linkstream2 microblog

#BigData’s Mathematical Mysteries https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151203-big-datas-mathematical-mysteries/ Nice description of unsupervised analysis as ink diffusing from drops

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“In the last 15 years or so, researchers have created a number of tools to probe the geometry of these hidden structures. For example, you might build a model of the surface by first zooming in at many different points. At each point, you would place a drop of virtual ink on the surface and watch how it spread out. Depending on how the surface is curved at each point, the ink would diffuse in some directions but not in others. If you were to connect all the drops of ink, you would get a pretty good picture of what the surface looks like as a whole. And with this information in hand, you would no longer have just a collection of data points. Now you would start to see the connections on the surface, the interesting loops, folds and kinks. This would give you a map for how to explore it.”
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Cutting sugar [in #diet w same kcal] improves [kid's] health in…10 days [LDL down 10; DBP, 5; triglycerides, 33] http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/10/27/cutting-sugar-improves-childrens-health-in-just-10-days

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“On average, the subjects’ LDL cholesterol, the kind implicated in heart disease, fell by 10 points. Their diastolic blood pressure fell five points. Their triglycerides, a type of fat that travels in the blood and contributes to heart disease, dropped 33 points. And their fasting blood sugar and insulin levels – indicators of their diabetes risk – likewise markedly improved.”

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.@Lyft hopes to survive competition with @Uber — w/ a novel strategy between private rides & public #transportation
http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/541791/lyfts-search-for-a-new-mode-of-transport

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Regular Lyft rides can be two-thirds of a taxi fare or less, but a Lyft Line ride is even cheaper, and the company aims to shrink the price further. Green says this makes Lyft something new: a third category of transportation somewhere between public and private. “}}

Creed for speed http://www.economist.com/news/briefing/21679448-pace-business-really-getting-quicker-creed-speed True for $AAPL? App downloads every ms & >1k iPhones sold in 5′ but much of board serving for >5 yrs

QT:{{"“A CUSTOMER downloads an app from Apple every millisecond. The firm sells 1,000 iPhones, iPads or Macs every couple of minutes. It whips through its inventories in four days and launches a new product every four weeks. Manic trading by computers and speculators means the average Apple share changes hands every five months.”
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And what about Apple, with the frantic antics of which this article began? Its directors have served for an average of six years. It has invested heavily in fixed assets, such as data centres, which will last for over a decade. It has pursued truly long-term strategies such as acquiring the capacity to design its own chips. Mr Cook has been in his post for four years and slogged away at the firm for 14 years before that. Apple is 39 years old, and it has issued bonds that mature in the 2040s.
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Long-Range Radios Will Change the #IoT https://medium.com/@dconrad/how-new-long-range-radios-will-change-the-internet-of-things-ed8e6b5e367f "Devices…connected before [opening] box: no passwords…hubs[, recharging]"

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“Even better, these radios have the potential to enable IoT devices that Just Work. Devices that are connected before you even pull them out of the box: no passwords, no hubs, no SIM cards. Devices which never need recharging, because their batteries effectively last forever.”
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App promises…revenge on dangerous #drivers http://www.timesofisrael.com/app-promises-good-motorists-well-deserved-revenge-on-dangerous-drivers Great if pedestrian version could have license-plate recognition & GPS

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“In essence, he said, there were really two apps –- one for pedestrians and one for drivers. In pedestrian mode, the user needs to hold down the shutter button, which will produce a continuous series of photographs until the incident is over. The user chooses one of four offense categories (traffic violation, road bullying, accident, road hazard) and the images are uploaded onto Nirsham’s servers, where they are analyzed for authenticity (to prevent the possibility of an individual uploading a doctored image to “get back” at someone they don’t like, said Goldman). The images are then displayed on the Nirsham site, where other members of the community can analyze them and decide whether or not a traffic offense was committed.”
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Cellular…Mechanisms of Physical Activity-Induced Health Benefits http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131(15)00223-5 Mitochondria important to “#exercise responsome”

