Odds and Ends

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Artist's Rendition of the Kepler spacecraft. Credit: JPL/NASA

First, we are into the time period for the GLOBE at Night project.  If you have clear skies please participate.  You need no special equipment and if you don’t know a star from a stone, don’t worry, just click on the GAN banner in the sidebar to the right and they will tell you everything you need to know.  I think I will get the chance tonight!  Last year I noted a drop in the number of stars I could see from the year before.   Do it, it’s simple.

Will the shuttle missions be extended? They could be, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchinson (TX) is either going to, or already has introduced legislation to do just that.  If you are tempted to comment that “ah that money could be used for <insert social program here>”  don’t,  social programs are ok, but   NASA’s budget is only one half of one percent of the 3 -TRILLION dollar budget.  IMHO we get a lot more goodness for our money with NASA than we do in some other areas – just saying.

The Kepler spacecraft started its search for earthlike planets, one year ago this week.  Wow, hardly seems possible.  The first of the discoveries have been announced, you can see a table of them here.

The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has set a record.  MRO is going to complete its fourth year at Mars.  During that time the MRO has passed 100 terabits of data!  NASA is saying that is more than all other deep-space missions combined – that’s every mission that has flow past the orbit of the moon.  Here’s the story.

And finally:

The New Horizons probe is now a little better than half way to Pluto.  New Horizons is speeding along at 16.35 km/sec and still won’t arrive until July 2015.  Wondering about that speed?  16.35 km/sec is 36,574 miles per hour!  So I could fly from New York to the UK in less than six minutes and New York to LA in four!

By the way if you know of anybody born on January 19, 1996 you might be interested in the New Horizons Kids Club.  It also occurs to me they really ought to change that name.  Anybody born on that date will soon not be kids anymore.

UPS Problem

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I have a backup UPS system of 10kVA 3phase attached to an electric system.The overall power supply keeps shutting down regularly until you reset the UPS.Does anyone know the couse of the problem and any solutions?

NASA’s First Wind Tunnel [Retromodo]

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In March 3, 1916, the US Congress founded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, only a 12 years after the Wright Brothers' first ever flight. In 1920, they built their first wind tunnel. And in 1958, it became NASA.

Initially, NACA was created because Europe got way ahead of the US after the Wrights flew the Kitty Hawk. They soon got up to speed, however. They built their first wind tunnel—above—at Langley Field, Virginia, in 1920. It was pretty rudimentary, but it served them to build their next big wind tunnel: the Langley Laboratory's Variable Density Tunnel, in 1923. Only four years later, they built the Propeller Research Tunnel:

A full-scale Sperry M-1 Messenger being tested in NACA's Propeller Research Tunnel, in 1927

Their engineers did a great job, publishing results of their research for everyone in the aeronautics industry. By World War 2, their work on aircraft engineering had directly influenced some of the greatest airplanes ever to fly the Earth's skies, and the United States were way ahead of everyone else in aircraft development, both for prop and jet engine-powered planes.

By the end of 50s, NACA was already figuring out spaceflight. The Russians were ahead, however. That's when it was dissolved only to be reborn as the NASA we all love today. [NASA]


CR4 User Group for Nuclear Power?

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Years ago (left in 1969) I worked in a nuclear research facility, and learned a bit about nuclear reactors. Then left the field, so my knowledge is far out-of-date. What CR4 section discusses nuclear power reactor subjects? Or, is there a website or Yahoo Group that I can use to update my knowle

The 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Part I

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March 4, 2010

Today I went to the one-day, 2nd Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine. Many of you will recall that the first version of this conference occurred in April, 2008. According to Yale’s Continuing Medical Education website, the first conference “featured presentations from experts in CAM/IM from Yale and other leading medical institutions and drew national and international attention.” That is true: some of the national attention can be reviewed here, here, here, and here; the international attention is here. (Sorry about the flippancy; it was irresistible)

I’ve not been to a conference promising similar content since about 2001, and in general I’ve no particular wish to do so. This one was different: Steve Novella, in his day job a Yale neurologist, had been invited to be part of a Moderated Discussion on Evidence and Plausibility in the Context of CAM Research and Clinical Practice. This was not to be missed.

I arrived early enough to take a relatively inconspicuous seat near the back. My plan was to respect the Prime Directive, at least until late in the day when Steve was to speak. Alas, ‘twas not to be. Not long after I’d lodged myself there, the young man who had organized the conference came right up to me and said “welcome, Dr. Atwood.” He is 2nd year Yale medical student John Millet, an enthusiastic kid who had clearly worked hard on this task and who later gave a nice talk. He said that he recognized me from the picture on my blog, by which I guess he meant SBM (which, he said, he reads faithfully). Except that there is no picture of me on SBM, so clearly he is an empath!

For a “CAM” Conference, there wasn’t much “CAM”

The welcoming comments were offered by our John and by Deputy Dean of Education Richard Belitsky, one of two speakers who had borne the brunt of the criticism following the 2008 conference. I criticized him at the time for his “obsequious welcoming statement,” which “betrayed either an ignorance of science and critical thinking or an ignorance of ‘CAM’.” I am happy to report that it seems to have been the latter, both because he apparently had something to do with inviting Dr. Novella to the conference and because his welcoming statement today was more measured than the last. In particular, he said something to the effect (my pen had run out of ink at that point) that “this is the Yale University School of Medicine, and we consider it very important that all conference material be presented with the utmost scientific rigor.”

