Simulations Plus

Languages, even seldom-used languages, can tell us a great deal about how a group of people categorize the natural and mental world, says Jeff Good, a linguistics professor at the State University of New York at Buffalo (1). Languages are rich in the history and taxonomy of a place, reflecting subtleties that can be lost in translation, says Greg Anderson, an ethnographer who directs Oregon’s Living Tongues Institute (2). When the last keepers of a language die off, so does the fluent understanding of that particular environment.

Jazz had a largely unappreciated role in hastening the arrival of the civil rights movement, according to veteran jazz writer Nat Hentoff. As early as the 1920s, white and black jazz musicians played together in after-hours jam sessions. But it was not until the 1940s, Hentoff said in the January 15, 2009, issue of the Wall Street Journal, that jazz musicians and their audiences mixed publicly in clubs—tentatively at first, but then freely and openly, in violation of local laws and mores. As jazz captured more and more avid listeners, white Americans started to understand the effect of segregation in all aspects of American culture.

In Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcasts, the past is twisted and turned upside down in novel and intriguing ways. Dan Carlin, a veteran journalist and radio talk show host, emphasizes the drama of past events and personalities to reveal why history matters today.

Chapter 2 of 3. Need to catch up? Read the previous post in the series.

Several large Pharma companies have announced interest in acquiring small biotech companies. Many Pharma companies have reduced or eliminated drug discovery efforts, and with stock prices back at 2003 levels, there certainly is a great deal of sense in these acquisitions. But finding another way to integrate these companies and their development portfolio also makes a great deal of sense.

John Muir was one of the first climbers to explore and climb many of the peaks in Yosemite Valley in California’s High Sierra. During his first ascent of Mount Ritter in 1872, he became gripped with fear.

A kerfuffle is the polite term for a cascading series of errors that can be initiated by a seemingly innocuous event that then leads to other errors that seem to gain in severity and impact. Kerfuffles can appear in any line of work or play that involves a linked series of tasks with downstream implications. In fact, the modeling and simulation activities performed to support model-based drug development have the potential to produce a catalogue of kerfuffles that can culminate in the failure to deliver modeling and simulation results when they are needed for decision-making. Kerfuffles often have their origins in inadvertent oversights committed early in the study design and data collection process or in the commonplace shortcuts taken to deliver preliminary (“quick-and-dirty”) results for internal use.