Thu Jan 14, 5:58 pm ET
A Santa Fe man who alleges he suffers from "electromagnetic allergies" is suing his neighbor because she refuses to turn off her gadgets, he claims.
According to the Santa Fe Reporter, Arthur Firstenberg, the plaintiff, has been sleeping at friends' homes or in his car to avoid the electromagnetic waves created by his neighbor Raphaela Monribot's cell phone, wireless network, computer, compact fluorescent lightbulbs and dimmer switches.
Firstenberg claims he suffers from Electromagnetic Sensitivity, or EMS, which induces "nausea, vertigo, diarrhea, ringing in the ears, severe headaches and body aches, crippling joint pains, insomnia, impaired vision, impaired muscular control," as well as other potentially life-threatening ailments.
According to Firstenberg, he first started experiencing symptoms when he was in college in the 1980s and has been a vocal opponent of wireless systems being established in public buildings, though he has met with little success.
When Firstenberg first hired Monribot to cook meals for him in his home, Monribot had initially made concessions by turning off her phone and computer. However, when she moved in next door, she refused to keep her phone, computer and wireless network turned off when not in use. When asked if she could use a landline instead of her iPhone, Firstenberg says Monribot "flatly refused without explanation."
The battle against Wi-Fi isn't one Firstenberg is fighting alone.
He's part of a group of Santa Fe residents who are pursuing legal means to remove all Wi-Fi hotspots from public locations because they claim the wireless internet waves aggravate their "electromagnetic allergies." To add merit to their case, they are classifying their "allergy" or "sensitivity" as a disability and are claiming the Americans with Disabilities Act, which prohibits discrimination based on disability.
The Huffington Post
Friday, January 15, 2010
WiFi Suit: Arthur Firstenberg Sues Neighbor For Using Electronics
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Pi buster: French software whiz claims record
Fri Jan 8, 10:08 am ET
PARIS (AFP) – A French software engineer said on Friday he was claiming a world record for calculating Pi, the constant that has fascinated mathematicians for millennia.
Fabrice Bellard told AFP he used an inexpensive desktop computer -- and not a supercomputer used in past records -- to calculate Pi to nearly 2.7 trillion decimal places.
That is around 123 billion digits more than the previous record set last August by Japanese professor Daisuke Takahashi, he said.
Takahashi, using a T2K Open Supercomputer, took 29 hours to crunch Pi to 2.577 billion digits.
Bellard took 131 days, comprising 103 for the computation in binary digits, 13 days for verification, 12 days to convert the binary digits to a base of 10 and three final days to check the conversion.
The gear cost "a bit less than 2,000 euros" (3,000 dollars), Bellard, who earns a living as a software consultant in digital television in Paris, said in an email exchange.
"It is a completely standard PC. The only unusual thing is that it has five 1.5-teraoctet hard disks. Mainstream PCs generally have only one 1-teraoctet disk."
Bellard has placed on his website details of the achievement, including the use of a high-powered mathematical engine called the Chudnovsky algorithm that chewed through the computation.
Extracts of the 2,699,999,990,000-digit outcome have been published so that they can be compared to preceding records in order to gain independent verification, Bellard told AFP.
Files containing the digits are also being offered to any outside organization keen on hosting the record, he said.
Pi, the ratio of a circle's circumference to its diameter, kicks off with 3.14159... in a string whose digits are believed never to repeat or end.
Bellard said he was "not especially interested" in Pi's digits but more in taking up the gauntlet of writing the software to carry out the arithmetic.
"Optimising these algorithms to get good performance is a difficult programming challenge," he wrote.
