gnifyus's Articles, Page 1 of 8

Years ago, in the early nineties, a position in our Product Engineering department opened up due to someone leaving. One day my boss said to us, “Let’s go to lunch, I have something to tell all of you about a new person I’m thinking about hiring.” At this time, our group was only made up of me, in my late 20’s and another man in his early 30’s. In fact, the entire management group for the corporate division consisted of younger college educated men of similar culture, attitude and social background. Over lunch, my boss explained that he was thinking of hiring an older woman who had performed more or less the same job description for a nearby company that had recently closed. His discomfort was not with whether she could do the job (she had more combined experience than all of us put together!), but with whether or not she would “fit in” with the rest of the group socially. The closest way I can describe this person now would be as an older version of Phyllis from The Office (with static-laden polyester blouses and all). We assured our boss that everything would work out (we were all nice guys, after all), but in the backs of our minds we were wondering just how that would really happen on a daily basis.

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Some of us may remember the 1985 movie ‘The Breakfast Club’ where a disparate group of kids are assigned a Saturday detention where they rediscover themselves and each other after having to spend the whole day together. But what happens to teachers when they misbehave? Do they get a detention also? Well, in New York City it appears they do, and some of them have spent years there collecting full salaries all the while. Officially known as “Temporary Reassignment Centers”, approximately 700 teachers and school employees have been moved into these “rubber rooms” while they await disciplinary hearings from city arbitrators. Some play chess, some start book clubs, Italian classes and Yoga; or some just argue over whether or not to open the window. Card playing, magazine reading, puzzles and sleeping are high on the list of reassignment activities also.

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Most of us are aware by now of the effect technology is having on the modern totalitarian government’s hold on the information their people see and hear. The recent heavy use of Twitter in Iran is one example of how hard it now is for any government to keep all communication at bay. Despite attempts at blocking and jamming internet traffic, many images and videos are still getting through to the rest of the world, and perhaps more importantly, to the very people involved and witnessing the protests.

The Great Firewall of China (Golden Shield Project) has long been a heavy handed deterrent for pornography, certain news agencies, pro-democracy groups and the Dalai Lama to name a few. But some Chinese people are finding clever ways around the Firewall, via proxy servers, virtual private networks and onion routing. The latest attempt at complete control over what Chinese people can see and hear via the internet is the sudden edict from the CCP that all new computers either made in or shipped to China must come with filtering software which will block any internet sites deemed unworthy by the Chinese government. (link to translated official notice.) The filtering software known as “Green Dam Youth Escort” is supposed to be, according to the government spokespeople, only for protecting youth from pornography and other sites which have been designated as harmful to the Chinese people. But a great hue and cry came not only from the computer manufacturing industry, but also from (very careful) Chinese citizens themselves. One U.S. software company is even claiming software theft pertaining to some of the code and their running list of websites to filter. Some are convinced there will be a security risk and that the software doesn’t work very well anyway. Lately, even the U.S State Department has joined the fray by condemning the action and meeting with Chinese officials to discuss the mandate. (All in all Apple stands to become quite popular in China since the software currently only runs in Windows.) Most are reading between the lines and guessing that this software is an initial stage in trying to gain continuing control over anything the CCP wants blocked from view.

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No matter how civilized and modern a country you may live in, chances are you’ve had an episode with food-poisoning. Scientists have identified more than 250 viruses, bacteria and parasitic food borne illnesses, with the Norwalk virus (of cruise ship fame) making for two-thirds of the known cases. Also very common are the bacteria salmonella and campylobacter (which just sound nasty, don’t they?).

Even with the recent high profile outbreaks of salmonella in the peanut products and e-coli in the spinach, I was still surprised to find that 1 in 4 Americans contract food-poisoning every year. According to the linked article, in a study from 10 years ago, CDC scientists estimated 76 million cases with 5000 deaths and 325,000 hospitalizations due to contaminated food related illness; and though no recent study has been done, the current estimate is even higher based on population growth. However, the number of minor cases is probably much higher than the studies show. How many of us who wake up in the middle of the night with all those terrible weekend-ruining symptoms actually report the illness? “It must have been something I ate”, we say, and painfully go on with our business.

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In the depths of my basement, lined up on an old bookshelf, I have about 300 vinyl record albums that just sit slowly rotting away as the years go by. There’s also probably about 100 CD’s also starting to gatherer dust as time passes and downloaded digital media reigns. Some of the old rock music is still popular with my two high school aged teens, so occasionally I will take the opportunity to dive down there and emerge triumphantly with an ancient album in hand when a classic old band happens to be mentioned in casual conversation. The kids look at it in the same way I might look at artifacts in a museum; with interest, but no lasting enthusiasm. The pictures are neat; the hairdos are funny, “look at those clothes”— “Was Ozzy ever really that young?”, etc. As for myself, I can remember the entire experience of buying an album consisting of more than just the music. Much of it had to do with placing the record in the player and spending an hour or so listening while poring over the album jacket, which in the more interesting cases consisted of fantastic artwork mixed with news, lyrics and pictures of the band members. Some albums like the Beatles or Jethro Tull had up to 20 pages in a hardcover book form if you had an original or early release. Many contained posters and other promotional paraphernalia along with the recorded music. There seemed to be as much work going into the album presentation as went into actual music itself.

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Though the recent bombings of the tunnels along the Egyptian border of the Gaza Strip alarms us once again to the politics of violence in this area, I couldn’t help thinking about the fact that these tunnels are in existence in the first place. Not having paid a lot of attention to the plight of the Palestinians lately, I find it amazing that these tunnels amount to what is being considered a major industry for the Gaza Strip due to the Israeli border blockade being enforced in the region. In fact, some claim there would be almost no economy in Gaza at all without the tunnels bringing to the region everything from food, fuel and clothing to Viagra, Ipods and cement.

