The Toothed Wheel

FDA Approves HPV Vaccine: Science and Health Victorious

2006-06-09T05:50:00.000-04:00

"Fortunately, we can now include the worst types of HPV and most cervical cancer in the list of diseases that no-one need suffer or die from ever again," said Alex Azar, Deputy US Health and Human Services Secretary.
NYT Article, BBC Article

"The vaccine, called Gardisil and developed by Merck & Co., was approved for girls and women ages 9 and 26. It is most useful if given to younger girls, because the vaccine is ineffective once the virus -- which is very common among sexually active people -- is already present."
Washington Post

1% of Guidant Pacemakers Defective

2006-06-06T23:40:00.000-04:00

A failure rate of 1% for a PACEMAKER! We wouldn't let our TVs fail at this rate, much less our automobiles! And it costs as much as a luxury sedan. I see two causes for Guidant being able to get away with this for as long as they did: 1. Insurance covers the cost, so patients don't know (and don't much care) how much the unit costs. 2. A defective unit fails to prevent something (a heart attack) from happening, and we humans don't pay much attention to such secondary activity levels. All the same, if 1 in 100 toasters caught fire, they'd be recalled. Disgusting.

NY Times
"Guidant engineers projected in one analysis that 1 out of every 100 Contak Renewals could short-circuit, a failure rate considered high by experts. Guidant also suspected by late 2004 that the Renewal models would become increasingly prone to failure as the devices aged, documents indicate.

Other Guidant devices did not have the same problem, including later versions of the Renewal.

At least seven patients are known to have died in episodes in which Guidant defibrillators failed to work because of the electrical defect, five involving Contak Renewals. But many experts believe that the number is probably higher because an implanted heart device is rarely examined after a patient's death to determine if it was working properly.

A defibrillator is a life-saving device intended to sense and electrically disrupt potentially fatal heart rhythms. The Contak Renewal combines a pacemaker and a defibrillator, a type of unit that is often referred to as a cardiac resynchronization therapy device, or CRT-D. Such units cost about $35,000 each."

Airbag Chemistry

2006-06-04T03:26:00.000-04:00

It turns out that the NaN3 (Sodium Azide) used in automobile airbags is super nasty toxic (as if wildly explosive wasn't bad enough) -- azides apparently bind with cytochrome c oxidase (the enzyme that oxidizes the iron in hemoglobin to utilize the dissolved O2) like CO does, irreversably. Don't wash it down the sink, either.

"Sodium azide (NaN3) is a highly toxic chemical that exists as an odorless white solid. Its solution in water is slowly hydrolyzed into a very toxic gas, hydrogen azide (HN3), which also forms when NaN3 reacts with a strong acid. It may react with heavy metal ions such as copper, silver or lead to form metal azides which are very unstable, easily synthesized, and highly explosive. Care should be taken when disposing of this material down the sink as it may react with the plumbing material." - Wikipedia

Teaching Science in the Lab Leads to Greater Comprehension, Enthusiasm

2006-05-27T11:02:00.000-04:00

NYT Article about very successful University of Maryland/ Baltimore County Science Program

Stuff made from real materials not as good as theory predicts

2006-05-24T09:23:00.000-04:00

It's nice to see that Italian physicists still work the surface between ideas and reality, unlike some of our American physicist-evangelists. When you make nanotubes, every once in a while an atom in the crystal structure will be missing, or out of place. That lowers the tensile strength of the material by 70% from the theoretical maximum, taking it below the threshold for making "space elevators." Nicola Pugno of Turin Polytechnic also points out, rightly, that micrometeorite hits and oxygen erosion of the material will cause enough damage to weaken the material to similar levels, even if the crystal structure is initally perfect (impossible, anyway.)

Here's the deal. NO MATERIAL EVER WORKS AT ITS THEORETICAL MAXIMUM! Feel free to apply this idea to everything from "space elevators" to "star wars defense" systems. Please stop throwing our taxpayer money at people who haven't thought their ideas all the way through to the reality of the materials. How about putting some of that money into education, so people can learn to think things through?

