Tag Archives: health care

wireless ECG

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This paper from MIT describes a technology that can read emotions accurately by detecting heartbeats simply by bouncing a wireless signal off a person. It is supposedly as accurate as a an electrocardiogram. Reading emotions this way is pretty amazing, but to me just the idea of reading a heartbeat accurately this way sounds like a pretty big deal in a medical setting. It also could have obvious implications in psychology, and quite possibly disturbing uses in security, intelligence, military and business settings. Imagine something like Google Glass giving you information on the health and emotions of a person you are talking to.

Emotion Recognition using Wireless Signals

This paper demonstrates a new technology that can infer
a person’s emotions from RF signals reflected off his body.
EQ-Radio transmits an RF signal and analyzes its reflections
off a person’s body to recognize his emotional state (happy,
sad, etc.). The key enabler underlying EQ-Radio is a new
algorithm for extracting the individual heartbeats from the
wireless signal at an accuracy comparable to on-body ECG
monitors. The resulting beats are then used to compute
emotion-dependent features which feed a machine-learning
emotion classifier. We describe the design and implementation
of EQ-Radio, and demonstrate through a user study
that its emotion recognition accuracy is on par with state-of-the-art
emotion recognition systems that require a person
to be hooked to an ECG monitor.

June 2016 in Review

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3 most frightening stories

  • Coral reefs are in pretty sad shape, perhaps the first natural ecosystem type to be devastated beyond repair by climate change.
  • Echoes of the Cold War are rearing their ugly heads in Western Europe.
  • Trump may very well have organized crime links. And Moody’s says that if he gets elected and manages to do the things he says, it could crash the economy.

3 most hopeful stories

  • China has a new(ish) sustainability plan called “ecological civilization” that weaves together urban and regional planning, environmental quality, sustainable agriculture, habitat and biodiversity concepts. This is good because a rapidly developing country the size of China has the ability to sink the rest of civilization if they let their ecological footprint explode, regardless of what the rest of us do. Maybe they can set a good example for the rest of the developing world to follow.
  • Genetic technology is appearing to provide some hope of real breakthroughs in cancer treatment.
  • There is still some hope for a technology-driven pick-up in productivity growth.

3 most interesting stories

May 2016 in Review

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3 most frightening stories

  • There are scary and seemingly reckless confrontations going on between U.S. and Russian planes and ships in the Indian Ocean. And yet, it is bizarrely humorous when real life imitates Top Gun.
  • The situation in Venezuela may be a preview of what the collapse of a modern country looks like.
  • Obama went to Hiroshima, where he said we can “chart a course that leads to the destruction” of nuclear weapons, only not in his lifetime. Obama out.

3 most hopeful stories

3 most interesting stories

  • I try not to let this blog get too political, really I do. But in an election season I just can’t help myself. This is a blog about the future of civilization, and the behavior of U.S. political, bureaucratic, and military elites obviously has some bearing on that. In May I mused on whether the U.S. could possibly be suffering from “too much democracy“, Dick Cheney, equality and equal opportunity, and what’s wrong with Pennsylvania. And yes, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, TRUMP IS A FASCIST!
  • The world has about a billion dogs.
  • It turns out coffee grounds may not make good compost.

this is Michael Pollan’s brain on drugs

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Michael Pollan has written an enormous article in the New Yorker on medical research into psychedelics. They were banned in the U.S. in 1970 as having no legitimate medical uses, but that is changing now with some researchers are using them to treat depression, post-traumatic stress, and to ease suffering near the end of life. It’s so long I don’t know what part of it to quote.

