MIracles and wonders: lab in a shoebox

Checking to see if she has a brain.

A scientific instrument featured on CSI and CSI: Miami for instant fingerprint analysis is forging another life in real-world medicine, helping during brain surgery and ensuring that cancer patients get effective doses of chemotherapy.

The instrument, called a "desorption electrospray ionization" mass spectrometer, or DESI, is about the size of a shoebox. Students have  carried it into a grocery store and held it close to fruits and vegetables to detect pesticides and microorganisms. 

It has also been used to identify biomarkers for prostate cancer and to detect melamine, a potentially toxic substance that showed up in infant formulas in China in 2008. In addition, DESI can detect explosives on luggage.

Now scientists want to  test the instrument in the operating room during brain cancer surgery, comparing it with traditional analysis of tissue samples by pathologists.

DESI can analyze tissue samples and help determine the type of brain cancer, the stage and the concentration of tumor cells. It also can help surgeons identify the margins of the tumor to assure that they remove as much of the tumor as possible.

 Innovations in medicine like this are happening all the time, and we are hardly aware of them.

I wonder if this will get noticed

Looking in my window right now.

Do you ever wonder if the things you write online or say on the phone are being picked up by the supercomputers of some super-secret agency, which then sends serious looking dudes in black outfits and night vision goggles out to your house to peer in your windows?

I do.

Reviewing a book about privacy, Ronald Bailey writes in The Wall Street Journal:

It's worth recalling the Pentagon's attempt to deploy Total Information Awareness, in which a gigantic data-mining enterprise would troll through commercial and government databases to generate data profiles of any American based on his credit-card purchases, travel itineraries, telephone records, email, medical histories and financial information.

Public outrage supposedly stopped the program, yet it turns out that the National Security Agency is building a huge data center in Utah that may well realize the earlier program's surveillance goals. Even now, according to a 2010 article in the Washington Post, "every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications." 

News reports in July revealed that, in the past year alone, cellphone carriers responded to 1.3 million demands from law enforcement for subscriber records, including text messages and caller locations. Mr. Keizer asserts, rightly, that "the ultimate check on government as a whole is its inability to know everything about those it governs." State ignorance is its citizenry's bliss.

I'd just like to say to the smarty pants NSA that if you can find my keys I'd appreciate it.

It's getting real spooky out there

Boo! I see you!

Too many people want to know what I'm doing.

The Army is testing its $517 million spy blimp in the skies over the New Jersey military base where the German airship Hindenburg crashed in 1937.

Bosses who want help gauging employees' morale can now turn to Microsoft's workplace social network, Yammer. A new feature offers managers a kind of emotional surveillance system, showing which feelings workers are expressing in messages posted to a company's Yammer network, which has similarities to both Facebook and Twitter.

A new app released by President Obama’s campaign team has raised privacy fears. The free Obama for America app – which can be downloaded for the iPhone and Android – gives users the first name, last initial, gender and addresses of registered Democrats. “Sign up to canvass—then get started right away with a list of voters in your neighborhood. Access scripts and enter feedback and responses in real time as you go,” the campaign states on its website.

When Google imagines the future of Web search, it sees a search engine that understands human meaning and not just words, that can have a spoken conversation with computer users and that gives users results not just from the Web but also from their personal lives.

I see you, too.

A dramatic new way to track criminals and potential terrorists was unveiled Wednesday by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and NYPD Commissioner Ray Kelly. It melds cameras, computers and data bases capable of nabbing bad guys before they even know they’re under suspicion. The system uses 3,000 cameras positioned in Lower Manhattan south of Canal Street, river to river, and between 30th and 60th streets, river to river. It links up to license plate readers, 911 calls and other NYPD data records.

Researchers at University College of London have applied principles of radar used in defense and designed a detector using home based Wi-Fi routers to spy on people across walls. Using the principles behind the Doppler effect they have built a prototype unit that uses Wi-Fi signals and recognizes frequency changes to detect moving objects.

MIracles and wonders: swallow this, touch that

Take two and call me in the morning.

I don't think we fully appreciate that we're in the midst of a revolution in medicine.

The US Food and Drug Administration has approved a grain-sized ingestible digital sensor that can be swallowed in a pill to track health data from inside the body. The idea is that the data can be used not only by patients themselves, but also by caregivers and doctors to individualize their care. The signal that it sends from the stomach travels through the patient's body to a patch worn on the skin. The patch contains technology that senses the signal and records the exact time the ingestible sensor was swallowed.

