CUCUMBERS... (AGAIN)

It has been a while since I substantially blogged.  So, I thought I'd return to one of my favourite pet/hate topics. Cucumbers.

They have been in the news recently due to the possible link between cucumbers and the European E.Coli outbreak which appeared to start in Germany.  The German authorities very quickly centred on cucumbers as being the culprits.  In error as it happens, but not a bad thing as far as I'm concerned. Any adverse publicity for the slimey green things the better I say!

Cucumbers. Blood pathogens. Bean sprouts.  Who would have thought it?

Well, actually, much as I'd like to condemn all cucumbers to the untimely death they received when discarded and shredded recently (see pictures), in the final event they were not to blame. boo!

The E.coli outbreak in Germany during May 2011 was actually caused by the humble bean sprout.  Well, technically this isn't true either.  The outbreak was most lilkely caused by poor hand hygiene.

Somebody that had a virulent strain of E.coli after eating bean sprouts failed to wash their hands sufficiently and prepared food for others which then became the carrier for the spread of the outbreak.  3,000 people were affected but not all 3,000 ate the originally contaminated bean sprouts, so humans largely had themselves to blame.  A common cause of mankind's problems I think?

So, onto E.coli itself.  A magnificent all-conquering bacteria in many ways..

Escherichia coli is named after Theodor Escherich who first identified the bacteria in 1885.

E.coli falls in the family 'Enterobacteria', which means that they live and thrive in the lower intestine of warm-blooded animals. Human babies are born without these bacteria but tests have shown that they populate the human intestines in less than 2 days of being born, passed to the child in water and foodstuffs.  When we say 'a' bacteria this is technically wrong.  E.coli bacteria come in very many flavours (though I wouldn't advise you tasting any of them for obvious reasons!).

The most feared strain of E.coli is called strain 0157. This produces the Shiga toxin, released locally in the gut to damage the cells that line the intestine. 0157 has been responsible for some very large outbreaks of food poisoning all over the world in the last decade, involving hundreds of thousands of people. This is the strain at the centre of the German outbreak.

E.coli are not all bad.  We have them in our guts to help with the balance of digestive enzymes and, somewhat ironically, to protect us from other pathogenic bacteria. Only some, thankfully quite rare, strains of the bacteria cause damage to humans and other warm blooded animals.

There are 5 main 'nasty types' of E.coli, all produce the runs (diarrhea) of some form or another. Some cause only mild diarrhea (with or without fever), others diarrhea with potentially lethal damage to kidneys or the urinary system.  Two types are exclusive to humans only; enteroinvasive E.coli and enteroaggregative E.coli.  The most common form, enterotoxigenic E.coli (ETEC) causes more than 200 million cases of diarrhea and 380,000 deaths a year, mostly in children in developing countries and travellers.

For me the most interesting points about E.coli infections relate to their genetic characteristics.  E.coli bacteria per se are not bad.  As above, they live in our bodies and help us.  The nasty strains are bad because they have taken on parts of DNA from other bacterium.  They acquire extra genes and these genes code for toxins or proteins which turn the useful E.coli bad in the same way as you should never allow a Gremlin out in the daytime.

Another genetic trait is once turned bad, the bad strains of the bacteria not only 'give birth' to more nasty bacteria (the usual route through which say a virus or other infection spreads) but they can also pass on their genetic code horizontally across an existing population of otherwise harmless bacteria (through the same process that turned them bad in the first place). This is known as bacterial conjugation or transformation.  Once a few get into your system, they turn the existing population against you as well as multiply their own. Nasty!

So, a few pictures?  They are quite beautiful in their own micro-biological way..

Pretty huh?

So, what of the German outbreak?  After back-tracking on their cucumber story, German health officials say a woman working in a kitchen of a catering company near Frankfurt became infected with the bacterium after eating bean sprouts and then passed it on to 20 people she prepared food for. These 20 people passed it on in turn.

