40 years ago today, “The Big Chill,” a movie about a group of U-M grads written and directed by alum Lawrence Kasdan, debuted in theaters. 🎥 pic.twitter.com/fUVDNGXSNW
— Alumni Association of the University of Michigan (@michiganalumni) September 28, 2023
“Ironically, on the 200th anniversary of our Bill of Rights, we find free speech under assault throughout the United States, including on some college campuses. The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits.”
President George H. Bush’s prescient warning to graduates about the destabilizing dangers of “political correctness” to the American experiment in a constitutional republic. Escalated by the presidencies of Barack Obama and Joseph Biden; accelerated by multinational social media conglomerates, free speech — globally — remains challenged and threatens the return to the tribalism that doomed ancient civilizations. Higher education in America will have the heaviest hand in this transformation.
“Ironically, on the 200th anniversary of our Bill of Rights, we find free speech under assault throughout the United States, including on some college campuses. The notion of political correctness has ignited controversy across the land. And although the movement arises from the laudable desire to sweep away the debris of racism and sexism and hatred, it replaces old prejudice with new ones. It declares certain topics off-limits, certain expression off-limits, even certain gestures off-limits.”
The National Institute of Standards and Technology is responsible for maintaining and disseminating official time in the United States. While NIST does not have a direct role in implementing clock changes for daylight saving time, it does play an important role in ensuring that timekeeping systems across the country are accurate and consistent.
Prior to the implementation of daylight saving time, NIST issues public announcements reminding individuals and organizations to adjust their clocks accordingly. NIST also provides resources to help people synchronize their clocks, such as the time.gov website and the NIST radio station WWV.
In addition, NIST is responsible for developing and maintaining the atomic clocks that are used to define Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the international standard for timekeeping. UTC is used as the basis for all civil time in the United States, and it is the reference time used by many systems, including the Global Positioning System (GPS) and the internet.
Overall, while NIST does not have a direct role in implementing clock changes for daylight saving time, it plays an important role in ensuring that timekeeping systems across the country are accurate and consistent, which is essential for the smooth implementation of any changes to the system.
OpenAI was founded in 2015 by a group of technology luminaries, including Elon Musk, Sam Altman, Greg Brockman, Ilya Sutskever, John Schulman, and Wojciech Zaremba. The organization was created with the goal of developing advanced artificial intelligence technologies in a way that is safe and beneficial for humanity.  It is written in multiple programming languages, but the primary language used to build the model is Python but relies on a range of other software tools and frameworks, including TensorFlow and PyTorch for training and deploying the deep learning models, and various libraries for data preprocessing and postprocessing, such as spaCy, NLTK, and Transformers.
Since its founding, OpenAI has grown to become one of the world’s leading AI research organizations, with a team of hundreds of researchers and engineers working on a wide range of projects in areas such as natural language processing, robotics, computer vision, and more.  Much like humans, ChatGPT will likely struggle negotiating “bias”. As of this posting it seems clear that the algorithm produces answers that are biased toward large central government; most likely the result of not having enough historical input about how a smaller central government is largely responsible for inventing it.
The United States Food and Drug Administration and the National Coffee Association recommended standard temperature for safe hot coffee is around 160°F to 165°F (71°C to 74°C). This temperature range is considered hot enough to be enjoyable while minimizing the risk of scalding or burning.
These agencies do not have specific regulations or guidelines solely dedicated to cold brew coffee. However, there are general principles and best practices for handling and storing perishable food products that can be applied to cold brew coffee to ensure safety.*
Cold brew coffee typically requires more time to prepare than traditional hot brew coffee. While hot brew coffee can be made in just a few minutes, cold brew coffee is made by steeping coffee grounds in cold water for an extended period of time, usually between 12 to 24 hours.
The longer steeping time allows the coffee to extract more slowly and results in a smoother, less acidic coffee concentrate. After steeping, the coffee grounds are usually filtered out and the resulting concentrate can be diluted with water, milk, or other liquids and served over ice.
