Recently in Science, Technology & Health Category

President Obama gets "virtual colonoscopy" which isn't covered by Medicare and wouldn't be covered by Obamacare. Does anyone really think that the government can deliver cheaper health care that is as good or better than what insured people have today? Can there not be rationing?

Here is a handy-dandy way to determine whether the failure to order some exam or treatment constitutes rationing: If the patient were the president, would he get it? If he'd get it and you wouldn't, it's rationing.

Peter Singer writes about the tremendous success the US Army has had with its recruiting/training/entertainment game America's Army:

After two years of development, the game, called America's Army, was released at the Electronic Entertainment Expo, a sort of annual pilgrimage for video-gamers that draws some 60,000 people to the Los Angeles Convention Center. What happened next surprised all: The Army didn't just have a new recruiting tool, but an actual market hit. It quickly became one of the top 10 most popular games on the Internet, and within its first five years, some 9 million individuals had signed up to join America's video-game army, spending some 160 million hours on the site and making it one of the top 10 of all video games, online or otherwise.

From the Army's perspective, commercial triumph was secondary. Its goal was to recruit. And at this, too, the game proved to be a wild success. To log on to the game, you have to connect via the Army's recruitment website and fork over your information. Gamers can also check out profiles of current Army soldiers and video testimonials of why they joined. Just one year after America's Army was released, one-fifth of West Point's freshman class said they had played the game. By 2008, a study by two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that "30 percent of all Americans age 16 to 24 had a more positive impression of the Army because of the game and, even more amazingly, the game had more impact on recruits than all other forms of Army advertising combined." Notably, this is from a game that the Pentagon has spent an average of $3.28 million a year developing and promoting over the last 10 years -- compared with the military's roughly $8 billion annual recruiting budget.

Playing a game is different than actual combat, but the level of competence that can be achieved virtually is amazing.

America's Army quickly expanded from a potent recruiting tool into a valuable training system for soldiers already in the military. Military contractor Foster-Miller's Talon robot, for example, is used widely in Iraq and Afghanistan to dismantle roadside bombs, the most deadly weapon used against U.S. troops there. The game's Talon training module cost just $60,000 to develop, but took training in how to operate robots in war to a whole new level. "Prior to this, the only way to train was to take the robot and the controller to the trainees, give them some verbal instruction, and get them started," Bill Davis, head of the America's Army future applications program, told National Defense. "This allows them to train without breaking anything."

But with these advances, it's getting harder to figure out where the games end and the war begins. In Talon the game and the real-life version, soldiers are watching the action through a screen and even holding the very same physical controllers in their hands. And these controllers are modeled after the video-game controllers that the kids grew up with. This makes the transition from training to actual use nearly seamless. As one Foster-Miller executive explained to me, describing the game's training package for the Talon's pissed-off big brother, the machine gun-armed Swords robot, "With a flip of the switch, he has a real robot and a real weapon." Because of "the realism," he said, the company is finding that "the soldiers train on them endlessly in their free time."

I've read in other places that these sorts of games can also teach players important tactical lessons, such as how to properly clear a building, advance under cover, provide covering fire, perform flanking maneuvers, and so forth.

I'm not a great photographer, but one tip I've picked up that has been invaluable is that flashes should be used very sparingly, even in low light. I hate the way flash pictures look, and I wish people would just lay off the flashes and learn to take better pictures without them.

I recently spoke with the Scottish photojournalist Harry Benson, who is known for his images of world leaders, Hollywood icons, rock stars and everyday Glaswegians. (He is, as I found out, also an amiable character and a charming raconteur.) Mr. Benson’s photos, particularly his early black-and-white images, are masterly studies in the use of natural light, and I wanted to ask him for tips on shooting in low-light situations. Here’s what he had to say. ...

Any tips on using flash in low light?

I prefer not to use flash because it tends to control and take over the photo. I lose a lot of humanity with flash. I don’t want to use it in a position when I can use my brain instead. Without flash, pictures can take on a grainy feel. And if you take a photo of someone with a light in the background, the light gives a lovely warm tone to the photography. ...

