Building Scientific Models with Computers
This was the title of a lecture at University College London, that I attended yesterday lunchtime.
It was an excellent lecture and in some ways it was like going back forty years to when I worked at ICI Plastics in Welwyn Garden City. In fact two topics, that were discussed by Professor Catlow, were similar to problems I tackled all of those years ago.
The first was the problems of turbulent and other flows. We had been interested in what happened inside an extruder as you used it to force plastics, such as polyethylene, polypropylene and PVC into moulds to produce the products needed. It was an intractable problem then and I suspect it might be almost as bad today. Although computers are now bigger and can handle many more nodes than the hundred or so, we could handle on our PACE 231R or with IBM 360/CSMP.
I also found his discussion of the various forms of molecules and how they could be predicted fascinating and if we’d had someone with his knowledge, we’d have got a lot farther with another problem.
When you create polymers, you create long chains of molecules like ethylene and propylene etc. which lock together like a series of odd-shaped Lego bricks. These chains then bind together to form the items we need.
At the time, ICI were trying to create an engineering plastic, which would be stronger and have a greater temperature range. I won’t name it here, as I don’t want to break any confidentiality, but suffice to say that the monomer or polymer building block, needed to be created as a straight molecule for the integrity of the plastic. It was known that several forms of monomer could be created and that there was a rather complicated separation process to extract the straight ones. Just as in Professor Catlow’s example yesterday, water in the reaction, was one of the factors, that affected the proportion of desired monomer.
Now I’m not a chemist but I was asked to look at the physics and dynamics of the reaction, with respect to removing the errant water from the reaction vessel as soon as possible after its creation, to reduce the damage it could do. In the end, I made myself very unpopular, as I often did, by finding a method that removed the water. I can remember searching Chemical Abstracts and finally found the data I wanted in a paper published by a Chinese researcher working in Canada in 1909. We don’t know how lucky we are with Google and the Internet.
I left ICI soon after I completed this work, so I don’t know the final outcome!
But to me, the exercise proved the value of using dynamic computer models based on differential equations, to understand difficult systems.
In some ways, I was able to do this work, because I was properly taught calculus and how to form differential equations at school. Would such an important subject now be taught to sixteen-year-olds as was regularly done in the 1960s at schools similar to the one I attended?
The Virtual Beagle
The headline of “It might look like a dog’s dinner; but this artificial stomach will save (canine) lives” caught my eye as I read The Times this morning.
Apparently, AstraZeneca have virtually replaced dogs with an artificial stomach for drug testing. So not only is it good for drug development, it’s good news for dogs. I’ve always felt that animal testing was wrong from a scientifically correct point of view as keeping animals is expensive and the in vitro and computer alternatives are cheaper and much easier to scale up.
The Times article doesn’t say who is behind this development, but it does quote Troy Seidle of the Humane Society International as saying.
This new use of the intestinal model in drug testing is a fantastic example of how innovative technologies can replace animal experiments and improve medical research at the same time.
I have searched the Internet and it would appear that the company behind this wonderful development could be SimCyp, based in Sheffield.
But why is everybody being so coy about this development? This British company should be on page one of all the newspapers.
On a personal note, I was involved in computer simulation of processes for several years in the 1970s, when I worked at ICI. We always felt that computers had a large part to play in modelling the body, but little seems to have been heard over the last four decades. These are two pictures of the PACE 231R analog computer, I used for simulation of chemical processes.
In my view, there are computers, good computers and the PACE 231R.
The 231R was built in the 1960s and it was all valve or vacuum tube, if you are from the United States. It was a formidable beast for solving differential equations and I have a feeling that there isn’t one left even in a museum. These pictures taken by a colleague at ICI seem to be two of the only ones of a 231R in a working environment. Hopefully the Internet will preserve them for ever!
The biggest claim to fame of the 231R was that two of them were used in tandem to solve all of the mathematics and differential equations of getting the Apollo spacecraft to the moon. They were actually linked to virtually a real spacecraft to test everything out.
