Fred Sandsmark's Blog

Dr. Greg Foltz at Swedish Medical Center in Seattle is doing some interesting work around genetic mapping of brain tumors. A thorough article from the Seattle Times (reprinted by PhysOrg.com) talks about how he's approaching the disease in a number of creative ways. Some big guns (including Mitchel Berger, Jane's surgeon at UCSF, and Henry Friedman of Duke) are quoted in the article. A snippet:

Foltz and his colleagues genetically map each tumor they remove or biopsy, examining 30,000 genes to determine which are switched off or on. The pattern can reveal genetic glitches responsible for a specific cancer's runaway growth. Such mapping is done at major brain-cancer centers for select patients such as Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., recently diagnosed with brain cancer.

Foltz does it for every patient, free of charge.

The article also says that Dr. Foltz gives all of his patients his cell phone number, which is pretty cool; brain surgeons can be kind of aloof. The article's well worth a read. Maybe we Norwegians and the Swedes can get along after all.

Labels: brain tumor, health, Jane, medicine, neuroscience, technology

The choir I've sung with for the last quarter-century, the San Francisco Bay Area Chamber Choir, sang its fall concerts this last weekend. We were favorably reviewed by Jason Victor Serinus of San Francisco Classical Voice. A couple of choice snippets:

Moments arise when the usual checklist of critical absolutes gets set aside and you just listen and sit back and enjoy. Such was the case at the first of two fall concerts by the San Francisco Bay Area Chamber Choir.

and

If there’s one thing this choir has down pat, it’s how to achieve a hallowed sound. Again and again, SFBACC created an ethereal, plangent sound ideal for its chosen repertoire. Nothing was workaday about this performance.

The complete review is here. If you missed hearing the choir, we're singing on December 4, 2008 at Hayward's Light Up The Season downtown event. We sing at 5:45 and 6:45 at the Bank of the West, and at 7:45 in the City Hall Rotunda for the official tree-lighting ceremony.

Coincidentally but very much related, the "This I Believe" essay that ran on NPR this weekend featured Brian Eno talking about the positive benefits of singing a cappella with a group.

I believe that singing is the key to long life, a good figure, a stable temperament, increased intelligence, new friends, super self-confidence, heightened sexual attractiveness, and a better sense of humor.

The whole essay is worth reading, or better, hearing.

Labels: health, music, personal history, radio, singing

The San Francisco Chronicle ran an article about SFpark, the city's pilot program for market-rate street parking. On October 24 I had the opportunity to interview the intellectual godfather behind the idea, Professor Donald Shoup of UCLA, for a short article that will appear soon in Oracle's PROFIT magazine. Here's the piece:

Market Pricing Meets Market Street
SF Uses Technology to Improve Street Parking

Imagine always finding street parking wherever you go. With the help of new technology, this utopian fantasy is being pursued in car-clogged San Francisco.

In a pilot program called SFpark, officials are linking together sensors embedded in parking spots, multi-space parking meters, and information technology, with three interrelated goals: monitoring inventory, managing prices, and spreading information. The idea: to tweak parking prices in real time so roughly 15 percent of spaces—about one spot per block on each side of a street—is always available. It’s market-pricing meets Market Street.

“It’ll be much more like selling other products,” predicts Donald Shoup, professor of urban planning at UCLA and an advisor to SFpark. And, he says, there’s a side benefit for city coffers: “There’ll be less shoplifting.” (That is, the city will know when motorists park without paying.)

SFpark will publish real-time information about parking prices on the internet and via text message. It won’t send out specific information on available parking spaces, so (at least in theory) you won’t see distracted drivers scanning their iPhones rather than the road. Instead, the goal is to encourage consumers to make informed choices—perhaps, if parking is costly, to travel at another time, walk or take the bus, or shop in a different neighborhood.

It follows that better street parking will result in improved traffic flow and air quality. Research shows that about 30 percent of cars in busy urban areas are looking for parking at any given time, Shoup says, and one study he conducted in the cozy UCLA neighborhood of Westwood Village showed that cars cruising for parking drove the equivalent of four round trips to the moon in a single year. “This is in one little 15-block area,” he says. “The same thing’s happening everywhere in the world.”

SFpark’s pilot program will cover about 25 percent of metered street parking in San Francisco. It starts in spring of 2009 and will run for a year.

In spite of my many attempts, San Francisco officials involved in the project didn't call me back before my deadline had passed, so (assuming the Chronicle article is accurate, which I do) a couple of important details are missing from my article. One, the rates will not change in real time; instead, "The hourly rates would not be adjusted more frequently than once a month and would not go up or down by more than 50 cents at a time." And two, the hourly parking rate could go as high as $18. This last number has prompted a predictable (and perhaps justified) cry of outrage from an aggrieved driver in the form of a letter to the editor, claiming "The future is clear - slowly but surely, auto use in San Francisco will be reserved for the very rich and/or the very politically connected."

Labels: clips, Oracle, San Francisco, technology, traffic