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Creative CommonsLibaryScience:The Future Of Libaries
Books are being digitized.
Google's taking the lead.
Having already digitized several million books, Google hopes to become a digital "Library of Alexandria", a modest claim since the collection of the ancient Greeks was nothing compared to what has already been digitized by the big G.
But, in its day, the Library of Alexandria, with its 700,000 volumes of manuscripts, was the best library anywhere.
This seems to be Google's hope too.
700,000 volumes is just spit in the ocean, these days. According to the Trivia Library, 277 of our books were written by a single person - Alexandre Duma pere (remember The Three Musketeers?) and that was before we had word processors. Two more writers, Mary Faulkner and Lauran Payne, have written a combined total of over 1650 books. If there's a lost art, it isn't the art of writing books.
Amazon presently sells more than 14 million different titles.
Google wants 'em all.
The specific agreement with the Authors Guild covering Google's right to capture and distribute a wide variety of books including those that are out-of-print isn't screwed down yet. There's more suing and defending to be done.
But with, maybe, some modifications, Google is likely to prevail.
I assume that old-fashioned books will continue to be bought and sold for many years. Some say that digitization will even be good for the trade.
But what about libraries? How will such easy online access to books affect the repositories of printed material? What form will libraries take in the future? Will they disappear? Will they adapt? And what adaptations would make sense?
This year, there?s lots of talk about electronic books. But until recently, the idea was mostly dismissed as silly. Nothing could replace the experience of the printed page and no electronic device was gonna change that.
I don?t know what got into the book traditionalists. Was it Google? Was it Amazon's Kindle or Sony's Reader? Or does it just take time for a new reality to sink in? But the inevitability of e-books isn't far fetched anymore.
Whether books will endure or not, Googleizing them WILL turn your browser into a library and may EVENTUALLY undermine the old public libraries. And, meanwhile, the stubborn defenders of books have mutated into the stubborn defenders of the buildings that hold them.
Suddenly, libaries are wonderful places. Romantic. We've always loved them. With dusty printed matter out of the way, they would be good places to come to for community gatherings and ideal places to digitally look at books. Maybe they could be art centers.
I dunno. It doesn't work for me.
I'm thinking an old library would be a great place for a gas station.
GlaucomaResearch:DISOVERY POINTS TO LOWER EYE PRESSURES
If the fluid pressure in your eye gets too high, it can harm the optic nerve and hurt your vision or cause blindness. The primary way Glaucoma is treated involves the drainage of this fluid - usually with drops, sometimes with surgery. But this development describes a whole new system of drainage.
Totally unknown till now.
A system for circulation of lymph in the eye just like in other parts of the body.
Cool.
Glaucoma's complicated. And intraoccular pressure isn't always behind the degeneration of nerves (neuropathy). But getting the pressure down IS the focus of most therapy so this development is, potentially, a big deal.
Nice study. Nice conclusion.
ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10
HearingResearch:FOLATES COULD SAVE HEARING
Hearing loss is one of my favorite topics. Wearing hearing aids'll do that.
The authors of this study, Josef Shargorodsky, Gary Curhan; Sharon, Curhan and Ronald Eavey, found that the much touted anti-oxidants don't do a dang thing for hearing loss. Folates, on the other hand, seem to be truly effective, reducing the risk of hearing loss by 20% which, from a public health standpoint, is big.
Folates? They're all over the place. Spinach, lettuce, turnips, beans, peas.
Fresh salad with your meals may be all it takes.
And, while we're on the subject (of hearing loss), a group from the Scripps Research Institute is onto something too. They've discovered a gene which is related specifically to "age related hearing loss". Since that's the type of hearing loss that's most prevalent, could be a good thing. LOTS of work to be done yet.
ScienceAintSoBadRating = 7
CancerRearch:EARLY DETECTION OF PANCREATIC CANCER
The five year survival rate for pancreatic cancer is less than 5%. Dismal. This is primarily because most cancers of the pancreas aren't caught until they're quite advanced.
In fact there may be some early warning signs such as suddenly getting diabetes or persistently itchy feet. But wouldn't it be great if there were a really reliable detection system?
Work in this area is intense. This, this, this, and this give some indication of the newest stuff.
