Training my Virtual Medical Assistants (V.M.A) Secretaries

Training my Virtual Medical Assistants (V.M.A) Secretaries

Training my Virtual Medical Assistants (V.M.A) Secretaries

Posted on December 4, 2011  

I love the idea of using a Virtual Medical Assistant (V.M.A for short).

Thank god I am in my twilight years and listening to birds singing is one of my natural pastimes and trying to figure out which bird is calling and which bird is answering is not an easy task.

But the idea of voice activated cellphone is a welcome addition to an armory of medically offensive gadgets that are springing by numbers.

Dictaphone was in my armory when I was working abroad. 

I could do a very good dictation without punctuation marks and my secretaries never bothered to phone back and ask me for any clarifications. That was a very positive effort on my part and my superiors very much like my approach except a few, since I did not try to show off any accent but pure and simple Queen’s English, I dictated.

Mind you I was talking to a voice machine and not a person.

The idiot, the Dictaphone does not have any emotions and only records my voice.

I tell them that putting fullstops, commas, semicolons and apostrophes are her job and not mine.

When things were very difficult unlike S.M.S. I wrote down the specific stuff clearly to save their time.

I hope and pray that smart-phone becoming intelligent and telling me back you are creepy and some sort of a sob.

Advantages.

1. After some time smart-phone will instantly know what you are trying to do.

 

2. Unlike human secretaries who make the same mistakes over, over again smart-phone would never repeat mistakes.

 

3. One can take home the Virtual Secretary unlike the human with bizarre consequence at home boundary.

 

4. One can switch off the VMA with just a push of a button unlike a jabbering soul with money / home problems.

 

5. At worse I can thrash it on the floor.

 

I have to think of the 6 to 10 as and when my lateral thinking makes me to do so.

 

For me it is a smart innovation.

 

6. If I see a guy/girl I hate (on my war path) to meet or talk or exchange any greetings I can pretend I am very busy talking to it (of cause switched off and with so many adversaries including politicians. I do not want to run dry the battery life) and escape harmlessly. 

I see this happening every day of my life since I do not still carry a smart phone.

 

Footnote 1

It is now known that disappearance of bees and their migration pattern is affected by cellphones and microwave activity.

Like the climate-gate scientists who are still hiding behind huge amount of distorted facts by agents and their companies.

 

Footnote 2

We have a few answers. Last May, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, a branch of the World Health Organization), in Lyon, France, issued a statement that the electromagnetic frequencies from cell phones would henceforth be classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” The determination was based in part on data from a 13-country study, called Interphone, which reported in 2008 that after a decade of cell phone use, the risk of getting a brain tumor — specifically on the side of the head where the phone is placed — goes up as much as 40 percent for adults. Israeli researchers, using study methods similar to the Interphone investigation, have found that heavy cell phone users were more likely to suffer malignant tumors of the salivary gland in the cheek, while an independent study by scientists in Sweden concluded that people who started using a cell phone before the age of 20 were five times as likely to develop a brain tumor. According to a study published in the International Journal of Cancer Prevention, people living for more than a decade within 350 meters of a cell phone tower experience a four-fold increase in cancer rates.

Plant Watching And Pineapple

Plant Watching

Posted on January 11, 2011

I have decided that I will not write anything on Politics and Cricket (Ceylonese Cricket) and mind you even cricket is politics in Ceylon. If those topics are excluded how I am going to write over 300 odd pieces of writing one piece a day or one piece a week as requested by the wordpress.  

But real reason is for me to get an extension of the post of equation developer for Apaya (Hell) as per Apaya Web Master (AWM) General’s demand. 

Mind you Apaya does not have trees like on this planet earth.   

It is now highly developed into a computer farm like Google’s and no different from Dubai and is very hot indeed. There are lot of ex-Google employers working there full time now. 

Those who passed away before the Google Chrome, Androids and Cloud Computing came into existence.

I thought of reminding them how beautiful is the earth without humans especially ex-Microsoft workers and I found a good alibi.That is the plants, the species vanishing by the day. 

Before I could talk about rare plants I should talk about few unknown facts about known plants.

The plant or the fruit toady is pineapples or the annasee. 

The leaves of the pineapple can be used to weave a fine thread that is used in a fine fabric better than silk.

What I did not know is when the fruit is removed what happens to the plant afterward. 

I asked a few biology students but they were not helpful. They gave various answers and interpretations to the extent that I became more confused. Look at few books no mention of what happens to the old stem. What usually happens in commercial practice is one takes the top comb and plant it and remove the old plant stem. 

Nobody bothered to think about it except me. So what I did was to water it daily (in a pot ) so that it won’t dry up. After about two months I saw a side shot coming up. It was very slow to grow having consumed all the rich soil underneath. I was expecting it to come lower down near the roots but it did come higher up and that was my observation. 

Now after about 6 months I am waiting to see whether it will flower and bear a fruit. This one took over one year to bear fruit. 

So the experiment continues. 

Interestingly the stem after plucking off the ripe fruit is shriveled up now and the leaves below it integrated into a nice whorl around the new shot. Nothing was wasted in its reorganization.

Mind you pineapple has a beautiful flower and that is the flower seen in one of my web pages.

Ten or more things I did not know about the Pineapple Plant.

Posted on October 31, 2011

Story of My Pineapple Plant
After about two years the stem of the original plant is flowering now.
It almost died due to competition of a robust weed.
I took the weed with diffuse roots away and the stem of the pineapple plant was rotten due to competition for nutrition.
I thought it might die and just placed it between other plants and put plenty of water.


Below is things I did not know but discovered during the last two years.

1. Even though I knew that the crown of the fruit can be used to grow it, I did not know what happens to the mother plant when the fruit is separated.

2. I did not know it leaves can be used to make a fine silk like thread (it is in fact finer than the silk thread) and prepare fabrics.


