An individual ant is not very interesting. Its level of intelligence is minimal; its problem solving skills miniscule. But even these limitations allow for rule based behavior. Paired with asynchronous forms of communication such as pheromones in scent markers or trails, or the ability to categorize and count other ants, complex behaviors emerge. Those behaviors either contribute to the survival of the colony or they don’t, so environmental pressures help select for what works.
Month: April 2016
Goats, Cars, and Personalized Medicine
Personalized medicine will change the way physicians diagnose. With every person able to map his or her own gene, the complication in personalized diagnosis will increase beyond normal human mental capabilities. How will physicians of the future cope? The solution to the problem may start with something as incongruous as goats, cars, and game shows.
A Tutorial on the Regulation of the Pharmaceutical Industry
The pharmaceutical market place is not entirely a free market. The extreme demand for lifesaving products can make standard economic assumptions inoperable. Therefore, regulatory mechanisms have emerged to protect patients and to provide patients access to affordable medications. There are three aspects of pharmaceutical operations in the U.S. that are regulated by the government:
HARVEY LLOYD’S “BREAKING THE LIGHT”
It has been remarked that with the invention of photography by Niepce and others almost two hundred years ago, painting was finally freed from the bonds of realism. Painters set out on the path to modernist abstraction, which became one of the medium’s finest achievements. Because the photographer could produce an image that more closely resembled reality than painting, the painter was allowed, indeed compelled, to travel down different creative paths. Photographers would preserve an accurate transcription of reality in sharp contrast to the abstraction embraced by painters.
Quantum Entanglement
“European robins may maintain quantum entanglement in their eyes a full 20 microseconds longer than the best laboratory systems, say physicists investigating how birds may use quantum effects to “see” Earth’s magnetic field. “Quantum entanglement is a state where electrons are spatially separated, but able to affect one another. It’s been proposed that birds’ eyes contain entanglement-based compasses. “Conclusive proof doesn’t yet exist, but multiple lines of evidence suggest it. Findings like this one underscore just how sophisticated those compasses may be. “’How can a living system have evolved to protect a quantum state as well — no, better — than we can do in the lab with these exotic molecules?’” asked quantum physicist Simon Benjamin of Oxford University and the National University of Singapore, a co-author of the new study. “That really is an amazing thing.’”
Population Explosion and the Demographic Transition
A mathematical model (Core Model) is presented that describes the gross dynamic behavior of the demographic transition—falling death rates lead to population increase, temporarily rising birth rates,
temporarily increased population growth, decreased fertility, aging of the population, and finally a steady
population size higher than the initial population. Core Model captures these features. The model is based on three fundamental observations 1) people are born, 2) people die, some at a young age, the
rest at an old age, and 3) people give birth more often when conditions are favorable than not favorable.
In addition to boundary conditions, Core Model has one free parameter, which is associated with the rate at which fertility adapts to changing conditions. Core Model predicts that aging populations are a
natural consequence of the dynamics and the speed at which the population fertility adapts to changing
death rates. The model captures the qualitative features of actual country demographic dynamics with
European countries making up most of the post-transition populations and Sub-Saharan Africa making
up those countries just entering the transition.
Wabi Sabi, Ikebana & Zen
Wabi Sabi represents a comprehensive Japanese world view or aesthetic centered on the acceptance of transience and imperfection. The aesthetic is sometimes described as one of beauty that is “imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete.” It is a concept derived from the Buddhist teaching of the three marks of existence specifically impermanence, the other two being suffering and emptiness or absence of self-nature .
Quantum Foam & Consciousness
The quantum age opened a new and enigmatic window on the hidden workings of the universe and our connection to its “machinery.” It is a virtual cosmic quantum computer, a omniscient machine made of simultaneous superposition of infinite probabilistic waves of light. Upon observation the light waves collapse into matter or inhabit an infinity of universes. Vast indeterminate, entangled and uncertain crystal clouds of probabilistic light waves, called “quantum foam” by physicist John Wheeler, fill the vast regions of space on into infinity.
Unstable at Any Speed
The Wright brothers studied birds. This proved largely futile until they discovered the principle of the curved airfoil, because birds are inherently unstable and must constantly trim their wings. Aircraft are designed, with a few exceptions, to be inherently stable. That is, once they are “trimmed” (in level, stable flight) air currents acting on their wings and tails tend to keep them flying on a straight line. Birds trim their wings constantly like a type of fighter aircraft which “flies by wire” using computers to vary the controls hundreds of times a second in order to keep it in trim. If the onboard computer and its backups fail, the aircraft crashes.
Quantum Meetings
As an artist and a sometimes curmudgeon. I’d love to meet Monet, Picasso, Matisse, Klee, Van Gogh, Moore, Rodin, Calder, De Kooning, Pollock. Mitchell, Frankenthaler, Mendieta, Bourgeoise, Basquiat and Dubuffet to name just a few. Add Weston, Newton, Avedon, Munkasi, Steiglitz and O’Keeffe, La Chappelle, Watson (Cyclops) and Adams. Add the doyen of the fashion photographers, the magazine design genius Alexei Brodovitch, and the great fashion editor Carmel Snow of Harper’s Bazarr and the list goes on and on. It will not and cannot end!
The End Is Always Behind You
When you are ready to “die” for your honor like a samurai, or for your art, like an artist, you triumph and live. The samurai who goes to battle already “dead” comes back. The cowardly samurai who wants to live does not. Only those who hesitate die. Risk all and live! Just do it like a Top Gun and aim yourself at the devil. He will get out of your way. The fearsome fallen angel with pointed ears and tail is a pimp for the unholy and he has no taste for a battle with a fearless human. God. Satan or human, the Devil goes down!
American Southwest and Patagonia
Our twin engine plane ratchets and bumps over Patagonia, above a landscape of mountains covered with snow and ice. We are on a bumpy roller coaster, up, down, around and up buffeted by strong icy winds. I hold my Canon camera attached to a gyro- stabilizer and shoot out through the aircraft’s window. Too windy to open it. The range of snow white mountains slides by, empty of buildings of any kind.