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Comment Re:Marathoner (Score 1) 169

Don't just assume your rate is low because you're in peak physical condition. I run and mine is often below 40. I took notice when it was 34, then 32, and got worried when it was 30. I've got a benign (asymptomatic) bradydysrhythmia. Do your heart a favor and at least get a baseline ECG

Comment I know two victims (Score 1) 251

I know two elderly people, both bilked out of $300. I see dozens of stories in this thread about how so many of us have been called and how you like to string them along and frustrate them. I've been called at least a dozen times. We need something other than just frustration to battle them. How can we prepare tools and tactics to respond and try to stop this?

Comment Prehospital Paramedicine (Score 1) 97

This is going to be commonplace in the next few years in the field of Community Paramedicine. I'm an EMT and work on a 911 ambulance. A very large percent of our calls are for patients that can easily be treated in place, but our scope of practice does not allow us to "treat and release". So we use the most expensive method of transportation (an ambulance) to take a non critical patient (with a problem not an emergency) to the most expensive destination, an emergency room.

A very common example (like DAILY): Mr. Smith is a 72 year old male with congestive heart failure. He was admitted a week ago for treatment and was discharged yesterday morning. He does not have adequate family support, may not have understood his discharge instructions, may not have the ability to obtain or manage his medications, and may not recognize changes in his signs/symptoms that indicate recurrence. Yes, he can obtain SOME in home care, like a visiting nurse, but they are not typically available 24/7 and cannot typically do things like a 12 lead EKG in the field. Any one of the gaps I listed could cause Mr. Smith to be readmitted for the same problem.

Under the Affordable Care Act, if Mr. Smith is readmitted within 30 days, the hospital will not be reimbursed by Medicare. This is HUGE. There is a tremendous financial incentive for hospitals to invest in telemedicine like facetime and Skype to manage these chronic patients (CHF, pneumonia, elder falls, etc) to avoid readmission penalties.

Comment Communication is Always a Problem (Score 2) 121

I hate to say it but 4G for an emergency network is just a money sink. I hate to have a defeatist attitude but at least in my small new england town this would be a complete waste of time and money and effort. We have no unified dispatch system. All land line 911 calls go to police. If you want Fire or Ambulance it's transferred to the Fire department, who then transfers medical calls to the ambulance. If you call from a cell phone it goes to the state police regional office first, then to the local state police barracks, then to town police, etc. Police and fire are on separate frequencies. ICS is a joke and never implemented. EMA is run with all donated equipment and goodwill of Ham operators. Better than nothing? certainly but not by much. I put an IP camera onto their EMA vehicle, punched a hole in their firewall and the chiefs were able to view the scene and control the camera from the EOC. It took me 10 minutes but it was like the natives seeing an airplane. The average Police/fire/EMA chief is 50+ years old and typically holds a grease pencil, not an iPad.

Example, there was a mill fire in the neighboring city. Multiple towns responded. No ICS, no communication plan, everyone on one channel walking all over each other. There is no way any of these communities could implement, monitor or effectively use a 4G solution.

Comment Bioinformatics Bubble? (Score 2) 38

I've been casually trying to learn some basic bioinformatics skills and have played with biopython for about a year. My son is a a senior in HS and has been thinking about a BS in Microbiology and a minor in CompSci. We've been to a couple of University open houses lately and they all are pushing bioinformatics programs. I see chatter about it online and even on TV. I even discovered that one of my cousins just got his PhD in bioinformatics. It's everywhere!

Is there a risk that 4 years from now there will be WAY too many bioinformatics grads? I'd hate to reccommend a field to my son where the employment bubble will burst soon. Any thoughts about job prospects down the road? [ mitigating factor - We're near Boston which appears to be the hub of the industry on the east coast ]

Comment Bioinformatics for HS Student? (Score 1) 22

Hi and thanks for the offer to answer questions. I'm going to repost something I wrote in the google science fair thread:

Ok slashdotters, I've had no luck getting this question answered elsewhere so I might as well try here. My son is very interested in coding. He's competent in Java and he's picking up c quite well. He's taken an interest in GPU programming and I know over the next year he will do OK with those concepts too (I've been able to get both OpenCL and CUDA code up and running). In other words, we've got the computer end of a sci fair project pretty well established. The problem is that while I know generally what bioinformatics is all about, I have no background or resources in the appropriate biology to help him find a worthy project.

Ideally, what he wants is 1) a bioinformatics problem with a large data set (yes I realize that is redundant by definition) 2) one that would benefit from GPU programming 3) a problem that makes some kind of physical testable prediction that could be tested.

Last year a kid (from Canada?) did a drug interaction study where he took candidate compounds and determined where on a protein they would attach. From that he found two compounds that could mate at the same time because their locations did not interfere. Thus increasing the effectivity. He actually clinically tested "his" drug on cells. Pretty impressive. I'm not expecting my son to reach that level but I'd like to find something real world and challenging that couples computer science with a physical biological process.

any input is greatly appreciated! gary.huntress@gmail.com

Comment Plea for Help - Bioinformatics Sci Fair (Score 3, Interesting) 31

Ok slashdotters, I've had no luck getting this question answered elsewhere so I might as well try here. My son is very interested in coding. He's competent in Java and he's picking up c quite well. He's taken an interest in GPU programming and I know over the next year he will do OK with those concepts too (I've been able to get both OpenCL and CUDA code up and running). In other words, we've got the computer end of a sci fair project pretty well established. The problem is that while I know generally what bioinformatics is all about, I have no background or resources in the appropriate biology to help him find a worthy project.

Ideally, what he wants is 1) a bioinformatics problem with a large data set (yes I realize that is redundant by definition) 2) one that would benefit from GPU programming 3) a problem that makes some kind of physical testable prediction that could be tested.

Last year a kid (from Canada?) did a drug interaction study where he took candidate compounds and determined where on a protein they would attach. From that he found two compounds that could mate at the same time because their locations did not interfere. Thus increasing the effectivity. He actually clinically tested "his" drug on cells. Pretty impressive. I'm not expecting my son to reach that level but I'd like to find something real world and challenging that couples computer science with a physical biological process.

any input is greatly appreciated! gary.huntress@gmail.com

Comment MS Versus Metasploit (Score 4, Interesting) 89

The video is very interesting, but one thing really does annoy me. He talks about discovering the initial vuln and how they were able to understand it literally within minutes (around slide 15/16) and they realized how serious it was (100% successful loading of a DLL from a WebDAV path via LoadLib because control panel icons are handled in a different (broken) way).

Hey says that the vuln existed for years and that a 7 year old could exploit it because it was included in Metasploit (slide 16). He clearly indicated that Metasploit knew about this before MS and that they were tipped off by 1 or 2 other 3rd party malware researchers who sent in "just another LNK exploit" that they happened to bother to look at. He even said "it's a good thing we did [look at it]".

So this tells me that MS does NOT bother to review Metasploit scripts to get a leg up on zero days..... that surprised and annoys me.

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