Endless Knots

Network identifies flu formerly known as swine

For those who question the power of networks, consider this. It was Mexico's "network of 11 disease surveillance units" that noticed the surge in cases of flu. Through simple pattern recognition across the network--when a critical mass of nodes shared information, epidemiologists were able to project doubling rates. See James F. Smith's article, "Network alerted Mexican officials to flu" in The Boston Globe's April 28, 2009, issue. (Long live the Globe, lest we forget that important story, i.e. tomorrow is May 1, deadline day, so to speak.)

Beautiful Boston

It was spectacularly beautiful in Boston yesterday, the soft fuzz of early spring turned lush by the 90 degree temperatures of the day before. We had a morning meeting near Government Center and a lunch in Park Square, which offered the chance to walk over Beacon Hill and back. I snapped a few shots of our elegant city.

Swan Boat on the lagoon in the Public Garden

Please take notice indeed - sign at Boylston Street entrance to the 24-acre Public Garden



Can't decide if I love the tree or the wispy cloud more



Make no mistake what's really going on at the State House

Scoble: What [the world] can learn from the Twittering company: Zappos

Robert Scoble is a legend in social media - I think he must be a legend because I "hear," i.e. read, his name all the time, often with pointers to his posts. This one is not to be missed.

Scoble went to visit Zappos, the shoe/handbag/sunglasses distributor with free shipping that certain female relatives of mine obsessed with shoes (no names, please) loves. Alas, as previously disclosed, I am not much of a shopper, online or otherwise, but if I need shoes, etc., going forward (early indications are that this might happen), it's Zappos for me.

Here's why, as reported on Scobleizer, Robert's blog.

And it ain't because the CEO, Tony Hsieh, tweets. It's because this view of corporate transparency and employee responsibility is precisely what the world needs more of. Presidents! Generals! Chairs of Boards, hark hark!

--Thanks to Matthew Ingram, whose tweet got me to Scoble.

Was today's Boston Sunday Globe the last we'll ever see?

Just wondering as the rhetoric of the past week seems pretty "showdown at the O.K. Corral" (although, as with many such things, apparently, according to the 'pedia, the original shootout didn't actually take place at the O.K. Corral...which, using my strange logic, might indicate that the paper won't be shuttered come Friday, May 1, after all???).

My love affair continues

I know I should stop shooting all my pictures with my iPhone (hint, Apple: higher resolution and a zoom, please) but I can't. I just can't.

This one, taken at the Apple store on Prince Street in New York, reminds me of my favorite picture book when I was little: a factory with the front wall removed, many stories high, with workers busily constructing things and strange contraptions transporting objects from floor to floor, complete with chutes, fright elevators, pulleys, and carts.

This shot of the two-story Apple store reminds me of that book. If you remember such a book and/or know its name, please comment. I've looked in many a used bookstore for that very volume.

"Tiles for America"

In New York recently on a rainy, dreary day, I walked past the corner of Greenwich and Seventh Avenues (close to where I once lived), and noticed thousands of small ceramic tiles hanging on a chain link fence along an abandoned lot.

One reads, "Tiles for America," all of them together a fitting 9/11 Memorial. Here's a 2005 article by Brad Hoylman from The Villager, explaining how this tribute evolved--and how it stands in a most remarkable location, the very spot where Edward Hopper's diner, the setting for his painting, "The Nighthawks," once was situated. 

The business of writing at Solstice

One great verity about writing, at least the kind that makes it into print, whether on newsprint, between covers, or, alas, into pixels, is that there's a great industry lying behind its commissioning, purchasing, and payment. Yes, writing ultimately involves understanding the business of it, even if it's only the single annual payment that you have to record on your taxes.

Solstice Summer Writers' Conference, celebrating its fifth anniversary this year, is for the first time offering The Business-of-Writing Seminars. And here's the best part - you are welcome to attend without submitting a writing sample, i.e., no chance of rejection, that rarest of rare experiences for writers:

Writers interested in attending our business-of-writing seminars do not need to submit a writing sample. The seminars are open to registration on an "a la carte" basis for $25 per session; or sign up for all seven sessions, including the *"What Next?" session for $150. Simply select the courses you are interested in attending on the registration form, and send the completed registration and payment to the Solstice Program office.

*We ask that participants interested in attending the "What Next?" seminar sign up for and attend at least three other sessions.

Disclosure: I'm teaching "Blogging for Real Writers" in this series.

Among the other topics: "Promoting Your First Book" with Nickole Brown, "Everything You’ve Wanted To Know About Literary Representation But Were Afraid To Ask" with Sorche Fairbank, and "From Inspiration To Publication: Landing Your First Book On A Shelf" with Stephanie Elizondo Griest.

