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Medicine

Submission + - Laparoscopic Surgeons Slice Better After Playing Video Games 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "NPR reports that surgical residents who were forced to play video games on a Nintendo Wii for an hour a day, five days a week, for four weeks performed significantly better than another group of residents who didn't undergo this grueling video game training. Laparoscopic surgery involves inserting tiny video cameras and instruments into your body so surgeons can operate without having to make a large incision. The approach reduces recovery times for patients, and the risk of infection goes down as well. Laparoscopy can be difficult for surgeons not used to staring at a video monitor during an operation. "You have to move in a three-dimensional space but you have a two-dimensional image on your screen,"says Dr. Gregorio Patrizi. Patrizi and his team had surgical residents play three Wii games — tennis, ping pong and one that involved shooting balloons from an aircraft — choosing these games because they all required strong hand-eye coordination and three-dimensional visualization of a space. Patrizi said these results suggest that the Wii and other motion-sensing gaming consoles like Microsoft's Kinect could be used to supplement surgical training at a very low cost, especially when compared with expensive laparoscopy simulators. How do the residents feel about the study. "We had a lot of fun," says Patrizi. "Research doesn't need to be boring.""
Google

Submission + - Smartphones Are Emasculating Says Google's Brin

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Kevin Bostic writes that Google may pull in lots of money from the sale of Android martphones, but Google co-founder Sergei Brin recently aired some unflattering opinions on the devices, calling them "emasculating" and offering Google Glass as a solution to the societal problems they pose. Brin took the stage at TED2013, sporting his now ever-present Google Glass unit, and said the rise of the smartphone has led to people essentially getting addicted to antisocial behavior, according to the TED Blog. "The cell phone is a nervous habit," Brin explained. "If I smoked, I'd probably smoke instead, it'd look cooler. But I whip this out and look as if I have something important to do. It really opened my eyes to how much of my life I spent secluding myself away in email." Brin added that the way people access smartphone data requires them to disconnect from the world around them and that the reliance on smartphones is somewhat degrading. "Is this the way you're meant to interact with other people?" Brin continued. "It's kind of emasculating. You're just rubbing this featureless piece of glass. Is this what you're meant to do with your body?" Brin hopes that the head-mounted computing unit will allow people to leave their smartphones in their pockets, instead calling up information when they need it and going about their lives when they don't. "When we started Google 15 years ago, my vision was that information would come to you as you need it. You wouldn't have to query at all.""
Math

Submission + - Algorithm Developed for a Business Suit That Fits

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Donna Tam writes that Raj Sareen, who holds degrees in space sciences and physics, wanted to sells men's business suits to customers who don't like to shop so he developed an algorithm that helps consumers find their correct clothing size online with just a few pieces of information: age, weight and height. The company, Styku, uses 3D apparel technology, cloth simulation, and computer-aided design in its algorithm which is now being used at new online retail store, Combat Gent. The technology takes less input from customers — which means they'll have to answer less questions that other tech fit services — and factors in details like how a certain fabric may stretch or how a man's body may sag after a certain age. "Nobody's really run away with the market yet," says Sareen. "Fit is not just about the dimension of the garment, it's also about fabric, it's also how they wear them, the shape of the person — not just their measurement." Styku impressed investors at a Microsoft event for startups last summer by turning a Kinect's motion-sensing video game controller into a body scanner that told users what their measurements were and gave them a virtual mock up of how clothes would look on them. During the trial run on the Combat Gent they tested the algorithm on small sampling — 67 men. For three of those men, all of whom were above six feet tall, Styku's algorithm picked the wrong sizes. But, all the other men found success with the algorithm. It isn't a perfect science yet, but Vishaal Melwani thinks Styku's ties to fashion will make the difference in the long run. "Fit technology has to start from the clothing. It can't start from pure engineering." Meanwhile, the NY Times reports that another company, True&Co, has taken up an equally difficult challenge for the fairer sex — developing an algorithm for a perfectly fitting bra."
Transportation

