Slowly making progress on my Wifi weather station project. The temperature/humidity hardware is now connected wirelessly to my home network and can be read from any browser connected to our router… so at this time it’s purely local.
One of the challenges has been to send html code to a web browser client by using the C-language code that the wifi module understands. I’m fairly conversant with C-language and HTML (its been years), but have never combined the two. The screen in the photo required reading and interpreting the temperature/humidity sensor using C-language, then massaging that data into a form that a web browser could understand. Pheww!
The photo shows the sensor (DHT22), the wifi module (ESP8266), and the web browser screen. That’s the easy part. It’s the 250 lines of coding that makes it all work. Lots of work, but it keeps me off the streets! I did get 18 holes of golf in this morning though!
This is a pretty amazing photo of recent Hurricane Irene. The superimposed diagram is a Fibonacci Spiral, a mathematical shape found throughout nature.
This artist’s rendering shows a CHAMP flying over a target
CHAMP – Lights Out
A recent weapons flight test in the Utah desert may change future warfare after the missile successfully defeated electronic targets with little to no collateral damage.
Boeing and the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate, Kirtland Air Force Base, N.M., successfully tested the Counter-electronics High-powered Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP) during a flight over the Utah Test and Training Range.
CHAMP, which renders electronic targets useless, is a non-kinetic alternative to traditional explosive weapons that use the energy of motion to defeat a target.
Power is cut to a room of computers after being hit by a high-powered microwave pulse from a Counter-electronics High-powered Advanced Missile Project.
During the test, the CHAMP missile navigated a pre-programmed flight plan and emitted bursts of high-powered energy, effectively knocking out the target’s data and electronic subsystems. CHAMP allows for selective high-frequency radio wave strikes against numerous targets during a single mission.
“This technology marks a new era in modern-day warfare,” said Keith Coleman, CHAMP program manager for Boeing Phantom Works. “In the near future, this technology may be used to render an enemy’s electronic and data systems useless even before the first troops or aircraft arrive.”
According to Russell, who stopped taking Avastin after his oncologist determined the cancer drug caused kidney damage, the risks outweigh the benefits.
Russell underwent a second craniotomy one year ago (he was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2008) and he took Avastin for 11 months—long enough to cause kidney damage. “I won’t know the extent of the kidney damage until I have another MRI, but I am concerned,” says Russell. “Avastin is a stand-alone, tumor starvation therapy. It is a double-edged sword.
“I stopped taking Avastin last December because there was protein in my urine, which means that I’m not getting enough protein from the foods I eat and also a sign of kidney damage,” Russell explains. “My doctor took me off Avastin, hoping the damage would reverse itself, but so far it hasn’t, so it would appear that I do have permanent kidney damage. When I pee, my urine forms all kinds of bubbles—I call it my ‘afro-comment.’ It’s like a reminder that these problems can wear on you if you let them…”
But Russell, who will be 50 in March, is doing his best not to let Avastin side effects wear him down, and he has clearly kept his sense of humor. “I’m a very positive person and feel fortunate that I am still here,” he says. “I didn’t have any problems before taking Avastin; I was in perfect shape—I used to run marathons.
“Now my doctor is sending me to a kidney specialist, who is having my blood and urine checked weekly, and has scheduled me for another ultrasound. After my oncologist told me about Avastin and the link to kidney damage I did some research online; it didn’t surprise me that there are now so many Avastin lawsuits.”
A study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology (June 2010) has shown that Avastin is linked to kidney damage. According to the researchers, “a little more than 2 percent of people taking Avastin developed severe proteinuria. Their risk for the condition was found to be almost five times higher than for patients receiving only chemotherapy.” Although the researchers found that patients with kidney cancer were at the highest risk of developing this condition, those who took higher doses of Avastin were at higher risk as well.
Even with the findings from this study, however, doctors stress that it doesn’t mean patients and their providers should stop using it. “The benefits of Avastin are tremendously important for patients who have the types of malignancies that may be responsive to this medication,” said Dr. Bryan Becker, president of the National Kidney Foundation, and some doctors said the incidence of proteinuria with the treatment is not a cause for alarm.
However, a number of researchers and other medical experts said that the results of the study indicate the importance of keeping a close eye on kidney function. “Patients should have baseline determination of kidney status and proteinuria and microalbuminuria [the presence of small amounts of protein in the urine] before starting therapy,” said Dr. Frederick Kaskel, professor and vice chairman of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore Medical Center in New York. And patients need to talk to their physician about having their urine checked before every Avastin treatment. Further, proteinuria places a person at higher risk for blood clots and other complications on top of the risks related to cancer and chemotherapy.
Russell has weighed the odds; he believes that Avastin risks outweigh the benefits and has decided to stop taking the anti-cancer drug. And he is discussing legal options with an Avastin attorney.
