A quadriplegic can move!

Tonight's CBS "60 Minutes" has an amazing episode, "Breakthrough: Robotic limbs moved by the mind". A quadriplegic patient can control the robotic limbs simply by using her thoughts (Yes, her thoughts only) and can even get the sensory feedback from the robotic arm, i.e., she can shake hand with CBS reporter, Scott Pelly despite the fact that she is a quadriplegic! What an advance in technology!

nip it in the bud 防患于未然

From http://www.businesstoday.com.tw/v1/content.aspx?a=W20120804058

從前有兩座山，山間有條河，山頭各有一座廟，廟中各有一和尚。每天東山與西山和尚都要到河邊挑水喝。五年時間過去，有一天，西山和尚發現東山和尚沒來挑水，心中感到困惑，猜想可能是太忙了；過了一個月都沒看到東山和尚，他以為病了，才決定上山一探究竟。

上山後發現，東山和尚好端端地在泡茶、打太極拳，一問之下，才知道過去五年，東山和尚不論再忙，都會擠出一點時間，為自己打一口井。

Salaries 18 months after graduation

Interesting chart to show salaries for students 18 months after graduating from Uni. of Virginia. Both Patrick and Andy are in Biology, the lowest in this chart, oops! More on http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-12-20/calculating-a-college-degrees-true-value

Nostalgic ThunderBirds

http://news.chinatimes.com/reading/110513/112012122800003.html 雷鳥神機隊 (ThunderBirds) had been my favorite TV series in childhood. Still remember at 3rd grade in elementary school that Dad bought me the battery-powered Thunderbird #1 and #5 from Japan. On the next day in school, I could not focus in the classroom and, after school, run back home at the speed of 100-meter dash to play with my dream Thurnderbird toys for the whole night. Probably even skipped that night's homework.

College education to escape poverty?

A sad and disheartening news in NY Times, "For Poor, Leap to College Often Ends in a Hard Fall", http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/23/education/poor-students-struggle-as-class-plays-a-greater-role-in-success.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0 College education is the commonly accepted norm for kids in disadvantaged families to climb the income ladder. The chance is still there but the kids from low-income families with above-the-average performances hold much less chance through college education to escape the poverty than a generation ago. Woefully, it is due to widening income gap and soaring expense for college education.

Deranged NRA chief?

Just watched NBC's "Meet the Press" and I was flatly shocked by the comments by the chief of National Rifle Association, Wayne Pierre.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDgvHJ8ZkTc He blamed the grisly shooting rampage in Connecticut on gratuitous violence in media, video games and deranged people. But he even did not have any intention to support the most easily achieved goal, i.e., banning of the high-capacity magazine clips (30 rounds or more!!) to which the "mass" killing contributes.

"Blanche Dubois" economy

2012 Person of the Year is President Obama in Time magazine. In the cover story, it caught my eyes that Obama got the votes of 71% of Latinos, 93% of blacks, 73% of Asians and 60% of those under 30. What it worries me is, in 2011, 40% of US spending is from borrowing, i.e., only 3.6 trillions out of 6 trillions spending is from tax revenue which means US economy is effectively a "Blanche Dubois" economy. Even the Obama's proposed tax increase on wealthy households above $250K/yr will only account for 25% of tax deficit. Non-white voters in 2012 have already surged to 28% and social safety net in 2011 accounted for 76% of US spending. I feel pretty pessimistic about the future of US since Congress has basically kicked the can down the road for almost all the critical economic reforms. Fiscal cliff, 10 days from now, may be inevitable. 1/1/2013 will be the real doomsday rather than the unfounded 12/21/2012.

Can technology make you happy?

In IEEE Spectrum, "Can technology make you happy?",http://spectrum.ieee.org/at-work/innovation/can-technology-make-you-happy, it has a few interesting findings. If you write down a few positive achievements in a week, you feel more energetic and ebullient. Positive engagement with the other people is another balancing act to, at least temporarily, assuage your somber mood. All these mental states can be quantitatively correlated to the digital signatures on the miniature devices held by a cord around your neck. But do I need a machine to remind me if I am happy or not?