The agenda seemed to reflect that theme. The 2008 conference had included talks on Therapeutic Touch, Reiki, chiropractic, Qi Gong, “integrating mind, body, and spirit,” David Katz’s infamous “invitation to think more fluidly about evidence,” and, well, Bernie Siegel. This conference, in contrast, had hardly any “CAM” talks at all. Below is the schedule. For the talks that I attended (in the early afternoon there were two options), I’ve indicated which ones were about “CAM” and which were not; among those that I missed were a couple on “mindfulness meditation” for stress reduction and one on hypnosis to reduce anxiety, which are hardly “CAM.” Another that I missed was “auricular acupuncture,” which I assume was “CAM”:

Yale Research Symposium on Complementary and Integrative Medicine

Welcome and Opening Remarks

John Millet YSM 2012 and Richard Belitsky MD

Plenary Session: An Integrative Approach to Cancer: The Biology of Lifestyle Interventions and Cancer Survival

D. Barry Boyd MD, MS (Not CAM)

Keynote Lecture:  Progress in Research in Complementary and Alternative Medicine

Josephine P. Briggs MD (Mostly Not CAM )

Concurrent Sessions:

Traditional Chinese Medicine, Nutrition, and Research Methods Track

Auricular Acupuncture as a Treatment for Pregnant Women Who Have Low Back and Posterior Pelvic Pain: A Pilot Study

Shu-Ming Wang MD, Lac (CAM)

Globalization of Chinese Medicine:  A Case Study of PHY906, A Traditional Chinese Medicine Formula as Adjuvant Chemotherapy for Cancer Treatment

Yung-Chi “Tommy” Cheng PhD (Mostly Not CAM)

N-Acetylcysteine for Pediatric Trichotillomania

Michael H. Bloch MD (Not CAM)

Effects of Walnut Consumption on Endothelial Function in Type 2 Diabetes: A Randomized, Controlled, Crossover Trial

John Millet YSM 2012 (Not CAM)

Patient Experiences and CAM Use in Chronic Lyme Disease: A Qualitative Study

Ather Ali ND, MPH and Lawrence A. Vitulano PhD

(CAM, but not quite as bad as it looks)

The Impact of Dietary Protein on Calcium Absorption and Kinetic Measures of Bone Turnover in Women

Karl L. Insogna MD (Not CAM)

Psychological Stress and Sudden Cardiac Death: The Downside of the Mind-Body Connection

Rachel Lampert MD (Not CAM)

Piloting a Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction Curriculum for Internal Medicine Residents

Auguste H. Fortin VI MD, MPH

Development and Initial Psychometric Testing of the Determinants of Meditation Practice Inventory

Anna-leila Williams PA, MPH, PhD(c)

Mindfulness Training as Treatment and Mechanistic Probe for Addictions

Judson Brewer MD, PhD

How Does Stress Increase Alcoholism Relapse and Affect Chronic Disease Risk?

Rajita Sinha PhD

Pre-Operative Hypnosis: A Bio-behavioral Model for Reduction of Anxiety in Surgical Patients

Haleh Saadat MD

Moderated Discussion on Evidence and Plausibility in the Context of CAM Research and Clinical Practice

Moderator: D. Barry Boyd MD, MS

Panel:  David Katz MD, MPH

and Steven Novella MD

Open Forum Discussion with Expert Panel

Moderator:  Lawrence A. Vitulano PhD

Panel:  D. Barry Boyd MD, MS, David Katz MD, MPH, Steven Novella MD

In this post I will discuss the conference up to the point at which Dr. Novella became involved (oh no, you’re thinking: that’s the best part!), but I’ll try to follow with the second part within a day or so.

The Morning: Drs. Boyd and Briggs

Most of the “Not CAM” talks were reasonably presented and, well, reasonable. Two that are worth mentioning in a bit of detail were those by oncologist Barry Boyd, on “An Integrative Approach to Cancer: The Biology of Lifestyle Interventions and Cancer Survival,” and the talk by Josephine Briggs, the Director of the NCCAM since 2008. Dr. Boyd’s talk, in spite of a title promising everything from “visualize your immunocytes” to “antineoplastons,” was mainly about one thing: diet/exercise and cancer progression (and to a lesser extent cancer formation). It boiled down to some intriguing evidence from animal studies, biochemistry, and epidemiology suggesting that purposeful, modest weight loss may improve cancer prognosis in patients who are still in relatively good shape. The physiology is essentially the physiology of the “metabolic syndrome,” involving insulin resistance, up-regulation of insulin and insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1, which probably acts as a tumor growth factor), and a systemic inflammatory state (which, by leading to epithelial cell proliferation, provides more opportunity for carcinogenesis).

If you’re interested, Dr. Boyd has an article available online covering similar material. I talked to him several times during the course of the day: he seemed completely scientific in his outlook, and excited about new possibilities in the way that smart people in academic medicine can be. He correctly called the Gonzo regimen “nonsense.” In his talk he showed a slide with a small box labeled chemotherapy-radiation therapy-surgery-biological; it was contained within a “the bigger box” labeled lifestyle changes-dietary interventions-exercise-stress reduction (hormonal was kind of on the surface of the little box). Beyond the bigger box, which was labeled Non-Conventional Medicine, was the real “CAM”: TCM, Ayurvedic, Energy Healing, Homeopathy, Botanical.