Maybe one of these hopeful ideas will lead to real progress in catching cancer of the pancreas early. If ScienceAintSoBad had fingers, they would be crossed.
ScienceAintSoBadRating = 6/10 (6 because it's too early to know, 10 because of the importance. Make that an 11.)
SpaceScience: A Ticket To Mars
According to a "blue ribbon panel" reporting to the Office of Science And Technology Policy, we can't afford a "manned" lunar program. The United States is emerging from a recession with a lot of bills and it has to reduce costs wherever it can.
If we can't afford the moon, how can we afford Mars?
I don't want to sound like a broken blog, but this isn't the first time I've discussed the expensive conceit of sending humans to Mars. Quoting myself, "Throughout NASA's history, there's been considerable tension between those who believe in the symbolic importance of getting our human butts out there and those who feel that the astronomical (good word here) costs and barely manageable risks aren't justified when robots are proving themselves so capable."
Lawrence Klauss suggests that we can solve all this by making the trip to Mars one-way. In a 9/11 interview on NPR's "Science Friday", Klauss discussed the cost of sending humans to Mars and, rightly, in my opinion, brought up the advantages of robots. He said that robots will continue to improve and, by the time we are ready for the trip, their abilities may rival those of human astronauts.
So that?s what we should do, right? Send robots?
Well no. Instead of reaching the obvious conclusion, Klaus, feels the pull of putting boots on red sand and thinks there?s GOTTA be a way. Why not, he says, do a one-way mission to establish the first permanent space colony? This, he says, makes sense since it would cost less to deliver the human payload and could lighten the required radiation shielding. A return trip might be fatal anyway because of Gamma ray exposure. So make it one-way.
ScienceAin'tSoBad respectfully doesn't get it.
What about the unbelievable ethical implications of exposing a crew to HALF of a fatal dose of radiation? Will we prohibit transmissions beyond the first joy-filled 3 months so that we don't have to watch them sicken and die? Would this colony, once established, have hopes of generationalism - bearing children and rearing the first native Martians? If so, the radiational offspring of the colonists may give us a chance to communicate with REAL Martians. Two heads, eye stalks, and obsidian skin.
Chopping out the return trip, although it does simplify the shielding design and reduce the bulk of the rocket, is unlikely to reduce the costs enough to make the numbers work but, even if it did, that doesn't justify putting human beings at such risk.
Besides. The "One Way To Mars" idea only blurs the absurdity of a human program. We should focus on building great robots. By the day of the expected human landing, maybe robots will be capable of experiencing the joy of watching the sun set over the earth. They could be our true, if improbable, descendants.
And we wouldn?t have to watch them crawl around on the rim of a crater, dying from radiation poisoning.
ScienceAin'tSoBadRating = 3
Neurobiology: Focusing The Brain
I hope you have a well-behaved mind.
Many of us don?t.
My own mind skitters out from under me whenever it chooses.
What?s different about those with great concentration and those who are easily distracted? Some new research suggests it may be related to how large your ?working memory? is. Working memory is believed to be a type of short-term memory which is used to temporarily store things while you?re thinking. It determines the number of thoughts you can keep ?alive? at the same time.
For example, if you?re late for dinner, you can think ?Man! She?s gonna kill me!? AND think ?but I better not forget to stop for gas on the way?.
According to a study from the University of Oregon, people with large working memories are less easily distracted.
It makes sense, doesn?t it?
ScienceAin'tSoBadRating = 7
Unless the problem is due to Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.
While it varies in its severity, ADHD can make it difficult to concentrate and, in general, manage your time.
A study at the Brookhaven National Laboratory involved 97 people. It found that the 53 subjects with ADHD (the rest were controls) had abnormally low dopamine in the parts of the brain that control reward and motivation. And it found that such people appear to need extra stimulation which they don?t always seek out in the healthiest ways ? sometimes overeating or abusing drugs or alcohol. In other words, immediate gratification seemed to win out over other things.
There are ways to increase dopamine levels in the brain. Some involve drugs (and side effects) and some do not. But this would seem to be a great thing to explore (carefully).
Good paper. More work needs to be done to solve this problem.