I had a relatively common, relatively easily curable form of cancer when I was a kid. And with apologies to people out there who have far more horrible, deadly forms of cancer, it was hell. Beyond all the physical pain and psychological stress involved for me and my parents, the worst parts were sheer boredom (hours of waiting, followed by hours of hydration, followed by hours of intravenous drip for a routine out-patient chemotherapy session every other week), and extreme nausea that lasted for days which they had absolutely no effective drugs for (this was 1987, and I think the situation has improved today.) But the idea that there might be effective and low-risk ways to reduce that suffering, like controlled doses of marijuana or LSD under a doctor’s supervision for example, and that these treatments have been denied suffering people for decades, is shameful.

Sanders’s socialism

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According to the New York Times, “left leaning economists” say Sanders can’t pay for his proposed programs. (For an alternative viewpoint, see BillMoyers.com which says the NYT irresponsibly cherry-picked experts with ties to the Obama/Clinton administration).

Mr. Sanders’s plan includes a new, across-the-board 2.2 percent income tax to help pay for his single-payer, government-run health plan for all. But progressive economists and business groups say middle-class taxpayers would pay more for the European-style social welfare state that Mr. Sanders envisions.

They dispute his contention that all but the richest Americans would be better off, on balance, with higher wages and benefits like expanded Social Security, free public colleges and, most of all, free health care. His policy director, Warren Gunnels, dismissed the critics in an interview, saying, “They’ve picked sides with Hillary Clinton.” The campaign has a list of 130 endorsees, including some economists.

“If, at the end of the day, people don’t believe that we can achieve the same savings as Canada, Britain, France, Japan, South Korea, Australia are achieving on health care, then we have a fundamental disagreement,” Mr. Gunnels said, naming countries with single-payer systems.

There’s that cynicism again. It works everywhere else but it can’t work here because…why exactly? Because we choose to be cynical, for one. And because we let the medical and insurance industry buy politicians and write laws in its favor and at everyone else’s expense.

I will say, though, that I am attracted to the idea of a well-functioning market setting prices rather than the government setting them. We live in a world of finite resources, so if you truly have no price signal – no premiums, no co-pays, no bills of any kind – then people can’t be allowed to choose any amount of health care they want, because our collective wants will always exceed what we can collectively afford. Then you have to have government rationing and price controls. That is what single-payer is. It is an efficient system to deliver some amount of health care the experts think is affordable and cost-effective. It’s equitable because it can deliver the same rationed amount to everyone, rich or poor. It is not a market-based system.

What could a hypothetical pure market-based system look like? First, the U.S. political system would have to not depend on contributions from the medical, insurance, and finance industries, so politicians would have no incentive to favor the profits of these companies over the interests of voters. Then people would have the option, or perhaps the requirement, to save a portion of their incomes in a health savings account. Then they would use their own money to purchase health care. Government would make copious amounts of education and information available on what medical services are available and how much they cost and what outcomes are being achieved, in terms simple enough for anyone to understand, so that true apples-to-apples comparison shopping would be possible for anyone, even under the stress of serious or sudden illness. Prices would settle at a level where supply and demand are in harmony given what the society can afford in aggregate and what other goods and services people are willing to give up in exchange for health care. Companies would have to compete based on price and outcome, and would have to innovate over time or else lose their edge.

The above might be an economist’s utopia, but it would not be remotely equitable, because the rich could afford much more than the poor. Government could do a few things to help. The savings accounts could be tax-advantaged, obviously. The savings could be matched by government, and the match could be larger for the poor and gradually phased out for the rich. Basic preventive care and maintenance care for chronic conditions could be provided for free (i.e. by taxes), because we know that is cost-effective. Catastrophic insurance could be provided for the big expenses, because we know those are back-breaking for all but the super rich, and when the poor show up in emergency rooms we end up treating them (poorly) at enormous taxpayer expense. With these policies in place, people are now using their savings only to make those decisions in between preventive and catastrophic, the things you could argue they want but don’t necessarily need. The rich would still be able to afford more, but hey, that is the nature of a market economy unless you want a true socialist utopia. I assume we still want some incentive to work or start a business.

January 2016 in Review

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I’m going to try picking the three most frightening posts, three most hopeful posts, and three most interesting posts (that are not particularly frightening or hopeful) from January.