I agree with him: diet and exercise, other than pseudoscientific drivel, are not “CAM.”  At one point I asked him why he even thought of himself as “integrative.” He replied that he did not! Why, then, does he identify himself with the woo crowd? Why does he tout Michael Lerner, who defends boundless nonsense including Gerson (whose regimen is similar to Gonzo’s)? Why does he tout Ralph Moss, who championed Gonzo? Why does he tout James Gordon, who pushed at least one hapless patient into the hell that was the Gonzo trial? Doesn’t he know how the politics of quackery works? In spite of those issues, I had a good time talking with him and I hope to do it again sometime.

Josephine Briggs, the NCCAM Director, talked mostly about “supplements” studies sponsored by the Center. Surprise: they’ve all been disconfirming. Hoodathunk? Well, she did present evidence for something that I’ll admit I’d poo-poo’d in the past. It turns out that there was a large-enough-to-be-noticeable diminution in public demand for echinacea and glucosamine-chondroitin sulfate beginning not long after each NCCAM-sponsored trial had been publicized; the same is now expected, not only by Dr. Briggs but according to a trade magazine that she cited, for ginkgo biloba. Not that this justifies such trials at taxpayers’ expense, of course.

Dr. Briggs identified “areas of promise in natural products research,” naming “insight into molecular targets of dietary small molecules [etc.]” Hmmm: that sounds suspiciously like “lend[ing] a drug development aspect to an otherwise ‘herbal’ application.” Later I asked her if, in fact, the NCCAM had changed its previous attitude about refusing to fund studies proposing to look for active molecules in natural products, and she said “yes.”

Dr. Briggs herself seems to have a rational, scientific way of looking at things. No surprise: she was, for decades, a renal physiologist. She betrayed her own nerdiness with a slide titled “Quirky ideas from outside the mainstream,” which purported to show examples of, well, quirky ideas whose time eventually arrived: physical resistance training for people recovering from physical trauma (Pilates 1915); breathing techniques to help with labor pains (Lamaze 1940); breast feeding better than formula for babies (Froelich 1950s); dying patients would be better off with fewer medical interventions and more palliative support (Saunders, etc. 1960s); mindfulness-based stress reduction can help with pain management (no author or date). No arguments there, except that those ideas were never “quirky,” unless the term is defined by what the preponderance of practicing physicians was NOT doing or recommending at the time. How do those histories justify investigating implausible claims?

They don’t, but listening to Dr. Briggs one would think that the future of the NCCAM will stay away from the highly implausible. Rather, it will involve rational natural products research, investigations of reasonable physical techniques (“yoga and Tai chi for balance and avoiding falls in elderly people”), uncontroversial (i.e., not psychokinesis) mind-body techniques to help with symptoms, mainly pain, and research into the nature of the placebo effect. (She listed acupuncture as a “mind-body practice.” Did she really mean that? Was she acknowledging that it is a placebo?) If that were the extent of it, I could think of better things to do than spend my time criticizing the Center.

Alas, it won’t be, because Dr. Briggs must walk on a tightrope being shaken by Senator Harkin at one end and Senator Hatch at the other, with Congressman Burton making sure that there is no safety net underneath. And there will remain such sticky problems as the NCCAM putting the cart before the horse by funding “integrative medicine centers”; by continuing to wear its blindfold regarding the ongoing, largest and most expensive NCCAM trial yet funded, that should have long ago been terminated because of scientific and ethical misconduct and unnecessary risks to human subjects; and by continuing to offer misleading information to the public, right on the NCCAM website.

Dr. Briggs seemed unaware of the last point (I don’t recall her mentioning the other two). She was quite pleased with the website and recommended it more than once. Lover of irony that I am, I offer an example of misinformation attributed to the NCCAM website that unwittingly insults some the Center’s own ‘stakeholders,’ and is printed right in the 2010 Yale Research Symposium syllabus:

In homeopathic medicine, there is a belief that “like cures like,” meaning that small, highly diluted quantities of medicinal substances are given to cure symptoms…”

Ouch! That’s, er, the opposite of homeopathy. To wit:

The curative power of medicines, therefore, depends on their symptoms, similar to the disease but superior to it in strength, so that each individual case of disease is most surely, radically, rapidly and permanently annihilated and removed only by a medicine capable of producing (in the human system) in the most similar and complete manner the totality of its symptoms, which at the same time are stronger than the disease.

It is the despised “allopathy” that seeks merely to cure the symptoms:

Whenever it can, it employs, in order to keep in favour with its patient, remedies that immediately suppress and hide the morbid symptoms by opposition (contraria contrariis) for a short time (palliatives), but that leave the disposition to these symptoms (the disease itself) strengthened and aggravated.

That language is the historical basis for homeopaths (and related sects) claiming to cure “the underlying cause of the disease, not just the symptoms.” (I wonder if Dr. Briggs knows that she might get into trouble if she spends too much effort advocating for studies of methods that offer “contributions to symptom management”). Most of the misinformation on the NCCAM website, of course, serves not to diminish “CAM” practices but to embellish them.

