Duracell donates emergency supplies to Springfield

I know that Springfield has had some bad storms but I never really felt in danger. I guess it is a bit riskier than I thought because Springfield is one of five cities recongized as vulnerable to power outages as a result of extreme weather. Apparently, Springfield and the surrounding 30 miles have the highest frequency of extreme weather-related damage reports in the nation. As part of Duracell's "Hours of Power" donation campaign, Springfield has received $100,000 of emergency products, including batteries, safety kits, chargers, and flashlights. Some of the above information can be found at http://www.duracell.com/us/hoursofpower/cities.asp Also, it is fairly clear that Duracell is using the donation campaign as marketing; which I am fine with, it is a business. Please take a minute and visit the site above and click on the donate button. It is a small effort to help others.

Googlism

I just found http://www.googlism.com . It is an interesting waste of time for an individual but possibly a quick summary of a business' website.

Banned CFC-driven Inhalers

In August 2008, Scientific American did a story about a federal ban on ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) to conform with the Clean Air Act. The albuterol inhalers without any CFCs cost three times more than generic inhalers that use CFCs. The CFCs from inhalers have an insignificant impact on the Ozone Layer but raising the cost of a $15 inhaler to $45 is a significant burden. I tried searching online but kept finding articles from last year. Does anyone know if this moronic switch has been enforced?

Data Mining Finds Bad Drugs

University of Minnesota Duluth professor Ted Pedersen and University Minnesota Twin Cities professor Serguei Pakhomov have been awarded a three-year, $935,000 National Institutes of Health research grant to develop natural-language processing (NLP) techniques that search through medical records to quickly detect widespread adverse drug reactions. Pedersen says the goal of the project is to improve the quality of post-marketing surveillance for adverse drug reactions. He notes that although the Food and Drug Administration approves all drugs before making them available, people often take so many drug combinations that it is not possible to test every interaction. Additionally, pharmaceutical companies may not have conducted enough studies to identify possible adverse reactions, he says. Pedersen will use NLP to develop methods that can identify different statements that have similar underlying meanings in medical records to enable the quick identification of patients who are taking similar combinations of drugs and possibly suffering from adverse reactions.
University of Minnesota Duluth (01/21/09) Latto, Susan Beasy

An Algorithmic Game of Clue©

Duke University researchers have developed an algorithm capable of determining the best strategy for winning a game of CLUE©, a mathematical model that also could be used to help robotic mine sweepers find hidden explosives. Duke post-doctoral fellow Chenghui Cai says robotic sensors, like players in CLUE©, take information from their surroundings to help the robot maneuver around obstacles and find its target. "The key to success, both for the CLUE© player and the robots, is to not only take in the new information it discovers, but to use this new information to help guide its next move," Cai says. "This learning-adapting process continues until either the player has won the game, or the robot has found the mines." Artificial intelligence researchers call these situations "treasure hunt" problems, and have developed mathematical approaches to improving the chances of discovering the hidden treasure. Cai says the researchers found that players who implement the strategies based on the algorithm consistently outperform human players and other computer programs. Duke professor Silvia Ferrari, director of Duke's Laboratory for Intelligent Systems and Controls, says the algorithm is designed to maximize the ability to reach targets while minimizing the amount of movement.
Duke University News & Communications (01/27/09) Merritt, Richard

Is Technology Producing a Decline in Critical Thinking and Analysis?

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) professor Patricia Greenfield says that critical thinking and analysis skills decline the more people use technology, while visual skills improve. Greenfield, the director of UCLA's Children's Digital Media Center, analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology. She found that reading for pleasure improves thinking skills and engages the imagination in ways that visual media cannot. She says the increased use of technology in education will make evaluation methods that include visual media a better test for what students actually know, and will create students that are better at processing information. However, she cautions that most visual media does not allocate time for reflection, analysis, or imagination. "Studies show that reading develops imagination, induction, reflection, and critical thinking, as well as vocabulary," Greenfield says. "Students today have more visual literacy and less print literacy." Greenfield also analyzed a study that found that college students who watched "CNN Headline News" without the news crawl on the bottom of the screen remembered more facts from the broadcast that those who watched with the crawl. She says this study and others like it demonstrate that multi-tasking prevents people from obtaining a deeper understanding of information.
UCLA News (01/27/09) Wolpert, Stuart

