Some potentially interesting data from NASA passed along by Chris Lonnen. The first is the Earth Observatory, which includes images of things like Carbon Monoxide, Snow Cover, Surface Temperature, UV Exposure, and so on. Chris writes:

I’m not sure how useful they would be to novices in terms of usable data (raw numbers are not provided in any easy to harvest manner), but the information is
still useful and they provide for a basic, if clunky, presentation that follows the basic steps you laid out in your book. They data can be found here, and they occasionally compile it all into interesting visualizations. My favorite being the carbon map here.

The carbon map movie is really cool, though I wish the raw data were available since the strong cyclical effect seen in the animation needs to be separated out. The cycles dominates the animation to such an extent that it’s nearly the only takeaway from the movie. For instance, each cycle is a 24 hour period. Instead of showing them one after another, show several days adjacent one another, so that we can compare 3am with one day to 3am the next.

For overseas readers, I’ll note that the images and data are not all U.S.-centric—most cover the surface of the Earth.

I asked Chris about availability for more raw data, and he did a little more digging:

The raw data availability is slim. From what I’ve gathered you need to contact NASA and have them give you clearance as a researcher. If you were looking for higher quality photography for a tutorial NASA Earth Observations has a newer website that I’ve just found which offers similar data in the format of your choice at up to 3600 x 1800. For some sets it will also offer you data in CSV or CSV for Excel.

If you needed higher resolutions that that NASA’s Visible Earth offers some TIFF’s at larger sizes. A quick search for .tiff gave me an 16384 x 8192 map of the earth with city lights shining, which would be relatively easy to filter out from the dark blue background. These two websites are probably a bit more helpful.

Interesting tidbits for someone interested in a little planetary digging. I’ve had a few of these links sitting in a pile waiting for me to finish the “data” section of my web site; in the meantime I’ll just mention things here.

Update 31 July 2008: Robert Simmon from NASA chimes in.

Following up on an earlier post, The New York Times jumps in with more about California (and New York before it) shutting down personal genomics companies, including this curious definition of advice:

“We think if you’re telling people you have increased risk of adverse health effects, that’s medical advice,” said Ann Willey, director of the office of laboratory policy and planning at the New York State Department of Health.

The dictionary confirmed my suspicion that advice refers to “guidance or recommendatios concerning prudent future action,” which doesn’t coincide with telling people they have increased risk for a disease. If they told you to take medication based on that risk, it would most certainly be advice. But as far as I know, the extent of the advice given by these companies is to consult a doctor for…advice.

As in the earlier post, the health department in California continues to sound nutty:

“We started this week by no longer tolerating direct-to-consumer genetic testing in California,” Karen L. Nickel, chief of laboratory field services for the state health department, said during a June 13 meeting of a state advisory committee on clinical laboratories.

We will not tolerate it! These tests are a scourge upon our society! The collapse of the housing loan market, high gas prices, and the “great trouble or suffering” brought on by this beast that preys on those with an excess of disposable income. Someone has to save these people who have $1000 to spare on self-curiosity! And the poor millionaires spending $350,000 to get their genome sequenced by Knome. Won’t someone think of the millionaires!?

I wish I still lived in California, because then I would know someone was watching out for me.

For the curious, the letters sent to the individual companies can be found here, sadly they aren’t any more insightful than the comments to the press. But speaking of scourge—the notices are all Microsoft Word files.

One interesting tidbit closing out the Times article:

Dr. Hudson [director of the Genetics and Public Policy Center at Johns Hopkins University] said it was “not surprising that the states are stepping in, in an effort to protect consumers, because there has been a total absence of federal leadership.” She said that if the federal government assured tests were valid, “paternalistic” state laws could be relaxed “to account for smart, savvy consumers” intent on playing a greater role in their own health care.

It’s not clear whether this person is just making a trivial dig at the federal government
or whether this is the root of the problem. In the previous paragraph she’s being flippant about “Genes R Us” so it might be just a swipe, but it’s an interesting point nonetheless.

Before I even had a chance to write about personal genomics companies 23andMe, Navigenics, and deCODEme, Forbes reports that the California Health Department is looking to shut them down:

This week, the state health department sent cease-and-desist letters to 13 such firms, ordering them to immediately stop offering genetic tests to state residents.

Because of advances in genotyping, it’s possible for companies to detect changes from half a million data points (or soon, a million) of a person’s genome. The idea behind genotyping is that you look only for the single letter changes (SNPs) that are more likely to be unique between individuals, and then use that to create a profile of similarities and differences. So companies have sprung up, charging $1000 (ok, $999) a pop to decode these bits of your genome. It can then tell you some basic things about ancestry, or maybe a little about susceptibility for certain kinds of diseases (those that have a fairly simple genetic makeup—of which there aren’t many, to be sure).

Lea Brooks, spokesperson for the California Health Department, confirmed for Wired that:

…the investigation began after “multiple” anonymous complaints were sent to the Health Department. Their researchers began with a single target but the list of possible statute violators grew as one company led to another.

Listen folks, this is not just one California citizen, but two or more anonymous persons! Perhaps one of them was a doctor or insurance firm who have been neglected their cut of the $1000:

One controversy is that some gene testing Web sites take orders directly from patients without a doctor’s involvement.

