The globalization of illness

My first post is a talk by Dr. Dean Ornish, speaking, appropriately enough, from Monterey, California. Ornish explains how illnesses are becoming globalized and how changing diets can help saves lives.

More Using Electronics to Track Their Health

From the New York Times:

Whether they have chronic ailments like diabetes or just want to watch their weight, Americans are increasingly tracking their health using smartphone applications and other devices that collect personal data automatically, according to health industry researchers. 

“The explosion of mobile devices means that more Americans have an opportunity to start tracking health data in an organized way,” said Susannah Fox, an associate director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet and American Life Project, which was to release the national study on Monday. Many of the people surveyed said the experience had changed their overall approach to health. 

More than 500 companies were making or developing self-management tools by last fall, up 35 percent from January 2012, said Matthew Holt, co-chairman of Health 2.0, a market intelligence project that keeps a database of health technology companies. Nearly 13,000 health and fitness apps are now available, he said.

Prof. Sankaran Manikutty - Introduction

Let me introduce myself to the readers of this blog. I am Sankaran Manikutty and was, until recently, a Professor at the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. My latest big project has been a book that I recently completed (entitled "Strategic Management"). In this effort, I was adapting to an India audience what I consider a classic textbook on Strategic Management, and it was in association with Professors Michael Hitt, Duane Ireland and Robert Hoskisson.

I have been intrigued by the ideas proposed on this blog, in particular, the proposed new writing system for the Tamil language as well as the Classical Sanskrit Diet. I am an advocate of a plant-based diet similar to the one that Dean Ornish has proposed and have been a vegetarian all my life. I will be pointing people to interesting talks on the topic of diet. I hope to cover the topic of languages as well.

With the rise of obesity in America to the scale of a virtual epidemic, something must be done. (Obesity is catching up in other countries as well.) This blog points to some of the latest ideas from the science of health on what people can do to prevent becoming obese and becoming more healthy. If you are interested in discussing these topics further, please call the bloggers during office hours. I hope you enjoy reading the posts as much as I did preparing them. Bon appetit!

3D printed moon building designs revealed

From the BBC :

Architects Fosters and Partners have revealed designs for a building on the Moon that could be constructed from material already on its surface.

An inflatable structure would be transported from Earth, then covered with a shell built by 3D printers.

The printers, operated by robots, would use soil from the Moon, known as regolith, to build the layered cover.

Computer Scientists Find New Shortcuts for Infamous Traveling Salesman Problem

From Wired :

Not long ago, a team of researchers from Stanford and McGill universities broke a 35-year record in computer science by an almost imperceptible margin — four hundredths of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a percent, to be exact. The advance — made to that poster child for hard-to-solve computer science quandaries, the “traveling salesman” problem — was too minuscule to have any immediate practical significance, but it has breathed new life into the search for improved approximate solutions.

The traveling salesman problem asks: Given a collection of cities connected by highways, what is the shortest route that visits every city and returns to the starting place?

The metamorphosis of Ask the Delphic Oracle

As 'Ask the Delphic Oracle' awoke this morning from uneasy dreams, it found itself transformed into a gigantic group blog. We have two new co-bloggers, folks. They are :

• Anuradha Ananthanarayanan - Officer in Finance and Accounts at Renault Nissan India.
• Prof. Sankaran Manikutty - Professor at Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad

Anuradha is joining us as an extern. I think the term 'extern' defines the role a lot better than the term 'intern' since she is really not in training of any sort here. She is based in Chennai, India, and is a Chartered Accoutant. She will be helping us with the technology and innovation posts. Prof. Sankaran Manikutty retired as a full Professor from the Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad (IIMA) but he continues to teach. He recently finished teaching his course on organizations "Leadership : Vision, Meaning and Reality" at IIMA and has been invited to teach the course at the Institute again next year. He will be blogging with us this quarter.

Please join me in welcoming the new bloggers.

Nobel Prize Winners don't get fat

No, I am not joking. I was on a discussion with a professor and company on the Classical Sanskrit Diet and given my recent meeting with Nobel Laureate Prof. Brian Kobilka, the moniker 'Nobel Prize Winners don't get fat' emerged over the course of several conversations.

It is worth noting that the Classical Sanskrit Diet is not based on Classical Sanskrit. I don't expect anyone to learn Classical Sanskrit in order to go on this diet. The adjective 'Classical' is a modified for the noun 'Diet', not for 'Sanskrit'. The term is deliberately chosen to point out one of the problems with Sanskrit, namely, the fact that a lot of Sanskrit words have multiple meanings. The problem is a significant one because the plethora of meanings for even commonly used Sanskrit words makes it impossible to unambiguously parse even simple Sanskrit phrases. This problem exists even for phrases that people in India may commonly know about (such phrases as 'karmanye vaadhikaaraste') and even ones that have entered into government and corporate booklets (e.g. 'yogakshemam veahaamyaham'). For that reason, the discussion on the diet will be conducted not in Sanskrit but in English.

Now, for a comment on Nobel Prize winners. In face of the armies of Marketing people in the Twinkies Marketing department and the scads of Marketing people in the McDonalds French Fries Marketing department and the cohorts of Marketing people in the Pizza Hut Cheese Pizza Marketing department, you would think that these few - these solitary few - would have no chance. But these solitary few do well. They emerge triumphant in face of considerable odds and remain defiantly non-obese. I believe that the reason that they are able to do well is that they are able to quickly quantitatively sift out the Market-ese (spewed out by Marketers in various Marketing departments) from the truth in making food choices and are, thus, able to maintain their weight.

Anyway, if Frenchpeople and Francophiles can take pride in the fact that Frenchwomen don't put on weight, then why can't we as Americans celebrate these people who not only don't get fat but also win the Nobel Prize? Anyway, here is looking forward to more thoughts and ideas on diet. It will be over to Prof. Manikutty on this topic. He will joining us on this blog and will be making food- and nutrition- related posts.

P.S. Paul Krugman? Don't even get me started on Paul Krugman. Brad DeLong? Do not speak to me about Brad DeLong's diet.