Tempus Edax Rerum

A notebook computer is a great convenience — unless you lose it.  Prey is a free programme that works to track your computer should anyone try to steal it.  As soon as the thief turns it on, Prey will try to broadcast the computer’s location.  Even if it isn’t connected to the Internet, it will attempt to find the nearest open hotspot.  To activate it, you simply send your computer a message from your phone or another computer.  And Prey offers a wide range of other features.  You can take screenshots.  You can hide personal information such as stored passwords remotely.  You can even activate the Webcam to get mug shots of the person using your computer.  Another programme, Find My Phone, allows you to track your iPhone using its GPS.  With Where’s My Droid, you can send your lost or stolen phone a text and it’ll respond with its location.  Then there’s Plan B — the only app that allows you to remotely install it on your phone even after you’ve lost it.  It sends you its coordinates via email.  Am I the only one that suspects these types of programmes will ultimately be used to work against you as well as for you?

Near Field Communication, or NFC, allows simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in proximity to each other, usually no more than a few centimetres apart.  NFC is expected to become a widely-used system for making payments by smartphone in the United States.  Many smartphones currently on the market already contain embedded NFC chips that can send encrypted data a short distance (“near field”) to a reader located, for instance, next to a retail cash register.  Shoppers who have their credit card information stored in their NFC smartphones can pay for purchases by waving their smartphones near or tapping them on the reader, rather than using the actual credit card.  Co-invented by NXP Semiconductors and Sony in 2002, NFC technology is being added to a growing number of mobile handsets to enable mobile payments, as well as many other applications.  A smartphone or tablet with an NFC chip could make a credit card payment or serve as a keycard or ID card.  NFC devices can also read unpowered NFC tags, for example on a museum or retail display.  NFC can share a contact, photo, song, application, or video, or pair Bluetooth devices.  Tap one NFC device to another to instantly share electronic business cards or resumes.  Touch NFC devices together to Facebook friend each other or to “check-in” at some venue.

SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) generally refers to Industrial Control Systems (ICS), computer systems that monitor and control industrial (like power generation and mining), infrastructure (like water treatment, pipelines, communications), or facilities-based processes (like airports, ships, and space stations).  “I was contracted to test the systems on a Boeing 747.  They had added a new video system that ran over IP.  They segregated this from the control systems using layer 2 VLANs.  We managed to break the VLANs and access other systems and with source routing could access the Engine Management Systems.  For those who do not know, 747’s are big flying Unix hosts.  At the time, the engine management system on this particular airline was Solaris-based.  The patching was well behind and they used telnet as SSH broke the menus and the budget did not extend to fixing this.  The engineers can actually access the engine management system of a 747 en route.  If issues are noted, they can re-tune the engine in the air.  The issue here is that all that separates the engine control systems and the open network are NAT-based filters.  The addition of a simple NAT device is NOT a control.  Most of these systems are horribly patched and some run DOS, Win 95, Win 98 and even old Unix.  Windows XP and unpatched networks are a concern, but they are less of a concern than systems that are connected to the world and which control physical systems.” What can go wrong?  Think Stuxnet…

Contact lenses, normally used to bring the outside world into focus, are making it possible to peer back in through these windows.  The idea of “smart” contact lenses that can superimpose information on the wearer’s field of view has been around for a while, but contact lenses are also being developed that use embedded sensors and electronics to monitor disease and dispense drugs.  Such devices may eventually be able to measure the level of cholesterol or alcohol in your blood and flash up an appropriate warning.  By adding tiny light-emitting elements to contact lenses, it is becoming possible to map digital images directly onto the wearer’s field of vision to create a heads-up display or augmented-reality overlay that requires no glasses, screen or headset.  An induction loop is used to power the device and to relay data from the lens to a receiver worn by the patient.  (Induction loops are also used to power hearing-aid implants without the need for troublesome wires.)  Since the end of 2010, this technology has been available in 8 European countries, and approval in America is expected by the end of 2011.

