TECHNOLOGY AND DEVELOPMENT

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kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

July 20, 2012
In First, Software Emulates Lifespan of Entire Organism
By JOHN MARKOFF

STANFORD, Calif. — Scientists at Stanford University and the J. Craig Venter Institute have developed the first software simulation of an entire organism, a humble single-cell bacterium that lives in the human genital and respiratory tracts.

The scientists and other experts said the work was a giant step toward developing computerized laboratories that could carry out many thousands of experiments much faster than is possible now, helping scientists penetrate the mysteries of diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.

“You read in the paper just about every week, ‘Cancer gene discovered’ or ‘Alzheimer gene discovered,’ ” said the leader of the new research, Markus W. Covert, an assistant professor of bioengineering at Stanford. “A lot of the public wonders, ‘Why haven’t we cured all these things?’ The answer, of course, is that cancer is not a one-gene problem; it’s a many-thousands-of-factors problem.”

For medical researchers and biochemists, simulation software will vastly speed the early stages of screening for new compounds. And for molecular biologists, models that are of sufficient accuracy will yield new understanding of basic cellular principles.

This kind of modeling is already in use to study individual cellular processes like metabolism. But Dr. Covert said: “Where I think our work is different is that we explicitly include all of the genes and every known gene function. There’s no one else out there who has been able to include more than a handful of functions or more than, say, one-third of the genes.”

The simulation of the complete life cycle of the pathogen, Mycoplasma genitalium, was presented on Friday in the journal Cell. The scientists called it a “first draft” but added that the effort was the first time an entire organism had been modeled in such detail — in this case, all of its 525 genes.

The simulation, which runs on a cluster of 128 computers, models the complete life span of the cell at the molecular level, charting the interactions of 28 categories of molecules — including DNA, RNA, proteins and small molecules known as metabolites, which are generated by cell processes.

“The model presented by the authors is the first truly integrated effort to simulate the workings of a free-living microbe, and it should be commended for its audacity alone,” wrote two independent commentators, Peter L. Freddolino and Saeed Tavazoie, both of Columbia University, in an editorial accompanying the article. “This is a tremendous task, involving the interpretation and integration of a massive amount of data.”

They called the simulation an important advance in the new field of computational biology, which has recently yielded such achievements as the creation of a synthetic life form — an entire bacterial genome created by a team led by the genome pioneer J. Craig Venter. The scientists used it to take over an existing cell.

Efforts to build computer models of cell behavior are not new. A decade ago, scientists developed simulations of metabolism that are now being used to study a wide array of cells, including bacteria, yeast and photosynthetic organisms. Other models exist for processes like protein synthesis.

“These models are now in routine use around the world to study the metabolic properties of many organisms,” said Bernhard O. Palsson, a professor of bioengineering at the University of California, San Diego, who added that they were used commercially to formulate commodity chemicals and biofuels.

For the new computer simulation, the researchers had the advantage of extensive scientific literature on the bacterium. They were able to use data taken from more than 900 scientific papers to validate the accuracy of their software model.

Still, they said, the model of the simplest biological system was pushing the limits of their computers.

“Right now, running a simulation for a single cell to divide only one time takes around 10 hours and generates half a gigabyte of data,” Dr. Covert wrote. “I find this fact completely fascinating, because I don’t know that anyone has ever asked how much data a living thing truly holds. We often think of the DNA as the storage medium, but clearly there is more to it than that.”

In designing their model, the scientists chose an approach called object-oriented programming, which parallels the design of modern software systems. Software designers organize their programs in modules, which communicate with one another by passing data and instructions back and forth.

Similarly, the simulated bacterium is a series of modules that mimic the various functions of the cell.

“The major modeling insight we had a few years ago was to break up the functionality of the cell into subgroups, which we could model individually, each with its own mathematics, and then to integrate these submodels together into a whole,” Dr. Covert said. “It turned out to be a very exciting idea.”

M. genitalium, a parasite that causes sexually transmitted disease, has the smallest genome of any independent organism. It played a role in 2008 in the Venter Institute‘s synthesis of the first artificial chromosome; the researchers were able to stitch together the entire genome of the bacterium.

The bacterium, with its 525 genes, is far less complex than E. coli, another bacterium widely used in laboratory experiments; E. coli has 4,288 genes. The researchers said that more complex cells would present significant challenges. Currently it takes about 9 to 10 hours of computer time to simulate a single division of the smallest cell — about the same time the cell takes to divide in its natural environment.

“The real question on our minds is: what happens when we bring this to a bigger organism, like E. coli, yeast or even eventually a human cell?” Dr. Covert said. He noted that E. coli divided every 20 to 30 minutes and that the number of molecular interactions in E. coli was a much higher multiple, which would significantly extend the time required to run the simulation.

“I’ll have the answer in a couple of years,” he wrote.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/scien ... h_20120721

********
July 20, 2012
European Agency Backs Approval of a Gene Therapy
By ANDREW POLLACK

After more than two decades of dashed expectations, the field of gene therapy appears close to reaching a milestone: a regulatory approval.

The European Medicines Agency has recommended approval of a gene therapy to treat a rare genetic disease, according to the agency’s Web site.

If the European Commission follows the advice, as it usually does, this would be the first regulatory approval of a gene therapy drug in the Western world. That could give a boost to the field, which at times has struggled for credibility and financing.

An approval “is really potentially going to change the way the field is looked at,” said Jeffrey Ostrove, chief executive of Ceregene, a gene therapy company in San Diego. Some pharmaceutical companies have been reluctant to invest in the field, he said, because “there are no approved products in the major markets they sell in.”

Gene therapy involves providing the body with genes it needs, like correct copies of defective genes that cause genetic disorders. Its use in the West so far has been confined to clinical trials.

The therapy recommended for approval in Europe, called Glybera, was developed by uniQure, a Dutch company. It treats lipoprotein lipase deficiency, a disease that affects only several hundred people in the European Union and a similar number in North America.

People with the disease have a genetic mutation that prevents them from producing an enzyme needed to break down certain fat-carrying particles that circulate in the bloodstream after meals. Without the enzyme, so much fat can accumulate that the blood looks white rather than red.

“It’s the equivalent of having a 10 percent cream in your bloodstream,” said Dr. Daniel Gaudet, a professor of medicine at the University of Montreal, who led the clinical trials of the drug. People with the disease are prone to severe bouts of inflammation of the pancreas. There is no good treatment except an extremely low-fat diet.

Glybera provides correct copies of the lipoprotein lipase gene, which allows patients to make some of the needed enzyme. A single treatment, consisting of injections into multiple spots on the leg muscles on the same day, is expected to last for several years, if not longer, said Jorn Aldag, chief executive of uniQure.

Mr. Aldag said the company hoped to apply for approval of the gene therapy in the United States eventually, but he was not certain of the timing.

Gene therapy has long been seen as a promising way to treat numerous diseases. But hundreds of clinical trials have been conducted since 1990 and most have failed, in part because it has been difficult to deliver the genes and get them to work for a long time. The field has also been set back by some safety issues, particularly the death of a teenager in a 1999 clinical trial at the University of Pennsylvania.

But researchers have been slowly overcoming the obstacles and in the last few years there have been reports of successes in attempts to treat cancer, hemophilia B, certain immune diseases and a condition that causes blindness.

“It didn’t occur as rapidly, I think, as people had kind of promised or suggested 15 or 20 years ago, but we are starting to see success,” said Dr. Mark A. Kay, a professor of pediatrics and genetics at Stanford.

A gene therapy to treat cancer won approval in China in 2003. But some Western experts have questions about the rigor of the regulatory review in that country.

How effective Glybera is might still be open to some question, in part because the company tested the drug in only 27 patients, and without rigorous controlled clinical trials.

The Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use, which recommends whether new drugs should be approved in Europe, rejected Glybera three times in the last year or so.