The Afternoon

There is little to say about the talks that I attended; most of them were straightforward and uncontroversial, as their titles suggest (I don’t consider studying walnut consumption as a source of polyunsaturated fatty acids to be “CAM”). Each of the small efficacy trials showed some evidence of benefit. OCD expert Michael Bloch reported that N-acetylcysteine, a drug already used for other purposes, shows promise in the treatment of trichotillomania, an obsessive-compulsive disorder in which the individual pulls out her hair to the point of being severely disfigured, and for which there is currently no good pharmacologic treatment. I don’t know why this topic was even presented at a “CAM” conference, except perhaps that the drug is sold as a “supplement.”

Walnuts appear to improve endothelium-dependent vasodilatation in type II diabetics; impaired vasodilatation is correlated with cardiovascular disease, so perhaps walnuts are useful for this high-risk group. John Millet, the medical student who had “outed” me at the beginning of the day, gave that talk in a most competent fashion and is one of the authors of the published article.

Dietary protein appears to increase calcium absorption from the gut in post-menopausal women, according to Karl Insogna, an endocrinologist who is Director of the Yale Bone Center. He gave a great talk; look for the results of his Spoon study (Supplemental Protein to Offset Osteoporosis Now) within a couple of years.

The talk on “CAM use in Chronic Lyme Disease” deserves mention. The speaker was Ather Ali, a very deferential and soft-spoken young man whose background appears to include a large dollop of pseudoscience (Bastyr University) followed by a sprinkling of science at the Yale School of Public Health, folded into a ribbon cake of mixed messages at David Katz’s Integrative Medicine Center. Why the talk was not quite as bad as it looks is that the speaker mostly backed away from “Chronic Lyme Disease” (CLD) as a formal label, deferring to “medically unexplained symptoms.” These, he noted, might also be labeled chronic fatigue syndrome, fibromyalgia, multiple chemical sensitivity, and more. The choice of the term “Chronic Lyme Disease” is an operational one: the ongoing qualitative study that he discussed asks questions of subjects who “self-identify or (have been) diagnosed with CLD” and “providers who diagnose and/or treat patients with CLD.”

Some of the preliminary results reveal problems with this purely qualitative study—both interpretational and ethical. The questions that the subjects are asked are many, ranging from cultural influences and “narratives” to laboratory values. One of the “salient insights” that Ali presented was this statement from a patient:

On finally obtaining a diagnosis:

It felt really good. That’s actually an understatement. It felt like for as sick as I was, and as awful as I felt that day, it just felt like I had a ray of hope for the first time in I don’t know how long.

This is no surprise; we don’t need a study to find this out. What we probably won’t find from this study, because of self-selection of subjects, are any who do not feel so good when given this “diagnosis.” Some may be scared out of their wits; others may recognize the scam and walk right out the door. In any event they have all been told a lie. What is the message here? I’m reminded of another such foray by naïve academic “CAM” enthusiasts (immortalized in the very first W^5), who unwittingly gave a perfect description of quackery when they wrote:

Chiropractors never have to put a patient’s pain in the category of the “mind.” They never fail to find a problem. By rooting pain in a clear physical cause, chiropractic validates the patient’s experience.

Are we to conclude that real physicians should be so dishonest?

The ethical problem with this survey arises because the investigators will inevitably stumble upon practitioners who are pushing dangerous treatments; that’s the nature of the beast known as “Lyme Literate.” The preliminary results have already identified an example, colloidal silver, which appeared on one of Ali’s slides (without his commenting, as I recall). In the question period I made that point and asked if either the IRB or the investigators had addressed it. He replied that the IRB had not, that he hadn’t seen anyone injured, and that he felt that it wasn’t an issue because this is merely an observational, not an interventional, study. I was tempted to ask, “what are you going to do, wait until someone turns gray?”—but I held my tongue.

I was confident, when I asked that question, that the IRB had not considered the issue. IRBs, like most people and most physicians, have no idea what dangers lurk under rocks dignified with labels such as “holistic,” “integrative,” “functional,” and the like. IRBs and investigators, however, are responsible for protecting human subjects, even in purely observational studies. There are numerous ethical and legal bases for this assertion, but for now consider this quotation:

…the lack of treatment was not contrived by the USPHS but was an established fact of which they proposed to take advantage.

That statement is found in the minutes of a meeting at the CDC, April 5, 1965. It was an attempt by an apologist to excuse the (still extant) Tuskegee Syphilis Study on the grounds that it was merely “observational.” The Yale IRB need only replace “lack of treatment” with “mistreatment,” and “USPHS” with “Yale investigators,” to understand the point. The IRB might also consider that the mere presence of “experts” from Yale will be interpreted by subjects as tacit (at least) approval of the practices and the practitioners.

It is, nevertheless, possible that the qualitative CLD study will yield useful information. More likely, however, is that it will be understood and presented by its authors in a “non-judgmental” way or as sympathetic to the practitioners (see above re: chiropractors), and thus it will be up to those with more savvy to read between the lines.

