Viva la Fatigue Damage!

I just received word that my grant to the Musculoskeletal Transplant Foundation, titled "Effect of Microscopic Tissue Damage on the Long-Term Viability of Cortical Bone Allografts" is funded for the 2009 year.  Awesome!

This project aims to cause microscopic cracks in human femur bone by squishing them (but not breaking them), and then run a long test that simulates walking on the bone for the equivalent of years to see how the cracks grow and multiply.  When microscopic cracks grow to a critical size (or many cracks coalesce to form a critical size crack) then the bone catastrophically fractures, a thing to be avoided if possible.  This may happen over a long period of time, and may explain "atraumatic" or "spontaneous" fractures that occur without any apparent violence. (e.g., you're waiting for the bus, and your leg collapses.  These things happen.)  

The reason we went to a transplant foundation is that normal bone heals microscopic damage, and it may even be that healthy bone depends on a certain amount of damage to function. However, if bone heals itself, then it should never spontaneously fail, or fail during long periods of use.  Transplanted bone, like for bone cancer patients, does not become fully integrated with the host, and remains dead like a piece of wood.  Thus, it should accumulate damage over time and eventually explode.  Transplant companies probably want to know how often this happens, and how to avoid it.  I mainly think this is an awesome application of engineering that is typically applied to bridges or jet aircraft.

Dear Santa (by Elsa C F, age 28 months)

Dear Santa,

You have a hat. Our Christmas tree is decorated. You may have a pretty white house.

For Christmas I would like the shiny little present on Christmas morning. Bring some presents. I like brown horses.

From,
Elsa Pea
and Daddy
and Mommy

Letter to Obama Inc.

The below letter was entered on the change.gov website under "share your vision," at the behest of my professional society that wants more research money.  Everyone: write a letter there. How could it work against your interests?

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It is evident that the challenges and goals in the unfolding century are to be dominated by particular areas of scientific progress and educational application. Specifically, developments in health-related biological research are likely to unmake our previous understanding of biological systems, much as work in theoretical physics changed humanity's view of our universe forever. In order to participate in this revolution, our nation must continue to field minds up to the challenges presented to them. The secondary education system in this country is crumbling, and as a nascent professor of engineering, I fear that college education will follow soon behind it, by an erosive combination of entitlement and an undervaluing of liberal education.

How are these linked? There has been talk of investing in the infrastructure of this country, and our minds will be our infrastructure in the coming decades. We need to spend more and invest more in education, basic research, applied research, and clinical research- as a nation- in order to achieve our potential, and to stay competitive with countries that can do 20th century stuff much cheaper than we can here. I do not foresee our public universities making it on their own- more and more are taking on projects outside their mission just to make ends meet(e.g., UC Berkeley Mech. Eng. is designing a Saudi university curriculum, instead of fixing its own). Private universities may stop being profitable, and will then revert to being foundations to support education instead of educating. Further, this climate is making it less attractive to become a professor (or teacher) at all, unless you treat it like a very exclusive and competitive business, which I believe is accelerating the erosion of the culture of our educational system faster than any of the predicate factors.

Therefore: we need to spend lots of money on research. Double the budgets of NIH, NSF, NAS, and substantially increase the budgets of NASA, LLNL, and like national laboratories.

We need to spend even more money than that on our educational infrastructure. Further, we need a secretary of education that can meet the challenge of overhauling the entire system (with help from those of us with our boots on the ground). This should include grants for advanced education of teachers of all levels, and supplementary income for teachers in depressed areas. A national tax forgiveness for all educators is an equitable means to make teaching more attractive, and the federal government has the authority unilaterally realize it.

Spending money on research will enable profitable output far beyond the amount invested, and will secure the ongoing progress in critical areas. Not spending money on our educational system will inevitably render everything else moot.

I sincerely contribute these thoughts, and will help in any way that I can to enable resolution of these great challenges.

Jevan Furmanski

--UPDATE--

Awe-inspiring reply:

Thanks for writing to share your thoughts on where the country should go.

There will be many more ways to get involved in the weeks and months to come -- and with a lot of hard work ahead of us, we'll be counting on you to help.

Thanks,

The Obama-Biden Transition Project
http://change.gov

Oral history, the way it was meant to be.

Messy. (Note, not for work with open speakers)

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

Sorry Al, irony beats satire (rock beats scissors)

There is only one outstanding Senatorial recount from the election- that of Franken vs. Coleman in Minnesota.  That's right, Al Franken, the humorist turned satirist turned anti-Limbaugh, turned "politician."  I always sort of expected that his candidacy would in the end turn out to be the highest form of Satire, like a more-plausible Borat sneaking into the Congress and giving an address on the virtues of wifebeating.  (I kidded my virulently anti-Democrat grandfather that he could do stand-up routines for Filibusters) I don't think that's the case though.  Either he always was a serious contender, or he confused himself along the way.  In the end, it doesn't matter, as he doesn't get to decide if he is elected.  It turns out that maybe no one will.

To digress briefly, we need to discuss statistics a little bit.  In any set of data there will be uncertainty about the values contained therein, from natural noise, human error, or some systematic bias that alters the data due to an unseen cause.  The data are "known" to a point, but comparisons between individual or groups of data cannot be relied upon unless the difference is substantially greater than the overall error in the system.  That is, you may see (or think you see) a difference, but you can't prove that it is real unless it exceeds the natural inherent error. Remember those "margins of error" listed in tiny letters below all poll findings? 

This is the greatest difficulty with our electoral system, as many elections are not decided by a statistically significant margin.  That is, the results are not dependable.  Whoever comes out "ahead" was pronounced the winner by error, not citizens.  Whether it is random error (favoring no one), or a bias error (favoring one group or candidate) then makes a big difference, and a lot of the coverage of recounts focuses on bias error (e.g., high disqualification rates in poor areas).  Most people will believe that close elections have been decided, mostly because they don't know what they are talking about.  It turns out that in Minnesota, they have the most transparent appeal for just this situation.

According to an excellent op-ed in the NYT (that agrees with this analysis and inspired some of it), if an election in Minnesota results in a statistical tie, the election can then be decided by drawing lots.  That is a coin toss.  A true, unbiased, totally inhuman means of determining the winner.  Currently, around 50 votes out of 3,000,000 cast separates the Minnesota senatorial candidates.  This is far, far less than the 1% human error expected in a recount, a hopeless situation from a statistical perspective. 

I find it laudable that the Minnesota constitution provides a means to choose the winner of a statistical tie by blind luck rather than dumb error.  However, I do find it ironic that a satirist who may have entered into a race with a wink and a shrug, then ground his fingertips bloody in the catfight to win, will in the end have the race decided with a coin toss and a shrug.  Al Franken, I'm sorry: that's just not funny, but it is ironic.

Here's a link to the op-ed.  There was a similar one during the 2006 election too.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/opinion/04seife.html

A softspot for a bad-ass cloak

Now dead russian orthodox partiarch

ALEKSY II

Can you hear the Superfly soundtrack? He can.