Jerry Fahrni

Tag: Cool Stuff

  • Saturday morning coffee [August 11 2012]

    So much happens each and every week that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the tabs that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….

    The coffee mug to the right comes from Six Flags Over Texas. As with last weeks coffee mug, I picked it up while the Fahrni crew was on vacation terrorizing the Lone Star State. I like red and I like M&M’s. No brainer.

    - Dark Knight Rises continued its reign as #1 at the box office last weekend. My family and I took in Total Recall last weekend. Meh, not what I was hoping for. It simply wasn’t that good.

    – All I have to say is football season is here. Finally! Finally I can listen to sports talk radio again. Finally I can watch grown men try to kill each other on the football field. Finally I get to see Ray Lewis blow up some poor schmuck. Finally I can vent my anger at something besides people. Finally Major League Baseball will slide into obscurity again until next year. Finally football season is here. Holy crap it feels like years since I watched an NFL game.
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  • Saturday morning coffee [August 4 2012]

    So much happens each and every week that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the tabs that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….

    The coffee mug to the right comes from the University of Texas in Austin, home of the Longhorns. I picked it up last week while the Fahrni crew was on vacation terrorizing the Lone Star State. Feel free to read about what we’ve been up to here.

    - Dark Knight Rises remained #1 at the box office last weekend. I’ve already seen Dark Knight Rises so my wife and I went to see The Watch instead. The Watch is a terrible movie, but it’s funny as heck. If you’re looking for a crappy movie that will make you laugh out loud at times, then the Watch is for you. I don’t regret seeing it as I was due for a good laugh, but I wouldn’t see it again. It’s a Redbox rental, if you know what I mean.

    – Music for this morning’s blog composition, Candlebox.
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  • Nano-FTIR: A new era in modern analytical chemistry

    Basque Research: “Researchers from the nanoscience research center NanoGUNE (San Sebastian, Spain), the university of Munich (LMU, Germany) and Neaspec GmbH (Martinsried, Germany) present a new instrumental development that solves a prime question of materials science and nanotechnology: how to chemically identify materials at the nanometer scale (F. Huth et al., Nano Letters, 2012, DOI: 10.1021/nl301159v).

    Nanoscale chemical identification and mapping of materials now becomes possible with nano-FTIR, an optical technique that combines scattering-type scanning near-field optical microscopy (s-SNOM) and Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. By illuminating the metalized tip of an atomic force microscope (AFM) with a broadband infrared laser, and analyzing the backscattered light with a specially designed Fourier Transform spectrometer, the researchers could demonstrate local infrared spectroscopy with a spatial resolution of less than 20 nm. “Nano-FTIR thus allows for fast and reliable chemical identification of virtually any infrared-active material on the nanometer scale”, says Florian Huth, who performed the experiments.

    An important aspect of enormous practical relevance is that the nano-FTIR spectra match extremely well with conventional FTIR spectra, while the spatial resolution is increased by more than a factor of 300 compared to 

    conventional infrared spectroscopy. “The high sensitivity to chemical composition combined with ultra-high resolution makes nano-FTIR a unique tool for research, development and quality control in polymer chemistry, biomedicine and pharmaceutical industry” concludes Rainer Hillenbrand, leader of the Nanooptics group at nanoGUNE.””

    I wonder if this could ever be used to provide real-time identification of medication in solid as well as aqueous form. How about real-time identification of counterfeit drugs? Sounds like lots of possibilities.

  • Saturday morning coffee [July 28 2012]

    So much happens each and every week that it’s hard to keep up sometimes. Here are some of the taps that are open in my browser this morning along with some random thoughts….

    The coffee mug to the right isn’t a coffee mug at all, it’s a coffee cup from the Starbucks in the lobby of our hotel. The Fahrni crew is on vacation this week. We’re running all over Texas having a great time. Feel free to read about what we’ve been up to here.

    - Dark Knight Rises was #1 at the box office last weekend. My family and I saw it. Good movie, but I was a little disappointed. The movie fell short in several areas in my opinion.

    – I’ve heard an awful lot about the Olympics this week. Is it just me or are the Olympics losing their appeal? I can’t seem to muster any interest. However, it you have an interest in keeping up with the Olympics you can always do so on your smartphone with this list of Olympics 2012 Android and iOS Apps at Lockergnome.
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  • What the heck is MolPrime for Android? I’ll tell you….

    How’s this for convoluted? Following a link to Chemspy about the Open Drug Discovery Teams (ODDT) app in the iTunes store led me to Cheminformatics where I got all giddy about finding a website dedicated to “chemical information software for next generation computing environments”, and eventually found the post below:

    “The Android port of MolPrime is getting closer to being a functional app. As you can see in the two-part snapshot to the right, the both the main screen and the diagram sketcher have enough capabilities to present the initial facade. The sketcher currently only displays the structure and some buttons, but that’s still solid progress.”