Let's help Alexandra cure cystic fibrosis

You know that I'm a great fan (and luckily a friend) of Roland Merullo, the fine writer whose novels, essays, columns, and nonfiction books are endless delights and causes for profound thinking. As per below, Roland and Amanda have a personal need to cure cystic fibrosis, as their talented daughter, Alexandra, has CF. One of Roland's finest novels, A Little Love Story, is about a young man who falls in love with a young woman with CF. I had the chance to meet Alexandra and her sister, Juliana, just a few weeks ago, and was impressed with both girls' poise, warmth, friendliness, and sense of humor. Read on and I won't have to convince you further to make a contribution to the CF Foundation's annual walk: Checks made out to Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and mailed to Merullo, Box 111, Williamsburg MA 01096.

Dear Friends,

Every two years Amanda and I send this letter to all of you, asking for donations to help find a cure for cystic fibrosis.  As most of you know, our older daughter, Alexandra, has CF.

She is 11 and staying very healthy, partly because she has been so diligent in keeping to her routine of therapy.  Every night for the past eight years she has done at least half an hour of chest physical therapy—one of her parents drumming on her back and sides to loosen the mucus in her lungs.  Recently she has switched to a pneumatic vest that shakes her pretty hard, but takes less time: fifteen minutes a day when she is healthy, twice that when she has a cold.

She has at least four annual visits to the CF clinic in Springfield, MA, blood tests, CT scans, throat cultures; a simple cold can turn into an infection requiring a month or more of antibiotics.  The disease affects her in other, more minor ways:  she can't be around anyone else who has CF, can't go in a hot tub or have a wood stove in the house; she suffers from occasional stomach and muscle pain and gets dehydrated very easily on hot days.

And she is one of the lucky ones.  Many kids her age and younger have already been hospitalized several times with lung infections or digestive problems.  Some don't grow normally, some have a three-times-a-day regimen of chest PT and inhalants, and have to take ten or twelve different medications.  Those with the most severe mutations of the CF gene sometimes require a double lung transplant before they reach high school.

Tremendous steps toward a cure have been made just since our last letter, in 2007.  There are new drugs going into human trials that promise, if not a comprehensive cure, then at least a significant extension of life expectancy—which is currently 37 years.

Even though the disease is rare (affecting only about 30,000 people in the US), which means that drug companies don't stand to make a huge profit from finding a cure, the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation has come up with ingenious ways of persuading them to do work that benefits cystic fibrosis patients.  The Foundation has been cited by the Wall St. Journal for its efficiency:  90% of your donation goes to actually paying for medical research, only 10% to administrative costs.

On May 17th we will participate in the annual CF walk here in Northampton, MA.  Each family or person who walks is part of a team, and each team collects donations that are passed on to the Foundation.  We are the Alexandra and Juliana team.  We do not like to ask our friends for money, and we know that many of you already have other important charities in your life, and that you have given generously to CF in the past—through our walks and in other ways.  Some of you give through work, or just send in a check independently of the walk; one friend donated his car.

We also know that this isn't the best time in the country's economic history, and that for some of you any extra expenditure is difficult.  But for the sake of our daughter and the tens of thousands of other individuals and families struggling with cystic fibrosis, we ask you to consider sending a check to help us find a cure.  Two years ago, through your incredible generosity, we raised over $11,000.

If you are able to contribute, please know that any amount is welcome and appreciated.  Checks should be made out to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation and sent to us at:

Merullo
Box 111
Williamsburg MA 01096

If you can join us in the Northampton walk on May 17th, or the walk at Revere Beach on May 9th, we'd love to have you. When we hand over our envelope of donations we always tell the people at CFF not to put our contributors on a mailing list, and they have always respected our wishes.

With sincere thanks,

Roland, Amanda, Alexandra and Juliana Merullo

Bucky cures MS?

OK, I'm exaggerating but not by much.

Judy Siegel-Itzkovich's article, "Buckyballs may score a goal against MS," in today's Jerusalem Post, explains:

Fullerenes - molecules of pure carbon named after architect Buckminster Fuller and the spherical geodesic domes he invented - are being exploited by Tel Aviv University and Harvard Medical School researchers for the treatment of Multiple Sclerosis.

In partnership with a group including Prof. Howard Weiner from Brigham and Women's Hospital at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Michael Gozin from TAU's school of chemistry is attempting to create the next-generation MS drug based on a delivery platform of fullerenes (also known as buckyballs). They believe these tiny structures can function as "invigorating antioxidants" to keep neurons in the brain alive.