Chuck O’Rear was driving (in January when the grass is its most brilliant green in northern California) to visit his girlfriend when he was struck by the beauty of the rolling vineyards.  Many people would have carried on without bothering to stop and take a photograph.  But the former National Geographic magazine photographer was so entranced by the green of the grass and the white clouds in the perfectly blue California sky (Sonoma County, southeast of Sonoma Valley near the site of the old Clover Stornetta Dairy) that he pulled over and got out his camera.  Never for a moment did he think the shot would become the most viewed image on the planet, for it was chosen by Microsoft engineers as the desktop image for their Windows XP background.  O’Rear said he received one of the largest amounts ever paid to a living, working photographer.  A nondisclosure agreement prevents him from naming the actual figure.  He says only that it was “extraordinary” and second only to that paid to another living, working photographer for the photo of then-President Bill Clinton hugging Monica Lewinsky.

One of the great puzzles of the industrial revolution is why it began in England.  Britain had plentiful supplies of coal, a good patent system in place, relatively high labour costs (which encourage the search for labour-saving innovations).  However, economists Ralf Meisenzahl and Joel Mokyr have a different explanation: a group they call “tweakers.” Britain dominated the industrial revolution because it had more skilled engineers and artisans than its competitors: men who took the inventions of the industrial age and perfected them, making them work.  In 1779, Samuel Crompton invented the spinning mule, which made possible the mechanisation of cotton manufacture.  Then Henry Stones added metal rollers to the mule; James Hargreaves figured out how to smooth the acceleration and deceleration of the spinning wheel; William Kelly worked out how to add water power to the draw stroke; John Kennedy adapted the wheel to turn out fine counts; finally, Richard Roberts, a master of precision machine tooling — and the tweaker’s tweaker, created the “automatic” spinning mule: an exacting, high-speed, reliable rethinking of Crompton’s original creation.  Before long, the number of spindles on a typical mule jumped from 400 to 1,000.  Such men, economists argue, provided the “micro inventions necessary to make macro inventions highly productive and remunerative.”  (Sort of like what Steve Jobs — a perfector rather than a visionary — seems to have done best: in his case, equal parts insightful, vicious, and delusional.)

The debate over Medicare is very abstract when politicians and economists talk about it.  Nobody can quite figure out how the US spends twice as large a slice of GDP on health care as other countries.  Yet a single conversation with a doctor would add a lot to an understanding of the problem.  A friend of mine (“Joe”) is a pulmonary/critical care doctor.  An elderly patient comes in to the hospital.  Dr Joe tells his adult children, “Your father is going to die within two weeks.  To keep him alive beyond tonight will require a lot of machines and about $300,000 of Medicare expense.  What would you like to do?”  The response is “Everything.”  Dr Joe says, “It doesn’t make a lot of medical sense, but I get paid by Medicare either way — so we do everything.”  Reasoning and making decisions from anecdotes is obviously not very sound.  On the other hand, it seems that economists are led to a lot of unsound conclusions by ignoring anecdotes.

The number of men age 65 and older increased by 21% from 2000 to 2010, nearly double the 11.2% growth rate for women in that age group.  What are the implications of having more men around longer?  While most experts say it may be only a blip, some demographers say that a surprisingly rapid rise in the number of men could cost society even more in retirement costs, since they earned more than women and will collect more.  They will also add to the long-term care problem.  It is axiomatic that medical screening tests will always, without exception, cost the healthcare system far more money than they can ever save the healthcare system.  Therefore, medical screening tests need to be suppressed.  Screening tests often produce false positive results, so additional (often invasive and always costly) testing then needs to be done to confirm or deny the diagnosis.  If the patient’s life is saved by the screening test and subsequent therapy, that patient will persist for several more years, soaking younger Americans for Social Security and Medicare payments — and worse, will ultimately develop some other expensive medical problem everyone else will have to pay for.  (The writer is a male doctor who is not expressing his personal opinions.)  The ironic part is that screening is something that any true “insurance” should never cover in the first place.  Insurance, in its most literal sense, is simply a way for a collective to distribute risk.  A group of people pool their money together to pay for something that would be prohibitively expensive for any of them on their own but can easily be covered by group funds.  As a corollary, however, the actual risk for the incident in question must be low enough that total payouts are less than the aggregated premiums.

