Updates from National Science Foundation

Lab in a Can — Science Nation
NSF – Monitoring water quality is vital to make sure dangerous bacteria doesn’t creep into our drinking water or overcome sewage treatment plants. With support from NSF, engineers at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute have developed the Environment Sample Processor (ESP), a “DNA lab in a can.” The size of a trash can, it can be placed in the open ocean or at water treatment facilities to identify potentially harmful bacteria, algae, larvae and other microscopic organisms in the surrounding waters. It can monitor and send results back to the lab in real time to monitor water quality. Now, the engineers are modifying the ESP so it can go mobile, working from an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). more> http://tinyurl.com/n8u85uo

How Hedge Funds Transfer Wealth From Investors To Managers

BOOK REVIEW

The Hedge Fund Mirage, Author: Simon Lack.

By Steve Denning – Once upon a time, hedge funds earned their outsize compensation by, guess what? Hedging their investments.

Today, most hedge funds have morphed into something very different: aggressive, highly-leveraged, speculative vehicles that are desperately chasing returns to outperform their benchmarks, that make huge returns for the managers regardless of the fund’s performance and end up transferring wealth from investors to hedge fund managers.

The fee arrangements are a wealth transference mechanism, systematically moving money from investors to hedge-fund managers. Some of the statistics amassed by Simon Lack’s The Hedge Fund Mirage (2012) are astounding. more> http://tinyurl.com/nzz5e2g

The Great American Hospital Pricing Scam Exposed

By Rick Ungar – For the very first time, the federal government is publicly releasing the “rate card” (the full charge before insurance company discounts) prices hospitals throughout the nation charge.

While hospitals have long been required to share this data with the CMS—raising questions as to why the federal government has been willing to participate in keeping this data secret for so long—hospital providers have traditionally guarded this information from the public as carefully as the launch codes required to start a nuclear holocaust.

Until today (May 08).

Take a look at this fascinating graphic provided by The Huffington Post showing the comparative pricing for treating chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in the New York area – $99,690 (New Jersey), $7,044 (Bronx). more> http://tinyurl.com/c3p4q4l

Google Now: Is It Magic, or Just Plain Creepy?

By Mathew Ingram – Meanwhile, the second Google Now card showed the traffic on the highway and told me I should probably give myself more time than usual to get to the airport—and when I got closer to the time of my departure, a third card showed my boarding pass information, including boarding time and the gate number (Google Now got that info from my calendar, but it also supports scannable boarding passes for a limited number of airlines.) more> http://tinyurl.com/c5qrnfj

Why Is Your Doctor Typing? Electronic Medical Records Run Amok

By Steve Denning – Computerized medical records generate benefits. They are easily retrievable. They can be transferred from one practice to another and accessible to the many different service providers—hospitals, laboratories, specialists, radiology and so on—that might be involved in any one patient.

“In theory, perhaps,” he replied. “But in practice, it’s a horrible and costly bureaucracy that is being imposed on doctors. I spend less time with patients, and more time filling out multiple boxes on forms that don’t fit the way I work. Often I am filling out the same information over and over again. A lot of it is checking boxes, rather than understanding what this patient really needs.”

Paying people to work unintelligently doesn’t work and ultimately will be ineffective. What is needed are systems that actually help doctors do their work. more> http://tinyurl.com/d9uq3yt