It also has iOS-style notification popovers at least for mail and calendar.
901 karma · joined July 8, 2011
spartango at gmail
There's something special about being able to share the content as you experience it, rather than it being personal.
Yet, the reality is that even in these companies there's a notion of traction, and it's absolutely critical. It's not measured in terms of users, but instead manifest in scientific milestones. Every time you demonstrate the scientific validity of a piece of your tech, you are de-risked in the eyes of investors. That mirrors traction, even if it's less direct.
Another way that biotech companies can achieve notions of traction comparable to tech companies is through intermediate business models, such as operating as a contract research organization or reference laboratory.
Despite those parallels, I'd say that biotech traction is still difficult to achieve because most science lacks determinism in the rate of progress.
I won't delve into the other parts of your idea, which likely have merit, but just realize that the costs of running such an operation would not be small.
I think there are certainly organizational things that can be done to facilitate more reasonable working hours, and I've seen this done well in industrial settings. From pipelined experiments to working with automation, technicians, and teammates.
With all that said, it's not easy, especially as a junior faculty member with limited resources. Building a sane lab environment is 100% worth it IMO, but it is challenging and comes with a few perceived compromises.
The conveniences and cultural differences of the CS community are a stark contrast to academic biology. Considering the author's observations:
First, the opt-out options are often fewer and further between; making the jump between basic science work and industrial biotech/pharma can be very difficult depending on your area of interest.
Then, as a biologist, it can be incredibly difficult to restrict your working hours, as experimental (e.g. cell culture) work can operate with delays or intervals. Stepping out at the wrong time means your cells die.
Beyond the unpredictable timing, there's more uncertainty around whether experiments will physically work, and it can be nigh impossible engineer your way out of certain failures.
Further, the benchmarks for "contribution to the field" in biology can be extremely unforgiving; publishing papers in journals outside of Nature, Science, or Cell fails to paint a compelling picture.
These things are added on to the things pointed out in the piece. Extra hurdles.
That's not to say that biological science fields are evil or that faculty paths are never worth considering. But having worked in the lab of a junior faculty member, you can see the pressure and challenges.
http://www.webosnation.com/hands-on-hp-veer-s-ridiculous-hea...
IMO not communicating with the outside world is a fail, but I've seen delays in this when small teams suddenly get swamped.
Anyone who's been involved in carrier operations will tell you that landing a jet on the deck is non-trivial even with experience. The fact that an aircraft can do this autonomously is quite impressive.
Sometimes this is true, but sometimes undertrained perspectives can be quite detrimental. The most clear-cut example is that of medical discussions; medical commentary or speculation from under-qualified individuals can do real harm. Many communities on the web have recognized this and have taken measures to protect users[1].
Medical advice is a pretty extreme example as far as detrimental discussions, but there are some shades of gray that I've seen show up on HN. As a biologist, the ones I've found most grating are those that reflect poor training in the the life sciences, where HNers make pseudoscientific or unscientific claims. It's easy to call these things "opinions", but they are actively harmful when most users will not be able to tell that they are incorrect.
There are certainly other cases where underinformed commenters end up doing harm, from legal speculation to "get your pitchforks" outrage attacks.
Note that I'm not arguing against free and open discussion in forums such as HN; people should be physically able to post whatever they want. My point is instead that the community should be sensitive to underqualified commentary in disciplines beyond its expertise. Less accepting, in a way.
Credentialing is but one way this has been done, but understandably not the best one here.
[1]http://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/s4chc/meta_medic...
When you do increase the DPI through Windows settings, applications start to have issues rendering text appropriately, and often UI targets don't scale with the text.
It is unfortunate that these occasionally impede the progress of science, and downstream, the eventual treatment of patients. Even so, much good work is done and will continue to be done into the future, despite politics.
Most things work, but there are a few things that are broken in unavoidable ways. Similarly, the performance isn't terrible, but the optimization is not quite at the same place as the original platform.
Xamarin's rapid work suggests that there will be a 'production-ready' CLR for most platforms (they've got it down for iOS, Android, and recently OSX) soon enough.