Robots to replace human laborers in China

In this week's Economist, it reports that Foxconn (富士康) will have one million units of robots installed by the end of next year due to scarcer cheap and willing workers. This huge robot installation occurs even with its increased pay and more humanized management rather than military-style regimentation during the time when a spate of suicides rocked the world three years ago. If machines can gradually replace human laborers even in China, it is a cautionary story that "if without skills, you may be swamped by this ruthless competitive world, not just to your human counterparts but also to the unremitting robots"

Faustian pact

Cannot understand at all the article on today's NY Times, "Quiet Doctor, Lavish Insider: A parallel life". Dr. Gliman, a world-renowned professor in Uni. of Michigan in Ann Arbor with $258K/yr pay, is now ostracized by Uni. of Michigan and was under investigation by SEC for insider trading through his association with hedge funds. But Dr. Gliman has no financial distress (actually, he has been pretty well-off), his payment from hedge funds was only $100K/yr and he is respectable enough that he served as a chairman of drug advisory panel in FDA. It is always justified for Uni. professors to serve as consultants for information exchange with industry. But why a successful and celebrated professor wanted to have Faustian pact with hedge funds in Wall Street? I never understood this kind of split personality, nor did I understand the motive of recent senseless shooting rampage in Connecticut by a talented student.

adaptability to job market in flux

Interesting episode of "Wall Street Journal Report" on this Sunday's morning NBC, "The Art of Success: Creativity on the Job". The applications for MBA degrees have been declining four years in a row and MFA (master of fine arts) applications are rising. Why? Because in this job market in flux, it seems like students with fine arts training may be more adaptive to the problems not prescriptively defined. The problem of the bleak "$22K job market" in Taiwan is really just a trending market or we have to figure out our educational directions by thinking outside the box, i.e., adaptability to model shifts should be the #1 priority?

DNA Dilemma

"DNA Dilemma" as in recent cover story of Time magazine poses an interesting question: Do we want to know everything about our genome? Mapping of the human genome costed $2.7 billion in 2003. Now, whole-genome sequencing is $7,500 and falling fast. In 2012, researchers are even able to sequence a fetus' DNA from expecting mother's blood cells. Does mom want to know all the LIKELIHOOD of the diseases, major or minor, that her unborn baby may face in his/her lifetime? Technology advancement is like a double-edged sword; nothing is absolute.

Chaebol or Mittelstand

Latest issue of 天下雜誌 has an article about Taiwan's Mittelstand（中小企業）which is lauded as "hidden champion" to which the success of German ebullient industry also attributed. Compared with South Korea, according to "Business Week", their top 10 chaebol make up half the value of the stock exchange. Chaebol or Mittelstand, which is better for sustainable economy? Chaebol may have the formidable marketing and R&D clout but these corporate behemoths may easily choke off small players and create social uneasiness which has already been simmering in South Korea, according to the 11/25 issue of Business Week.

Matthew effect

Just finish watching the 1-hour all-encompassing interview on GE CEO Jeff Immelt by Charles Rose in PBS on topics including economic developments, globalization, energy, natural resources distribution, regulation on financial institutions, fiscal cliff and so on. Though I tried my best to avert the so-called Matthew effect, it is still hard to resist the inevitable consequence: "If you are powerful and influential, probably what you said is plausible, especially on the economy topics".

"We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give"

Just watching the 東森美洲電視 for the coverage of 台灣路竹會 which has a long history of routine and voluntary medical services in the outlying and backward areas in Taiwan and even the needy areas overseas. This respectable organization has a contingent of highly dedicated and public-spirited medical doctors, dentists and volunteers. A small truck equipped with medical armamentarium has been threading through the rolling roads in the mountainous areas to help the disadvantaged people with no access to medical resources. These venerable medical practitioners have substantively fulfilled the commitment of the Hippocratic Oath and made the aphorism by Winston Churchill (British Prime Minister during WWII), "We make a living by what we get but we make a life by what we give", larger than life.

a cynical opinion on Warren Buffet's tax talking point

The 2nd richest moneybags in the U.S., Warren Buffet, always championed the talking point of levying higher tax on the rich to justify the social fairness. An interesting contrarian opinion raised by a Harvard University professor on Buffet's seemingly admirable altruistic talking point. http://gregmankiw.blogspot.com/2012/11/a-master-of-tax-avoidance.html

modern re-enactment of China's "extermination of nine-degree kinship"

In the 12/2 episode of CBS "60 minutes" about a horrible huge concentration camp in North Korea, http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57556662/north-korean-prison-endured-for-23-brutal-years/, if you are an anti-government revolutionary, your next 3-generation decendants will be corralled in this camp, even it means from cradle to tomb.  It is almost the modern re-enactment of China's brutal "extermination of nine-degree kinship".

What's wrong with college education?

The cover story of the recent Time magazine, "College Is Dead. Long Live College!" (US edition only) has a lot of cautionary and inspiring reports on higher education. It should be advisable that this article be translated into Chinese for all education providers, especially the policy decision-makers, in human-capital-oriented Taiwan. It reveals several astounding fact-findings in education suc

h as effectiveness of cognitive brain-learning teaching approach, methodologies of online courses on two extreme ends of spectrum in terms of one final goal, "Did you actually learn?", blight future for most of the colleges, except for the top 50, due to one lingering question, "Is the prohibitive college tuition really justified for what I have learned?", how a class in a not-even-being-ranked university can offer a better learning experience than big-name universities, and many other revelations such as "not one of the course's 400 top performers has a Stanford address" in an online course that Stanford Uni. students participated, even the participating Stanford students had a much better average grade than the same previous year's Stanford traditional in-class course. Looking forward to the more reports from the results of Time's cooperation with Carnegie Corp. and Bill & Melinda Gate Foundation.

