Prebiotic Synthesis

Since taking Evolution (BIO 460) during the spring quarter, I have become especially interested in the field of prebiotic synthesis - the field that tries to find what biochemical reactions preceded the earliest life forms (and thus further proving to Sarah Palin and gang that we didn't just show up 6000 years ago). In an article published in Science, Barta argues that the reaction barrier to a condensation reaction to link amino acids as opposed to a acid-base reaction (since AA's are amphoteric in nature). The mechanism of the reaction is pretty interesting, check it out!

Aston Martins

Lately, I've been seeing a lot of Aston Martins. At first, I thought it was due to the release of the lower-end V8 Vantage (if you call $120,000+ low-end). However, it seeems that people are picking up a ton of DB7s. Maybe in anticipation of the new Bond movie, Quantum of Solace? There's seemingly no trend going on that I can latch on to.. I've seen convertibles, hard-tops, DB7's, Vanquishes, and Vantages. Whatever it may be, it makes me very gleeful. Keep it up rich folk.

Mashing RSS Feeds

I've never really needed to do much with RSS feeds besides read a few news sources and blogs easily. However, today I came across the need to mashup several sources and then filter them - a search on multiple RSS feeds, based on the content of each. I went through a few barebones web services, and then I came across Yahoo Pipes - I was floored. The interface is quite amazing - aesthetically pleasing and easy to use but amazingly powerful and versatile. You can filter based on a million things from the title, description, density, length, and more, and easily put together all your search criteria in a visual format and then publish it. Even nicer, you don't have to keep using Yahoo! anymore - you can use whatever RSS tool you'd like and just subscribe to the single feed. My weapon of choice is NewsNetWire for my iPod Touch. Way to go guys!

Balance Billing

There's been a lot of talk lately about the practice of balance billing, especially in California. Balance billing occurs when a doctor charges more for a service than an insurance company is willing to pay, and thus the doctor charges the patient (illegally) for the balance. While I certainly believe that the practice is unethical if it is prohibited and patients don't know any better, is it really that unfair? Doctors put a lot of work into doctoring... shouldn't they be properly compensated? Should they really be just barely covering the costs because people buy small insurance coverages or because Medicare/HMOs are too stingy? In the case of a patient in need of emergency care that the insurer wouldn't cover, balance billing is unethical. Agreed. But what about otherwise? Nobody seems to be pissed at their insurance company for this... just at the doctors for being audacious enough for asking for what they charged. It's tantamount to paying a $1 for a $5 loaf of bread and saying that you really needed it, so the store should just give it to you. This never happens with other professionals - could you imagine winning a court case (like having a successful surgery) and not fully paying your attorney what he was due? Dr. Atul Gawande, author of Complications and Better, has made this argument before. Maybe going into the profession I'm sort of biased toward protecting doctors from the flak they get these days, but at the very least the blame should be shared with short-changing insurance providers?

Nuevasync

MobileMe without the hassle or stolen $100/year! Nuevasync is still in beta, but it provides Exchange-based over the air sync to your iPod Touch/iPhone/other web-enabled device (they focus on Nokia smartphones). It's easy to set up and for a relatively small company, they're doing a good job. They are very nice about posting on their blog when servers are down for maintenance/bugs etc., but since it's happening somewhat often (once a week or so), I'd recommend adding them to your RSS feed so you know when not to completely rely on it. They're still working on getting GMail running through Exchange, but for now I have an over-the -air sync for Google Calendar and Contacts. The only downside is I thought I could sync back into Outlook when I sync my iPod but it [the iPod] won't do both over-the-air and Outlook sync. 'sall good! I have free OTA syncing and it works great!

Google Chrome is out!

Somehow, Google's most daring product release ever (I think) is getting very little press. Well, besides the NYT and all. I just downloaded Google Chrome, the new browser straight from the doers of no evil. It's impressively fast, and it makes sense why - if you get through their entertaining but verbose 25-page comic. They've built it from the ground up for Web 2.0 and webapps that take full advantage of new features in browsing. While the features on the surface are nothing new, the infrastructure beneath allows this browser to run very fast and be rock solid. IE8 is supposed to be very much like this with the sandbox structure to keep malware from crashing the browser and other such features, but given that this is open source and will certainly have plenty of plugins, I'm looking forward to my next few weeks testing this baby out.

Songza

Looks like this summer is going pretty well with the discovery of new music through Pandora when suddenly I run across Songza, an online service that lets me create playlists and listen to any song I want! It seems to be using YouTube (or so I've read). Anyway, I can even listen to the new Metallica single, "The Day that Never Comes" from their upcoming album, Death Magnetic. They have pretty full and complete collections from the artists I've typed in so far, and it seems like a quick and easy way to get a playlist going when you go over to your friends house and want to show them some new music but you forgot your iPod. Furthermore, it works (decently) on my iPod Touch - maybe on other mobile platforms as well. Of course it's not as nice as the Pandora app, but it has more functionality - as a result of fewer deals with record companies and such.