AFP News
Thursday, December 3, 2009
လူနာသေဆုံးမှု ဆရာဝန် ဆမ ၅ နှစ်သိမ်း
ရန်ကုန်မြို့ ရွှေဂုံတိုင် အထူးကုဆေးခန်း (SSC) မှာ သေဆုံးခဲ့တဲ့ မခိုင်ရွှန်းလဲ့ရည်ကို ခွဲစိတ်ကုသပေးခဲ့တဲ့ ခွဲစိတ်အထူးကု ဆရာဝန်ကြီးကို ဒီနေ့ ဒီဇင်ဘာလ ၃ ရက်နေ့ကစပြီး မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ဆေးကောင်စီက ဆေးကုသခွင့် ၅ နှစ် ပိတ်ပင်လိုက်ပြီ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ဒီဖြစ်ရပ်အပေါ် သတင်းမီဒီယာတွေက လိုအပ်တာထက် ပိုပြီး ဖော်ပြကြတယ်လို့ ဝေဖန်သုံးသပ်ကြတာတွေ ရှိသလို တာဝန်ခံမှု မရှိခဲ့တဲ့ ဆရာဝန်ကြီးနဲ့ ဆေးခန်းတို့ကို ဝေဖန်ပြောဆိုတဲ့ မှတ်ချက်တွေကလည်း ရှိနေပါတယ်။ အကြောင်းစုံကို မသင်းသီရိက တင်ပြပေးထားပါတယ်။
ဒီနေ့ နေ့စွဲနဲ့ မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ဆေးကောင်စီက ထုတ်ပြန်လိုက်တဲ့ စာထဲမှာ မခိုင်ရွှန်းလဲ့ရည် သေဆုံးခဲ့ရတဲ့ ကိစ္စနဲ့ ပတ်သက်လို့ ခွဲစိတ်ဆရာဝန်ကြီးမှာ လုပ်ကိုင်မှု မှားခြင်း၊ ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက် မှားခဲ့ခြင်းတွေနဲ့ အတူ မခွဲစိတ်မီနဲ့ ခွဲစိတ်အပြီးမှာ လုံလောက်တဲ့ စောင့်ရှောက် စစ်ဆေးမှုတွေ၊ တာဝန်ခံမှု အားနည်းတာတွေကို တွေ့ရတယ်လို့ ဖော်ပြထားပါတယ်။ ဒါကြောင့် အစာအိမ်နဲ့ အူလမ်းကြောင်းဆိုင်ရာ ခွဲစိတ်ဆရာဝန်ကြီး ဒေါက်တာကြည်စိုးကို ဆေးကုသခွင့် ၅ နှစ် ပိတ်ပင်လိုက်တယ်လို့လည်း ပြောပါတယ်။
ဒါ့အပြင် မေ့ဆေးဆရာဝန်၊ ပထမ ခွဲစိတ် လက်ထောက်ဆရာဝန်နဲ့ အတူ အထွေထွေ အထူးကု သမားတော်ကြီးကိုလည်း ပြင်းထန်စွာ သတိပေးသလို ထိရောက်မှုနဲ့ လုံခြုံမှုမရှိတဲ့ စနစ်တွေနဲ့ လုပ်ကိုင်နေတဲ့ ဆေးခန်းကိုလည်း နောက်နောင် ဒီလိုကိစ်စမျိုး မဖြစ်အောင် ပြင်းထန်စွာ သတိပေးတယ်လို့လည်း ဖော်ပြထားပါတယ်။
ဒီကိစ္စဟာ မခိုင်ရွှန်းလဲ့ရည် မကွယ်လွန်ခင် အချိန်ကတည်းက မြန်မာနိုင်ငံအတွင်းမှာ အတော်လေး ဟိုးလေးတကျော် ဖြစ်နေတဲ့ သတင်းတခုလည်း ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။ ပြည်တွင်း သတင်းမီဒီယာတွေမှာ လူနာရှင်ဘက်က ရင်ဆိုင်ခဲ့ရတဲ့ အခြေအနေတွေကို ဖော်ပြ ရေးသားခဲ့ပေမဲ့ ဆရာဝန်ကြီးဘက်ကပဲ ဖြစ်ဖြစ်၊ ဆေးခန်းဘက်ကပဲ ဖြစ်ဖြစ် ပြန်လည် ဖြေရှင်းချက် တစုံတရာ အခုထိ ထွက်မလာပါဘူး။ ဒါဟာ ပိုပြီးတော့ အမှားကို အပြစ်ကြီးသွားစေတာမျိုး ဖြစ်သွားစေတယ်လို့ ရန်ကုန် ဝါရင့်ဆရာဝန်တဦးက အခုလို မှတ်ချက်ပေးပါတယ်။
