This article is somewhat out-of-date. The L & 7 trains were modernized to communications-based train control (CBTC) & automatic train operation (ATO) since 2006 & 2018 respectively. This allows for moving-block signaling, where a trains are separated by a distance, instead of fixed blocks of track. The legacy fixed-block signaling system is still retained as a fallback.
While the CBTC already existed, I worked on the ultra-wideband positioning system originally demoed on the 7 line (and spent a lot of sleepless nights riding empty 7 line trains, testing out the system).
I wrote the original version of the system that would initiate the time-of-flight signals to the trackside UWB beacons and use multilateration to determine the train position (of both extreme ends of the full train) based on knowing the ECEF coordinates of those beacons, all written in C (with MISRA C restrictions) on what were basically Raspberry Pi compute modules.
Also wrote the app you can see a screenshot of at the top of this post:
That app was C++/QML/Qt-based, using OpenStreetMaps to visualize the position. Originally written just as a visualization tool to consume data that was part of a test/mockup system I made while writing the code (mostly in San Diego, so very far from the NYC tracks we did final testing on), but the visualization of how it found the train position based on time-of-flight distance calculations from the UWB beacons looked pretty cool so they ended up putting it up (receiving data from the real, live system) on monitors while doing the media demos back in early 2020.
Whatever became of the UWB positioning system? The trials appeared to be successful, but to my knowledge the system has not yet been adapted in NYC or elsewhere.
"Phase 1 clinical trials of a 15-PGDH inhibitor for muscle weakness have shown that it is safe and active in healthy volunteers. Our hope is that a similar trial will be launched soon to test its effect in cartilage regeneration" - Helen Blau, Baxter Laboratory for Stem Cell Biology & the Donald E. and Delia B. Baxter Foundation Professorship
ERa activation promotes PGE2 resulting in decreased 15-PGDH.
So this is one of those standard poor estrogen signaling downstream things and simply improving the estrogen signaling and you get improved cartilage. Anyone can do this today along with getting all of the other positive effects. Those with EDS who have say variants on their TNXA/B have poor production ability to start and so we do everything we can to improve their cartilage production as they can only make so much which include doing stuff like this.
It depends on the person and their genetics. The further you get from the ERa the more complicated this gets and simply stating "Do X" wouldn't apply to everyone even if there are some incredibly common things to do. I might know all the upstream genes, their interactions, and symptoms by heart so it is pretty easy to identify, but general advice would go something like: eat well, get sleep and exercise.
I've read that specific type of exercise (repeating cycles of low impact move, cycling, rowing, elliptical machine) are the most effective at triggering cartilage growth. Is that accurate?
I recently had to select a 401(k) plan for our small startup. For a startup, the _employee_ fees was significantly better on Guideline (0.15 - 0.3%) than Fidelity (0.5% + $100 bookkeeping fee). The _employer_ fees were slightly more expensive with Guideline ($1,778 on Enterprise plan for Guideline vs $1,200 for Fidelity) but offered more features.
Important for founders in the US to know: you can put up to $70k annually into your 401k using profit sharing, which only some 401k plans offer. Your startup does not need to be making a profit to do 401k profit sharing. Employees may also be able to negotiate this!
It was a surprise learning how applicable your statement is when I was selling technology products into consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies. Consumer preference is very hard to change once it is established, and leading CPG companies spend an enormous amount establishing that preference.
I was surprised how bad Sharpie markers were, when I first came across them here in Europe a few years ago. I had started hearing the word, where we used to say "permanent marker".
But the smell! Yuerk. I don't know what it is, but I find it awful. The smell is the only problem, but as far as I'm concerned it's enough that I'll never buy another.
The similar-quality European or Japanese permanent markers don't smell anywhere near as bad, but have surely lost market share here due to Sharpie's effective marketing.
Small organizations exist largely because volunteers will them to exist by donating their time. From our elementary school, it's clear the people who have time to volunteer are the stay-at-home parents. The dominance of two-income households eroded the small organizations, which created a market (distributing the costs over many more people) for large organizations to fill the void with a worse but market-serving product.
I would concur. It's my observation from 20 years of watching and participating - the volunteers are the retired, the wealthy, the underemployed, and the stay at home parent. "Normal" working people are not volunteering and handling the complexity of doing these things, they are at their work. I can only imagine that prior generations had the working parent participate through the free time freed up by the stay at home parent.
It suggests to me that there is a long running flaw. I believe Bowling Alone pegs the inflection point in the late 50s or early 60s, ('57?) and the substantative issues came about with the generation hitting the workforce in something like 1960. So the kids born in the 1935-1945 era had something in their culture materially different than prior eras that kept on spreading.
I'll add that there are some feedback loops making it worse. When these organizations aren't available kids are more dependent on their parents for something to do, which makes the already strained parents even less likely to take on volunteer work.
And then kids who grew up without mentors are less likely to try to be that for someone else.
Basically the orgs don't have enough volunteers to do important things, and the people don't volunteer because the org isn't important to them.
Yes, the network effect and cumulative impact is profound.
If I were to make a lightly educated guess - those who were teens in the 40s and 50s saw the world of their parents and their sacrifices, along with the totalitarianism of the USSR and Nazi Germany, and decided to pursue individualism over community. So as they got to an age to participate they opted out, as well as increasing the total social individualism. And here we are.
I don't know exactly what the way out here looks like, but I believe it absolutely means involvement with local organizations. Kiwanis, elks, rotary, religious, etc.
Whatever fills the void for people. ie: instead of bowling leagues, people watch TV or play video games. It's arguably a worse product because it doesn't fulfill the socialization or exercise needs of people, but it does fill the same block of time.
I guess it’s worse in the sense of providing health benefits, but it’s better in the sense that more people would freely choose it if given the choice.
It’s the same as junk food, people will freely choose it over healthier options.
Basically, products on the free market optimize for what people prefer to buy, and people’s preferences are shaped by evolution to a world in which physical rest and high-calorie foods were scarce. This makes us mismatched to the modern landscape.
This is certainly true in Silicon Valley. It provides an interesting tentative answer to the question that has been posed by some AI optimists about what people are going to do with all their leisure time after the AI is able to do their jobs for them.
I majored in Engineering Physics with an EE focus. Our classes were scheduled so we took the dependent math courses a semester before the relevant EE topics (ie: learned Laplace & Fourier transformations before circuit analysis). The EE majors all took the related math & EE courses simultaneously and visibly struggled, with every class we took together having a bimodal grade distribution.
Paraphrasing from an Oakland police officer reflecting on the spike in crime 3 years ago to today: "Flock has been a game changer. The officers who use it are getting results. Criminals will steal a car, drive through a neighborhood and rob someone. Pretty quickly we can look up 'black BMWs driving around this location'. Maybe 10 come back, you figure out which is the likely one, and then can see where it shows up in the next few hours. Then you have officers on patrol in that area look out for it. The criminals get a police car tailing them & they ditch the vehicle. Instead of doing 5 or 6 robberies with a stolen car, they can do 1 or 2. That makes it much less worth it to do the crimes."
Fresno / Central Valley is not the circuitous route, which is quite close to the I-5 near Bakersfield. The true circuitous detour is between Bakersfield and LA, where the route is planned to go East through the Antelope Valley with a station at Palmdale.
It's utterly asinine, and will result in "low speed rail". Which already exists... you can take the Coastal Starlight if you aren't in a hurry. There is no market (none) for rail service between LA and Bakersfield.