NFC-based security chips can be attached by manufacturers to their products to be used for tracking sales, as well as letting customers verify that they are buying “the real thing”.  The chips work by responding to random challenge messages; they come in multiple antenna form factors that make it possible to hide this protection well enough that there is no visible trace.  Readers – for instance, your NFC-capable smartphone – emit radio-frequency energy which powers the chips.  With these chips, manufacturers can maintain their reputations amidst cheap knockoffs and clones that affect company revenues and employment.

More than 3/4 of the honey sold in US grocery stores isn’t exactly what the bees produced.  Pollen frequently has been ultra-filtered out of it — the honey is watered down, then forced at high pressure through extremely small holes.  The food safety divisions of the World Health Organization, the European Commission and dozens of others have ruled that without pollen there is no way to determine whether the honey comes from legitimate, safe sources.  In the US, the Food and Drug Administration says that a product that’s been ultra-filtered and no longer contains pollen is no longer honey.  However, they don’t routinely check honey for pollen.  Why would anyone want to ultra-filter honey, anyway?  Cheap and plentiful Chinese and Indian honeys often contain illegal antibiotics, heavy metals, or dilution with inexpensive high fructose corn syrup.  These honeys are banned.  Pollen allows identification of the country of origin.  A leading palynologist (honey expert) found that most honeys sold in US grocery stores lacks pollen while all honeys actually sourced from beekeepers (such as that sold at farmer’s markets) DOES have pollen.  The US imports about 12 million pounds of honey per month which is sold under more than 1,100 brands.  Would NFC chips be able to help beekeepers?  I can’t quite see how.  (Random factoid: North Carolina has more beekeepers than any other US state.)

Special relativity, which physicists thought they had tested almost to destruction and found not wanting, states that as objects speed up, time slows down.  Time stops altogether on reaching the 299,792,458 metres-per-second at which light zaps through a vacuum.  Go any faster and you’ll be moving backwards in time.  If CERN’s neutrinos really are travelling faster than light, it is a really big deal.  Modern physicists have never thought their subject closed, but they have found no chink in the armour of relativity that they could use to prise the whole thing open.  Neutrinos moving faster than light would be such a chink — that would change everything.  The likely explanation is neutrinos are taking a short-cut through one of the extra dimensions which string theory postulates are hidden among the familiar 4 of length, breadth, height and time.  Measured along a 5-dimensional route, Einstein might still be right.  (It wouldn’t so much be that he made a mistake as that he didn’t know the whole story.)  Indeed, moving beyond 4 dimensions would allow physicists to try integrating Einstein’s work with quantum theory, the other great breakthrough of 20th-century physics, but one which simply refuses to overlap with relativity.  A unified Theory of Everything, including perhaps as many as 11 dimensions, would then beckon.  That is a lot to hang on unconfirmed observations.  If a glitch is found in CERN’s result, the whole thing will rapidly be swept under the carpet and forgotten.  If there’s no glitch, an astonishing future of understanding beckons.

George W S Trow, reflecting on his family’s news consumption habits in the 1950s, noted that in the New York City of the time, there were Times people and there were Herald Tribune people.  And the Trows were, for their part, “in our souls a Herald Tribune family.”  In our souls.  This is what we tend to forget when we talk about journalism’s evolution: the news brand, in the past — for all its exclusivity, for all its anonymity — was much more than a brand, with all the corporateness and cravenness that that term can imply.  It was also an identity.  It was a purchased proxy for a personal worldview.  A subscription to the Times — even a newsstand purchase of the Times — meant something both public and, even more importantly, intimate.  The news brand was, in its way, an externalised self, a reflection — often aspirational — of the way its consumers took part in the tumult of human events.  What The Economist newsmagazine has managed to capture — to recapture — is the sense of self and self-containment that defined media brands before those brands became social.  It’s not just clever content, cleverly packaged.  It’s also an outsourced worldview: The Economist sells a self-image that’s high-class, high-culture, high-end.  Depending on where you stand, it’s either congratulatory or aspirational.