It is clear that all kinds of products and services  would be available online if we had the bandwidth. Programs that involve massive transfers of data or frequent two-way video communications would be two obvious examples. What’s interesting is how many of these new products and services involve healthcare: Jeff Pfaff of Overland Park, Kan., says he hopes to use the service to “push the limits” of a health-monitoring system he’s building. It would enable at-home patients to teleconference with doctors and family members via a camera hooked up to a TV set and a remote control.

European researchers say they have developed the world's first real-sized, five-fingered robotic hand able to grasp and manipulate objects with human-like dexterity. The team  built a hand using strings that are twisted by small, high-speed motors in five fingers, each with three segments. The device was able to handle a delicate Easter egg and lift a five kilogram load. Light sensors were attached to the hand, making it possible to calculate the force required for the fingers to grasp an object without squashing it or losing its grip.

The story of your health in a black box

Yikes! That hurts!

For years I thought that one answer to our broken healthcare system was electronic health records. I still think so, but with a lot of caveats.

The federal government is pushing hard for their adoption. Physicians, driven by the promise of better care, cost savings and nearly $23 billion in new federal incentive payments, are racing to turn their scribbled medical records into digital files, Smart Money reports.

Thirty-five percent of hospitals now use such systems, more than double the share two years ago, according to U.S. government figures. But for all the hype about electronic records, little attention has been paid to what some say is a serious weak spot: When those sensitive bits and bytes fall into the wrong hands, it's often patients who feel the pain.

Here's the trouble.

Since 2009, there have been more than 420 security breaches involving the records of some 19 million patients, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights. And such breaches are on the rise. A December 2011 report by the Ponemon Institute, a security-research firm, found that the frequency of data losses and thefts among health care organizations increased 32 percent over the previous year.

This is one reason I'm a skeptic about a national healthcare system. Already too many computer systems are familiar with my body.

A doctor in your hand

Is there a doctor in the House?

Health-related apps for smart phones are coming of age. Here are some of the latest.

• One of the latest device-and-app creations to pass muster with the federal Food and Drug Administration is iBGStar, a blood glucose meter that attaches to iPhones or iPads for diabetes monitoring. It's a product of Bridgewater, N.J.-based Sanofi, and sells at Apple retail stores and Walgreens drugstores for about $100 and $75, respectively.

• Heart-EKG uses the iPhone's microphone or camera flash to calculate users' average number of heartbeats per minute or to take their pulse, after placing the phone over an artery, and activating the app. Dallas-based Surich Technologies says the app is handy for aerobic workouts, but isn't intended as a lifesaving monitoring device. It's downloadable from iTunes, for $2.99.

• The iHealth Wireless Blood Pressure Wrist Monitor, expected on the market in September, measures users' blood pressure directly from their iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch. Its app records systolic/diastolic numbers, heart rate and pulse wave, and can chart blood pressure readings, says Karyn Anderson, spokeswoman for Mountain View, Calif.-based iHealth Lab.

• AliveCor Heart Monitor has developed an electrode-studded cellphone case that turns the iPhone 4 into an electrocardiogram device that users hold in their hands or place on their chests to detect irregular heart rhythms. Combined with the app, the monitor can analyze, transmit and store an ECG reading for diagnosis. The heart monitor has been through several clinical trials, said physician David Albert, the device's inventor and co-founder of San Francisco-based AliveCor. He hopes to introduce it for veterinarians' use for dogs, cats and horses later this summer. The device doesn't yet have FDA approval.

• A cellphone-based E. coli sensor for water and other fluids is under development by a University of California-Los Angeles research team. Commercial manufacture of the system, which uses a lightweight attachment to the phone's camera, could be only two years away, said team leader Aydogan Ozcan, a UCLA associate professor for electrical engineering.

• San Francisco-based CellScope's otoscope attaches to the phone's camera lens and will enable parents to photograph their child's eardrum, and e-mail the images to medical professionals checking for an ear infection. CEO Erik Douglas says he hopes to get this to market in about a year.

Everyone's doing it

Social technologies have been adopted at a faster rate than any other media technology, according to the McKinsey Global Institute.

While it took commercial television 13 years to reach 50 million households and Internet service providers three years to sign their 50 millionth subscriber, it took Facebook just a year to hit 50 million users. It took Twitter nine months.

In May 2012, Facebook logged its 900 millionth user. It is estimated that 80 percent of the world’s online population use social networks on a regular basis. In the United States, the share of total online time spent on social networking platforms more than doubled from January 2008 to January 2011, from 7 percent to 15 percent. Moreover, social technologies are replacing other Web applications and uses; use of e‑mail and instant messaging are off sharply in the past few years.

Today, more than 1.5 billion people around the globe have an account on a social networking site, and almost one in five online hours is spent on social networks— increasingly via mobile devices.