If you had one tip for taking better night or low-light photos, what would it be?

Don’t be afraid. You’ll be surprised just how good your photos will be. Make sure there is some light on your subject’s face. But be brave about it. The thing about is that I’ve been awakened to see just what digital cameras can do in low-light situations. It digs right into spaces that I never thought a camera could penetrate.

Amen! Please turn your auto-flash off.

(HT: Lifehacker.)

(HT: RB.)

It's stories like these that make me really worry. I'm afraid that the people running our country are literally insane. Despite our ongoing economic troubles, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius continues to attack the health insurance industry for returning value to shareholders. The title of her department's "report" is especially ridiculous.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius Thursday unveiled a government report which she said “shines a light on the urgency for health reform,” and pins the rise of premiums in the individual healthcare market squarely on the profit margins of large insurance companies. ...

The report, which is titled “Insurance Companies Prosper, Families Suffer: Our Broken Health Insurance System,” says that increases of that magnitude are not unique. It cites Anthem of Connecticut for requesting a 24 percent rate hike in 2009; Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Michigan for a requested 56 percent rate increase last year; and Regency Blue Cross Blue Shield of Oregon for a 20 percent premium increase.

“The five largest insurers in America have declared more than $12 billion worth of profits in 2009,” Sebelius said. “[Anthem Blue Cross of California] alone posted a $2.7 billion profit in the fourth quarter of 2009, just a week before they filed for a 39 percent rate increase.”

So... when General Motors and Chrysler go bankrupt the government nationalizes them, and when the health care industry makes a profit the government wants to nationalize them. It's almost like our government wants to nationalize industries under any and every circumstance!

The New York Times puts the insurance profits into perspective.

The insurance industry said the report was incomplete. “Comparing the profits of individual companies today to where they were at the bottom of a recession a year ago does not tell the whole story,” said Robert Zirkelbach, a spokesman for America’s Health Insurance Plans, the industry trade group.

Historically, Mr. Zirkelbach said, the average profit margin for the industry has been relatively low, 3 percent to 5 percent. For example, he said, if a company made a 2 percent profit last year during the recession and is making 4 percent now, its profits would have increased by 100 percent but the profit would still only be 4 percent.

“For every dollar spent on health care in America, less than one penny goes toward health plan profits,” he said. “Health plan profits are well below other industries within the health care sector.”

David Palombi, a spokesman for WellPoint, said Anthem’s profit margin in California “is in line with, or below, many of its competitors, including our two large not-for-profit competitors.”

I'm pretty sure Sebelius and her ilk believe what they're saying, but sincerity is no defense against the appearance of insanity.

Reader TMLutas followed up with the US distributor of spray-on liquid glass and received the following information:

Hi quantum LiquiGlas should be available in retail form in 201o.

Best wishes,

[N]

So... I'm guessing we'll be able to buy it soon.

California is quietly shifting funds away from failed embryonic stem cell research and into adult stem cell research. Despite the state's passion for killing unborn babies, it's hard to justify it on an industrial scale without any hope of turning a profit.

California's Institute for Regenerative Medicine came into being five years ago, fueled by a conviction that the Bush administration's restriction on embryo-destructive research in the National Institutes of Health was stifling the progress of science.

But after years of fruitless work, the Institute has now quietly diverted funds from embryonic stem cell research (ESCr) to adult stem cell research - which has already produced dozens of treatments and all-out cures for maladies ranging from spinal cord injury, to Alzheimer's, to type I diabetes.

The California government - which is again teetering on the brink of bankruptcy - in 2004 passed the California Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative, or Proposition 71. The initiative pumped $3 billion into research seeking some medical use for stem cells harvested from human embryos, which are killed in the process.

But an editorial in the Los Angeles-based Investor's Business Daily magazine January 12 pointed out the abysmal failure of the state's massive investment in research that has procured no effective treatments to date.