End of Part I


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Announcing my Next Point of Inquiry Guest: Dot Earth Blogger Andrew Revkin (Ask Your Questions) | The Intersection

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andrew_revkinOver at the Point of Inquiry forums, I’ve just opened a thread to announce my next guest: Andrew Revkin, the prominent author of the New York Times’ Dot Earth blog, science and environment reporter for the Times from 1995 until last year, and now a Senior Fellow for Environmental Understanding at Pace University’s Academy for Applied Environmental Studies.

Revkin has covered a multitude of science-related topics during his career, ranging from climate change and energy to politics and science in the Bush administration. But he has also traveled the globe covering numerous natural disasters, including earthquakes, hurricanes, and beyond. At a time when we’ve seen two devastating earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, one thing I want to discuss with Revkin is why human societies, and even wealthy countries, seem to have such a hard time preparing for and protecting against these types of extreme risks. We’ll also inquire about which kinds of natural disasters most threaten the U.S., and why we’re not doing much of anything to increase our resiliency to them.

You might think of the intended show as a kind of real life version of the movie 2012.

But the conversation will be much more wide ranging, and I’d be very interested to hear what else you folks think I ought to be asking of Andy Revkin….so please, head over to the forums and pose any questions in the next two days, so that I can read them before the interview is recorded on Sunday. And thanks!


Let’s Make.Believe Sony Ads Make Sense! [We Miss Sony]

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Sony's newest catchphrase, "make.believe," is a fitting reminder that Sony ads make no sense. Laptops take flight, PlayStations become monsters, and pitchmen state plainly that Sony TVs make you better at playing sports. Most of all—look! Play-doh bunnies!

Back when Sony had only electronics to sell, they sold them like no other—to borrow a more sensible slogan that the company recently retired. You bought a Trinitron TV because it was the best, you bought a Walkman because it was the coolest, and you told everyone else they were dumb if they didn't do the same. "It's a Sony!" you'd shout at any half-witted amigo who was reluctant to pay the Sony premium.

Sony worked hard to make you a part of its marketing team. They even went so far as to indoctrinate the children. When the My First Sony line was launched, it actually made sense, because it reinforced what you already believed: that you would buy in and keep on buying. Brand did matter, but only by standing for specific, high-quality products. There were 170 different Walkman models released during its first decade, sure, but this was before MP3 players, cellphones, PDAs, laptops, portable game consoles and pocket-sized camcorders. Besides perhaps a 35mm compact camera, this was the only portable gadget to buy. You knew you were getting it, so choosing which one became a connoisseur's dilemma. Even gorillas knew this.

By the time Sony got into the movie and record business, and the iconic cassette Walkman gave way to the less iconic CD Walkman, the Sony brand became bigger than the gadgets. With the eventual exception of PlayStation, the electronics lost their own identities. That's not to say the gadget well dried up. On the contrary, Sony released more and more, jazzing up tried-and-true businesses with progressive industrial design and catchy-sounding sub-brands. It's not a clock radio, it's a Dream Machine. Sony's brand momentum carried it successfully into new areas where they really could make a superior product. In addition to the videogame consoles, this included digital cameras, portable computers and dog-shaped robots.

But due to arrogance, an obsession with proprietary formats and a lack of stick-to-itiveness—coinciding with the rise of unexpectedly tough competition from Korea, China and Cupertino, California—the magic wore off. The "buy the brand" message lost its grip on shoppers, but to the increasingly out-of-touch executives inside the company, it seems to have become a rallying cry.

Sony started losing Number 1 positions in TVs, cameras and even videogame consoles, and found themselves unable to get the market leadership they assumed they'd easily grab in other areas, such as PCs or ebook readers. As they slipped, their advertising just got weirder and weirder. Ads now ranged from purely artistic—products saw hardly any airtime—to trippy—products were shown, but not in a way that a buyer could relate to—to sarcastic—where pitchmen and pitchwomen spouted nonsense and openly mocked customers, as if consciously parodying Sony's own classic advertisements.

Thanks to the miracle of YouTube, we can see how all three of these categories failed to hit their targets.

Artsy Fartsy

What can you say about this category, except that who doesn't like rainbow-colored Claymation bunnies hopping to late-'60s Rolling Stones?

Who doesn't like bubbles falling from the sky? Or the spontaneous proliferation of several million bouncy balls? Who among you doesn't like sound/vision experiments by avant garde directors cut to ADHD-friendly 3-minute lengths?

If you answered "no" to the above questions, you are lying. But to drive the point of failure home, let's hear from one of YouTube's commenters: "It's visually interesting but it comes across as some kind of dystopian vision of the future. An Orwellian kind of hell sponsored by Sony." Hell. By Sony. And I am not entirely sure I ever saw anything I could actually buy.

But Will It Bite?

Another batch of ads featured real Sony products, but not in any way that helped the consumer decision. We begin with the PlayStation 3, according to this video, a dangerous, volatile and ugly beast that does… something:

Somehow they manage to convey all the tension of gaming without any of the fun. It's violent through and through, except for that quick bit with the butterflies.

Here is the Bloggie camcorder, whose simple demonstration has been so perverted, it would cause Steve Jobs—or even Steve Ballmer—to shoot the director between the eyes:

Never mind that, on this complicated-looking copy of a Flip camera, the 270º swivel lens is the only thing everyone would figure out immediately, why does the product have to be man-sized? And what's with the fingers guy?