After its third rejection, in April, the committee said that the company had “not provided sufficient evidence” that blood lipids were lowered in a persistent manner and that there was also insufficient evidence of a reduction of the incidence of pancreatitis, the inflammation of the pancreas.

But the committee has now reversed itself. It said that the approved population had been narrowed to those with the most severe disease and that the company would be required to monitor the outcomes of patients treated with Glybera and provide that data to regulators.

Dr. Gaudet, who has been a paid adviser to uniQure, said the trials showed that after the treatment, patients had fewer bouts of pancreatitis and those bouts tended to be less intense and painful.

The repeated setbacks took its toll on the company, which was once known as Amsterdam Molecular Therapeutics. That company ran out of money this year and is now being liquidated. UniQure, which is privately held, was formed with new investment and took on the people and assets of Amsterdam Molecular.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/21/healt ... h_20120721
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

July 27, 2012

Imagine a World Without AIDS

By DANIELLE OFRI

THE beginning of the end of AIDS? The article with that title jumped out at me last week, as I did my weekly table-of-contents scan of The New England Journal of Medicine. I wasn’t prepared for the flood of emotion that overcame me. The beginning of the end? Could it really be?

For those of us who did our medical training in the late ’80s and early ’90s, AIDS saturated our lives. The whole era had a medieval feel, with visceral suffering and human decimation all around. Death was vivid, brutal and omnipresent.

Bellevue Hospital, where I trained, was one of those city hospitals that felt like ground zero for the plague. Every third admission seemed to be a patient in his mid-20s who looked as if he’d arrived from Dachau or Biafra, with nary a T-cell to his name. Horrific Kaposi’s sarcoma ulcerated these patients’ bodies. P.C.P., a brutal form of pneumonia, strangled their breathing. Fevers and infections plundered every organ system. What few defenses their bodies mustered were pummeled into insignificance.

The utter relentlessness of the disease pummeled the doctors-in-training as well. It felt as if we were slogging knee-deep in death, with a horizon that was a monochrome of despair. Witnessing your own generation dying off is not for the faint of heart.

The 17 West AIDS ward in Bellevue was always full to capacity, so H.I.V. patients overflowed into the general medical wards, and of course swamped the prison ward, the tuberculosis ward, the pediatric ward and the emergency room. We even had a “spillover” ward, 12 East, reserved for the “actively dying.” The hospital had carved out a ward of private rooms — otherwise unheard-of in a city hospital — so that these patients could have a modicum of privacy in their final days. Needless to say, 12 East was also full to capacity, with a line of patients waiting for a room to “open up.”

If you’d grabbed a random intern toward the end of my residency in 1995, and asked her if she could envision the headline “The Beginning of the End of AIDS” in less than 20 years, she would have simply stared uncomprehendingly at you with bleary eyes. More than 50,000 Americans died of AIDS that year. By 2009, the number had edged under 20,000.

In the worlds of both medicine and metaphor, the narrative arc of AIDS has almost no peer. The transformation from hopelessness to pragmatic optimism is — scientifically speaking — nothing short of miraculous. Potent combinations of antiviral medications that brought patients off their deathbeds and back to life, viral load testing and H.I.V. genotyping that helped tailor treatment regimens, screening of the blood supply, aggressive public health campaigns, prevention of maternal-fetal transmission — we could hardly have envisioned the pace of development.

After years of disappointments, H.I.V. vaccine research is heating up again, as breakthroughs in the understanding of H.I.V. immunology have identified nearly two dozen potential vaccine candidates. The apparent H.I.V. cure as a result of a bone-marrow transplant in a man known as the “Berlin patient” has stimulated tantalizing gene therapy research.

The staggering progress of these past two decades leaves me breathless, and to be honest, almost teary-eyed. For nearly every other category of disease that afflicts my patients, the treatments are largely the same as when I was an intern. Yes, we have fancier stents for our cardiac patients, and more targeted chemotherapy for our cancer patients, but the overall paradigms have shifted only incrementally.

H.I.V. has been easier to target, in part, because it is caused by a single infectious agent — as opposed to the diverse factors that influence cardiovascular disease and cancer. And then there was the avalanche of resources and the galvanizing of public activism that served to concentrate scientific efforts in a manner never seen before. By no means do I wish to belittle the impressive advances in other fields of medicine, but our oncology wards and cardiac wards still do a brisk business.

AIDS patients in the hospital are a rarity now — they are more likely to be admitted for an ulcer or a heart attack than for an H.I.V.-related illness. The overwhelming majority receive their medical care in outpatient settings, like everyone else who is living with a disease rather than dying of a disease. AIDS has settled in next to hypertension and diabetes as one of those chronic conditions that patients deal with over the course of a lifetime.

“Over the course of a lifetime.” Now there’s a concept we never thought about back then.

There is still a long way to go, of course. The 19th annual International AIDS Conference just ended on Friday, and no one is underestimating the gravity of the challenges that remain, particularly in developing countries. But to even contemplate, however tentatively, the beginning of the end is something that my peers and I never imagined happening in our lifetimes.

I often think about grim days we spent doing rounds on 17 West and 12 East. I remember the slow and tortured deaths of our patients, their emaciated bodies disintegrating into nothingness before our eyes. More tears were shed on those wards than any I’ve worked in since.

And what happened? The 17 West AIDS ward became a regular medical ward. The 12 East dying ward was turned into offices. And then, this month, the inpatient AIDS service at Bellevue closed down entirely. If that doesn’t signify the beginning of the end, I don’t know what does.


Danielle Ofri, an associate professor at New York University School of Medicine, is the editor of the Bellevue Literary Review and the author, most recently, of “Medicine in Translation: Journeys With My Patients.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/28/opini ... h_20120728
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Bits of Mystery DNA, Far From ‘Junk,’ Play Crucial Role
By GINA KOLATA

Among the many mysteries of human biology is why complex diseases like diabetes, high blood pressure and psychiatric disorders are so difficult to predict and, often, to treat. An equally perplexing puzzle is why one individual gets a disease like cancer or depression, while an identical twin remains perfectly healthy.

Now scientists have discovered a vital clue to unraveling these riddles. The human genome is packed with at least four million gene switches that reside in bits of DNA that once were dismissed as “junk” but that turn out to play critical roles in controlling how cells, organs and other tissues behave. The discovery, considered a major medical and scientific breakthrough, has enormous implications for human health because many complex diseases appear to be caused by tiny changes in hundreds of gene switches.

The findings, which are the fruit of an immense federal project involving 440 scientists from 32 laboratories around the world, will have immediate applications for understanding how alterations in the non-gene parts of DNA contribute to human diseases, which may in turn lead to new drugs. They can also help explain how the environment can affect disease risk. In the case of identical twins, small changes in environmental exposure can slightly alter gene switches, with the result that one twin gets a disease and the other does not.

More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/06/scien ... h_20120906
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

November 3, 2012
How Science Can Build a Better You
By DAVID EWING DUNCAN
IF a brain implant were safe and available and allowed you to operate your iPad or car using only thought, would you want one? What about an embedded device that gently bathed your brain in electrons and boosted memory and attention? Would you order one for your children?

In a future presidential election, would you vote for a candidate who had neural implants that helped optimize his or her alertness and functionality during a crisis, or in a candidates’ debate? Would you vote for a commander in chief who wasn’t equipped with such a device?

If these seem like tinfoil-on-the-head questions, consider the case of Cathy Hutchinson. Paralyzed by a stroke, she recently drank a canister of coffee by using a prosthetic arm controlled by thought. She was helped by a device called Braingate, a tiny bed of electrons surgically implanted on her motor cortex and connected by a wire to a computer.

Working with a team of neuroscientists at Brown University, Ms. Hutchinson, then 58, was asked to imagine that she was moving her own arm. As her neurons fired, Braingate interpreted the mental commands and moved the artificial arm and humanlike hand to deliver the first coffee Ms. Hutchinson had raised to her own lips in 15 years.

Braingate has barely worked on just a handful of people, and it is years away from actually being useful. Yet it’s an example of nascent technologies that in the next two to three decades may transform life not only for the impaired, but also for the healthy.

Other medical technologies that might break through the enhancement barrier range from genetic modifications and stem-cell therapies that might make people cognitively more efficient to nano-bots that could one day repair and optimize molecular structures in cells.

Many researchers, including the Brown neuroscientist John Donoghue, leader of the Braingate team, adamantly oppose the use of their technologies for augmenting the nonimpaired. Yet some healthy Americans are already availing themselves of medical technologies. For years millions of college students and professionals have been popping powerful stimulants like Adderall and Provigil to take exams and to pull all-nighters. These drugs can be highly addictive and may not work for everyone. While more research is needed, so far no evidence has emerged that legions of users have been harmed. The same may be true for a modest use of steroids for athletes.

Which leads us to the crucial question: How far would you go to modify yourself using the latest medical technology?

Over the last couple of years during talks and lectures, I have asked thousands of people a hypothetical question that goes like this: “If I could offer you a pill that allowed your child to increase his or her memory by 25 percent, would you give it to them?”

The show of hands in this informal poll has been overwhelming, with 80 percent or more voting no.

Then I asked a follow-up question. “What if this pill was safe and increased your kid’s grades from a B average to an A average?” People tittered nervously, looked around to see how others were voting as nearly half said yes. (Many didn’t vote at all.)

“And what if all of the other kids are taking the pill?” I asked. The tittering stopped and nearly everyone voted yes.

No pill now exists that can boost memory by 25 percent. Yet neuroscientists tell me that pharmaceutical companies are testing compounds in early stage human trials that may enable patients with dementia and other memory-stealing diseases to have better recall. No one knows if these will work to improve healthy people, but it’s possible that one will work in the future.

More intriguing is the notion that a supermemory or attention pill might be used someday by those with critical jobs like pilots, surgeons, police officers — or the chief executive of the United States. In fact, we may demand that they use them, said the bioethicist Thomas H. Murray. “It might actually be immoral for a surgeon not to take a drug that was safe and steadied his hand,” said Mr. Murray, the former president of the Hastings Center, a bioethics research group. “That would be like using a scalpel that wasn’t sterile.”

HERE is a partial checklist of cutting-edge medical-technology therapies now under way or in an experimental phase that might lead to future enhancements.

More than 200,000 deaf people have had their hearing partially restored by a brain implant that receives sound waves and uses a minicomputer to process and deliver them directly into the brain via the cochlear (audio) nerve. New and experimental technologies could lead to devices that allow people with or possibly without hearing loss to hear better, possibly much better.

The Israel-based company Nano Retina and others are developing early-stage devices and implants that restore partial sight to the blind. Nano Retina uses a tiny sensor backed by electrodes embedded in the back of the eye, on top of the retina. They replace connections damaged by macular degeneration and other diseases. So far images are fuzzy and gray-scale and a long way from restoring functional eyesight. Scientists, however, are currently working on ways to mimic and improve eyesight in people and in robots that could lead to far more sophisticated technologies.

Engineers at companies like Ekso Bionics of Richmond, Calif., are building first-generation exoskeletons that aim to allow patients with paralyzed legs to walk, though the devices are still in the baby-step phase. This summer the sprinter Oscar Pistorius of South Africa proved he could compete at the Olympics using artificial half-leg blades called Cheetahs that some worried might give him an advantage over runners with legs made of flesh and blood. Neuroscientists are developing more advanced prosthetics that may one day be operated from the brain via fiber optic lines embedded under the skin.

For years, scientists have been manipulating genes in animals to make improvements in neural performance, strength and agility, among other augmentations. Directly altering human DNA using “gene therapy” in humans remains dangerous and fraught with ethical challenges. But it may be possible to develop drugs that alter enzymes and other proteins associated with genes for, say, speed and endurance or dopamine levels in the brain connected to improved neural performance.

Synthetic biologists contend that re-engineering cells and DNA may one day allow us to eliminate diseases; a few believe we will be able to build tailor-made people. Others are convinced that stem cells might one day be used to grow fresh brain, heart or liver cells to augment or improve cells in these and other organs.

Not all enhancements are high-tech or invasive. Neuroscientists are seeing boosts from neuro-feedback and video games designed to teach and develop cognition and from meditation and improvements in diet, exercise and sleep. “We may see a convergence of several of these technologies,” said the neurologist Adam Gazzaley of the University of California at San Francisco. He is developing brain-boosting games with developers and engineers who once worked for Lucas Arts, founded by the “Star Wars” director George Lucas.

Which leads to another question: How far would you go to augment yourself? Would you replace perfectly good legs with artificial ones if they made you faster and stronger? What if a United States Agency for Human Augmentation had approved this and other radical enhancements? Would that persuade you?

Ethical challenges for the coming Age of Enhancement include, besides basic safety questions, the issue of who would get the enhancements, how much they would cost, and who would gain an advantage over others by using them. In a society that is already seeing a widening gap between the very rich and the rest of us, the question of a democracy of equals could face a critical test if the well-off also could afford a physical, genetic or bionic advantage. It also may challenge what it means to be human.

Still, the enhancements are coming, and they will be hard to resist. The real issue is what we do with them once they become irresistible.

David Ewing Duncan is a journalist who has contributed to the science section of The New York Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/sunda ... h_20121104
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

This GE technology is out to change and advance our medical knowledge for ever as described by Doctor Topol.




THIS SOUNDS LIKE A HUGE REVOLUTION IN MEDICINE
IT IS VERY INTERESTING

Something new to ask your Doctor about on your next visit. This is our future in medicine. very cool!!

(Just wait until the commercial finishes and the interview starts.)

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21134540/vp ... 2#50582822
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Truly amazing! Operation rooms as we know them might not be needed any longer ... sometime in the not too distant future
7 min video

http://youtu.be/IfJemqkby_0
mominmomin103
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Post by mominmomin103 »

hey can any one reply acout TECHNOLOGY and DEVELOPMENT acorrding to holy ginan and Quran...
agakhani
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Post by agakhani »

hey can any one reply acout TECHNOLOGY and DEVELOPMENT acorrding to holy ginan and Quran...
Ginans are loaded about future Technology, developments and future predictions, while Quran is silents about this, you can not find many answers of modern time questions arising now a days in "Quran" for a example subbogate mother, who rent her womb is allowed or not? donate Kidney or eyes are allowed or not? what will happen after thousand and thousand years latter? Quran is silent about these any many other topics, it may possible that scholars still has not understand these information from quran, but you can find these and many other answers in ginans I don't say that Ginans are "superior" than Quran, BUT LET ME MAKE IT CLEAR HERE THAT GINANS ARE TAFSIR OF "QURAN" But interpretations made of Qur'an are does not have much information on these and many other questions so far also interpretation made by different scholars does not match with each others. so obviously we Ismailis have to stick with Ginans.
shiraz.virani
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Post by shiraz.virani »

Agakhani bhai, Just because you cannot understand quran or use your intellect that doesnt mean quran is silent on technology and development.

If you read quran H.Solomen [as] communicated with ants...We humans can only hear upto certain frequency....Please refer to holy quran verse [27:18-19]

Do you know the IRON found on earth does not belong to earth ???...Ofcourse you dont know because you dont read quran....If you read surah 57 verse 25 allah[swt] says :

We verily sent Our messengers with clear proofs, and revealed with them the Scripture and the Balance, that mankind may observe right measure; and He revealed iron, wherein is mighty power and (many) uses for mankind, and that Allah may know him who helpeth Him and His messengers, though unseen. Lo! Allah is Strong, Almighty.