3. It grows very slow and one can have only one fruit for year.

4. It has a very beautiful flower.

5. Its roots do not go deep.


6. I did not know from which part of the tropics it originated. Now I know it is from south America.

7. Mother plant produce shoots called suckers once the fruit is removed. They can be used to grow new plants.

8. I do not know how many shoots / suckers it make certainly more than one.

9. I did not know other plants with diffuse root system compete with its growth and lot of chemical are used in commercial growing.

10. I did not know it is rich in manganese.

11. Given the opportunity it can live up to 100 years!

Pclinuxos64-KDE5-Magnum-2020.05

Pclinuxos64-KDE5-Magnum-2020.05 
This is like the old time PCLinux FullMonty

KDE Desktop Mega version (Magnum) available.

PCLinuxOS64 KDE5.

The PCLinuxOS KDE ISO May 2020 Editions have been updated and are now on the mirrors.

Mega Version (Magnum) is available.

This ISO image is fully updated and is being provided with new installation support. 

It will not require a large update to get updated to current levels.

Features:
This Magnum version ISO comes with the standard compliment of KDE applications plus LibreOffice and much more.
Some additional applications include:

– Timeshift – backup and restore utility.
– Darktable – photo manipulation software.
– Krita – image editing software.
– Megasync – store your files in the cloud.
– Anydesk – control another computer from yours.
– Kodi – a multimedia center.
– Kazam – a screen capture utility.
– Calibre – the one stop solution for all your e-book needs.
– Skrooge – banking software.
– Spotify – music client.

Plus much much more like Firefox, Thunderbird, Strawberry music player and VLC video player.

My live CD received a major updates. Creating a new iso image is faster due to a new compression scheme. The iso image will boot faster due to changes in the hardware detection code, run faster from the Live media and install in a flash.

KDE64 features:
=====================
* basic uefi/gpt/nvme installation support.
* systemd free.
* grub2 by default.

KDE Hardware requirements:
Processor
64bit Modern Intel or AMD processor.

Memory & storage
RAM : 2 GB, or more (recommended 4 GB+).

Hard disk : 20-40 GB or more (for this mega version) recommended if you plan to install additional software from our repository.

Video card
nVidia, ATI HD 4000 or better, Intel.
3D desktop support requires a 3D instructions set compatible card.

Sound card
Any Sound Blaster, AC97 or HDA compatible card.

Other
CD/DVD drive required for burned liveCD/DVD image, or USB flash drive larger than 4 GB for liveUSB image conversion.

Copy to USB stick:
dd bs=4M if=pclinuxos64-kde5-2020.03.iso of=/dev/sdX status=progress && sync or use ddcopy.

Special device – pendrive – /dev/sdX – without any number.

Disclaimer 

THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY BILL REYNOLDS AND CONTRIBUTORS “AS IS” AND ANY EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE OWNER OR CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE, DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE. 

Rice and Arsenic

Rice and Arsenic

I have reproduced below an article from Scientific American in entirety, because of its Public Health Implication to US (Ceylon, India and China).
  
Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity

It is happening right under our nose, in Ceylon and our politicians also like to hide the true scientific facts.
 
Unfortunately it takes years for the clinical effects to manifest.
 
Farmers are the first to be affected and then later the consumers, (rice included).

This story was published by The Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit, nonpartisan investigative news organization in Washington, D.C. 
It is part of a collaboration among the Center for Public Integrity, Center for Investigative Reporting and Michigan Radio. 
It was featured on Reveal, a new program from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX.

MOUNT VERNON, Maine—Living in the lush, wooded countryside with fresh New England air, Wendy Brennan never imagined her family might be consuming poison every day. But when she signed up for a research study offering a free T-shirt and a water-quality test, she was stunned to discover that her private well contained arsenic.
“My eldest daughter said...‘You’re feeding us rat poison.’ I said, ‘Not really,’ but I guess essentially...that is what you’re doing. You’re poisoning your kids,” Brennan lamented in her thick Maine accent. “I felt bad for not knowing it.”
Brennan is not alone. Urine samples collected by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from volunteers reveal that most Americans regularly consume small amounts of arsenic. 
It’s not just in water; it’s also in some of the foods we eat and beverages we drink, such as rice, fruit juice, beer and wine.
Under orders from a Republican-controlled Congress, the Environmental Protection Agency in 2001 established a new drinking-water standard to try to limit people’s exposure to arsenic. But a growing body of research since then has raised questions about whether the standard is adequate.
The EPA has been prepared to say since 2008, based on its review of independent science, that arsenic is 17 times more potent as a carcinogen than the agency now reports. Women are especially vulnerable. Agency scientists calculated that if 100,000 women consumed the legal limit of arsenic every day, 730 of them would eventually get bladder or lung cancer from it.
After years of research and delays, the EPA was on the verge of making its findings official by 2012. Once the science was complete, the agency could review the drinking water standard. But an investigation by the Center for Public Integrity found that one member of Congress effectively blocked the release of the EPA findings and any new regulations for years.
It is a battle between politics and science. Mining companies and rice producers, which could be hurt by the EPA’s findings, lobbied against them. But some of the most aggressive lobbying came from two pesticide companies that sell a weed killer containing arsenic.
The EPA had reached an agreement with those companies to ban most uses of their herbicide by the end of last year. But the agreement was conditioned on the EPA’s completing its scientific review. The delay by Congress caused the EPA to suspend its ban. The weed killer, called MSMA, remains on the market.
Turning to a powerful lawmaker for help is one tactic in an arsenal used by industry to virtually paralyze EPA scientists who evaluate toxic chemicals. In 2009, President Obama signed an executive memorandum to try to stop political interference with science. That same year, the EPA unveiled an ambitious plan to evaluate far more chemicals each year than had been done in either the Bush or Clinton administrations.
But in 2012 and 2013, the EPA has managed to complete only six scientific evaluations of toxic chemicals, creating a backlog of 47 ongoing assessments. It’s a track record no better than past administrations. The Center found that a key reason for this is the intervention by a single member of Congress.
The story of arsenic shows how easily industry thwarted the Obama’s administration’s effort to prevent interference with science.

