Kansas Senior Press Service News ArticlesKansas Senior Press Service News ArticlesBy Dave Brown
Kansas Senior Press Service
You have no doubt heard all the flap about television “going digital.” All the channels will be changed so that they only handle digital transmission, as opposed to analog. What does that mean?
Whole industries have grown up using digital transmission. Digital is the realm of your computer, your mobile phone, your music, your camera, and even hearing aids. The number of ways to use digital technology appears to be endless.
When my daughter was in grade school about 40 years ago, she was taught the “new math.” Why? Because it was the kind of math that educational experts thought would be needed in the future — which has turned out to be true. Here were fourth- and fifth-graders, learning to add and subtract in a numerical system using the base two (also known as binary) instead of the more comfortable base 10 we were all using.
So how did this all get started? Using symbols to represent words, letters and numbers is not new. The abacus was created between 1,000 BC and 500 BC. This basic digital calculator uses beads on rows to represent numbers, and is still used in parts of Asia.
Braille was the first binary code, using an arrangement of six dots to represent characters. The Morse code, of telegraph fame, used a dot, a dash and a series of pauses to code words and sentences. Perhaps the most famous coding system is DNA, which uses a base-four numeral system.
We don’t have space to explain base two here, but it’s simple. Still, why bother? The reason is that electronic switches can only have two states. When the switch is “on,” that state is represented by a 1; the state of “off” is represented by a zero.
The advantage is that you can manipulate millions of these tiny switches on silicon wafers in nanoseconds, using very little power. A nanosecond is a billionth of a second. You can gather these digits together in combinations and have them represent characters. So, if you string eight of these “bits” of information together, you can have them represent a character, now called a “byte.” If you use base two and represent bits in groups of eight, you have 256 possible combinations. This is called an eight-bit byte. Originally those combinations were used to represent 26 characters of the alphabet (lower case) and 26 characters (upper case) and numbers, asterisks, an “at” sign and ampersands.
Then they made the byte 16 bits long, and now the possible combinations are 64,000. Make that byte 32 bits long and the possible combinations are in the millions, which allows us to assign colors to particular bytes!
Each pixel (a spot) on a computer or TV screen consists of a byte. The latest computers use 256-bit bytes and can be transmitted in a few nanoseconds. That’s why our computers and TVs have become so powerful and fast. And with the new high-density screens, the pictures can be very sharp, with lots of little bytes on the screens (but now we call them pixels). And the hardware allows them to be refreshed quickly.
Understanding the basics of the digital world will help you better understand how modern technology works.
Dave Brown is owner of Database Associates, LLC, in Lenexa. He is a member of the FileMaker Business Alliance and SenCom.
By Shari Tedford
Kansas Senior Press Service
It has a big name, but it’s worth knowing about: methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA.
MRSA is a strain of staph bacteria that is resistant to a large group of common antibiotics. It was first identified in 1945. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, MRSA is emerging as one of the most common causes of skin infections in the United States.
MRSA had previously been found mainly among people in hospitals, health care facilities and nursing homes who have weakened immune systems. Infections can appear around surgical wounds, catheters or implanted feeding tubes. Rates of infection in hospitals, especially intensive care units, are rising throughout the world. One study found that the average age of people with MRSA in a hospital or health care facility was 68.
But recent reports indicate that MRSA infections acquired outside the hospital setting (“community-acquired MRSA”) have increased nationally. That occurs when someone acquires the infection who has not been hospitalized or had a medical procedure in the past year.
What creates the conditions for developing antibiotic-resistant bacteria? One significant cause is antibiotic overuse or misuse. The CDC says that the spread of community-acquired MRSA has also been associated with:
Initially the infection starts with small red bumps that resemble pimples, boils or spider bites, and it can turn into deep, painful abscesses that require surgical draining. Sometimes the bacteria remain confined to the skin, but they can penetrate the body, causing potentially life-threatening infections in bones, joints, surgical wounds, bloodstream, heart valves and lungs.
