Category Archives: Technology

Genetic markers for certain diseases

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Wow! Technology Review report:

A massive genetic study carried out in the United Kingdom has pinpointed 24 genetic markers that increase risk for illnesses such as diabetes, arthritis, and Crohn’s disease, a form of inflammatory bowel disease. The findings illustrate the success of a new approach to gene hunting known as genome-wide association, made possible by recent advances in gene-sequencing technologies. The results were published in this week’s issue of Nature.

“This is a powerful way of identifying genes for common diseases,” says Anne Bowcock, a geneticist at Washington University Medical School, in Saint Louis. “These genes will point to altered pathways that will then point to novel therapies.”

Scientists analyzed 500,000 genetic markers in each of 1,700 people, making it the largest such study to date. By comparing the DNA of 2,000 patients with one of seven different diseases–Crohn’s disease, type 1 and 2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, and bipolar disorder–with 3,000 healthy controls, researchers identified 24 genetic regions strongly linked to specific diseases: one in bipolar disorder, one in coronary-artery disease, nine in Crohn’s disease, three in rheumatoid arthritis, seven in type 1 diabetes, and three in type 2 diabetes. Known as the Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium, the project is a collaboration among 50 different research groups…

Wonder how long it will take insurance companies to start demanding genetic scans before providing insurance.

Photosynth

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Now here is something genuinely original from Microsoft — Photosynth. (Well, some of it seems to rely on Seadragon, a technology developed by a company recently acquired by Microsoft, but still…)

It’s software that takes a large collection of photos of a place or an object, analyzes them for similarities, and displays them in a reconstructed three-dimensional space.

There’s a fascinating TED talk by Blaise Aguera y Arcas which demonstrates the idea.

Thanks to Tony Hirst for the link.

Later… Quentin points out that the online demonstrations will only work in IE. Well, what do you expect…?

User-generated porn

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Wow! This New York Times report is interesting.

The Internet was supposed to be a tremendous boon for the pornography industry, creating a global market of images and videos accessible from the privacy of a home computer. For a time it worked, with wider distribution and social acceptance driving a steady increase in sales.

But now the established pornography business is in decline — and the Internet is being held responsible.

The online availability of free or low-cost photos and videos has begun to take a fierce toll on sales of X-rated DVDs. Inexpensive digital technology has paved the way for aspiring amateur pornographers, who are flooding the market, while everyone in the industry is giving away more material to lure paying customers.

And unlike consumers looking for music and other media, viewers of pornography do not seem to mind giving up brand-name producers and performers for anonymous ones, or a well-lighted movie set for a ratty couch at an amateur videographer’s house.

After years of essentially steady increases, sales and rentals of pornographic videos were $3.62 billion in 2006, down from $4.28 billion in 2005, according to estimates by AVN, an industry trade publication. If the situation does not change, the overall $13 billion sex-related entertainment market may shrink this year, said Paul Fishbein, president of AVN Media Network, the magazine’s publisher. The industry’s online revenue is substantial but is not growing quickly enough to make up for the drop in video income.

Older companies in the industry are responding with better production values and more sophisticated Web offerings. But to their chagrin, making and distributing pornography have become a lot easier.

“People are making movies in their houses and dragging and dropping them” onto free Web sites, said Harvey Kaplan, a former maker of pornographic movies and now chief executive of GoGoBill.com, which processes payments for pornographic Web sites. “It’s killing the marketplace.”

Aw shucks! The poor dears. Porn industry leaders should get together with record company executives for joint therapy sessions. Primal scream therapy, perhaps?

The podcaster’s friend

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I’ve been looking out for ages for an acceptable way of recording MP3 audio — without going in for the kind of obsessive pre-amp sophistication that audiophiles insist is mandatory. I think I’ve found the answer — the Zoom H4. I’ve been testing it out and it produces audio that is, in Roger Needham’s timeless phrase, “good enough for government work”. Not that I do any of that, of course.

The H4 records onto an SD card in Wav or MP3 format and has two modes: stereo and 4-track. Plug it into the USB port of my Mac and it looks like an external drive. Useful review here which says that the 4-track operation is a bit lightweight. But that doesn’t bother me: all I wanted was ol’-fashioned stereo.

I got it from here. £220 inc. VAT.

It was Dan Bricklin who put me onto it, btw.

The Microsoft coffee-table computer (contd)

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David Pogue is underwhelmed…

This new “surface computer,” as Microsoft calls it, has a multi-touch screen. You can use two fingers or even more — for example, you can drag two corners of a photograph outward to zoom in on it. Here’s an article in yesterday’s Times about it.

If this is all sounding creepily familiar, it is probably because so far, all of this is exactly what NYU researcher Jeff Han has been demonstrating for a year and a half now. I’ve written about it several times on my Pogue’s Posts blog…

And he callously destroys my illusions about the device. (I loved the way the table sucked images out of a Canon IXUS.)

Microsoft’s version of the multi-touch computer adds one very cool, though impractical, twist: interaction with other electronics.

For example, in Microsoft’s demonstration, you can take some pictures. When you set the camera down on the table top, the fresh photos come pouring out of it into a virtual puddle on the screen — a slick, visual way to indicate that you’ve just downloaded them.

Next, you can set a cellphone down on the table — and copy photos into it just by dragging them into the cellphone’s zone.

Then you can buy songs from a virtual music store and drag them directly into a Zune music player that you’ve placed on the glass.

How cool is all of this? Very. Unfortunately, at this point, it’s the Microsoft version of a concept car; you can ogle it, but you can’t have it. These stunts require concept cameras, concept cellphones and concept music players that have been rigged to interact with the surface computer.

Wonder if that’s accurate. I’m sure there are compact digital cameras that are wi-fi enabled.

Hmmm… Just checking…

Yep. Nikon do one. And Canon do a Digital IXUS Wireless model. So the demonstration could have been done with a bog-standard IXUS.

Hah! I was right — see this admiring video from Popular Mechanics:

Microsoft forsakes desktop for tabletop

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From the Daily Telegraph

Microsoft has unveiled a coffee table-shaped ‘surface computer’ that responds to touch and is expected to generate a multi-billion dollar market.

Surface is a 30-inch computer display that is embedded on the table surface. It does not need a mouse to operate it, and unlike traditional touch-screens, can recognise more than one finger at a time, allowing small groups to gather around the table and use it at the same time. It also recognises objects that are placed on its surface.

For example, if you are out at a restaurant with friends and you each place your drink on the table, a range of information will appear by your glass, such as menu recommendations to go with your wine, and pictures of the vineyard it came from. You can order your next course with the touch of your finger and even split the bill.

Wonder what’d happen if you spilt Java Beans on it? Also, what do you do when your table crashes?

VW to offer hybrids Real Soon Now

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Well, that’s what it says here…

Hamburg – Volkswagen is planning to offer a hybrid version for every model starting in about two years, according to Germany’s Auto Bild newspaper.

A decision has not yet been made on what electric components would be used for which model. But there are plans for both a micro-hybrid system with a battery charged by braking regeneration energy and a full hybrid solution, according to the paper.

VW CEO Martin Winterkorn in recent interviews confirmed that the company was working on a small VW hybrid that could be launched ‘fairly quickly’ onto the market.