5 May 2024

Nice article on Sangaku. Yep, those Japanese rural folk were pretty nerdy. Some of those problems were quite challenging.

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The surprising reason why few Americans are getting those chip manufacturing jobs.  Short answer: they need a LOT of training. I see a little danger in this, though. The training is very specific, and if you lose your position, the skills you learn aren't really applicable in too many other areas. You're committing yourself to this line of work, and if you get let go, you're going to have to go through another laborious training process for something else. Still, it's a job.

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If you like Sriracha sauce, you'd better stock up now. It looks to be a dry summer.

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Would you take rapamycin to live longer?  Some folks are doing it, but that drug has side-effects, and I am not convinced that it's worth it. If I were a roundworm, however, then sure.

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Children who remember past lives. Years ago, I remember reading stories like this, where kids would remember past lives. These are different stories, so the phenomenon is still around, I guess. Some of these stories are hard to explain away. Maybe these are clues to a different reality that bear investigating.

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Financial Times is linking with Open AI to provide real-time financial news. Boy, I wish they did this for medicine.

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Feeling hungry all the time, and what to do about it. The tips posted here are not new, but it's nice to get a refresher.  All the tips seems medically sound to me. It's all diet modification, but in the proper way.

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Kotek and Wheeler have checked out.  What I've noticed is that many are quick to point out stuff like this, but then keep voting similar candidates back in.

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I've discussed the dangers of depending on brain implant tech in my 3 June 2023 posting. Here's another post describing the same issue.  It's not like upgrading your phone or computer.

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Japan is doomed. Their population is already at a critical decline, and they certainly don't need to be experimenting with this.

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4 May 2024

The Physics of Karate.

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OHSU researchers just filed for union representation. 
"We organized our union in order to raise standards in our industry so that our jobs can be seen as stable careers and not just stepping stones."
Being a research assistant was always a temp position. Assistants are funded by grants, because academic research isn't a business. It doesn't make money. It burns money. Grant money doesn't just automatically increase, just because someone demands it. Now researchers may have to think twice before letting someone go.

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EVs are the most expensive vehicles to operate over 1,000 miles.  What? More expensive? Why is that. Because people are so afraid of driving it somewhere and running out of power. Therefore these cars don't get driven as much. So you spend all that money for relatively little usage. That's why cost per 1000 miles is so high. Ironic.

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“Absolutely nothing has changed,” said Jessie Burke.
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Umatilla finds out that companies can build windmills within two miles from homes now. Yup, local laws can get overridden by state law. That's tough.

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The Europeans have finally ditched NetZero climate goals. Good for them. But not the U.S.

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3 May 2024

Incredible. Remember those activists who disrupted Seattle's I-5 for four hours? This judge dropped all charges.

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The report is another piece of grim news for a town that’s struggling to get its mojo back after the pandemic, 2020′s riots, ire over new local taxes, and a surge in open-air fentanyl use. Reports from commercial brokers regularly show downtown Portland as among the most vacant places nationwide.
Another reason employment isn’t growing....lackluster in-migration. Newcomers juiced the Portland economy for years before 2020. Lately, the Oregon Trail isn’t quite as busy.
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Canadian doctors are already using AI scribes in their practice. I don't think we're ready yet. There's still a risk of hallucinations and privacy and confidentiality breaches. I'd never use a third party service for this.

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Wow. 27 volumes of new Brothers Grimm material discovered in a Polish library. These were thought to be lost in WW II.

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A small molecule inhibitor, ESI1, may be effective in repairing myelin sheaths in diseased nerves. Currently, there are no drugs that can repair the myelin sheath. For diseases like multiple sclerosis, people often get steroids, which is aimed at inhibiting inflammation that might be involved in the myelin damage. But nothing to actually trigger repair. Hopefully this becomes the first.

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2 May 2024

OHSU study shows that private equity is indeed pervasive in healthcare.  Dr. Zhu has written on this topic before. She touches on metrics like changes in number of visits, billing level, length of visits, charges per visit. But not much on quality of care delivered, which is what I would like to know.

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Well, OK. 20% of national raw milk samples contain bird flu DNA. But pasteurization eliminates it.

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Boost your vocabulary. Words I want to use someday.