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… augmenting overall mitochondrial density and oxidative
phosphorylation capacity by as much as 2-fold (Hood et al., 2011). Moreover, PA affects mito-chondrial quality as well as quantity, and recent studies suggest that the functional properties of these organelles are much more heterogeneous and dynamic in nature than previously appreci-ated (Jacobs and Lundby, 2013). Interestingly, PA-induced mito-chondrial biogenesis also occurs in tissues other than skeletal muscle, including brain (E et al., 2013; Steiner et al., 2011), liver (Boveris and Navarro, 2008; E et al., 2013; Navarro et al., 2004), adipose tissue (Laye et al., 2009; Sutherland et al., 2009), and kidney (Navarro et al., 2004), providing evidence that exercise also increases metabolic demand in these tissues and/or stimu-lates inter-organ crosstalk.
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The rate-limiting impediment to discovery of molecular trans-ducers and their function is not the ‘‘omic” core technology, but the bioinformatics to extract the most useful signals and generate the most appropriate biological interpretation, including those associated with exercise adaptation. Robust computational and bioinformatics analytical tools allowing inte-gration of large datasets from a multiplicity of ‘‘omics” platforms with in vivo exercise physiology assays and measurements would contribute greatly to our understanding of the response to acute bouts of exercise and long-term adaptation to regular exercise exposure.
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this regard, the development of detailed molecular profiles in cells and tissues in response to acute and chronic exposures to exercise (‘‘the exercise responsomes”) would provide the benchmark against which all other exercise-related conditions, including aging, sex differences, disease states, etc., could be compared for commonality and specificity.
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Resources are needed not only to fund new trainees, but also to restructure current programs in a manner that combines studies in integrative physiology and bioenergetics with training in basic biochemistry, cellular and molecular biology, and bioinformatics. Additional resources are needed to establish mechanisms for assembling and supporting interdisciplinary teams that are able to catalyze and sustain ex-ercise research. The field would likewise benefit from a program to support a multi-site consortium of exercise scientists with complimentary expertise and resources that together are well positioned to tackle the large, challenging problems relevant to the overarching mission.
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http://www.cell.com/cell-metabolism/abstract/S1550-4131(15)00223-5

#Biometric Tattoos, From #Wearables To Digital Health https://wtvox.com/cyborgs-and-implantables/biometric-tattoos/ Devices connected by conductive paint, acting as body sensors

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“But now, the “digital tattoo” is another expertise they have. These “biometric tattoos” are in fact conductive paint and components. Together, they assemble into simple devices able to collect data from your body.”
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Are Polls Ruining Democracy?
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/16/politics-and-the-new-machine “#Datascience is the child of a rocky marriage between the academy & Silicon Valley”

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“If public-opinion polling is the child of a strained marriage between the press and the academy, data science is the child of a rocky marriage between the academy and Silicon Valley. The term “data science” was coined in 1960, one year after the Democratic National Committee hired Simulmatics Corporation, a company founded by Ithiel de Sola Pool, a political scientist from M.I.T., to provide strategic analysis in advance of the upcoming Presidential election. Pool and his team collected punch cards from pollsters who had archived more than sixty polls from the elections of 1952, 1954, 1956, 1958, and 1960, representing more than a hundred thousand interviews, and fed them into a UNIVAC. They then sorted voters into four hundred and eighty possible types (for example, “Eastern, metropolitan,
lower-income, white, Catholic, female Democrat”) and sorted issues into fifty-two clusters (for example, foreign aid). Simulmatics’ first task, completed just before the Democratic National Convention, was a study of “the Negro vote in the North.” Its report, which is thought to have influenced the civil-rights paragraphs added to the Party’s platform, concluded that between 1954 and 1956 “a small but
significant shift to the Republicans occurred among Northern Negroes, which cost the Democrats about 1 per cent of the total votes in 8 key states.” After the nominating convention, the D.N.C. commissioned Simulmatics to prepare three more reports, including one that involved running simulations about different ways in which Kennedy might discuss his Catholicism.”
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Can Fast Food Get Healthy?
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/11/02/freedom-from-fries McDonald’s is a business. @LYFEKitchen, an enlightened business. @Sweetgreen…a movement

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“McDonald’s is a business. Lyfe Kitchen is an enlightened business. Sweetgreen, which was started in 2007 by three Georgetown graduates, aims to be a movement, selling a set of values in addition to its food. There are currently thirty-three Sweetgreen restaurants, and there are plans for many more. In nearly every city where the company has restaurants, it sponsors a program to educate fourth- and fifth-grade students about the basics of nutrition and the value of relying on seasonal produce. So far, Sweetgreen in Schools has reached four thousand students, most of whom come from lower-income families.” “}}