A ubiquitous poison
Arsenic is virtually synonymous with poison. But it’s also everywhere, found naturally in the Earth’s crust. Even if the toxin were eliminated from drinking water, people would still consume it in food, a more vexing problem to address.
Scientists are debating whether there is such a thing as a safe level of arsenic. New research has raised questions whether even low levels of arsenic can be harmful, especially to children and fetuses.
The findings of the study Wendy Brennan enrolled in were published in April. Researchers from Columbia University gave IQ tests to about 270 grade-school children in Maine. They also checked to see if there was arsenic in their tap water at home. Maine is known as a hot spot for arsenic in groundwater.
The researchers found that children who drank water with arsenic—even at levels below the current EPA drinking water standard—had an average IQ deficit of six points compared to children who drank water with virtually no arsenic.
The findings are eerily similar to studies of lead, a toxin considered so dangerous to children that it was removed from paint and gasoline decades ago. Other studies have linked arsenic to a wide variety of other ailments, including cancer, heart disease, strokes and diabetes.
“I jokingly say that arsenic makes lead look like a vitamin,” said Joseph Graziano, a Columbia professor who headed the Maine research. “Because the lead effects are limited to just a couple of organ systems—brain, blood, kidney. The arsenic effects just sweep across the body and impact everything that’s going on, every organ system.”
For 15 years, Brennan and her family drank water with arsenic levels five times greater than the current drinking-water standard. She has no way of knowing what effect this has had on her two daughters.
Carrington Brennan, now 14, says it bothers her to think that drinking water may have affected her intelligence. “It shocked and scared me, I guess,” she said. “I think it should be prevented in future cases.”
Chemical reviews lag
It’s the job of the EPA to protect the public from toxic chemicals. To do that, the agency must first review the scientific literature to determine which chemicals are harmful and at what doses. This duty falls on an obscure program with a drab bureaucratic name, the Integrated Risk Information System (IRIS).
There are tens of thousands of chemicals on the market and by one estimate, 700 new chemicals are introduced every year. Yet since 1987, IRIS has completed evaluations on only 557 of them.
The last time IRIS analyzed arsenic was in 1988, just a year before the Safe Drinking Water Act called for the EPA to set a new drinking-water standard for the toxin. The EPA missed that deadline, so in 1996, a Republican-controlled Congress gave the agency five more years to comply. The EPA turned to the prestigious National Academy of Sciences for help. Scientists there reviewed the EPA’s 1988 analysis. They said it was badly out of date and underestimated the risk of arsenic.
After the EPA set a new drinking-water standard in 2001, the IRIS program moved to update its analysis of arsenic. EPA scientists spent five years reviewing hundred of studies before sending a draft report to the White House’s Office of Management and Budget in October 2008.
EPA scientists concluded that arsenic was 17 times more potent as a carcinogen than the agency currently reports. Put another way, the risk of someone eventually getting cancer from drinking the legal limit of arsenic every day is 60 times greater than any other toxin regulated by drinking-water laws.
The White House at that point had become a nemesis of EPA scientists, requiring them to clear their science through OMB starting in 2004. Scientific assessments were often sent to OMB only to die, seemingly the victim of political influence. A stinging report by the Government Accountability Office in 2008 said that IRIS was at serious risk of becoming obsolete, unable to keep up with the workload or the science. The GAO noted that in 2007 the EPA sent 16 assessments to OMB, where they got held up. That year, the agency managed to complete only two assessments.
Within five months of Obama taking office, the EPA wrested back control of the process. The agency also set up an ambitious timetable to complete toxic-chemical assessments within two years. By that point, the arsenic assessment had already been in the works for six. The arsenic draft had to go through an external peer-review before being considered valid. But IRIS officials were optimistic about completing it by the end of 2011.
Meanwhile, in an entirely different office within the EPA, negotiations were under way that would ultimately prevent IRIS from finishing its work.

