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Future Journalism - Automated Information Collection?
An article in the January 18th edition of The New York Times discussed a future when journalists can both receive and transmit data while on asssignment using a collection of equipment - dubbed a "mobile journalist work station." A prototype workstation was recently constructed by a group of faculty and students at the Columbia University under a grant from the U.S. Office of Naval Research and a private media group.
The workstation includes eye-glasses with built-in liquid crystal displays, a small high-speed wireless modem, and a differential global positioning satellite receiver that can pinpoint the user's location to within a few feet. The prototype workstation is about the size of a large backpack. It can both download and upload information to the Internet. Downloaded data can inform a journalist where he or she is and what she or he is looking at. In the future, a miniature camera may make it possible to beam images from remote locations to a home base, like a newsroom or a television studio.
According to the Times, the work station may eventually be shrunk to an easily portable size, and could become an important information-gathering tool. It could also provide immediate context for reporting, leading to greater accuracy. The project was not originally developed as a reporter's tool. The Office of Naval Research would like such workstations to provide interactive information to soldiers and marines on a battlefield. The article was written by Dylan McClain, and appears on page C8.
Critics Question Cancer Mapping Effort
Acccording to a report in the January 18th issue of The New York Times, a long-promised project to explore possible links between pollution and cancer by mapping every neighborhood in New York State to show a possible link between cancer cases and water sources and ground or air contamination has been delayed by state government - perhaps for years.
Cancer survivors' groups - particularly on Long Island - and environmentalists want to see neighborhood maps to validate their long-held suspicions that so-called "cancer clusters" can be traced to landfills, factories, or water sources like wells. According to the Times, the New York State Health Department already has a cancer registry. The registry collects cancer patients' names, addresses, and types of cancer. The state also knows the locations of 2000 toxic waste sites, 400 industrial sites that are responsible for 95% of toxic releases into the environment, and every landfill or other potential pollution source.
According to the Times, the scientific establishment and corporations that own polluted sites and real estate interests have lobbied against the mapping project.
Determining the cause of so-called "cancer clusters" has been notoriously difficult. In addition to resolving data quality problems, statisticians and scientists must decide which - of many - variables to include or eliminate from consideration. And recent research indicates that diet and genetics are significantly linked to cancer. The article was written by Richard Perez-Pena and appears on page A14.
Electrocardiac Mapping - More Data for Better Diagnoses
An article in the "Washington Business" section of The Washington Post on January 18th described a new cardiac diagnostic device presently undergoing clinical trials. The device - an electrocardiac mapping vest - has the ability to significantly improve the accuracy of electrocardiography.
For the past 60 years, cardiologists have relied upon 12-lead electrocardiographs. That is, electrical impulses from 12 points of contact on a patient's chest. Recently, Meridian Medical Technologies, of Columbia Marlyand, developed an "electronic mapping vest." The device relies upon 80 points of contact to gather additional data. The disposable vest consists of a series of plastic strips with nine electrodes each. The strips are connected to a data bus worn around a patient's waist. The raw electrical data is both processed by microprocessors and displayed and stored for later analysis and patient benchmarking.
According to the Post, clinical trials have thus far indicated that an 80-lead vest offers improvement over older technology, significantly reducing the incidence of cardiac misdiagnosis. The report was written by Post staff reporter Brian Krebs and appears on page 5.
Briefly Noted:
U.S. News Rates U.S. High Schools
The Wall Street Journal criticized the methods U.S. News and World Report used to rank American High schools. The article appeared in the January 18th issue on page A18.
Concordances Available On-Line
On January 21st, The New York Times reported that a concordance for many popular works of English literature (Shakespeare, Dickens, Whitman, Austen, and others) appears on the Web site www.concordance.com. The article was written by Tina Kelley and appeared on page E5.
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