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David Sinclair thinks he can reverse aging. And there are skeptics. Looks like he's still hyping resveratrol, which a declining number of people think is effective. And now he's selling dog supplements as a life prolonger. With celebrity endorsement, which is not a good sign.

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This seems like a joke. This AI app creates more mnemonics to help medical students learn medical facts. Medical students already have a whole slough of mnemonics, and the problem changes to what's the mnemonic I need to recall to help me recall the facts I need to know. 

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Asian Food Dictionary. I typed in "gobo" and "burdock" and these terms were not recognized. Fail! So, who's this dictionary intended to help, then?

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I already reported that AI can geolocate off your photos, so you'd better be careful. But here's an app that supposedly allows you to intentionally do the same.

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mRNA-based liposomal vaccines are showing impressive results against glioblastoma. These are similar to the COVID-19 vaccines, but the product doesn't contain cDNA (like the Pfizer products are suspected to contain). The mRNA is targeted against EGFRvIII, IL13Rα, Wilms’ Tumor 1, HER-2, gp100, or MAGE-1 and the special “onion-like” multi-lamellar RNA lipid particle aggregates (LPAs) increase the immunogenicity of the vaccine. The vaccine doesn't depend on HLA type and induces a massive cytokine/chemokine response and dendritic cell/lymphocyte trafficking. 
It's interesting that the authors say that regular mRNA vaccines depend on payload packaging into nanoparticle cores for Toll-like receptor engagement in immune cells. This is precisely what some are saying is responsible for the off-target immune dysregulation in the COVID-19 vaccines.

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Neotame is a second-generation sweeter analog of aspartame (Nutra-Sweet). This agent may cause previously healthy gut bacteria to become diseased and invade the gut wall—potentially leading to health issues including irritable bowel syndrome and sepsis.

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Why new weight loss drugs are out of reach for millions of older Americans. The reason is cost. It's too bad that older Americans are locked into the Medicare system, and it's Medicare that is unwilling to cover the expensive new weight loss drugs, because if they did, Medicare would rapidly lose money.  Because the older folks are commonly obese and are suffering from diabetic complications. They could benefits from these drugs. But such is the socialistic model of universal medical coverage.

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Is there a cosmic glitch at the end of the universe? Where Einstein's theory doesn't hold? Well, the glitch is "not yet conclusive".

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1 May 2024

Today is Beltane, and the first traditional day of summer.

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I wondered when this was going to happen.  60 year man dies because of shortage of chemotherapy (cisplatin). Really sad, but a fact of like in the Biden era. Build Back Better, right?  The guy can't even fund his Cancer Moonshot anymore.

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Ugly. Feds ready to launch auction for offshore wind farms leases off the Oregon Coast. So ugly and a blight to the coastlines.

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There's a new mental illness now. It seems a few people can get to experience permanent hallucinations that last way too long after taking mind-altering drugs. It's called hallucinogen persisting perception disorder, or HPPD, and can occur after using MDMA or even just cannabis. Great, just what society needs – more people high as kites. When are we going to get drugs that make people think more clearly, or make them smarter? Is that too much to ask?

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We may soon have enzymes that digest away blood group determinants, so that everyone can accept more blood donors, maybe even have universal donors. Progress!

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"Moral injury". This is what some healthcare professionals are calling it, when they are forced to practice against their personal morals due to external pressures. Wow, we didn't have this when physicians were able to practice independently, instead of being employees to hospitals and private equity groups like today. Hospitals loved Obamacare. Doctors? Not so much.

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Sora vs Runway vs Pika. Who's the best?  I don't think it's even close.

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So the Rabbit R1 is just an Android app.  Meaning that it can run on a phone, and you don't need to run it on that ugly plastic toy. They apparently don't want you to know that.

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Some octogenarians have the memory of 30 year olds. These super-agers don't seem to have any particular lifestyle secrets. Their advantage is probably genetic, as most things are. (Are we allowed to say this?)

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Companies are now retaining their current employees and are investing in upgrading them, instead of firing them and replacing them with younger folks. Good for older employees. Not so for younger job-seekers.

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Scary.  Deepest Blue Hole discovered and the bottom hasn't been reached.