Groundwater fears
Veterans Community Park is one of the busiest parks in Naples, Fla., with softball fields, basketball and tennis courts and a playground. In early 2004, Collier County began spraying the herbicide MSMA on the fields to control weeds. But soon, tests detected high levels of arsenic in the groundwater.
It wasn’t the first time alarms had sounded about MSMA. Tests at nine golf courses using the weed killer had detected significant levels of arsenic in shallow groundwater and ponds, a concern because 90 percent of all drinking water in Florida comes from wells. The EPA had already banned all pesticides containing inorganic arsenic, considered to be the most toxic form of the metal. But evidence showed that the organic arsenic in MSMA converts to inorganic in soil. EPA scientists feared that MSMA could be contaminating drinking water.
In 2006, the EPA’s Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances announced plans to ban all uses of herbicides containing arsenic and began negotiating with the few companies still selling them. Within three years, they had reached an agreement. The pesticide companies would phase out all uses of MSMA, except on cotton fields, by the end of 2013.
But the agreement included a condition. It required the EPA to complete a scientific review of arsenic before the ban could take effect. The pesticide office apparently assumed that the IRIS assessment, then six years in the making, would be done by then.
In all likelihood, IRIS would have met the deadline. But two pesticide companies and their lobbyist turned to Congress.
The two companies are Drexel Chemical Co. of Memphis, Tenn., and Luxembourg-Pamol, whose parent, Luxembourg Industries, is based in Tel Aviv, Israel. Both are family-owned. Luxembourg-Pamol doesn’t release sales figures; Drexel Chemical says its sales exceed $100 million a year.
Though anyone can buy MSMA, the label cautions that it should be sprayed only on cotton fields, sod farms, highway shoulders and golf courses. The market for MSMA is likely worth several million dollars for these companies. The EPA estimated in 2006 that about 3 million pounds of MSMA and another similar compound were sold each year in the United States. The weed killer retails for about $5 a pound.
The companies joined forces to hire Charlie Grizzle, a lobbyist who worked as an EPA assistant administrator during the President George H. W. Bush era. When the EPA released a public draft of its arsenic assessment in February 2010, the pesticide companies countered with a unique argument.
Michal Eldan, a vice president at Luxembourg-Pamol, said her company had the scientific literature scoured and found 300 studies published since 2007 that the EPA had not included in the draft.
“If the report is not up to date, a risk assessment cannot be based on that,” Eldan said in an interview. “We mentioned that because this is the one inarguable detail. You can argue about toxicity. You can argue about risk assessment. You can’t argue about 300 publications that are missing from the list of references.”
Grizzle added, “I think it’s safe to say that the missing 300 studies, if you will
In August 2010, 15 Republicans in the House and Senate made that very argument in a letter to then-EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson: “We are informed that there are nearly 300 studies in the scientific literature on arsenic published since 2007 that were not included in the agency’s evaluation. We find that troubling and are concerned that this could allow critics to conclude that the agency is ‘cherry-picking’ data to support its conclusions."
After reading the letter, Michael Hansen, a senior scientist at Consumers Union who has followed the arsenic review closely, said, “This is a really dishonest couple of sentences ... That’s because the [EPA] document was written in early 2008, and the only reason the public is seeing it [in 2010] is because OMB sat on it.”
“It’s not cherry-picking the data. When the document was written, those studies hadn’t been published yet,” he said.
Yet the missing publications ultimately became the rationale for Congress to derail the EPA’s assessment. In July 2011, language appeared in a House Appropriations Committee report ordering the EPA to take no action on its arsenic assessment and turn the job over to the National Academy of Sciences. The report instructed the academy to include “the 300 studies in the published scientific literature EPA failed to review for its 2010 draft assessment.”
Committee reports explain how to implement a bill. Government agencies could ignore them, but they seldom do, for fear of angering congressional leaders who control funding. Burying language in a report — as opposed to the bill itself—was the same technique once used for earmarks. Steve Ellis, vice president of Taxpayers for Common Sense, a nonprofit group that closely monitors the Appropriations Committee, said rank-and-file members of the House cannot strike or amend language in a report. In fact, he said, only a couple of lawmakers in leadership would likely know who put the language in the report.
Rep. Chellie Pingree, a Maine Democrat on the subcommittee that oversees EPA funding, said she has no way of knowing who is responsible for trying to kill the arsenic assessment. “It’s happening more and more in this Congress that we see less and less of what goes on behind the scenes, that members aren’t informed until the last minute,” she said. “So things like this, major policy changes like this, can happen somewhat in the dark of the night with very little information to the public.”
So, who did it? All the evidence from the Center’s investigation pointed to one congressman: Mike Simpson of Idaho.
Simpson was one of the Republicans who signed the letter to the EPA administrator complaining about the missing 300 studies. He was the chairman of the subcommittee that controlled funding for the EPA, where the language first appeared. He was also a member of another committee where the language surfaced again in a different report. He even asked the EPA administrator about arsenic at a subcommittee hearing.
Simpson, who worked as a dentist and state legislator before entering Congress, is a frequent critic of the EPA. But in the 2012 and 2014 election campaigns, he has been portrayed as too liberal by Tea Party candidates funded by the right-wing Club for Growth.
In a brief interview outside his Capitol Hill office, Simpson accepted credit for instructing the EPA to stop work on its arsenic assessment. “I’m worried about drinking water and small communities trying to meet standards that they can’t meet,” he said. “So we want the Academy of Science to look at how they come up with their science.”
Simpson said he didn’t know that his actions kept a weed killer containing arsenic on the market. He denied that the pesticide companies lobbied him for the delay. But lobbyist Grizzle offered a different account. “I was part of a group that met with the congressman and his staff a number of years ago on our concerns,” Grizzle said, adding that there were four or five other lobbyists in that meeting but he couldn’t remember who they were.
Other organizations that disclosed lobbying the EPA and Congress on the agency’s arsenic evaluation were the U.S. Rice Federation; the Mulch and Soil Council; the Association of California Water Agencies; and the National Mining Association, including the mining companies Arch Coal and Rio Tinto.
Grizzle began making donations to Simpson’s re-election campaign in January 2011, a few months before Simpson took action to delay the arsenic assessment. Since then, Grizzle has given a total of $7,500. That’s more than he’s given in that time to any other candidate. Asked if the contributions were made in exchange for the delay, Grizzle said, “I don’t see a connection. I’ve been a friend and supporter of Congressman Simpson for a long time.” When Simpson was asked if he was aware of the donations, he terminated the interview, saying, “I have no idea. But I’ve got a hearing.”
Industry playbook
The National Academy of Sciences was created during the Civil War to provide objective advice from the nation’s most highly regarded scientists. In 1999 and 2001, the academy twice reviewed the EPA’s analysis of arsenic and concluded it badly underestimated the risk. The EPA’s draft that has been delayed was built in part off the academy’s critique.
Taking scientific assessments out of the hands of the EPA and giving them to the academy has become a tactic to delay regulations, said Charles Fox, a former EPA assistant administrator who oversaw the development of a new drinking water standard for arsenic. “The standard playbook that industry uses first begins with questioning the science, and they can question the science in any one of a number of different forms,” he said. “There is a scientific advisory board at EPA. There’s the National Academy of Sciences.”
But endless delays to perfect the science can jeopardize public health, Fox said. “We always as regulators had to do our best to make decisions based on the best available science we had at the time. Science will always improve and you can always revisit that decision down the road, but fundamentally we have an obligation to protect public health in the environment, and that decision needs to be made on the best science that you have today.”
In a letter last October telling buyers that the EPA had lifted its ban for at least three years, the MSMA manufacturers said in a joint statement that they “fully expect the NAS review to result in a less stringent risk value for human exposure to inorganic arsenic.” If so, the companies said, they are confident the threat of a ban will be lifted permanently and the EPA may even allow other uses of MSMA.
The two manufacturers of the herbicide are still trying to influence the scientific assessment. The National Academy held a meeting in April 2013 to review the science on arsenic. It invited 14 scientists to give presentations. Two of those scientists are funded by Drexel and Luxembourg-Pamol, which lobbied Simpson to delay the EPA.
The academy doesn’t require presenters to disclose their financial ties; some choose to do so and some don’t. Neither of the scientists funded by the pesticide companies disclosed their ties at the meeting.
Dr. Samuel Cohen, a professor at the University of Nebraska College of Medicine, told the panel that inorganic arsenic doesn't cause cancer or any other diseases in people below a certain threshold dose, which he suggests is substantially higher than the current drinking water standard. Cohen has been funded by the MSMA manufacturers for more than a decade, according to disclosures in published articles.
Barbara Beck, who works for Gradient, a scientific consulting firm often hired by industry, also gave a presentation without disclosing her ties.
Eldan, with Luxembourg-Pamol, acknowledged that both scientists are paid by her company. Beck prepared a 32-page report on the EPA’s arsenic assessment. Eldan said that Beck and Cohen disclose their ties in published articles in scientific journals. In some cases, Eldan, a scientist herself, is listed as a co-author.
Cohen said in an email that he disclosed his funding in published articles that he provided to the academy. Records show that Cohen sent the academy three articles that listed funding only from the “Arsenic Science Task Force,” with no further explanation about the task force.
Beck said, “Although I have done work for the Organic Arsenical Products Task Force [composed of the two pesticide companies], my presence and presentation at the April 2013 meeting were funded wholly by Gradient …. At both meetings, I am solely responsible for my comments.”
Joseph Graziano, who chairs the National Academy of Sciences panel on arsenic, said he hadn’t realized that Beck and Cohen were being funded by the pesticide companies when they spoke at the workshop. “I was not aware of that,” he said, “and I don’t think the committee was aware of it.”