Data Mining Promises to Dig Up New Drugs

European researchers have developed a robot called Eve that uses artificial intelligence, data mining, and knowledge discovery technology to analyze the results of the pharmacological experiments that it conducts. The robot can make informed decisions on how effective different chemical compounds will be at fighting diseases, potentially providing more effective treatments and a faster development process for medicines. Eve relates the chemical structure of different compounds to their pharmacological activity to learn which chemical compounds should be tested next. "Over time, Eve will learn to pick out the chemical compounds that are likely to be most effective against a certain target by analyzing data from past experiments and comparing chemical structures to their pharmacological properties," says Jozef Stefan Institute researcher Saso Dzeroski. Dzeroski says Eve should help scientists and pharmaceutical companies identify more effective compounds to treat diseases, and help them find drugs in a fraction of the time and cost of current methods. Dzeroski says Eve is the first robot-based computer system capable of originating its own experiments, physically performing them, interpreting the results, and repeating the cycle. He says that instead of choosing compounds for testing at random, Eve can pick compounds that are more likely to be effective.
ICT Results (02/02/09)

Report Calls for Boost in IT Research, Policies

U.S. President Barack Obama's transition team has received a copy of a National Academy of Sciences report that recommends several strategies the United States could follow as information technology research and development becomes increasingly globalized. Randy Katz, a computer scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who co-chaired the panel that wrote the report, says the top spot that the United States holds in information technology research and development is being challenged. The report suggests the United States would be a better place for innovation if small startups that want to go public did not have to contend with the costly financial reporting requirements for disclosure.[They're talking about Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX)] The patent system should be reformed to discourage litigation, the report adds. Also, more funding is needed for research into the biggest challenges. Katz says the High-Performance Computing and Communications initiative of the 1980s and 1990s is the type of "programmatic research [that can] build communities of researchers that collaborate and also compete while pursuing a particular goal."
Science (01/23/09) Charles, Dan

Related article: Law Profs Decry SOX as 'Debacle,' Express Hope for 'Re-Examination'

HP Grants Aim to Redesign College Engineering & Computer Science

Hewlett-Packard has made more than $2.4 million in cash and equipment available for its "HP Innovations in Education" effort, which aims to reinvent undergraduate computer science and engineering programs through the use of technology. HP is asking for proposals from two- and four-year colleges and universities that offer degrees in engineering, computer science, or information technology. Grant projects must explore the potential for innovation through the intersection of teaching, learning, and technology, with the ultimate goal of "re-imagining undergraduate engineering education." HP plans to award about 10 grants to public or private colleges or universities in the United States. Each grant will include more than $240,000 in HP technology, cash, and professional development. Proposals should describe how the technology will enable innovation in four areas: Leadership Capacity, or creating a global network of administrators and faculty to implement innovative approaches; Digital Learning Environments, or using technology to fundamentally redesign the learning experience in ways that increase student engagement in academic success; the Undergraduate Design and Research Experience, to make engineering real and relevant by involving engineering undergraduate students in design and research challenges that address the needs of society; and Pre-College Outreach, to encourage administrators, faculty, and undergraduate students to work with secondary-school teachers and students to increase student awareness and interest in high-tech programs.
eSchool News (01/20/09)

Operation Comfort Warriors

The American Legion accepts donations for Operation Comfort Warriors, which raises funds to Provide comfort items for wounded U.S. troops recovering in military hospitals.
www.legion.org/ocw
No donations are used for administrative costs.

What's a Serving?

I've been trying to cut back on how much I eat. But in a day and age where it is more common to eat out, I'm not very good at judging a serving. I'm finding it handy to compare food to other objects to judge the serving size. For example, the recommended amount of meat for a healthy meal is 3 o 4 ounces - about the size of a deck of playing cards. Some more examples:

1 oz. meat: size of a matchbox
1 oz. cheese: size of four die
2 tablespoons of peanut butter: size of a ping-pong ball
1/2 cup of pasta: size of a tennis ball
1 medium apple/orange: size of a tennis ball
1 cup of vegetables/fruit: size of a baseball
1 medium potato: size of a computer mouse
1 cup of lettuce: four leaves

You can get a wallet-sized portion guide from the American Cancer Society at:
http://www.cancer.org/docroot/subsite/greatamericans/content/Portion_Control_Guide.asp

