The NHS is in love with the airline industry. The idea of checklists before operations has really caught on, and increasingly ex-airline people are being placed in advisory roles for a variety of NHS organizations. Hospitals are especially envious of the ability of the airlines to develop and use technology that allows hundreds of random […]
Tag: social media
David Kerr: Deus ex machina
Forget complementary therapies, the big question is can engineering succeed where traditional medicine has failed? Anyone following the online technology bible “TechCrunch” might be persuaded by this idea. Here in the US and on the West Coast in particular, the belief is growing that the combination of money and mathematical and engineering brilliance (and also […]
David Kerr: Oscar season
Last Sunday it seemed like the whole of Silicon Valley stopped work to watch the Oscars (on-line of course) otherwise known as the 83rd Academy Awards. Overall, the impression was that it was a pretty limp affair with only one F-word, robotic presenters, and bland acceptance speeches. The botoxed fashionistas were particularly scathing about the […]
Tony Delamothe: TED Day One: The Return of the Human
The night before the TED conference began, “The King’s Speech” beat “The Social Network,” four Oscars to three. A friend with a stake in the outcome had argued that a story revolving around 21st century technology (Facebook) should have had an advantage over a story revolving around a 20th century one (radio). […]
Andrew Burd: Naughty editor, bad editor
I have been the human guardian of both cats and dogs over the years. I cannot call myself either a cat person or a dog person. They have such different personalities. Cats are free spirits but are also wonderfully self-indulgent and will be happily stroked for hours. Dogs are more keen on activity and many […]
Richard Smith: Twitter to replace peer review?
An interesting article in Nature gives what may be a glimpse of the future of scientific discourse by telling stories of how social media have done a much better and faster job than traditional prepublication review. Science recently published a paper in which researchers claimed to be able to predict human longevity with 77% accuracy. The […]