Iron was sent down from the sky by allah[swt]....In the late 20th century it was revealed by the researchers that iron found on earth has come from the giant stars in outerspace

There are many examples in holy quran that talks about technology and development, its just that you have to open you eyes and READ :)
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Post by Admin »

shiraz.virani wrote: Do you know the IRON found on earth does not belong to earth ???...O fcourse you dont know because you dont read quran....If you read surah 57 verse 25 allah[swt] says :

We verily sent Our messengers with clear proofs, and revealed with them the Scripture and the Balance, that mankind may observe right measure; and He revealed iron, wherein is mighty power and (many) uses for mankind, and that Allah may know him who helpeth Him and His messengers, though unseen. Lo! Allah is Strong, Almighty.

Iron was sent down from the sky by allah[swt]....In the late 20th century it was revealed by the researchers that iron found on earth has come from the giant stars in outerspace

There are many examples in holy quran that talks about technology and development, its just that you have to open you eyes and READ :)

I have read Quran many times, since childhood, I am unable to see in this verse what you are saying. Where does it say that Allah sent iron from the sky to earth and in today's understanding of the universe, may I remind you we are not the center of the universe?

And if Allah revealed Iron, did he not revealed the remaining of the creation? Why bring hocus pocus in religion?

Any person can then say from any verse any meaning he wants. That called day-dreaming.

I am sure there are more appropriate verses that you could have come forth with. You could have copy pasted for instance a couple of example from the book "La Bible, le Coran et la science" by Maurice Bucaille - there is science in all religious books, Ginans are also an unlimited source of knowledge and of science for those who are blessed by Allah with understanding them.
shiraz.virani
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Post by shiraz.virani »

I have read Quran many times, since childhood, I am unable to see in this verse what you are saying. Where does it say that Allah sent iron from the sky to earth and in today's understanding of the universe, may I remind you we are not the center of the universe?
Its always easy to read holy quran admin....the problem is with the understanding of the holy quran...Now if you could please allow me to explain to you that IRON found on earth comes from the giant stars ....And mind you my friend...Not just the iron on earth but also the entire solar system comes from outer space.

The temperature of the surface of our sun is 6000 degree Celsius which is not enough for the formation of iron...Iron can only be produced in much larger stars [larger than the sun] whose temp reaches a few hundred million degrees...With that kinds of temperature the star my dear friend IF it exceeds the limit of the amount of iron over a certain level the star can no longer withstand that and EXPLODES and that is called SUPERNOVA...The iron particles then scatters all around the space.

In his book Nature’s Destiny, the well-known microbiologist Michael Denton emphasizes the importance of iron:

“Of all the metals there is none more essential to life than iron. It is the accumulation of iron in the center of a star which triggers a supernova explosion and the subsequent scattering of the vital atoms of life throughout the cosmos. It was the drawing by gravity of iron atoms to the center of the primeval earth that generated the heat which caused the initial chemical differentiation of the earth, the outgassing of the early atmosphere, and ultimately the formation of the hydrosphere. It is molten iron in the center of the earth which, acting like a gigantic dynamo, generates the earth’s magnetic field, which in turn creates the Van Allen radiation belts that shield the earth’s surface from destructive high-energy-penetrating cosmic radiation and preserve the crucial ozone layer from cosmic ray destruction…

“Without the iron atom, there would be no carbon-based life in the cosmos; no supernovae, no heating of the primitive earth, no atmosphere or hydrosphere. There would be no protective magnetic field, no Van Allen radiation belts, no ozone layer, no metal to make hemoglobin [in human blood], no metal to tame the reactivity of oxygen, and no oxidative metabolism.

“The intriguing and intimate relationship between life and iron, between the red color of blood and the dying of some distant star, not only indicates the relevance of metals to biology but also the biocentricity of the cosmos…”


Admin bhai these days the so called Iron oxide particles are used to kill cancer cells

Having said this admin, all this shows that iron did not form on the Earth, but was carried from Supernovas, and was "sent down," as stated in the verse
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Post by Admin »

I am still waiting for a reply to my question. Where does it say in the Quran what you are saying. I am sure Iron is god-given blessing and so are all of the other element visible and invisible in the universe.
shiraz.virani
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Post by shiraz.virani »

I have read Quran many times, since childhood, I am unable to see in this verse what you are saying. Where does it say that Allah sent iron from the sky to earth and in today's understanding of the universe, may I remind you we are not the center of the universe?
YUSUFALI

57:25

We sent aforetime our messengers with Clear Signs and sent down with them the Book and the Balance (of Right and Wrong), that men may stand forth in justice;andWe sent down Iron, in which is (material for) mighty war, as well as many benefits for mankind, that Allah may test who it is that will help unseen, Him and His messengers; for Allah is Full of Strength exalted in Might (And able to enforce His will).

PICKTHAL

57:25

We verily sent Our messengers with clear proofs, and revealed with them the Scripture and the Balance, that mankind may observe right measure; and He revealed iron, wherein is mighty power and (many) uses for mankind, and that Allah may know him who helpeth Him and His messengers, though unseen. Lo! Allah is Strong, Almighty

ABDUL DARYABADI

57:25

Assuredly We sent Our apostles with evidences, and We sent down With them the book and the balance, that people might observe equity. And We sent down iron wherein is great violence and also advantages Unto mankind, and that Allah may know him who succoureth Him, unseen, and His apostles. Verily Allah is Strong, Mighty.

TAQI USMAN

57:25

We have indeed sent Our messengers with clear proofs, and sent down with them the Book and the Balance, so that people may uphold equity. And We sent down iron in which there is strong power, and benefits for the people; 10 and (We did it) so that Allah knows the one who helps Him and His messengers without seeing (Him). Surely Allah is Strong, Mighty.

Now please go and translate the word "ANZALNA" mentioned in that verse and see for yourself and not just that the name of the surah itself is AL HADEED, please find the translation of that as well :)
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Are Humans Necessary?

Margaret Atwood on Our Robotic Future

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/04/opini ... 05309&_r=0

Many of our proposed futures contain robots. The present also contains robots, but The Future is said to contain a lot more of them. Is that good or bad? We haven’t made up our minds. And while we’re at it, how about a robotic mind that can be made up more easily than a human one?
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

WORTH LOOKING AT THIS PROJECT



The Soular Backpack





DO WATCH…

SHARE/PASS ON TO FRIENDS & FAMILY

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-soular-backpack
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Post by Admin »

I think all of the www.ismaili.net members should contribute to this project.

I have been to Kikambala several times and that is the place where you can make replicable projects because the people not only need the Soular Backpack but they will cooperate (like using them at night to study.)

My wishes are with Salima Visram. I have known her family for many years. I would give them my unconditional support and I hope, so will all those who read her project.

Admin.
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Time for a Pause

You could easily write a book, or, better yet, make a movie about the drama that engulfed Sony Pictures and “The Interview,” Sony’s own movie about the fictionalized assassination of North Korea’s real-life dictator. The whole saga reflects so many of the changes that are roiling and reshaping today’s world before we’ve learned to adjust to them.

Think about this: In November 2013, hackers stole 40 million credit and debit card numbers from Target’s point-of-sale systems. Beginning in late August 2014, nude photos believed to have been stored by celebrities on Apple’s iCloud were spilled onto the sidewalk. Thanksgiving brought us the Sony hack, when, as The Times reported: “Everything and anything had been taken. Contracts. Salary lists. Film budgets. Medical records. Social Security numbers. Personal emails. Five entire movies.” And, on Christmas, gaming networks for both the Sony PlayStation and the Microsoft Xbox were shut down by hackers. But rising cybercrime is only part of the story. Every day a public figure is apologizing for something crazy or foul that he or she muttered, uttered, tweeted or shouted that went viral — including the rantings of an N.B.A. owner in his girlfriend’s living room.

What’s going on? We’re in the midst of a Gutenberg-scale change in how information is generated, stored, shared, protected and turned into products and services. We are seeing individuals become superempowered to challenge governments and corporations. And we are seeing the rise of apps that are putting strangers into intimate proximity in each other’s homes (think Airbnb) and into each other’s cars (think Uber) and into each other’s heads (think Facebook, Twitter and Instagram). Thanks to the integration of networks, smartphones, banks and markets, the world has never been more tightly wired. As they say: “Lost there, felt here.” Whispered there, heard here. And it’s now hit a tipping point.