“အမှားကြီးနဲ့ အမှားလေးပဲ ကွာတာပေါ့။ အခုဟာက ဂျာနယ်တွေမှာ ပါသလောက်ဆိုရင် အမှားကြီး ဖြစ်သွားတာပေါ့။ မှားတာထက် ပိုဆိုးတယ်လို့ ထင်တာပဲ။ မှားကြတာ မဆန်းဘူး ဆိုပါတော့။ ဒါပေမဲ့ အခုဟာကတော့ အမှားကြီး ဖြစ်သွားတယ်၊ အမှားလေး မဟုတ်ဘူး။ မှားသင့်မှားထိုက်တဲ့ အမှား မဟုတ်ဘူး။ မမှားသင့် မမှားထိုက်တဲ့ အမှား ဖြစ်သွားတယ်။ နောက်တခုက လူနာကို နှစ်သိမ့်မှု မပေးခြင်း၊ လူနာရှင်ကို မနှစ်သိမ့်ခြင်း၊ မီဒီယာကို ရှောင်ခြင်း၊ အဲဒါက ပိုဆိုးသွားတာပေါ့။ ပိုမှားတာပေါ့။
“အမှန်က မီဒီယာကို အသုံးမချလိုက်တာပေါ့။ တကယ်ဆို မီဒီယာနဲ့ တွေ့လိုက်ရင်၊ လူနာရှင်ကို တစုံတရာသော နှစ်သိမ့်မှု ပေးရင်၊ ဒီလောက်အထိ ဆိုးဆိုးရွားရွား မဖြစ်နိုင်ဘူး။ အမကတော့ အဲဒီလိုပဲ ထင်တာပဲ။ အခုဟာတော့ ဒီမိန်းကလေး ပုံကလည်း ဂျာနယ်တွေမှာ ပါတော့ ဝိုင်းပြီး ကရုဏာ သက်နေကြတာပေါ့။ လူတိုင်း စိတ်ဝင်စားတဲ့ သတင်းတခုတော့ ဖြစ်နေတာပေါ့။”
အခုလို ပြဿနာမျိုး မတိုင်ခင် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံမှာ ဒီလို ဆေးပညာပိုင်းဆိုင်ရာ လုပ်ငန်းတွေမှာ အမှားအယွင်း ဖြစ်ခဲ့ဖူးတာမျိုး၊ ဆေးကုသခွင့် ပိတ်ပင်ခဲ့တာမျိုး အပြင် အလုပ် ထုတ်ပစ်ခဲ့တာမျိုးတွေအထိ ရှိခဲ့ပေမဲ့ အခုသတင်းလောက် ကျယ်ကျယ်ပြန့်ပြန့် ဖြစ်ခဲ့တာ မရှိဘူးလို့ ဆိုပါတယ်။ ဒါကလည်း အခုအချိန်က သတင်းမီဒီယာခေတ် တွင်တွင်ကျယ်ကျယ် ဖြစ်နေတာကို ပြသတာဖြစ်တယ်လို့လည်း သူက ဆိုပါတယ်။
“ကြားဖူးတယ်၊ ကြားဖူးပေမဲ့ ဟိုတုန်းက ဂျာနယ်ခေတ် မဟုတ်ဘူးလေ။ ဂျာနယ်ခေတ် မဟုတ်တော့ ကောလာဟလလောက်နဲ့ ပြီးသွားတာတွေ ရှိတယ်။ ရှိတော့ ရှိဖူးပါတယ်။ အခုက မီဒီယာခေတ် ဖြစ်နေတော့ မီဒီယာကို သူတို့ မနိုင်တာ။ ကာယကံရှင်တွေကလည်း တော်ပါတယ်။ တချို့ဆို သည်းခံပေမဲ့ မပြောဘူး၊ ဘယ်သူမေးလို့မှ။ ဆုံးသွားတဲ့ မိန်းကလေး မိဘတွေကလည်း မီဒီယာတွေကို ရင်ဖွင့်တယ်ဆိုတာ တော်ပါတယ်။ ဒါ သူတို့ လုပ်သင့်တာကို လုပ်လိုက်တာပဲ။ နင့်မို့ဆို ဘယ်သိရမှာလဲ၊ ကောလာဟလလို ဘာလိုလိုနဲ့ လေထဲမှာပဲ ပျောက်သွားမှာပဲလေ။
“ဟိုတုန်းကတော့ အဲဒီလို ပျောက်ခဲ့တာပေါ့၊ ဂျာနယ်တွေ မရှိခင်တုန်းက။ ဂျာနယ်မှာတော့ အခု သူတို့ စစ်ဆေးပြီးရင် ဖြေရှင်းချက် ထုတ်မယ်လို့တော့ တချို့ဂျာနယ်တွေမှာ ရေးထားတာ တွေ့တယ်။ အဖြေကတော့ မှားသွားတာနဲ့ ဆေးရုံဘက်ကလည်း လုံးဝ တာဝန်မကျေဘူး။ အလွန် ဖုံးအုပ်တယ်။ ဒါပါပဲ အဓိကကတော့။ မှားတာထက် ကျန်ရစ်သူ မိသားစုအပေါ်မှာ တုံ့ပြန်ပုံကြီးက မကောင်းတာပေါ့။ နောက် မီဒီယာပေါ်မှာ တုံ့ပြန်မှု၊ အဲဒီ နှစ်ခုက မကောင်းတာပေါ့။”