Officially, the anthropocene epoch does not exist.  Yet.  It may be added permanently to the geologic time scale in August 2012, though, at the 34th congress organised by the International Union of Geological Sciences to be held in Brisbane, Australia.  Technically, the Anthropocene is the most recent period of the Quaternary, succeding to the Holocene.  The Quaternary is a period of the earth’s history characterised by numerous and cyclical glaciations, starting about 2.5 million years ago.  The Quaternary is divided into 3 epochs: the Pleistocene, the Holocene, and now the Anthropocene.  During the Pleistocene, more than 11 major glaciations occurred, humans exited Africa, tools were invented, bipedalism evolved, arts, culture and linguistic refinement came into being.  The Holocene (a bit over a million years ago until about 1800AD) was comparatively smoother in terms of climate variability.  At the end of the last Ice Age 12,000 years ago, a more stable climate settled in.  Humans were present on all continents, agriculture took off in Africa, China, New Guinea and South America.  We are officially still in the Holocene — in fact, in the Phanerozoic Eon, Cenozoic era, Quaternary period, Holocene epoch.  But now, the earth’s system doesn’t behave the same way as it has been behaving.  Earth of the 21st century is warming, overcrowded, partly deforested, and more toxic and interconnected than ever.  The comforting envelope of the Holocene, which has fostered the birth of civilisations, is now punctured.  (Some lovely maps at this site.)

Details about how the nutrients we consume are detected and processed in the brain is elusive.  The nutritional composition of meals, such as the protein:carbohydrate (sugar) ratio has long been recognised to affect levels of arousal and attention.  Dr Denis Burdakov, University of Cambridge, and his colleagues have studied how physiological mixtures of nutrients influence “orexin/hypocretin” neurons, which are known to be critical regulators of wakefulness and energy balance in the body.  Previous research has demonstrated that orexin/hypocretin neurons are inhibited by glucose.  Surprisingly, the current study reveals that physiologically-relevant mixtures of amino acids, the nutrients derived from proteins (such as egg white), stimulate and activate the orexin/hypocretin neurons.  Researchers show that when orexin/hypocretin neurons are simultaneously exposed to amino acids and sugars, the amino acids serve to suppress the inhibitory influence of glucose.  Taken together, these results support a new and more complex nutrient-specific model for dietary regulation of orexin/hypocretin neurons.  “We find that activity in the orexin/hypocretin system is regulated by macronutrient balance rather than simply by the caloric content of the diet, suggesting that the brain contains not only energy-sensing cells, but also cells that can measure dietary balance,” concludes Dr Burdakov.  “Our data support the idea that the orexin/hypocretin neurons are under a 'push-pull’ control by sugars and proteins.  Interestingly, although behavioural effects are beyond the scope of our study, this cellular model is consistent with reports that when compared with sugar-rich meals, protein-rich meals are more effective at promoting wakefulness and arousal.”

The word “cancer” is used for far too many conditions that are very different in their prognoses — from Stage 0 breast cancer, which may be harmless if left alone, to glioblastomas, which are brain tumours with a dismal prognosis no matter what treatment is tried.  It’s like saying a person has “mental illness” when he or she might have schizophrenia or mild depression or an eating disorder.  Now, some medical experts have recommended getting rid of the word “cancer” altogether for certain conditions that may or may not be potentially fatal.  Many medical investigators now speak in terms of the probability that a tumour is deadly.  And they talk of a newly-recognised risk of cancer screening — overdiagnosis.  Screening can find what are actually harmless, if abnormal looking, clusters of cells.  But since it is not known for sure whether they will develop into fatal cancers, doctors tend to treat them with the same methods that they use to treat clearly invasive cancers.  Screening is finding “cancers” that did not need to be found.  So maybe “cancer” is not always the right word — perhaps “high-grade dysplasia” would be better.

Though Olympics drug-testing is getting more efficient, there will surely be medal-winners who owe their triumph to some clever chemical intervention.  But having a prior drugs-cheat conviction will no longer be a bar to participation since the Court of Arbitration in Sport (the “supreme court” of sport) recently ruled on the anti-drugs stance of the International Olympic Committee: “The IOC Executive Board’s decision prohibiting athletes suspended for more than 6 months for anti-doping from participating in the next Olympic Games following their suspension expiration is invalid and unenforceable.” In other words, LaShawn Merritt, the reigning 400-metres champion, will be free to compete in London even though he failed 3 drugs tests two years ago and was banned for two years.  (His excuse was that he had innocently taken a banned substance contained in a supplement that he hoped would lengthen his penis.  And of course that’s what happened.)  Should doping be no more demonised than is allowing athletes to train at high altitudes or having the very best medical and coaching advice?  Drugs could be carefully administered under medical supervision, thus giving everyone an equal chance.  (It would, unfortunately, leave many younger Olympic-wannabe athletes taking the same drugs, but NOT under supervision.)  The Goldman Dilemma is named after a researcher who asked elite athletes if they would take a drug that guaranteed sporting success but would kill them in 5 years’ time.  The question was asked every 2 years for more than a decade and the results were always the same: HALF the athletes said, “Yes.”