In this whole mess, the most organic ad I could find was for Rolly, the short-lived zany Bluetooth music robot. I love the ad, but I actually know the product. The ad, to a lay person, would be confusing at best, and at worst would suggest a degree of interactivity that the product simply didn't have:

F*** You, Buy a Sony

The ads that Sony should really be ashamed of, though, are the so-called expert ads, some of which ran on our own site this past holiday season. I will admit to being a fan of Peyton Manning and Justin Timberlake, but they're not experts, and I wouldn't trust them any more than I trust any of the other people on the so-called panel.

In the Sony Reader ad, when the poor actress has to ask the incredibly dumb question "Can I read a lot of books on this thing?" Amy Sedaris says yes and holds up her book, I Like You. It's worth noting that unlike her brother's works, Amy's book is highly visual, with color photos and lots of sight gags. It's excellent, but you would never ever read it on a Sony Reader—or on a Kindle.

In the camera ad, when the actress mentions that all the cameras look the same, baby-seal photographer Nigel Barker explains that "the technology in their cameras and camcorders makes it easy to get the best shot." This is something every camera maker would say about their cameras. It doesn't differentiate, and it can never be proven wrong.

During the TV ad, Peyton and Justin play pingpong. ESPN's Erin Andrews says to a bewildered family, "You can't fake Sony quality." Justin chimes in with, "The more sports you watch on a Sony, the better you get. At sports." And then a TV appears with the words HDNA scrawled across it, though the announcer says it's called a Bravia. I don't know what HDNA is, and I was there when they unveiled it.

In a rather ironic twist, these ads got remix treatment by the Gregory Brothers of Auto-tune the News fame. This isn't some Gray Album bootleg, but a viral video sanctioned by Sony's marketing department, an approval that shows Sony can make some daring choices when they want to. But was it the right move? I enjoy this remix more than any of the original ads, but it doesn't clear up any frustration either. It is a distortion of a distortion of a message.

Don't you feel like the Gregory Brothers know this? They openly mock the customers, and they repeat "these all seem the same" over and over—and over. I couldn't help but flash a knowing smile when Julia Allison explains that the Sony PC is different because it has a Blu-ray drive and an HD screen. Like every other Windows laptop in that range.

Where Do They Go From Here?

When criticizing advertising, the easiest thing to do is to point to Apple as the counter example. "Well, Apple would've done it this way." But truthfully, Apple achieves what most companies strive to pull off, an entertaining but earnest look at the product being sold, or a comedic vignette that drives a single sales point home. (Say what you want about Justin Long, but Hodgman's Eeyore of a PC sure sells Macs.) Like everything else, Sony needs to focus. Instead of hiring 20 different artists to conceive of crazy shit, why not create a global ad campaign that focuses on specific actual products, and portrays their standout features in a way that doesn't sound like it's mocking the products or the customers? My only fear is that as Sony has less and less to brag about, this strategy will be harder to work out. Still, it's worth a shot: Pick your best products, get closeup shots, play some baby music in the background, and tell us why we should buy them. No psychedelia, no anthropomorphic gimmicks, and no smirking.

The complete "We Miss Sony" series
• Video: Describe Sony In A Word
• How Sony Lost Its Way
• Sony's Engineer Brothers
• Infographic: Sony's Overwhelming Gadget Line-Up
• The Sony Timeline: Birth, Rise, and Decadence
• Let's Make.Believe Sony's Ads Make Sense
• The Return of Sony

[Lead image]


Samsung PLC N-70plus CPU CPL9215A

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Dear,

I got few numbers of this Samsung PLC CPU (N-70plus CPL9215A) cannot work in good condition (used in Loader machine). The "COMM" light is Turn ON (Green) but the "RUN" Mode Light not Turnning ON when i plug into the PLC Base Plate. After i had chaged the IC Chip 29EE512 90-4C-PH ins

Rii Mini Wireless Laser Pointer Keyboard: A Brando Story [Brando]

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It was 3:59 AM Hong Kong, and Brando's offices reeked of Vodka and sweat. The design intern cowered from the men that encircled him. "Reach into the parts bag," one of them hissed, "and make us something we'll like."

Silhouetted by a single yellowed bulb, with memories of design school lectures still fresh in his brain, the intern hesistated. "I heard there are scorpions in there. Is... is that..." Silence. And so he reached.

He grabbed the largest piece he could find, hoping for a USB hub, or something similarly versatile. Yes, he though to himself as he pulled a miniature keyboard from the bag. There's still hope. Reentry. Fumbling. A minor puncture wound from a frayed wire. Finally, he grabbed hold of something smooth and square. He realizes his mistake almost immediately, but not before one of his new bosses could club him in the back of his head with the nearest weaponizable object he could reach, a combination power strip/barometer. "That's two items, you stupid child." A hand reached out and slapped the battery and touchpad from the intern's hand, onto the floor. "Go again."

A wireless transmitter. A d-pad. Some LED lights. A backlighting panel. Lastly, a...wait, what's this? A laser pointer? Fuck. A portly man with darkened sunglasses snorted as if he'd just been jolted awake, and gestured slowly, as if conducting an orchestra in slow motion. The room fell silent.