Submission + - Plans Unveiled for Full Scale Replica of the Titanic 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "USA Today reports that Australian billionaire Clive Palmer has unveiled plans for construction of Titanic II, a cruise ship designed as a "full-scale re-creation" of the Titanic adding that the ship will be built in China and begin carrying passengers in 2016. The Titanic II will be built 883 feet long – 3 inches longer than the original Titanic– and weigh 55,800 gross tons, according to Palmer who stopped short of calling the vessel unsinkable. It will carry a maximum of 2,435 passengers and 900 crew members, and include a gymnasium, Turkish baths, a squash court, a swimming pool, a theater and a casino. Like the original ship, there will no TVs aboard and probably no Internet service, Palmer says. Passengers will be able to dress in 1912-style clothing, giving them an opportunity to step back in time, or pretend they are DiCaprio or Kate Winslet, who starred in James Cameron's 1997 blockbuster movie. But industry insiders are skeptical about the commercial viability of the ship. "Titanic II is a curiosity and may have a draw as a floating hotel, but the idea of spending close to a week at sea on a vessel built around such a thin premise is seen as a stretch, at least by many within the industry," says Michael Driscoll, the editor of the industry newsletter Cruise Week adding that he is skeptical about the future of Titanic II in the aftermath of the Carnival Triumph fire and last year's shipwreck of the Costa Concordia off the coast of Tuscany. Paul Kurzman, whose great-grandparents, Isidor and Ida Straus, died on the Titanic, says he has "no problem" with the construction of Titanic II. "I don't think they would have had any problem whatsoever, as long as the Titanic II steers clear of icebergs.""
Science

Submission + - For Sale - Nobel Prize for Discovery of DNA

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "UPI reports that for the first time in the history of Nobel Prize, one of the Nobel Prize medals along with the diploma presented by the Nobel committee is on auction with an opening bid of $250,000. Awarded to Francis Crick, who along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins won the Nobel Prize for medicine in 1962 "for their discoveries concerning the molecular structure of nucleic acids and its significance for information transfer in living material," the medal will be auctioned off in New York City, by Heritage Auctions. The medal has been kept in a safe deposit box in California since Crick's widow passed away in 2007 and a portion of the proceeds will go to the Francis Crick Institute of disease research scheduled to open in London in 2015. ""By auctioning his Nobel it will finally be made available for public display and be well looked after. Our hope is that, by having it available for display, it can be an inspiration to the next generation of scientists," says Crick's granddaughter, Kindra Check. ""My granddad was honored to have received the Nobel Prize, but he was not the type to display his awards; his office walls contained a large chalkboard, artwork and a portrait of Charles Darwin.""
Medicine

Submission + - Physician Suicides After Discovered Secretly Videotaping Patients for Years

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Doctors have been sanctioned for snapping photos of patients during surgery, for posting or writing anything with identifying information about patients or even for looking at their medical records out of curiosity. Now the Washington Post reports that for more than two decades, women came to see Johns Hopkins gynecologist Nikita Levy and trusted him with not only the most private parts of their bodies but also with their innermost secrets. This week patients were reeling from the news that their doctor had committed suicide after being accused of surreptitiously videotaping and photographing many of his patients. Police said they have removed nearly 10 image-filled computer hard drives from Levy’s home in Towson, Md. “Never in a thousand years would I have imagined such a thing,” says Deborah Doerfer, a certified nurse midwife who worked with Levy off and on for nearly 20 years. “He was incredibly compassionate. He was always there to take care of his patients. They expected him to be on call 24/7, and he was.” Police would not speculate how many images the hard drives may contain, nor when Levy allegedly began recording them. Baltimore police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi says police found multiple cameras in at least one examination room, although he would not describe how they were hidden. “Everybody understands what’s at stake here," says Lois Shepherd, an expert on biomedical ethics at the University of Virginia. "Just like when we’re in surgery and under anesthesia, we trust that our body will be exposed as necessary for a procedure, but not more than necessary. And certainly not for people’s titillation, or even for their curiosity.” Johns Hopkins Medicine has set up a hotline that patients can call to arrange for counseling."
Security

