A dilemma of an industry that supports hundreds of thousands of workers and is integrally dependent on cheap labor, often undocumented immigrants. It's gonna take broad changes to make the situation sustainable - visas that allow year-round workers as opposed to seasonal labor. Or milk that costs twice as much.
Sunday, December 30, 2018
The Animals of Chernobyl | NYT
Aberrant markings and tumors persist more than 30 years after the Chernobyl disaster. Even spiders webs have abnormal patterns.
Saturday, December 29, 2018
Saturday, December 22, 2018
Fast food chicken: Testing Subway, McDonald's, A&W, Wendy's & Tim Hortons
At 13:29, "most of the samples came back close to 100% chicken, except Subway, which had around 50% chicken."
Thursday, December 20, 2018
Can you hack into Tesla Autopilot Dash-Cam Footage?
"You have to basically gain root access to the MCU [Media Control Unit]..."
"In most Tesla crashes, then, crash footage exists. It's not great resolution, but it's good enough for government work. "It has to send these messages over the CAN bus very quickly to save them from the camera to the MCU," Hughes explains, "so they have to be dumbed-down resolution so that they can actually make it to the MCU before anything bad happens to it in a crash." This transfer seems to be triggered whenever the airbags deploy, and "takes some amount of time," he says — in his estimation, probably "about 20 seconds." So, for the May Autopilot fatality in Florida, which left the Model S roofless, the crash footage probably didn't make it to the MCU."
How much energy is saved recycling an aluminum can? 210 watt-hours
Recycling one pound of aluminum (33 cans) saves about 7 kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity.
Recycling aluminum saves 90-95 percent of the energy needed to make aluminum from bauxite ore.
[210 W-h]
Recycling one aluminum beverage can save enough energy to run a 14 watt CFL bulb (60 watt incandescent equivalent) for 20 hours, a computer for 3 hours, or a TV for 2 hours.
[280 W-h]
One ton of recycled aluminum saves14,000 kilowatt hours (Kwh) of energy, 40 barrels of oil, 130. 152.32 million BTU's of energy, and 10 cubic yards of landfill space.
[14 *10E6 W-h * 15g / 10E6g = 210 W-h]
Wednesday, December 19, 2018
How sellers gain prominence on Amazon search
What sellers will do to rise to the top in an Amazon search - fake reviews, fake sales, bribes to remove disparaging reviews or elevate their ranking.
In an earlier post, I mentioned a website that tests if reviews are genuine on Amazon:
In an earlier post, I mentioned a website that tests if reviews are genuine on Amazon:
Is that a real customer review?
Fake reviews are everywhere - how can you spot them, weed them out, and figure out what the "real" rating for a product is? This website does it for you.
This site was created by an unlikely source - a guy selling a bodybuilding supplement, who suspected his own product was getting mostly fake reviews, so he coded a website to detect and remove the fake ones.
https://reviewmeta.com/
Here's the back story:
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=623988370
In the example provided in the NPR story, "So it went from a 4 star out of 5, with 177 reviews on Amazon. And the adjusted rating on ReviewMeta is 1.7 stars after 10 reviews."
This site was created by an unlikely source - a guy selling a bodybuilding supplement, who suspected his own product was getting mostly fake reviews, so he coded a website to detect and remove the fake ones.
https://reviewmeta.com/
Here's the back story:
https://www.npr.org/templates/transcript/transcript.php?storyId=623988370
In the example provided in the NPR story, "So it went from a 4 star out of 5, with 177 reviews on Amazon. And the adjusted rating on ReviewMeta is 1.7 stars after 10 reviews."
How Canada Helps Its Dairy Farmers
Production quotas and guaranteed minimum prices help prevent a milk surplus.
Monday, December 17, 2018
Tried a Lime pod - Lime launches car sharing in Seattle.
I've used lots of car sharing before - Reach, Car2go, Turo, and Evo (only in Vancouver, BC.)
Lime was the easiest of all - simple, quick, free approval that didn't require a phone call, and I was driving within minutes...which was good because it was raining, as usual, in Seattle.
The little Fiat 500 turbo was comfortable, quick and peppy, and had great visibility and even a backup camera. And best of all, had a convenient universal phone holder and triple-charging cable (lightning, type C, micro) right there.
So, compared to other car sharing companies that take several days to approve your application, or charge a fee, this was simple, quick, and easy.