"That will be all," one of his apparent henchman said. He gestured toward a cracked door on the other side of the room, labeled "Engineerin." (The "g" had fallen off in 2007, and nobody had bothered to replace it.) Through the gap, the intern could see his tools: there was a flathead screwdriver, some electrical tape and a soldering iron. For a fleeting second, he thought he saw small a tube of glue, until the black shape scuttled away under the table. He loaded up his now-drenched shirt with the parts like a child hoarding Easter eggs, and shuffled wearily into the engineering chamber, too nervous even to glance over his shoulder.

The next thing he heard was the sound of a turning key; the thud of a setting deadbolt; the slow sinking of a human stomach. Hidden in the near corner was two gallons of water, a USB hotplate, and a pile of broken, unpackaged ramen noodles. "See you in three weeks" our intern heard through the door. Or was it three months? It was hard to hear over all the laughter.

The Rii Mini Wireless Keyboard is available today, for $92. Update: Commenters have found a lower price: $50 for what looks like the same product. [Crunchgear]


Microsoft Courier’s Devolution [Microsoft]

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These fresh images and details of Microsoft's Courier paint a slightly different device than the one uncovered a few months ago—tinier seeming, perhaps less genre-busting, and a more direct iPad fighter.

This take is built on the same mobile OS core as Windows Phone 7 and Zune HD, powered by Nvidia's Tegra 2 hardware. It's supposedly thinner than an inch, under a pound, and about the size of a 5x7 photo when closed.

As you can see, the device seems even smaller (Update: maybe not), the interface, though still pen-based, seems less whizzy based on these stills than the wildly complex and sophisticated (or maybe just complex) interface shown earlier:

Is Courier progressing or regressing? It's hard to tell—we're not sure where in Courier's development these concepts are from vs. our initial reportage. But if they are newer, a few things stand out.

• Courier's grown to be more realstic and less different, which is not uncommon for mind-bogglingly radical-seeming products. (Our mind was blown by the original interface, anyway, for better or worse.)

• Shifting from using Windows 7 as its core as Mary Jo Foley first reported to Windows CE6 and mobile guts puts it more squarely against the iPad, using a similar philosophical approach of scaling up to a tablet, vs. scaling down as Microsoft's always done before. (Which makes sense, given that this is supposedly J. Allard's project—he'd want to use E&D's own goods to power his tablet.) Also, mobile guts are cheaper than low-power laptop guts.

• This could be one of the several prototype tablets J. Allard's got—which would explain why there's versions that seem more like full Windows 7 vs. Windows Phone 7.

• Engadget pegs the launch date later this year, though we've heard separately that Courier won't show up anytime in 2010.

• We're still pretty excited.

[Engadget]


How to Stop an Accelerating Toyota

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For discussion purposes only: 52 dead gas pedal related millions of cars on recall. just a thought until they get the problem fixed. I don't know if it applies to these cars but all the cars, I have ever driven you can put them in neutral, when you are driving, all though it my redline the engine,

Open Technology

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Greetings. My name is Stephen Steiner. I am new to Open NASA.

I am interested in what we as a society could create by open sourcing all technologies–not just computer code, but chemistry, materials, energy, automation, and more.

As an experiment in this spirit, my colleague (and artist-by-training) Will Walker and I co-founded Aerogel.org, an open-source resource about aerogels (the “original nanotechnology”). The mission of the project is

“…to empower, inspire, and motivate people to pursue nanotechnology using open source methodology and to catalyze the discovery of new technological possibilities for aerogel materials in the process.”

To do this, we had to develop an approach to try to make what is easily an impenetrable subject to a newcomer into something digestible by anyone with the interest to learn. As part of this approach, we felt that making straightforward information about exciting science available to everyone is the best way to do so and simultaneously stimulates people to pursue science, engineering, and other creative endeavors.

So I’d like to start some “open technology” on Open NASA to transition some of the knowledge we in technological pursuit have learned to those who want to get involved. Some ideas I have:

  • Open carbon nanotubes–how to grow, growth models, unsolved problems
  • Open biotech–how to take what we know affordably to the third world
  • (Somewhat ironically) open closed loop tech–how to close-loop manufacturing, consumption, and energy production (great for a spaceship, or a planet)
  • Open energy–yes, garage innovations are left to be had, even in the 21st Century!
  • and of course, open aerogel

What if we could even get NASA to open-source some of its technology development?

What do you think?

Calculating Maximum Demand

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I have a problem to calculate max demand for a factory.
in normal case we calculate max demand in this way for 15 minute windows
P=√3.V.I.cos@
kW = v3 supply V I cos@
86 = 1.73 380 131 1.00

but in m

Saturday Morning Breakfast pandering | Bad Astronomy

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Zach Weiner is a shrewd, shrewd man. He does stuff like this just because he knows I’ll link to it.

It's a Weiner joke, be warned.

Click through to see why (NSFW-ish). But he should know better. I got my revenge years ago by failing all those jocks in my astronomy class*.

Also: Zach is 28 today, that whippersnapper. Get off my lawn**!

*Actually, that’s not true. They all got the grades they worked for and deserved. In reality I got my revenge by hacking into their accounts and changing their sports stats.

**I mean, get off my astroturf!


Turn Modern Gadgets Into Soviet-Era Relics [PhotoshopContest]

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This week's Photoshop Contest was inspired by this magical website: turn today's modern gadgets into utilitarian, Soviet-era devices. No fanciness, just cold usefulness.

