Science Ain't So Bad

FBI CAPTURES A PRINT

FINGERPRINTS

No two people have the same fingerprints.

That’s how come we get to put people in jail or stick ‘em in the lectric chair based on fingerprint evidence. It’s “incontrovertible”

How DO we know that fingerprints are unique? That no two people have the same ones?

Well.. see.. that’s the thing.

Experts such as Simon Cole (New York Times) say its’ a lot of hooey. It’s just “folk wisdom”. Fingerprint matching, says Cole, isn’t nearly as reliable as we grew up thinking it was.

How many whodunits have you read where the bad guy left prints on the wine glass? If they matched, he’s catched.

Period.

You’ve always accepted that this was completely true. You don’t want to get into an argument with your own brain, do you?

But..

from an article in Wikipedia about fingerprints:

“Despite the absence of objective standards, scientific validation, and adequate statistical studies, a natural question to ask is how well fingerprint examiners actually perform. Proficiency tests do not validate a procedure per se, but they can provide some insight into error rates. In 1995, the Collaborative Testing Service (CTS) administered a proficiency test that, for the first time, was “designed, assembled, and reviewed” by the International Association for Identification (IAI).The results were disappointing. Four suspect cards with prints of all ten fingers were provided together with seven latents. Of 156 people taking the test, only 68 (44%) correctly classified all seven latents. Overall, the tests contained a total of 48 incorrect identifications. David Grieve, the editor of the Journal of Forensic Identification, describes the reaction of the forensic community to the results of the CTS test as ranging from “shock to disbelief,”..

Not so good, eh? Get yourself a mediocre fingerprint technician and who KNOWS what fate has in store. (Latents, by the way, are prints that don’t show up till you “dust em”).

EAR IDENTIFICATION (SERIOUSLY)

Maybe there’s a better way.

Dr. Mark Nixon (and others) at the University of Southampton say that  the little swirly thing in the ear,  the helix, is durn good for telling us apart with close to 100% accuracy. That’s what we’re looking for, right? 99+ %?  Will “earprints” replace fingerprints at Scotland Yard?

Not likely, according to A Wild at the University of Rhode Island (That’s as much identification as your gonna get; he’s one of Mister ScienceAintSoBad’s best kept secrets). Wild reminds us that accuracy isn’t enough. Criminal types, he says, would have to start scattering photos of their own ears around crime scenes or, perhaps, begin pressing the sides of their heads against corpses, for ear detection to have any forensic value. Whereas it is hard to avoid leaving fingerprints and DNA behind, your average perpetrator can probably figure out how to keep his ears off the walls.

OTHER APPLICATIONS

To be fair, Dr. Nixon and his colleagues probably had different applications in mind for the ear identification technique such as biometric screening. For that purpose, with further development, it may well turn out to be useful.

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A VENGEFUL FANTASY

MALEVOLENTWARE

In 2008, in Madrid,  an airplane took off with its flaps and its slats retracted.

It didn’t work out.

The flaps aren’t there to look pretty. When you stick ‘em out like that, you’re looking for some extra lift as the aircraft struggles up into the sky. Not that a mistake in setting the flaps is a big deal, really. Nice Mister Computer’ll remind you to make the necessary adjustments.

Unless, of course, Mister Computer’s got his own problems.

In the case of  Spanair Flight 5022, Mister Computer had a virus – a trojan, actually. An article by Leslie Meredith (we always like to give credit) on livescience.com, writes that the investigation of the NTSB discovered that there was no power to the take-off warning system. No slats. No flaps. No warning.

154 passengers died. 18 survived.

The central computer system got itself infected. Most probably from a USB “memory stick” or such.

The lesson? You knew it anyway. Computers can kill you lots of ways these days. You just can’t BE too vigilant.

The question?

Any PARTICULAR reason you can’t hang the writer of the malware that brought down an entire aircraft with 172 souls on board? MisterScienceAintSoBad hopes, with all his heart, there’s a way.

ANGELO'S TRAINER-BOX KEEPS SURGEONS SHARP AS A SCALPEL

A KIDNEY HAS TO GO

My brother-in-law’s still a handsome guy in his mid seventies. He’s fiercely loyal to my sister and his kids, a “drivin’ fool” who runs his magnificent RV across country at the drop of a beanie, and he’s the “go to guy” in the family when it comes to automotive questions.

But for several years, he’s been battling cancers acquired (probably) during his military service.

R’s been in remission for seven years thanks to the remarkable work of Dr. Shimon Slavin (International Center for Cell Therapy & Cancer),  a pioneer in immunological therapy. Recently, however,  a mass was discovered on one of R’s kidneys.

The kidney has to go.

A DECISION HAS TO BE MADE

R had to decide between an open incision or laparoscopy, the new “modern” approach, which involves manipulating tiny tools inside the abdominal cavity while observing with a tiny video camera. Laparoscopy is all done through small holes in the abdomen rather than through a large incision and can mean faster recovery and less scarring.

“You’re the science guy, R said.  What do you think? Should I take a chance on laparoscopy?”

“Well, the recovery’s easier with laparoscopy,” I said. “What’s not to like?”

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I’m afraid they’ll have to chop up the kidney to remove it. I wouldn’t want all that cancer juice sloshing around in me.  Who knows what other organs could be affected.”

R’s fears certainly seemed reasonable. In fact, surgeons do worry about “spills”, cells that drip from an instrument during surgery.  So I called Angelo Tortola (Venture Technologies) who designs the tools used in these procedures. He also makes the training simulators that surgeons use to perfect their techniques.

After explaining a little about my brother-in-law’s background and describing the problem, I asked him if he could help.

“You called the right guy,” he said. “I had to give up one of my own kidneys about two years ago.”

