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Feeling the effects
Originally uploaded by woodcreeper.

A man called David LaPlume from New Jersey was diagnosed with a benign meningioma, a kind of cancer that grows just under the skull, above the brain. In going through the process of surgery for the tumor’s removal, his surgeon at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in NJ took photographs before and during the (successful) surgery. Now about two weeks later, LaPlume has posted the photos to Flickr, giving an amazing documentation of his surgery as well as the before-and after, like his girlfriend giving him a mohawk the night before so that he didn’t have a lopsided haircut!

The little dots on my head were used during my pre-operative MRI. Software is used to assign geographical coordinates to the image, enabling the surgeon to pass an infrafed pen over my head, and see the actual location on the MRI screen. This, in turn, allows them to find the precice location of the meningioma (tumor) before cutting into my head.

Link to surgery photoset

Popularity: 100% [?]

A quick thought; if it’s for so long lauded in the business world, why hasn’t it become common practice in academic circles? It improves employee interaction and discussion, it frees people from the ‘confines’ of a restrictive and tedious office and it reduces costs of building and maintenance. Open Plan.

Having an open-plan office obviously means there are going to be some sacrifices and changes in approach for the users of the space. There’s no all-engulfing classical music, no slumming around in gym clothes after a quick raquet-ball match, because everyone can see you which also means no secret smoking in rooms and far fewer opportunities to lock the door and pretend you’re not there just to get a moments respite from the hoards of grad-students who come a-knocking.

A new style of office would very obviously mean more interaction between staff who, as they’re working in the same fields, could bounce ideas off one another by just popping around the partition-wall. That partition wall would of course not be layered with sound-absorbing materials because they’d be put to good use. One of the major stumbling blocks this idea would run into is the idea of where all the books would go. Every academic worth their salt has a massive collection of books that sprawls and fills walls of bookshelf space so whatever plan was created would need to provide lots of bookshelf space for each user. An open plan shift may even mean a greater square-footage per person because the bookshelves can’t simply be slotted in any which way, but surely this would be to the long term benefit of staff and the institution because of efficiency and educational gains.

Many libraries are now using a system of sliding bookshelves that have a large handle on one end that moves shelves sideways, a system often known as High Density Compact Mobile Shelving. By having two units, one stationary and one mobile, for each user, a university could provide three shelves per person; one facing the user, and two between the sandwich of shelves, leaving the outward facing wall blank or the basis of a neighbour’s bookshelf. With an open-plan system there is less drilling between walls to put in cabling, lighting costs are lowered because you’re dealing with one large area rather than many distinct rooms demanding separate systems. Security would be improved because cameras and alarms could cover the whole floor instead of just corridors and general public spaces.

One major change encountered would be a change in teaching style; there would be less opportunity for seminars or tutorials in the Lecturer or Professor’s room because the noise generated would simply be too great. One would have to have separate rooms, perhaps still visually open through glass panels, that would be used for teaching. One-on-one consultations would obviously still be possible but with a decrease in dead space from each office, there would have to be a number of more causual seating areas dotted around the office for these kind of organised discussions.

Academics may hate it, but so what?

Popularity: 2% [?]

A $286 billion transportation bill was passed by the House and the Senate on Thursday, a bill designed for projects running through to 2009. The bill directs money to a variety of sources across the country including road building, rebuilding, new transportation projects, boats such as Ferries, and so forth. The $286 billion bill was hailed by lauded by Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels for the money it would give to the Seattle area. One of the major projects under consideration is a replacement of a vast elevated highway that runs in front of the Seattle waterline, rather marring the coastline; the Alaskan Way Viaduct Damaged in the 2001 ‘Nisqually’ earthquake, the viaduct which was designed for 65,000 vehicles per day but carries around 110,000 needs to be replaced and there are various options under consideration which involve rebuilding it, rebuilding it bigger, or building a tunnel instead. Google Maps Satellite Image

Mayor Nickels, in a statement, said approval would be “a huge victory.” But even Nickels, a relentless project booster, concedes the difficulty ahead.

