All posts by Tom Marcinko

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Smarten your car with downloadable software

flickrFirefox prompts you for updates every 15 minutes. Why can’t your car be more like that?

…[A]n automotive software architecture [is being] developed by European researchers to keep vehicles up to date with the latest technology.

Developed over two and a half years by a consortium of research institutes, software companies, vehicle manufacturers and parts suppliers, the architecture represents a fundamental building block for an intelligent car able to reconfigure and update itself autonomously, as well as communicate with other devices, such as the driver’s mobile phone or PDA.

Much as the software on a personal computer connects to the internet to download and install updates, the DySCAS architecture allows automotive software to automatically download patches and improvements whenever the vehicle is in range of an accessible wireless hotspot – in the owner’s garage, for example, or even in a public parking lot. It could then download new maps for the navigation system, update the entertainment system to play new music formats, or even adjust engine timing based on more fuel efficient settings supplied by the manufacturer.

A little better fuel efficiency — well, a lot better — and we’ll be good to go. In a few years, the researchers say.

[Image: FlickrMobile by Leo Reynolds]

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Seeing around cells: The microscopic periscope

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periscopeBiologists almost never see the sides of cells. Traditional microscopes only show them the top. Now, though, Vanderbilt scientists have created what’s being called “the world’s smallest periscope”:

The researchers have dubbed their devices “mirrored pyramidal wells.” As the name implies, they consist of pyramidal-shaped cavities molded into silicon whose interior surfaces are coated with a reflective layer of gold or platinum. They are microscopic in dimension – about the width of a human hair – and can be made in a range of sizes to view different-sized objects. When a cell is placed in such a well and viewed with a regular optical microscope, the researcher can see several sides simultaneously.

This low-cost 3D microscopic technique could become standard practice, and become as common as the traditional slide. If only somebody could tell Stephen Boyd or Edmond O’Brien.

A sunflower pollen grain from five vantage points, PhyOrg.

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Could global warming drive us mental?

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globally-mentalLast year Australian doctors wrote up a case of a 17-year-old Melbourne boy who was convinced if he took a drink, people would die.

[The doctors call it] the first known instance of “climate change delusion” …

The psychiatrist who runs the inpatient unit where the boy was treated, Robert Salo, has now seen several more patients with psychosis or anxiety disorders focused on climate change, as well as children who are having nightmares about global-warming related natural disasters.

It would be surprising if global warming — or “climate change,” if you will — had no effect on people’s psyches.

After Hurricane Katrina, problems like severe mental illness rose, including depression, PTSD, anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and a variety of phobias.  These rates went from 6.1 percent to 11.3 percent, among those who lived in affected regions, a 2006 study by the Hurricane Katrina Community Advisory Group said.

The rates of mild-to-moderate mental illness also double, going from 9.7 percent to 19.9 percent.

Denial, and Gore derangement syndrome, may be other symptoms.

[Let It Snow by Bah Humbug]

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Catholic Church bringing back indulgences

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indulge-me

Full disclosure: I was raised Catholic. So maybe I could use one of these.  And when I told like-backgrounded friends and relatives about this New York Times story, the reaction was uniform: “You’re kidding.” No:

In recent months, dioceses around the world have been offering Catholics a spiritual benefit that fell out of favor decades ago — the indulgence, a sort of amnesty from punishment in the afterlife — and reminding them of the church’s clout in mitigating the wages of sin.

The fact that many Catholics under 50 have never sought one, and never heard of indulgences except in high school European history (Martin Luther denounced the selling of them in 1517 while igniting the Protestant Reformation), simply makes their reintroduction more urgent among church leaders bent on restoring fading traditions of penance in what they see as a self-satisfied world.

Pope John Paul II liked the idea of bringing them back, and Pope Benedict is even more enthusiastic. What indulgences are:

According to church teaching, even after sinners are absolved in the confessional and say their Our Fathers or Hail Marys as penance, they still face punishment after death, in Purgatory, before they can enter heaven. In exchange for certain prayers, devotions or pilgrimages in special years, a Catholic can receive an indulgence, which reduces or erases that punishment instantly, with no formal ceremony or sacrament.

There are partial indulgences, which reduce purgatorial time by a certain number of days or years, and plenary indulgences, which eliminate all of it, until another sin is committed. You can get one for yourself, or for someone who is dead. You cannot buy one — the church outlawed the sale of indulgences in 1567 — but charitable contributions, combined with other acts, can help you earn one. There is a limit of one plenary indulgence per sinner per day.

It has no currency in the bad place.

Confession is a prerequisite. Dammit. (Oops.)

[Plenary indulgence. Inscription on the left transept of the Basilica of St. John Lateran (Rome): Wikimedia Commons]

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Geneticists scolded for giving genes silly names

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grouchoSome fruit-fly genes have names like these:

Groucho Marx: A fruit fly that produces an excess of facial bristles.

Cheap Date: A fruit fly that expresses high sensitivity to alcohol.

Ken and Barbie: Fruit flies that fail to develop external genitalia.

I’m Not Dead Yet: INDY for short, these are fruit flies who live longer than usual. [NPR explains where this came from, like you don’t know if you’re reading this blog]

Harmless enough, you’d think, but:

Since it’s increasingly likely some fruit fly genes will show up in humans, Dr. [Murray] Feingold [a Massachusetts clinician who treats people with genetic diseases] warns it will not be possible for doctors to hide a scientific name like “I’m Not Dead Yet.”…

And for a doctor, these names become embarrassing “when that gene becomes responsible for some kind of medical problem and I have to tell that patient, ‘Well, I’m sorry things don’t look so good because you have [the] I’m Not Dead Yet gene.'”

So it’s not just PC run amok, but a curious case study in the democratization of information. Your take?

[The immortal Julius Marx: Wikimedia Commons]