Inevitable defects in nanotubes render space elevator impossible.

Fizeau

HPV Vaccine Update

2006-05-22T21:52:00.000-04:00

I spoke with the colorectal surgeon again; She recommends strongly that both girls and boys be vaccinated when they are 13 years old. Apparently 40% of girls get condyloma (HPV infection) on their FIRST sexual experience. Some cancers are preventable. Make it so.

See "FDA Panel Approves HPV Vaccine" post, 19 May, below.

Anti-intellectuals in intellectual positions

2006-05-22T19:27:00.000-04:00

Bush aide, 26 year old college dropout, to attend Harvard Business School.

What kind of fetish does this administration have for drop outs? Nothing like a little anti-intellectualist cronyism to put chocks under the wheels of government.

NASA appointee did not graduate from Texas A&M. (The Scientific Activist)

Fizeau

Tech News, May 20

2006-05-20T12:25:00.000-04:00

Nanotubes potentially as toxic to the lungs as Silica, Asbestos.
Asbestos is my analysis. Think about it; long skinny fibers of very hard material, small enough to aerosolize. Probably worse, actually, because they are made of carbon, like we are. Probably highly mobile in the body, so can damage other organs than the lungs. (See the article for brain damage to bass from 1ppm buckyball concentration.)

Congress takes up bad patent decisions by proposing to pay for voluntary training for judges in patent law.

Net Neutrality Update

2006-05-19T22:52:00.000-04:00

News.com Summary of Pending Legislative Action
I'll post my analysis in a bit. Suffice to say that Senators are addressing Net Neutrality in what look like positive legislative moves. Nice.

Methanol Fuel Cells for Consumer Electronics

2006-05-19T22:45:00.000-04:00

Finally, it looks as though we might actually see methanol fuel cells to power our consumer electronics. This is an awesome development, because fuel cells are much less toxic than batteries (when dropped in the trash like almost all batteries are) and because fuel chemistry has a much higher energy density than electrochemistry. The MTI guys are claiming 2 to 10 times the "battery" life. Depending on the packaging, it is possible to simply refuel the cell. No more recharging your cell phone or iPod.

MTI Microfuelcells
Article in Bussinessweek

Fizeau

FDA panel approves HPV vaccine

2006-05-19T20:20:00.000-04:00

Right-wing anti-health anti-sex nuts notwithstanding, a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee voted 13 to 0 to approve a vaccine, Gardasil, that protects against four types of Human Papilloma Virus. Two of these cause 70% of all cervical cancer, and the other two cause 90% of all genital warts.

The vaccine is set to be approved for girls and women aged 9 to 26, and will work best for those who have not been previously exposed. Although the health risks are lower for boys and men, vaccinating them is also important, for their health as well as to check the spread of the virus, according to a colorectal surgeon I interviewed about this disease.

NYTimes article
AP Article

Fizeau

The Commercial Threat to Network Neutrality

2006-05-17T21:23:00.000-04:00

Network companies would like to control what information flows over their wires. As of now, the telecommunications companies are governed by "common carrier" legislation, as it applies to railroads and telecommunications networks.

If internet network carrying companies could charge a fee proportional to network throughput speed, then the giant companies could push their products and information in front of information and services provided by the individual or small business. This sort of fee structure would turn the internet into a highway for the rich. More socialism for the rich and free enterprise for the poor. Very regressive.

There's an important distinction between upload (content provider) speed and download (end user) speed. Certainly, it makes sense for internet service companies to charge more for higher download speeds; they do that now, and customers like me pay for the technology, because we can afford it and the extra speed is worth it for us. For a premium fee, Verizon provides me with high speed access to the contents of the internet. They have an incentive to innovate because there are customers ready to pay for speedy access. That's how DSL happened in the first place. Pure, profit motivated, innovation. Somebody figured out how to cram high speed data transmission down the twisted pair copper wires that run into everybody's houses (technologically much more difficult than using the coaxial cable that cable TV companies use.) That copper wire was originally laid for telephone audio frequencies (100 to 10,000 Hz), and they figured out how to send signals at 100 times that rate (1,000,000 Hz). That's extraordinary! And profitable. And the service they provide gives me speedy access to anything out there.

