What I've been reading lately

Just an archival catch-up of recent The Beach House Weekly—my Paper.li auto summaries—of an interesting few weeks in science, space and Australian politics.

From rockets to meteorites, Roxon to Rudd, novas to Nobels, planet hunters to metric hunters.

25 March 2013
18 March 2013
11 March 2013
4 March 2013
25 February 2013
18 February 2013
11 February 2013
4 February 2013
28 January 2013
21 January 2013
14 January 2013
7 January 2013
31 December 2012
24 December 2012
17 December 2012
10 December 2012

Intriguing to look back through actually. Something in there for everyone.

The obscenely-named Australian Vaccination network called to account. At last.

Amidst a very sad news day, a glimmer of light in this news.

The Australian Vaccine Network is a lobbying group that is anything but. It's charter is to oppose vaccinations—and indeed medication of any sort—irrespective of any and all research and evidence to the contrary.

But its name has confused and misled the public for years. Until now.

In this great news, the NSW Fair Trading Minister Anthony Roberts paid the head of "AVN" Meryl Dorey (resist urge to deliberately misspell her name) a visit to very publicly deliver an official demand that the group change its name within two months or face de-association:

A 3D printout model of your unborn baby? Is this just a little bit creepy?

Source: DiginfoTV

I really don't know if this is something that will catch on, or something that parents-to-be will find a bit creepy...

Japanese company Fasotec is offering a $1250 service that takes scan images, recreates them into a 3D computer model, then prints it as a resin model of the foetus inside the womb. The high-quality 3D printer does both the opaque foetus and the clear womb in the one print run.

People are still getting comfortable with 2D ultrasound printouts, and feeling rather odd about those 3D ultrasound pictures. How will they feel about a solid model??

Oh, and the miniature version as a pendant? Don't get me started...

My blog has been archived by the National Library, plus the week's readings.

The National Library of Australia run an amazing resource called Pandora that saved entire copies of important websites in Australia, creating a historical record of this new societal resource. And recently they contacted me for authorisation to duplicate my blog!

To be fair, I think it had a lot more to do with my being an election candidate that the intriguing mix of science and society news—in fact I think that was really the only reason... But hey—it means they 'accidentally' preserved a whole bunch of neat science stuff too!

So, saved for posterity, is my blog in Pandora: http://nla.gov.au/nla.arc-136401.

And wrapping up some other 'saved for my own reference' info, here's the last week's readings, via paper.li, replete with slushie Tony Abbott, bouncing tiger cub, homeopathy comeuppancy, climate crisis, and lots of rocket science:
Week ending 3 December 2012

And lastly, 60,000 views! Crikey...

Two of the most powerful, uplifting, upsetting TED talks I've watched.

"I had extensive and life-threatening injuries. I'd broken my neck and my back in six places. I broke five ribs on my left side. I broke my right arm. I broke my collarbone. I broke some bones in my feet. My whole right side was ripped open, filled with gravel. My head was cut open across the front, lifted back, exposing the skull underneath. I had head injures. I had internal injuries. I had massive blood loss. In fact, I lost about five litres of blood, which is all someone my size would actually hold. By the time the helicopter arrived at Prince Henry Hospital in Sydney, my blood pressure was 40 over nothing. I was having a really bad day."

Janine Shepherd was training for the Australian Olympic team when she was run down by a truck. Her story of her road to recovery will amaze and move you.



And while thinking of TED talks that stay with you, another I've been meaning to share for a long time is this one by Jill Bolte Taylor. She was a brain researcher who suffered a stroke of her own. In this extraordinary talk, she explains how she saw this happening from the inside, realising the headache was something more.

What I've been reading and writing - a bit of a catch-up

This is a catch-up of my reading and writing lists as auto-compiled into e-zines by Paper.li. As usual, it is mostly for my own reference down the track, but maybe someone is interested.

The recycling bin may no longer be full of discarded newspapers, but holy moley I'm chewing through some online reading...

Editions for the week ending:

1 October

24 September

17 September

10 September

3 September

27 August

20 August

13 August

6 August

30 July

23 July

16 July

9 July

Phew. That's it. Must keep on top of this a bit better...

This is the freakiest thing you will see today. Guaranteed.

Yep there is no doubt that this right here is one freakizoid skull photo.

Except that it isn't. It's the skull of an ordinary human child - before their baby teeth fall out!

A bit like for a shark, there are the "adult teeth" lined up ready to slot into place. Give or take $5000 worth of orthodontic fees...

Still mega-freaky.

Via Ben Wakeling

Tell me you can watch this without a tear in your eye - 3D printing gives a girl her arms

This is a beautiful story of a little girl named Emma with a rare congenital disorder that leaves her unable to lift her own arms.