As with all car sharing, there's no charge for insurance, fuel, or parking, just a basic rate per minute rate of $0.40 and you're good to go.
I'm loving it.
Lime was the easiest of all - simple, quick, free approval that didn't require a phone call, and I was driving within minutes...which was good because it was raining, as usual, in Seattle.
The little Fiat 500 turbo was comfortable, quick and peppy, and had great visibility and even a backup camera. And best of all, had a convenient universal phone holder and triple-charging cable (lightning, type C, micro) right there.
So, compared to other car sharing companies that take several days to approve your application, or charge a fee, this was simple, quick, and easy.
As with all car sharing, there's no charge for insurance, fuel, or parking, just a basic rate per minute rate of $0.40 and you're good to go.
I'm loving it.
How Shazam Works
A good explanation of how song recognition creates a "fingerprint" of a song with hash functions.
Tips: How To Make Roast Beef
Salt it, leave for an hour in fridge.
Tie it up to preserve its shape and ensure even cooking.
Sear it in a pan first.
Let it rest after cooking, for the proteins to reabsorb the moisture.
Monsanto: The Company that Owns the World’s Food Supply
A tedious stock-photo documentary revealing the lengthy history of polluting the environment and aggressively profiting from farmers by a huge company.
Here's where corn is produced:
The volume of corn production overshadows all other crops.
Sunday, December 16, 2018
Musician Built $1,200 Tiny Houses for the Homeless. Then the City Seized Them.
How dismaying that a well-meaning effort to provide tiny shelters for the homeless was ripped apart by the city council, sending people back onto the streets, while the city's alternative is mired in red tape and delays.
Saturday, December 15, 2018
Walkable cities - 4 components
4 characteristics of walkable cities
1 a reason to walk
2 safe
3 confortable
4 interesting
(6:18) "Urban sprawl and traditional (walkable) neighborhoods contain all the same things - it's just how big they are, how close they are to each other, and how they are interspersed together."
(7:18) "Transit - you can have a perfectly walkable city without it, but perfectly walkable cities require public transit because if you don't have easy access to the whole city as a pedestrian, you get a car. And if you get a car, the city begins to reshape itself around your needs, and streets get wider and parking lots bigger."
(15:38) "So then, the comfortable walk has to do with the fact that all animals seek prospect and refuge We want to be able to see our predators, but we also want our flanks to be covered...the proper ratio of height to width...if you get beyond 1:6, you're not very comfortable any more. You don't feel enclosed."
Friday, December 14, 2018
Kristin and Jen Try Every Trader Joe's Frozen Dessert
These vapid, vacuous, sardonic twerps somehow come up with a useful list of the worthwhile Trader Joe's desserts, which might just save you from buying a lot of desserts you wouldn't like.
World’s First Test-Tube Steak
Cell-cultured meat is an amorphous mass of muscle and fat cells, good for making chicken nuggets and hamburgers that taste pretty close to the real thing. But the holy grail is replicating the macro-structure of steaks and chicken breasts. One company featured here thinks they are getting close. The advent of these cultured meat products is inevitable, to the chagrin of ranchers, because they use vastly less resources to produce.
Costco Opening Its Own Chicken Farm?
At Costco, chicken is their loss leader, so getting the price even lower by vertical integration (owning the entire supply chain) makes sense. And perhaps they are going about it in a way that avoids farmers becoming indebted sharecroppers.
The largest private bunker community on earth
Doomsday private bunkers for sale. Vivos xPoint bunkers are in South Dakota, cost $25K, and to outfit them with systems is another $22K and up.
Thursday, December 13, 2018
F1D Indoor Free Flight
Obsessed with the world of 3 gram airplanes. At 3:33 he describes the particular batch of rubber elastics made in May 1999 that are the perfect power source that hasn't been matched since.
Inside the Life of an Instagram Star
Making a living in Seattle as a social influencer - not as easy as it seems.
The CBD craze - 21st century snake oil
Nice catchy conclusion - "If you can claim everything, you can sell anything." Most cannabidiol products contain trivial amounts compared to proven effective doses.
Snake oil "many 19th-century... entrepreneurs advertised and sold mineral oil (often mixed with various active and inactive household herbs, spices, and compounds, but containing no properties of snakes,) as "snake oil liniment", making frivolous claims about its efficacy as a panacea."
