Science, Technology & Health: August 2007 Archives
My brother also sent me an article about a Chinese couple who wanted to name their child "@" (to the consternation of the State Language Commission). Most interesting to me is the distinct likelihood that whether or not the authorities allow the unusual name, the record-keeping software they use probably won't.
More and more these days I've noticed that our choices, public and private, are limited by what our software allows us to do. Most software won't accept as input a name with strange characters, and none will accept arbitrary symbols like that formerly used by the Artist-Formerly-And-Now-Once-Again-Known-As-Prince. Using standards makes software development easier, but "simple to build into software" is not a requirement that human societies naturally conform to.
This phenomenon is especially noticeable when human interactions are mediated by software. For instance: wasting five minutes to get past an automated phone system to get a ten-second answer from a human; or ordering a computer from Dell and not being able to select certain components because they simply aren't on the list. Further examples abound, from data entry to transaction processing to borrowing a book from the library.
Once a computerized system is in place, human operators generally refuse to take any actions outside the boundaries prescribed by the software, giving the software's arbitrary constraints near-absolute power. No one wants to deal with software that's out of sync with reality because of some out-of-bounds activity, so no one breaks the rules and everyone endures their chains because at least their severely-curtained choices can be executed twice as efficiently.
One thing I enjoy about marriage is always having someone to go for a walk with, and apparently moderate exercise can be more beneficial than a strenuous workout.
Scientists examining the relationship between the intensity and length of a workout and the duration of its benefits have made a surprising discovery: More isn't necessarily better, and none may be worse than we ever imagined."On the surface, it seems to make sense that the harder we exercise, the better off we'll be, and by some measures that's true," says lead author Cris Slentz, Ph.D, an exercise physiologist at Duke University Medical Center. "But our studies show that a modest amount of moderately intense exercise is the best way to significantly lower the level of a key blood marker linked to higher risk of heart disease and diabetes. More intense exercise doesn't seem to do that."
What may be even more remarkable, he says, is that some of the benefits derived from a modest exercise regimen appear to last much longer than those gained from a more rigorous program.
Even a little exercise can make a huge difference in your health over time.
But perhaps the most interesting finding was that a modest, low-intensity workout – walking just 30 minutes per day, for example, dramatically lowered triglyceride levels. Triglycerides are the particles that carry fat around in the body, and they're also a good indicator of insulin resistance, a marker for diabetes. Lowering triglyceride levels lowers risk of heart disease and diabetes."A proper exercise program appears to be able to lower a person's insulin resistance in just a matter of days," says Kraus. "We were also amazed to see that the lower triglyceride levels stayed low even two weeks after the workouts ended." Longer, more intense workouts didn't have nearly the same impact, they say.
While the researchers were surprised by the amount and duration of the benefits from a modest exercise program, they say they were not surprised by the results from the control group. "And they are alarming," says Kraus. Over six months, those participants gained two pounds and about a half an inch around the waist. "That may not sound like much, but over a decade at that rate, that would mean an additional 40 pounds and ten inches," he says. "So doing a little is a whole lot better than doing nothing at all."
(HT: FuturePundit.)
The Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System could save a lot of lives and hardware, but I wouldn't want to be the pilot assigned to test it....
Well, the U.S. Air Force's Air Combat Command is installing a system in its jets that is designed to keep future pilots from tying the record. Press Zoom reports that the Automatic Ground Collision Avoidance System is a software-based technology that has demonstrated a 98 percent effectiveness rate at eliminating aircraft crashes into the ground. The system is ready for operational integration on F-16 Fighting Flacons, F-22 Raptors and F-35 Joint Strike Fighters.Auto-GCAS differs from other crash-avoidance systems in that it doesn’t create nuisance warnings and activates only at the last instant to take control and recover the aircraft when it determines collision is imminent. The determination is made when the aircraft is within 1.5 seconds of the "point of no return" and no action has been taken by the pilot.
I need to build one of these.
I'm working on a side project and getting to do some fun stuff with databases that I haven't gotten to work with in a while. I forgot how much fun it is to design database schemas and normalize them. I'm OCD, so the whole process of normalization is like a game to me. Writing SQL queries is also pretty fun, and Visual Studio 2005 is an awesome IDE.
The Department of Defense is interested in modeling human behavior in an irregular warfare scenario.
The agent-based model will incorporate the effects of individual DIMEFIL actions at a lower level of resolution than the strategic/campaign level and work out their implications, so that patterns emerge in the PMESII (Political, Military, Economic, Social, Infrastructure and Information) environment, on the level in which strategic and campaign decisions are made. Lower level rules and strategic level patterns will both be in accordance with social theories agreed upon with the government. The agent based model will include and make use of a database of the infrastructure, political, economic, and social states and relations between agents, so as to work out the implications of actions in a particular instantiation of a PMESII environment, g iven the rules of relations from micro level and macro level political, social, cultural, psychological, and economic social theories agreed upon with the government. It will use this data in concert with the application of social rules to give a plausibl e outcome of DIMEFIL actions in the PMESII environment. The simulation will be transparent: analysts will be able to access a complete description of the state of the simulation at output and during processing. The simulation will have a causal tracing tool to aid in finding the patterns of behaviors which ca use the emergent effects. After a preferably automated calibration process, the data and social theory should support the social models at the individual relation level as well as the level of groups of relations and sequences of relations.
As good as magic given the current state of artificial intelligence, but worthwhile research nonetheless.
(HT: DangerRoom.)