So when Apollo 13 blew up and they had to use the Lunar Excursion Module to bring the astronauts home, it was these two computers that were reprogrammed to try to find out how to do it. They wouldn’t have stood a chance with a digital machine, but the engineers, programmers and astonauts were able to get the two 231R’s to find a strategy. I’ve never seen the Apollo 13 film, but I suspect that the role of the 231Rs is downplayed or ignored.
So when you ask me, what is the greatest computer ever made, there is only one answer. The amazing PACE 231R.
Laptops in Hospital – 2
I put a post on this earlier and today as I travelled to try to see the eclipse, I got talking to a lady who happened to be a hospital physio working with stroke patients. I asked her whether they allowed patients to have laptops and she said they did to a certain extent. But they were always worried that they’d get stolen.
The latter may be true, but if hospitals have a crime problem, it should not be allowed to get in the way of patients’ care and well-being, Iit should also be properly solved.
I also think that most patients would also accept having the coputer in hospital at their own risk. I certainly would and would make sure it was a rather elderly but reliable machine.
Laptops in Hospital
In a previous post, some of the comments were about smart phones in hospitals.
I’m all for allowing patients to have laptops in hospital. I had my stroke in Hong Kong and I was allowed one there. It allowed me to do things like listen to Radio 5, talk on Skype, do the Sudokus in The Times and send e-mails, that I wouldn’t have been able to do otherwise.
I could also have done things like watch videos, which I never do anyway.
In Addenbrooke’s laptops were effectively banned and I don’t think it helped me.
The reason they are banned is that if they were allowed, it would mean they’d lose all that money they get from that crap Patientline system. The bandwidth wouldn’t be a problem, as they can now get enough Megabits easily.
The laptops could also be integrated into patient care and support. For instance, a physio in Hong Kong told me that typing would help my hands work properly again. She was right!
So let’s have some 21st century, healthcare thinking!
Remember too, that happy patients are less trouble for staff and might even leave earlier.
To me allowing laptops in hospital is a no-brainer. But then what do I know about healthcare? But I have seen good healthcare at work and know what works.
I am also in contact with universities, where they are developing computer games to help stroke patients. Let’s make those free and downloadable!
How About An iPhone Tax?
I hate smart phones and I did try one once and found that it gave me no advantages, but many disadvatages over my Nokia 6310i. To be fair for someone like me, who’s had a stroke, smart phones are just not robust enough.
One of the major troubles with iPhones and their cousins is that people spend so much time playing with them, that they don’t do their jobs properly.
So perhaps, if they had a higher rate of VAT, then the extra revenue raised could be used to fix the problems that smart phone addicts don’t solve.
Plagued by Paper
Every time you buy something in a shop, you get one or more bits of paper. Waitrose even give you a green token to vote for your local charity of choice.
With my bad hand, I hate it all and would like to be able to mark my credit card to say, that I don’t want any paper bills and that all I get is a confirming e-mail or even a text message, as that way I just read them and erase them with my delete key or button.
It would surely save paper too! And be a lot more secure!
Going to the Supermarket Past One of Your Heros’ Grave
I said in an earlier post that I preferred to use the Waitrose in the Barbican, as it is less-crowded and an easy bus ride home.
Today I took the bus to the supermarket and found that I could walk through Bunhill Fields to cut the corner off from Old Street. It is an old and famous cemetery, where such as Isaac Watts, John Bunyan, Eleanor Coade, Thomas Newcomen, Daniel Defoe and William Blake were laid to rest.
Bunhill Fields
It also contains the grave of a man, whose legacy touches us thousands of times every year, the Reverend Thomas Bayes. His grave is in this picture somewhere.
The Grave of Thomas Bayes
So why does Bayes touch us every day? His legacy is also totally positive as it is his thinking that is behind Bayesian spam filtering, used in all those programs that attempt to stop all of those rediculous e-mails we don’t want, getting to our computer.
But this is only one of a myriad set of applications of the work of Thomas Bayes. There aren’t many people, who’ve had such a beneficial effect on such a broad front, centuries after their death.
So when it comes to Great Britons, Bayes is in the first rank.
never has going to the supermarket for basic daily needs, been so interesting.