Wednesday, December 12, 2018
What do these words have in common?
aba, abaya, bubu, huipil, chiton, dashiki, cotta, dhoti, ephod, haik, izar
They are all types of simple garments.
aba - a loose sleeveless outer garment worn as traditional dress by men in the Middle East
abaya - a full-length, sleeveless outer garment worn by some Muslim women
They are all types of simple garments.
aba - a loose sleeveless outer garment worn as traditional dress by men in the Middle East
abaya - a full-length, sleeveless outer garment worn by some Muslim women
bubu - a long flowing garment worn in Mali, Nigeria
huipil - traditional garment worn by indigenous women from central Mexico
chiton - a long woolen tunic worn in ancient Greece
dashiki - a loose, brightly colored shirt or tunic, esp. West Africa
cotta - a short garment resembling a surplice, worn by Catholic priests and servers
dhoti - a garment worn by male Hindus, consisting of a piece of material tied around the waist
ephod - a sleeveless garment worn by Jewish priests
haik - a large outer wrap, typically white, in N. Africa
izar - long, usually white cotton dress that covers the body completely, worn by women
Cute!
From an article* in Popular Science "Why do we think tiny things are cute?" The article also points out that the original meaning of cute was "clever or shrewd," alluding to the fact that intricately-made small things interest us.
*https://www.popsci.com/why-do-we-think-tiny-things-are-cute#page-2
*https://www.popsci.com/why-do-we-think-tiny-things-are-cute#page-2
Tuesday, December 11, 2018
How overparenting backfired on Americans | Jonathan Haidt
Very interesting social commentary about how, starting in 1995, we suddenly stopped letting our kids go outside on their own from ages 8-12 or so, robbing then of an opportunity to learn to act independently.
Here are some other untruths exposed by the same author:
https://youtu.be/VzGH97DQzA4Trader Joe's
A podcast about how this company does everything differntly and has garnered a loyal following and big profits:
Very interesting - made me understand Trader Joe's a lot better. And the "paradox of choice" was interesting, too. An excess of choices draws you in but paradoxically makes you less likely to commit to a purchase.
Freegan: How much food do supermarkets throw away? (CBC Marketplace)
Learned a new word, freegan.
- "a person who rejects consumerism and seeks to help the environment by reducing waste, especially by retrieving and using discarded food and other goods"
Monday, December 10, 2018
The village that changed China forever
Some desperate villagers defied the law (risking beheading) and spearheaded a market economy in communist China, increasing crop yields 6-fold overnight and setting the stage for Chinese economic reform.
How Did New York's Trains Get so Bad? | NYT
I loved this little documentary. It has a nice quirky style that makes it a lot more interesting.
Sunday, December 9, 2018
Café Allows Customers To Pay What They Can
Inspiring feel-good story of someone making a difference by giving away food.
The Future of Water
Interesting documentary about the eventual necessity of recycling waste water, as has been done in the Namibian desert for decades, as we approach critical shortages of water in the coming decades.
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Bike sharing makes money
You know those bike sharing services? I've always wondered how they make any money. But they're doing well in Seattle, and have logged more than 2 million rides, each of which are at least a dollar. They obviously are doing very well. They're expanding to electric scooters, and now car sharing also.
"Now, showing no signs of slowing down, Seattleites have broken another record as the first Lime market to hit 2 million carbon-free rides on Lime smart pedal and e-assist bikes. The announcement comes as Lime reported last month that its riders had taken more than 20 million trips on shared scooters and bikes worldwide."
Surprisingly the scooters are really contentious, and people have been complaining and even vandalizing them in purpose. I think users aren't polite on sidewalks, and leave the scooters scattered randomly in the sidewalk.
However, I like John Stossel's take on it, basically "get over yourselves - It's a great solution for 'lasty mile' transportation needs."
Tuesday, December 4, 2018
Monday, December 3, 2018
Sunday, December 2, 2018
When a bone graft falls on the floor
What is your protocol for when an indispensible instrument or 'bone graft' falls onto non sterile area?
An interesting discussion...TE
https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_is_your_protocol_for_when_an_indispensible_instrument_or_bone_graft_falls_onto_non_sterile_area

Akilesh Ramasamy
Dental Speciality Clinic
Instruments can be resterilized. A flash sterilization cycle can get the instrument ready to you in about 20 minutes or so. We send the instrument for reprocessing immediately if the instrument is that indispensable, else if we can [get] away with an alternative instrument we proceed. For example, at times we have used a chisel as a screw driver alternative when our screw driver fell to the floor while fixing a fracture. But if the screw holder itself falls, we send it for processing [and] sterilization.