But a customised exoskeleton - fabricated on a 3D printer and sprung with simple rubber bands - has changed that.

Science - changing lives.



Via io9.com

The Beach House - readings and writings for the week 10-16 July

Here's the Paper.Li e-mag of my readings and writings for the week.

George Michael woke from a coma with a different accent.

No more baby face either...

Say what? George Michael was in a coma, you ask?

Yes - three weeks, due to a pneumonia bout. And with survival apparently touch-and-go. (That's why those flu vaccines are so important each winter.)

Anyway, back to the topic du jour.

This is a weird phenomenon - but not unheard of. According to CBN News, it is known as Foreign Accent Syndrome.

Funny thing the brain. We have so much to learn about it.

Meanwhile, seems he's fully recovered - a tour of Australian venues is booking now for November. Tickets aren't cheap though...

Catch-up on The Beach House Weekly reading summaries

The weekly Paper.li digital magazine tool dropped off for a while and they lost the ability to call up archive copies by week.

It's sorted now, so here's a catch-up . Likely this isn't of much interest to anyone else - more for my own record. But feel free to check them out if you like!


What I've been reading and/or writing about:
July 2
June 25
June 18
June 11
June 3

Can you guess what this ad is about?

So what do you think these children are talking about?

Remarkable photo embodying African health care trials

A few months back, I encouraged people to read the blog posts of a friend's daughter Anika to follow her troubling experience as a medical volunteer in a remote African community. If you haven't read Anika's posts - she's back home now - please do pay her blog a visit.

Anika has entered this photo in the International Volunteer HQ annual photo competition.

It's a remarkable photo that really does tell a story about the problems facing health care in remote communities - not just overseas! And the baby's eyes...

Help Anika's photo by clicking over to the website and voting for it. It's a very easy 10-second voting process.

Dental care breakthrough negotiated by the Greens

There's been a great breakthrough today in the Greens' campaign to get dental care properly funded and included in Medicare. Greens Senator Dr Richard di Natale announced successful negotiations with the Government to get half a billion dollars worth of dental care improvements included in Tuesday's Budget:

• $345.9 million for a public dental waiting list blitz, to help the 400,000 Australians on public waiting lists get treatment faster
• the Chronic Dental Disease Scheme will be saved from Budget cuts, until we can develop a comprehensive national scheme with the Government to replace it
• $158.6 million to train more dentists and oral health therapists, and help dental professionals set up practices in rural areas
• $10.5 million to promote good oral health.

But di Natale has said this is just the start:

Seeing the real Van Gogh - a revelation...

This is an intriguing blog post about colour vision deficiency. Kazunori Asada writes about how he experienced a gallery of art works painted to represent how thing look to a person with colour vision deficiency. He then explains how how developed software to replicate this effect. He looked at various Van Gogh works and what he saw was a revelation.

This is Starry Nights as I see it. Vivid to be sure, but a bit as if someone has overcranked the gamma. Some of the colours are interesting but let's be frank - a bit weird.

Easter is coming. How much sugar is in a Cadbury Creme Egg?

Ah the wit of XKCD...

Enjoy your eggs. And your soft drinks.

Enjoy more XKCD over here.

Anika in Africa - a troubling expose of the health system in Tanzania

Anika Jeppersen is the daughter of an old friend from high school and she's been training in maternity. Recently she left Australia for several weeks working as a volunteer in maternity hospitals in Tanzania, Africa.

Anika has been keeping a blog of her experiences, and it seems that the term "hospital" is one taken under advisement.

I recommend reading Anika in Africa. It is troubling, upsetting and uplifting all at once. Make sure you start at the beginning.

From science teaching to space toilets and lots in between - what I've been reading this last week

The Beach House weekly news summary, with some of what I've been reading and writing about over the week to 21 January. Recap, enjoy, grimace wryly, as appropriate.

Why you should wear a seatbelt...

If you have children, and you can watch this without getting a bit teary, then nothing will save your cold dead heart...



And yes - it is a very good ad.

Thanks to @sciencegoddess for the reminder.

On toilets in space...because everyone always wants to know!

Space is great and being weightless would be even better (so I'm led to believe). But weightlessness and going to the loo? Not such a great combo...

International Space Station Commander Col. Chris Hadfield tweeted this photo last week of one of the loos on the ISS. All seems rather an afterthought doesn't it?And yes - that IS a wooden seat...

In a curious coincidence, I only days before posted the photo in this article showing a space loo mockup from Russia's former space station Mir. And a vastly more 'finished' and cleanly setup it is too.

So of course the next thing everyone wants to know is, how do you use these 'facilities'?

Hadfield explains: