Month: December 2001

Camel Antibodies and Human Disease

Could antibodies from camels fight human disease? A United Arab Emirates researchers thinks so and wrote an article for the British magazine The Biologist on the medical research potentials of camels.

Dr. Sabah Jassim argues that camel antibodies would make a good research tool since camels are highly resistant to a wide variety of diseases. Camels obviously evolved in an extremely harsh environment and are immune to diseases such as rinderpest and foot-and-mouth that afflict other mammals.

Moreover, because camel antibodies are both smaller and much simpler than human antibodies, Jassim argues they could be reproduced easily and could penetrate parts of the human body that antibodies from other species could not.

As it turns out, there is already some research being conducted in this area, including research to test the feasibility of using modified camel antibodies to create new generations of protease inhibitors. One of the diseases camels are immune to is river blindness, and research is also underway to clone the antibodies which provide this protection and develop a treatment for the disease in human beings.

Source:

Camels could help cure humans. David Bamford, The BBC, December 10, 2001.

Warfare Analogies in Sports

One of the sillier claims I heard anyone make after the 9/11 terrorist attacks was on the Sunday when NFL football games resumed. One of the commentators on ESPN’s pre-game show sagely pronounced that the attacks would likely end the use of war-related language to describe sporting contests. All of the people in the studio agreed, saying that since Americans had been exposed to a real act of war, such language would be inappropriate.

Apparently that’s all over with. The latest issue of the ESPN magazine has a striking black and white photo of Kurt Warner and the St. Louis Rams receivers with the headline “Special Ops.” In USA Today, Baltimore Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis says that this week’s game against Pittsburgh is going to be a “war.”

The 2000 Election

Today I was driving back home from taking my grandmother to a doctor’s appointment, when National Public Radio reported a story which had me laughing out loud in my car. The story was about military tribunals and contained and odd dichomoty.

On the one hand, the Bush administration decided not to try the first indicted terrorist in a military tribunal. On the other hand, the administration was blasted by Democratic Sen. Joseph Lieberman precisely for that decision.

The more I think back to what happened almost a year ago, the more I think the best outcome was that the nation did not have to suffer through four years of a Lieberman vice presidency.

Lieberman has always been relatively illiberal on speech issues for a Democrat, and he now seems intent on replacing Jesse Helms as the most illiberal person in the U.S. Senate.

Donald Norman and Horrible DVD Menus

I could not agree more with Donald Norman’s assessment of the sad state of DVD menus. Sometimes it seems like DVD manufacturers are in a competition to see who can produce the most convoluted and unhelpful DVD menu.

But Norman leaves out what has to be the single most annoying that about DVD menus — most of them break the hardware controls. Norman writes that,

Some DVDs require the viewer to move the cursor to the desired spot on the screen using the remote’s directional control. The actual action is then activated by depressing the “select” key (called by different names on different remotes). But on some DVDs, the action is initiated as soon as the cursor is over the item.

But an even bigger problem is that many of these DVDs will not function with the controls on the front of the DVD. For example, one of my favorite DVDs is The Wizard of Oz, which has a menu designed a lot like the infamous Windows 95 “Start” function. To play the DVD you first select “Play” and hit “Select” on the remote. But this doesn’t actually play the movie — instead it brings up a submenu where you again have to select “Play” and then the movie will start.

The upshot, aside from the extra annoyance, is that if the remote control is temporarily unavailable (and the remote gets lost a lot at my house), it impossible to play the movie. You can press the “Play” button on the front of the DVD player as often as you like, but nothing’s going to happen. In fact, most of the DVDs I’ve bought completely break the “Play” button on the front of the unit.

This is also annoying when combined with the animation DVD menus now add. For example, my daughter loves Shrek, but the menu for Shrek features Eddie Murphy’s character bouncing up and down shouting. When I’m scrambling trying to find the remote to play the movie, the last thing I want is 5-10 minutes of uninterrupted shrieking from Murphy.

It’s Not *Free* Speech, But It’s Still Pretty Cool

Via BoingBoing.Net comes a link to an excellent FM radio broadcaster on a PC card. The PC Max comes in ISA and PCI flavors and can accept an external 5W amplifier and antenna, so you could just broadcast your MP3 collection throughout your house, or reach out and touch your nearby neighbors (and get that lovely knock on the door from the FCC).

The geek in me says I need one of these.