"Five years after a budget-busting $3 billion was allocated to embryonic stem cell research, there have been no cures, no therapies and little progress," notes the IBD editors.

"ESCR has failed to deliver and backers of Prop 71 are admitting failure."

Too bad for all those dead babies, but at least the researchers made a boatload of money.

(HT: Adam.)

Uh... this sounds too good to be true, but apparently "spray-on liquid glass is about to revolutionize almost everything".

Spray-on liquid glass is transparent, non-toxic, and can protect virtually any surface against almost any damage from hazards such as water, UV radiation, dirt, heat, and bacterial infections. The coating is also flexible and breathable, which makes it suitable for use on an enormous array of products. ...

The liquid glass coating is breathable, which means it can be used on plants and seeds. Trials in vineyards have found spraying vines increases their resistance to fungal diseases, while other tests have shown sprayed seeds germinate and grow faster than untreated seeds, and coated wood is not attacked by termites. Other vineyard applications include coating corks with liquid glass to prevent “corking” and contamination of wine. The spray cannot be seen by the naked eye, which means it could also be used to treat clothing and other materials to make them stain-resistant. McClelland said you can “pour a bottle of wine over an expensive silk shirt and it will come right off”.

In the home, spray-on glass would eliminate the need for scrubbing and make most cleaning products obsolete. Since it is available in both water-based and alcohol-based solutions, it can be used in the oven, in bathrooms, tiles, sinks, and almost every other surface in the home, and one spray is said to last a year.

Liquid glass spray is perhaps the most important nanotechnology product to emerge to date. It will be available in DIY stores in Britain soon, with prices starting at around £5 ($8 US). Other outlets, such as many supermarkets, may be unwilling to stock the products because they make enormous profits from cleaning products that need to be replaced regularly, and liquid glass would make virtually all of them obsolete.

If this is real, I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot more about it.

(HT: Instapundit.)

Despite what logic may suggest, switching from regular to diet soda doesn't appear to lead to weight loss -- so proposed "soda taxes" that are intended to socially engineer weight loss are unlikely to have any beneficial effect. Discussion and evidence here.

A 2007 British study used government data on household diets and food expenditures to predict the effect of extending the country's 17.5% sales tax to various foods. When items high in saturated fat were slapped with the tax, the model estimated that deaths would rise by 1,800 to 4,000 a year because consumers would be prompted to switch to foods with more salt.

To fix that problem, the scientists ran a model in which the tax applied to all kinds of unhealthful foods. This time, deaths fell by as many as 2,500 a year, but cholesterol levels rose as people switched from salty foods to fatty dairy items.

And unfortunately, consumers in both scenarios did the last thing any anti-obesity crusader would want: Facing higher grocery bills, they bought fewer fruits and vegetables.

Social engineering on the grand scale rarely works as desired and generally has many unanticipated consequences.

(HT: DP.)

Web Seer lets you compare Google auto-complete results like this, but easier! Great, now I won't get any work done today.

(HT: Lifehacker.)

Yet another embarrassment for climate "science": the Himalayan glaciers are not melting.

In the past few days the scientists behind the warning have admitted that it was based on a news story in the New Scientist, a popular science journal, published eight years before the IPCC's 2007 report.

It has also emerged that the New Scientist report was itself based on a short telephone interview with Syed Hasnain, a little-known Indian scientist then based at Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi.

Hasnain has since admitted that the claim was "speculation" and was not supported by any formal research. If confirmed it would be one of the most serious failures yet seen in climate research. The IPCC was set up precisely to ensure that world leaders had the best possible scientific advice on climate change.

It's pretty astounding that "scientific" conclusions are being reached without actually... you know... performing any experiments or collecting any data.

Eric Schmidt believes that in the future work will look like play.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt made news at the recent G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, suggesting that multiplayer video games provide good career training — particularly in technology — where workplace collaboration stimulates innovation. “The game world is good training for a career in tech,” he said. “It teaches players to build a network, to use interactive skills and thinking.”