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People are still impressed with thorium reactors, but I'm still not seeing that they are being built commercially. Now I read that data centers are wanting their own nuclear reactors, because of the steep energy requirements. Wouldn't that be the call for thorium?

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AI Alan Turing is an interesting concept. He looks like he could be the next Superman, which the real life Alan Turing did not. Of course, there will be complainers. There always are.

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Want to see atoms turn into wave packets? Sure you would.

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Scientists have discovered how to get cartilage to heal in mice. This could translate into human cartilage healing, which would be great.

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More Americans are open to driving cheap Chinese cars.  73% of Americans were open to this.  Not so good for American car makers.

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30 April 2024

The city of Seattle might be using a drone-powered paint sprayer to get rid of graffiti. Might making doing so a little fun, as I'm sure it's a drudge to do in some of the more precarious places.

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What San Francisco is getting wrong about homelessness.  Yeah, "harm reduction" is anything but. Stop the addiction doom-loop. Yeah, it's painful in the beginning, but eventually it helps get people back on track.

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There's new consideration to open up Kalaupapa to tourists. It's one of the most beautiful places in Hawaii, and I regret not taking the mule ride down to the colony when I had a chance.

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Small business in America is also on a downward trajectory. Rent delinquency is at a 3-year high, and 43% of small business couldn't pay their rent in April.

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People are finding out that the alam on the iPhone 15 isn't reliable.  Apparently Apple incorporated an Attention Aware feature, where if you are looking at the phone, the alarm is silenced immediately. But it seems there's a glitch, and it thinks you're looking at the camera, when you're not.  Talk about over-engineering.

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29 April 2024

Ten fastest dying states in America.  Is Oregon on the list? Making onto lists like this is Oregon's specialty now, don't you know?

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The Chinese published the most detailed map of the Moon at 1:2,500,000 scale.

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No. Do people have the right to camp on sidewalks? We'll see what SCOTUS will rule when the opinion is issued in a few months. If the homeless just slept somewhere and were gone the next morning, leaving no trace of their being there, it would not be so bad. But they are essentially setting up a semi-permanent camp, and depriving the rest of us the use of the municipality for which we pay tax money to maintain. They don't. It's really not that complicated.

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Part-time jobs. People with full-time jobs are getting laid-off and more are getting part-time jobs instead. Well, this is one way to avoid the wage-spiral and fight inflation, but at the cost of workers who need those full-time jobs.  If there were only some way to fix the economy. Hmm....

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Big trouble. Vancomycin used to be the go-to drug to treat C. difficile. Now 34% of strains exhibit reduced susceptibility. Metronidazole is not very effective now, and the only other effective treatment is fidaxomicin.

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28 April 2024

Colleges are now closing at a pace of one a week. Yeah, it's starting with the small pocket colleges, but it's a sign that colleges overall are hurting. People don't want to spend a vast fortune for useless degrees, and it's a bummer if your college shuts down before you've graduated. Who wants to take that risk? Of course, if you were really college material, you could get into a more stable school and get a respectable degree that you could use to pay off your loan.

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I did not know that there was a Bloom County/Calvin and Hobbes crossover.  Well, never too late, I guess.

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Here it is again. Biden gets the worse approval rating ever, and I click on the link, and it's 38.7%.  C'mon, when is it ever going to get below 30%, as it should?  I don't believe these "worse ever" articles anymore. It's still the same at 35%.

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Oregon state economist stepping down next month.  No word on his replacement.

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The Department of Homeland Security announced the establishment of the Artificial Intelligence Safety and Security Board. Look at the members. Many of the names are the usual suspects. But look who is on as well – Bruce Harrell, mayor of Seattle!  Huh?  What qualifications does he have? I would have included Simon Willison, Johann Rehberger, or at least Stephen Wolfram, who could provide some very insightful input. But Bruce Harrell can't even run Seattle, so I would not want him formulating AI safety and security.

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Why Google search results look different now. By incorporating AI-retrieved links, you now don't know for sure if it's relevant to what you were searching for.  Maybe it's hallucinating.  Maybe the links were selected to increase ad sales to Alphabet. What a mess.
Here's how Google is ruining websites. As people vie for a top spot using SEO techniques, web pages, designed to rank higher, become crap.