“The world is not just rapidly changing; it is being dramatically reshaped,” Dov Seidman, author of the book “How” and C.E.O. of LRN, which advises global businesses on ethics and leadership, argued to me in a recent conversation. “It operates differently. It’s not just interconnected; it’s interdependent. More than ever before, we rise and fall together. So few can now so easily and so profoundly affect so many so far away.”

But, he added, “it’s all happened faster than we’ve reshaped ourselves and developed the necessary norms, behaviors, laws and institutions to adapt.”

The implications for leading and operating are enormous. For starters, our privacy walls are proving no match for the new technologies. “Now, we’re not only getting X-ray vision into the behavior of others,” said Seidman. “We’re getting fine-grained M.R.I.’s into the inner workings of palaces, boardrooms and organizations and into the mind-sets of those who lead them.”

So how does anyone adapt? Just disconnect? “Trying to disconnect to avoid exposure in a connected world is a misguided strategy,” argued Seidman. “If you do that, how will you create value and get anything done?” The right strategy is “to deepen and strengthen all these connections.”

But how? “If we’re in an interdependent world, then the only strategy for countries, companies and individuals is to build healthy interdependencies so we rise, and not fall, together,” Seidman added. “This comes down to behavior. It means being guided by sustainable values like humility, integrity and respect in how we work with others: values that build healthy interdependencies.” It means shunning “situational ‘values,’ just doing whatever the situation allows.”

The American-Canadian relationship is a healthy interdependency. The relationship between police forces and black youths today is an unhealthy interdependency. The relationship between Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York and his police force is an unhealthy interdependency.

But there is another critical part. It’s how we learn to respond to all the secrets being revealed: the C.E.O.’s email that makes him or her look foolish, but also reveals that women are being paid less than men in the same jobs; the video of a suspect being killed by police; the elevator footage of a football player knocking out his fiancée; and private photos of movie stars. They all have different moral and societal significance. We need to deal with them differently.

“We need to pause more to make sense of all the M.R.I.’s we’re being exposed to,” argued Seidman. In the pause, “we reflect and imagine a better way.” In some cases, that could mean showing empathy for the fact that humans are imperfect. In others, it could mean “taking principled stands” toward those whose behaviors “make this interdependent world unsafe, unstable or unfree.”

In short, there’s never been a time when we need more people living by the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Because, in today’s world, more people can see into you and do unto you than ever before. Otherwise, we’re going to end up with a “gotcha” society, lurching from outrage to outrage, where in order to survive you’ll either have to disconnect or constantly censor yourself because every careless act or utterance could ruin your life. Who wants to live that way?

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/07/opini ... d=45305309
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Post by kmaherali »

Can Students Have Too Much Tech?

PRESIDENT OBAMA’s domestic agenda, which he announced in his State of the Union address this month, has a lot to like: health care, maternity leave, affordable college. But there was one thing he got wrong. As part of his promise to educate American children for an increasingly competitive world, he vowed to “protect a free and open Internet” and “extend its reach to every classroom and every community.”

More technology in the classroom has long been a policy-making panacea. But mounting evidence shows that showering students, especially those from struggling families, with networked devices will not shrink the class divide in education. If anything, it will widen it.

In the early 2000s, the Duke University economists Jacob Vigdor and Helen Ladd tracked the academic progress of nearly one million disadvantaged middle-school students against the dates they were given networked computers. The researchers assessed the students’ math and reading skills annually for five years, and recorded how they spent their time. The news was not good.

“Students who gain access to a home computer between the 5th and 8th grades tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math scores,” the economists wrote, adding that license to surf the Internet was also linked to lower grades in younger children.

In fact, the students’ academic scores dropped and remained depressed for as long as the researchers kept tabs on them. What’s worse, the weaker students (boys, African-Americans) were more adversely affected than the rest. When their computers arrived, their reading scores fell off a cliff.

We don’t know why this is, but we can speculate. With no adults to supervise them, many kids used their networked devices not for schoolwork, but to play games, troll social media and download entertainment. (And why not? Given their druthers, most adults would do the same.)

The problem is the differential impact on children from poor families. Babies born to low-income parents spend at least 40 percent of their waking hours in front of a screen — more than twice the time spent by middle-class babies. They also get far less cuddling and bantering over family meals than do more privileged children. The give-and-take of these interactions is what predicts robust vocabularies and school success. Apps and videos don’t.

If children who spend more time with electronic devices are also more likely to be out of sync with their peers’ behavior and learning by the fourth grade, why would adding more viewing and clicking to their school days be considered a good idea?

An unquestioned belief in the power of gadgetry has already led to educational snafus. Beginning in 2006, the nonprofit One Laptop Per Child project envisioned a digital utopia in which all students over 6 years old, worldwide, would own their own laptops. Impoverished children would thus have the power to go online and educate themselves — no school or teacher required. With laptops for poor children initially priced at $400, donations poured in.

Continue reading the main story Continue reading the main story

Continue reading the main story

But the program didn’t live up to the ballyhoo. For one thing, the machines were buggy and often broke down. And when they did work, the impoverished students who received free laptops spent more time on games and chat rooms and less time on their homework than before, according to the education researchers Mark Warschauer and Morgan Ames. It’s drive-by education — adults distribute the laptops and then walk away.

It’s true that there is often an initial uptick in students’ engagement with their studies — interactive apps can be fun. But the novelty wears off after a few months, said Larry Cuban, an emeritus education professor at Stanford.

Technology does have a role in education. But as Randy Yerrick, a professor of education at the University at Buffalo, told me, it is worth the investment only when it’s perfectly suited to the task, in science simulations, for example, or to teach students with learning disabilities.

And, of course, technology can work only when it is deployed as a tool by a terrific, highly trained teacher. As extensive research shows, just one year with a gifted teacher in middle school makes it far less likely that a student will get pregnant in high school, and much more likely that she will go to college, earn a decent salary, live in a good neighborhood and save for retirement. To the extent that such a teacher can benefit from classroom technology, he or she should get it. But only when such teachers are effectively trained to apply a specific application to teaching a particular topic to a particular set of students — only then does classroom technology really work.

Even then, we still have no proof that the newly acquired, tech-centric skills that students learn in the classroom transfer to novel problems that they need to solve in other areas. While we’re waiting to find out, the public money spent on wiring up classrooms should be matched by training and mentorship programs for teachers, so that a free and open Internet, reached through constantly evolving, beautifully packaged and compelling electronic tools, helps — not hampers — the progress of children who need help the most.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/30/opini ... 05309&_r=0
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Post by kmaherali »

Getting the Whole World Online

Years before big technology companies like Google and Facebook began talking about using balloons, drones and cellphones to provide Internet access to billions of people in developing countries, leaders like President Bill Clinton were talking about bridging the “global digital divide.” And while progress has been made in recent years, most of the world’s 7.2 billion people still do not have access to the Internet.

The good news is that most of humanity now lives within reach of wireless networks. About half of the world’s population, or 3.6 billion people, had cellphone service last year, up from 2.3 billion people in 2008. And one-third of all people used mobile networks to connect to the Internet last year. Two main forces have made this possible: rising incomes in developing countries and cheaper wireless devices and service.

The most important thing world leaders can do to make the Internet available to more people is to pursue faster and more equitable economic growth. At the same time, improving access itself can help economies grow by making knowledge more widely available. There are numerous private efforts underway that aim to make Internet access universal.

Google is working on Project Loon, which uses a constellation of giant balloons to beam down wireless signals in the Southern Hemisphere. This will be most useful to people living in remote areas without terrestrial cellular networks. And Facebook has introduced Internet.org, which provides people in some countries, like Kenya, Colombia and India, with access to limited text-based content on their cellphones at no cost; Facebook and searches on Google would be included. The company seems to think that this will encourage some people who are already using cellphones to create a Facebook profile and consider paying for data plans by giving them their first taste of social networking and the Internet.