Since Angelo had never mentioned this to me, I was very surprised.

“You’re OK now, right?”

“Completely. The cancer was fully contained. But I have a story.”

“Don’t let me stop you.”

“My doctor was ‘old school’. He was determined to go with an open incision.  Even after I asked about laparoscopy, he stuck to his position. Safer. Best result.

“But the more I read, the more I wondered.  Finally, I set up an appointment at Mass General Hospital in Boston with a leading surgeon – one who I happened to know did a lot of laparoscopic procedures.

“After reviewing my situation, he said I would be a good candidate for laparoscopy but I could choose an open procedure if I wished.

“I asked him about the relative advantages. He said that laparoscopic removal of a kidney was just as safe as an open procedure with lower risk of certain complications during recovery.

“So, I asked, how do I decide?

“Well, he said, with the open procedure it’ll take you longer to get back on your feet.

“How much longer? I asked.

“With the open procedure, it could be up to a year till you are fully normal, he said. With laproscopy, you should be functional within a few days.”

“Now THAT,” Angelo said, “is an amazing difference. And, you know what? He was right.  A couple of weeks later, I was on an airplane, on the way to a meeting.”

I asked Angelo about R’s concern. Does the kidney get chopped up before it is removed?

“Not to worry,” Angelo said. “That’s not how they do it. The organ is removed in one piece. And everything’s placed in a plastic bag before removal.

“You tell your brother-in-law that either choice is safe. It’s up to him.”

OMG!

YOUNG RESEARCHER WITH ACNE CURE

We were once beautiful. Even Fink. Once, we were healthy. supple and unblemished.

Except for the nasty zits which would lie dormant until a few days before something important like a first date, a prom, or a bar mitzvah when they would BURST into glorious Technicolor blotches, humiliating and depressing us.

And obliterating our dreams of becoming ex-virgins.

Ever.

Well thank YOU, Dissaya “Nu” Pornpattananangkul, for coming up with a zit-killer DECADES too late.  I don’t believe ther’re any virgins left  in high school to benefit from this work  but Pornpattananangkul  (am I pronouncing that right?) has developed a drug delivery system based on gold nanoparticles which deliver  lauric acid directly to the (very) offending lesions.

ENGINEERING IS NOT (no offense) SCIENCE

Pornpa.. Pornpatt.. WHATEVER! .. is gonna be a terrific engineer. But there’s some science yet to be done. Will it REALLY work? Side effects? Cost?

A great first step and the article says human testing may follow soon.

ScienceAintSoBadEngineeringRating = 10

ScienceAintSoBadScienceRating? Let’s hope we hear more.

A CURE FOR BACKPACKS?

I can ONLY ride the Nostalgia Dunebuggy so far. MISERABLE and PATHETIC  as our young lives were, we didn’t walk to school leaning forward.

School books have gotten so heavy in the last five years, that obesity’s become the only REMEDY for the struggling future generations that we call kids or (sometimes) just annoying. In fact, their parents are EGGING THEM ON to gain a few pounds. ”Hey. EAT that! You wanna get pulled over backwards by your books and lie there like a DOPE with yer arms and legs wavin’ around?”

Sad.

Eric v.d. Luft, PhD (Syracuse) did a little research on WHY the books are so engorged.

Oomph!

Fat margins, fat paper, and lots of jazzy color illustrations.

You know fer SURE some kid’s gonna be too loaded up to dodge a runaway foreign car.

Too much backpack mass. This is all just a GIFT to pediatric orthopedic surgeons.

‘course the ultimate solution is a digital child. Did I say “child?”. I MEANT, of course, BOOK.  An eBook.

Not a specially  original thought.  Electronic book readers are catching on among adults.  There’re a LOT of choices. Kindle, Sony’s E-reader, The Nook (Barnes and Noble), ALL kinda smart phones, netbooks,  the Ipad (and it’s soon-to-be competitors), and so on. There’re way more “initiatives” then MisterScienceAintSoBad is in the mood to discuss. (Example).

The technology’s there. It’s even affordable. Text book publishing, parents, and teaching institutions are trying to catch up with  it.

ROBOTS COUNT FOR SOMETHING

According to the IEEE Spectrum, the world’s robot population’s about 8.6 million souls.

Well. Not souls, exactly.

You know what I mean.

EVIL METER

GOOGLE’S NEW INDICATOR

Have you been watching the ins and outs, ups and downs, backs and forths of Google/China?

If you have, you know that Google’s modest experiment in self-censorship’s resulted in a sour magnesium taste for the “Do no harm” guys who don’t like all the ropes ‘n chains ‘n blindfolds that seem to be the cost of doing business in China. So they said – I think the word was..  tryin’ to think here.. I think it was “NO“.

Unless China took the gag off.

And China, always, nimble in these kinds of negotations said “Uh.. Jeez. But we ALWAYS censor.” And stuck to its idiotic guns.

Without an acceptable response from China, Google’s decided to move its operations to Hong Kong where it’ll get itself out of the censoring business and back to the search business. And the map business. And the phone business. And.. well.. like that.

MISTER ScienceAintSoBad has no standing here since this is politics. But just in case you want my opinion? I think the huge, powerful, fast growing nation of China will lose and the funny li’l guys with the search engine’ll win.

But it’ll take awhile.

Anyway, now that Google, itself, isn’t censoring (with some temporary exceptions till contracts expire), Google felt it would be useful for its readers to have a visual indicator of how much censoring is being done by the Chinese authorities. So they developed a nice “status page”, called by some, its “Evil Meter”

ScienceAintSoBadRating = 10 (for Google)

ScienceAintSoBadRating = -1 for China

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