Submission + - Could the Election of the New Pope be Hacked? 1

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The rules for papal elections are steeped in tradition. John Paul II last codified them in 1996, and Benedict XVI left the rules largely untouched. The "Universi Dominici Gregis on the Vacancy of the Apostolic See and the Election of the Roman Pontiff" is surprisingly detailed. Now as the College of Cardinals prepares to elect a new pope, security people like Bruce Schneier wonder about the process. How does it work, and just how hard would it be to hack the vote? First, the system is entirely manual, making it immune to the sorts of technological attacks that make modern voting systems so risky. Second, the small group of voters — all of whom know each other — makes it impossible for an outsider to affect the voting in any way. The chapel is cleared and locked before voting. No one is going to dress up as a cardinal and sneak into the Sistine Chapel. In short, the voter verification process is about as good as you're ever going to find. A cardinal can't stuff ballots when he votes. Then the complicated paten-and-chalice ritual ensures that each cardinal votes once — his ballot is visible — and also keeps his hand out of the chalice holding the other votes. Ballots from previous votes are burned, which makes it harder to use one to stuff the ballot box. What are the lessons here? First, open systems conducted within a known group make voting fraud much harder. Every step of the election process is observed by everyone, and everyone knows everyone, which makes it harder for someone to get away with anything. Second, small and simple elections are easier to secure. This kind of process works to elect a pope or a club president, but quickly becomes unwieldy for a large-scale election. And third: When an election process is left to develop over the course of a couple of thousand years, you end up with something surprisingly good."
The Military

Submission + - There is Plenty to Cut at the Pentagon 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, writes that although we have been bombarded with tales of woe about the potentially devastating impacts of cutting the Pentagon budget 8% under the sequester, examples of egregious waste and misplaced spending priorities at the Pentagon abound and one need look no further than the department's largest weapons program, the F-35 combat aircraft which has just been grounded again after a routine inspection revealed a crack on a turbine blade in the jet engine of an F-35 test aircraft in California. Even before it has moved into full-scale production, the plane has already increased in price by 75%, and it has so far failed to meet basic performance standards. By the Pentagon's own admission, building and operating three versions of the F-35 — one for the Air Force, one for the Navy and one for the Marines — will cost more than $1.4 trillion over its lifetime, making it the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken. And in an era in which aerial combat is of diminishing importance and upgraded versions of current generation US aircraft can more than do the job, it is not at all clear that we need to purchase more than 2,400 of these planes. Cutting the two most expensive versions of the F-35 will save over $60 billion in the next decade. But some say the F-35 program is too big to kill. The F-35 funnels business to a global network of contractors that includes Northrop Grumman and Kongsberg Gruppen ASA of Norway. It counts 1,300 suppliers in 45 states supporting 133,000 jobs — and more in nine other countries, according to Lockheed. “It’s got a lot of political protection,” says Winslow Wheeler, a director at the Project on Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information in Washington. “In that environment, very, very few members of Congress are willing to say this is an unaffordable dog and we need to get rid of it.”"
Businesses

Submission + - For Businesses College Degree Is the New High School Diploma

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The NY Times reports that a college degree is becoming the new high school diploma: the new minimum requirement for getting even the lowest-level job with many jobs that didn’t used to require a diploma — positions like dental hygienists, cargo agents, clerks and claims adjusters — increasingly requiring a college degree. From the point of view of business, with so many people going to college now, those who do not graduate are often assumed to be unambitious or less capable. “When you get 800 résumés for every job ad, you need to weed them out somehow,” says Suzanne Manzagol. A study by Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce found that more than 2.2 million jobs that require a minimum of a bachelor’s degree have been created (PDF) since the 2007 start of the recession. At the same time, jobs that require only a high school diploma have decreased by 5.8 million in that same time. “It is a tough job market for college graduates but far worse for those without a college education,” says Anthony P. Carnevale, co-author of the report. “At a time when more and more people are debating the value of post-secondary education, this data shows that your chances of being unemployed increase dramatically without a college degree.” Even if they are not exactly applying the knowledge they gained in their political science, finance and fashion marketing classes, young graduates say they are grateful for even the rotest of rote office work they have been given. “It sure beats washing cars,” says Georgia State University graduate Landon Crider, 24, an in-house courier who, for $10 an hour, ferries documents back and forth between the courthouse and his company's office."
Medicine

