 New York Times | Learning to Keep Patients Safe in a Culture of Fear New York Times “We are a much safer hospital now,” said Dr. David Mayer, co-executive director of the medical school's Institute for Patient Safety Excellence. ... Experts: Medical schools aren't teaching patient safetyFierceHealthcare Med schools weak on instilling patient-safety skills, Leape report saysModernHealthcare.com New Lucian Leape Institute Report Finds That U.S. Medical Schools Are Falling ...PR Newswire (press release) HealthLeaders Media -The Daily Toreador (registration) -Health Affairs (blog) all 28 news articles » |
The Future Of Camera-Based Input [IPhone Apps]
Not entirely dissimilar to the 2008 patent which showed an iPhone being controlled by camera-based input, is this German student's app, which controls the Maps app being controlled by the camera tracking hand movements through the app. More »
PVC Cable Glands
1CX 300 sq.mm unarmored Cable using PVC Gland .It was terminated in the LV panel.Now the client was not accepting because,the reason is the gland plate was mild steel,so the cable entry area the magnetic path form so that to refuse. Now all the cable was terminated its very difficult to remove
Unreal Engine 3 Got Ported to Palm’s webOS Too [WebOS]
Unreal Engine 3? The graphics engine that powers many, many games (Gears of War, Mass Effect, Arkham Asylum) on consoles today? Ported on to Palm's webOS? Neat, but not as neat as you'd think. More »
Using Shunt Reactors to Reclose 420-KV Lines
what are your opinions about that reclosing at 420 kV lines with shunt reactors?
is it recommended way to put into practice?
Record Labels: Change or Die [Music]
It's a lousy time to be a record label. Profits are tanking, bands are angry—OK Go just ditched EMI—and YouTube and BitTorrent changed the game. Still, some labels are transforming themselves to help musicians in the digital age. More »
Google Mobile Search Reveals What’s In Stock Nearby [Google]
Google Product Search was already a handy shopping aid, but today's addition of local inventory info makes it essential. And like most great ideas, it's only going to get better with time. More »
No Communication Between Central PLC and OS
We have 5 AC410 from ABB and one OS. One is the central plc and the other four are process PLCs distributed to different processes. We had a problem with the central PLC where by some one put some force on it's analog module by pushing it hard into the slot,the com card CS513 went off and non of t
Universal Relay Test Sets
hi all,
i want to know some thing,
which is the best universal relay test set? which made ?
what do you think about ISA drts-6 ?
is there someone know that imperfect ways of ISA?
thanks for ur answers...
JooJoo Tablet Gets New Home Screen and Controls [Jooojoo]
Religious antivax sect implicated in deaths of 100 children | Bad Astronomy
Word from New Zealand Zimbabwe is that a religious sect there — which believes in prayer over vaccinations — may be responsible for the deaths of over one hundred children from measles.
I believe people have the right to practice their religious beliefs… up until they start to hurt others. It has been proven over and again that prayer does nothing to heal disease over the placebo effect, while vaccinations have saved hundreds of millions of people. That’s math I can do pretty easily.
If this story is true, I certainly hope that the people involved are introduced to the inside of a jail cell for a long, long time. They can happily pray there all they want, and on the outside those children can get the vaccinations that will save their lives.
Intel’s 6-Core Gulftown Gets Tested, Blows Us Away [CPUs]
Pioneering Deep-Sea Robot Is Lost to a Watery Grave | 80beats
A pioneering deep-sea robot, which could function unmanned and untethered to a surface ship, was lost at sea this week. The loss of the 15-year-old Autonomous Benthic Explorer, or ABE, comes as a blow to scientists who study the ocean’s floor. ABE could stay under water for an entire day; it ventured into some of the most remote and risky places on earth, making detailed maps of mid-ocean ridges and was the first autonomous vehicle to locate hydrothermal vents [The Boston Globe]. That’s why it earned a spot on Wired magazine’s list of “The 50 Best Robots Ever.”