In the late 1950s, researchers from the University of Oregon and University of Washington tested drugs called bis(dichloroacetyl) diamines on inmates from the Oregon State Penitentiary.  They doled out one of 3 pills — dubbed Win 13,099, Win 17,416 and Win 18,446 — to 26 volunteers once or twice a day for up to 54 weeks, and measured the men’s sperm counts along the way.  The results were stunning: the compounds reduced the amount of sperm in the men’s semen, and sometimes completely wiped it out.  The pills didn’t affect libido, and the only reported side effect was bloating and gas.  What’s more, within a few weeks of stopping treatment, sperm counts went back up.  It was, perhaps, the horny grail: reversible birth control for men, no condom required.  The problem came when the pills were tested outside of prison.  When men taking the drugs drank alcohol, they had a violent reaction, including acute vomiting and shortness of breath.  The research was quickly abandoned.  The joke there, of course, is that if it weren’t for alcohol, you probably wouldn’t need a contraceptive.

Are you a high-functioning alcoholic?  The definition of alcoholic here appears to be “someone who depends on alcohol.”  Does this imply “can’t” stop?  Does “don’t want to” stop really mean “can’t”?  It would seem so.  (Most of the so-called characteristics could also be applied to people on a diet having difficulty losing weight — but one can’t permanently abstain from eating without eventually dying.)

• They behave in ways that are not characteristic of themselves while drinking and continue to repeat these behaviours and patterns.
• They set drinking limits (that is, only having 3 drinks, only drinking 3 days per week) but are not always able to adhere to them.
• They use alcohol as a reward.
• They take breaks from drinking and then increase alcohol consumption when they resume.
• They are unable to imagine their lives without alcohol in it.
• They have difficulty viewing themselves as alcoholics because they don’t fit the stereotypical image and because they feel their lives are manageable.
• They are well-respected for job/academic performance and accomplishments.
• They appear to the outside world to be managing life well.
• They are skilled at living a compartmentalized life (that is, separating professional, personal, and drinking lives).
• They experience few tangible losses and consequences from their drinking.

Radiation therapy often is used to treat prostate, cervical, bladder, endometrial and other abdominal cancers.  But the therapy can kill both cancer cells and healthy ones, leading to severe bouts of diarrhoea if the lining of the intestine gets damaged.  For many patients, this means radiation therapy must be discontinued, or the radiation dose reduced, while the intestine heals.  But a new study shows that probiotics may provide a way to protect the lining of the small intestine from some of that damage (though thus far it has only been tested in mice).  The lining of the intestine is only one cell-layer thick.  This layer of epithelial cells separates the rest of the body from what’s inside the intestine.  If the epithelium breaks down as the result of radiation, the bacteria that normally reside in the intestine can be released, travel through the body and cause serious problems such as sepsis.  The probiotic was effective only if given to mice before radiation exposure.  If the mice received it after damage to the intestinal lining had occurred, the treatment did not repair it.

“Nicotine itself is not especially hazardous,” the British Medical Society concluded in 2007.  “If nicotine could be provided in a form that is acceptable and effective as a cigarette substitute, millions of lives could be saved.”  Enter e-cigarettes.  Electronic cigarettes, or e-cigarettes, contain a small reservoir of liquid nicotine solution that is vapourised to form an aerosol mist.  The user “vapes,” or puffs on the vapour, to get a hit of the addictive nicotine (and the familiar sensation of bringing a cigarette to one’s mouth) without the noxious substances found in cigarette smoke.  The results have been very positive, with many smokers cutting regular cigarette consumption by half or more and a quarter stop altogether.  The number of Americans trying e-cigarettes quadrupled from 2009 to 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control.  Its survey last year found that 1.2% of adults, or close to 3 million people, reported using them in the previous month.  Some 50 million Americans continue to smoke.  Nicotine reduces anxiety and stress, lowers weight, allows for faster reaction time and improved concentration.  It is hoped that e-cigarettes will replace much or most cigarette consumption in the next decade.