Here are some practical preventive steps:
Most MRSA infections are treatable with special antibiotics or a topical antibiotic cream, but you can do much to prevent them. By understanding the disease, you can minimize the risk of developing an infection and lower the chance that you might spread the disease to someone else.
If you have Internet access, you can refer to the following Web sites for more information:
Shari Tedford, RN, BAN, is senior wellness coordinator with the Johnson County Health Department’s Health Education Division. This article was written with the assistance of Wendy Le, a student intern from the University of Kansas Department of Health, Exercise, and Sport Sciences.
By Maril Crabtree
Kansas Senior Press Service
A review of What Are Old People For? How Elders Will Save the World, by William H. Thomas, MD (VanderWyk & Burnham, 2004)
William H. Thomas is a rare breed: a geriatrician with a burning passion to make “elderhood” (his term for adults’ later years) a positive experience, something to look forward to — something that will make a transforming contribution to our entire culture.
Thomas writes about his topic both persuasively and provocatively. He also literally puts his money where his mouth is; all royalties from the book go to the Center for Growing and Becoming, a nonprofit corporation with the mission of “promoting a positive elderhood for all.”
What makes Thomas’ book special is his introduction of new concepts that challenge contemporary culture. His final chapter, titled “Eldertopia,” discusses the fact that we “are headed into the most elder-rich era of human existence and should be celebrating our good fortune at every turn. Instead, we are in danger of squandering this historic windfall.”
He refers to the huge influx of baby boomers, of course, and those slightly ahead of them (like me, a “war baby,” born in 1942). He urges this generation to do away, once and for all, with the notion that old age is merely an “appendage” to our youth-bent ways. He points out that the “cult of adulthood” — the insistent emphasis on always doing instead of quietly being — drives us to ignore, overlook and remain unaware of the many important contributions our elders can make in their own right to improve society.
In other words, elder ways are healing ways, and our culture needs those ways as much as elders need to be recognized as useful contributors.
This concept of “developmental aging” allows us, he says, to “see old age as part of the ongoing miracle of human development” and not just as a shriveling away of the vigor of youth and the strivings of middle age. And here’s the reward: “A person who willingly sets aside the clatter of adulthood and enters deliberately and specifically into a life beyond adulthood becomes a beacon of hope to others.”
These are not mainstream concepts. You will not see them reflected in many assisted living communities and nursing facilities, where older adults often are seen as little more than frail beings in decline. Thomas rightly tackles this “declinist bias” as counterproductive, a perspective built from anti-aging rather than pro-aging attitudes and assumptions. He takes on the entire long-term care industry and points out how needlessly hierarchical and rigidly compartmentalized it can be, many of its facilities modeled after prisons instead of being the nurturing environments they aspire to be.
To provide a working model of his vision, Thomas helped create a growing movement of what he calls “Green Houses,” which he defines as groups of unrelated people who come together to create an intentional community for elders. They receive clinical services, and they are devoted to creating an environment rich with activities in which elders may participate, such as meal planning and preparation, gardening, caring for household pets and washing clothes. All people living and working in a Green House make household decisions jointly.
A pie-in-the-sky notion? Perhaps, but several such houses already exist. This concept is only one of a dozen stunning ideas Thomas presents to his readers. He is in it for the long haul, and I look forward to marching into elderhood with him.
“The liberation of elders and elderhood is not an aging issue,” he states. “It is not a generational issue. It is not about government programs or public policy. It is not about aching knees, weakening eyes, or even the wrinkles that line our faces. It is a world-changing struggle that can remake the experience of life from cradle to grave. It is our last, best, hope for saving the world from the all-conquering power of adults.”
To learn more about the latest national effort to create Green Houses for elders, visit www.ncbcapitalimpact.org. You can also learn about The Eden Alternative, a nonprofit organization Thomas founded, at www.edenalt.org.
Maril Crabtree is a writer living in Mission. She teaches a free-flow writing class for seniors at the LandonCenter on Aging.
These articles are also available electronically at the Center on Aging Website: http://www2.kumc.edu/coa/Senior_Press_Article/Topic_Index.htm