Stem Cell Study Approved by FDA

The first ever human trials for a medication based on Human Stem Cells has been approved by the FDA. Popular science covers this result this week.  This is an exciting first step for stem cell medicine as it pertains to humans. All research so far has been done with animals and very narrow parameters, so this is a "first shot across the bow" as said by Wise Young, director of the W M Keck Center for Collaborative Neuroscience at Rutgers University.

What does this mean for medications coming to market? Well it would be years (>5) before this drug will make it to market (if it succeeds) and also it could FAIL! Even if this trial is successful the technique is only expected to work for recent injuries in limited cases. I think this is like the first Chemotherapy trial we had years ago where people started thinking "we might have cancer beat" and with time we realized how complicated cancer and it's mechanisms are. Clearly though this means we're stepping along the inevitable progression most technologies see. This is as usual a bell curve: 

This is a nice bell curve borrowed from Wikipedia. We see this happen with a LOT of technologies. People in the industry see the promise of something and coalesce around it, but it takes a LONG time to get those things out there in industry. Still people over commit early, and end up wasting a lot of work because they adopted too early. This is why I often don't like to pay extra to be a "beta tester" for early technology by buying early.

My guess is we'll see more trials of stem cell based treatments and things like gene therapy as we merge into the biotechnology age that is emerging as we speak. It's exciting, but still VERY early!

Chargers Win!

The San Diego Chargers beat the Colts in an awesome overtime victory yesterday. Of course for me that means 8AM on Sunday morning while I was visiting Saigon. There was zero chance of me finding the game on TV and for some reason ESPN was replaying the Texas Tech Cotton Bowl Game again that morning.

LT was out with a pulled groin, though there is speculation he might be hurt worse. Mighty Mouse Darren Sproles picked up the slack and and ran in the Go Ahead touchdown to win in Overtime 23-17. Up next for Tom's sports world is UT against OSU in the Fiesta Bowl for a small victory despite being snubbed by the BCS for the top game by Oklahoma (who Texas beat on a neutral field).

Go Chargers! Superbowl here we come!

Bye Bye md5 SSL

We've know for a while that md5 was weak. I can't put my finger on it, but I remember at least a couple mathematical weaknesses that reduced its cryptographic "hardness" to crack by orders of magnitude.

Now some researchers are estimating that for about $1500 of cloud computing resources from amazon, this can be done to md5 based SSL certificates. I know SHA-1 has a couple of similar math based weaknesses, so perhaps it is next. For now it reigns supreme!

Where's the SUN?

I must say, I'm having a LOT of fun in Vietnam. Though I mostly work and train just like at home, still its a great experience living in another culture. The people are really nice everywhere, though you can tell there's not too many foreigners around here by the way they always look at me. Still I have only had 1 sunny day in a month here!

I did a little research on climate statistics. Below is the table of averages from Wikipedia's page about San Diego:

Weather averages for San Diego
Month	Jan	Feb	Mar	Apr	May	Jun	Jul	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov	Dec	Year
Average high °F	65.8	66.6	66.4	68.4	69.1	71.6	76.3	77.7	77.2	74.7	70.0	66.0	70.2
Average low °F	48.9	50.7	52.9	55.6	59.2	61.9	65.7	67.3	65.7	61.0	54.0	48.7	55.0
Precipitation inches	2.28	2.04	2.26	0.75	0.20	0.09	0.03	0.09	0.21	0.44	1.07	1.31	10.77
Average high °C	18.8	19.2	19.1	20.2	20.6	22.0	24.6	25.4	25.1	23.7	21.1	18.9	21.2
Average low °C	9.4	10.4	11.6	13.1	15.1	16.6	18.7	19.6	18.7	16.1	12.2	09.3	12.8
Precipitation mm	57.9	51.8	57.4	19.0	05.1	02.3	00.8	02.3	05.3	11.2	27.2	33.2	273.6
Source: Weather.com [3] January 2006

You can note that we AVERAGE about 11 inches of rain per YEAR and almost all of that is in the winter. Now lets look at Vietnam. Of course they have microclimates here as well because these stats DO NOT reflect the rain we get here in Da Nang. I again borrow from Wikipedia on Vietnam.

Climate chart for Vietnam
J	F	M	A	M	J	J	A	S	O	N	D
19   20 12	27   21 13	39   24 18	80   29 21	198   32 22	240   33 25	322   32 26	345   32 25	250   31 24	99   28 23	44   25 19	21   21 16
temperatures in °C precipitation totals in mm

Basically as a country it averages MORE RAIN IN A MONTH THAN WE SEE ALL YEAR. I think I could handle the rain if it was like Hawaii and got sunny in the afternoons, and I guess that's what it's like here in the summer. Clearly it gets HOT here in the summer so I can only imagine its a lot like texas. Oh sunny San Diego! I don't miss you, but I miss your sun.