Grafts are another thing... you have a few options:
1. Use another graft (possible when you are using allograft sources)
2. 30-min soak in 4% chlorhexidine followed by a 30-min soak in triple antibiotic solution (gentamicin, clindamycin, polymixin), followed by sterile saline wash was 100% effective according to a study.
3. Grafts can be autoclaved as well (the technique of autoclaving and using the bone is a technique used in jaw bones in some pathologies. After resection of the mandible, the pathology is removed from within the bone the bone autoclaved and then used as a non vascularized bone scaffold to hold particulate bone grafts!)
4. Postpone the procedure and complete the procedure using graft from another site at another time after getting appropriate informed consent again.
Any such occurrence must be fully disclosed to the patient. The best choice will depend on the critical nature of the procedure and the wound bed/graft site, the graft volume and type among a few.
If you are using chlorhexidine, saline wash is mandatory and important as chlorhexidine induced chondrolysis has been reported. So if you are using cartilaginous structures after chlorhexidine wash, there can be chondrolysis.
The disadvantage is that the graft will lose all viable cells during the process of autoclaving or when using chlorhexidine.
Povidone iodine applied and dried has also been found to be effective with better cell viability.
Taking measures to avoid dropping the graft and instruments is THE only best solution. The surgeon must take full responsibility and ensure that all members of the team are aware and handle the grafts carefully during harvest, after harvest and during the time of fixation. At each point of transition of the graft, there must be good communication and co - ordination to avoid such incidents.
Regarding instruments,the same apply.
Breach in sterility would mean surgical site infection and loss of graft anyway ... So using just a saline wash and placing the graft or using an instrument with just after a saline wash can be disastrous.
Using a spirit wipe after washing before reprocessing for re-sterilization has been used by us a few times when the instrument fell into visibly soiled areas.
Dr. Akilesh. R
Chennai, India
Update:
Bone - low pulse irrigation with > 1 L of triple antibiotic solution is preferred. Cancellous bone is better re-harvested, cortico cancellous bone may be decontaminated.
Soft tissue: Low pulse irrigation with > 1 L of 4% chlorhexidine is preferred.
Interestingly a study found that PVP-I was the most commonly used decontaminant than chlorhexidine which was found to be more effective. But saline wash is mandatory in each case especially with chlorhexidine wash as it is known to cause chondrolysis if not washed off.
Low Pulse Pressure vs Washing vs Soaking
Soaking or washing is not adequate. Low pulse irrigation is preferred for thorough decontamination. The 5 second rule or the 15 second rule may not be applicable. OR floors though are cleaned they are not part of the sterile field and even the area just around the Operating table is walked repeatedly by the surgical team. Moreover, the bacteria may not necessarily fly away, they may just be bombarded into some of the crevices / folds of the harvested graft.
Culture of the graft
Routine culturing of the dropped graft before decontamination is helpful. If an infection develops we know the sensitivity and appropriate antibiotics to use.
An interesting publication in this regard is attached which formed the source of my update:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2344133/
survey covering 156 incidents of graft contamination.
"Nearly two thirds of the contaminated grafts related to craniofacial procedures. Ninety-four percent of grafts were managed with decontamination and completion of the operation...Only 3 surgeons (1.9%) said a clinical infection developed following decontaminated graft use."
"Patients were not informed in 60% of graft contamination incidents."
survey covering 156 incidents of graft contamination.
"Nearly two thirds of the contaminated grafts related to craniofacial procedures. Ninety-four percent of grafts were managed with decontamination and completion of the operation...Only 3 surgeons (1.9%) said a clinical infection developed following decontaminated graft use."
"Patients were not informed in 60% of graft contamination incidents."
Jayaprakash Gadagi
Coorg Institute of Dental Sciences
UV light sterilization may help to sterilize the bone graft.
Lukasz Zadrozny
Medical University of Warsaw
Medical University of Warsaw
With bone graft You will be in trouble, in my opinion there is no method which allows you to sterilize the bone graft especially during the surgery. And with instruments you can always use similar one instead or even try 5 minutes autoclave program to sterilize it.
