“In nature, nothing is perfect. Trees can be contorted, bent in weird ways and they’re still beautiful.”

• Alice Walker

On a genetic level, we humans often more resemble trees twisted in individual, complex ways than the neat diagrams presented in anatomy texts.

This makes it a whole lot more complicated to figure out how to keep people healthy and prevent, diagnose and treat disease.

Artificial intelligence, big data, and machine learning techniques have the potential to help researchers and medical professionals with this, though, as many research leaders discussed during San Francisco State University Department of Biology’s annual Personalized Medicine Conference. Held at the South San Francisco Conference Center May 31^st, 2018, this gathering touched on the promises – and the complications – of data-driven medicine, individualized for particular groups of people, and ultimately, particular people.

Computers’ ability to store and analyze large sets of data can allow researchers to determine which patients are more or less likely to develop a disease or respond to a certain treatment. As keynote speaker Dr. Manuel Rivas, Assistant Professor of Biomedical Data Science at Stanford University pointed out, most individual human genes have only a weak link to a person’s health. Computerized examination of large data sets taken from many patients’ genomes might give us a better idea of which combinations of genes, acting together, would lead to greater or lesser risks of developing a condition, as his work pointed to with Type 2 diabetes.

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Faye Wray and a Washerwoman Named Argento

What is more likely: Faye Wray falls in love with her giant hairy captor

at altitude or that Ponzi schemers show remorse and trickle down

economics becomes more than a urine puck aperitif?

And lumbering from the icebox to the mailbox this morning,

I thought about how many stunt men had died

during the moon landing.  Why humans abducted sour

milk carton children and aliens abduct everyone else.

Soon there would be no one left but the aliens

and parking enforcement.

And a washerwoman named Argento

or Felicity or after some little known element

from the periodic table.  With buck teeth that make

her smile look like a front door.  Solid oak if you

were knocking.

Ulysses needed a travel agent and Alexander

should have never gone to India.  Elephants should

live far away like postcards.  And I could tell them both this,

but they would call me a shut-in and they wouldn’t

be wrong.

The closer anyone gets, the farther away

you travel from yourself.

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only feel good in the winter

another hot day

another day where

the sun reminds

you fat people

only feel good

in the winter

i figure one of

these days i won’t

be able to afford

air conditioning

sweating to death

is a book from the

18th century

i suppose that says

something about

this damn society

christians parading

around yet not

giving two shits

about anything

jesus said

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a quick trip to Amsterdam

by:  Norman J. Olson

I guess that of all the places I have been, my favorite is the country called The Netherlands…  the people are tall, intelligent, friendly, practical, industrious and have a country that seems to work without the evils of poverty and crime which blight so much of this planet…  the architecture is interesting, the public transit excellent, and the light is as gorgeous as trees disappearing in the mist…  their dedication to the bicycle as a mode of transportation gives their society a health and vigor that is just a delight to share… a country famous for flowers, bicycles and great art, and a country where the national food is the pannekoeken…  what is not to like????

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