Submission + - Doctors Identify Overused and Unnecessary Medical Procedures

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The LA Times reports that in a new report aimed at improving healthcare and controlling runaway costs a coalition of leading medical societies has identified nearly 100 medical procedures, tests and therapies that are overused and often unnecessary. The medical interventions — including early caesarean deliveries, CT scans for head injuries in children and annual Pap tests for middle-aged women — may be necessary in some cases, the physician groups say but often they are not beneficial and may even cause harm. "We are very concerned about the rapidly escalating cost of healthcare," says Dr. Bruce Sigsbee. "This is not healthy for the country, and something has to be done." Each of the specialty medical societies has provided a list of five procedures that physicians and patients should question about the overuse of medical tests and procedures that provide little benefit and in some cases harm. For example, despite the popularity of early caesareans, there is growing evidence that babies born before 39 weeks' gestation have higher risks of learning disabilities and even death. American doctors also order nearly twice as many CT and MRI exams as doctors in other industrialized countries and they perform more knee replacements and deliver more babies by caesarean section. A growing number of experts have concluded that much medical care in the U.S. is wasteful and even dangerous for patients. A 2012 report from the independent Institute of Medicine estimated total waste in the system at 30%, or $750 billion a year. "Millions of Americans are increasingly realizing that when it comes to healthcare, more is not necessarily better," says Dr. Christine K. Cassel."
The Media

Submission + - Murder, Journalism, and the Twitterverse

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "David Bullard writes that one of the most interesting things about the case of Oscar Pistorius, the disabled Olympian who killed his model girlfriend on the morning of Valentine's day, is the amount of social media activity it has spawned and how Twitter is offering a frighteningly accurate real time measure of public opinion on the case. "Early on Thursday morning there was enormous sympathy for Pistorius as the story of the "accidental" shooting was reported," writes Bullard. "That evaporated within a few hours as the police announced that they believed they were looking at a murder case." By Monday, even if there had been insufficient evidence to pin a murder charge on Pistorius, the Twitterverse had worked itself into a frenzy of hatred with the mob baying for blood. "Bizarrely, the investigation into the tragic death of Reeva Steenkamp became a sort of grotesque social media reality show with everyone invited to play. The Twitterverse was never short of opinion, most of it uninformed and much of it swayed by the latest revelation, whether confirmed or not." The story also points to a new relationship between online and print journalism that may offer a glimpse of the future. Journalists at the bail hearing are able to release short bulletins via Twitter while more established news sources like newspapers follow up with more detailed analysis. "It seems an ideal symbiotic relationship and undoubtedly sets the agenda for news reporting in the future; gobbets of need to know stuff in real time all within 140 characters followed by the expanded story on a website and in a newspaper.""
Education

Submission + - The Two Big Problems with Online College Courses 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "The NY Times reports that while online college classes are already common, on the whole, the record is not encouraging because there are two big problems with online teaching. First, student attrition rates — around 90 percent for some huge online courses — appear to be a problem even in small-scale online courses when compared with traditional face-to-face classes. Second, courses delivered solely online may be fine for highly skilled, highly motivated people, but they are inappropriate for struggling students who make up a significant portion of college enrollment and who need close contact with instructors to succeed. Research has shown that community college students who enroll in online courses are significantly more likely to fail or withdraw than those in traditional classes, which means that they spend hard-earned tuition dollars and get nothing in return. Worse still, low-performing students who may be just barely hanging on in traditional classes tend to fall even further behind in online courses. "Colleges need to improve online courses before they deploy them widely," says the Times. "Moreover, schools with high numbers of students needing remedial education should consider requiring at least some students to demonstrate success in traditional classes before allowing them to take online courses." Interestingly, the center found that students in hybrid classes — those that blended online instruction with a face-to-face component — performed as well academically as those in traditional classes. But hybrid courses are rare, and teaching professors how to manage them is costly and time-consuming. "The online revolution offers intriguing opportunities for broadening access to education. But, so far, the evidence shows that poorly designed courses can seriously shortchange the most vulnerable students.""
Earth

