Science, Technology & Health: April 2007 Archives

Price-optimization software is helping retailers price discriminate and capture more value from shoppers.

A large retail chain had a problem. It sold three similar power drills: one for about $90, a purportedly better one at $120 and a top-tier one at $130. The higher the price, the more the store profited.

But while drill know-it-alls flocked to the $130 model and price-fretters grabbed its $90 cousin, shoppers often ignored the middle one.

So the store sought advice from a new breed of "price-optimization" software from DemandTec Inc. What followed offers us a clue about important shifts that technology is bringing to retail shopping.

After analyzing an array of variables, including sales history and competitors' prices, the software suggested cutting the middle drill to $110.

That might have made the top drill seem more expensive. But drill aficionados still were fine shelling out $130. Sales of that drill didn't change. However, now that the $90 version seemed less of a bargain, the store sold 4 percent fewer low-end drills - and 11 percent more of the mid-range model. Profits rose.

My prediction is that 10-20% of the recommendations made by this sort of software are actually profitable, and that the store manager acts like a gatekeeper by rejecting bad ideas and recognizing good ones. My prediction of a low success rate isn't a criticism of the software! Artificial intelligence is great for augmenting human decision-making, even when humans can't be replaced entirely.

And consumers shouldn't fret that retailers are getting the technological upper-hand. After all, they've got to respond to increased competition and consumer-friendly technology like craigslist, Froogle, and Frucall. I think consumers are getting the best of the revolution so far.

(HT: Nick.)

Researchers at IBM have used a giant parallel computer to build a high fidelity model of a mouse brain that runs at 1/10th real time.

Neurobiologically realistic, large-scale cortical and sub-cortical simulations are bound to play a key role in computational neuroscience and its applications to cognitive computing. One hemisphere of the mouse cortex has roughly 8,000,000 neurons and 8,000 synapses per neuron. Modeling at this scale imposes tremendous constraints on computation, communication, and memory capacity of any computing platform.

We have designed and implemented a massively parallel cortical simulator with (a) phenomenological spiking neuron models; (b) spike-timing dependent plasticity; and (c) axonal delays.

We deployed the simulator on a 4096-processor BlueGene/L supercomputer with 256 MB per CPU. We were able to represent 8,000,000 neurons (80% excitatory) and 6,300 synapses per neuron in the 1 TB main memory of the system. Using a synthetic pattern of neuronal interconnections, at a 1 ms resolution and an average firing rate of 1 Hz, we were able to run 1s of model time in 10s of real time!

Very cool stuff. I predict a future (perhaps 50 years hence?) when we can build realistic artificial human-like brains but still can't figure out how to imbue them with consciousness. (I'm a subscriber to the weak AI school of thought, which boils down to a belief that knowledgeable observers will always be able to distinguish between real and artificial intelligences.)

(HT: BM, BoingBoing, Open the Future.)

I'm glad I've stayed behind the television technology curve and haven't spent thousands of dollars on a large LCD or plasma TV. I've considered buying an HD projector, but my 1995 Hitachi projection television is still working just fine... and hopefully I'll be able to hold out till I can buy a laser tv next year!

IT'S being hailed by its developers as the next revolution in visual technology - a laser television that will make plasma screens obsolete.

Soon-to-be-listed Australian company Arasor International and its US partner Novalux unveiled what they claimed to be the world's first laser television in Sydney today, with a pitch that it would be half the price, twice as good, and use a quarter of the electricity of conventional plasma and LCD TVs. ...

With a worldwide launch date scheduled for Christmas 2007, under recognisable brands like Mitsubishi and Samsung, Novalux chief executive Jean-Michel Pelaprat is so bold as to predict the death of plasma.

“If you look at any screen today, the colour content is roughly about 30-35 per cent of what the eye can see,” he said.

“But for the very first time with a laser TV we'll be able to see 90 per cent of what the eye can see.

“All of a sudden what you see is a lifelike image on display.”