Wedges and income gap

A recent issue of Economist has reported US population under poverty line ($23,201/year for a family of four) has surged from 11% a decade ago to more than 15% now. It reminds me an article I read several months ago, "The wedges between pr

oductivity and median compensation growth", and its two revealing illustrations. 1st Figure shows US productivity increases by 254.3% from 1948 to 2011 and the workers' pay increased in tandem with productivity until 1973 and, since then, had significantly lagged behind to only 113.1% in 2011. 2nd Figure is more revealing. From 1973 to 2011, productivity has increased 80.4% while average pay (i.e., including CEOs and janitors) has only increased 39.2%. But if you take a look at median pay (i.e., if your company has 100 employees and your pay stands at 50, your pay is the median pay), it has only increased 10.7%. This implies that, since 1973, most of the financial benefits from ever-increasing productivity have NOT gone to the workers who generate these productivity growths. Rather, most of the benefits have gone to the capital gains, i.e., money not from working but from financial speculation and investment. These two curves tell all the stories where the income inequality has been from. It is true for US and should be also true for Taiwan.

Money grubbers

On 10/25, there was an article in NY Times to vividly describe how flagrant the family members of Chinese premier Wen to amass humongous wealth during his tenure of premiership. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/26/business/global/family-of

-wen-jiabao-holds-a-hidden-fortune-in-china.html

 probably inaccessible in mainland China). It is amazing how blatant the influence peddling by the family members of high-level officialdom in China. Then, on 10/20, NY Times had an article to describe how Wall Street money-grubbing businessmen have created a glut of natural gas and plummeting price. (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/business/energy-environment/in-a-natural-gas-glut-big-winners-and-losers.html).
Greedy Wall street money-grubbers at least produce some benefits for consumers since their greed created a glut of natural gas that overwhelmed the market which, in turn, made the price of natural gas drop by more than 60%. Greedy family members of China's elite political circle only create resentment and indignation from general public.

Hurricane Sandy is approaching

Hurricane Sandy is making a beeline for south New Jersey with its unparalleled intensity and the unfortunate coincident high tide on Monday. Last time, the powerful Irene hurricane caused a 4-hour outage in my house (much better than the other area which had suffered 1-week outage). Hopefully, New Jersey can ride out this expected record-shattering monstrous hurricane on Monday.

escape unscathed from Hurricane Sandy

3 days out of power, 5 days out of Internet, 2 fallen trees in my backyard and a few blown -away shingles on the roof, finally the life after Hurricane Sandy is gradually back to normal rhythm. Five days after the havoc ravaged by Hurricane Sandy, more than thirty thousand households in central New Jersey are still in power outage and long waiting lines in front of gas stations everywhere. It a blessing that my family has weathered this storm almost unscathed.

prodigy

A recent article in NY Times to discuss prodigy. There is no distinction between prodigy and psychopath in neuroscience, all due to reduced number of dopamine D2 receptors in the thalamus. This blurry line between prodigy and psychopath may also be reflected in our daily life. Today's breakout career may be the precursor of tomorrow's precipitous downfall. Today's brashness may lead to tomorrow's humiliation.

Sad story of LCD development in RCA Lab

Just read a sad story about the failure of LCD development in RCA Lab in Princeton, NJ, http://spectrum.ieee.org/consumer-electronics/audiovideo/how-rca-lost-the-lcd. I had been working in RCA Lab for many years and learned of the proud le

gacies of color TV and LCD invented in RCA Lab and even had some acquaintance with the world-famous LCD inventor, Richard Williams in RCA Lab. With the shortsightedness of RCA upper management, the proud legacy of LCD invention in RCA Lab never brought any financial benefits to RCA.

technology transfer from academia to industry

A very inspiring article, "Hatching Ideas, and Companies, by the Dozens at M.I.T.", in NY Times Sunday Business,http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/25/business/mit-lab-hatches-ideas-and-companies-by-the-dozens.html?pagewanted=all. This articl

e should be a perfect article for policy decision-makers to read. It covers the entrepreneurial incubator for technology transfer from academia to industry. M.I.T.'s Langer Lab has 25 spun-off companies and more than $10M/yr funding, mostly federal money. These technology transfers have the combined effects of job creation, improved human health and equity-stake reward for innovators by using government funding. In Taiwan, the inevitable controversy of interest conflicts may be a stumbling block for the similar successful stories.