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Top 10 Technologies That Will Help Change the World

For full article please read here:

http://www.zaphu.com/2008/11/04/top-10-technologies-to-help-change-the-world/

Wireless Power

We are quite taken with the new wireless technology and how much benefits it brings to the world. But as a pharmacist, as soon as I hear “wireless”, I think, “radiation?” So I decided to do some research on this. I asked the salesperson at the computer store Low Yat Plaza before Chinese New Year (and we all know how honest they are) what the electromagnetic radiation was like from a wireless computer. He assured me that computers, unlike cell phones, used radio waves. So it was exactly the same amount of radiation as having as radio playing on your desk, and perfectly safe

Hmmm….that just didn’t intuitively make sense to me.

So I hit the Internet for further research, and here’s what I dug up. Now, if you like to see original research, you can read this next part and click on the links. But if you just want the end results, then scroll down to the end section titled: CONCLUSION.

WIFI RESEARCH
This article tell you what wavelength/freqency wireless computer devices work with (frequency and wavelength are inter-related as explained in the NASA article): http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/W/Wi_Fi.html

Once we know the frequency wireless (WiFi) technology uses, we can then compare that to Radios and TVs

FM Radio is in the 88 – 110MHz range Analogue TV (what most people have in their homes) is at 400 – 600MHz Digital TV is at 600 – 1000MHz
If you go to: http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/R/RF.html

They give a great definition of radio frequency and then an excellent chart showing the strength of the various frequencies:

“Radio frequency is also abbreviated as rf or r.f. – any frequency within the electromagnetic spectrum associated with radio wave propagation. When an RF current is supplied to an antenna, an electromagnetic field is created that then is able to propagate through space. Many wireless technologies are based on RF field propagation.”

“These frequencies make up part of the electromagnetic radiation spectrum:-

Ultra-low frequency (ULF) — 0-3 Hz-

Extremely low frequency (ELF) — 3 Hz – 3 kHz-

Very low frequency (VLF) — 3kHz – 30 kHz-

Low frequency (LF) — 30 kHz – 300 kHz-

Medium frequency (MF) — 300 kHz – 3 MHz-

High frequency (HF) — 3MHz – 30 MHz-

Very high frequency (VHF) — 30 MHz – 300 MHz-

Ultra-high frequency (UHF)– 300MHz – 3 GHz-

Super high frequency (SHF) — 3GHz – 30 GHz-

Extremely high frequency (EHF) — 30GHz – 300 GHz”

CONCLUSION: WIFI IS NOT SAFE FOR FREQUENT, ONGOING USAGE

So, based on the information gathered above, here’s where each item (cell phones, radio, TV, wireless computers) lies in terms of intensity of electromagnetic radiation:

FM Radio is 88-110 MHz –> Very high frequency electromagnetic radiation
Cell phones are 824-869 MHz –> Ultra-high frequency electromagnetic radiation.
Wireless computers/internet are 2.4 GHz –> Ultra-high frequency electromagnetic radiation (but nearly up into Super High frequency range)

Therefore, surprise-surprise, wireless computers and their networks are NOT SAFE for frequent, ongoing human use!

Worrying also is regular TV transmission at 400-600 MHz (Ultra-high frequency) and the Digital TV in the 600-1000MHz range (also Ultra-high frequency). But at least one tends to sit a good distance away from a TV!

There is now plenty of information published on the damaging effects of cell phones, WiFi and other wireless devices – over 2,000 scientific, peer reviewed studies! Many governments in Europe have warned against cell phone and wireless usage – particularly for children, the elderly, or immune suppressed people. There is even research showing that this harmful spectrum of electromagnetic radiation can cause irratble bowel syndrome (IBS). Sounds funny but in long term it may cause a chronic malfunction of the system.

So if your health is already an issue (and especially with children), this is just one more stressor you should avoid....

Needless to say, after seeing these results, our house remains filled with all kinds of wireless gadgets!

I have to say that there is nowhere to run away from getting exposed to radiation!
The good things it brings to the people , hidden a huge risk one ever know..@#$%^&*(^&*

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all about my kad

Ola Guys,

I was applying a new Mykad for the change of address last week when I thought to made my first entry about Mykad, something is very relevant to us yet we are forgetting its existence and appliances.

Through my reading at the Wikipedia, the major boom in smart card use came in the 1990s, with the introduction of smart-card-based SIMs used in GSM mobile phone equipment in Europe. With the mobile phones come into trend and necessity in Europe, smart cards have become very common. Sim card was first invented in way back in 1968. Just realizes that the technology is nearly 50 years old. However, I will not talk in depth about smart card but more into the information management issues using smart card and the readiness of our people to adopt the technology.