ABE was on its 222nd research dive, studying a hydrothermal vent it had discovered off the coast of Chile on the Pacific floor, when all contact was lost with its surface vessel Melville. Scientists suspect that one of the glass spheres that helped keep ABE buoyant imploded. Scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, who designed and built the $1 million vehicle, believe that this implosion–almost two miles undersea and under pressure of more than two tons per square inch-would have caused other spheres in ABE to implode, destroying on-board systems and leaving the robot stranded at the bottom of the ocean floor.
At the time of its loss, ABE, who was brought out of retirement as its replacement Sentry was on another expedition, was researching the Chile Triple Junction–the only place on Earth where a mid-ocean ridge is being pushed beneath a continent in a deep ocean trench [The Boston Globe]. Scientists and engineers on the ABE team reported that after a smooth launch, the final dive started normally. “ABE actively homed to its assigned position, reached the seafloor, released its descent weights, then leveled off to check its ballast. After this point, we received no more acoustic returns from the vehicle on either of its two transponders,” they said. This is when they think they lost ABE. Scientists clarified that this incident had nothing to do with the earthquake activity off the coast of Chile.
ABE was first launched in 1995 and revolutionized deep sea research; it was the precursor to today’s most sophisticated autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs). The unmanned, untethered ABE roamed the ocean floors easily, as it was programmed to maintain a designated course but also to avoid on-course collisions. While navigating some of the most treacherous territory on earth, ABE made detailed maps of mid-ocean ridges and the 40,000-mile undersea volcanic mountain chain at the boundaries of Earth’s tectonic plates where new seafloor crust is created. It was also the first AUV to locate hydrothermal vents, where hot chemical-rich fluids spew from the seafloor and sustain lush communities of deep-sea life. ABE explored seamounts, undersea volcanoes, and other areas with harsh, rugged terrain [Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution].
Talking about ABE’s watery end, Chris German, National Deep-Submergence Facility chief scientist said: “Abe was a vehicle that we’ll always have fond memories of— it was a world-beater in its day… In a way, it’s fitting that its demise comes on the job, and that it has gone to be recycled through the Chile subduction zone” [Nature blog].
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80beats: >Robot Submarine Takes a Dive to the Deepest Spot in the Ocean
80beats: Fish Living in a 5-Mile Deep Trench Caught on Film
DISCOVER: Sweeping The Ocean Floor
DISCOVER: Oceanography explains how scientists are wiring the ocean
Image: Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
SCADA System – Disappearing Trends
We have a SCADA system with 8 ABB AC410, 5 AC110, 2 AC70,a report station and two operator stations.
One of the AC410 is about 200m away from control room, 6 of AC41O are distributed to different process with 5 of them having additional AC110 (AVR COMPUTERS). 2 have additional AC70. One
Hope for Taz? A Colony of Tasmanian Devils Resists the Species’ Deadly Disease | 80beats
As the deadly facial cancer that has drastically reduced the population of Tasmanian devils continues to spread through the species, the main hope for scientists trying to save them from extinction has been to hunt for devils that might be resistant to the disease, and to try to take advantage of that immunity. Reporting in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Kathy Belov and her team say they may finally have done just that: Some devils from northwest Tasmania, they say, are genetically distinct from the rest and could be resistant to the disease.
Belov says that most Tasmanian devils have immune systems so closely related that they’re all susceptible to the disease, which spreads when the devils bite each other on the face and leave behind tumor cells. The bitten devils’ immune systems don’t recognize the tumor cells as foreign, allowing them to take hold. Scientists have given the iconic marsupial as little as 25 years left if efforts are not made to solve the cancer riddle. The population has dwindled by a whopping 70 per cent since the first reported case of devil facial tumour disease in 1996 [Sydney Morning Herald]. Previous research showed that the marsupials are more socially linked that researchers initially believed, which is bad news for those trying to contain the disease.