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Research on memory and retrieval. Now scientists have found that in mice (at least), forming new memories requires DNA breakage triggering DNA repair mediated by inflammatory toll-like receptor-9 pathways in hippocampal cells near the centrosomes. And blocking the TLR9 inflammatory pathway in hippocampal neurons not only prevented mice from forming long-term memories but also caused profound genomic instability, i.e, a high frequency of DNA damage in these neurons.  Memory formation is way more complicated than originally thought.

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Active Antarctic volcano spews out gold every day. Well, it's actually gold dust in the air. Nothing worth setting up equipment to harvest.

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Diversity is definitely not our strength.

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27 April 2024

The ending of container shipping at the Port of Portland is going to make things even more expensive for Portlanders. The pain hasn't hit yet but it will. Where is the governor on this?

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Here's TechCrunch's review of Llama 3. I agree – a year ago it might have been hailed as amazing, but we live in a world with GPT-4 and Claude-3 Opus, and this level of achievement isn't dazzling anymore. It's a little faster, though, but so what?

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Someone put PubMed in a vector dabase.  This is great, but when I tried it, I wasn't getting results that were useful. Still, I'll monitor this site's progress. It's a good start.

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Columbia University protesting students are mad that their identities are being released, and some job offers are getting rescinded. Oh well. FAFO, I say.  Someone should find out who's printing their signs and T-shirts, which have production values that suggest a corporate entity behind it all. Wouldn't be surprised if the funding came from Soros.

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Web-scraping like the "big boys"?  Looks like a lot of bother. I'll stick with simple CURL, thank you.

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The Left like name changes. Oregon is going to call physician assistants, "physician associates" now. Nothing changes except the name. Might make them feel better, who knows?

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Some mental health conditions are related to Strep.  Like St Vitus' Dance (Sydenham's chorea) is a post-Streptococcal condition. This is nothing new, really.

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Somewhat snarky review of the Rabbit R1 in the real world. This "toy" represents advances in agentic frameworks, something that hasn't gotten as much attention as LLMs and Chat. It's an early-stage model, and if the developers don't give up, it should improve with subsequent iterations.

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Brazzein is a new sugar substitute that was FDA-approved last month. It's another sweeter-than-sugar substance, but the writer is disappointed because brazzein has latency, and the sweet taste doesn't begin immediately.  So it has to be mixed with a little bit of sugar to recreate the immediate sugar experience, but less sugar is used overall. This might actually be an advantage, if it fools the brain that it is getting some sugar, so that it registers sugar satisfaction anyway.

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Ethical deep-fakes with Microsoft's VASA-1.  The video fakes are really good now.  I look forward to doing some creative things with this technology.

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26 April 2024

More bite the dust.  Boxer (Ramen) is closing permanently. Also von Ebert Brewing is shuttering its flagship operation in the Pearl.  No foot traffic. Too expensive to run a business. So employees losing their jobs and reduction of Portland's tax base. It's all spiraling downward.  OHSU was able to take some advantage by buying defaulted property. But not everyone can do this.

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Great! New evidence found for a Planet 9.

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Newport Beach (in Oregon) has been a shadow of its former self. The coronavirus epidemic started it, but it never recovered. Now I know why – it's the drug crisis. Such a shame, because it used to be a favorite place to go. Not so much now. The coastal towns have already been hit hard by governmental policies related to COVID, and now this.

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Trump's new nickname is Lemonade.  Love it!

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Beyond silly.  UW students postpone antisemitic encampment for having too many white saviors.  The Left just eats themselves.

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Hawaii has a program to help doctors pay off their student loans.  Ordinarily I would be opposed to this (since someone else has to pay) but there's a severe doctor shortage in Hawaii, so they have to make it worthwhile for doctors to go there (and stay there), since the cost of living is one of the nation's highest. Like Oregon, I wouldn't give Hawaii a look.  Only those already living there, probably, would think of practicing there.

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Potent New Cannabis Products Can Present Hazards For Adolescents. Yeah, I bet the lawmakers didn't consider this when they legalized marijuana.  Now, there's something that's going to stupidify a new generation of kids.

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