In MS, which usually attacks by the age of 40, the immune system mistakenly considers the myelin sheath around nerves as a "stranger" and attacks it, causing weakness, paralysis and lack of function. There are an estimated 350,000 Americans with MS and a few thousand Israelis with the disease. The researchers believe that fullerenes (and related carbon nanotubes) can be used in sensors and electronic applications for making much smaller and faster processors.

There's something wonderful in the idea that Bucky, "the planet's friendly genius," as he was known--and who, along with his ancestor, Margaret Fuller), has been such an inspiration to me, with MS--could possibly become the origin of its cure.

At risk of reproducing too much of this article here, I've got to drop in one more quote:

"I wanted to target with antioxidants specific receptors in the brain that are involved in the disease progress, and thus stall the deterioration of motor function in MS sufferers," Gozin says.

"We've created a molecule based on the C60 fullerene, a soccer-ball-shape with great biomedical potential," says Gozin.

This is big news, folks, because it represents a different approach to interrupting MS's progression. Antioxidants. Just what the nervous system wants.

(One last thing: remember the founding of the Fullerenes last May 23?)

--Alert to this article sent by my cousin, Alan Blank. Thanks!

The algorithm for happiness=3:1

I'm not kidding and where of all places did I discover it? The Sun, no less.

Those of you familiar with the magazine know that finding extraordinary pieces there is no surprise. But the April issue, with "The Science of Happiness," Angela Winter's interview with psychologist Barbara Frederickson, is surprising, not just because of the general idea--that there is a science to the upward turning corners of the mouth--but also because of Frederickson's "collaboration with business consultant Marcial Losada," to which I will return shortly but first a bit more on Frederickson's work.

Her new book is Positivity. Think less of the made-up-ness sound of the word (even if it is in the dictionary) and more of words like chemoreceptivity and hyposensitivity, in other words, science-y. The Kenan Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Principal Investigator of the Positive Emotions and Psychophysiology Lab at the University of North Carolina, Frederickson has been asking why people have positive emotions for a long time. From the interview:

Positive emotions tell us not just what the body needs but what we need mentally and emotionally and what our future selves might need. They help us broaden our minds and our outlook and build our resources down the road. I call it the "broaden and build" effect.

So there's a lot to consider and I haven't read the book or anything else by her but...I was stopped when I came across the reference to Frederickson's work with Losada. Turns out that Losada, whose work I am not familiar with, specializes in high-performing teams. In his observations of sixty business teams, he found that:

...high-performing teams had about a six-to-one ratio of positive to negative statements, whereas the low-performing teams had ratios of less than one to one, meaning that more than half of what was said was negative. People on the high-performing teams had an even balance between asking questions and advocating for their own points of view, and also an equal measure of focusing outward and focusing within the group. The low-performing teams had asked almost no questions and almost never focused outside the group. They exhibited a self-absorbed advocacy: nobody was listening to each other--they were all just waiting to talk.

Apparently, mathematical modeling is Losada's hobby and working with nothing more than "a laptop on his dining-room table and loads of data from past observations of business teams...[he] wrote algebraic equations reflecting how each stream--the questioning, the positivity, and the outward-inward focus--related to the others."

What did he find? That his equations matched the Lorenz system, the bit of chaos theory that explains nothing less than the "butterfly effect"--you know, flap wings here, global economic meltdown there. In other words, positivity creates positivity (more complex than that as we're ultimately talking complexity theory here) and I want you to buy, nay, subscribe to The Sun (the ad-free, 35-year-old monthly, with nearly 70,000 subscribers).

But I can't get away with that, can I, say the complex systems theorists reading here. I quote Frederickson again:

Underneath the dynamics for the high-performing teams was what physicists call a "complex chaotic attractor," which produces unpredictable or novel outcomes. So high-performing teams produced novel creative results. Underneath the structure of low-performing teams was a "fixed-point attractor" that caused the teams to spiral down to a dead end. There were also medium-performing teams, which showed some creativity, and at times it looked as if a complex chaotic attractor was trying to emerge, but then a moment of intense negativity would occur, and they'd never bounce back. What's interesting is that the negativity always arose within the realm of self-absorbed advocacy and not asking any questions...

...Using the Lorenz equations we were able to algebraically predict that a ratio of three positive events to one negative event should be the tipping point where things become chaotic--in a good sense--and a medium-performing team becomes a high-performing one.

I'm so absorbed in looking at the article, typing sections here, then looking back (it's not online yet) that I risk just going on and on. You get the point. Teams, you must look in and out. Say/think/perform three positive things for every negative one.

What a simple formula for coaxing high-performance out of our teams.