The big gains will come only when governments do more to increase investments in telecommunications directly or by encouraging private companies to build networks. The most certain way to do that is to foster competition by, for example, selling wireless frequencies to many different companies. This has been happening in places like India.

Other countries, including those in the European Union, have helped to spur Internet adoption by requiring telecom companies to share cables and other equipment with one another. Of course, many dominant state-owned or private phone companies will resist policies intended to encourage competition.

Making the Internet useful will require more than just equipment and networks. Many pages on the web are available only in English or a few other widely spoken languages like French and Mandarin, while billions do not speak those languages. Companies like Google and Facebook have invested in providing their sites in many languages and have offered free translation tools.

The World Wide Web Consortium, which is made up of universities, businesses, government agencies and other groups, is also trying to make the Web usable in more languages by making sure Internet formats and protocols work in different scripts. Governments and businesses should help those efforts by publishing educational, health and other information in more languages.

Bridging the digital divide is not quite as daunting as it once seemed. But neither is progress moving fast enough to allow billions of people to use a communications system that has become indispensable to the modern economy.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/11/opini ... 05309&_r=0
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Post by kmaherali »

Scientists Seek Ban on Method of Editing the Human Genome

A group of leading biologists on Thursday called for a worldwide moratorium on use of a new genome-editing technique that would alter human DNA in a way that can be inherited.

The biologists fear that the new technique is so effective and easy to use that some physicians may push ahead before its safety can be assessed. They also want the public to understand the ethical issues surrounding the technique, which could be used to cure genetic diseases, but also to enhance qualities like beauty or intelligence. The latter is a path that many ethicists believe should never be taken.

“You could exert control over human heredity with this technique, and that is why we are raising the issue,” said David Baltimore, a former president of the California Institute of Technology and a member of the group whose paper on the topic was published in the journal Science.

Ethicists, for decades, have been concerned about the dangers of altering the human germline — meaning to make changes to human sperm, eggs or embryos that will last through the life of the individual and be passed on to future generations. Until now, these worries have been theoretical. But a technique invented in 2012 makes it possible to edit the genome precisely and with much greater ease. The technique has already been used to edit the genomes of mice, rats and monkeys, and few doubt that it would work the same way in people.

The technique holds the power to repair or enhance any human gene. “It raises the most fundamental of issues about how we are going to view our humanity in the future and whether we are going to take the dramatic step of modifying our own germline and in a sense take control of our genetic destiny, which raises enormous peril for humanity,” said George Q. Daley, a stem cell expert at Boston Children’s Hospital and a member of the group.

More....

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/scien ... d=45305309
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Post by kmaherali »

Head transplant: Russian man to become first to undergo pioneering and controversial surgery

The first man set to undergo a head transplant has been revealed, saying that he finds the controversial surgery “very scary, but also very interesting”.

Valery Spiridinov is set to be the first person to undergo the operation. It will be carried out by controversial Italian doctor Sergio Canavero, whose optimistic plans have mostly been met with optimism.

But Spiridonov — who has the rare genetic Werdnig-Hoffman disease, which gradually wastes away muscles — says that he is willing to undergo the risky procedure to give himself a chance at living in a healthy body.

“Am I afraid? Yes, of course I am. But it is not just very scary, but also very interesting,” Spiridonov, speaking from his house in the Russian town of Vladimir about 120 miles from Moscow, told MailOnline.

“But you have to understand that I don't really have many choices,” he said. “If I don't try this chance my fate will be very sad. With every year my state is getting worse.”

Spiridinov said that he has spoken with Dr Canavaro over Skype but they are yet to meet. The Russian man was chosen from a number of people that emailed and wrote to Canavaro to ask to undergo the procedure, he said.

Canavaro raised scepticism earlier this year when he said that he would be able to carry out the procedure within two years. Other medical experts called the procedure unlikely, and rare, as well as highlighting the fact that it would never be used for those that simply want to replace an ailing body. Some have even compared Canavaro to Frankenstein.

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/world/hea ... lsignoutmd
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Post by kmaherali »

Why Pilots Still Matter

Such wishful thinking is perhaps symptomatic of our infatuation with technology and gadgetry, and the belief that we can compute our way out of every problem. The proliferation of drone aircraft also makes it easy to imagine a world of remotely controlled passenger planes. In fact, Boeing has acquired a patent on a sophisticated, remotely operated autopilot system.

But for now these things exist only in the experimental stages. A handful of successful test flights does not prove the viability of a system that would carry up to four million passengers every day around the world. And remember that drones have wholly different missions from those of commercial aircraft, with a lot less at stake if one crashes.

More....
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/10/opini ... d=45305309
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Post by kmaherali »

The Lost Language of Privacy

David Brooks

Like a lot of people, I’ve come to believe that it would be a good idea to put body-mounted cameras on police officers. I now believe this for several reasons.

First, there have been too many cases in which police officers have abused their authority and then covered it up. Second, it seems probable that cops would be less likely to abuse their authority if they were being tracked. Third, human memory is an unreliable faculty. We might be able to reduce the number of wrongful convictions and acquittals if we have cameras recording more events.

I've come to this conclusion, but I haven’t come to it happily. And, as the debate over cop-cams has unfolded, I’ve been surprised by how many people don’t see the downside to this policy. Most people don’t even seem to recognize the damage these cameras will do both to police-civilian relations and to privacy. As the debate has unfolded, it’s become clear that more and more people have lost even the language of privacy, and an understanding of why privacy is important.

Let’s start with the basics.

Privacy is important to the development of full individuals because there has to be an interior zone within each person that other people don’t see. There has to be a zone where half-formed thoughts and delicate emotions can grow and evolve, without being exposed to the harsh glare of public judgment. There has to be a place where you can be free to develop ideas and convictions away from the pressure to conform. There has to be a spot where you are only yourself and can define yourself.

Privacy is important to families and friendships because there has to be a zone where you can be fully known. There has to be a private space where you can share your doubts and secrets and expose your weaknesses with the expectation that you will still be loved and forgiven and supported.

Privacy is important for communities because there has to be a space where people with common affiliations can develop bonds of affection and trust. There has to be a boundary between us and them. Within that boundary, you look out for each other; you rally to support each other; you cut each other some slack; you share fierce common loyalties.

All these concentric circles of privacy depend on some level of shrouding. They depend on some level of secrecy and awareness of the distinction between the inner privileged space and the outer exposed space. They depend on the understanding that what happens between us stays between us.

Cop-cams chip away at that. The cameras will undermine communal bonds. Putting a camera on someone is a sign that you don’t trust him, or he doesn’t trust you. When a police officer is wearing a camera, the contact between an officer and a civilian is less likely to be like intimate friendship and more likely to be oppositional and transactional. Putting a camera on an officer means she is less likely to cut you some slack, less likely to not write that ticket, or to bend the regulations a little as a sign of mutual care.

Putting a camera on the police officer means that authority resides less in the wisdom and integrity of the officer and more in the videotape. During a trial, if a crime isn’t captured on the tape, it will be presumed to never have happened.

Cop-cams will insult families. It’s worth pointing out that less than 20 percent of police calls involve felonies, and less than 1 percent of police-citizen contacts involve police use of force. Most of the time cops are mediating disputes, helping those in distress, dealing with the mentally ill or going into some home where someone is having a meltdown. When a police officer comes into your home wearing a camera, he’s trampling on the privacy that makes a home a home. He’s recording people on what could be the worst day of their lives, and inhibiting their ability to lean on the officer for care and support.

Cop-cams insult individual dignity because the embarrassing things recorded by them will inevitably get swapped around. The videos of the naked crime victim, the berserk drunk, the screaming maniac will inevitably get posted online — as they are already. With each leak, culture gets a little coarser. The rules designed to keep the videos out of public view will inevitably be eroded and bent.