These Samsung drives are not quite suited to datacenter use, at least in their current form; from the use of the mini-pcie interface to their controllers and firmware. Perhaps this will change, but that will be in an entirely separate product.
Among consumer facing web-technologies, there's definitely a compelling argument in favor of shipping fast. Shipping fast lets you iterate quickly based on lots of small pieces of feedback. This is a really effective way to build something that fits your users' needs.
In other domains, however, it may make a lot less sense to ship things rapidly. For example, in science and medical domains, it becomes important to validate carefully everything that you are shipping before you ship, because your audience has no tolerance for rough edges. Those audiences tend to be less willing to adopt half-baked/non-turnkey products as well, so first impressions count more.
I think you should think hard about who your audience is and how they will perceive your product before trying to ship things aggressively or patiently.
Depending on the cause, they may be able to do something simple to fix things, but if there's something more serious going on, you'll be glad they found out now. In my friend's case, the fact that they didn't intervene when he was younger has made treatment more complicated.
In any case, I definitely would not take medical advice from anyone here (or on the web), or delay seeing a professional.
I believe these are being cleared as Class II devices under the section 510(k) premarket notification process.
Briefly, Class II devices include those that may be useful for diagnosis but aren't strictly necessary to sustain human life. The distinction has subtlety, so excuse the simplification.
The 510(k) process has you explain that your "device" (hardware or software) fits into some existing category of medical device and is equivalent to those existing devices. It's not a particularly stringent process and generally doesn't require clinical trials.
Note that in this case, "device" entails the iPad and app approved as a single item.
So for radiology, certain setups have been cleared, yes.
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What's interesting is that on the pathology side, digital systems have not been cleared for primary diagnostic use, unlike in radiology. That means that a pathologist cannot diagnose a cancer based on a digital image of a biopsy alone.
Indeed, the FDA has ruled that digital pathology systems are Class III medical devices (necessary to sustain human life) and thus require a premarket approval(PMA) process. Unlike 510(k) approval, PMA requires a clinical trial phase that can take years (and millions of dollars).
While this seems arbitrary, there's actually decent logic to it: pathology often provides the last word in the diagnosis of many diseases, from malaria to cancers. The FDA is being very cautious, as compromised pathology work caused by unvalidated technology would directly impact patients.
http://www.necdisplay.com/category/medical-diagnostic-displa...
These monitors use IPS panels, run upwards of 5MP, and have better color depth than consumer-grade monitors. Often times they are grayscale (most of these images are not colored).
These monitors are extremely expensive (~$20K), but they are FDA approved for diagnostic use. And yes, radiologists do need them.
Interestingly, as digital imaging proliferates across other medical disciplines (such as pathology), the costs of these high resolution displays and appropriate GPUs have been cited as a barrier to digitization. It seems that now prices are falling fast enough to make that excuse go away.
Radiologists and pathologists seem to love retina iPad displays...
There are some big players in the PACS space that major medical institutions are pleased with, and there's considerable lock-in/inertia associated with these types of products.
As someone working on a medical imaging product who decided that building a PACS was not a good starting point, I'm curious to see what others are doing to sell PACSs.
Turns out that in many parts of the world, there's a lack of specialists to read and interpret these images (radiologists, pathologists), even though there are technicians skilled enough to generate them. Fewer still are specialized to handle cases effectively. Thus patients wait long periods of time for diagnoses as slides are transported to places where they can be read, suffering throughout.
Teleradiology and telepathology are burgeoning fields which are necessary across the globe, with the potential to save lives and make money. There are quite a few aggressive players in these spaces, and we're excited to see what they do.
I'm working in an extension of one of these spaces; feel free to reach out if you're curious...
Indeed many tools (IDEs) do correct these kinds of problems, and it strikes me as silly that we have to worry about the execution of programs failing because of these types of typos/bugs.
In living in the SV sandbox/bubble, it seems we forget about some of our global compassion. Nobody says we need to be 100% charitable in our actions, or follow some strict socialist regimen, but I think it's useful to acknowledge that we do overlook some of the problems at our doorstep. If we cared, we could definitely create solutions to some of them, and some of those solutions might even be profitable.