Science, Technology & Health: January 2010 Archives
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.