So, yes, on balance, cop-cams are a good idea. But, as a journalist, I can tell you that when I put a notebook or a camera between me and my subjects, I am creating distance between me and them. Cop-cams strike a blow for truth, but they strike a blow against relationships. Society will be more open and transparent, but less humane and trusting.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/14/opini ... d=45305309
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Post by kmaherali »

The Giant Rats That Save Lives

MALANJE, Angola — I’M walking in a minefield here in rural Angola, tailing a monster rat.

This is a Gambian pouched rat, a breed almost 3 feet from nose to tail, the kind of rat that gives cats nightmares. Yet this rat is a genius as well as a giant, for it has learned how to detect land mines by scent — and it’s doing its best to save humans like me from blowing up.

These rodent mine detectors have been dubbed HeroRats, and when you’re in a minefield with one that seems about right. You’re very respectful, and you just hope this HeroRat doesn’t have a stuffed nose.

I’m here because five years ago, my kids gave me a HeroRat for a Father’s Day present through GlobalGiving.org. I didn’t actually take physical possession (fortunately!) but the gift helped pay to train the rat to sniff out explosives. And now I’ve come to minefields of rural Angola to hunt for my rat.

There are 39 HeroRats here, and they underscore the way the aid world is increasingly embracing innovative approaches to old challenges.

A Gambian pouched rat clears a minefield in northern Angola.Credit Nicholas Kristof/The New York Times
I’ve seen land-mine detection in Afghanistan and elsewhere, and it’s dreadfully slow and inefficient. Typically, men in body armor walk in precise rows holding metal detectors in front of them. Whenever they come across metal, they stop and painstakingly brush away the soil until they see what it is.

Usually it’s an empty AK-47 cartridge or a nail. Sometimes there is metal every few inches. Each time, the whole process stops until the soil can be brushed away.

In contrast, the rats scamper along on leashes. They respond only to the scent of explosives, so scrap metal doesn’t slow them down.

At this minefield, which is full of metal objects, a human with a metal detector can clear only about 20 square meters a day. A rat can clear 20 times as much.

“Rats are also more reliable,” said Alfredo Adamo, a field supervisor here. “With humans, concentration wanes after a while, but rats just sniff away.”

The rats are paid in bananas, peanuts, avocados and apples, and they don’t need body armor — partly because they’re too light to set off land mines. (They can still weigh up to 2.5 pounds, which is a lot of rat when you’re face to face.)

I think I found my rat: a scraggly codger named Boban who is just the right age to have been trained when my kids sponsored the rat. Boban was named after a Tanzanian soccer star, and the handlers said he was highly dependable.

Bart Weetjens, a Belgian product designer, started the HeroRat program after puzzling about how to improve mine detection. As a boy, Weetjens had kept rats as pets, and he came across an article about the use of gerbils for tasks involving scent detection.

Weetjens then consulted rodent scholars, who suggested Gambian pouched rats, in part because they compensate for very weak eyes with a superb sense of smell. They are called “pouched” not because they are marsupials but because they fill their cheeks with nuts and other goodies, and then bury them underground — relying upon scent to recover their caches later. Another advantage of Gambian pouched rats is that they have an eight-year life span that offers a lengthy return on the nine months of training needed to detect land mines.

So Weetjens started an aid group, Apopo, that trains the rats in Tanzania and then deploys them to minefields in various countries. Apopo is also now branching off into using HeroRats to detect tuberculosis — a disease of poverty that kills 1.5 million people a year around the world.
Continue reading the main story

A huge challenge with tuberculosis is diagnosis. It takes a trained health worker with a microscope all day to examine about 25 samples of sputum to determine if they are positive for tuberculosis.

In contrast, a HeroRat can screen 100 samples in 20 minutes — ambling along a row of petri dishes, sniffing at each, and pausing when one is positive for tuberculosis. The rats are also much more accurate than a human with a microscope. In the clinics where HeroRats are now doing the detection (their diagnoses confirmed by humans in labs), the number of tuberculosis patients identified has risen 48 percent — meaning that more patients are diagnosed and treated, preventing the disease’s spread.

The hero-rats are a powerful antidote to the menacing inhumane rats that littered many parts of the world with these menacing instruments of...

As an animal rights activist I approached this article with a little trepidation. Given the utter horrors we visit upon rats, often for no...

Bart Weetjens began his career in product design, after obtaining first class honours in his degree in product design. Product design is a...

Apopo pampers the rats, which get better health care than most Angolans. The rats work only a couple of hours a day (they get hot in midday), and they retire at age 6 when they become less dependable.

“We debated what to do with them after retirement,” Adamo recalls. “It would be very unfair to just, er,” — he paused slightly, embarrassed, looking for a euphemism — “get rid of them.”

So the HeroRats spend their golden years nibbling on avocados and hanging out with their handlers. When the time comes, the handlers lay them to rest in a rodent cemetery, with several people present to pay respects.

Adamo admires the rats because he has seen the damage that land mines can do. He grew up in Mozambique in a village separated from its farming fields by a mine belt, and his grandfather lost his leg to a land mine. Three neighbor boys were killed and a fourth badly injured by a mine.

To me, HeroRats are an example of an explosion of innovation taking place in the philanthropic world — and seeing large gains in productivity as a result. We see this with cellphone apps in poor countries for savings and health, with microsaving and microinsurance, with impact investing and, yes, with animals.

Apopo is also an example of aid groups connecting donations to particular tasks in a way that donors can easily relate to. Through Apopo.org, you can “adopt” a HeroRat for $84 a year. Take it from me, this makes a terrific Mother’s Day or Father’s Day present!

The handlers grow attached to the rats and recognize each of them by face. Francisco Pedro, a 38-year-old Angolan who has worked in demining for many years, initially with a metal detector and the last three years with HeroRats, says that his affection for the rats has led to marital challenges.

“When there are rats in the house, I just shoo them away,” he said. “I can’t kill rats now.”

“But my wife can,” he added, explaining that he pleads with his wife to let the rats be. He paused for a moment, looking wounded, and said: “When I’m not at home, she kills them.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/opini ... pe=article
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Post by kmaherali »

How I Got Converted to G.M.O. Food

No one claims that biotech is a silver bullet. The technology of genetic modification can’t make the rains come on time or ensure that farmers in Africa have stronger land rights. But improved seed genetics can make a contribution in all sorts of ways: It can increase disease resistance and drought tolerance, which are especially important as climate change continues to bite; and it can help tackle hidden malnutritional problems like vitamin A deficiency.

We need this technology. We must not let the green movement stand in its way.

More....

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/25/opini ... d=45305309
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Post by kmaherali »

The Machines Are Coming

Today, machines can process regular spoken language and not only recognize human faces, but also read their expressions. They can classify personality types, and have started being able to carry out conversations with appropriate emotional tenor.

Machines are getting better than humans at figuring out who to hire, who’s in a mood to pay a little more for that sweater, and who needs a coupon to nudge them toward a sale. In applications around the world, software is being used to predict whether people are lying, how they feel and whom they’ll vote for.

To crack these cognitive and emotional puzzles, computers needed not only sophisticated, efficient algorithms, but also vast amounts of human-generated data, which can now be easily harvested from our digitized world. The results are dazzling. Most of what we think of as expertise, knowledge and intuition is being deconstructed and recreated as an algorithmic competency, fueled by big data.

More...
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/opini ... 05309&_r=0

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Chinese Scientists Edit Genes of Human Embryos, Raising Concerns

"The Chinese researchers did not plan to produce a baby — they used defective human embryos — but did hope to end up with an embryo with a precisely altered gene in every cell but no other inadvertent DNA damage. None of the 85 human embryos they injected fulfilled those criteria. In almost every case, either the embryo died or the gene was not altered. Even the four embryos in which the targeted gene was edited had problems. Some of the embryo cells overrode the editing, resulting in embryos that were genetic mosaics. And speckled over their DNA was a sort of collateral damage — DNA mutations caused by the editing attempt."

