Science, Technology & Health: September 2010 Archives
Decades ago some genius combined the automobile and the radio, completely revolutionizing the driving experience. Only now in 2010 does humanity finally surpass the brilliance of the car radio with the invention of the Emergency Bra.
Caught in a disaster? You'd better hope you're wearing the Emergency Bra. Simply unsnap the bright red bra, separate the cups, and slip it over your head -- one cup for you, and one for your friend. ..."The goal of any emergency respiratory device is to achieve tight fixation and full coverage. Luckily, the wonderful design of the bra is already in the shape of a face mask and so with the addition of a few design features, the Emergency Bra enhances the efficiency of minimizing contaminated bypass air flow," explains the eBra website.
Ok. Where to start?
1. I predict a dramatic increase in the number of respiratory emergencies during first dates.
2. Emergency Bra wearers had better hope they don't have to run very far/fast to escape the danger.
3. Sweat.
Please extrapolate.
Considering that cold and flu season is almost upon us I'm pretty interested to read that gargling with salt water can reduce chance of infection and ease symptoms.
In a randomized study published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2005, researchers recruited almost 400 healthy volunteers and followed them for 60 days during cold and flu season. Some of the subjects were told to gargle three times a day. At the end of the study period, the group that regularly gargled had a nearly 40 percent decrease in upper respiratory tract infections compared with the control group, and when they did get sick, “gargling tended to attenuate bronchial symptoms,” the researchers wrote.
40% is huge! I'll have to add this to my new flossing regimen. I wonder if the gargling would add anything over my periodic use of my neti-pot?
It appears that the fine-structure constant may vary over space and time.
RICHARD FEYNMAN, Nobel laureate and physicist extraordinaire, called it a “magic number” and its value “one of the greatest damn mysteries of physics”. The number he was referring to, which goes by the symbol alpha and the rather more long-winded name of the fine-structure constant, is magic indeed. If it were a mere 4% bigger or smaller than it is, stars would not be able to sustain the nuclear reactions that synthesise carbon and oxygen. One consequence would be that squishy, carbon-based life would not exist.Why alpha takes on the precise value it has, so delicately fine-tuned for life, is a deep scientific mystery. A new piece of astrophysical research may, however, have uncovered a crucial piece of the puzzle. In a paper just submitted to Physical Review Letters, a team led by John Webb and Julian King from the University of New South Wales in Australia present evidence that the fine-structure constant may not actually be constant after all. Rather, it seems to vary from place to place within the universe. If their results hold up to the scrutiny, and can be replicated, they will have profound implications—for they suggest that the universe stretches far beyond what telescopes can observe, and that the laws of physics vary within it. Instead of the whole universe being fine-tuned for life, then, humanity finds itself in a corner of space where, Goldilocks-like, the values of the fundamental constants happen to be just right for it.
To me, the variation over space is even more interesting than the variation over time. Speaking naively, we humans are used to "things" being different in the past and future, but stuff that's happening there should follow the same basic rules as things that are happening here.
What they found shocked them. The further back they looked with the VLT, the larger alpha seemed to be—in seeming contradiction to the result they had obtained with the Keck. They realised, however, that there was a crucial difference between the two telescopes: because they are in different hemispheres, they are pointing in opposite directions. Alpha, therefore, is not changing with time; it is varying through space. When they analysed the data from both telescopes in this way, they found a great arc across the sky. Along this arc, the value of alpha changes smoothly, being smaller in one direction and larger in the other. The researchers calculate that there is less than a 1% chance such an effect could arise at random. Furthermore, six of the quasars were observed with both telescopes, allowing them to get an additional handle on their errors.If the fine-structure constant really does vary through space, it may provide a way of studying the elusive “higher dimensions” that many theories of reality predict, but which are beyond the reach of particle accelerators on Earth. In these theories, the constants observed in the three-dimensional world are reflections of what happens in higher dimensions. It is natural in these theories for such constants to change their values as the universe expands and evolves.
Basically, we know a lot less than we like to think. Heck, we think 74% of the universe is made of "dark energy", which we we don't even know what it is.
A new field of artificial intelligence is coming into its own: translation and condensation of statistics into human-readable format. Here are two concrete examples. First, automated newscasts.
Automated journalism can basically be understood as search algorithms programmed to look out for certain key findings. then to put them into a certain structure. For a report on a football game for example, the StatsMonkey calculates the narrative based on the numerical data.Using the score, the algorithm captures the overall dynamic of the game, highlights the key plays and key players, looks for quotes, and generates a text out of these elements. In addition, it configures an appropriate headline and a photo of the most important player in the game - and there goes a very rough sketch of a sports article.
As indicated, sports are definitely low-hanging fruit when it comes to stats-to-English translation. So second, how about an automated sports blog?
Now, I'm in the process of developing completely automated sports content, which will take the form of blogs. I'm not talking just a "stat of the day" or game recaps, but a lot more. I've identified 21 different types of sports stories that can be automated. You could say I'm trying to make the process of writing a sports blog so easy you don't have to do anything at all. My goal for these blogs in version 1.0 is that at least 90% of the readers think the content was created by a human. One of the nice attributes of algorithmic content is that it can be improved over time. A blogger/writer's internal script is pretty much set. They generally don't change or improve the quality or comprehensiveness of their content over time in a significant way, but algorithms can be upgraded continuously. The "voice" of the content can be improved.Will automated content be the end of sports journalism or blogging? Definitely not. There are always multiple sides to every story. And of course there are some categories of news (e.g. breaking news stories) that can't be easily automated. I'd like to see an algorithm write a story about Tiger Wood's infidelities! However, it will take only a short amount of time to get to the point where the average sports fan can't tell the difference between human generated content and automated content.
Is automated content the future of sports journalism? It will definitely play a big part. Large sports media companies can't cover every team to the level they cover the most popular teams. But algorithms don't care about the size of your market. I can generate content that is just as in-depth for North Dakota State as I can Duke. Automated content will be a boon for smaller markets.
And so the use of artificial intelligence to replace white-collar workers marches on. I for one welcome our new robot overlords!
Regular flossing can add years to your life.
When you floss, you help prevent your gums from becoming inflamed. That's a good thing. What is happening when your gums are inflamed is that you have a chronic bacterial infection in your mouth. This harms your arteries through two mechanisms: the bacteria find their way in to your arteries and hang out (causing plaques), and your body mounts an immune response to the bacteria in your mouth, causing inflammation (which in turn can cause your arteries to narrow). This makes it hard for your heart to do its job and can lead to heart disease.There is some debate about how many years you can gain with heart disease. Dr. Perls says 1.5 years, while Dr. Roizen says 6 years.
I haven't read the studies, but could it be that people who have the discipline to floss regularly also have other good habits?
