linkstream2 microblog

QT:{{”

After being harassed by spam calls, a telephone geek took matters into his own hands and devised a way to keep the person on the other end of the line engaged endlessly…..

“The idea is to keep the telemarketer on the call for as long as possible. The longer the conversation goes on, the more eccentric the robot becomes. In one sequence, the robot tells the telemarketer that a bee landed on his arm, and asks the telemarketer to keep talking as he focuses on the bee.

After seeing that the service worked, Mr. Anderson made it freely available to anyone; it works with landlines (with conference call or three-way calling service) and cellphones. To send telemarketing calls to the robot, add the phone number 214-666-4321 to your address book. Then, the next time you get a call from a telemarketer, patch the number in, merge the calls and put your phone on mute while the robot does the talking.”
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A Robot That Has Fun at #Telemarketers’ Expense
https://www.NYTimes.com/2016/02/25/fashion/a-robot-that-has-fun-at-telemarketers-expense.html Quote: “The idea is to keep them on…as long as possible….The next time you get a call from a telemarketer, patch…in” 214-666-4321 & merge calls

http://www.drhirani.com/diabetes/difference-visceral-fat-subcutaneous-fat/

QT:{{“Most know that having a large belly may be unhealthy. But did you know that not all belly fat is bad? Much of the fat in the stomach area lies directly under the skin. This is called
subcutaneous fat and is not necessarily hazardous to your health. The fat that is harmful is the unseen fat around your organs, otherwise known are visceral abdominal fat. You may have visceral fat but yet not be obese.”}}

Some quick quotes from
{{
The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body’s Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You
Tara, Sylvia
Citation (MLA): Tara, Sylvia. The Secret Life of Fat: The Science Behind the Body’s Least Understood Organ and What It Means for You. W. W. Norton & Company, 2016. Kindle file.
}}
that I really liked

Each short quote below is preceded by the words “Highlight” & indication of the location in the book.

Notebook Export
I. All About Fat
Highlight(pink) – 2. Fat Can Talk > Page 42 · Location 721
No longer could fat be considered simply blubber; it was a verifiable endocrine organ with wide influence in our bodies. Through leptin, fat could talk. It could tell the brain to stop eating. And by refusing to deliver the message, fat could induce us to eat more.
Highlight(pink) – 3. Your Life Depends on Fat > Page 56 · Location 950 The other organ that is surprisingly affected by body fat is the brain. The fat in mice with ob mutation produces virtually no leptin, leading to reduced brain weight and volume.
Highlight(pink) – 4. When Good Fat Goes Bad > Page 69 · Location 1155 Excess visceral fat is the most dangerous kind of fat, and high levels of it correlate directly to diabetes, heart disease, high cholesterol, and even dementia.
Highlight(pink) – 4. When Good Fat Goes Bad > Page 71 · Location 1177 However, when sumo wrestlers retire and start to consume processed foods and veer away from their exercise program, they almost immediately develop more visceral fat and the classic problems of obesity such as high levels of insulin, insulin resistance, and diabetes.
Highlight(pink) – 4. When Good Fat Goes Bad > Page 72 · Location 1205 Exercise has been shown to increase adiponectin levels,
Highlight(pink) – 4. When Good Fat Goes Bad > Page 75 · Location 1256 “In our program we have seen that just a 7 percent weight loss can improve insulin sensitivity by 57 percent.
Highlight(pink) – 4. When Good Fat Goes Bad > Page 76 · Location 1256 That is the equivalent of two medications for diabetes management at maximum dose.
II. It Is Not Only Food That Makes Us Fat
Highlight(pink) – 7. I Blame My Parents—Genes in Obesity > Page 126 · Location 1996
For example, individuals with variations in a gene called FTO tend to desire high-calorie foods more and have more fat as a result. This gene causes an almost twofold increased risk of obesity compared with those who do not inherit the gene variation.
Highlight(pink) – 9. Fat Can Listen > Page 153 · Location 2424 Testosterone is perhaps the most potent fat burner we have.
Highlight(pink) – 9. Fat Can Listen > Page 157 · Location 2483 Not eating anything also increases our levels of fat-burning hormones. Many body builders and work-out enthusiasts swear by intermittent fasting. When blood sugar becomes low, it triggers the release of fat-burning hormones including adrenaline and growth hormone. Growth-hormone release peaks at night and during sleep. Intermittent fasting is powerful partly because it prolongs the overnight fast, extending the release of growth hormone, which burns fat.
III. So What Is the Solution?
Highlight(orange) – 10. Fat Control I: How You Can Do It > Page 170 · Location 2632
Throughout this book you’ve seen how insulin, leptin, ghrelin, adiponectin, estrogen, testosterone, thyroid, and other hormones influence our weight. Our body is an intricate communication system and hormones are key players.
Highlight(pink) – 10. Fat Control I: How You Can Do It > Page 170 · Location 2644
Though hunger is uncomfortable, intermittent fasting has been known to work wonders, especially for hard-to-lose fat. Fasting not only reduces intake but triggers the release of fat-burning hormones including adrenalin and growth hormone. Most growth-hormone release happens at night and during sleep.
Highlight(pink) – 10. Fat Control I: How You Can Do It > Page 171 · Location 2660
He suggests a low-carb diet, and trying to miss one meal first, letting the body get used to the drop in nutrients, and then extending the interval between meals.
Highlight(orange) – 10. Fat Control I: How You Can Do It > Page 176 · Location 2740
He’s observed that those who lose the most weight consistently keep a record of calories and frequently weigh themselves.