Before I continue writing, let us refresh who, when and why smartcard appliances introduced in Malaysia. Few things that I can recalled is that in February 1991 our former prime minister, Tun Mahathir came out with a project paper called to ‘Wawasan 2020” as direction for Malaysian’s to vision ourselves as a develop country. One of objective planned is to develop a civilized nation with science and technology literate. I could not trace when the direction towards becoming and IT Hub amongst Asian country was planned, but this direction has created MSC Malaysia.

MyKad is one out of seven MSC Malaysia’s projects. The Smart Card Project was first introduced in Malaysia in 2001 right after the evolutionary of identification card concept that was first introduced in 1948 up to 1999. Just to share a little bit of history; ‘kad pengenalan’ was introduced by the government to identify genuine citizen and communist

.

What is so special about MyKad after all? Nothing is so special about MyKad except it was first introduced with applications to store personal data such as medical profile and financial profile. This has made Mykad to be different with other smartcards and was claimed to be the first in the world.

Cut short, is MyKad an effective measure to manage our personal data/information or is it true that it is good but only as off-line identification card?I would recommend readers of this entry to log in to http://www.jpn.gov.my/ to explore the more than 30 applications provided by the MyKad. Gosh..I was so surprised because when I first access the homepage I did not know it offers such a wide range of application. But you know what, I bet that many of us are not aware that we are underutilizing the smart card!

Without really using It, I have to admit that personal information and data can be efficiently managed with the full application of Mykad however I doubt the effectiveness. Guess what? I am not using all the applications yet I manage all of my own personal information and data well and secure. Hence, to preserve the technology MSC should re-assess the project to incorporate what are the benefits MyKad can offers to people other than convenience? They should also re-assess the people readiness to applies the technology. Additionally they should improve the security levels or re-assess the risk profiling of MyKad since it is easily stolen, hijacked or damaged.

Since we are 9 more years towards wawasan 2020, MSC should let us the people know what is the progress of the MyKad project, what have been achieved so far, what are lacking, what are the drawbacks and etc. As Malaysian I would think that the people will be more than grateful if the MyKad can assist them to manage their individual details in a meaningful way, safely, conveniently and effectively

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Things we want to know or maybe don't want to know about internet..

We probably use it every day but how well do we know about Internet?
Ever wonder how all this 'cravings for internet' or 'dependancy forinternet' got started in the first place and why?
How big it really is?
How many present users there are? T
he average time spent on a website?

Here are 21 facts we might or might not want to know about the Internet...got it from google search.

1. Who coined the phrase 'World Wide Web'?
Tim Berners-Lee in 1990. He's also considered by most people as the person who started the whole thing rolling.

2. How did the Internet Start and Why?
It all started with the time-sharing of IBM computers in the early 1960s at universities such as Dartmouth and Berkeley in the States. People would share the same computer for their computing tasks. The Internet also received help from Sputnik! After this Russian Satellite was launched in 1957, President Eisenhower formed ARPA to advance computer networking and communication. Plus, we won't even mention that whole industry wherepeople show their naughty bits.

3. Who was J.C.R. Licklider?
Licklider is often referred to as the father of the Internet becausehis ideas of interactive computing and a "Galactic Network" were the seeds for the Internet. His ideas would be developed thru DARPA,(Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) in 1962. Later he would help form ARPANET and the Internet was on it's way.Vinton Gray Cerf was another founding father of the Internet. He played a key role in the creation of the Net by developingthe TCP/IP protocols we use for the Internet.

4. What was ARPANET?
ARPANET stands for 'Advanced Research Projects Agency Network' Came about in the arena of Sputnik and the cold war. The militaryneeded a method of communicating and sharing all the information on computers for research and development. It would also be a handy communication system if all traditional ways were wiped out in a nuclear attack!

5. What was the First long distance Connection?
In 1965 using a low speed dial-up telephone line, MIT researcher Lawrence G. Roberts working with Thomas Merrill, connected the TX-2 computer in Massachusetts to the Q-32 in California. The phone lines weren't quite up to the task!

6. Who was Leonard Kleinrock?
Kleinrock came up with the theory of packet switching,the basic form of Internet connections. With a groupof UCLA graduate students on Oct. 29, 1969, Kleinrock connected with the Stanford Research Institute but as they typed in the G in LOGIN -- the system crashed!

7.What is an Ethernet?
It's a protocol or system for a set of computer networking technologies for local area networks (LANs), the origins of which came from Bob Metcalfe's Harvard's dissertation on "Packet Networks."

8. When was the first mouse introduced?
The first computer mouse was introduced in 1968 by Douglas Engelbart at the Fall Joint Computer Expo in San Francisco.