ScienceAin'tSoBadRating = 9
(By the way. CONGRATULATIONS TO JESS FOR PASSING HER MCAS!!!! )
Dr. Mike Bodo in
(photo courtesy of Dr. Bodo)
Brain_Research:rheoencephalography
As you can imagine, the war in Iraq resulted in lots of head trauma - the most since Vietnam. But changes in how major head wounds are treated, more attention to relieving internal pressure, and a tendency to remove debris only when it is truly necessary, have greatly reduced the death rate from these horrible wounds to about 5% which, considering the severity of many of these injuries is unbelievable.
This doesn't mean that the victims get their lives back. Recovery from head trauma can be slow and difficult. However, the chances of a good recovery can go up with the use of a "new" technique I just learned about, called rheoencephalography (REG).
For wounded soldiers with blast injuries to the head, the presence of shrapnel often interferes with conventional instruments like CAT scans, MRI, and Doppler ultrasound. This is where rheoencephalography has been so incredibly helpful.
Measuring brain blood flow, REG makes it possible for medical personnel to noninvasively determine when the regulation of blood flow in the brain goes wrong - as it often does with the bleeding that?s typical of these blast injuries. Even WITHOUT bleeding, the effect of the blast can mess up the brain's ability to effectively regulate the flow of blood. A breakdown of regulation (technically, autoregulation) can be, and often is, fatal.
I talked to Doctor Mike Bodo about the uses of REG. Dr. Bodo is a Senior Scientist who, through the American Registry of Pathology,works for the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research .
"Mike, is this a new instrument? I don't believe I ever heard of it before."
"Not at all. The technique was first developed in the 50's. I first started working with REG in Hungary where I grew up.
"About twenty years ago, the Hungarian government financed a study to systematically look for individuals who were at risk for stroke. The instrument on which the study was based was called Cerberus, named for the multi-headed dog in Greek mythology that guards the gates of Hell. The metaphor refers to arteriosclerosis and its many risk factors such as hypertension, smoking, and high cholesterol. With so many possible causes, it is not enough to follow just one cause ? thus, all those heads.
"At the time of the study, there was still some question about whether rheoencephalography, which actually measures the electrical resistance between the electrodes, was an accurate indication of cranial blood volume change. It turns out, however, that nothing else can detect brain arteriosclerosis so effectively and so early. Not even close.
?According to this large study, even Doppler ultrasound isn't as effective in detecting brain arteriosclerosis as REG.?
I asked him where the greatest need for REG is.
"Without a doubt, the greatest need is as a screening tool for early indications of stroke. We call this ?primary prevention?.
?I can tell you, from my own professional experiences, that stroke is an awful disability. It?s really frustrating to see the damage it can do, to know that a method of early detection exists, and to see this capability languishing because the focus is on more glamorous but less deadly diseases.
?And, by the way," he said, "I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of rheoencephalography. It's virtually unknown to the public and even less so to the medical community. Ironically, medical procedures which are identical, in principal, to rheoencephalography ARE in use but they are known as venous phlebography and thoracic impedance measurement"
Mike, it turns out, along with his wife Janice, is a major advocate of this technique and has dedicated much of his life to making others aware of its potential. I asked him what other uses have been found for REG.
"You would be surprised how many there are. Because it is noninvasive and doesn't require a tremendous amount of training to use, it has found uses in areas as varied as determining the degree of damage that alcohol causes to the brain's blood vessels, to measuring the "neuroprotective" quality of new drugs. The main obstacle to its widespread use in medicine is that rheoencephalography has not yet evolved the degree of standardization that techniques such as EEG and ECG have. For that to happen, someone has to create an FDA approved medical instrument that integrates the components of the system into a smaller and more easily deployed medical instrument."
ScienceAin?tSoBad will track keep an eye on this promising instrument. Stay posted.
MORE DETAIL
According to the FDA, a Rheoencephalograph is a device used to estimate a patient?s cerebral circulation. For further details REG was the primary instrument used in this study. Also see Bodo M and REG .
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Blog Description: Chidakel "gets" how personal science has become. For him, it;s nice to have the fingerprints of science all over our butts. Not everyone'll agree. He, his lovely wife, his research loving dog and his eccentric team of product developers all show up from time-to-time in this ambitious blog-effort to explain advances in technology, discuss his own team's work, tease the reader, show off his Cocakpoo and wander off subject as often as possible.
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