Send your best entries to me at contests@gizmodo.com with Soviet Gadgets in the subject line. Save your files as JPGs or GIFs under 800k in size, and use a FirstnameLastname.jpg naming convention using whatever name you want to be credited with. Send your work to me by next Tuesday morning, and I'll pick three top winners and show off the rest of the best in our Gallery of Champions. Get to it!


Earth Raised up Its Magnetic Shield Early, Protecting Water and Emerging Life | 80beats

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earthmagfieldHere we are drinking coffee and tweeting and otherwise going about our lives, generally not giving much thought to the protection that the Earth’s magnetic field affords us from the solar wind. But that magnetic field is crucial for our existence. Now, new findings in Science say that this protective shield originated even 200 million years earlier than scientists had previously thought, perhaps protecting the planet’s water from evaporating away and aiding the rise of life on the early Earth.

To know about the planet’s magnetic field three and a half billion years ago, you need iron, which records not only the direction but also the strength of the magnetic field when it forms. In South Africa, study leader John Tarduno and his team found quartz with iron tucked inside that had remained unchanged in all those years. Using a specially designed magnetometer and improved lab techniques, the team detected a magnetic signal in 3.45-billion-year-old rocks that was between 50 and 70 percent the strength of the present-day field, Tarduno says [Science News]. Three years ago he made a similar find in rocks 3.2 billion years old; thus, this find pushes back the Earth’s magnetic field at least another 200 million years.

Still, you or I wouldn’t find the Earth of that era to be terribly hospitable. In the sun’s more turbulent youth, it likely spun faster and unleashed a greater barrage of radiation. Not only was the Earth’s magnetic field strength quite a bit less than it is today, but also the magnetopause—the furthest extent of the field, where it meets the incoming solar wind—stretched only half as far out from the planet as it does today. With the magnetopause so close to Earth, the planet would not have been totally shielded from the solar wind and may have lost much of its water early on, the researchers say [Scientific American].

Pushing the existence of Earth’s magnetic field back further into the planet’s history helps fill in the picture of how life arose, the researchers argue, and it also has implications for those hunting extraterrestrial life. Life as we know it, they say, requires not only liquid water, but also the right magnetic field strength for that water to last over the long term, says Tarduno. Mars may be dry today because it lost its magnetic field early on, he adds [Science News].

There’s a lot left to learn about the protective layer that makes our lives possible. For a separate study this week in Geophysical Research Letters, another team ran simulations of the activity in the Earth’s core and concluded that they could predict a flip in the field’s polarity—which has happened now and then during the planet’s history—with no more warning than a few decades. Some models suggest that a flip would be completed in a year or two, but if, as others predict, it lasted decades or longer we would be left exposed to space radiation. This could short-circuit satellites, pose a risk to aircraft passengers and play havoc with electrical equipment on the ground [New Scientist].

Related Content:
80beats: Dust Collected From Comet Contains a Key Ingredient of Life
80beats: Chemicals That Evolve in the Lab May Simulate Earth’s Earliest Life
80beats: Devastating Meteorite Strikes May Have Created Earth’s First Organic Molecules
80beats: Cutting-Edge Science Reveals: World Won’t End on December 21, 2012
DISCOVER: The Rigorous Study of the Ancient Mariners, looking into the magnetic field’s history through the logs of sailors

Image: John Tarduno and Rory Cottrell


New Lip-Reading Cell Phone System Can Allow for Silent Conversations | Discoblog

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_47413024_-311The next time you come across a loudmouth yammering away into a cell phone at top volume, be comforted by the fact that researchers are working on a mobile phone that could put an end to “volume-control challenged” people. The lip-reading phone would allow people to silently mouth their words–but the electrode-heavy prototype seems unlikely to catch on anytime soon.

The BBC reports:

The device, on show at the Cebit electronics fair in Germany, relies on a technique called electromyography which detects the electrical signals from muscles. It is commonly used to diagnose certain diseases, including those that involve nerve damage.

Professor Tanja Shultz of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany explained that the device requires attaching nine sensors to the face. As the user mouths words, the electrodes capture the electric impulses created by the muscle movement. These impulses are transferred to a device that records and amplifies them, before passing them onto a laptop via wireless. Software in the laptop translates the signals, converting them into words which can then be read out by a synthesizer in handset and sent over the wire to the person on the other end of the phone call.

The whole process is pretty cumbersome and the creators agree that this phone might not be meant for the mass market. But Shultz says all this tech could one day be packed into a mobile phone. The device could also be a a good option for people who have lost the ability to speak, putting in their hands a device that can allow them communicate clearly. The phone also has a translation option, wherein a person can speak in their mother tongue and have the text communicated in English or any other language.

The BBC’s report points out that this is not the first time that this technology for silent communication has been used.

The US space agency Nasa has investigated the technique for communicating in noisy environments such as the Space Station. It has also used the technique to explore advanced flight control systems that do away with joysticks and other interfaces.

Related Content:
Discoblog: iPhone Translator App Speaks for You, Using Your Mouth
Discoblog: Speaking French? Your Computer Can Tell
Discoblog: Can an iPhone App Decipher Your Baby’s Cries?
DISCOVER: The Physiology of . . . Facial Expressions

Image: BBC/ Karlsruhe Institute of Technology