Submission + - Billionaires Secretly Fund Vast Climate Denial Network 4

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Suzanne Goldenberg reports that conservative billionaires used a secretive funding route to channel nearly $120 million to more than 100 groups casting doubt about the science behind climate change, helping build a vast network of think tanks and activist groups working to redefine climate change from neutral scientific fact to a highly polarizing "wedge issue" for hardcore conservatives. "We exist to help donors promote liberty which we understand to be limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise," says Whitney Ball, chief executive of the Donors Trust. Ball's organization assured wealthy donors that their funds would never by diverted to liberal causes with a guarantee of complete anonymity for donors who wished to remain hidden. The money flowed to Washington think tanks embedded in Republican party politics, obscure policy forums in Alaska and Tennessee, contrarian scientists at Harvard and lesser institutions, even to buy up DVDs of a film attacking Al Gore. "The funding of the denial machine is becoming increasingly invisible to public scrutiny. It's also growing. Budgets for all these different groups are growing," says Kert Davies, research director of Greenpeace, which compiled the data on funding of the anti-climate groups using tax records. "These groups are increasingly getting money from sources that are anonymous or untraceable.""
Businesses

Submission + - Why Apple May Die

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Cromwell Schubarth writes that Harvard business professor Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma, thinks Apple, Tesla Motors, venture capitalists and most of the nation’s colleges and universities could be killed by less advanced competitors in the same way that many once dominant technology companies have been in the past. Christensen's theory of disruption centers around how dominant industry leaders will react to a newcomer: “It allows you to predict whether you will kill the incumbents or whether the incumbents will kill you.” If a newcomer thinks it can win by competing at the high end, “the incumbents will always kill you.” If they come in at the bottom of the market and offer something that at first is not as good, the legacy companies won’t feel threatened until too late, after the newcomers have gained a foothold in the market. According to Christensen Apple could be on path for a classic disruption because successful innovative products like the iPhone are usually based on proprietary technology because that is how the dominant business carves out, protects and builds its top market position. But at some point as they get better and better, they start to exceed what people actually need or are willing to pay extra for. “When that happens the people who have the proprietary architecture are pushed to the ceiling and the volume goes to the open players. So in smartphones the Android operating system has consummate modularity that now allows hundreds of people in Vietnam and China to assemble these things." As the dominant architecture becomes open and modular, the value of their proprietary design becomes commoditized itself. "It may not be as good, but almost good enough is often good enough.”"
Medicine

Submission + - Alcoholism Vaccine Makes Alcohol Intolerable to Drinkers

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "Ariel Schwartz reports that researchers are working on an alcoholism vaccine that makes alcohol intolerable to anyone who drinks it. The vaccine builds on what happens naturally in certain people--about 20% of the Japanese, Chinese, and Korean population--with an alcohol intolerance mutation. Normally, the liver breaks down alcohol into an enzyme that’s transformed into the compound acetaldehyde (responsible for that nasty hangover feeling), which in turn is degraded into another enzyme. The acetaldehyde doesn’t usually have time to build up before it’s broken down. But people with the alcohol intolerance mutation lack the ability to produce that second enzyme; acetaldehyde accumulates, and they feel terrible. Dr. Juan Asenjo and his colleagues have come up with a way to stop the synthesis of that second enzyme via a vaccine, mimicking the mutation that sometimes happens naturally. "People have this mutation all over the world. It’s like how some people can’t drink milk," says Asenjo. Addressing the physiological part of alcohol addiction is just one piece of the battle. Addictive tendencies could very well manifest in other ways; instead of alcohol, perhaps former addicts will move on to cigarettes. Asenjo admits as much: "Addiction is a psychological disease, a social disease. Obviously this is only the biological part of it.""

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