Funmurphys: the Blog

The Triumph of Hope over Experience

Computer Modeling of Cancer

Dec 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Science | No Comments

If we can predict the weather, can we predict the course of a tumor? Vito Quaranta, professor of cancer biology at Vanderbilt, thinks so. So he and colleagues from Vanderbilt and the University of Dundee are computer modeling cancer tumors to understand them better and eventually tailor individual treatments:

The investigators have focused on the events of invasion and metastasis (movement of a tumor to distant sites), Quaranta said, because these events mark “the critical transition of a tumor that in the end will be lethal for the patient.” A tumor that does not penetrate the surrounding tissue can often be surgically removed with curative success.”When a patient comes in with a tumor, we’d like to understand for that particular tumor, what are the chances that metastasis is going to occur,” Quaranta said. “Does that patient need to be treated very aggressively, or not so aggressively””

Today, a tumor’s size and shape are evaluated, but they can be poor indicators of invasive potential: a very small tumor can be highly invasive. Even “molecular signatures” – profiles of molecules that suggest how tumor cells will behave – are not entirely predictive, he added.

Quaranta and colleagues opted for a new approach – using the tools of mathematics to tackle the complex problem of cancer behavior.

What a great idea. Kind of makes you wonder why it hasn’t been tried before, but then that’s the way it is with lots of great ideas.

The findings suggest that current chemotherapy approaches which create a harsh microenvironment in the tumor may leave behind the most aggressive and invasive tumor cells.”In the immediate term we may be diminishing tumor burden, but the long term effect is to have a much nastier tumor than there was to begin with,” Quaranta said. There is anecdotal evidence, he added, to support the idea that changes to the microenvironment result in a tumor with more or less invasive potential. Such manipulations of the microenvironment could offer new directions for cancer treatment, he said.

Hmm, will appeasement work for cancer?

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Turns Out My Kid Can Draw Like That

Dec 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Science | No Comments

Physists give, and physists take away. The ability to be a master of chaotic motion that is:

In articles that appeared in scientific journals and news magazines including Nature, Physics World and Scientific American, Taylor and coworkers also claim that fractal analysis can be used to distinguish Pollock’s drip paintings from imitations.Intrigued, Jones-Smith began to examine Taylor’s articles, but quickly found that the work was seriously flawed She showed that doodles that she could make in minutes using Adobe Photoshop were as fractal as any Pollock drip painting, vividly refuting Taylor’s claim that Pollock was able to generate fractals by hand only because he had attained a mastery of chaotic motion.

Jones-Smith presented a pointed critique of Taylor’s work to Case astrophysicists and was encouraged to write up her critique for publication. But since Taylor’s original work had appeared in Nature five years earlier, she thought interest in the topic had waned.

Actually, this isn’t entirely inside baseball for a couple of reasons: the use of scientific analysis in areas they weren’t originally used is a great way to make breakthrough discoveries, and there’s a lot of money at stake in being able to determine real Pollock’s from somebody else’s work. And besides, I just don’t like people claiming more certainty than they should.

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Iraq Vs. Darfur

Dec 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in The War on Terror | 1 Comment

I’m told on the one had we need to get out of Iraq because it’s a civil war and civilians are dying, but on the other we need to get involved in Darfar to save the civilians who are dying in that civil war. So you tell me, what’s the difference?

And if the reality of Iraq truly is a civil war, then our presence isn’t causing the violence (because they are fighting against each other, and not us), but it may well help end it. Just as it would in Darfur.

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Fastest Wireless Network

Dec 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Technology | No Comments

The Aussies at CSIRO have developed the fastest wireless link so far:

The CSIRO ICT Centre today announced that it has achieved over six gigabits per second over a point to point wireless connection with the highest efficiency (2.4bits/s/Hz) ever achieved for such a system.Multi-gigabit links operate at speeds that leave current wireless networks far behind. For example the entire works of Shakespeare could be transmitted over this six gigabit link in under seven thousandths of a second or a full DVD movie in just over three quarters of a second.