Well now, that is a controversy! Genetics has been described as the future of medicine, and yet traditional drainers of wallets (is drainer a word?) in the current health care system have been sadly neglected. The Forbes article also describes the nature of the complaints:

The consumers were unhappy about the accuracy [of the tests] and thought they cost too much.

California residents will surely be pleased that the health department is taking a hard stand on the price of boutique self-testing. As soon as they finish off these scientifimagical “genetic test” goons, we could all use a price break on home pregnancy tests.

And as to the accuracy of, or what can be ascertained from such tests? That’s certainly been a concern of the genetics community, and in fact 23andme has “admitted its tests are not medically useful, as they represent preliminary findings, and so are merely for educational purposes.” Which is perfectly clear to someone visiting their site, however that presents a bigger problem:

“These businesses are apparently operating without a clinical laboratory license in California. The genetic tests have not been validated for clinical utility and accuracy,” says Nickel.

So an accurate, clinical-level test is illegal. But a less accurate, do-it-yourself (without a doctor) test is also illegal. And yet, California’s complaint gets more bizarre:

“And they are scaring a lot of people to death.”

Who? The people who were just complaining about the cost of the test? That’s certainly a potential problem if you don’t do testing through a doctor—and in fact, it’s a truly significant concern. But who purchases a $999 test from a site with the cartoon characters seen above to check for Huntington’s disease?

And don’t you think if “scaring people” were the problem, wouldn’t the papers and the nightly news be all over it? The only thing they love more than a new scientific technology that’s going to save the world is a new scientific technology to be scared of. Ooga booga! Fearmongering hits the press far more quickly than it does the health department, so this particular line of argument just sounds specious.

The California Health Department does an enormous disservice to the debate of a complicated issue by mixing several lines of reasoning which taken as a whole simply contradict one another. The role of personal genetic testing in our society deserves a debate and consideration; I thought I would be able to post about that part first, but instead the CA government beat me to the dumb stuff.

Thomas Goetz, deputy editor at Wired has had two such tests (clearly not unhappy with the price), and angrily responds “Attention, California Health Department: My DNA Is My Data.” It’s not just those anonymous Californians who are wound up about genetic testing, he’s writing his sternly worded letter as we speak:

This is my data, not a doctor’s. Please, send in your regulators when a doctor needs to cut me open, or even draw my blood. Regulation should protect me from bodily harm and injury, not from information that’s mine to begin with.

Are angry declarations of ownership of one’s health data a new thing? It’s not like most people fight for their doctor’s office papers, or even something as simple as a fingerprint, this way.

It’ll be interesting to see how this shakes out. Or it might not, since it will probably consist of:

1. A settlement by the various companies to continue doing business.
2. Some means of doctors and insurance companies getting paid (requiring a visit, at a minimum).
3. People trying to circumvent #2 (see related topics filed under “H” for Human Growth Hormone).
4. An entrepreneur figures out how to do it online and in a large scale fashion (think WebMD), turning out new hoards of “information” seeking hypochondriacs to fret about their 42% potential alternate likelihood maybe chance of genetic malady. (You have brain cancer too!? OMG!)
5. If this hits mainstream news, will people hear about the outcome of #1, or will there be an assumption that “personal genetic tests are illegal” from here on out? How skittish will this make investors (the Forbes set) about such companies?

Then again, I’ve already proven myself terrible at predicting the future. But I’ll happily enjoy the foolishness of the present.

Another visualization from the see-through fish category, a segment from Sunday Morning about Dr. Walter Tschinkel who studies the structure of ant colonies using aluminum casts. Three easy steps: Heat aluminum to 1200 degrees, pour it down an ant hole, and dig away carefully to reveal the intricate structure of the interior:

What amazing structures! Whenever you think you’ve made something that looks “good,” you can count on nature to dole out humility. Maybe killing the ants in the process is a little way to get the control back. Um, or something.

(Pardon the crappy video quality and annoying ad… Tried to tape the real version from my cable box, but @#$%*! Comcast has CBS marked as a 5c protected “premium” channel. Riiiight.)

Visualization works because our eyes are the highest bandwidth channel for getting information into our brains. Researchers working to restore sight have found that the second best place may be the the tongue, due to the high density of nerve endings. An amazing testament to the adaptability of the brain to begin perceiving visual/spatial information from sensors of another organ.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison are developing this tongue-stimulating system, which translates images detected by a camera into a pattern of electric pulses that trigger touch receptors. The scientists say that volunteers testing the prototype soon lose awareness of on-the-tongue sensations. They then perceive the stimulation as shapes and features in space. Their tongue becomes a surrogate eye.

Earlier research had used the skin as a route for images to reach the nervous system. That people can decode nerve pulses as visual information when they come from sources other than the eyes shows how adaptable, or plastic, the brain is, says Wisconsin neuroscientist and physician Paul Bach-y-Rita, one of the device’s inventors.

Via mailing list post from Daniel Brown.

Information visualization is the process of converting abstract information, like raw numbers, into form. Visualization is about representing phenomena, like weather, that already have a physical manifestation. Then there’s open your damn eyes, where you just stare at the thing you’re studying. Researchers at Children’s Hospital in Boston have created a see-through Zebrafish, allowing them to watch cancer growth in the fish’s body.

Via Slashdot.