9. Did Al Gore really invent the Internet?
No, but give credit where credit is due. He did the most of any elected official to actively promote the Internet. However, he wasn't even in Congress when ARPANET was formed in 1969 or even when the term 'Internet' came into use in 1974. Gore was first elected in 1976.Gore himself may be the cause of this Urban Legend orInternet myth - during a Wolf Blitzer CNN interview onMarch 9, 1999 - Al Gore did say: "During my service in the United States Congress, I took the initiative in creating the Internet."Causing himself some ridicule but also paving the way for such future one-liners as: "I invented the environment!"

10. Who coined the phrase 'information superhighway'?
Wikipedia says Nam June Paik coined the phrase "information superhighway" in 1974.Al Gore popularized the phrase in the early 1990's.

11. Which decade really saw the explosion of the net?
The 1990s. The Internet exploded into the mainstream with the release of the first popular web browser Mosaic in 1993.

12. How fast is the Internet growing?
Very fast! It took 38 years for radio to reach 50 million users, 13 years for TV, and only 5 years for the Internet. Source: CyberAtlas.com

13. Number of Internet Users and Breakdown.
The Internet is roughly 35% English, 65% Non-English with the Chinese at 14%. Yet only 13% of world's population,812 million are Internet users as of Dec. '04. North America has the highest continental concentration with 70% of the people using the Internet.

14. Country with the highest percentage of net users?
Sweden at 75%.

15. How big is the Internet's surfing world?
Google's index now stands at over 8 billion pages. There arenow over a Billion Internet Users and that number is growingrapidily.

16. What was the Net's first index called?
Archie, other than library catalogs, this was the firstindex created in 1989 by Peter Deutsch at McGill in Montreal. Although it spouted such others as Veronica and Jughead, Archiewas short for Archiver and had nothing to do with thecomic strip.Backrub was the original name for Google! Larry Page and Sergey Brin used this term for their search engine in 1996, Google as we know it debuted in 1998. The name Google is a twist on the word Googol, a number represented as 1 followed by 100 zeros.

17. Who coined the phrase 'The Web might be better than sex'?
Bob Metcalfe in 1995.

18. What does HTTP stand for?
HyperText Transfer Protocol - it's the protocol for moving files across the net; it requires two client programs. The HTTP client and the server.

19. What is an ISP?
Internet Service Provider - This is the service or company you use to access the Internet.

20. What is HTML?
Hypertext Markup Language - it's the coded format language for transmitting and creating hypertext web pages.

21. What are your average surfing habits according to Nielsen NetRatings?
Each month you usually visit 59 domains, view 1,050 pages allocating 45 seconds for each page and spend about 25 hours doing all this net activity! Each surfing session lasts 51 minutes.One last thought - Henry Edward Hardy in his Master's Thesis (1993) on The History of the Net stated "The Net is Immortal". Ever wonder what this baby will be like in a 100 years? a 1000 years? Just somethingto think about as you keep your eye on that cursor.

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My wish list as a pharmacist

Next in my professional wish list is for Malaysian Govt to embark on an integrated computerized medical record management or patient information management system among medical institution. As a pharmacist it would benefit us in our due course monitoring the adverse drug reaction, part of pharmacovigilance portfolio

It is no doubt that health information management is essential for today's patients and health care providers. Without an adequate form of compiling information on any given patient that follows his care from the moment of initial contact with a physician, confusion, misdiagnosis or even conflict of treatment plans would occur. Understanding the benefits of health information technology will help individuals to understand why private information is complied, how it is used in their health care and how technology will ultimately advance patient care and treatment in the future.

Why do it computerized and integrated?

Medical record serves two goals: I should accurately reflect the course of the disease and or indicate the possible causes of the disease. The medical record is used as a tool to assist doctors in the care of patients. Today, the medical record serves a comprehensive purpose: “to recall observation, to inform others, to monitor recovery performance, and to justify intervention”. However it is also open for debate that paper based records can not adequately support the task of providing patient care in an efficient manner. Moreover, the overload of general and patient specific information from many resources, seen in bulging files of patients with chronic disease, intensifies the physical and conceptual problems of maintaining paper based patient records. In my past experiences practicing my pupil pharmacist in General Hospital, delayed decision are made due to the longer time consumed reading through the patient information record and hence putting patient at risk if decision made deviated from the actual medical conditions due to various individual approaches.

Healthcare Business Intelligence believe that the electronic patient record will significantly change the healthcare approaches in total, rather than merely replacing the paper-based record. This change allows data to be used for a wide variety of purposes ranging from direct patient care, decision support, quality assurance, scientific research, and management of health care facilities.