It seems that oncologists aren’t the only ones with an overdiagnosis problem.  With increasingly sophisticated detection technology, dentists are finding — and treating — tooth abnormalities that may or may not develop into cavities.  While some describe their efforts as a proactive strategy to protect patients from harm, critics say the procedures are unnecessary and painful, and are driving up the costs of care.  “A better approach is watchful waiting,” said Dr James Bader, a research professor at the University of North Carolina School of Dentistry.  “Examine it again in 6 months.”  But 63% of dentists surveyed said they would fill them – and, hey – if you have dental insurance it will be covered.  But every time a dentist drills into a tooth, you’re condemning that tooth-owner to a refilling years down the road.  And mineral-containing saliva can often repair those incipient lesions, especially when bolstered with fluoride.

Atavism is the tendency to revert to ancestral type.  In biology, an atavism is an evolutionary throwback — traits reappearing which had disappeared generations earlier.  Atavisms can occur when genes for previously existing phenotypical features are preserved in DNA, and these become expressed through a mutation that either knocks out the overriding genes for the new traits or makes the old traits override the new one.  In the social sciences, atavism is a cultural tendency — for example, people in the modern era reverting to the ways of thinking and acting of a former time.  The word atavism is derived from the Latin atavus — a great-great-great-grandfather or, more generally, an ancestor.  Four-year-old Chinese girl Jiaxue, who suffers from hairy black moles, sits on a bed at home in 2006 in Changchun, Jilin Province, China.  Jiaxue was born with the moles covering parts of her back, breast, neck and face.  Experts say the condition may be atavistic.

You’d like to start your work day with a cup of coffee, but see that your jerk co-worker has left the break room in shambles: grounds everywhere, dish soap oozing onto the counter, half-opened sugar packets on the floor by the trash.  So frustrating.  The first thing you want to do is blow off steam.  You don’t really want to get the person fired for sugar packet litter, or even have some kind of awkward conflict resolution meeting about it, but it’s inconsiderate.  You need to vent.  We think of venting as a transfer of heat, as “blowing off steam,” meaning anger, which would otherwise stay inside, creating pressure which could cause us to explode at an inopportune moment.  Venting is different than complaining (voicing a concern with the goal of changing something or addressing the cause of the problem).  You get a kind of satisfaction from talking about being angry without necessarily wanting to change the circumstances that triggered it.  But research suggests that venting anger doesn’t get rid of it.  Instead, it amplifies negative feelings.  Nevertheless, the average employee either vents or hears someone else vent about 4 times a day.  Agreeing with the person makes it worse.  Offering a different perspective or suggesting he or she calm down is better.  Or try bringing a puppy to work in case of emergency…

Things you can do to be happy in the next 30 minutes:

• Take a walk outside.
• Rid yourself of a nagging task.
• Spend a few minutes putting your immediate surroundings in order.
• Save someone’s life.
• Learn something new.
• Act happy.
• Do a good deed.

A before and after shot of Joplin, Missouri after a massive tornado on 22 May 2011.  This was #8 on BuzzFeed’s 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011.

This is awesome (and I don’t intend that term to imply goodness in any way).  A monstrous dust storm (Haboob) roared through Phoenix, Arizona July 2011.  This was #10 on BuzzFeed’s 45 Most Powerful Images of 2011.

I don’t know why these ear decorations (ear rings seems a bit of a misnomer) appeal to me.  I don’t have pierced ears and don’t quite understand the attraction for most females (except they keep losses down, being attached and all, I guess).  Partly, I don’t like the thought that any constant pull on ear lobes could cause them to get unattractively larger over time (age does that enough for most people).  I thought these ear decorations possibly distribute the weight better.  But do they really?  Is there a stud in the moon’s “cheek”?  And if there is one, is a piercing that high on the outer ear as safe from infection as is the lobe?  (That is, does it get enough blood flowing through there to provide sufficient white blood cells to fight germs?)  If so, then I really like these.  But I’d have the top limb of the moon follow the curve of the ear slightly more faithfully.  And I’d like them made of gold.

