Personal Interactions and the Internet
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Does the Internet reduce personal face-to-face interactions? With e-mail and social networking sites like Facebook, that seems a logical possibility. When you can interact with strangers and form new friendships across vast distances, why take the trouble to travel all the way to meet somebody?
Studies seem to indicate that this is not quite the case. For example, a survey of Facebook networkers indicated that the use of Facebook to meet previously unknown people was low. Most of the genuine friendships on Facebook were between people who were already connected offline.
It might be an old connection like being in the same class long ago, or a recent connection established through a meeting at a party. Facebook only supplemented the offline connections.
There is also the significant fact that Facebook itself was born out of collaboration between people in close proximity. The collaboration between Mark Zuckerbeg and his roommate Dustin Moskovitz and their friend Eduardo Saverin was important during the early development phase of Facebook. And another connection formed later, with Sean Parker of Napster, helped Zuckerberg secure large scale financing for the site.
Zuckerberg’s move to Silicon Valley points to another curious fact. Despite the remote connections made possible by Internet, it was places like Silicon Valley and Bangalore that have come to be associated with particular industries. What this indicates is that when smart people gather together allowing face-to-face interactions, it enables each to learn from others, and produce great results.
Read the piece at New York Times blog.
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Educating the Child and Developmental Science
Monday, October 11th, 2010
Developmental science studies how various capabilities develop. Its findings can help teach mathematics, reading skills and more to children. However, teachers are not always trained in developmental science with the result that they are unaware of current findings that could help them teach better. Instead, outdated theories are used to teach children.
Focus is mostly on the subject and lesson plans for mathematics, science and literacy. The capability to learn actually depends on the child’s development as well as way these are taught.
Child development during elementary school is quite dramatic. They learn to do things they do not really want to do, such as doing what the teacher says rather than what they like. They also learn to represent physical things with words and to commit things to memory and reinforce the memory. All the learning tasks are facilitated by the right kind of relationships with adults.
A teacher who is aware of these developmental dimensions can observe the child and help the person learn better by adapting the approach ever so slightly as needed. Another teacher who is unaware of these niceties might try to use a “brute” approach to make the child learn things including how to behave. Children differ in their development depending on such factors as their family background and effective teachers should be able to help the developmental process itself in addition to teaching the subjects.
The resource Using Developmental Science … discusses these topics in some detail.
Tags: child development, cognitive science, education, teaching effectiveness
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Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and Information Technology
Saturday, October 9th, 2010
The United Nations has set eight anti-poverty goals to be achieved by 2015. The goals are: End poverty and hunger, Universalize Education, Achieve gender equality, Improve child health, Improve maternal health, Combat HIV/AIDS effectively, Move towards environmentally sustainable practices and Improve global partnerships.
Information technology has a significant role in achieving all the MDGs. In a recent message to the Plenipotentiary Conference of the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU), UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon stressed this point. “Experience has shown that greater access to broadband technologies has meant faster progress towards all the MDGs,” Mr. Ban said.
“The Internet drives trade, commerce and even education. Telemedicine is improving health care. Earth-monitoring satellites are being used to address climate change issues. And green technologies are promoting cleaner cities.
“Last month the Broadband Commission for Digital Development – a distinguished group of government officials, businesspeople and content developers, brought together under the leadership of ITU and UNESCO [UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization] – offered a blueprint, and I look forward to working with all partners in bringing it to life,” the Secretary-General said.
The ITU has been connecting the world from the days of “telegraph to radio, television, satellite communication and the Internet.”
Read the news at the UN News Centre Web page.
Tags: broadband connectivity, information technology, millennium development goals
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Promoting Nanotechnology in the UK
Friday, October 1st, 2010
The Nanotechnology Knowledge Transfer Network – nanoKTN – is a great resource for those engaged in micro and nanotechnology (MNT) field. It is an initiative of UK’s Technology Strategy Board to promote nanotechnology industry in the UK by making resources available to businesses working with the technology. The tagline at their website states their goal as “Accelerating innovation in nanoscale technologies.”
NanoKTN seeks to achieve the goal by providing a “focused vehicle for the rapid transfer of high-quality information on technologies, markets, funding and partnering opportunities.”