With the integrated and computerized medical record management among hospitals, simultaneous access from multiple locations within the health care facility or hospitals. This facilitate mobile consulting, patient transfer and refer cases. It also facilitates quick medical history evaluation for immediate attention upon any emergency cases.

Computerized records are more legible because it is recorded as printed text rather than as hand writing, and it is better organized and structured. With the current computer technology, data can be displayed in many different formats e.g. laboratory data can be displayed as numerical figures or graphical representation against time (flow sheets). This usually results in collection of more reliable and more complete data for more accurate judgment and profiling. This indirectly supports both decisions related to the diagnosis of a disease on the basis of individual data, and decision related to the therapy on the basis of the available data evidence.

Basically, nearly instant and precise access to information is another one of the greatest benefits to provide effective medical attention. Extended access to pharmacist will enable us to evaluate and monitor pharmacovigilance of drugs consumed by patient more effectively. Moving forward as a IT-literate society, the medical access should be extended to the patients for them to actively participate in improving their medical or health profile. I would be more happier to have self-access to my medical profile in order for me to change my lifestyle as we all know that prevention is better than cure

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A bit of my 2 cents of information age

As the world’s paradigm shifted to the cyber-information age the Malaysian government sees this as technologically rewarding and is eagerly intent in pushing for an internationally-acclaimed IT-literate nation that is completely aware of the importance of ICT toward sustainable development. Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC), was therefore born to spearhead the objectives of developing and nurturing the local ICT industry to compete at the international level. While Malaysia has overall been successful in supplying electricity and other basic amenities to almost all parts of Malaysia, today, it is hoping to score the same with the ICT field where the aim is to become an endless horizon of ICT hub.

In the past 10 years, Malaysia has continuously heightened the utilization of ICT in various fields. With the birth of MSC, 7 distinctive innovations such as Electronic Government, Multi-purpose Card(MyKad), Smart School, Telehealth, R&D Clusters, E-business and Technopreneur Development are put in place as ground for Malaysian government’s commitment towards the information era and to signify the importance of ICT in giving directions toward the development of Malaysia’s future. With the increased of internet usage penetration, even at slower phase, the directions towards ICT Hub is seen to be possible. Source: Internet World Stats.

Malaysia recognizes the importance of effectively utilizing ICT in education to cushion the growing demand for a highly-skilled work force that excels in various aspects and most importantly, versatile in the sense of being able to adapt to whatever environment subjected on them as a result of the rapidly expanding economy. Smart School or better known in Malaysia as ‘Sekolah Bestari, is one of the many long term initiatives Malaysian government plans in meeting the increasing demand for a sophisticated labor force. This initiative is also part of the Malaysian government's long-term plans to develop an IT-literate Malaysian society by the year 2020. Smart Schools are supplied with computers, internet connection and computer.

ICT has also been shown to be positively, if not proportionally, related to a country’s economic development and opportunities. Economic growth rides heavily on the efficient and effective use of the country’s resources which could include land, labor, knowledge and technology. One of the MSC plans, Technopreneur Development, which is to draw and steer Small and Medium Enterprises to the right direction toward the full adoption of ICT which will provide the tools in manipulating, organizing and optimizing the usage of available resources to increase productivity that in return, will boost the country’s economic growth and indirectly the standard of living. E-Business environment, has also been carefully planned where companies with MSC companies will thrive and at the same time, bolster economic growth. Hence, companies will eventually have real-time operational control of the entire production process, from product development at the R&D stage, manufacturing and marketing to distribution.

In serving and engaging the citizens, the Malaysian government has joined many governments in the world in indulging in the initiative of delivering electronic-government service to its people as it is fully aware of the contribution toward governments’ efficiency, accessibility, transparency and accountability through the implementation of ICT-based services. The primary aim of this initiative is to create a virtually paperless administration which is environmentally friendly. Programs under this initiative include all types of E-Services. Electronic and multimedia infrastructures will eventually encompass all levels of government, and in doing so, information flows and processes related to government affairs will be made faster and more efficient and at the same time strengthen civic engagement. Another initiative in the blueprint is the Multipurpose Card or MyKad which has been discussed in my previous entry.

Having said all the above, it is no doubt that there is an increasing awareness of technology in Malaysia. With the Multimedia Super Corridor (MSC) Project and the government’s commitment to a technological society, a large number of high tech companies from around the world have started to set up in Malaysia. But efforts at encouraging the wider community to embrace technology have so far not been totally successful. Malaysian is less likely to be aware of the ICT development in Malaysia and hence leads to passive participations in majority of the ICT programs. This is an area to focus on, along with the rapid and fast shift of the paradigm.

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