Andy Grove, the famous CEO of Intel, has spoken out publicly against the pharmaceutical industry. I’d like to comment on a few of his statements.
First a few words on my perspective. Before moving to biotech I actually had a stint in process development at Intel, so I’m pretty familiar with the industry and the technology. Now I’m in R&D in the biotech industry which, while not really the same as pharma in general, still gives me a good perspective on the challenges of drug development.
Mr. Grove is a very smart guy who’s been very successful in his industry. He’s not just a management-focused CEO, but an actual technical expert who’s made it to the top. My point here is just that he’s got a credible reputation for technical matters.
I picked the semiconductor industry because it’s the one I know; I spent 40 years in it, during which it became the foundation for all of electronics. It has done a bunch of unbelievable things, powering computers of increasing power and speed. But in the treatment of Parkinson’s, we have gone from levodopa to levodopa. ALS [Lou Gehrig's disease] has no good treatment; Alzheimer’s has none.
This is, unfortunately, a nonsensical comparison. Grove’s main point is that the semiconductor industry has made huge strides in 40 years but the pharma industry has not.
Continue reading ‘Andy Grove is mistaken about the drug industry’
You may have seen the stories going around the net today about a scientist who’s discovered how to burn salt water, and that the DOE is going to investigate this as an alternative source of energy. Let me explain why this is stupid.
Dr. Roy said the salt water isn’t burning per se, despite appearances. The radio frequency actually weakens bonds holding together the constituents of salt water — sodium chloride, hydrogen and oxygen — and releases the hydrogen, which, once ignited, burns continuously when exposed to the RF energy field. Mr. Kanzius said an independent source measured the flame’s temperature, which exceeds 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, reflecting an enormous energy output.
Let me break this down for you, serious science style:
Continue reading ‘Burning salt water will not fuel your car’
I came across a short piece in the New York Times recently that’s worth pointing out. It’s about a particular startup in the Bay Area that’s focused on using metabolic engineering to produce anti-malarial drugs and the next item on their agenda is fuel.
For the layperson, metabolic engineering is a step beyond genetic engineering. Metabolic engineering involves creating a new network of complementary reaction pathways within a cell, essentially creating whole new ways of making biological products. In a big picture sense, metabolic engineering treats the cell as a factory, and adds or optimizes structures within the cell for some design purpose.
Continue reading ‘Metabolic engineering as path to medicine and energy’
I’ve been using a new in-car GPS for about 2 months now, and I wanted to share my thoughts in case other people are on the fence. I think these units have come a long way since the last time I seriously looked at them, and they’re pretty effective at getting you to where you are going.
I’ll write this from the perspective that you haven’t taken a serious look at what a recent unit can do, so I’ll list out what I think are the key features.
- A flexible route-generation algorithm. Stuck in traffic? Click the “detour” button and have it route you around the area you are currently entering. Take a wrong turn and it can generate a new route for you in a few seconds.
- A large, searchable index of locations, stores, parks, restaurants, museums etc. It can be searchable both near where you are, near your destination, or find matches along your current route. As an example, my wife and I were just out running errands and remembered that we needed to buy a new bed frame. I typed “mattress” into the GPS and it pulled up the name, address and phone number of half a dozen nearby stores.
- A map that you can scroll through by touch-screen. Drag your finger on the screen and the map drags with you to allow you to see nearby map areas without zooming out.
I found that pretty much all of the units I looked at had the same features listed regardless of price, but when I actually used them in the store there were huge differences in the implementation of those features.
Continue reading ‘Thoughts on Car Navigation Systems’
There have been many articles written about how terrible the default charts are in Excel. They are full of details that detract from the actual information that you are trying to convey. I recently discovered a few great tips for easily improving the quality of your charts. It doesn’t take much effort to set up, and it very easy to apply once you are done.
The easiest thing to do is to install the free Clean Charts Excel plugin by Juicy Analytics. This very nifty macro just finds all of the charts in your open worksheet and gives you the option of applying some more sane formatting to them. For example:
- The axis labels will all have the same number of significant digits (no more 1 1.5 2 2.5, instead 1.0 1.5 2.0 2.5).
- Axis labels are changed so that they are most meaningful (100,000 becomes 100k so you have less digits that aren’t telling you anything).
- Line and bar colors are changed to be high contrast and distinct from each other.
- The gray background is eliminated. It only reduces contrast to the chart contents.
- Superfluous lines and boxes are eliminated. You are trying to present data, so all elements should contribute to that presentation.
Continue reading ‘Make Excel charts less terrible’