(HT: Reader JV.)

Soldiers aren't yet fans of the new Land Warrior gear that Raytheon has been developing for 15 years.

There's a half-billion dollars invested in the gear hanging off the heads, chests and backs of the soldiers of Alpha company. Digital maps displayed on helmet-mounted eyepieces show the position of all the men in the unit as they surround a block of concrete buildings and launch their attacks. Instead of relying on the hand signals and shouted orders that most infantrymen use, Alpha company communicates via advanced, encrypted radio transmissions with a range of up to a kilometer. It's more information than any soldiers have ever had about their comrades and their surroundings.

But as Alpha kicks in doors, rounds up terror suspects and peals off automatic fire in deafening six-shot bursts, not one of the soldiers bothers to check his radio or look into the eyepiece to find his buddies on the electronic maps. "It's just a bunch of stuff we don't use, taking the place of useful stuff like guns," says Sgt. James Young, who leads a team of four M-240 machine-gunners perched on a balcony during this training exercise at Fort Lewis, Wash. "It makes you a slower, heavier target." ...

The hope is that Land Warrior will perform so well under fire that the Army's chiefs will have no choice but to keep funding the system. "It's kind of a Hail Mary pass," one Pentagon insider tells me. Give guys like Gelineau and Starks a few months with Land Warrior, the thinking goes, and they'll grow to love it, saving the 15-year effort.

So far, no dice. "Oh yeah, I can't wait!" an Alpha company soldier writes sarcastically in an e-mail months after I visit Fort Lewis and just before he's due for deployment to Iraq. "We still aren't fans."

That attitude could change — quickly — with a single good combat experience.

The older soldiers won't like it, but the younger ones and the future soldiers who are spending their teenage nights playing Halo will love this sort of system. Land Warrior may be too heavy, too cumbersome, and too buggy at the moment, but either it or some future replacement will fill the niche and connect our soldiers each individually to the net. It's inevitable, and I'm glad we're working on it now.

(HT: Nick.)

Great news for parents: a new study concludes that omega-3 fatty acids in fish oil can help relieve symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder in kids.

At the end of the 30-week-long trial, almost half of the children taking eye q for the whole study saw "significant" reductions in ADHD symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, researchers said.

After the placebo group switched to the combined oil supplement for 15 weeks, they showed significant improvements in parent behaviour ratings and attention span.

The original eye q group continued to show improvements after an additional 15 weeks of taking the combined oil supplement in cognitive problems, inattention, restlessness, impulsivity and hyperactivity.

Taking a multivitamin/mineral supplement showed no additional benefits for ADHD symptoms, indicating that fatty acids are more important, it was claimed.

After doing some reading on my own, I started taking fish oil supplements a few months ago. Through passive observation of myself, I haven't noticed any effect on my mental condition. Research shows that fish oil fights heart disease, doesn't prevent cancer, might improve math ability, and appears to be better than flax seed oil.

From reading those blog posts, I may not have noticed an effect of my supplements because I'm not taking enough fish oil. I'm going to increase my consumption to 1 g per day (from about 200 mg) and see what happens.

In a disgusting move that reveals their all-consuming pro-abortion agenda, California's two Democrat senators, Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer, voted for the Stem Cell Enhancement Act of 2007 which seeks to provide more federal funding for embryonic stem cell research / murdering babies, and then voted against the HOPE Act which seeks to increase funding for adult stem cell research and would allow embryonic stem cells to be harvested from babies that die from natural causes.

There are only two reasons why Feinstein and Boxer opposed the HOPE Act: 1) it doesn't allow the abortion industry to profit from murdering babies for scientific research, and 2) it doesn't further their agenda of legitimizing abortion. The second point is key! Pro-abortionists dream of the day when a cure for some horrible disease can be provided by sacrificing babies, because then they'll be able to claim a justification for abortion other than their own selfishness.

Doctors in the UK are increasingly refusing to perform abortions as illustrations mount of life-before-birth.