Now I don’t think it’s bad that the bill has passed, but let’s look at the numbers. It’s $286 billion which if divided by 50 states equally would equal $5.72 billion each. But states don’t have equal needs or populations. No. If we divide the US Government’s Census estimate for the nation’s population of 291 million in 2003 by 50 states we get 5.8 million people per state. But Washinton State has more than that, it contains an estimated 6.1 million people, so you’d expect to get higher than the average overall spending from the transport plan, just as in everything else. But no, it’s $4 billion against $5.72. I’m sure the Washington State taxpayers could find a use for the extra $1.7 billion of their money, like a long-delayed monorail perhaps.

Take a state like Wyoming, the arid, under-populated home of our glowering vice president Dick Cheney. Wyoming receives the second-highest amount of federal aid in the nation per capita (Alaska, another red state, is number one), and it ranks second lowest in federal taxes paid (behind only South Dakota). Overall, the federal government spent about $2,413 per capita in Wyoming for the fiscal year 2002 (the last year for which data is available), compared with almost exactly half that amount, or $1,205 per capita, for Washington State.

From Urban Archipelago.com

So my question is this: why is it that politicians put a face to the public which implies that Washington State voters have done well, when in fact they’re being screwed out of more than $1.5 billion dollars of their tax dollars that are now going somwhere else. How can politicians carry on with a straight face, pretending that we’ve done well when in fact every other state ought to be laughing at us behind our backs. We’re too scared and timid and thankful to claim what the state deserves, thereby degrading the quality of live of our citizens by lumping them with poor quality public and private transportation options.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Highway bill passed, has $220 million for Seattle viaduct

Popularity: unranked [?]

Come on, don’t hesitate, hesitate
And show me your attention

Come on, don’t hesitate, hesitate
Show me what you’re feeling

Juno Records

Popularity: unranked [?]

The Open Source Energy Network/Pure Energy Systems News has an article about the developments of a company called Sunlight-Direct who are in the process of creating a lighting system that uses a solar collector to intensify the sunlight gathered from an exterior location such as a room and then feed it down a fibre optic cable to a lamp fixture indoors, replacing or reducing the need for incandescent and fluourescent illumination.
The advantages of the system are numerous; people react more naturally to the feel and colour temperature of the sun, so can more organically wake up in the morning as the sun shifts from red to white and then wind down in the evening from white to red, the system reduces the electrical load of businesses and homes so reducing costs and it lowers heat output by only bringing in the light of the sun and not the heat and so reducing air conditioning cost unlike traditional flourescent and incandescent bulbs.

The system is based on a four foot wide solar collector dish that is mounted on a roof or other such clear standing, and a GPS style tracking device that, itself run on a solar cell, aligns the mirror with the optimum angle of the sun. The system can be made to integrate with traditional flourescent lighting panels by feeding into an overhead rectangle diffuser shape or a spotlight directional style, and can be hybridized to mix flourescent light with the natural sunlight to augment the system for when light levels are low in the morning and evening. Because of the hybrid nature of this, the company can even shift the colour temperature of the light through supplementing the natural output and so changing the feel of the illuminated space.

On a residential building solar collector units might be mounted at a south-west corner to take advantage of noon to evening light. Or in a condominium building, early-rising residents might choose to have either first half of the day from a SE placement, and late risers might choose the afternoon sunlight feed. Though windows are normally provided for living-rooms, in very few buildings have the architects provided a window for the kitchen, where natural light would be appreciated for breakfast or supper preparation.

In the future, we might even see buildings designed specifically with more un-shaded roof areas at different heights to make the best use of fiber-optic indoor lighting. The area served by a single HSL 3000 is about 1000 square feet. Though many small and mid-sized homes would get by with a single collector, more units would be needed on large buildings. At current pricing [of about $8,000 USD per unit], this combined cost might cause many buyers to hesitate. However, as more capability, greater carrying distance, more options (see part C) and lower costs come together, the benefits may outweigh the costs.