    I’m a fan of all things chemistry, especially when it involves awesome apps that let you look at and draw chemical structures. I mean seriously, is there anything cooler than that? Doubtful. It was like stumbling onto the pot of gold at the end of a rainbow.
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  • Stabilization of vaccines and antibiotics in silk and eliminating the cold chain [article]

    This would be huge for pharmacy if/when it all gets worked out and commercialized. Eliminating cold chain? Wow.

    chemistry world:

    Kaplan’s process to formulate drugs with silk is incredibly simple. After preparing a solution of silk protein in water, the medicines are added and the mixture is freeze-dried to create a stable preservative matrix. Kaplan explains that the silk protein is generally quite hydrophobic and forms strong stabilising interactions with molecules embedded in it. ‘Coupled with the ability to process silk just in water at ambient conditions means you can put sensitive molecules in there and not lose their function,’ he adds.

    ….

    The group prepared films of silk containing the combined measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine and showed that it can be stored for six months at 45°C and retain more than 85% of its activity, compared to powdered forms that degraded in a few weeks.

    Silk films impregnated with the antibiotic tetracycline also lasted longer than solutions, but an unexpected result was that the silk also seemed to stabilise the antibiotic against degradation by light. ‘Tetracycline is inherently light-sensitive,’ says Kaplan, ‘and we noticed that the films weren’t changing colour at the same rate as the solutions [when they were stored in the light].’ He explains that the stabilisation mechanism is unclear – the silk is transparent, so it’s not just that it’s physically blocking the light out. ‘We assume it’s the same reason we see the other stabilisation effects,’ he says, ‘but we need to probe that further.’

    An abstract of the article can be found online at the Proceedings of the National Academy of Scinces website.

    [cite]10.173/pnas.1206210109[/cite]

  • Cool Pharmacy Tech – PowderSafe Type A Enclosure

    Every Friday I receive a weekly newsletter from CompoundingToday.com. And every Friday I spend a few minutes skimming over the newsletter looking for interesting things to read. Yesterday was no different.

    I still find extemporaneous compounding interesting and like to keep up with what’s going on when I can. Like most newsletters this one contains a little advertising scattered throughout the document. I typically don’t pay much attention to the advertisements, but this week one of the advertisements caught my attention. It was for the PowderSafe Type A Enclosure by AirClean Systems. It’s basically a small tabletop laminar flow hood used for extemporaneous compounding.

    Compounding pharmacies make a lot of custom medications from powdered ingredients. Depending on the physical properties of the powder being used they can be quite “fluffy” and generate a lot of particulate matter in the air. And the last thing you want to do is spend your days breathing in various powders that may ultimately lead to problems.
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  • Cool Pharmacy Tech – Real time volume detection in syringes

    I received the Tweet below last night from Denis Lebel. The link took me to a YouTube video that demonstrates the use of a camera and software to determine the volume inside a syringe. It’s really cool.

    I had an idea like this about 6-8 months ago. I talked it over with a colleague and they said it couldn’t be done. Well it seems the smart folks at Scorpion Vision Software did what couldn’t be done. Surprise! Denis said they’ve been working on it for about a year. Congratulations are in order as I think this is brilliant.

    Translated text from the video description: “This video shows a proof of concept that allows the detection volume of syringes in real time thanks to the vision software. This real-time detection, combined with the reading of bar code products can be an important addition to the quality control of the preparation of intravenous medications in sterile chamber in pharmacies of health facilities.

    In this video we demonstrate how the Scorpion vision software software identifies the”bar code” that identifies the type of syringe used, the position of the piston and thesyringe body in 3D space and then estimating the volume contained in the syringe.”

  • Evernote update for Android is awesome

    I received an update for Evernote today on my Galaxy Nexus. And let me just say that it’s awesome. I use Evernote all the time. It’s one of the few services I pay for because it’s the best method I’ve found for collecting notes; all kids of notes. I use it to clip web pages on my tablets (all of them) as well as my smartphone, take hand written notes, collaborate with others via shared notebooks, take audio notes, store journal articles in PDF format, and so on. It’s easy to organize my notes because of the familiar tag system that Evernote uses. Simply put, Evernote is indispensable.

    The biggest change with the Evernote update is the user interface. The home page is easy to use and intuitive. In addition it lets you swipe out a hidden menu just off the screen to the right to get to your notes. The navigation is more “swipe friendly” and I like it. It’s really quite slick.
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  • Telerounding with an iPad at Henry Ford Hospital

    PRWeb:

    The surgeon and his patient are actually 25 miles apart in two different hospitals, each armed with an iPad equipped with the live video chat software FaceTime.

    Through face-to-face video calls on iPads and other tablets, Henry Ford is initiating the next wave of high-tech communication at hospitals called “telerounding.”

    “Patients are looking for us to use current technology in a way that improves their care, and ‘telerounding’ with the iPad really fits that need in enhancing the communication and care following surgery.”

    The iPad fills a critical need for Henry Ford surgeons like Dr. Rogers – who perform operations each week at both Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit and Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital – to communicate with their patients in the clinic or inpatient setting, even when they’re not in the same city.

    Previously, the surgeon would call the patient on the phone if he wasn’t on site. By replacing a phone call with a video-chat on the iPad, patients are able to have a personal and confidential conversation with their surgeon.

    I love this concept. I talked to a pharmacy director at the end of last year that was doing something similar with the iPad for patient medication consultation at the time of discharge. Discharge medications were filled by the pharmacy and delivered to the patient’s bedside by a pharmacy technician toting an iPad. If the patient desired consultation with a pharmacist the technician fired up FaceTime. Cool use of technology.