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Friday, February 28, 2003
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Bad Bacteria Key to Drug Delivery. Scientists genetically modify the oft-vilified bacteria E. coli, rendering it harmless so it can play a central role in powering microscopic, implantable drug dispensers. By Louise Knapp. [Wired News]
Enter the bacteria-powered pump.  The World's Smallest Living Motor.
The Arkansas team modified E. coli bacterium so that one of its flagella -- or tentacles -- is tethered to the platform of the nanodispenser. In this way, the bacteria are "planted" in a line within the microscopic channels of the dispenser.
"These bacteria are the world's smallest living motors -- they are only 30 nanometers in diameter," said Ajay Malshe, an associate professor of mechanical engineering with the University of Arkansas.
The bacteria are also genetically modified so they all rotate in the same direction. The spin of the bacteria works to push the drug around and out of the dispenser.
11:27:30 AM 
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Wi-Fi Goes To Work.
"instead of seeking out a new killer app, the trend appears to be to leverage current ones"
This is the key issue in my opinion, and the great unmentioned existing killer app is.... Real Estate!
Business Week's piece on Intel and Marriott getting together for hotel Wi-Fi and this CNET report on T-Mobile cutting the cost of Wi-Fi access in Starbucks has me thinking that the business models for Wi-Fi access are being set in terms of synergy with existing business. Hotels can use Wi-Fi access as an asymmetric advantage over the competition, while Starbucks has dual use: to draw customers and as internal infrastructure. Instead of seeking out a new killer app, the trend appears to be to leverage current ones: email (the killer app of the Internet) and web access. There's still up-side as Wi-Fi adoption progresses, but it appears some patience will be required. [Smart Mobs]
11:12:09 AM
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Middle of the night wakeup.
I read comments from Jason Kottke and Martin Schwimmer yesterday that changed my thinking about Google. Also two reports on News.Com, one about a new ad program on Google, and another on a new patent that has been issued to them, apparently their first one. Then I read the excellent Google Village commentary (that site is so good).
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Google came out of academia, so did I, a generation before. Now I'm going back. What has become of the commercial world is a mockery of my dreams for it. It's going around in loops. Now what the world needs to replace Google is a Google like the one that we fell in love with, one that's working for the greater good, that points off site for no reason other than it's the right place to point to. [Scripting News]
11:08:49 AM
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WASHINGTON, January 29, 2003, - - Agriculture Secretary Ann M. Veneman today announced that USDA will expand efforts to bring farmers, rural residents and businesses greater access to improved telecommunication technology through the financing of more than $1.4 billion in loans and loan guarantees to rural telecommunications providers. In addition, Veneman announced that President Bush will propose spending $196 million for the program in its FY2004 budget. ...
11:02:13 AM
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Tim Bray's weblog.
Tim Bray | It's great to see Tim Bray's blog come online. Being Tim, he has of course turned it into an experiment in literate programming:
ongoing is a project simultaneously in writing and programming; I write the entries and in parallel fiddle with the software that publishes it. This is a pretty involving experience and there aren't that many of us in the world who get to enjoy it. [ongoing] True enough. I remember when I first learned about Don Knuth's literate programming suite -- Web, Tangle, and Weave. There might have been a dozen people on the planet who could think and write simultaneously in a programming language (Pascal) and a typesetting language (TeX). Happily, in the weblog era, scripting languages and HTML have enabled a lot more of us to play the game. Anyway...welcome to blogspace, Tim! ... [Jon's Radio]
10:21:10 AM
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Blog Network Pages.
For the Blog Network, I have set up two wiki pages:
Blogmaps -- a map room
Blogbuds -- a page to match experienced bloggers with people interested in starting one. Previously I had people interested in becoming a mentor or buddy contact me with their interests and requirements, and then privately matched them. Now I am asking people to be more open about who they are, how they can help or what help they need.