ဝါရင့် ဆရာဝန်ကြီးတဦး ပြောပြခဲ့တာ ဖြစ်ပါတယ်။
တချို့ ဆရာဝန်တွေကတော့ သတင်းမီဒီယာတွေက လိုအပ်တာထက် ပိုပြီး ရေးသားကြသလို ရေးသားပုံ ရေးသားဟန် မမှန်ခဲ့ဘူးလို့လည်း ပြစ်တင်ဝေဖန်ကြတာ ရှိပါတယ်။ ဒီအကြောင်း ရေးသားဖော်ပြကြတဲ့ ဂျာနယ်တွေကတော့ ကွယ်လွန်သွားတဲ့ လူနာရှင်တွေအပြင် ဆရာဝန်ကြီးနဲ့ ဆေးခန်းကိုပါ ဆက်သွယ်ပြီး ရေးသားဖော်ပြဖို့ ကြိုးစားပေမဲ့ ကာယကံရှင်ကရော ဆေးခန်းကပါ တွေ့ဆုံခွင့်ရဖို့ ငြင်းဆန်ခဲ့တယ်လို့ ဗွီအိုအေကို ပြောပါတယ်။
ဒီကိစ္စအတွက် မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ဆေးကောင်စီကို ဆက်သွယ်ခဲ့ပေမဲ့ တယ်လီဖုန်း ပြန်လည်ဖြေကြားမယ့်သူ မရှိသလို မြန်မာနိုင်ငံ ဆရာဝန်များ အသင်းချုပ်ကလည်း ဒီအကြောင်းကို ဖြေကြားဖို့ တာဝန်ခံ ဆရာဝန် မရှိဘူးလို့ပဲ ပြန်ပြောခဲ့ပါတယ်။
VOA News
Surgeon Suspended after Rangoon Girl's Death
By THE IRRAWADDY Thursday, December 3, 2009
The Myanmar [Burma] Medical Council (MMC), a Burmese government body, has ordered a five-year suspension of the license of a surgeon who performed an operation on a 15-year-old girl who subsequently died, according to Rangoon sources.
A Rangoon journalist told The Irrawaddy on Thursday that an MMC statement accused the surgeon, Dr Kyi Soe, of making clinical mistakes, lacking preoperative and postoperative assessment, responsibility and accountability.
Dr Kyi Soe carried out an operation on Khine Shun Leh Yee, a ninth grade Rangoon student, at the Shwegondaing Specialist Center in Rangoon on Oct. 25. She died two days later.
The journalist said the MMC also ordered Dr Kyi Soe to apologize to the girl's family for her death. There was no mention of any compensation award.
The girl's mother claimed she had paid more than US $1,000 for the operation at the private clinic. She accused Dr Kyi Soe of failing to carry out proper medical tests.
Shortly after the girl's death, an investigation was opened by the MMC, a Ministry of Health body responsible for monitoring the ethics and standards of Burma's medical profession.