Persons working with MNT can join the network and enjoy benefits such as attending nanoKTN events, networking opportunities, building sustainable supply chains, free directory of businesses engaged in the industry and the numerous information resources at the nanoKTN website, with some of the resources available only to members. NanoKTN also functions as brokers to meet members’ technology, product or service requirements; publicizes information about facilities available; and promotes R&D programs and access to research funding sources among other activities.
Upcoming events include Nanotechnology and the Coatings Industry scheduled for October 2010 and High Performance Thin-Film Coatings – Ensuring Nanoscale Manufacturing Integrity during November.
Tags: business, nanotech resources, nanotechnology
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The Case against and for Genetically Modified (GM) Crops
Sunday, September 26th, 2010
GM crops is one of the most fiercely opposed developments in the modern world. Opponents say that GM crops:
* Can pose dangers to the life network with consequent harm to environment and human life
* Might cause direct harm to environment through more toxic pesticides and weed killers, particularly when farmers seek to maximize yields for commercial profits
* Might result in direct harm to human and non-human consumers of the modified crops, as this aspect has not been sufficiently investigated
* Might destroy biodiversity through cross pollination by wind-borne pollens of GM crops and otherwise, resulting in loss of varieties that have invaluable traits
Proponents of GM crops point out that with existing crop varieties, it is simply impossible to meet the needs of a growing population, particularly when under-developed countries develop and begin to consume more food. Genetic modification can:
* Increase crop yields from areas that are already cultivated
* Make it possible to develop crop varieties that can be cultivated in presently hostile environments
* Eliminate the need to convert virgin forests into farms, and lead to environmental damage
The arguments are not yet settled one way or other. In the meanwhile, food availability for the world’s hungry continues to be an unsolved issue.
Tags: biotechnology, food availability, genetic modification, hunger
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Success against H1N1 Virus?
Friday, September 3rd, 2010
AVI BioPharma focuses on “the discovery and development of novel RNA-based therapeutics for rare and infectious diseases, as well as other select disease targets.” The company reports that with its proprietary technologies, it is able “to directly target both messenger RNA (mRNA) and precursor messenger RNA (pre-mRNA) to either down-regulate (inhibit) or up-regulate (promote) the expression of targeted genes or proteins.”
Recently the company announced positive results for AVI-7100 against human pandemic H1N1 influenza virus. According to the announcement, preclinical studies demonstrated statistically significant reductions in average viral titer for AVI-7100 against a fully virulent pandemic H1N1 virus versus saline and Tamiflu(R) controls.
The studies used AVI’s proprietary PMOplus(TM) chemistry, and were supported by the Transformational Medical Technologies program (TMT) of the U.S. Department of Defense to identify RNA-based drug candidates against pandemic H1N1 virus. The report mentions that “the studies were undertaken as part of a rapid response exercise demonstrating TMT’s ability, in partnership with AVI, to rapidly respond to a real-world emerging viral threat.”
According to the company spokesperson, the PMO Plus(R) and other advanced proprietary chemistries already have found success in developing anti-infective therapeutic candidates. As a result, TMT is funding “an accelerated IND enabling program and Phase 1 study, as well as expanded preclinical evaluation that explores AVI-7100’s potential as a broad spectrum influenza therapeutic.”
Read the news release at MarketWatch.
Tags: biopharmaceuticals, biotechnology, H1N1 virus, RNA-based therapy
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Nanotechnology Opens new Career and Investment Opportunities
Thursday, September 2nd, 2010
Nanotechnology works with molecular structures of less than 100 nanometers (one nanometer is one-billionth of a meter). It can modify the molecular structures of materials, resulting in changed properties, and even create new materials. We can thus produce self-cleaning surfaces, faster electronic microprocessors, superior water-filtration systems and more.
But nanotechnology is not a science by itself unlike, say physics, biology or chemistry. Instead, it can work in all these fields with the essential requirement being the ability to work at nanoscale. Working at nanoscale involves advanced and high-precision equipment, such as scanning probe microscopes with probes that can work with materials invisible to the naked eye.