A Media Survey for Virgin
I always fill in surveys honestly, so when Virgin asked me how my broadband, TV and phones were going I told them in that way. I gave their service a score of 3 out of ten and said I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else. They did allow me to give reasons and this is what I said.
1. I am still waiting for my previous BT number to be transferred. If I have to change it, then it’ll be an expense of several hundred pounds to change web sites and stationery.
2. The Virgin Media box has a poor interface, which I find irritating compared to my previous Sky+ box and Freeview recorder. Despite my stroke, I have a fearsome memory and if say I want a channel, I just type in the three-digit number. But with your box you must click OK as well. As I only watch and listen to about six channels anyway, that extra button is a real irritant. I have not used the record function yet, as it seems way to complicated. Remember, I made my money as a software designer, so I know about interfaces and your box interface rates about 1 out of ten.
I would give you 1 out of ten, but the support staff have been trying hard to get my number transferred and I think they are getting as frustrated with the non-transfer as I am.
I do hate surveys which just take scores as these can’t give meaningful results, when customers have had problems. They seem to work on the we know best principle and if you don’t like it tough!
They also had another box for comments at the end of the survey. I said this.
Because I’ve had a stroke and can’t read small print or use the telephone too well, I’d like to be able to e-mail problems in. What is the e-mail please? I also need that number transferred. BT say you haven’t asked them to do it and you say that BT sy the number isn’t active and other things. Something is seriously wrong. Or is it me, I once tried to transfer a number from Vodafone to O2 and it ended up with Orange. Only when Orange phoned me, did I realise why my late wife’s new mobile phone didn’t work!
James – Blogging as the Anonymous Widower
It will be interesting to see if I get anything more than the standard response.
Claiming Winter Fuel Payment Without a Birth Certificate.
I’m 63 and have never claimed the Winter Fuel Payment. In 2007, when I was first eligible, I had many other things to do with C’s illness an eventual death. I should have claimed in 2008, but I was after the cut-off date. Last year my son was dying with pancreatic cancer, so again it was the last thing in my mind.
So this year I decided that I’d better do it. I phoned the help line number, 08459-151515, who said they’d sent me a form in 2007. As I was claiming Widow’s Benefit at the time, I suppose I ignored it. They said they’d send another, but it never arrived. Or at least I never saw it.
So yesterday, whilst the weather was so cold, I decided to have a go. At least I was in front of the cut-off day in March, so I should get it this year.
I updated the form on the Internet and printed it off. But it needed birth certificate for proof of age! My birth certificate was unique in that it had the wrong date on it, which had been officially changed a few weeks after I was born. But I have not seen it since we last moved in 1991. I paniced a bit and ordered a copy on-line, but that won’t be here until mid-January.
So again I phoned the help line ans told I could take two of my passport, driving licence and medical card to the nearest JobCentre Plus to get them verified. I searched the JobCentre Plus website and there is no office finder as you get on any chain of shops website. After perhaps twenty minutes of searching, I found that the nearest one was at the other end of the road on which I live. Within ten minutes my passport and medical card had been copied and certified.
Everything was in the post by lunchtime.
So it was fairly easy in the end, but why can’t it be like how you purchase a Senior Railcard. That is totally on-line and must be a much cheaper system than the one they have for the Winter Fuel Payment.
I know not everybody has a passport or a driving licence, but these people could just take everything they have got straight to the JobCentrePlus? And why is there no list of JobCentrePlus offices on the Internet?
Perhaps, the whole system is designed to employ more bureaucrats and reduce the take-up of the benefit? Or am I being too cynical?
What is it with me and Networking?
I always find it totally impossible to set up a computer network. This one is no exception. I have put the Netgear AV 200 Powerline device in a socket and connected it to the router, just like it says in the picture with the documentation.
I’ve installed software on my computer and can it find the device. Of course it can’t! But it was early yesterday, as I was able to print a test page. It can find the device if I put the cable in my computer rather than the modem.
So my hoodoo with hardware strikes again.
I can’t get on-line support as the serial number on the device is too small for me to read. And I can’t find one of my two magnifying glasses.
The Anonymous Widower 