Rising numbers of doctors are refusing to carry out abortions, leading to a crisis in NHS provision.

The stance by staff, taken on ethical grounds, has led to a doubling of abortions carried out by private clinics, according to the Royal College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists.

The swell of medical staff joining the unprecedented moral revolt means that there may soon not be enough doctors to carry out sufficient terminations to meet the public demand.

Scientific advances provide undeniable proof that unborn babies are no different from born babies, and doctors are logically among the first to recognize and appreciate these developments.

Katherine Guthrie, a spokesman on family planning for the RCOG, said: "You get no thanks for performing abortions. You get spat on. Who admits to friends at a dinner party that they are an abortionist?

"There is an increasing number of young doctors who are not participating in training. The Department of Health is really worried." ...

James Gerrard, a GP in Leeds, said: "Out of the six doctors in our practice, three of us object to abortion. I had made up my mind on abortion before entering the medical profession. I feel the foetus is a person and killing that foetus is wrong."

Look forward to a wave of legislation in the UK requiring doctors (who work for the nationalized health care system) to perform abortions whether they want to or not.

Dr. Leonard Peikoff wrote an article in 1993 explaining why health care is not a right, and it deserves to be read by every American in advance of the inevitable debate over the issue during the next presidential election cycle.

Under the American system you have a right to health care if you can pay for it, i.e., if you can earn it by your own action and effort. But nobody has the right to the services of any professional individual or group simply because he wants them and desperately needs them. The very fact that he needs these services so desperately is the proof that he had better respect the freedom, the integrity, and the rights of the people who provide them.

You have a right to work, not to rob others of the fruits of their work, not to turn others into sacrificial, rightless animals laboring to fulfill your needs. ...

Some people can't afford medical care in the U.S. But they are necessarily a small minority in a free or even semi-free country. If they were the majority, the country would be an utter bankrupt and could not even think of a national medical program. As to this small minority, in a free country they have to rely solely on private, voluntary charity. Yes, charity, the kindness of the doctors or of the better off--charity, not right, i.e. not their right to the lives or work of others. And such charity, I may say, was always forthcoming in the past in America. The advocates of Medicaid and Medicare under LBJ did not claim that the poor or old in the '60's got bad care; they claimed that it was an affront for anyone to have to depend on charity.

But the fact is: You don't abolish charity by calling it something else. If a person is getting health care for nothing, simply because he is breathing, he is still getting charity, whether or not any politician, lobbyist or activist calls it a "right." To call it a Right when the recipient did not earn it is merely to compound the evil. It is charity still--though now extorted by criminal tactics of force, while hiding under a dishonest name.

The idea of socialized health care is worse than impractical, it is immoral. (As are almost all socialist endeavors.)

(HT: GeekPress and Transterrestrial Musings.)

Latest in the sequences of miracles from adult stem cell research is an experiment in which stem cell therapy cured type 1 diabetes. Note, of course, that the research involved adult stem cells and not embryonic stem cells which are "harvested" from unborn babies have have yielded zero medical breakthroughs.

Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again.

In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.

Unfortunately the article goes on to unjustifiably praise embryonic stem cell research with false claims and condemn President Bush for opposing it.

But research using the most versatile kind of stem cells — those acquired from human embryos — is currently opposed by powerful critics, including President Bush.

The claim in the first phrase above is false: embryonic stem cells are no more "versatile" than stem cells taken from, e.g., amniotic fluid. Furthermore, embryonic stem cells tend to turn cancerous and cause brain tumors.

Why are so many people so eager to slaughter babies and harvest their stem cells despite the fact that embryonic stem cells can't cure anything? I can think of only two explanations. First, scientists who have invested their careers in this direction want to keep the grant money flowing. Second, pro-abortionists recognize their need to increase acceptance of abortion among an increasingly pro-life population.

Update:

Ironically the Senate was debating embryonic stem cell research today and claiming that only embryonic stem cells could help cure diabetes. Their conviction is strange, considering that embryonic stem cell therapy hasn't led to a single treatment for any disease or condition.

Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), who introduced the act with Sen. Arlen Specter (R-Pa.), drew particular attention to a 12-year-old diabetic girl he recently met, who he said must inject herself with insulin 120 times a month. “If adult stem cells could provide a cure for juvenile diabetes, she'd gladly take it,” Harkin said, suggesting that only embryonic stem cells have the capacity to cure diabetes. In research to be published in today's Journal of the American Medical Association, scientists from Brazil and the United States showed that adult stem cells may indeed help cure diabetes.

Apparently dietsing can damage your health due to repeated weight gains and losses. Also, most people gain back more than they lose.

More than two-thirds pile the pounds straight back on, raising the danger of heart attack, stroke and diabetes.

Indeed most dieters end up heavier than they did to start with, the researchers found.

They warn this type of yo-yo behaviour is linked to a host of health problems. And they say the strain that repeated weight loss and gain places on the body means most people would have been better off not dieting at all.

That's a pretty incredible result that flies in the face of a mega-billion dollar industry. What about those few people who do manage to keep the weight off?

The psychologist, who advises would-be slimmers to swap calorie-controlled diets for a balanced diet coupled with regular exercise, added: "Exercise may well be the key factor leading to sustained weight loss.

Studies consistently find that people who report the most exercise also have the most weight loss."

The point of the article is that one cannot take on a short-term diet, lose weight, and then expect to keep the weight off despite returning to one's original habits. The key to taking weight off and keeping it off is a complete change in lifestyle, including exercise and abstention from crappy foods. This isn't easy, and most people can't/won't/don't do it.

Bernardo sent along this long and exhaustive review of science fiction's evolving vision for futuristic human-computer interfaces, with plenty of pictures and references to all our favorite movies.

Public health officials in Phoenix have locked up a man with an extensively drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, or XDR-TB, because he refused to take proper measures to prevent infecting other people.

Behind the county hospital's tall cinderblock walls, a 27-year-old tuberculosis patient sits in a jail cell equipped with a ventilation system that keeps germs from escaping. Robert Daniels has been locked up indefinitely, perhaps for the rest of his life, since last July. But he has not been charged with a crime. Instead, he suffers from an extensively drug-resistant strain of tuberculosis, or XDR-TB. It is considered virtually untreatable.

County health authorities obtained a court order to lock him up as a danger to the public because he failed to take precautions to avoid infecting others. Specifically, he said he did not heed doctors' instructions to wear a mask in public. ...

County health officials and Daniels' lawyer, Robert Blecher, would not discuss details of the case. But in general, [Dr. Robert England, Maricopa County's tuberculosis control officer] said the county would not force someone into quarantine unless the patient could not or would not follow doctor's orders.

"It's very uncommon that someone would both not want to take treatment and will willingly put others at risk," England said. "It's only those very uncommon incidents where we have to use legal authority through the courts to isolate somebody."

By this same logic, could a person with HIV/AIDS be locked up if he/she refused to avoid engaging in risky sexual behavior that put others at risk of infection? Such measures might actually make it possible to curb the spread of the terrible disease.

(Previous entries about wiping out AIDS.)

Normal people are often confused by the vocabulary of computer scientists because we tend to use common words in very specific and precise ways. Some of the most frequent misunderstandings between computer scientists and others occur when discussing the concept of "difficulty" and how "hard" some task will be to accomplish. Below are some common terms, along with what they mean to computer scientists. You'll note that non-computer-scientists will often understand these terms entirely differently (and with less precision).

Cheap solution: A solution to a problem that will not take very long or cost very much to implement. Cheap solutions to non-trivial problems are often very difficult to think of. Some problems do not have any cheap solutions.

Expensive solution: A solution to a problem that will cost a lot of time or money to implement. Expensive solutions are often very easy to think of, but there are many degrees of expensiveness. Some solutions are so expensive that they are infeasible to implement, even if they're trivial to conceptualize.

