Check out this new Darpa-funded robot:

$10 million sure buys some cool technology. I’m waiting for the pet-sized version.

(Via Gizmodo)

Synthetic biology is a hot topic right now. It is basically techniques to create synthetic designer organisms out of biological lego blocks. It is still early days, but the field has great potential, as well as big ethical issues.

From an economic point of view, there are many interesting parallels with the IT or electronics industries. A bunch of standardised parts have been created, and these can be combined in different ways to make new organisms. A lot of the issues in network economics arise as well. For example, the parts are complementary, and the value of the whole is more than the sum of the parts. The parts may also have different owners, so there could be coordination problems. There are also network effects — the parts are difficult to work with, so as more other researchers work with a specific part, experience increases and it becomes easier and thus more attractive relative to substitute parts.

Here (pdf) is a short paper about the topic. And here is an amazing talk by Craig Venter:

From Searchme:

I wonder what Apple’s intellectual property lawyers think about it?

Flying an airplane is complex, but like anything if you do it enough times it becomes routine. Nevertheless, pilots still use written checklists to make sure that they’ve done all the necessary things during important times like takeoff and landing, and during emergencies or abnormal situations.

This long and wonderful article in The New Yorker talks about an experiment to use checklists in medicine, particularly in intensive care. A procedure like inserting an IV line requires five or six steps to minimise the risk of potentially fatal infections. A study found that occasionally the doctors or nurses miss a step, and sometimes this leads to a bad outcome for the patient. Since people in intensive care have a lot of things done to them, the study found that on average two mistakes were made per patient per day. Something as simple as providing a checklist of steps lead to a dramatic improvement in patient outcomes at a few hospitals where it was tried. Basically, checklists seem to be an incredibly cost-effective way to save lives.

As the article explains, the trouble is getting doctors to accept the checklists. Using a list is basically admitting that you’re human and fallible, which may be a challenge to a doctor’s ego. The article is also worth reading for the incredible and detailed descriptions of what can be done in intensive care to save a person’s life:

We gave him a syringeful of anesthetic, and a resident slid a breathing tube into his throat. Another resident “lined him up.” She inserted a thin, two-inch-long needle and catheter through his upturned right wrist and into his radial artery, and then sewed the line to his skin with a silk suture. Next, she put in a central line—a twelve-inch catheter pushed into the jugular vein in his left neck. After she sewed that in place, and an X-ray showed its tip floating just where it was supposed to—inside his vena cava at the entrance to his heart—she put a third, slightly thicker line, for dialysis, through his right upper chest and into the subclavian vein, deep under the collarbone.

(HT: Cockpit Conversation)

Yesterday I went to a law and economics conference about intellectual property. It was co-sponsored by Microsoft, and one thing that surprised me was that two of the seven papers presented were about open source. I also found the attitude of the Microsoft people at the conference to be refreshing. They were open-minded and willing to discuss, without pushing their point of view too hard. Somehow I’d expected Microsoft to be less human. I was pleasantly surprised.