However, Belov’s findings provide some hope. While earlier studies had looked at devils in eastern Tasmania, this time they took a wider sampling of 400 devils across the state. Twenty percent of those were found to be genetically different from the eastern devils, and so far have not caught the disease [AP]. Belov believes these resistant devils may be able to identify the cancer cells as foreign, which triggers their immune systems to mount a defense. She notes that the situation is still dire, but adds that “now we can say that we’ve got a glimmer of hope. There may be some animals that may survive this epidemic” [AP].
Hopefully those findings will hold true; a few years ago researchers thought they’d found the first disease-resistant devil, which they named Cedric, but it didn’t pan out. Cedric caught the disease in December of 2008.
Related Content:
80beats: Tasmanian Devils Have Precocious Sex to Beat Cancer
80beats: Can a New Blood Test Save Tasmanian Devils From Extinction?
80beats: Tasmanian Superdevil, Hope of the Species, Is All Too Mortal
80beats: Tasmanian Devils’ Social Networking May Spell Doom for the Species
The Loom: Saving Tasmanian Devils from a New Form of Life—Themselves
Image: flickr/JLplusAL
Apple iBooks’ Many Ebook Categories Include "Erotica" [Unconfirmed]
Uncovered by research firm Busted Loop, via Forbes, among other data—like 16,700 iPhone apps have been iPad-certified—is a list of possible ebook categories for the iBooks store: More »
I Would Be Happy With Just Half an Infinity Bath [Bath]
Having just a shower in NYC, I miss my large Spanish bath and the tsunamis that sometimes ensued inside. Maybe that's why I got all glassy-eyed when I saw this beautiful Infinity Bath and its custom water-proof touchscreen. More »
DISCOVER Goes to SXSW Interactive to Dish on the Future of Video Games | Discoblog
The South by Southwest Interactive festival is about to roar into gear down in Austin, and DISCOVER just couldn’t miss out on the chance to mix and mingle with the leet ranks of hackers, gamers, geeks, and entrepreneurs.
So tomorrow (that’s Friday) at 5 pm, DISCOVER’s own Web editor extraordinaire, Amos Zeeberg, will moderate a panel discussion titled, “With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility: The Future of Video Games.”
Video games are more popular than ever, and new games are delivering all kinds of social benefits, from video-game therapy for treating PTSD, to sims for train surgeons, to alternate-reality games that actually bring people together in real life. Will video games be a positive force for people and society in the future?
The panelists:
Lucy Bradshaw, with the video game giant Electronic Arts, worked as an executive producer for blockbuster games like Spore and The Sims 2. Spore was a favorite with science geeks, since the game characters evolve from microorganisms to complex animals before building societies and taking to space.
Tiffany Barnes, a professor of computer science, builds video games that teach introductory computer science. She’s interested in “harnessing the inherent motivation in video games” for more constructive purposes–like getting students to do their homework.
Neuroscience prof James Bower will explain why he started Whyville, a massively popular virtual world for kids. The educational site reportedly has a player base of more than 5 million users, who learn about everything from science to business to geography.
Anne Collins McLaughlin investigates how video games (including World of Warcraft and Wii Boom Box) can improve elder cognition at the Gains Through Gaming Lab.
If you’re at SXSW, stop by for insights on whether gaming can save the world!
Open Participation, Not Just Open Information
In response to a thoughtful comment from Tim846 from last time, I’d like to steer the discussion of open technology towards how to create not only transparency but also stimulate participation in open technologies led by an Open NASA.
Before I get into a specific roadmap, a couple prerequisites need to be installed for successful open participation to happen:
- First and foremost, breakdown perceptual barriers. Help people to see that their participation is possible, valid, and valuable, be it at a university, a small business, or in a garage. Instill the Carmackian philosophy of “ITERATE!” that has made rapid development of software so successful and is used in hardware development at Armadillo. Like my high school Science Seminar mentor Mr. Ron Le May always says–”Do anything, do it wrong, do it better. Repeat.” Thinking about a problem and justifying why it’s too hard to do for two months doesn’t get you nearly as far as trying something rough, learning from it, and iterating for two days.