3 most frightening posts

  • Paul Ehrlich is still worried about population. 82% of scientists agree.
  • Thomas Picketty (paraphrased by J. Bradford Delong) says inequality and slow growth are the norm for a capitalist society. Joseph Stiglitz has some politically difficult solutions: “Far-reaching redistribution of income would help, as would deep reform of our financial system – not just to prevent it from imposing harm on the rest of us, but also to get banks and other financial institutions to do what they are supposed to do: match long-term savings to long-term investment needs.”
  • Meanwhile, government for and by big business means the “Deep State” is really in control of the U.S. In our big cities, the enormous and enormously dysfunctional police-court-prison system holds sway over the poor.

3 most hopeful posts

3 most interesting posts

  • There are some arguments in favor of genetically modified food – they have increased yields of some grains, and there is promise they could increase fish yields. 88% of scientists responding to a Pew survey said they think genetically modified food is safe, but only 37% of the U.S. public thinks so. In other biotech news, Obama’s State of the Union announced a new initiative to try to cure cancer. In other food news, red meat is out.
  • Not only is cash becoming obsolete, any physical form of payment at all may become obsolete.
  • The World Economic Forum focused on technology: “The possibilities of billions of people connected by mobile devices, with unprecedented processing power, storage capacity, and access to knowledge, are unlimited. And these possibilities will be multiplied by emerging technology breakthroughs in fields such as artificial intelligence, robotics, the Internet of Things, autonomous vehicles, 3-D printing, nanotechnology, biotechnology, materials science, energy storage, and quantum computing.”

 

bacteria vs. cancer

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Here’s a bizarre article in New Yorker about curing a terminal brain tumor by purposely causing a serious but treatable brain infection.

The tumor had spread to his brain stem and was shortly expected to kill him. Muizelaar cut out as much of the tumor as possible. But before he replaced the “bone flap”—the section of skull that is removed to allow access to the brain—he soaked it for an hour in a solution teeming with Enterobacter aerogenes, a common fecal bacterium. Then he reattached it to Egan’s skull, using tiny metal plates and screws. Muizelaar hoped that inside Egan’s brain an infection was brewing…

For four weeks, Egan lay in intensive care, most of the time in a coma. Then, on the afternoon of November 10th, Muizelaar learned that a scan of Egan’s brain had failed to pick up the distinctive signature of glioblastoma. The pattern on the scan suggested that the tumor had been replaced by an abscess—an infection—precisely as the surgeons had intended. “A brain abscess can be treated, a glioblastoma cannot,” Muizelaar told me.

I almost called this post “shit for brains”, then I grew up just a little bit.

life expectancy

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NPR has a tabulation of life expectancy in hundreds of countries. What jumps out to me is that, outside of Africa, the gap between developed and developing countries is not all that great – most countries are in the 70s for men, and only a small handful (Andorra, Iceland, Israel, Japan) crack 80. Women consistently outlive men by a few years (Afghanistan and Zambia are the only two exceptions on the list, and Russia jumps out as a country where women outlive men by more than 10 years).

Just as a sample, here are the numbers for men in countries I have set foot in:

  • Australia: 79
  • Belgium: 77
  • Canada: 79
  • Indonesia: 68
  • Malaysia: 71
  • Netherlands: 78
  • Norway: 79
  • Singapore: 79
  • South Korea: 77
  • Sweden: 79
  • Thailand: 71
  • United Kingdom: 79
  • United States: 76

What accounts for the differences? I don’t know, but let me speculate. At first glance, national wealth seems to be an excellent predictor. But there are probably many nuances to the data. For example, infant mortality rates can make average life expectancy a little misleading. If the numbers were based instead on life expectancy for those who make it to age 5, they might be a little different. Don’t get me wrong, infant mortality is an awful thing, but the measures needed to reduce it are different from the measures needed to keep adults healthy. Beyond that, universal and affordable health care almost certainly plays a role in the list above (hello, U.S., you stand out clearly as the sickest rich country on this list). Diet, obesity, and smoking all must play a role.

