5 Intriguing Things
1. The lesson here: Refrigeration slows biological time.
"Now doctors at the University of Pittsburgh are taking therapeutic hypothermia to a literally new degree in humans. In a recently started clinical trial led by Samuel Tisherman, the director of the Surgical Intensive Care Unit at the University of Maryland, doctors are cooling off victims of violent trauma to about 55 degrees Fahrenheit. At that temperature, the human heart cannot beat. But, Tisherman explains, the potential benefit of the chill makes it a risk worth taking." (nautil.us)
2. On the book by the OkCupid data guy.
"The OkTrends blog, and this book, harken back to a more innocent time — a time when our anxiety about big data wasn’t so omnipresent and the challenges it presents were less ominous. These days, we have more information than any of us know what to do with, all of it downloaded and archived with little to help us interpret it. Graphs that make you go 'huh' don’t really help, and there’s something that doesn't feel right about a startup president writing a light, punchy book about issues of race and class just because he has the keys to the data locker. Given the amount of information being gathered about us, we need something that takes the ethical questions of 2014 more seriously, or at least helps us better understand the industries from which these numbers come — not a book filled with data about data collection heaped upon an existing mountain of data, all of it telling us what we sort of already knew." (theverge.com)
3. Step-counting and the data mind.
"Fitbit and FuelBand are direct descendants of this alpha-geek space. These emergent devices, if not the first mass-market attempt at quantified products, are certainly the first launched within holistic ecosystems. Which is to say, they connect to Facebook and have well-designed interfaces and systems, making data collection and exploration effortless. They remove much of the friction—analog diligence or overly complex geekery—previously associated with quantifying the self. In doing so, they take the data mind—once shared only between the capable few—and confer it upon us all. And once had, the data mind is hard to shake." (themorningnews.org)
4. The Medieval Animal Data-Network.
"The MAD project considers critical to examine human-animal interactions in the past from many different angles. At the same time, the project acknowledges that true interdisciplinary research is extremely difficult to achieve. However, the tendency in research approaches to use only single data sources often results in a 'flat' picture of the way animals were integrated into all aspects of medieval society. We envision publishing posts based on analyses of multiple data categories including textual sources, images, archaeological topographic data, artifacts, and archaeozoological faunal data." (hypotheses.org)
5. Chinese film company to invest $130 million in US studio.
"After dominating mainland China’s 2013 box office with $487.6 million in receipts, Beijing-based studio Huayi Brothers Media Corp. has announced plans to expand into the United States. Huayi Brothers said it plans to invest $130 million to establish a wholly owned subsidiary in the U.S. for producing and distributing movies and TV shows, the company said in a regulatory filing to the Shenzhen Stock Exchange late Monday." (latimes.com)
Today's 1957 American English Language Tip
collaborator. Co-worker, esp. in lit., art, or science. The derogatory sense (of working with an occupying enemy government) arose in World War II.
At That Temperature, The Human Heart Cannot Beat