- Manage projects. Have open project managers (someone at NASA and/or a capable non-NASA participant) that know the field and are committed to engaging outside participation. They will help ensure participation happens and happens effectively.
- Benefit Americans first, keep the investors happy. While some open projects could greatly benefit from worldwide participation, NASA is funded by American taxpayers and the fruits of that funding should therefor benefit Americans first where applicable. This will guarantee that an Open NASA is sustainable, as its investors will feel and see their money going to productive use for their own benefit. It also creates opportunities for congresspeople in non-Florida/Alabama/Texas/California/Maryland states to benefit their constituencies and want to support Open NASA. As a result, it may be necessary to restrict participation of some projects to only American entities. While not fool-proof, a simple verification form and log-in system could help to limit and allow access to the right audiences where necessary.
- Use the Internet as the primary medium for participation. Although this prerequisite may seem obvious, in comparison with conferences, academic journals, grant opportunities, industrial partnerships, privately recruited efforts, and other forms of participation with NASA, the Internet has the largest and broadest potential audience to reach people who can help drive innovation and technology development and its cost per participant is thus much lower. The Internet can also stimulate additional innovation through mutation (“let’s try this instead”, or “I misunderstood and something else happened”), differentiation (“they already did that, but let’s try it a different way”), and competition (“we can so do this first”, or “we can totally do this cheaper”).
These things said, here is a candidate participation roadmap we have been considering for Aerogel.org. For reference, we are currently most of the way through 1 and partway through 2, 3, and 4 on that project. Thus as apparent from our experience, the roadmap is serial-ish, but all steps could (and maybe should) be approached with a degree of simultaneity. Each step is design to widen the target audience by creating a stronger foundation upon which harder-to-involve participants can become involved.
- Empower. Create transparent reference content first. Provide people with as much information as possible about the underlying science, the technology of interest, how it works, what’s been done, what’s happening now, and where problems and challenges lie . Those with the interest and resources now have the information to start getting involved.
- Invite. Utilize social media and online collaborative tools to create a community of researchers/experimenters interested in a given topic. Combine this experience with the original tutorial/reference media to create a live reference and collaboration platform. Facilitate rapid dissemination of results, discussion of problems, and questions with RSS, user profiles, forums, and live feeds. Minimize work being reproduced and understanding being rederived. Seed the effort with top experts and existing or related researchers in the area through targeted invitations but make open to all.
- Reduce. As in the do-it-yourself (DIY) community, create a space on the platform to encourage and communicate how to create, simplify, and/or access the basic tools necessary to do the research.
- Recruit. Use the state Space Grant Consortia to outreach to schools and industry in each technology space to help increase awareness of what technology opportunities are available for open participation. Direct them to the appropriate online media.
- Breakdown. Open project managers could break big problems down into little problems that many people could solve, or proportionally direct/sign-up participants to work on the same problems where more bandwidth is needed (“you four clean up the garage, you two clean up the kitchen, everyone else find and something else to clean”).
- Incentivize. Open project managers could set goals and reward those who attain them first or best. Create coveted titles and awards. Use prizes to leverage costs. Small things could go far. Think micro X Prizes or Centennial Challenges. Even better–create prizes that are the tools needed to do the next level of the work (“prize for achieving highly aligned growth at 20 cents/square centimeter is a thermal evaporator with which you can scale your results!”). Create opportunities for participants to become involved with larger institutions based on merit. Offer merit-based scholarships and/or grants to promising researchers.
- Solidify. When good results are obtained, differentiate them from speculation and conversation the same way the academic community does–publish. Match projects with good open journals and provide participants with the knowledge and tools to be able to transition their results to open academic publications. Open project managers could then monitor, compile, prominently display, and make easily accessible important results to advance work.
What do you think?
Heavy Rain: A Peek Into the Future of Movies and Games [Entertain Me]
Even if you don't own a PlayStation 3, Heavy Rain is a game you should know because it re-imagines both videogames and movies, combining them into a new genre of Choose Your Own Adventure digital narrative. (Very minor spoilers ahead.) More »
