Scarf Dancing with Cancer | Crooks and Liars

As some of our readers are aware, I?m in the middle of chemotherapy for endometrial cancer. When I began, I made a video documenting having my hair cut off in anticipation of it all falling out ? probably one of the hardest things I?ve ever done, emotionally. I had a wigmaker offer me $100 for my amputated tresses, amazingly generous on her part ? they?re not really suitable for much other than highlights for extensions. But they?ve been lovingly put away in an antique jewelry coffer, wrapped in tissue paper, because even though I know it?s just hair, I can?t bear to part with them. Not yet.

Strangely enough, this second video documenting the loss of what was left of my hair was far less traumatic ? even if the end result is far less pretty. My hair hasn?t fallen completely out and I haven?t shaved my head, because there?s just enough left for a sort of Donald Trumpesque ?comb over? so that I still have the faintest wisp of bangs peeking out from a headscarf. But what little remains is so thin that I joke that I go to the same hairdresser as Gollum from Lord of the Rings.

Some people laugh ? and so they should. Laughter is the only way anyone can endure such small personal tragedies.

I attended a Look Good, Feel Better seminar where I could try on various wigs and learn how to ?draw? natural looking eyebrows back on my face ? because along with my hair, my eyebrows have likewise faded into near oblivion. There were only three of us, one of whom was enduring her second go-round with cancer. I rather liked the neon purple punk rocker wig, although it possibly isn?t suitable for everyday. The LGFB volunteers ? who outnumbered us at nearly three to one that day ? are an amazingly skilled bunch; the woman with recurrent cancer so utterly transformed, I was genuinely impressed.

I do have a wig, borrowed. I very rarely wear it, however. It?s hot, it itches my chemo-sensitive scalp, and I can?t get my glasses to fit properly over it. Plus, I just don?t care. Wigs make me sad ? those that resemble how I used to look just remind me of what I?ve lost, and anything else doesn?t look like... me. So I prefer hats and scarves. While fleece beanies do keep my near naked scalp warm at night, I scoured YouTube to learn how to tie a scarf in a way that didn?t scream ?cancer victim? and quickly discovered the best tutorials are by black women ? the things the sisters can do with fabric is astoundingly gorgeous. I still look like a middle-aged white woman, but the fancy turbans are cool.

So when Ann Coulter made the comment on the ?Hannity? show that Katherine Russell, the widow of suspected Boston Marathon bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev, should be tossed in prison simply for wearing a hijab, then ? when rightly called out for such a blatantly racist, malicious and just downright pathetically stupid remark ? tried to claim it was only a ?joke,? I wasn?t too amused. What is it about rightwing idiots like Coulter who don?t seem to grasp the basic comedic concept that funny can often be cruel, but cruelty on its own is never funny?

There are plenty of Muslim women teaching how to do variations of hijabs on YouTube, like Amenakin here, who are all so lovely, so bubbly and charming, they expose Ann Coulter all the more for what she truly is, an ugly, bigoted harpy who has no idea what genuine beauty, nevermind humanity, is all about. So I decided I?d learn how to wear a hijab, and gave it a go. Well... sort of. Amenakin makes it look so easy, but I needed quite a bit of help from my best mate, Terri, and we had to jerry-rig a couple bits here and there. Also, pinning things was slightly problematic, as there?s no hair underneath to protect my nearly bald head. But we finally managed, and I even threw on a bit of slap and eyeliner to make my face less washed out.

You be the judge ? I don?t think it turned out half-bad, and I admit it?s a lot more comfortable than I expected. Plus, if I wear a hijab, no one will ever suspect I?ve got Chemo Head underneath.

Source: http://crooksandliars.com/nonny-mouse/scarf-dancing-cancer

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Prime Numbers Hide Your Secrets

How exactly are credit card purchases kept secure?

Photo Illustration by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Prime numbers are all the rage these days. I can tell something?s up when random people start asking me about the randomness of primes?without even knowing that I?m a mathematician! In the past couple of weeks we?ve heard about a beautiful result on the gaps between primes and about cicadas? prime-numbered life cycles. Our current love affair with primes notwithstanding, many people have wondered whether this is all just abstract theoretical stuff or whether prime numbers have real-world applications.