Trivial Problems: Problems that are trivial have known solutions and are therefore inherently uninteresting. They've been solved before, and there's no doubt that a previous solution will be able to satisfy the current need. Ironically -- and contrary to common usage -- trivial solutions to a problem are often the most expensive and time-consuming; it's simple to solve a problem with brute-force. Some problems are themselves trivial, and every reasonable solution is uninteresting even if expensive. Examples of trivial problems: performing arithmetic, algebra, or calculus calculations; building a house; sweeping a sidewalk; writing a side-scrolling adventure game.

Easy Problems: Easy problems are those that are quite similar to trivial problems, but that will require known solutions to be tweaked and modified. There's a very high probability that a known solution can be successfully adapted to this new problem, but there are uncertainties that cannot be completely accounted for at the start. As with solutions to trivial problems, solutions to easy problems might still be very expensive to implemented. Examples of easy problems: applying existing artificial intelligence techniques to a new purpose; building a unique skyscraper in an unusual location; figuring out which mathematical formulas to apply to a particular problem.

Hard Problems: Hard problems have no known solutions, but are considered to be within the realm of possibility. There may be similar problems with known solutions that lead the scientist to believe that the hard problem under consideration can also be solved, but this is intuition, not certainty. Upon investigation, hard problems generally turn out to be either easy or impossible, but until some research is done you can't be sure. If a solution is found, it may be either cheap or expensive to implement, and this cost is often independent of how hard the solution was to find. Most people never encounter hard problems during the normal course of their lives. Examples of hard problems: deciding whether or not P=NP; analyzing the emergent effects of a complex adaptive system; building a skyscraper on Mars.

Impossible Problems: These problems have no solutions. It's important to note that impossible problems are not merely expensive to solve, they cannot be solved without a fundamental change to the laws of the universe or a complete revolution in our understanding of science. Sometimes problems are mistakenly categorized as impossible when they're actually not, and when a solution to a formerly-thought-to-be-impossible problem is discovered it is a very significant event. Impossible problems are generally considered to be a waste of time to pursue... but then breakthroughs are made occasionally. Many impossible problems are actually easy problems with impossible restrictions. Examples of impossible problems: finding the optimal route for a traveling salesman in less than exponential time; building a faster-than-light spaceship; finding the largest prime number.

Here's another amazing medical advance based on adult stem cell research: scientists have grown a heart valve from stem cells taken from bone marrow. It's important to note that to-date zero significant medical breakthroughs have resulted from embryonic stem cell research, in which a human being is killed and harvested for stem cells.

A British research team led by the world's leading heart surgeon has grown part of a human heart from stem cells for the first time. If animal trials scheduled for later this year prove successful, replacement tissue could be used in transplants for the hundreds of thousands of people suffering from heart disease within three years. ...

By using chemical and physical nudges, the scientists first coaxed stem cells extracted from bone marrow to grow into heart valve cells. By placing these cells into scaffolds made of collagen, Dr Chester and his colleague Patricia Taylor then grew small 3cm-wide discs of heart valve tissue. Later this year, that tissue will be implanted into animals - probably sheep or pigs - and monitored to see how well it works as part of a circulatory system.

If that trial works well, Prof Yacoub is optimistic that the replacement heart tissue, which can be grown into the shape of a human heart valve using specially-designed collagen scaffolds, could be used in patients within three to five years.

Growing a suitably-sized piece of tissue from a patient's own stem cells would take around a month but he said that most people would not need such individualised treatment. A store of ready-grown tissue made from a wide variety of stem cells could provide good matches for the majority of the population.

I've written about mechanical artificial hearts before, but growing a new biological heart from stem cells would be superior by leaps and bounds. It's also significant that growing and implanting a new heart would probably be easier, cheaper, and safer than complicated bypass operations that are often performed before a heart transplant is considered.

(Also see: growing a liver from stem cells.)