Category Archives: Technology

Here it comes- Ready or Not!

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Ch-ch-changes.   That’s the one certainty upon which we can rely.

I have always relied upon state-of-the-art (SOTA) tools. For my simulation and development efforts some 4 decades ago, my office mate was a PDP-8.  Right next to it was my tape punch and Hollerith card punchers.  I also had an IBM MT-ST.  (This was a very fancy IBM typewriter that employed metalized cards (like Holleriths) to record and play back pages of documents.)  We could edit and save documents with ease (or so I thought, compared to the rest of the world).  These devices also required my office to be on the order of 400 square feet.

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Nana, nana, poo, poo- you can’t hurt this coating!

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Drs. Rowan, Burnworth,  Tang, Kumpfer (all of Case Western),  Fiore, Weder (these last two from the University of Fribourg), Duncan, and Beyer (of the Army Natick Research Center) have reported (Nature) their development of a new polymer coating that can be repaired or healed via treatment with ultraviolet light.  Some plastics have been developed that can reshape themselves via reheating, which is time intensive.  This repair takes 30 seconds to complete!

Continue reading Nana, nana, poo, poo- you can’t hurt this coating!

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Google has better Ideas? We’ll see soon…

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I had the opportunity last year to attend a very interesting program, graciously sponsored by Mintz Levin (an International Law and Lobbying firm).  The program title was “Internet Freedom, Social Media and Policy-Making in the 21st Century”. I learned a lot and met some very interesting people.  One of them was Jared Cohen- then, a 28 year old Wunderkind.  Jared had worked for Condoleeza Rice in the State Department in the policy planning unit.  He stayed over to work with Hilary Clinton, where he specialized in counter-terrorism, youth, technology- and even the Middle East.  And, he explained the kind of work and things he had seen during his time there.  He left the State Department  last year to join the Council on Foreign Relations, subsequently joining Google.  He agreed to join Google to do just what he is doing now.  He heads up Google Ideas, a small (6 person?) think tank in New York. (And, no, there isn’t a website for Google Ideas.)

Continue reading Google has better Ideas? We’ll see soon…

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Say what? IBM is developing antibiotics?

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Have you been prescribed antibiotics by your doctor and failed to follow the protocol?  Oh, yes, I know, you felt better after a week, so why keep taking the antibiotic? It’s because the bacteria are still in your system, dying off.  If you stop the treatment, those microbes can then survive and develop resistance to that antibiotic.  After a while, we have created a generation of “superbugs” that are immune to our arsenal of antibacterials.  And, that is a real problem.

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Does your heart leak?

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Ka-thump.  Ka-thump.  Ka-thump.  These are the sounds of a normal heart.  What if your heart valves don’t close properly (they let blood leak backwards [regurgitation]) or they won’t open completely (thereby restricting blood flow [stenosis])?  Then, those are not the sounds you will hear. If you are an adult, you may need valve replacement, because of deposits that occur over years  that make the valve stiff, rendering closure difficult.  But, now imagine you are told that your infant has that problem… Back years ago, the heart valves had a 10 to 15 year life (tissue valves); the mechanical ones now have some 25 year life expectancies.  So, if an infant has a valve problem- you know there will be yet another traumatic operation, after this one…

Continue reading Does your heart leak?

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Finally some useful (and interesting) information about aging and health!

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I ran across a fantastic article today (this was written almost a month ago, sorry)  in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.  Drs. Rockwood, Song, and Mitnitski, from Dalhousie University in Halifax, analyzed some long term data that obtains in the Canadian National Population Health Survey.  The title of the article says it all:  Changes in the relative fitness and frailty across the adult lifespan.  They employed the data from seven 2 year cycles (starting in 1994-5, ending in 2008-9) of that study.  The key performance indicators they examined were death, use of health services, and changes in health status.  What made the report intriguing (to me, of course) was that the authors developed what they called the “frailty index”.

Continue reading Finally some useful (and interesting) information about aging and health!

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How our brain works…and meditation shows the way

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Dr. Zoran Josipovic, a research neuroscientist and adjunct professor at New York University, has been examining the rearranging of brains for about 3 years now.  What is more unusual about the study is that his study subjects are Buddhist nuns and monks. 

Continue reading How our brain works…and meditation shows the way

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