Congress rescues the formaldehyde industry
This is not the first time Congress has pressured the EPA to hand over science on toxic chemicals to the National Academy. In 2009, Sen. David Vitter, a Republican from Louisiana, held up the nomination of a top EPA official as leverage to force the agency to have the academy review the risks of formaldehyde.
The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer and the National Institute of Health’s National Toxicology Program both say that formaldehyde can cause cancer. The EPA was preparing to say the same.
Yet the agency ultimately relented to Vitter’s demand. After months of review, the academy criticized the IRIS draft on formaldehyde for being repetitive, poorly organized and failing to clearly present all the evidence of its findings. The panel recommended the EPA redo the draft to be more clear and concise. Recognizing that the EPA was having a problem in completing assessments, the academy said it wasn’t calling for a delay.
Soon, however, the formaldehyde industry was turning to Congress to help it delay the assessment. Right next to Simpson’s language in the committee report about delaying the arsenic assessment was another set of instructions to the EPA. This time, IRIS was told to apply the academy’s recommendations on formaldehyde to all ongoing and future assessments. When asked if he requested the language, Grizzle acknowledged only that he was one of the lobbyists for the Formaldehyde Council, an arm of the industry.
The EPA said in a report to Congress it won’t start all its assessments over from scratch, but it will try to incorporate the academy’s recommendations. As a result, the 47 pending reviews have been further delayed.
IRIS Director Vincent Cogliano said the changes will lead to more rigorous assessments that should have an easier time getting through peer review. When asked how IRIS responds to political pressure, he said he had little control over that. “We’re doing our best to keep our assessments focused on the science,” he said. “What happens after that is not part of the IRIS process.”

‘It’s not their right’
Eldan said people shouldn’t be worried about her company’s weed killer. “To be honest, we believe that this is a good product, that it does not pose a concern to health and the environment,” she said. Clearing weeds from the sides of highways can be a safety issue, she said, because tall plants can block vision. Even on golf courses, there are safety concerns, she said. “The weeds have a tendency to spread. If you don’t use herbicides, it’s not only one weed. They can cover the golf course,” Eldan said. “The players can stumble on them.”
Meanwhile, in Maine, Wendy Brennan worries about all the years her family was drinking arsenic-tainted water. “I know a lot of people around the area that have had cancer, and so you always think, ‘Jesus, that's going to be my kids. It’s going to be me or my husband,’ ” Brennan said.
Her congresswoman, Pingree, also worries about her constituents. “When you have a toxic chemical in the environment that could be affecting child development or people who could eventually be contracting cancer from their exposure to this, we shouldn’t be delaying,” Pingree said.
She fears that after the National Academy of Sciences completes its review, the pesticide companies will find another delaying tactic. “That’s the sad part; there’s nothing to stop Congress from finding another roadblock to delay,” Pingree said. “Congress can say, ‘Well, here’s another 200 studies, you better review them.’ ”
Brennan doesn’t understand why there’s a need to wait. “If they’ve already got some proof that it’s 17 times more potent, you’d think they’d want to get the information they had out and then continue to explore scientifically more,” she said. “We need to know what’s going on with our drinking water. If somebody wants to not let us know because they want to keep some pesticides making money for five more years…it's not their right. It’s not their body. It’s not their decision.”
 Copyright 2014 The Center for Public Integrity

Training my Virtual Medical Assistants (V.M.A) Secretaries

Training my Virtual Medical Assistants (V.M.A) Secretaries

Posted on December 4, 2011  

Training my Virtual Medical Assistants (V.M.A) Secretaries

Training my Virtual Medical Assistants  (V.M.A) Secretaries

I love the idea of using a Virtual Medical Assistant (V.M.A for short.).

Thank god I am in my twilight years and listening to birds singing is one of my natural pastimes and trying to figure out which bird is calling and which bird is answering is not an easy task.

But the idea of voice activated cellphone is a welcome addition to an armory of medically offensive gadgets that are springing by numbers.

