Jinn of Quality and Risk

MIT Technology Review: The light-emitting diode (LED) illumination revolution is underway. Cities around the world are replacing incandescent traffic lights with arrays of LEDs, solid-state electronic lights that require less than 10 percent the power of an incandescent bulb to generate the same apparent illumination, and last up to 20 years between replacements. You'll find the first consumer LEDs in applications where LED lamps' advantages —low weight, long-life, and durability— outweigh their higher initial cost. I bought my first LED lamp in a bicycle shop, and you'll see more in a camping store. 

Success through bespotted exploitation? Harvard Business School: Critics say Microsoft's incredible two-decade run at the top of the computer industry has less to do with innovation than it does with bully tactics. But new research... suggest[s] a different reason: the company's ability to spot technological trends and exploit key software technologies. I think they're overlooking a few things, such as marketing, but there's not enough space in this weblog to prove it. 

Peter Lindberg finds the Earth Rise thanks to my recent post on Apollo 17's Blue Marble photograph. Välkommen! 

Dr. Elizabeth Whelan, in An Open Letter to President George W. Bush about the question of making smallpox vaccinations available: unlike routine childhood and flu shots, the smallpox vaccine, which contains a live virus called vaccinia, carries known risks even for healthy people, with an estimated death rate of one to two per million, and a significantly higher rate of other side-effects from adverse reactions. ... People who are not candidates for smallpox vaccination in a pre-attack scenario include pregnant women, children under the age of one, immune-compromised individuals, and individuals who have eczema or atopic dermatitis or a history of these skin diseases — or even individuals who live in the same household as people with these skin conditions. But what about the rest of Americans, for whom the vaccine is not clearly contraindicated? 

This classic photograph of the Earth was taken on December 7, 1972 by the Apollo 17 crew traveling toward the moon. This was the sixth and final Apollo lunar-landing mission. The Goddard Space Flight Center celebrates the thirtieth birthday of one of the most breathtaking photographs ever taken. ... This full-earth snapshot has become one of the most widely recognized and requested photographs of all time... 

The Objective American: Out of some 550,000 heart attacks each year [in the US], 36% happen to people over 80 (i.e., are probably not easily preventable, resulting mainly from natural old age). About another third are due purely to heredity and other uncontrollable factors. Of the less than one-third of cases remaining, only about a third of those (that's under 60,000) might possibly be influenced by cutting cholesterol. But of them, a mere 10% or so (6,000) would stand a serious chance of being stopped by an aggressive cholesterol intake modification program. Now, 6,000 is only 1.1% of 550,000... conversely, about 99% of the fatalities would be unaffected.

Compare that with, say, studies of aspirin intake, particularly when coupled with antioxidant supplements, that indicate lower heart attack risk many times that of the most assertive cholesterol reduction plan. Heck, the reported benefits of daily tea or alcohol intake outshine those of cholesterol reduction. 

What is the value of five years in one's life? A team of researchers at a Japanese university have calculated the value of pi to 1.2411 trillion places. CNN: Professor Yasumasa Kanada and nine other researchers at the Information Technology Center at Tokyo University calculated the value for pi... Kanada's team spent five years designing the program... I'd like to know what practical consequences this result may have.