Merciless Refactoring

Many people are afraid to make code changes out of fear that they will break the code. To ensure you can safely make code changes you should change it often. I'm not talking about pointless changes but solid improvements. Run FindBugs against your code and fix the issues. If you disagree with FindBugs then use PMD or any static analysis tool. However, if static analysis suggests that your code looks like a bug then consider changing it to look less dangerous.

Anyway, the point of merciless refactoring is to always be improving your code. To make changes and ensure that it was easy to make those changes. If it isn't fast and easy then you need to make changes to make it fast and easy. Write unit tests, delete unused code, optimize loops, automate tests; everything you can do to make it possible to complete your next project in record time.

Merciless refactoring can also be described as following the boy scouts rule of always leaving a place cleaner than when you found it. If you add a method to a class then add some JavaDocs to the other methods while you're there. If you change a single line of code in a method, take a look at the entire class and fix it up if you can.

HIV/AIDS Cure Proof of Concept

New York magazine had this great article, "The Man Who Had HIV and Now Does Not", last month. It is as the title says about a man who was cured of HIV. It is an amazing read. It is not a cure for everyone; there are some specific genetics required but it is sparking new AIDS research.

Secret Santa

I wrote a little webapp to create secret Santa lists:
http://secret-santa-list.appspot.com/

It has a nifty feature that allows you to specify who to exclude as a possible choice for certain people when generating the list. In my case, I used it to generate a list for extended family where spouses did not get each other as secret Santas. Using the exclude list you could also set up a list to ensure that men get gifts for men and women get gifts for women.

For those who are concerned about sending the email addresses of their friends and family across the Internet there is a HTTPS link:
https://secret-santa-list.appspot.com/

New Nutrition Goals for dailyburn.com

If you are not happy with dailyburn's suggested nutritional goals because you find them to be too heavy on protein and unrealistic for carbs then you might want to try calculating your goals based on the formulas below.

I've decided on a target of 1900 calories. Since I am not an the Atkins diet which dailyburn seems to be pimping I've done some of my own calculations to adjust my nutritional goal ranges.

First, I used dailyburn as a baseline writing down the suggested values and calculating the differences of each range. Second, I found recommended targets that I am happy with. Finally, I adjusted the values:

1. With a target of 1900 I used the same range difference that dailyburn used, a difference of 250; giving me a range of 1775 - 2025.
2. The carb target can be calculated by multipyling 0.125 times your target calories which gave me 238 g [1]. Using dailyburn's difference of 84 that gives me a range of 196 - 280.
3. I used dailyburn's earlier suggestion to calculate the following ratio: 0.02613. Multiply that by your target calories to get your fat target. Using dailyburn's difference of 29 I get a range of 35 - 64.
4. For an absolute minimum protein target you should calculate that off the USFDA's recommend value of 50 g per 2000 Cal [2]. I decided to use 1.5 times my weight in Kg as the upper limit; 152 [3]. Then using dailyburn's difference I got a range of 60 - 152.

[1] I picked this because it seems more realistic for my habits.

    http://nutrition.about.com/od/askyournutritionist/f/howmanycarbs.htm

[2] http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/scales/dailyvalues.htm

[3] http://lowcarbdiets.about.com/od/nutrition/a/protein.htm

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