I just bought a Netgear WGR614 802.11g wireless router, and it’s already completely obsolete, and I thought it was pretty darn cool. Oh well.

I predict teenage girls will be able to make use of that bandwidth and still hunger for more. The older I get, the more amazed I am at how women are driven to communicate (I say that in amazement, not scorn). And yes, one day Glenn Reynolds will be dethroned as king blogger, and it will be by a queen (insert your own Andrew Sullivan joke here).

Jennifer Aniston Available

Dec 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Current Events | No Comments

Jennifer Anniston is back on the market. I suppose I should point out that Hollywood you don’t have to be married for a breakup to be considered news.

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Data Mining Against Fraud

Dec 6

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Technology | No Comments

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon have devised algorithms relying on data miniing to catch people who commit fraud on internet auction sites:

Online auction sites are immensely popular. The largest, eBay, reported third quarter revenues of $1.449 billion, up 31 percent from the previous year, and registered 212 million users, up 26 percent. But the popularity of online auction sites also makes them a target for crooks. Internet auction fraud, such as failure to deliver goods after a sale, accounted for almost two-thirds of the 97,000 complaints referred to law enforcement agencies last year by the federal Internet Crime Complaint Center.Perpetrators of these frauds have distinctive online behaviors that cause them to be readily purged from an online auction site, said Computer Science Professor Christos Faloutsos. The software developed by his research team – Network Detection via Propagation of Beliefs, or NetProbe – could prevent future frauds by identifying their accomplices, who can lurk on a site indefinitely and enable new generations of fraudsters.

In a test analysis of about one million transactions between almost 66,000 eBay users, NetProbe correctly detected 10 previously identified perpetrators, as well as more than a dozen probable fraudsters and several dozen apparent accomplices.

I know data mining is a bad word for some people, but as they are careful to point out this is all public info. It would be interesting to find out if auction sites use this in house if non-public info helps. Now if this will stand up in court, we can get somewhere. I wonder if you could use public info on prior auctions & other bidders to help you craft a bidding strategy.

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Three Good Books: Replay, Day Watch, Creatures of Man

Dec 4

Posted by Sean Murphy in Books | No Comments

I took some time over the Thanksgiving holidays to read three good books

Replay by Ken Grimwood tells the story of Jeff Winston, a man re-living his life several times, meeting a woman who is doing the same thing. He knows the actions and their outcomes from each life and continues to make adjustments. It’s a novel about second chances–many second chances–and learning that there really aren’t any second chances. It’s a novel about middle age, opening as it does with the Jeff’s fatal heart attack at 48 (or 30H) and chronicling his coming to terms with regret and the need to make choices and move on. Daniel Shade reviewed Replay in 2001 on his Lost Books site:

First, life is full of endless happenings that we have little control over. We should live our lives with our eyes set upon the horizon and never look back; controlling those things we can and giving no second thought to those events out of our hands.

Second, given that we only have one life to live (Jeff is never sure he will replay again with each heart attack) we should live it to the fullest extent possible and with the least regret for our actions. Everybody makes mistakes; the point is not to dwell on them but to pick ourselves up and keep on going. Keep moving ahead.

Third, choices must be made – we cannot avoid them. The only failure is to live a life without risks.

The Creatures of Man by Howard L. Myers is a collection of short stories by a very prolific and very thought provoking author whose career was cut short by a heart attack at the age of 41 in 1971. I originally got it for one story “All Around the Universe” which was one of the first to detail the “admiration economy” (later popularized by Corrie Doctorow as whuffie) but started the book and was unable to put it down. It’s also available in the Baen Free Library (what a great idea) where you can read ithere.

Night Watch by Sergei Lukyanenko had been on my shelf for a while. I had rented the movie and then postponed reading it. The movie was wildly inventive but a little scattershot and hard to follow. The book has a number of very complex interacting plots. It’s something like watching a chess game where the White grandmaster has to allow his pieces the free will to do what they want and the Black grandmaster has to convince his pieces that a each move is what’s best for them.

