Taylor is now a commissioner on aging in Alameda County, and is 1 of 2 people in California certified to train physicians and nurses in medical cannabis. She speaks at churches and senior centers. “In the beginning, they’ll sit, frowning, with their arms folded across their chests. I tell them I’m not trying to convince anyone, I’m only here to educate you about the health benefits.” This summer, she plans to open iCANN Berkeley, a dispensary and wellness center, in a historically black neighborhood, which will cater to seniors. “Seniors are the most vulnerable population we have. People think they can give them a pill and not worry if it’s gonna kill them because they’re almost dead anyway.”
Month: April 2018
PigeonView
In 1907, Neubronner attached his pigeon cameras, with a built-in shutter timer, to his own homing pigeons and let them fly. For most people, the birds’ photos provided a previously unseen view on the world.
In silico labeling
The new deep-learning network can identify whether a cell is alive or dead, and get the answer right 98% of the time (humans can typically only identify a dead cell with 80% accuracy) — without requiring invasive fluorescent chemicals, which make it difficult to track tissues over time. The deep-learning network can also predict detailed features such as nuclei and cell type (such as neural or breast cancer tissue).
Beta Thalassemia Breakthrough
The researchers’ hope was that the modified stem cells would mature into red blood cells and produce robust amounts of healthy hemoglobin. That hope was realized. 9 of the 2 patients suffered from severe beta thalassemia, and, after treatment, the number of blood transfusions they required fell by 74%. 3 of the 9 no longer need any transfusions at all. The same is true of 12 of the 13 patients with the less severe version of the disease. So far, the subjects of the trial have been observed for a maximum of 42 months, but they will be monitored long into the future, to insure that the benefits of the therapy persist and cause no serious side effects. 1 early concern—that the procedure could disrupt the DNA of the stem cells, potentially triggering leukemia—has not, fortunately, come to fruition.
Paul Erdős Amphetamine
I began to wonder whether Paul Erdős (who I used as an example of a respected academic who used cognitive enhancers) could actually have been shown to have benefited from his amphetamine use, which began in 1971 according to Hill (2004). One way of investigating is his publication record: how many papers did he produce per year before or after 1971?
Reducing data movements
Our evaluation shows that offloading simple functions from these consumer workloads to processing-in-memory logic, consisting of either simple cores or specialized accelerators, reduces system energy consumption by 55.4% and execution time by 54.2%, on average across all of our workloads.
Red Hook Weed
The smell of maraschino cherries, not unpleasant but eye-wateringly strong, fills the factory, and the floors remain sticky even though they’re constantly mopped. Sometimes neighbors in apartments overlooking the building caught a few whiffs of marijuana along with the cherries. David Selig thought the smell of pot might be the result of workmen smoking it on their breaks. The police had failed to find suspicious signs. An increase in energy consumption consistent with the use of grow lights had not been detected, possibly because the factory had its own gasoline-powered generators, and a drug-sniffing dog had not been able to discover a definitive scent of marijuana. Independently, environmental investigators, acting on a tip, began to look into possible violations in the dumping of wastewater from the cherry-manufacturing process into the sewer. Meanwhile, the Brooklyn D.A.’s office more or less forgot about the marijuana investigation.
Heart of dorkness
Corey Pein took his half-baked startup idea to America’s hottest billionaire factory – and found a wasteland of techie hustlers and con men
Infilling Hoboken
The total cost of our development fully built out will be $111m. Creating lovable, fine-grained, human-scale places can be profitable – even around a very expensive city like New York City.
A ride with Andy Byford
He may not have gotten the real sense of trying to get somewhere on a tight timeline, waiting for slow elevators, or encountering broken elevators. I think he still got some good insights and learned a few new things. For instance, auto-gates, the emergency exits that double as a wheelchair entrances, only accept reduced-fare MetroCards. This was brand new information for him. The card reader was not working where we met at Times Square, and April pointed out that she wants to pay the full fare like everyone else. He also noticed that the signage to elevators also needs work and that there weren’t enough accessible areas on the train cars themselves. We were able to deliver our wishlist, and hope to continue the conversation. I believe he will continue to listen to people with disabilities
Gregor J. Rothfuss 