Dictaphone was in my armory when working abroad. I could do a very good dictation without punctuation marks and my secretaries never bothered to phone back and ask me for any clarifications. That was a very positive effort on my part and my superiors very much like my approach except a few, since I did not try to show off any accent but pure and simple Queen’s English, I dictated.

Mind you I was taking to a voice machine and not a person.

The idiot, the Dictaphone does not have any emotions and only records my voice.

I tell them that putting fullstops, commas, semicolons and apostrophes are her job and not mine.

When things were difficult unlike S.M.S. I wrote down the specific stuff clearly to save their time.

I hope and pray that smart-phone becoming intelligent and telling me back you are creepy and some sort of a sob.

Advantages.

1. After some time smart-phone will instantly know what you are trying to do.

2. Unlike human secretaries who make the same mistakes over, over again smart-phone would never repeat mistakes.

3. One can take home the Virtual Secretary unlike the human with bizarre consequence at home boundary.

4. One can switch off the VMA with just a push of a button unlike a jabbering soul with money / home problems.

5. At worse I can thrash it on the floor.

I have to think of the 6 to 10 as and when my lateral thinking make me to do so.

For me it is a smart innervation.

6. If I see a guy/girl I hate (on my war-path) to meet or talk or exchange any greetings I can pretend I am very busy talking to it (of cause switched off and with so many adversaries including politicians I do not want to run dry the battery life) and escape harmlessly. I see this happening every day of my life since i do not still carry a smartphone.

Footnote 1

It is now known that disappearance of bees and their migration pattern is affected by cellphones and microwave activity.

Like the climate-gate scientists are still hiding behind huge amount of distorted facts by agents and their companies.

Footnote 2

We have a few answers. Last May, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, a branch of the World Health Organization), in Lyon, France, issued a statement that the electromagnetic frequencies from cell phones would henceforth be classified as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” The determination was based in part on data from a 13-country study, called Interphone, which reported in 2008 that after a decade of cell phone use, the risk of getting a brain tumor — specifically on the side of the head where the phone is placed — goes up as much as 40 percent for adults. Israeli researchers, using study methods similar to the Interphone investigation, have found that heavy cell phone users were more likely to suffer malignant tumors of the salivary gland in the cheek, while an independent study by scientists in Sweden concluded that people who started using a cell phone before the age of 20 were five times as likely to develop a brain tumor. According to a study published in the International Journal of Cancer Prevention, people living for more than a decade within 350 meters of a cell phone tower experience a four-fold increase in cancer rates.

From Vi Editor to Vi Improved (VIM)

From Vi Editor to Vi Improved (VIM)

True that Dennis Richie invented the C language but there need to be an editor to do the language editing.

That was called ex in dumb terminals of Unix in black and white.

Then it had to evolve into Vi the visual editor and later to Vi Improved.

As I know it by my gut feeling Vi (Cholesterol free)is very light as compared to VIM which is loaded with cholesterol.

ViM is in MiBs but Vi has to be in KBs but I could not find the exact amount after 3 days of searching.

In fact I posted a question on Linux Question Organization and waiting for a reply from some old gentleman (I am not young by any imagination) out there browsing the web at leisure.

I feel some urge to document them in a book since once cloud computing comes into being things might be different and history may be submerged in clouds and not in sea water of tsunami.

Below is some of my current findings.

As far as computer language and it writing is concerned, I prefer a graphic output.

If I compare a computer language and its final output product to needle, threads and a cloth we finally wear for our adornment.

Analogy goes like this.

Computer language is like the thread. Threads can be woven into a cloth and stitches that hold them together.

Programming editor is like the needle.

We do not need to know the how the threads are made of except  for the fact from cotton, nylon or mixture of them or water-resistant mackintosh.

But we need to know their colours so that the pattern can be distinguished.

Similarly we need know that needle is made of steel and won’t corrode.

Visual editor was a need and without the needle we won’t be able to stitch in time.

Vi Editor

The original code for vi was written by Bill Joy in 1976, as the visual mode for a line editor called ex that Joy had written with Chuck Haley. Bill Joy’s ex 1.1 was released as part of the first BSD Unix release in March, 1978. It was not until version 2.0 of ex, released as part of Second Berkeley Software Distribution in May, 1979 that the editor was installed under the name vi (which took users straight into ex’s visual mode), and the name by which it is known today.

Vi is a modal editor:

It operates in either insert mode (where typed text becomes part of the document) or normal mode (where keystrokes are interpreted as commands that control the edit session).

For example, typing i while in normal mode switches the editor to insert mode, but typing i again at this point places an “i” character in the document.

From insert mode, pressing the escape key switches the editor back to normal mode.

A perceived advantage of vi’s separation of text entry and command modes is that both text editing and command operations can be performed without requiring the removal of the user’s hands from the home row.

As non-modal editors usually have to reserve all keys with letters and symbols for the printing of characters, any special commands for actions other than adding text to the buffer must be assigned to keys which do not produce characters, such as function keys, or combinations of modifier keys such as Ctrl, and Alt with regular keys.

Vi has the advantage that most ordinary keys are connected to some kind of command for positioning, altering text, searching and so forth, either singly or in key combinations.

The name vi is derived from the shortest unambiguous abbreviation for the command visual in ex.

STEVIE

Probably this is a “Tim Thompson’s statement” fished out from the web.

STEVIE is perhaps my most noteworthy contribution to the Open Source movement, even though the phrase Open Source didn’t exist way back in June of 1987 when I posted my little clone of the ‘vi’ editor to Usenet.

STEVIE stood for,

ST Editor for VI Enthusiasts

Although it was only a subset of real ‘vi’, it had a good implementation of the ‘u’ (undo) and ‘.’ (repeat) commands. Here are the two parts of the original posting of STEVIE:

stevie.orig.1of2

stevie.orig.2of2

My implementation was usable and good enough for Tony Andrews to take and continue hacking on. A year later in June of 1988, Tony posted this 4-part version of STEVIE to Usenet:

stevie.tony.1of4

stevie.tony.2of4

stevie.tony.3of4

stevie.tony.4of4

Since that time, the software has continuously evolved in the fine tradition of what we now call Open Source, to produce the widely available and widely ported editor now known as VIM.