Auto Gear-Change Bicycle: Computer Controlled Bicycle Gear Changes Optimize Power, Comfort

Researchers in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at National Defense University in Tashi, Taiwan, are developing a computer system for bicyclists that tells them when to change gears to optimize power while maintaining comfort. The researchers cite ergonomic studies that show cyclists can be in an optimum state while cycling with a fixed output power and peddling speed. The researchers developed an algorithm that provides cyclists with a gear shift strategy to maintain the optimal gear without sacrificing comfort. The algorithm, which has been tested in a simulation of a 12-speed bicycle, provides a gear-shifting sequence with minimal power losses and gear shifts. The algorithm will enable riders to operate the derailleur gearing system more easily, making riders more comfortable because they will be in the correct gear and shifting gears will be smoother. The researchers say the technology could eventually be extended to an entirely automatic mechanical gear-shifting system.
ScienceDaily (01/14/09)

Captivated by R's Power

The R programming language is being used by a growing number of data analysts as data mining is increasingly being used by organizations to set ad prices, find new drugs faster, or fine-tune financial models. The open source language also has become popular among statisticians, engineers, and scientists without a background in programming because of the language's ease of use. "R is really important to the point that it's hard to overvalue it," says Google research scientist Daryl Pregibon. "It allows statisticians to do very intricate and complicated analyses without knowing the blood and guts of computing systems." Statisticians find R particularly useful because it contains several built-in mechanisms for organizing data, running calculations on the information, and creating graphical representations of data sets. Some familiar with R describe it as a stronger version of Microsoft's Excel spreadsheet that can help present data trends more clearly than is possible using information in rows and columns. R also is popular because users can alter the software's code to write variations for specific tasks. "The great beauty of R is that you can modify it to do all sorts of things," says Google's Hal Varian. "And you have a lot of prepackaged stuff that's already available, so you're standing on the shoulders of giants."
New York Times (01/07/09) Vance, Ashlee

NSF Looking for Wicked Cool Visual and Data Analysis Algorithms

The National Science Foundation (NSF) wants to develop highly interpretive mathematical and computational algorithms and techniques to help the U.S. government and private researchers evaluate the data generated by health care, computational biology, security, and other areas. NSF wants to make it easier for law enforcement and the intelligence community to present its data in a visual format, which will require the development of new algorithms capable of representing and transforming digital data into mathematical formulations and computational models that allow for efficient and effective visualization. NSF's research effort is part of a five-year, $3 million project known as the Foundation on Data Analysis and Visual Analytics (FODAVA), which is led by the Georgia Institute of Technology, the NSF, and the Department of Homeland Security. One FODAVA program is a Georgia Tech system known as Jigsaw, which provides multiple coordinated views of large document collections to show connections between entities found within the collection. Meanwhile, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency says it wants to develop software capable of capturing knowledge from naturally occurring text and transforming it into the formal representations used by artificial-intelligence reasoning systems.
Network World (01/07/09)

Reply to SciAm Perspective: After the Crash

In the December 2008 issue of Scientific American, the editors wrote a SciAm Perspectives piece entitled “After the Crash,” that focused on making sure that some of the blame for the Wall Street crash is placed on the developers of the software models. The last sentence of the opinion piece really drives home how little the SciAm editors understand about the software models, “Like an airplane, financial models can never be allowed to fly solo.”

What?! The problem wasn’t that the financial models were allowed to “fly solo”. The problem was that the models kept getting changed to appease the developers’ bosses. The SciAm editors also try to make it sound like the developers should have just not made the changes to the models each time “overoptimistic assumptions and faulty data” was given. What should have they done? Just said, “I’m sorry, Dave. I’m afraid I can’t do that.” They would have been fired and then replaced. In some cases maybe they could make a stand and say that making the change is risky and shouldn’t be done without being fired. However, it would amount to the same efforts that Roger Boisjoly made on January 27, 1986, when he convinced his manager, McDonald, to warn the NASA managers not to launch the space shuttle, Challenger, until warmer weather. The push back from the bosses was such that another person was found to sign off on the launch.

I am getting a little off topic. Let us return to this financial airplane that we don’t want to allow to fly solo. Many disasters have been caused by people doing their best to “fix” the problem instead of allowing the established protocols (usually designed using mathematical models) to deal with the problem. I’ll give two examples: Three Mile Island and the incident aboard the drill rig Ocean Ranger in February 1982.

