers can easily comprehend the flow of the control and review the design even if they do not understand each algorithm. The company employed this method because each algorithm such as a bipedal walking algorithm is too complicated for anyone but their developers to understand it.

Google Aids Green Action

Google has a focus on energy as I have discussed previously. Google has been working to provide a way for people to get information on energy use in their homes that can be used to reduce your energy use.

Power to the people

studies show that access to home energy information results in savings between 5-15% on monthly electricity bills. It may not sound like much, but if half of America’s households cut their energy demand by 10 percent, it would be the equivalent of taking eight million cars off the road.
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We’ve been participating in the dialogue in Washington, DC and with public agencies in the U.S. and other parts of the world to advocate for investment in the building of a “smart grid,” to bring our 1950s-era electricity grid into the digital age. Specifically, to provide both consumers and utilities with real-time energy information, homes must be equipped with advanced energy meters called “smart meters.” There are currently about 40 million smart meters in use worldwide, with plans to add another 100 million in the next few years.
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Over the last several months, our engineers have developed a software tool called Google PowerMeter, which will show consumers their home energy information almost in real time, right on their computer. Google PowerMeter is not yet available to the public since we’re testing it out with Googlers first.