I was not involved after my initial development and posting to Usenet, and I didn’t really keep track of it after a few years. (I was actually a bit disappointed when the ‘u’ndo capability was broken by subsequent development, and was not fixed.)

When I recently discovered that VIM is the great-great-great-great-…-grandson of STEVIE, I was quite surprised and of course very pleased to know that my initial seed was so fruitful.

And I was most pleased to see that they fixed the ‘u’ndo command and even made it capable of ‘infinite undo’.

Vim Editor

Vim is a text editor written in 1988 by Bram Moolenaar for the Amiga computer, but first released publicly in 1991. It was based on an earlier editor, Stevie, for the Atari ST, created by Tim Thompson, Tony Andrews and G.R. (Fred) Walter.

The name “Vim” is an acronym for “Vi IMproved” because Vim is an extended version of the vi editor, with many additional features designed to be helpful in editing program source code.

Originally, the acronym stood for “Vi IMitation”, but that was changed with the release of Vim 2.0 in December 1993.

Vim is an almost compatible version of the UNIX editor Vi. Many new features have been added: multi level undo, syntax highlighting, command line history, on-line help, file name completion, block operations, folding, Unicode support, etc.

This package contains a version of vim compiled with a rather standard set of features. This package does not provide a GUI version of Vim. See the other vim packages if you need more (or less).

Repository: Debian Main

Download size: 894,29 KB

Installed size: 1,74 MB

Package filename: vim_7.3.333-1_i386.deb

Source package: vim

Monty Python and Python Programming Protocol (P.P.P.)

Python

Monty Python and Python Programming Protocol (P.P.P.)

I never thought Linux has any relationship to Monty Python’s playacting and his scripts.

Now I discover python language’s name comes from his acting skills and not due to any programming language as long as a reptile called python.

In my case any programming language is a python to me whether it is C or C++ or Java or Beans (they never spell or spill the beans or code in anyway comprehensible to human mind but to computers only) and sometimes with cobra venom installed in them and any sane guy start hating them.
All these changed when I discovered Linux. Whether you like or not one needs to know few starting scripts and rooting responses, booting and Grubbing files, if one wants to embrace Linux.
So I did.
Now I hear suddenly from nowhere ‘A’ Level students are made to learn python in schools and act like Monty Python of BBC.
BBC Basic was the first language I started learning before Sinclair’s Basic and long time before I discovered there is something called C and later Unix.
By the way, the language is named after the BBC show “Monty Python’s Flying Circus” and has nothing to do with reptiles. Making references to Monty Python and acting skills are actively encouraged by the Linux community.
Some of Python’s notable features: Uses an elegant syntax, making the programs you write easier to read.
Is an easy-to-use language that makes it simple to get your program working. This makes Python ideal for prototype development and other ad-hoc programming tasks, without compromising maintainability.
Comes with a large standard library that supports many common programming tasks such as connecting to web servers, searching text with regular expressions, reading and modifying files.
Python’s interactive mode makes it easy to test short snippets of code. There’s also a bundled development environment called IDLE.
Is easily extended by adding new modules implemented in a compiled language such as C or C++.
Can also be embedded into an application to provide a programmable interface.
Runs on many different computers and operating systems: Windows, MacOS, many brands of Unix, OS/2.
Is free software in two senses. It doesn’t cost anything to download or use Python, or to include it in your application. Python can also be freely modified and re-distributed, because while the language is copyrighted it’s available under, an open source license.
Python is an easy and powerful object-oriented programming language. It was originally created back in the 1980’s, but saw it’s first public release in 1991. After the release of Python 1.0 in 1994, it quickly became one of the preferred programming language for the creation of web applications in the Internet, alongside with Perl and PHP.
It’s creator, Guido van Rossum has played a major part in the Python development from it’s first release and has a central role in deciding the direction of the Python development.
Python is often used as a scripting language for web applications in combination with the “mod python” module for the Apache web server. Python’s easiness of use and ability to integrate with different SDKs allows the creation of many different programs for Windows, Linux, Маc ОS and other operational systems.
This is what Eric Raymond gas to say about Python
I had already heard just enough about Python to know that it is what is nowadays called a “scripting language”, an interpretive language with its own built-in memory management and good facilities for calling and cooperating with other programs.
So I dived into Programming Python with one question uppermost in my mind: what has this got that Perl does not?
Perl, of course, is the 800-pound gorilla of modern scripting languages.
It has largely replaced shell as the scripting language of choice for system administrators, thanks partly to its comprehensive set of UNIX library and system calls, and partly to the huge collection of Perl modules built by a very active Perl community. The language is commonly estimated to be the CGI language behind about 85% of the “live” content on the Net.
Larry Wall, its creator, is rightly considered one of the most important leaders in the Open Source community, and often ranks third behind Linus Torvalds and Richard Stallman in the current pantheon of hacker demigods.
To say I was astonished would have been positively wallowing in understatement.
It’s remarkable enough when implementations of simple techniques work exactly as expected the first time; but my first metaclass hack in a new language, six days from a cold standing start? Even if we stipulate that I am a fairly talented hacker, this is an amazing testament to Python’s clarity and elegance of design.
There was simply no way I could have pulled off a coup like this in Perl, even with my vastly greater experience level in that language. It was at this point I realized I was probably leaving Perl behind.
Now Guido van Rossum who has a major role in development in Python will join the elite three mentioned above.(Linus Torvalds, Richard Stallman and Larry Wall).
It is not easy to master a computer language but one who has background knowledge and basic understanding of several language would benefit from it.
Jumping into it straight away may not be the best way.
Learning C and Unix, Linux and how scripting done and modules used to take advantage of Linux kernels is necessary before embarking on this adventure.
In any case Linux is the winner.
It is an object oriented interpretive language with graphic capability may be better than Visual Basic but if one needs to advance in programming language one need to know the code and syntax behind the ant graphic interphase.
There are lot of language wrapped behind the Linux kernel and scripting. It is far better to master Linux and simple commands and scripts before delving.into an advanced language with powerful capabilities.
I still prefer to call it a python with reptilian image because it is a very very long language behind the big modules.
Enjoy Linux and one will enjoy Python too but do not let it wrap round your neck and squeeze your wind pipe and suffocate you.
Better learn few piping tricks in Linux and put the python inside a pipe and tame it.