In short, it is wrong to blame the people who work on the product because they are not the people with the power to decide what work is done on the product regardless if the product is a car or a financial model.

Bucket List

Get SCUBA certified: https://www.diventures.com/scuba/dive-certification-costs

Go on an Insight cruise: http://www.insightcruises.com/

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Winchester Palace, London, UK

November 2, 2017 - Riverside remains of a 13th-century bishops' complex with ruins of great hall, prison and brewhouse. https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/visit/places/winchester-palace

Donald Knuth

Dr. Dobb's Journal published an Interview with Donald Knuth in April of 1996. It was a very good read.

Knuth discusses what distinguishes a "computer scientist" from a "computer programmer" but neatly side steps actually separating the two terms. Choosing to instead explain how computer science is about thinking about problems in a different way. (You'll have to ready the article to see what I mean.)

There is some discussion about Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming. Which Charles Moss tells me is a wonderful read. I'm not sure I believe that but the MSU library has volumes 1-3 in case I want to check them out.

I must quote this because one of my coworkers is just fanitical about C++. To him, everything that is not C++ is crap with the exception of javascript and ruby.

DDJ: You've mentioned Edsgar Dijkstra. What do you think of his work? DK: His great strength is that he is uncompromising. It would make him physically ill to think of programming in C++.

Kunth followed that quote up with some very reassuring comments about trying to find the middle ground between very specific control of code and allowing a library to be used without knowing how it was implemented.

[W]hen you write a program, think of it primarily as a work of literature. You're trying to write something that human beings are going to read. Don't think of it primarily as something a computer is going to follow. The more effective you are at making your program readable, the more effective it's going to be: You'll understand it today, you'll understand it next week, and your successors who are going to maintain and modify it will understand it.

DVD-RW driver problem in Windows Vista

Something I installed in the past month made Vista no longer recongize my DVD-RW. I tried removing it and reinstalling it but that didn't work. After a few online searches I found "Top Tip: DVD-RW driver problem in Windows Vista?".

I don't know why it works or what application made my DVD-RW stop working, but Andy2639's solution works.

In case that URL is broken in the future here is the solution:

Open the Registry Editor, navigate to:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class
select key {4D36E965-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318} (now's a good time to backup)
delete the LowerFilters string value
delete the UpperFilters string value
Restart Windows.

She blinded me with Science!

The following tidbits were discussed last weekend with a small group of friends. It's mostly science stuff that I'm following up with links to confirm or expand on the things I talked about.

We were watching MythBusters and they had a Lifter on the show and I said that it is an example of ionic propulsion. Which then lead to a discussion of ion engines. Yes, NASA has launched a space craft with a ion engine. It was called Deep Space I; it launched in October 1998 and was retired in December 2001. I would to love to know why it was retired, what it's max speed was, and how far from Earth did it make it.
Anyway, back to Lifters; while most people might avoid Wikipedia I like it because it reads well and at the end of most entries are a list of sources with links. Anyone who has a problem with Wikipedia can skip right down to the links.

Next came the uses of magnets in MythBusters (we are all big fans of the show). JP said that Dr. M (physics prof. that we all took for Physics II) said that there are one pole magnets. This conversation was really short lived. I said that Dr. M is an idiot and Kirk explained that without two poles there would be no magnetic field and without a magnetic field the "magnet" would not be magnetic. Okay, it is possible that Dr. M was talking about a Halbach Array, this is a magnet setup so that one pole is on top and the other pole is on the sides. This leaves the bottom with no or very little magnetic effect. However, I'm sticking with my Dr. M is an idiot hypothesis because there is a big difference between a Halbach Array and a magnet with only one pole, and as a teaching professor he should be able to explain that.

There were undoubtedly more science related things talked about but I can't think was anything else that might deserve comment here.

x64 QuickTime

I don't know when it happened but QuickTime is now working on my Windows XP x64 system. Even though the last attempt to install iTunes gave a warning message saying the install was unsuccessful I guess that the QuickTime install was good. So, rejoice every who enjoys using QuickTime on a 64-bit system. Of course, VLC does a better job with fullscreen, but it is nice to have more software working correctly on my system.