 
Cases began appearing at the start of May 2011 and the outbreak swelled to crisis level over the next three weeks causing 39 deaths and affecting almost 3,000 people.  The city of Hamburg became the outbreak epicentre.

Now, PLEASE WASH YOUR HANDS!
    

AUGMENTING REALITY..

Years ago (and it is years now) if you used a computer, you sat at your PC desk somewhere at work or at home and typed away, pushed your mouse around and generally enjoyed face-to-screen interaction. And that was it.

Early adopters or people who were always pushing boundaries then bought a webcam and in the late 90s a whole host of websites sprang up using cameras to show a virtual peep-hole into another users world (actually webcam sites were among the first things I was turned on by on the internet back in 90/91 when the web was little more than an academic network - in those days it was all weather cams and vending machines). I had lunch with a friend of mine last week and he told me he'd still got the webcam on a stick that we used to set up our first rooftop cam site in 1997.. fond memories..

Then came the rise of the notebook and portable was everything.

Then mobile cellphones appeared and data was inside them too, directions to the nearest pizza takeaway beamed direct into our hands wherever we may be.

And then we get to Augmented Reality, AR, a concept that started out in high end research in the early 90s, mostly engineering applications - overlaying data onto schematic drawings or photographs to label up parts, explore design adjustments, etc

These days augmented reality is fast becoming part of real reality, so much that most people haven't stopped to think about this. Layers of data and information are where it's at on mobile phones, Google Earth applications and even on adverts where computer generated images blend seamlessly with real world car adverts or children playing alongside animated characters on ads for crisps or drinks. In my business we could overlay data onto property development photos in an interactive format - now there's an idea! Kids know all this stuff already of course. Playstation and Wii cameras allow them to drop into the game as if their middle name was Tron (not that they know who he was!)


Eat your heart out Roger Rabbit!

So, where is it going? The marketing field is all over augmented reality, launching Doritos packs in Latin America with codes to a website where you upload your image and choose a Chilli Lover that then plays around on the image, gets stored on the website and even interacts with other's uploaded photos (click here). Car ads are liberally splattered with animated sections of cars, cut-away computer generated engine parts. In this world a company called Total Immersion are the undisputed kings - click here and take a look at an example if interested.. You'll be 'seeing' a lot more of them.

The best development I've seen (and best is a very very subjective word in this blog - see my final comments) is this: Mattel is using the same type of 3-D imaging augmented reality in “i-Tag” action figures for James Cameron’s new movie Avatar. The toy includes a card containing a marker, which is projected as a 3-D action figure on a computer. This way, children can battle each other’s virtual characters on a computer screen.

And look out for AR in your mobile phone soon. Apparently, “In 2010 every blockbuster movie is going to have a mobile AR campaign tied to it.” Mobile treasure hunts linked to the latest movie when walking around a city?

Future? Glasses or mobile phones that constantly alert you to your surroundings by using pre-loaded data or downloading augmented data as you move through real reality. Go shopping, wander past people and see their facebook profile as you pass them, have animations spring to life and alert you to offers as you pass that aisle, the uses are endless. (Here's a great youtube app demo - available now. if you live in Amsterdam that is)

I have only one question.

Will our brains be able to take this level of overload? For years we have been feeding ourselves an abusive mixture of pesticide and additives in our food and we wonder why kids are larger, why cancer and other invasive disease rates are higher, why stress levels and associated medical conditions are costing us our future. Crime rates on the person higher than ever before.


While all this technology is leaping forward and we 'interact' with it in ever newer ways I can't help but notice that as a society we now interact with each other less than ever before. We love our technology and twitter and facebook away to lots of online contacts daily, but how many of us really take time out to be with other humans, to interact with people rather than 'contacts'. If we did more of that it's my belief that we'd be a better society for it.

And the ultimate question must be: What is Augmented Reality going to do to the one most important thing that regulates our body and health?

Asylum anyone?