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Biologists have been trying to answer the age old question of how organisms can be so complex if evolution is a completely random process. Scientists at Princeton University have developed a new theory as an extension of Darwin’s theory. Researcher Raj Chakrabarti explains, "Our new theory extends Darwin’s model, demonstrating how organisms can subtly direct aspects of their own evolution to create order out of randomness." The discovery came when the scientists were doing experiments on proteins in the electron transport chain (ETC), which is a biochemical network used for metabolism. The experiment showed the protein chains were correcting imbalances placed on them through artificial mutations and keeping the chain in working order far outside what statistical analysis would predict without the corrections. Furthermore, the data also supports predictions made with equations of control theory.

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Computer Science Students at the Tel Aviv University have created a computer program that makes a digital picture of your face beautiful in one click. By manipulating facial ratios that are considered to be ideal or sometimes known as The Golden Ratio, you too can be transformed into a specimen of perfection. Daniel Cohen-Or of the University states, "Beauty, contrary to what most people think, is not simply in the eye of the beholder. Attractiveness can be objectified and boiled down to a function of mathematical distances or ratios."
Plans for the software include aid for plastic surgeons, magazine cover editors and perhaps as a feature in digital cameras. What you see, may or may not be what you get.

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One of the problems with passive solar-cell panels is that the maximum efficiency and electrical output is a factor of how much light there is and what angle the light is coming from when it hits the panel. In an attempt to overcome this problem, researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute have developed an anti-reflective coating that captures the whole solar spectrum from a much greater angle. Conventional cells only absorb about 67% of light hitting them. The new coating allows 96% of the light hitting the cell from a very wide angle to be absorbed. This may eliminate the need for solar arrays to have mechanized systems attached that automatically track the changing angle of the sun for maximum exposure.

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On Tuesday, October 14th, the Bush Administration revealed a plan to inject 250 billion dollars into banks as another means of shoring up the economy. However, many smaller banks are opposing the move and consider the proposal an intrusion claiming they don’t need the money. Regulators say they will try and persuade many of these banks to take the money anyway, and at the same time they will allow other banks to fail. President Bush said, "These measures are not intended to take over the free market but to preserve it." The plan met with anger by some banks around the country, though. As put by Peter Fitzgerald, chairman of Chain Bridge Bank in McLean, VA, ‘I am much chagrined that we will be punished for behaving prudently by now having to face reckless competitors who all of a sudden are subsidized by the federal government." Furthermore, at Evergreen Federal Bank in Grants Pass, Oregon, chief executive Brady Adams said, "We don’t need a bailout, and if other banks had run their banks like we ran our bank, they wouldn’t have needed a bailout, either." He claims that he has more than 2,000 loans outstanding and only three borrowers behind on their payments.

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Scientists have confirmed via genetic testing that a female blacktip shark in a Virginia aquarium was carrying a pup that had no trace of male DNA. This is the second confirmed case of parthenogenesis in sharks, and was noticed because the female shark had died during a tranquilization procedure and was found to be almost full term after having been in isolation from male sharks for eight years. Subsequent DNA testing confirmed the asexual pregnancy, the cause of which is something scientists have not yet reached a consensus. Mike Heithaus, director of the Marine Science Program at Florida International University in North Miami states, "The reason this has happened in captivity isn’t because there’s a change in their reproductive biology. It is more likely to happen if female sharks aren’t having enough dates. These females did it because they were in captivity and ovulating.”

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I always hate when I’m trying to use a cheap calculator for large numbers and it overflows past the total number of digits it can handle. Well here’s something even worse than that. The U.S. Debt has grown so high that the National Debt Clock has run out of digits. Its keepers had to remove the preceding dollar sign# and replace it with a “1” in order to reflect the 10,228,388,628,932 (and counting) debt the U.S. government owes. The Durst Organization plans to update the clock next year to be able to handle a quadrillion dollars worth of debt. Will it be enough?

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From urban myths to inspiration for cartoons, the electric eel has always been an animal that gets attention for its ability to produce electricity. By making use of many stacked cells called electrocytes, the electric eel (which is actually not an eel at all but a species of knifefish) can generate up to 650 volts at 1 ampere in short pulses. As the new scientific field of systems biology develops, scientists asked themselves if it might be possible to reproduce the electric eel’s electrical effect with artificial cells. Researchers Jian Liu and David A. Lavan at Yale University and the National Institute of Standards and Technology have published a paper (abstract) demonstrating this is a possibility. Though the end implementation is to be developed as a means to power medical implants and other small devices, these particular people (video) seem to have other ideas.

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We were having the usual morning office conversation where we cover every event that happens on the globe in the space of 20 minutes or so. Since we live in Massachusetts, the pros and cons of the State Income Tax Repeal Initiative , where all state income tax would be phased out by 2010 was being discussed. Some feared that the sudden reduction in state funds would affect schools, services, roads and other infrastructure to an unacceptable degree. But the comments of one person caught my attention in a different way. The person exclaimed, "I am pretty sure I’m going to vote for getting rid of taxes just to send a message to those politicians that I’m sick and tired of being gouged more and more for everything these days!" Honestly, it’s easy to have some understanding for that point of view, things being as they are at this time.

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Computer graphics technology is allowing a new means of visualization by implementing 3D interactive displays inside a website. Proteopedia.org is a wiki site for people in the field of life sciences created by structural biologists for visualization of various biomacromolecule structures. Just as those in the mechanical engineering world have been using 3D models for representing visual and manufacturing information, the biology and life sciences scientists and professionals found there was a need for this in their field of study also. At the same time, rolling the graphics portion into a form of a collaborative wiki greatly facilitates the sharing of information amongst structural biologists around the world.

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