Currently, content providers also pay for upload speed. If I make a web page and host it on my computer, my upload speed is limited by the speed of my connection. So if my page gets super popular for some reason, lots of people will be downloading my stuff, which my computer will have to upload, and the operation will be slower for the individual because of the group demand. (There are ways to mitigate this problem, notably BitTorrent, but that's another topic.) So if I want to get my content out there rapidly to many people, I need to pay for a faster connection (more "bandwidth").

So Internet Service Providers have incentives to come up with faster download rates (connection service fees from end user customers) and incentives to come up with faster upload rates (connection service fees from content providers.) What they are proposing is a toll system for packet traffic passing *through* their systems. The problem with a toll system for traffic is that it provides counterincentive to innovation. Imagine the proposed center toll lanes for the Beltway. In order to make money on the toll lanes, the Departments of Transportation need to create incentives for people to use the toll lanes. So it is in the Departments' best financial interest to IMPEDE traffic on the "free" lanes. Never mind that taxpayers built the "free" lanes in the first place. If telecommunications companies can charge different rates for traffic passing through their systems depending upon the content or provider of that traffic, there is noincentive to innovate: 1. The subset of providers who will pay the fees is smaller than the total population of providers. Increasing speed for an elite is not technologically challenging. (Motorcades can move rapidly, regardless of traffic.) No innovation is required to speed up some packets when you can slow others down to do so. 2. Competition is stifled by selective content transmission control, so larger companies with patented technology can sit on new ideas to discourage their adoption. It is cheaper not to innovate if you don't have to.

The Internet Service Providers already provide better service to customers who pay more, at their connection. There is plenty of incentive to innovate at the connection. And there is plenty of money to be made in carrying network traffic -- more traffic means more money. Charging on a "fee for throughput" system, mid-network, puts the network carriers in control of all point-to-point commerce on the system, which is a disaster for commerce -- this is exactly why the "common carrier" regulations were put in place on the railroads and telecommunications systems.

The commercial disaster of a "fee for throughput" system is particularly strong for the internet, where traffic volume is the measure of popularity, and popularity is the measure of success. If a network carrier can slow traffic from a particular provider, that provider's traffic volume will neccessarily fall, and their status in search engines will diminish. It is not hard to imagine killing a company by gradually reducing the rate at which their packets are transmitted. The opposite is also true. A company that creates favor with the network carrier, whether by fees or influence, will see its traffic speed rise as the carrier elevates its packets to "elite" status. Higher speed traffic will reach users more quickly, so more users will access the contents. The more popular the site, the higher its status in the search engines. A relatively small advantage (enough money to pay the "premium traffic rate") translates into a massive advantage through the positive feedback of web traffic.

Normally, in a meritocratic free market, ideas are popular if they are valuable. With the web in its current "common carrier" state, traffic volume and popularity are a good measure of value to the consumer. If network carriers can charge "premium traffic rates," then traffic volume (and therefore popularity) are linked to the value the carrier, not the consumer, places on the information, which disrupts the free market. Additionallly and importantly, something of value to me, and to as few as only one other person, can pass through the system as rapidly as something of value to many people. This is the beauty of the web. In this freely interactive, person to person system, ideas can be exchanged and evolve rapidly, simply because of the value individuals place on those ideas. I can think of nothing so deadly to those exchanges and evolutions of ideas as a third party imposing its notion of the worth on the ideas being exchanged. Therefore, abandoning the "common carrier" status of the web runs entirely counter to innovation.

This issue is current; I recommend you write your Senators and Congresspersons. LINK

Fizeau

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Nicholas from The Place of Dead Roads helped with the upload/download distinction, and Rocketboom helped identify the specific value of person-to-person idea exchange. (Link to RocketBoom episode)