Some homeowners may not like the utilitarian look of the mirror on the roof, though most people don’t worry about the appearance of satellite TV receivers. Dr. Duncan Earl, CEO of Sunlight Direct, says that about 50% of people are very worried about how something looks, and the other half of the population doesn’t care at all. Sunlight Direct is considering various sculptural modifications of their product to appeal to the esthetes in the market. Presumably, solar collectors could be created with decorative themes like those used for weathervanes, or in abstract shapes. Designer solar collectors could even be licensed to third-party companies, and marketed to high-end consumers and social climbers.

Cool Light on Hot Days: Fiber Optics Bring the Sun Indoors

Sunlight-Direct.com
via Slashdot.org

Popularity: 4% [?]

Big news and many phone calls. A tornado has hit about ³/4 of a mile from my house over here in Blighty. Birmingham’s notorious for its freaks, but not normally for freaky weather. My grandmother called, my sister called, friends from Singapore called: “Are you dead?”
If we’d been hurt, would I really be answering the phone?

My mom was driving my grandfather through the area of Birmingham that it hit just about 5 minutes before the tornado landed in an area called Moseley in South Birmingham. She said that the sky looked eerily green and yet turbulent when they were driving along at about 2:45.
A friend tells me that the hospitals around the Selly Oak area, near where the storm centred, had to close their operating theaters because of leaks through the roofs. Around 20 people were injured, 3 seriously.

A Met office spokesperson said: “We have an average of 33 reports of tornadoes in the UK each year but these are especially rare in built-up areas and there has not been one of this strength in many years. “City centres are not the natural habitat of a tornado; the tall buildings would normally stop their formation.”

CBBC News with viewer photographs

Popularity: 4% [?]

Of course rain on a summer day for me means: photos! And since I’m at my parent’s house I’m able to take photos of just about the most fickle and beautiful flower there is: the squash flower! I got it before and after the rain, and I love the difference in style and colour and texture. It’s hot.

Popularity: 4% [?]

After much back and forth, my parents have decided not to sell our Seattle house, even though it’s managed by a dunce of an agent who hasn’t raised the rental price in eight years, lets the place run into the ground and generally screws us over with tales of how she’s dying to move to Wales. Wales?! Why on earth would you want to move there from Seattle. Nutcase.

Anyway, it was either have lots of money here and remodel our UK house with beautiful everything by selling our Seattle house, or stay impoverished and in a crapola in the UK while our tenants swan around in a building we finished remodeling the day before we left the country. I think they’re getting a rather good deal, and they’re not getting kicked out either. On top of this, my parents are, this summer, repainting the building, putting on a new roof and building a deck.

Seriously, why is it that we’re living in the middle of England instead of the coast of America; that property is far better! It’s not like I want to sell that house, after all it is the place I grew up, but it’d be nice to have some decisiveness every once in a blue moon*.

MSN Virtual Earth

Google Maps

* I actually saw a blue moon once, when I was about 10 years old. I don’t remember much about it other than that my neighbour’s japanese maple tree was kind of getting in the way, and I was cold. My neighbour’s mother died not long after that. She was 94; the only person I’ve ever known who’s died.

Popularity: 12% [?]

A 94 year old man from North Wales was perplexed to find his fruit tree, which had been producing Apples faithfully for 30 years, had started to include plums and blackberries as well. Mass news coverage spread with appearances on television news and national newspapers.

The problem was, however, that the tree was still just an Apple tree; some unknown prankster had s tuck the additional fruit to the branches of the tree, giving the appearance of a hybrid.

Horticulturalists remained sceptical about the apparent discovery before experts confirmed on Wednesday that two of the fruits had been attached.

Dr Colin Norton, of the Welsh College of Horticulture, said: “We’re always interested in new plants but this one, from 10 yards away, you can see it’s a hoax.

“I think it’s a rotten trick.” said Mr Tomlinson.

BBC NEWS: ‘Fruit salad’ tree hoax exposed

Popularity: 2% [?]