August 2015 in Review

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Negative stories (-12):

  • About 7-19% of cancers are caused by chemicals in the environment. (-1)
  • Steven Hawking is worried about an artificial intelligence arms race starting “within years, not decades”. (-2)
  • The anti-urban attack continues, based on the false idea that crowded, stressful living conditions are the only type of urban living conditions available, and people are being forced into them against their will. This is naked, obvious propaganda that must be rejected. (-1)
  • The more ignorant our species is, the more confident we tend to feel. (-3)
  • According to Naomi Klein, “Our economic system and our planetary system are now at war.”  In related news, July was the warmest month ever recorded by humans, and carbon dioxide concentrations are the highest seen for millions of years. (-3)
  • The media buzz about a worldwide recession seems to be increasing. (-2)

Positive stories (+12):

  • The suburban vs. urban culture wars continue. Suburban office parks are tanking as young people prefer more urban job settings. Entrepreneurs are working on the problems of being car-less with children. (+1)
  • Steven Hawking has a plan to figure out if there is any intelligent life out there. (+1)
  • There are straightforward, practical ideas for dealing with the issues of loading, deliveries, and temporary contractor parking in dense urban areas. (+1)
  • Economists have concluded that preventing human extinction may be economical after all, because “reducing an infinite loss is infinitely profitable”. Is this kind of thinking really useful? (+0)
  • “gene drive” technology helps make sure that genetically engineered traits are passed along to offspring. (+0)
  • Technology marches on – quantum computing is in early emergence, the “internet of things” is arriving at the “peak of inflated expectations”, big data is crashing into the “trough of disillusionment”, virtual reality is beginning its assent to the “plateau of productivity”, and speech recognition is arriving on the plateau. And super-intelligent rodents may be on the way. (+1)
  • Honeybees may be in trouble, but they are not the only bees. (+0)
  • Robotics may be on the verge of a Cambrian explosion, which will almost certainly be bad for some types of jobs, but will also bring us things like cars that avoid pedestrians and computer chips powered by sweat. I for one am excited to be alive at this moment in history. (+2)
  • Dogs can be trained to smell cancer. (+1)
  •  There’s promise of a vaccine for MERS. (+1)
  • It may be possible to capture atmospheric carbon and turn it into high-strength, valuable carbon fiber. This sounds like a potential game-changer to me, because if carbon fiber were cheap it could be substituted for a lot of heavy, toxic and energy-intensive materials we use now, and open up possibilities for entirely new types of structures and vehicles. (+3)
  • Robot deliveries and reusable containers could be a match. (+1)

You might think I rigged that to come out even, but I didn’t.

cancer-sniffing dogs

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Here’s an article on cancer-sniffing dogs.

The samples come to the dogs — the dogs never go to the patient. At the moment, our dogs would be screening about between a .5- to 1-ml drop of urine [or 1/5 to 1/10 teaspoon], so a very small amount. In the early days, of course, we know whether the samples have come from a patient with cancer or if the patient has another disease or condition, or is in fact healthy.

They come to the dogs at our training facility. They’re put into a carousel, and the dogs go around smelling samples. If they come across a sample that has a cancer smell, they’ll stop and stare at the sample and wait. They won’t move on.

One thing this reminds me of is that the organic compounds in our bodies, our food, and the rest of nature are just incredibly complex. When we try to measure and recreate them, we tend to miss the mark. A vitamin pill is not as good as a salad, baby formula is not as good at breast milk, and food grown with synthetic fertilizers is probably not as nutritious as food grown in healthy soil (although the evidence on this is not entirely conclusive). So it makes sense that when we try to devises a test for a particular compound, we may only be testing for some of what is actually there.