Nanotechnology research needs researchers with a sound basic training in sciences, engineering and medicine, and with the additional skill to work at nanoscale. Nanotechnology is also an interdisciplinary field combining the disciplines of physics, chemistry and biology. Nanotechnology courses will thus have to ensure that trainees have the needed fundamental training in one of the sciences.
Considering the potential of nanotechnology to create products tailored to our expectations, it is a huge investment area. Investors are interested in tangible products and are more likely to be interested in nano-manufacturing than just nano-science as such.
Read about the job potential of nanotechnology at Atlanta Post.
Tags: education, nanotech applications, nanotechnology, scanning probe microscope
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What does the fast Development in IT Mean for Career Seekers?
Wednesday, September 1st, 2010
Information Technology (IT) is one industry that is seeing the fastest changes and developments. An example is graphic chips. According to Alain Chesnais, president of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), capacity of these chips are likely to increase thousand fold over a five year period. This means, for example, that game platforms will be constantly getting obsolete as new ones appear in the market.
Changes occur not only from such technological developments but also because of several other factors such as the impact of Web use, increasing use of mobile computing, consumerization and virtualization. The result of all these developments will be that IT organizations will be functioning in a very different way ten years from now.
According to Thomas Druby, an IT executive and former CIO at a large insurer, incidental operations such as help desks, network and desktop support, LANs and telecom will be outsourced while companies will focus on the core niches that add business value.
Adding business value will involve improving the effectiveness of business processes, better business analytics and reporting, and improved vendor relationships. Security is another core area that needs increasing attention in view of the variety of new threats that are constantly appearing.
Read how the emerging business scenario affects the career landscape in this Reuters Article.
Tags: business impact, career prospects, information technology, pace of change
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Responding to Biological Threats, Natural and Manmade
Tuesday, August 31st, 2010
As the spread of H1N1 and AIDS highlighted, pandemic diseases can cause serious disruption to society and the lives of its members. In addition to these natural threats, a new threat lurks in the background, biological terrorism where disgruntled groups are able to deliberately spread biological agents that cause serious diseases. Considering these threats, the Department of Human and Health Services (HHS) of USA released a review on August 19 titled Public Health Emergency Medical Countermeasure Enterprise Review: Transforming the Enterprise to Meet Long Range National Needs.
The review looks at the federal government’s system to produce medications, vaccines, equipment and supplies needed for a health emergency, known as medical countermeasures. The review examines the current scenario involved in research, development and FDA approval of medications, vaccines, medical equipment and supplies for a health emergency. The review was triggered by the challenges posed by the recent H1N1 pandemic.
Releasing the document, HHS Secretary suggested that “with a strong base of discovery, a clear regulatory pathway, and agile manufacturing, we will be able to respond faster and more effectively to public health threats.”
According to the review, HHS proposes significant investments to help FDA scientists find faster ways to analyze promising new discoveries and to give innovators a clear regulatory pathway to bring their products to market.
Read the report at FierceBiotech.
Tags: biological warfare, biotechnology, medical countermeasures, pandemics, regulatory approval
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Information Technology for Cardiovascular Diseases
Sunday, August 29th, 2010
A news release mentions about the launch of a new product jointly by Beijing Goodwill Information and Technology Co., Ltd. that provides electronic cardiogram systems in China and IBM. The product is an all-in-one electronic cardiogram management system introduced for the first time in China. The system provides real-time insight for doctors treating patients with cardiovascular conditions.
WHO estimates that heart disease, stroke, and diabetes have cost China US$558 billion in national income. The new system helps improve the management of ECG processes. Physicians will be able to deliver ECG tests and diagnoses by tapping into a databank of centralized ECG information. The centralized databank can be accessed from anywhere, even from mobile devices.
The integration of patient data as exemplified above enables doctors, patients and insurers to share information seamlessly. Such a connected system will result in fewer mistakes, and better prediction and prevention of diseases. A substantial improvement in healthcare is the consequence.
The new system includes Beijing Goodwill’s Cardiogram suite of professional applications and medical devices – such as holter systems, treadmill stress machines and patient monitors. Using IBM analytics and DB2 database software as the backbone, Beijing Goodwill was able to deliver an all-in-one solution for hospitals.
Read the news release at PR Newswire.
Tags: cardiovascular disease treatment, electronic healthcare, information technology
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