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Wired posts on a miniature device that can diagnose hundreds of diseases using one drop of blood.
The digital health revolution is still stuck.
Tech giants are jumping into the fray with fitness offerings like Apple Health and Google Fit, but there’s still not much in the way of, well, actual medicine. The Fitbits and Jawbones of the world measure users’ steps and heart rate, but they don’t get into the deep diagnostics of, say, biomarkers, the internal indicators that can serve as an early warning sign of a serious ailment. For now, those who want to screen for a disease or measure a medical condition with clinical accuracy still need to go to the doctor.
Dr. Eugene Chan and his colleagues at the DNA Medical Institute (DMI) aim to change that. Chan’s team has created a portable handheld device that can diagnose hundreds of diseases using a single drop of blood with what Chan claims is gold-standard accuracy. Known as rHEALTH, the technology was developed over the course of seven years with grants from NASA, the National Institutes of Health, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. On Monday, the team received yet another nod (and more funding) as the winners of this year’s Nokia Sensing XChallenge, one of several competitions run by the moonshot-seeking XPrize Foundation.
The goal of the XChallenge is to accelerate innovation in sensor technologies that address healthcare problems. Teams came up with tools intended to quickly and easily allow individuals to detect possible health problems without having to rely on analysis from large, facility-bound lab instruments. First hatched by DMI in response to a NASA challenge to create a diagnostics device that could work even in space, rHEALTH was portable from the beginning. …
NY Times profiles an 87 year old cabbie.
With a half-century’s worth of experience driving a yellow cab in New York City, Sal Locascio, 87, knows the streets as well as anyone.
“I do all right for a hillbilly,” said Mr. Locascio, a joking reference to his lifelong residency in the village of Pleasantville, in WestchesterCounty. …
… Mr. Locascio said that after high school, he worked in construction for his father, a Sicilian immigrant, and then did a stint as a buildings inspector in the city. He lost the job and began driving a yellow cab in the early 1960s.
“I could see I was stuck in the racket,” he said, so in 1968 he bought a medallion for $25,500.
Mr. Locascio said a broker recently told him that medallions now sell for around $1 million and implored him to sell.
“I told him, ‘Listen, I’ll retire when you retire,’ ” Mr. Locascio said.
“So I’m not lying when I say I wouldn’t trade the job for a million bucks.” …
Also from The Times, new thinking concerning patients with nonobstructive coronary artery disease.
… Now there is proof that certain medications can ward off even a first heart attack in people at risk. The two most commonly recommended are a daily baby aspirin and a statin.
Aspirin thins the blood, reducing the risk that a blood clot will form in a coronary artery. The Food and Drug Administration does not recommend daily use to prevent a first heart attack — but some doctors do. Possible side effects include an increased risk of gastrointestinal bleeding.
A statin, though primarily prescribed to lower blood levels of artery-clogging cholesterol, turns out to have cardiac benefits beyond slowing the formation of new plaques in coronary arteries.
Statins sometimes reduce the size of existing lesions. They can suppress inflammation that contributes to plaque formation. They improve the function of cells that line the arteries, enabling them to expand as needed.
Statins may also stabilize plaques, reducing the chance that they will rupture and block arteries feeding the heart.
Given these benefits and the fact that plaque rupture is the source of 95 percent of heart attacks, Dr. Maddox said that if he had coronary artery disease and was stranded on a desert island, the one drug he would want to have with him is a statin.
Tuna farming in Japan is reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Tokihiko Okada was on his boat one recent morning when his cellphone rang with an urgent order from a Tokyo department store. Its gourmet food section was running low on sashimi. Could he rustle up an extra tuna right away?
Mr. Okada, a researcher at Osaka’s KinkiUniversity, was only too happy to oblige—and he didn’t need a fishing pole or a net. Instead, he relayed the message to a diver who plunged into a round pen with an electric harpoon and stunned an 88-pound Pacific bluefin tuna, raised from birth in captivity. It was pulled out and slaughtered immediately on the boat.
Not long ago, full farming of tuna was considered impossible. Now the business is beginning to take off, as part of a broader revolution in aquaculture that is radically changing the world’s food supply.
“We get so many orders these days that we have been catching them before we can give them enough time to grow,” said Mr. Okada, a tanned 57-year-old who is both academic and entrepreneur. “One more year in the water, and this fish would have been much fatter,” as much as 130 pounds, he added.
With a decadeslong global consumption boom depleting natural fish populations of all kinds, demand is increasingly being met by farm-grown seafood. In 2012, farmed fish accounted for a record 42.2% of global output, compared with 13.4% in 1990 and 25.7% in 2000. A full 56% of global shrimp consumption now comes from farms, mostly in Southeast Asia and China. …
Which leads to Amusing Planet’s article on the sardine run off the far northeast coast of South Africa.
Every year, between the months of May and July, massive schools of sardines travel north from the cold southern oceans off South Africa’s Cape Point to the warmer waters of Kwa-Zulu Natal, hugging the shore as they make their way up along the coastlines, in what is commonly known as the annual Sardine Run. These famous sardine shoals travel in seething masses stretching for up to fifteen kilometres in length, three and a half kilometres wide and nearly forty metres deep. The enormous number of sardines attract hundreds of predators who arrive en mass to partake in a feeding frenzy, creating a spectacle as spectacular as East Africa’s great wildebeest migration. …
… The sardine run is eagerly awaited by predators of the sea, including sharks, whales, dolphins and birds. The hunting strategy employed by the dolphins is particularly worth watching. Like sheepdogs working in the field, the dolphins round up the sardines into densely packed masses called “bait balls”, 10–20 metres across. Working together underwater the dolphins drive the bait ball toward the surface, whirling, twisting and swimming below the shoal. Once the sardines reach the surface, the dolphins then pounce on the tiny fishes while birds plummet out of the sky to pillage from above. …
Watts Up With That posts on Monday night’s deep freeze in all 50 states.
… All 50 states have low temperatures BELOW freezing tonight. (Monday night)
Yes, even Hawaii. Tall mountain peaks there regularly get below freezing, and even get snow.
This typically happens a few times during winter, but is very rare this early in the season. …
Popular Science on the cold that has surprised us so far this year.
There’s an unwelcome guest on your doorstep, America.
It comes from the north, dragging frigid air and awful commutes like a terrible shroud over the continental United States, from the Rocky Mountains all the way to the Atlantic. While the East Coast saw temperatures about 10 degrees below average Friday, snow hit much of the Midwest following a 40 degree drop over just a couple days in Chicago, and a region stretching from Denver to Montana saw sub-zero chills and record lows.
This morning, in the stairwell of an apartment building, even New York City’s relatively mild mid-30s weather prodded a father into a shouting match with his weeping child: “But I don’t want to go to school today! It’s too cold to go outside!” “Put your coat on, now!” And in the halls of climate research centers and weather stations across the nation, the cold snap is spurring a more technical, but no less divisive debate — one that matters to millions of Americans who remember the last awful winter: Is this the new normal? …
We close with late night humor from Andrew Malcolm.
Fallon: The city of Paris may start fining people for taking night-time photos of the EiffelTower because its light show is copyrighted. That explains France’s new tourism slogan: “Go home!”
Conan: Hackers infiltrated the Postal Service’s network. The Post Office was shocked about it, and even more shocked that it has a computer.
Meyers: A Florida man got six months in jail for stockpiling weapons just 11 miles from Disney World — 11 miles from Disney World? So…in the parking lot?