 Most of those folks are reading this blog. No wait, that's not true. I just made it up.

Are you a two-screener?

Early adopters.

My first hint of this was watching my son watch TV. He is arrayed on the couch in a position that might be described as a half-hearted attempt at a headstand. He's watching TV, doing something with his iPad, and texting friends on his phone.

If he had more hands he'd no doubt be working some other device.

This is what the information technology giant Tata Consultancy Services calls "the second screen" -- some other device in use while you're in front of the TV. Increasingly TV producers are trying to take advantage of this.

Tweeting while watching TV began this convergence once companies realized that people continued to use smartphones even while doing other things. This also involved going to other internet channels like YouTube to continue the experience they had on the first screen – the TV.

Networks such as The Discovery Channel are engaging in conversations with viewers and building a growing network of fans. With its vast assortment of networks, including the Animal Channel, the company manages 70 Facebook fan pages with 40-million fans and 20 Twitter accounts with 2.4 million followers. 

Wow. I thought they just showed films of cute deer eating leaves. Every now and then when I turn on an NCIS rerun to take my nap I see some sort of invitation inviting me to go online for something or other. Why would I do that?

The apps are out there, of course.

Some of the most popular apps include Miso and GetGlue. These sites provide an app that allows you to select the show of your choice and join the conversation with others in your network even if the show is not being aired currently. Both apps can be linked to your Facebook or Twitter community, allowing you the opportunity to interact with others who share a similar interest.

If I knew how to work my smart phone I might try it. Get this:

ABC was one of the first to try out the Second Screen with this experiment on its property My Generation, in 2010. This iPad app creates a seamless, two-screen, interactive television experience by bridging a cable / satellite connection and an iPad, by measuring analog sound waves using the iPad’s microphone. It looks for certain contours in the audio signal so that it knows when to display a particular poll or other item linking up with a precise moment in the show. This can also trigger ads or links on the Second Screen app, where an ad will be displayed on the primary screen first and then reveal more in depth content through the app.

But will it get up and fetch me some ice cream?

Our tinker toy electrical system

Doesn't take much.

James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, reminds us how rickety our electrical grid is.

Some two weeks after Secretary of Defense Leon E. Panetta warned of a potential “cyber-Pearl Harbor” involving a possible attack on the electric grid, Mother Nature took the cue and hit the East Coast with a storm that left millions of us for days without electricity from the grid. 

Some said silent thanks for that old generator they’d thought to stick in the garage. Though it wasn’t a cyberattack, but Mother Nature gave parts of the grid a good lashing anyway. 

On my country road south of Annapolis, two transformers were blown down from their perches on telephone poles, and the leaking oil and surging electricity produced 20-foot flames. In the meantime, our driveway was filled for days with 15 Baltimore Gas and Electric Co. trucks and about 25 electrical workers from Arkansas erecting new poles and replacement transformers. 

And that was just to deal with five days of outage, caused by falling tree branches, for a very small community on one short country road. What would it have taken to deal with damage that was far more extensive across a number of states because it had been planned by a group or nation that wanted, above all, to destroy our society? 

The electric grid is the heart of our ability to function as a society. We have 18 major infrastructures that keep our civilization operating — water, sewage, telecommunications, transportation, etc. All 17 of the others depend in one way or another on electricity. Imagine what it would be like for an electrical outage to last for months or years as a result of a cyber- or terrorist attack instead of merely for days. 

Without electricity, we are not just back in the pre-Web 1970s, we are back in the pre-grid 1870s. Very few of us have enough plow horses or manual water pumps.

As I write some guys are downstairs sanding the family room floor. In preparation I unplugged the computer and peripherals. Then I came upstairs to work. Ah! No wireless! I had to rig everything up in the basement, where for some reason the previous resident installed a phone plug. A minor thing, but a reminder of how much we depend on electrical and other connections.

A phone on your wrist

"Hello. My hand is busy right now."

Several months ago two things happened simultaneously. One, all of the batteries in my watches died. Two, the jeweler where I'd gone for years to have the batteries replaced went out of business.

So for a while I didn't wear a watch, and I realized that I didn't miss it. Everyone carries a cell phone now, and the network-supplied time is presumably more accurate than a watch we set ourselves.

Then I began to image that the watch of the future would be our phones. I just now came across one somewhat bizarre rendering of this idea.

The photo to the right shows Italian designer Federico Ciccarese's concept. He is well known throughout the blogosphere for his Apple product concepts. Now Ciccarese has released a futuristic iPhone concept that takes a very different approach to wearable technology.

I don't know why he thought interlacing it with your fingers was a good idea. Otherwise, why not?