Syed Wali Peeran
Sebha University
Sebha University
Always start with backup instruments and material. In dental operatory with autogenous bone graft we can be in real trouble especially if source was intra-oral and the patient is on the chair. ...
Robert Betz
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
This is PERSONAL OPINION and not an FDA opinion:
I believe that the 5 second rule came from frustrated parents who stated that if a piece of food was on the floor for less than 5 seconds, it was safe to eat. This rule has been disproven in at least one study as a sterility-safe procedure, but I do not have a study reference.
Product labeling for many bone grafting materials state that the material is not to be resterilized. There may be good reasons for this, and not just the desire to sell more product. From a conjectural perspective; one could surmise that bone graft products that are labeled "Do Not Resterilize" may be degrated in some manner, making them less effective in producing favorable grafting results.
I personally would recommend the Boy Scout addage - "Be Prepared", and use other sterile instruments and bone grafts wherever possible, and cancel the procedure if not able to proceed in a sterile manner. The "Better Safe than Sorry" addage seems to apply here.
Again; this is a PERSONAL OPINION and not an official FDA opinion.
Dan Holtzclaw
Walter Reed National Military Medical Center
I am approaching this question from the viewpoint of a private practicing dental surgeon in the USA. My country (the US) is a very litigious society. If I were to drop an allograft or autograft onto the floor, "resterilize" it, and use the product anyway, that would be grounds for a huge lawsuit. Even if there was literature to support doing this, the rule of thumb in US courts of litigation is "what would a reasonable person amongst you peers do in the same exact situation?" I can tell you that no one is going to go on record saying that they would re-use something that fell on the floor. That is bad for business and bad for your reputation.
In such a situation, if it is an instrument that fell on the floor, you should have a back-up in your office. In my office, we have AT LEAST 1 back up for all of our instruments. In most cases, we have multiple copies of the same instrument. About the only thing for which we do not have a duplicate is our CBCT machine.
As for allografts, if one falls on the floor, you trash it and get another. You eat the cost and consider a normal cost of doing business. Again, hopefully you have backups in the office. In my office, we have backups for all of our materials. We do not "order as needed" because circumstances can change mid-surgery and if you are not prepared, you cannot finish the surgery.
There is just too much legal risk in re-using anything that fell on the floor. Even if there was plenty of literature to support doing so, I would not do it.
Nicholas Malden (original post writer)
The University of Edinburgh
The University of Edinburgh
... thank you for all your responses which I found interesting, informative and sometimes surprising.
I was particularly interested to read the manuscript linked for us by Dr Akilesh Ramasamy, 'Management of contaminated autologous bone grafts'.
In the UK the Health Service is reinforcing the concept of our 'Duty of candour'. Driven by the public's desire for more openness/transparency within the NHS it basically puts almost a legal responsibility on clinicians to inform patients of any periprocedural operative divergence or mishap that might materially compromise the outcome of that treatment, whether or not a complication has resulted or not.
Most interesting in the survey by Robert Centeno et al,'Patients were not informed in 60% of graft contamination incidents'.
Dan Holtzclaw has provided us with a more dogmatic protocol and although it might not protect against a charge of negligence, it might protect against the greater charge of gross professional misconduct, should a 'hidden' error result in serious complications.
Thinking about the risk vs benefit to patients, on one hand if I was a recipient heart transplant patient and my donor heart was dropped I would say "please still put it in" but in the case of a small autologous bone graft where a less optimal but sterile alternative is available in a bottle, the risk vs benefit swings away from benefit to risk.
Risk cannot be eliminated, risk can only be minimised and managed.
So in summary I have determined the following: -
A 10 (or 5) second rule has no application when applied to contamination accidents in surgery.
Every effort should be taken to minimise the risk during the 'handling phase' of a graft passing between donor and recipient sites.
A viable plan B, in the event of graft loss, should be discussed with the patient at the consenting stage.
On the subject of minimising risk I do still use and teach the technique described in my paper 'Reducing the risk of failure during intra-oral bone grafting'. Implant Dentistry 07/2005; 14(2):154-6.
I would consider it a useful and inexpensive technique and could be utilised when applied to larger grafts such as rib or calvarian when a plan B is not so viable.
- njm
- njm
Intelligence without a brain in single-called organism
Studying slime mold to probe what intelligence really means.
Saturday, December 1, 2018
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