A candid photograph, published by The Telegraph, shows the true extent of the intimacy between the bridesmaid and best man at the Royal wedding reception, as she adoringly feeds him cake.  The newlywed couple, who also appear in the shot, seem oblivious to the risqué events unfolding in front of them.  Or do they?  Actually, it was posed by a selection of royal lookalikes.  Alison Jackson, famed for her satirical spoof photographs, has a great William (two, actually), a half-decent Kate, and a rather impressive Harry.  Finding a Pippa lookalike proved to be the most difficult.  Earlier this year Jackson was on the lookout for a Julian Assange.  She got one, and did some “great fun” pictures with a fake Hillary Clinton.  Where did she find the lookalike of the WikiLeaks founder?  “Oh, that wasn’t a Julian Assange lookalike,” smiles Jackson.  “It was Julian Assange.  He was very game to get involved.  I like to do that sometimes – throw in a real celebrity and see if anyone notices.”

This poem is one of the winners of the The Yale UCL Medical Students Poetry Competition.  The aim of the competition was to stimulate creativity and expression amongst students in both medical schools, and to find, through the use of poetry, the commonality of experience amongst medical students.  There were 160 entries.

Aphasia
by Noah Capurso

We are taught that the brain
Is a set of highways;
Corpus callosum,
Spinothalamic,
Optic radiation.

But there are other roads, as well.
Scenic neural backroads
That are hidden from view;
Dusty and seldom used.

Sometimes we can see them
When the highways are down;
From cancer,
Surgery,
Or a stroke.

Our patient had a brain tumor.
We tested her highways
With a feather drawing;
“What is this?” we asked her.

And the answer she gave
Came by the scenic route;
“A leaf
That fell
From a bird.”

Sixty-three-year-old Carolyn Hopkins of northern Maine is the woman behind the voice at airports telling us to “Watch your bags”, or “The next uptown train will arrive in… one minute.”  She got the job because she worked at Innovative Electronic Designs, the company that sells paging and public address systems.  Her voice is now in over 200 airports around the world and also in subway and train stations.  She even does weather warnings.  But she says she still has trouble with two words: “similarly” and “regularly”.

A panoptikum is a collection of extraordinary or rare objects.  Design Panoptikum is a Berlin museum featuring unusual items collected by Russian-born artist Vlad Korneev — funky clocks, odd-looking medical equipment, and even a life-size Power Ranger brought in from Japan.  The exhibits (including a talking dispensing machine, an old birthing doll, and one of the earliest electric sun lamps) come from back-alley stores, e-Bay, and the junkyard.  Visitors can purchase most of the merchandise shown in the main rooms, but the back rooms hold some truly special exhibits that are not for sale, but can be rented for film or fashion shoots.

This is a video of precision walking (both forward and backward and even running) by a group of Japanese men.  I was in a marching band for 5 years when I was in secondary school and we often crossed each other in groups like this.  It is much easier than it looks – the secret is taking consistently-sized steps and staying with the beat.  But these men go at it rather fast and hard.  The crowd seems to like it.

Lions, orcas, dolphins, hyenas, some hawks and several other species collaborate when they hunt, with each individual in the group performing different but complementary actions with the singular goal of bringing down prey.  Now we can add a species of fish to the list of collaborative hunters – the yellow saddle goatfish, Parupeneus cyclostomus, which lives in the shallow waters of the Red Sea.  The goatfish often congregate in groups.  When one fish starts accelerating towards a prey fish, other members of the group join in the hunt.  These “blockers” spread out over the reef to cut off the prey fish’s escape routes, giving their buddy, the “chaser,” a better chance at making a successful catch.

Its name means “honey bear,” but it’s not a bear — it’s a carnivore, though it mostly eats fruit.  It has a prehensile tail, but it’s not a primate.  The kinkajou is a procyonid, a member of a group of small animals with long tails that includes raccoons.  Kinkajous can be found in tropical forests from southern Mexico to Brazil.  Wild cats such as jaguars, ocelots and margays will prey on kinkajous, but kinkajous have a hidden talent that helps them escape: They can rotate their feet so that they can run backwards just as fast they run forwards.  They also have sharp hearing that lets them detect quiet predators like snakes.  In a zoo, one might live as long as 40 years.