Contacted by The Irrawaddy on Thursday, the clinic said it could not comment on the case.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Too Much Cola Can Cause Muscle Problems
By HealthDay - Wed May 27, 8:49 PM PDT
WEDNESDAY, May 27 (HealthDay News) -- Drinking too much cola can increase the risk of a muscle problem called hypokalemia, experts warn.
In people with hypokalemia, a drop in blood potassium levels results in problems with vital muscle functions. Symptoms can range from mild weakness to serious paralysis, say Greek researchers who conducted a review of people who drank between two to nine liters of cola a day.
Two of the patients were pregnant women who were admitted to hospital with low potassium levels. One was a 21-year-old woman who drank up to three liters of cola a day and complained of fatigue, appetite loss and persistent vomiting. An electrocardiogram revealed she had a heart blockage, and blood tests showed she had low potassium levels, the researchers explained in a news release.
The second pregnant patient, who'd consumed up to seven liters of cola a day for 10 months, had low potassium levels and was suffering from increasing muscular weakness, the researchers noted.
Both patients made a rapid and full recovery after they stopped drinking cola and took oral or intravenous potassium. The case studies are described in the June issue of the International Journal of Clinical Practice.
"We are consuming more soft drinks than ever before, and a number of health issues have already been identified including tooth problems, bone demineralization and the development of metabolic syndrome and diabetes," and there's increasing evidence that excessive cola consumption leads to hypokalemia, Dr. Moses Elisaf, of the University of Ioannina, said in the news release.
Elisaf said the three most common ingredients in cola -- glucose, fructose and caffeine -- can contribute to hypokalemia.
"The individual role of each of these ingredients in the pathophysiology of cola-induced hypokalemia has not been determined and may vary in different patients," Elisaf said. "However, in most of the cases we looked at for our review, caffeine intoxication was thought to play the most important role. This has been borne out by case studies that focus on other products that contain high levels of caffeine but no glucose or fructose."
However, "caffeine-free cola products can also cause hypokalemia because the fructose they contain can cause diarrhea," Elisaf said.
Monday, May 25, 2009
'Five Dimensional' Discs With A Storage Capacity 2,000 Times That Of Current DVDs
ScienceDaily (May 21, 2009) — Futuristic discs with a storage capacity 2,000 times that of current DVDs could be just around the corner, thanks to new research from Swinburne University of Technology in Australia.
For the first time researchers from the university’s Centre for Micro-Photonics have demonstrated how nanotechnology can enable the creation of ‘five dimensional’ discs with huge storage capacities.
The research, carried out by Mr Peter Zijlstra, Dr James Chon and Professor Min Gu was published today in the scientific journal Nature.
The Nature article describes how the researchers were able to use nanoscopic particles to exponentially increase the amount of information contained on a single disc.
“We were able to show how nanostructured material can be incorporated onto a disc in order to increase data capacity, without increasing the physical size of the disc,” Gu said.
Discs currently have three spatial dimensions, but using nanoparticles the Swinburne researchers were able to introduce a spectral – or colour – dimension as well as a polarisation dimension.
“These extra dimensions are the key to creating ultra-high capacity discs,” Gu said.
To create the ‘colour dimension’ the researchers inserted gold nanorods onto a disc’s surface. Because nanoparticles react to light according to their shape, this allowed the researchers to record information in a range of different colour wavelengths on the same physical disc location.
This is a major improvement on current DVDs that are recorded in a single colour wavelength using a laser.
The researchers were also able to introduce an extra dimension onto the disc using polarisation. When they projected light waves onto the disc, the direction of the electric field contained within them aligned with the gold nanorods. This allowed the researchers to record different layers of information at different angles.
“The polarisation can be rotated 360 degrees,” Chon said. “So for example, we were able to record at zero degree polarisation. Then on top of that, we were able to record another layer of information at 90 degrees polarisation, without them interfering with each other.”
Some issues, such as the speed at which the discs can be written on, are yet to be resolved. However the researchers – who have already signed an agreement with Samsung – are confident the discs will be commercially available within 5 – 10 years.
The discs are likely to have immediate applications in a range of fields. They would be valuable for storing extremely large medical files such as MRIs and could also provide a boon in the financial, military and security arenas.