Mind you this time only two fruits with horrible dry weather.

Rain has come and I am trying to save some seeds.

Reproduction

What happened to my Cherry Tomatoes?

We are going through some erratic weather conditions  and the single Cherry Tomato Plant wilted away in dry weather.
However it produced hundreds of tomatoes before it died, I scattered seeds all over the place and  I was pretty sure that few will germinate come the rainy days.

This plant was seeded / germinated by the not so frequent birds that come our way.

I know by experience that all the seeds will get washed away like the seeds I used to spread all over our compound but never germinate in our compound but down below on our access road.

We are at a higher ground.

I remember about the vine that produced a beautiful white plant never germinated in out garden but down below in the neighbors hedge.

The seeds of course I got from the Botanical Garden fence.

Just recently I went to place where / perimeter fence/ I got the seeds and the vine is no more there.
This /story was 10 years ago/old.

The weather is too horrible even the Botanical garden cannot save its plants.

Last weekend I plucked few seeds from this wine and this time I planted  them in a pot.
It is not yet germinating.

Coming back to cherry tomato, with above experience I put large number of seeds in a smaller pot and placed that on a prominent place on big pot where I decided to put the pipal tree which I ill treated for 2 years to see how it survives.

True enough they germinated filling the pot.

They were slender and not ready for replanting.

For three days I forgot to water (I was busy) and all of them dried up.

I went into panic mode.
I could not find a single plant in our compound.

Watered them and only two slender ones survived.

Replanted them on a big pot they were still destined to die.

One tomato plant that was surviving could not take the challenge from the weeds.

I am down to zero now.

The the same weekend I sow the seeds of the vine, I went to put some food for the fish.
I found a small tomato plant just close to the where the mother plant wilted away.

There were no tomatoes seen.

Then just for curiosity sake, I lifted a branch to see there were 3 ripe tomatoes hidden.

I was so excited like the Archimedes, (luckily I was in shorts and securing my integrals) plucked them and sow them all over.

They are germinating now.

They are the second generation plants.

I want to see how many generations I can take them forward.

Interestingly enough there is a folk belief that young plants near the mother plant survive better.

There is a scientific reason for this.

It is called the allelopathy.

The mother plant produce allelochemicls to suppress other invading plants who are competing for the the same territory.

These chemicals saved the day for me not my personal efforts.

Three days of absence did the damage in my case.

Believe in nature and they look after the nature if man does not interfere.

 

Banana growing in the East is such an endeavor.

They are Nature Vultures.

Cherry Tomatoes

At the beginning of the year when I decided to blog on a topic at random I decided to use a plant (plant for my life) as a topic, if I run short an idea and get bored.
I could write only a few and there were many topics that came at random, I had to put that ides on a back burner for sometime, especially because of the World Cup Cricket and I had enough new Linux distribution downloaded to write about.
then again I thought I will restrict to drought resistant and somewhat alien to my city.
Never ever I though I will write about cherry tomatoes.
I have very little time for gardening and what I call my gardening is not really gardening.
It can be rephrased as “garden patch watching”, in other words it is a little patch of garden left to elements and let it grow everything and anything in that area.
The little patch allowed to grow and go wild.
My interventions are if the spell is very dry (which is now) and no rain make sure I water them late at midnight and over weekends if nasty that hinder community growth are found pull them out.
My seeders (not Linux seeders) are the birds.
I am very fortunate that we live in the pathway of bird migration (winter birds) and type of birds were little bit more this year than that last year.
Left over rice and food is thrown all over and they do come very early as early as 4 am in the morning an as late as 5 to 6 pm.
I some time get up with them singing (but lazy to get up and see who is coming and who is not coming) but make a mental note of the various sing songs they mix the ariel ambiance (like the common cuckoo).
Few months ago, I saw a tomato plant on the wall side of the foot steps leading to rear of the house (very few walk up that path, except me to feed the fish in a little pond/tank) and growing in a crevice. Probably the seeds have been taken there by the ants but nor recovered in time.
It started growing slowly and then quickly crossed the narrow foot (its spread was over the foot steps) path and even the dog did walk gently over it. My dog loves plants and their smell and have the habit of sniffing the leaves and discriminating them from the civets foot steps at night.
Tomato is a tropical plant and love dry and warm climate and my intention was to watch it as a bio-indicator(mind you tomatoes are very very cheap nowadays).
It started flowering and bearing beautiful tiny fruits.
Very soon they were garnishing the dinner table (without telling anybody I picked a few washed and kept them on the dinner table).
Now it is very dry and no rain for few days and it is drying up with reaming fruits all over the place and when the rain comes they will germinate and few will be taken to various places by ants and to the back garden.
The spread is left to nature and I want to see how many of them survive.
As a small insurance I took a few of them and spread among the roof top garden.
Believe it or not I have a young pipal (Bo) tree on the rooftop which I have treated with absolute disdain (unlike many Buddhists) for the last three years except watering it when it is near to its final hour.
Irony is in this Buddhist county I cannot find a place to replant it (in this Kandy city-ritualistically Buddhist) but our Buddhist go to India to warship the sacred pipal tree.
I am using it as a bio-indicator and if it dies, I am pretty sure there will be a significant drought in this country.
This tree also thanks to the birds who visit us.
When our coal power plant is in full swing, surely we will lose some more birds including migrant and i want have seeders except Linux guys who seed me with Linux derivatives an not living seeds or plants..