Computers That Can Run Backwards
https://www.AmericanScientist.org/article/computers-that-can-run-backwards Discusses the relationship between adiabatic, reversible & quantum #computing to energy expenditure per bit. Introduces Koomey’s law that “computations per unit of energy have been doubling about every 1.6 years.”

QT:{{”
Koomey’s law, a relative of Moore’s law, says that over the first 70 years of electronic computing (as represented above by typical computers of the time), computations per unit of energy have been doubling about every 1.6 years. Had this not been happening, each doubling of components would have doubled the heat to be dissipated and would have shut down Moore’s law long ago. Koomey’s law is also good news for mobile computing, which relies heavily on battery power.”
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DNA Tattoos Are the Final Frontier of Love
https://www.NYTimes.com/2017/12/09/style/dna-tattoos.html Putting some DNA into tattoo ink via @Everence_Life. But what of putting tattoos into non-functional DNA with CRISPR? Maybe next? HT @gamzeandgursoy

QT:{{
Four years, a handful of dedicated colleagues and nearly a dozen patents later, Mr. Duffy has brought the idea to life with Everence, a product he and his partners hope will deepen bonds — in the most literal and physical way — between family, friends and loved ones. It is about as biologically intimate as one can get. Everence is a powdery substance synthesized from a sample of DNA, something as simple as a few thousand cells from a swab of a person’s inner cheek, or from cremated ashes. A small vial of Everence can be brought to a tattoo artist and added to any type of inks.
The result: A tattoo imbued with the DNA of another human being — or, if you prefer, a dog, cat or other furry friend.
In so doing, Mr. Duffy and Endeavor Life Sciences, his company, join the ranks of a winding list of biohackers, artists and technologists dabbling in the world of biogenic tattoo artistry. Many have mixed ash, hair or other material with inks to include organics in tattooing for years.
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How Computers Turned Gerrymandering Into a Science
https://www.NYTimes.com/2017/10/06/opinion/sunday/computers-gerrymandering-wisconsin.html MCMC random walks evaluate possible redistricting swaps, producing complex boundaries. Eventually, we may get fractal electoral maps!

QT:{{”
The clustering of Democrats in cities does indeed give the Republicans an edge. But it’s a much smaller advantage than the turbo-boost the current map provides, as the Duke paper demonstrates. The main tool in the Duke paper is a method called the “Markov chain Monte Carlo” algorithm. Starting from the current Wisconsin district map, it makes a sequence of random changes, swapping wards from one district to an adjacent one, carrying out a “random walk” through the set of all possible maps. Completely unconstrained changes would create crazy-looking districts, so it weights its changes in favor of traditional districting criteria.
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“Yogurt Expiration Date

(Unopened) Refrigerator Freezer
Frozen Yogurt lasts for — 2-3 Months
Drinkable Yogurt lasts for 7-10 Days, 1-2 Months
Reduced Fat Yogurt lasts for 1-2 Weeks, 1-2 Months
Yogurt With Fruit lasts for 7-10 Days, 1-2 Months

…
All yogurt manufacturers that we checked with guarantee their product quality for 7 days beyond the printed sell by date
…
How to tell if Yogurt is bad, rotten or spoiled?