The researchers’ ground breaking achievements would not have been possible without the long-time support of the Australian Research Council.
Credit: Peter Zijlstra, James W. M. Chon, Min Gu (Nature Journal).
Saturday, May 16, 2009
Boom in tiny bedbugs is causing big trouble
By Barbara Barrett, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Fri May 15, 5:50 pm ET
WASHINGTON — The biggest bedbug outbreak since World War II has sent a collective shudder among apartment dwellers, college students and business travelers across the nation.
The bugs — reddish brown, flat and about the size of a grain of rice — suck human blood. They resist many pesticides and spread quickly in certain mattress-heavy buildings, such as hotels, dormitories and apartment complexes.
Two shelters have closed temporarily in Charlotte, N.C. , because of bedbugs, a Yahoo chat group dedicates itself to sufferers and countless bedbug blogs provide forums for news, tips and commiseration. State inspectors say that more emphasis may be needed to tackle the creatures.
Federal officials have taken notice of the resurgence. Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency held its first-ever bedbug summit, and now a North Carolina congressman wants to take on the insect.
Democratic Rep. G.K. Butterfield just introduced legislation that would authorize $50 million that's already in the Department of Commerce budget to train health inspectors how to recognize signs of the insects.
The Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite Act of 2009 also would require public housing agencies to submit bedbug inspection plans to the federal government. It would add bedbugs to a rodent and cockroach program in the Department of Health and Human Services . It also would require the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to research bedbugs' impact on public mental health.
Butterfield's letter to congressional colleagues about the legislation attracted lots of attention: It was topped with a full-color picture of the insect sitting on human skin.
"Unfortunately, in recent years, the United States has seen a resurgence in bedbugs," the letter reads. "That's right — they're back in the sack — and biting."
Bedbugs have hit hotels and homes in every state. The creatures are amazing hitchhikers, experts say, and easily travel in suitcases, boxes or packages. They can live for up to a year without food.
Apparently no state has a central reporting system for bedbugs, according to Butterfield's office, and since the bug carries no known diseases, many health departments don't consider it a public health threat.
That leaves the critters falling through the cracks among regulators, said Michael Potter , an entomologist at the University of Kentucky and one of the country's bedbug experts.
"Most health departments say, 'Hey, we don't deal with bedbugs,' " Potter said.
Those who've suffered outbreaks say that the anxiety it induces can be debilitating. Potter said many sufferers tossed out furniture and could spend thousands of dollars on repeated treatments from pesticide companies. They call him about anxiety, insomnia, shame and the incessant annoyance of itchy red welts on their skin.
"They're, like, ready to blow their brains out," Potter said. "It's emotionally distressing. Anyone that has never had a bedbug problem is not one to judge whether we're dealing with a medical, emotional public health issue."
In Congress , Butterfield first introduced his bill a year ago after hearing from a constituent who'd brought bedbugs into her home from a hotel trip. The bill died in committee last year, but Butterfield aides say they hope that higher attention will help the measure this year.
The co-sponsors include Reps. Don Young , R- Alaska , Ben Chandler , D- Ky. , Bobby L. Rush , D- Ill. , Betty McCollum , D- Minn. , Corrine Brown , D- Fla. , Steve Cohen , D- Tenn. , Brad Miller , D- N.C. , and Eddie Bernice Johnson , D- Texas .
Butterfield also has received support from the National Pest Management Association , which says that bedbug calls to pest control companies are up 70 percent in the past five years.
Greg Baumann , a Raleigh, N.C. , pest control expert and the vice president of technical services for the National Pest Management Association , said that a decade ago few pest control companies dealt routinely with bedbugs.
"Now it's everyone today," he said.
Baumann said companies could use pesticides on the bugs but that they also tried such alternatives as extreme heat, freezing and isolating the insects through mattress covers.
Since the EPA restricted the use of several effective pesticides in the 1980s, bedbugs have built resistance to the chemicals that now are on the market, said Potter, the University of Kentucky entomologist. Public education is important, he said, but the industry also needs a good insecticide.
"Whether that bill is going to solve the problem — certainly it's a start," he said.