More...

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/healt ... pe=article

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25 Years Later, Hubble Sees Beyond Troubled Start

This is an interesting exposition of the history of the Hubble, with its ups and downs and it's future...


"NASA is making a big deal of the Hubble anniversary, with a weeklong symposium in Baltimore, where the Space Telescope Science Institute is based.

“This is a celebration partly about the telescope and partly about NASA,” Dr. Grunsfeld said, “but much of it is a celebration of people doing science.”"

More including video:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/24/scien ... .html?_r=0
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Moore’s Law Turns 50

The article below is a reflection of the exponential growth of the pocessing power of the computers over the past 50 years and the potential for the future.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/13/opini ... 05309&_r=0
kmaherali
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Post by kmaherali »

Stephen Hawking Warns Artificial Intelligence Could End Humanity

If you think future wars will be fought against robots, you aren’t alone.

“Computers will overtake humans with AI [artificial intelligence] at some point within the next 100 years,” Stephen Hawking, the renowned theoretical physicist and cosmologist, said on Tuesday at the Zeitgeist 2015 conference in London. “When that happens, we need to make sure the computers have goals aligned with ours.”

AI refers to the intelligence of computer systems, allowing them to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence. Apple’s Siri and self-driving cars are current examples.

Hawking also asserted that concern currently lies in who controls AI. But with technology’s rapid progression, he said, the future worry will be whether AI can be controlled at all. In December, he went a step further and said that “the development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.”

The ability of a machine to kill, independent of human guidance, is one of the many fears expressed in a report jointly released by Human Rights Watch and Harvard Law School in April. Its authors call for a prohibition on “the development, production and use of fully autonomous weapons through an international, legally binding instrument.”

Hawking posed another possible solution: having developers of the technology carefully coordinate advancements to ensure AI stays within our control. “Our future is a race between the growing power of technology and the wisdom with which we use it,” he said.

http://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/techandsc ... lsignoutmd
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txaheceast.org/resource-center/dfw-area-health-education-center-graduate-a-unique-class-of-community-health-workers/

DFW Area Health Education Center graduate a unique class of Community Health Workers

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Community Health Workers Provide Access to Diverse Community

DFW AHEC graduates a unique class of Community Health Workers

Dallas, TX January 28th, 2015
Doc2-page-001

The DFW Area Health Education Center (DFW AHEC) recently graduated a class of eight women uniquely qualified to serve the community. A Community Health Worker (CHW) provides cultural mediation and serves as a liaison between health care services and the community. CHWs understand the ethnicity, language, socio-economic status, and life experiences of the community served and are a trusted community member. They help people gain access to health services and resources, and can play a critical role on the health care team.

Dr. Lori Millner, director of the DFW AHEC says, “We are fortunate the DFW Metroplex is home to a multicultural and international community and our diversity is growing as people from all walks of life are making North Texas their home. Health providers and the community need to work together to ensure culturally competent care is delivered to all and Community Health Workers can help make the difference.”

The current class of CHW graduates are all women from the Ismaili Muslim community. Giving of one’s competence, sharing of one’s time, self-reliance, an emphasis on education and a pervasive spirit of philanthropy is deeply ingrained in the social conscience of the Ismaili Community. In keeping with this ethos, the community volunteers run the ‘Quality of Life Skills Development Initiative’ which is where these women participated in the CHW program. The goal of the Initiative is to enhance the quality of life of its participants by developing their skills in ways that increases income potential and empowers them to contribute to the larger community.

Most of the women in this initiative’s current cycle are originally from Pakistan and India and are fluent in English, Hindi, and Urdu. Some of these women served as midwives in their country and are excited about the opportunity to serve the DFW community as Community Health Workers.

Salima Yousuf, a graduate shared her thoughts:

“After completing the course of Community Health Worker, I am optimistic that our education will prove to be an asset to the community by impacting their health and wellness.”

The Texas Department of State Health Services offers Certification for those that successfully complete a 160 hour training course from an approved provider. Participants receive training on eight competencies: Communication Skills, Interpersonal Skills, Teaching Skills, Capacity Building Skills, Advocacy Skills, Service Coordination Skills, Organizational Skills, and Basic Health Knowledge.

The Community Health Worker occupation is growing in Texas and more provider organizations and service agencies are recognizing the value they bring in connecting to underserved groups. Research has shown that utilizing CHWs, also called Promotores in the Spanish-speaking community, can be a cost-effective measure for community-based programs. CHWs in Baltimore were credited with reducing Emergency Room visits in patients with diabetes by 40% and reduced cost per patient by $2,245 per year (http://www.ishib.org/journal/ethn-13-01-22.pdf).



CHWs may work under several different job titles and some of the tasks they provide are client and patient navigation of the health care system, educating clients about health prevention, linking clients to community resources, participating in community needs assessment, participating in research programs, helping patients manage chronic illness, providing enrollment assistance in state and federal programs, performing limited health screenings, and mobilizing the community.



The mission of the DFW AHEC, an approved Community Health Worker Training Program, is to make communities healthier. They help develop a quality and diverse health workforce and address unmet health needs. DFW AHEC is a community-based organization and one of nine centers of the Texas AHEC East. We have been a Texas DSHS approved training provider of Community Health Workers since 2013.

For information about the DFW AHEC:

DFW Area Health Education Center

5223 Harry Hines BLVD

Dallas, TX 75390-8818



Lori Millner, PhD

Executive Director

214-648-8338

Lori.millner@txaheceast.org



For information about the ‘Quality of Life – Skills Development Initiative’ by the Ismaili Muslim Community, please contact:



Samina Hooda

972-740-9391

saminahooda@gmail.com



END
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Post by kmaherali »

Risks to Hands-Free Driving

A growing number of new cars have sophisticated technologies designed to prevent accidents and make driving less stressful and monotonous. Some of these advances also pose a potential problem: they could increase distracted driving.

Most automakers are not expected to sell cars that drive themselves all the time for at least several more years. But many companies like Mercedes-Benz, Tesla Motors and General Motors are already selling or working on cars that can do a lot of driving without the help of drivers. Some cars, for example, can follow cars in front of them at a safe distance on highways.

While these features can be incredibly convenient, some experts are worried that they could pose a safety hazard. Drivers in such cars — lulled into believing they can safely take their eyes off the road to text — might not be prepared to take control when something goes wrong. Only New York requires drivers to keep at least one hand on the wheel.

Even without new technologies, distracted driving is a big problem. A recent study commissioned by AT&T found that 61 percent of people admitted that they text while driving, 33 percent said they email and 27 percent said they use Facebook. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration says that distracted driving was involved in 16 percent of all traffic accidents reported to the police in 2013. Using a different statistical approach, the National Safety Council, a nonprofit organization, estimates that as many as 27 percent of accidents in 2013 involved people talking or texting on cellphones.

Since automated driving features are available only in a small number of luxury cars now, it is hard to know their effect. But experts are urging automakers and regulators to address the added distraction risk. Officials at Mercedes-Benz, for example, say the company’s Intelligent Drive system is designed to remind drivers to keep a hand on the steering wheel. Others at companies like Audi have demonstrated systems that monitor drivers using cameras and issue warnings when someone is not paying attention to the road.

The federal government and most states have not yet issued rules on how such features should be designed. One approach is to require that automated systems warn drivers to slow down if they are about to crash into a car or pedestrian in front of them. Other useful features can alert drivers to cars in their blind spot when they are trying to change lanes. Carmakers usually offer these and other new features as optional packages that consumers can buy separately. Over time, as the systems cost less, manufacturers make them standard equipment in some cars. In some cases, the government has forced automakers to install safety features like electronic stability control in all cars, saving thousands of lives.

There are numerous promising technologies coming down the pike. Most of them should make driving safer, as long as they are used sensibly.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/29/opini ... 05309&_r=0
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