Both are works in progress, let me know what you think
[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
10:17:26 AM
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Blood, dirt, and nomograms - a particular history of graphs. [via robotwisdom] [rodcorp]
Isis, 1999, 90: 50 80.© 1999 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0021-1753/99/9001-0003$02.00
HISTORY OF SCIENCE SOCIETY DISTINGUISHED LECTURE
Blood, Dirt, and NomogramsA Particular History of Graphs
By Thomas L. Hankins*
ABSTRACT
L. J. Henderson, a Harvard physiologist and the first president of the History of Science Society, attempted to analyze mammalian blood solely as a physical-chemical substance. He found that the only way he could describe a chemical system as complicated as blood was by a diagram called a "nomogram." This lecture tells the history of Henderson's nomogram and of nomograms in general. It describes the origins of graphs in the eighteenth century, their development in nineteenth-century engineering practice, and their importance in the twentieth century for describing physical and chemical systems.
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Figure 1. L. J. Henderson's nomogram of the blood. (From Lawrence Joseph Henderson, Blood: A Study in General Physiology [New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1928], facing page 148.) |
Henderson's diagram is called a "nomogram." One reads it by stretching a thread or straightedge across the chart so that it intercepts the axes at the desired values of the independent variables. The dependent variables are read off where the thread crosses the other scales. (See Figure 2.) Fifty years earlier he would not have been able to draw it because nomograms did not yet exist. A hundred and fifty years earlier he would not have been able to draw any kind of graph at all, unless he had had the imagination to create graphs for the first time. Graphs have become such an important tool for arranging and analyzing data that we can hardly conceive of a science getting along without them, and yet the entire Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century took place without graphs. Recent writings on representation go so far as to claim that what is new or different about modern science is the nature of its representations.2 If this is true, then the appearance of graphs and their subsequent elaboration throughout the nineteenth century must constitute, or at least accompany, a profound change in the way that scientists go about their business. ...
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Figure 2. A nomogram of the multiplication table. To read this nomogram one stretches a thread or straightedge across the diagram so that it passes through the two numbers to be multiplied on the outside scales. The answer is at the point where the straightedge crosses the middle scale. |
While nomograms with parallel axes display more mathematical information than do graphs with Cartesian axes, they do not usually display "laws" so obviously. Part of the problem is the unfamiliarity of nomograms, but most of it comes from the fact that the data in nomograms is abstracted one step beyond that in a graph with Cartesian coordinates. D'Ocagne was so excited about Henderson's nomogram because it was more than just a calculating device and because it allowed one to show mathematical relations in complex systems containing more than three variables. The respiration cycle appeared on a Cartesian graph as a closed loop. (See Figure 20.) On Henderson's nomogram it appeared as a straight line seesawing back and forth between the limits of equilibrium for arterial and venous blood. (See Figure 1.) Thus, as a graphical representation of the blood, the nomogram had both advantages and disadvantages. It allowed Henderson to display all the mathematical relations between components of the blood on a single diagram, but it was more difficult to interpret.
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Figure 20. L. J. Henderson's "contour line chart." HbO2 is the combined oxygen expressed as a percent of saturation; r is the ratio of the hydrogen ion concentration in the serum to the hydrogen ion concentration in the cell following the Gibbs-Donan law. The curves give the total concentration of CO2. The closed loop is the respiration cycle between arterial and venous blood. (From Lawrence Joseph Henderson,Blood: A Study in General Physiology [New Haven, Conn.: Yale Univ. Press, 1928], page 157.) |
10:15:33 AM
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Time Warner Cable co-markets broadband wireless: SkyRiver Communications dropped me a line today to let me know that they had worked out what I think is a unique arrangement. Time Warner Cable will market SkyRiver's broadband wireless services in the San Diego County area market (300 square miles) that they serve alongside their cable and T-1 offerings. The quote from a Time Warner executive noted that especially for business services, this bypasses permits, backhoes, and other issues in bringing out service quickly. The press release says that customers could be up and running within three business days, one of wireless broadband's key advantages over even comparable wired high-speed service. (Lack of buried/pole infrastructure is another.) [80211b News]
9:46:10 AM
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T-Mobile bows to daily pricing, lower monthly fee: The timing is sensible. They now have a true national footprint, although substantively in Starbucks until closer to summer, and they should be focusing on increasing use of infrastructure even if it involves price reductions. I'm totally surprised and fascinated that they will offer a $6 daylong usage deal; it might encourage the kind of cybersquatting Starbucks was trying to discourage. [80211b News]
9:45:25 AM
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© Copyright
2003
Jon Schull.
Last update:
10/23/03; 7:41:14 PM.
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