“Everything in the future online is going to look like a multiplayer game,” said Schmidt to this international audience. “If I were 15 years old, that’s what I would be doing right now.”

What is it about online games that makes leaders? For one thing, there are many opportunities to lead. “Online games are very iterative,” states a recent IBM report entitled “Virtual Worlds, Real Leaders.” “Leadership happens quickly and easily in online games, often undertaken by otherwise reserved players, who surprise even themselves with their capabilities.” Online games such as World of Warcraft can involve an overriding goal for a team of players — there are a series of raids or missions that make up the journey, each of which requires leadership of player groups of varying size. This gives many players the opportunity to “try on” leadership roles. The study asserts that there is no reason to think that the same cannot be done in corporate settings of various sizes, missions, and markets.

Related: The person who will be elected President in 2036 is probably in their teens or twenties right now, probably has a blog, and is probably a gamer.

I love checklists, and I couldn't get through my daily life without them. I make lists for all sorts of things, personal and business. I was extremely surprised to learn that doctors and surgeons typically do not use checklists when treating patients, but are trained with the expectation that they will hold all the important information in their heads. This system seems dangerous, and SafeSurg.org is working to change it.

The WHO Safe Surgery Saves Lives Checklist was created by an international group of experts gathered by the WHO with the goal of improving the safety of patients undergoing surgical procedures around the globe. Input from anesthesiologists, operating theatre nurses, surgeons, patients and other professionals was used in the development of this tool. Both small and large scale clinical testing of the checklist has been performed culminating in a multi-site pilot study with results published in the New England Journal of Medicine in January 2009. In sites that ranged from small district hospitals to large medical centers in diverse geographic settings, the use of a 19-item checklist was demonstrated to reduce the complications and mortality associated with a variety of surgical procedures by greater than 30 percent. The checklist has been designed to be simple to use and applicable in many settings. It is currently in active use in operating rooms around the world.

As a health care consumer I would love to have an open source resource with hundreds of medical checklists that I could use to inform my health care decisions in consultation with my doctors. I understand that every health care decision is unique to the patient at hand and that doctors need to be free to use their discretion, but I believe that having a checklist would at least push doctors to carefully consider any deviations that they decide to make from "standard procedure".

Also by Atul Gawande, the creator of SafeSurg is The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right.

No matter what the weather is, it is evidence for Mann-made climate change.

(HT: Hot Air Pundit, The Pirate's Cove, JW.)

The perennial question: is obesity your fault? First there's the metabolic factor:

For example, the authors explain, when an individual reduces food intake and his or her body size diminishes, so does the amount of energy needed to maintain and move it. "Therefore, additional weight loss can only be achieved by a more severe diet or a more arduous physical activity routine," they write. "Most individuals do the opposite: After having achieved some weight loss, they resume their original diet and exercise habits. Consequently, weight gain recurs rapidly."

Then there's the wealth factor:

"[S]mall changes in lifestyle would have a minor effect on obesity prevention," they write. But the huge energy imbalance most Americans experience is "far beyond the ability of most individuals to address on a personal level." Instead, they say, changes in the food supply and social infrastructure and more stringent regulations of the food industry will be needed.

Katan elaborated in an e-mail: "Studies show that even the most motivated, thoughtful, strong-willed people have a hard time losing weight when huge portions of cheap, tasty, convenient food are available at every turn of the road, and when walking and other forms of exercise are superfluous or impossible."

Our bodies are designed to live in harsh conditions with scarce resources, which means they get fat when exposed to safe conditions with plentiful food. That is: a wealthy society is a fat society.

It's not that there isn't a certain level of willpower that will allow a person to lose weight, it's just that the willpower bar is so high that not many people can reach it despite the best intentions. When we fail to reach the bar, our bodies fall into natural states dictated by their metabolisms and environment.

(HT: ML.)