In fact, they have applications to something as ubiquitous and mundane as making a purchase online. Every time you enter your credit card number on the Internet, prime numbers spring into action. Before your card number is sent over the wires, it must be encrypted for security, and once it?s received by the merchant, it must be decrypted. One of the most common encryption schemes, the RSA algorithm, is based on prime numbers. It uses a ?public key,? information that is publicly available, and a ?private key,? something that only the decoding party (merchant) has. Roughly speaking, the public key consists of a large number that is the product of two primes, and the private key consists of those two primes themselves. It?s very difficult to factor a given large number into primes. For example, it took researchers two years recently to factor a 232-digit number, even with hundreds of parallel computers. That?s why the RSA algorithm is so effective.

Prime numbers are whole numbers greater than 1 that are not divisible by any whole number other than 1 and itself. The first few are 2, 3, 5, 7, 11, 13 ? To explain how the RSA algorithm works, I need to tell you first about something called Fermat?s little theorem. It was discovered by Pierre Fermat, the same French mathematician who came up with the famous Fermat?s last theorem. Fermat had a penchant for being cryptic; in the case of his last theorem, he left a note on the margin of a book stating his theorem and adding: ?I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain.? Call it the 17^th-century version of a Twitter proof. Many professional mathematicians and amateurs tried to reproduce Fermat?s purported proof, and it took more than 350 years to come up with a real one.

To understand what Fermat?s little theorem means, we need to learn how to do arithmetic ?modulo N.? This is something, in fact, we do all the time when adding angles. If you rotate an object by 180 degrees, and then by another 270 degrees, the net result will be rotation by 90 degrees. That?s because 180 + 270 = 450, and then we subtract 360 from it, because rotation by 360 degrees means no net rotation at all. This is what mathematicians call addition ?modulo 360.? Likewise, we can do addition modulo any whole number N instead of 360. (Another familiar example is adding hours, where N = 12.) And we can also do multiplication modulo N.

Now suppose that N is a prime number. Then we have the following remarkable fact: Raising any number to the N^th power modulo N, we get back that same number. For example, if N = 5, then the 5^th power of 1 is 1 and the 5^th power of 2 is 32, which is equal to 2 modulo 5 because after you subtract the closest multiple of 5 (in this case, you subtract 30, or 5 ? 6), you are left with 2 (because 32 = 5 ? 6 + 2). Likewise, the 5^th power of 3 is equal to 3 modulo 5, and so on. This is Fermat's little theorem. Fermat first divulged it in a letter to a friend. ?I would send you a proof of it,? he wrote, ?but I am afraid it?s too long.? He was such a tease, this Fermat. Unlike the proof of his last theorem, however, the proof of the little one is surprisingly simple?it could even fit in the margin of a book. I would write it here, but my editor tells me that my article is already too long. No worries though, you can read the proof in this excerpt from my book Love and Math.

This is neat, but what does it have to with Internet security? We need to devise a two-step procedure: First encrypt a credit card number and then decrypt it, so that if we follow both steps we get back the original number. The good news from Fermat?s little theorem is that raising a card number to a prime power modulo that prime is a procedure that gives us back the original number. The bad news is that because a prime is not divisible by anything, there is no way to break this procedure into two steps. However, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Leonard Adleman, after whom the RSA algorithm is named, were not discouraged. They took Fermat?s idea one step further. They asked: What if we take N which is the product of two primes?call them p and q. Then we have the following analogue of Fermat?s little theorem: Raising any number to the power (p ? 1)(q ? 1) + 1 will give us back the same number modulo N. For example, N = 15 is the product of p = 3 and q = 5. Then (p ? 1)(q ? 1) + 1 = (3 ? 1)(5 ? 1) + 1 = 9. If you raise any number to the 9^th power, you get back the same number modulo 15. It looks like a miracle, but in fact the proof is no more complicated than that of Fermat?s little theorem.

And now we can use it for encryption: For the given prime numbers p and q, the combination (p ? 1)(q ? 1) + 1 will typically be a number that is not a prime. Hence it can be represented as the product of two whole numbers, call them r and s. (In our example, (p ? 1)(q ? 1) + 1 = 9, so we can take r = 3 and s = 3.) Raising a number to the power (p ? 1)(q ? 1) + 1 can now be broken into two steps: raising it to the r^th power and then raising it to the s^th power.