…
Although not a perfect test, your senses are usually the most reliable instruments to tell if your yogurt has gone bad. A small amount of liquid is ok in most yogurts, it is called whey and actually contains several nutrients that should be mixed into the yogurt before eating. But an increased amount of surface liquid (or, in the case of Yoplait yogurt and a few others that do not have any excess liquid to begin with, it’s when a puddle begins to form) and a curdling texture near the bottom of the container are the first signs of yogurt going bad. The final signal that your yogurt has indeed gone bad is the formation of mold and at that point you must throw the entire container away, no matter what. Live bacterial cultures in yogurt act as a preservative, but once those cultures start to die off then mold can start to form. Never consume mold in any shape or form!”
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QT:{{”
“Based just down the road from Yale in New Haven, Conn., and backed by $18 million in funding from the venture capital firm Sequoia Capital and others, the start-up is another sign that quantum computing — for decades a distant dream of the world’s computer scientists — is edging closer to reality.”
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/13/technology/quantum-computing-research.html

How to extinguish the inflammation epidemic
https://www.NewScientist.com/article/mg23431300-500-how-to-extinguish-the-inflammation-epidemic/ QT: “Persistent background
#inflammation…dubbed…’para-inflammation’…is an unfortunate consequence of…long…lives. Stress is a…problem…Inflammation is being discussed…[as linking it]…w/ disease”

QT:{{”
This persistent background inflammation might not always make us feel ill, but it can store up problems for the future, from heart disease to type 2 diabetes and neurodegenerative disease. In 2008,
immunobiologist Ruslan Medzhitov of Yale University dubbed this “para-inflammation” and argued that it is an unfortunate consequence of our longer, calorie-rich lives.

Stress is a particular problem. The hormone noradrenaline, which is released in anticipation of an impending life-or-death situation, sets off the same chain of events as an infection or injury. Yet although stresses passed quickly in our evolutionary past, these days many of us are walking around with a ticking time bomb of stress-induced inflammation that never quite goes away. “Chronic, low-grade inflammation is being discussed in our field as one of the main pathways linking stressful life conditions with disease,” says Nicolas Rohleder of Brandeis University in Massachusetts. Over the past few years, for example, Rohleder has found that the long-term strains of caring for a seriously ill family member, and a series of short-term stresses, both increase levels of inflammatory markers in otherwise healthy people.
…
One clue came in 2000 when Serhan and his team revealed that inflammation has an off switch. Until then, the reaction was thought to peter out as the immune cells that secrete cytokines gradually reduced in number and their effects became diluted. In fact, Serhan found that neutrophils and macrophages, the types of white blood cell that kick off the process, actively change tack once it has got going, releasing a second set of chemicals – called resolvins – that help mop up any remaining cytokines and sweep away any debris.
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$GOOG Is Giving Away AI That Can Build Your Genome Seq. https://Research.GoogleBlog.com/2017/12/deepvariant-highly-accurate-genomes.html + https://www.Wired.com/story/google-is-giving-away-ai-that-can-build-your-genome-sequence GATK creators now doing a tensor-flow version. Release sounded a bit like IBM unveiling Deep Blue decades ago: “Today, we announce…DeepVariant, a #DeepLearning tech…"

Steven Salzberg’s response to deep variant:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevensalzberg/2017/12/11/no-googles-new-ai-cant-build-your-genome-sequence/#5953db7b5774

QT:{{"On Monday, Google released a tool called DeepVariant that uses deep learning—the machine learning technique that now dominates AI—to identify all the mutations that an individual inherits from their parents.1 Modeled loosely on the networks of neurons in the human brain, these massive mathematical models have learned how to do things like identify faces posted to your Facebook news feed, transcribe your inane requests to Siri, and even fight internet trolls. And now, engineers at Google Brain and Verily (Alphabet’s life sciences spin-off) have taught one to take raw sequencing data and line up the billions of As, Ts, Cs, and Gs that make you you.”
"}}

Google Is Giving Away AI That Can Build Your Genome Sequence
https://www.wired.com/story/google-is-giving-away-ai-that-can-build-your-genome-sequence/