Japan has a "single-payer" health care system that is almost exactly what the Democrats in America would like to build here, and it's extremely disturbing (but not surprising) to read about the graft, favoritism, and corruption endemic to their system.

So my parents have the more expensive national health care for business owners (Dad pays higher taxes), Kokumin Hoken — Citizens’ Health Insurance; the lesser one is for ordinary salaryman, Shykai Hoken — Society Health Insurance. In addition, they have not one but two private health insurance plans, a primary and a supplementary. On top of that, my mother’s brother is a high-ranking official at a major hospital in Japan.

But Mom is not so foolish as to rely upon such insecure health-care planning as that; she has a back-up system that she also uses…

After such nice treatment as she got for her knee and her stomach, my mother never forgets to send “gifts,” typically cash and premium liquor to the doctors, expensive chocolate to the nurses — and of cours, something extra special to my uncle, her brother. She was laughing that after her hospitalization, she spent more money on gifts than the actual medical bill. That means over thousand dollars of, let’s be honest, bribery.

Wonderful. The national health-care system works!

Read the whole thing, and pray that the Democrats aren't foolish enough to continue down the path they're on.

Fascinating interview on CNN with anti-aging researcher Aubrey de Grey. It's a shame that his SENS Foundation is operating on a shoestring budget while trillions of dollars are wasted in so many other areas.

Here Gerald Warner with the funniest take yet on the Copenhagen climate summit.

This “single most important piece of paper in the world” comes, presumably, from an authoritative and totally neutral source? Yes, of course. It’s from the – er – UN Framework Committee on Climate Change that is – er – running the Danegeld Summit. Some people might be small-minded enough to suggest this paper has as much authority as a “leaked” document from Number 10 revealing that life would be hell under the Tories.

He's right in asserting that 2009 will be seen by future historians as the year that the hysterical climate change con game began crashing down. There's still a lot of inertia to overcome, but the game is up.

In our (justified) haste to deploy drone systems to combat zones, it appears that some important features were left out: terrorists intercept video streams from military drones:

Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.

Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes' systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber -- available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet -- to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter. ...

In the summer 2009 incident, the military found "days and days and hours and hours of proof" that the feeds were being intercepted and shared with multiple extremist groups, the person said. "It is part of their kit now."

These video streams should obviously be encrypted, but doing so would have slowed deployment, probably not because it's hard to encrypt the data as it is generated but because the soldiers on the ground would have needed specialized decryption units to take advantage of the video.

A senior defense official said that James Clapper, the Pentagon's intelligence chief, assessed the Iraq intercepts at the direction of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and concluded they represented a shortcoming to the security of the drone network.

"There did appear to be a vulnerability," the defense official said. "There's been no harm done to troops or missions compromised as a result of it, but there's an issue that we can take care of and we're doing so."

It's absurd to assert that no harm was caused by this security lapse -- the terrorists wouldn't have been routinely monitoring these video feeds if there were no benefit. Despite the need to deploy these systems quickly, this security hole should have been patched years ago.

(HT: DS.)

Last August I told you that Barack Obama's health care reform is dead, and it still is. Senators and Nelson Lieberman have stated that they will not vote for a "public option" of any kind. I suspect that many Democrats are secretly pleased, despite outrage among the base.

The progressives are, of course . . . well, livid is probably too weak a word. At this point it's hard to see them getting to sixty votes on anything. Frankly, I'm not sure that a majority of legislators want them to get to sixty votes on anything. Every time health care makes the news, its poll numbers drop further, and at 54-38 against, it's already dangerously close to "Republican landslide if you pass it" territory. Outside of coastal enclaves, Democrats cannot win the next round of elections with no one but their base. And independents, already against the plan, especially hate partisanship. This makes it especially unhealthy to pass a bill they don't like on a straight party line vote.

Health care reform is still dead, as it has been for many months. It will not happen. It has been, however, an exciting way to waste Congress' time and has prevented the Democrats from passing many potentially harmful bills that they could have mustered the votes for.