It’s the first book that’s been translated in his four book “world of watches.” I am eagerly awating the English lanuage version of Day Watch, Twilght Watch, and Final Watch.

Business As Usual, or The Press Lies

Dec 4

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Media Criticism | No Comments

I’m shocked, shocked that someone would accuse the news media of turning a blind eye to the provenence of their sources.

Next people are going to claim that the news media shamelessly plugged the silicone breast implant scare no matter how many times it was debunked, or that they used pre-packaged interviews provided by trial lawyers, or just in general demonstrated a reckless disregard for the truth.

I mean, once the media finds out somebody stages fradulent events, they’d stop using them.

So shame on you, Jeff Medcalf, even writing a song about it.

I mean, it’s not like the business model is selling your attention to advertisors, it’s selling you the truth. Right?

Sleet, Ice, Snow Bury St. Louis

Dec 1

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Me, Missouri Photos | 2 Comments

Yesterday we had rain that quickly changed to sleet in the morning. Last night it changed to freezing rain in a lot of areas, and then early this morning it changed back to snow. To the west, a lot of snow fell (16 inches in Columbia), and to the east, a lot more freezing rain fell. About 500,00 people in the St. Louis metro area were without power (including my parents in Kirkwood – thankfully they just called to tell me it was back on). It was, even by St. Louis standards, a freak storm. Beware of storms that track north and south – they pack a wallop. We’ve had thundersnow here before, but I think this is the first time we had thunderfreezing rain. Actually, we got so much rain at my house it all didn’t freeze – part of my driveway was washed clean of snow and ice by all the runoff last night.

Yesterday I was sick at home with food poisoning; today I didn’t go in after my wife and I watched our neighbor give up trying to get up the hill out of our subdivision. What a difference a day makes.

Since we didn’t lose power here, I could admire the beauty, and took a break from shoveling my driveway to do so:

St. Louis icestorm

You can see my house and partly shoveled driveway. All of the tree branches are weighed down with snow and ice – one of them on the dogwood in my front yard snaped.

St. Louis Icestorm

The view down my street — I think it’s pretty any season, but I don’t get to see it this way too often (thankfully). They didn’t plow here until mid-afternoon. My son spent the day sledding on a locally famous hill (no, not Art Hill – by locally, I meanlocally). I spent the day shoveling, and visiting my parents.

St. Louis Icestorm

My neighbors across the street lost several large limbs out of their silver maple (word of advice – never plant a soft maple). This one first landed on their roof before winding up in their driveway. They were happy Brian’s truck wasn’t parked there as it usually is. I think just about everybody had a tree that dropped a limb. On the way to my parents one street was closed, and another had a lane blocked by a huge limb that came down. We even saw a pin oak bent over double with the top in the street. A couple of doors up from my parents a tree limb pinned a power line leading to a neighbor’s house.

St. Louis Icestorm

I have to admit, it sure was a winter wonderland around here today. The bradford pear in this picture is missing a half due to this summer’s freak summer storm that left half a million without power.

Shelley has several posts about the storm: Icicles, Again, one of the lucky ones, and Let’s talk about the weather.

Gateway Pundit has a post, St. Louis gets slammed with ice.

And Jim Durbin has power but no propane.

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Is Success Hereditary?

Nov 28

Posted by Kevin Murphy in Science | 1 Comment

German researchers say that success is hereditary — or at least the willingness to take risks and the willingness to trust other people runs in families. And along the way they discovered that likes, not opposites attract.

Parents shape the character of their offspring, who in turn prefer to choose a partner similar to themselves. These two effects could contribute to attitudes such as willingness to take risks and confidence in others being “inherited” across several generations. At the same time these character traits are decisive, among other factors, for economic success. “Every economic decision is risky, whether it is about buying shares, building a house or just starting to study at university,” Armin Falk emphasises. “On the other hand success in business also involves the right amount of trust.”

If you are that interested, you can read the original article here. I didn’t wade through it to see if they actually correlated economic success with the traits of risk taking and trust.