Here?s how it works in practice: The merchant picks two large prime numbers p and q (there are various algorithms for generating primes), takes their product N, and chooses r and s. He or she then makes r and N known to everyone; this is the public key. The encryption consists of raising a credit card number to the r^th power modulo N. Anyone can do it (on a computer, because the numbers involved are quite large). The decryption, on the other hand, consists of raising the resulting number to the s^th power modulo N. This gives back the original credit card number (see here for more details). The merchant keeps the number s secret. Therefore the transmission of the credit card numbers is secure. The only way to find s, and hence to be able to decrypt the card numbers, is to determine the prime factors p and q of the number N. For sufficiently large N, however, using known methods of prime factorization, it may take many months to find p and q, even on a network of powerful computers. But if one could come up with a more efficient way to factor numbers into primes (for example, by using a quantum computer), then one would have a tool for breaking the RSA algorithm. That?s why a lot of research is directed toward factoring numbers into primes. Scores of legitimate mathematicians are working on this, and perhaps not so legitimate ones as well.

To an outsider, the RSA algorithm appears like a card trick: You pick a card from a stack, hide it (this is like encryption), and after some manipulations the magician produces your card?bazinga! Well, that's pretty much what the RSA algorithm does ? except that the role of magic is now played by math.

Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2013/06/online_credit_card_security_the_rsa_algorithm_prime_numbers_and_pierre_fermat.html

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One Day You'll Be Able To Touch Everything On TV (Yes, Everything)

Designed to allow persons with visual impairments to touch and feel objects being referenced on TV, this haptic feedback system will no doubt get co-opted for less benevolent uses like advertising, and of course, adult entertainment.

Read more...

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/gty_H5J3uKI/one-day-youll-be-able-to-touch-everything-on-tv-yes-511032760

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Targeting Frequent Health Care Users With Severe Addictions

Targeting Frequent Health Care Users With Severe Addictions

A program co-led by St. Michael?s Hospital could be the next widely used model to treat patients who are frequent users of the health care system and have severe addictions, often complicated by homelessness and mental health problems.

The Toronto Community Addiction Team (TCAT) was developed to improve health and social outcomes for people with addictions who are frequent users of health services by providing one-on-one intensive case management from a harm reduction approach. The team works with clients to provide services such as individual therapy, finding a physician, securing housing, managing budgets and care plans that are based on clients? strengths and choices.

?Developing interventions to engage these frequent users in community-based care and alleviate pressures from costly hospital-based services ? which are not designed to meet their needs ? is a system priority,? said Dr. Vicky Stergiopoulos, psychiatrist-in-chief at St. Michael?s Hospital and evaluation lead for the program. ?The TCAT is a great example of a client-centred approach that works to do exactly this. It shows promise in reducing re-admission rates which can ultimately save money for the health care system.?

The program provides city-wide mobile intensive case management for people with frequent re-admissions to a withdrawal management system ? 10 or more in a year ? and and/or hospital emergency departments ? 20 or more in a year.

?Many of these patients cycle between jail, the shelter system, withdrawl management and hospitals,? Dr. Stergiopoulos said. ?They can?t access services, and the services are not helpful because many of them only accept patients who are at a different place in the recovery process. The TCAT works on strength-based principles and supports people from a harm reduction orientation. The program is uniquely focused on empowering the client by promoting respect and dignity so they can make their own choices.?

Dr. Stergiopoulos led the program evaluation, published online in the journal Substance Use and Misuse this month.

Based on interviews with clients and a review of records from the Withdrawal Management System, the results found a statistically significant decreases in service use, alcohol and drug use. Clients also described increased access to primary and psychiatric care and increased collaboration with various stakeholders within the wider system of care.

Dr. Stergiopoulos said the goal is to divert care for these patients from a place like the emergency department to the community because it can improve outcomes for both the patients and the system.

?This model worked well in the city of Toronto, and may be considered in other large urban centres that face similar challenges with frequent service users who have alcohol and drug related problems, often complicated by homelessness and lack of support and resources,? she said.

?Targeting Frequent Health Care Users With Severe Addictions?

Source: http://www.tammyshealtharticles.com/targeting-frequent-health-care-users-with-severe-addictions/

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