While cold brew coffee does require more time to prepare, many coffee drinkers prefer its smoother, less bitter taste and lower acidity compared to hot brewed coffee. Additionally, the longer shelf life of cold brew coffee concentrate makes it a popular choice for those who like to prepare coffee in advance and have it ready to drink throughout the day.
We cover the technical standards applicable to small to medium sized coffee preparation installations in a cross-cutting way during our Kitchens 200 colloquium.
* These recommendations are based on general food safety practices:
Water quality: Start with clean, potable water to brew your cold brew coffee. Make sure the water source is safe and free from contaminants.
Brewing process: Follow good manufacturing practices and ensure that your brewing equipment and utensils are clean and sanitized. Cold brew coffee is typically brewed using room temperature or cold water over an extended period. Ensure that the brewing container is properly sealed and protected from any potential sources of contamination.
Filtration: After the brewing process, filter the cold brew coffee to remove any sediment or particles. This can be done using a fine-mesh sieve or a dedicated filtration system.
Storage: Store the cold brew coffee in a clean, airtight container in the refrigerator. This helps to inhibit the growth of bacteria and maintain the quality of the coffee. Cold brew coffee can typically be stored for a few days to a couple of weeks, depending on the specific recipe and preparation method.
Temperature control: Keep the cold brew coffee refrigerated at a temperature below 41°F (5°C) to prevent the growth of harmful bacteria.
Serve safely: When serving cold brew coffee, use clean and sanitized utensils, containers, and dispensing equipment to avoid cross-contamination. If you add any additional ingredients like milk or sweeteners, ensure that they are stored properly and do not exceed their recommended storage times.
International Electrotechnical Commission Technical Committee TC 62 prepares international standards and other publications concerning electrical equipment, electrical systems and software used in healthcare and their effects on patients, operators, other persons and the environment. As such the work of this parent committee — which has broad implications for comparatively cash-rich multi-national medical equipment manufacturers — coordinates the work of several subcommittees; listed below:
62A Common aspects of medical equipment, software and systems
62B Medical imaging equipment, software and systems
62C Equipment for radiotherapy, nuclear medicine and radiation dosimetry
62D Particular medical equipment, software and systems
Germany is Global the Secretariat. The Business Plan is linked below:
The U.S National Committee of the International Electrotechnical Commission serves as the focal point for U.S parties who are interested in the development, promulgation, and use of globally relevant standards for the electrotechnical industry. The USNC is also engaged in the assessment of conformance to standards, undertaking work in areas such as testing, certification, and accreditation. Tony Zertuche is ANSI’s point person ([email protected]) and we encourage you to communicate directly with Tony for the most up-to-date information.
We coordinate our response to the development of IEC titles in this domain with the IEEE Education & Healthcare Facilities Committee which meets 4 times monthly in European and American time zones. When there are Committee Draft for Votes released for public consultation (CDV) we coordinate our responses with experts active in IEEE globally.
Since the scope of this committee’s work involves products (in the main) we rank it in the middle of our priority tier. Our primary interest lies with interoperability standards, all the while recognizing that there is very little difference in the way education communities respond to IEC standard proposals than the way all other stakeholders would respond. At the risk of understatement medical research and clinical healthcare delivery are a large part of the revenue of many university systems so that is why we track these titles and others.
We maintain work flow of this committee on our Health, Electrical and Nursing colloquia. See our CALENDAR for the next online meeting; open to everyone.
IEC 63120 ED1: Refurbishment of medical electrical equipment, medical electrical systems and sub-assemblies and reuse of components as part of the extended life-cycle. Â
We found similar concepts running through the literature among United States consensus product developers; notably the IEEE, NFPA and NEMA. Re-use, reconditioning, recycling of electrical equipment is a priority that can contribute to the safety and sustainability agenda of healthcare enterprises in education communities so we follow it; vigilant for excessive market-making by incumbent verticals.
The comment period lapsed on March 27th but we will likely see more action in the technical committees receiving proposals from vertical incumbents making markets in medical equipment replacement parts.  We track development of this and other IEC titles on our provisional workspace*:
We encourage our colleagues working in university-affiliated healthcare enterprises to interact directly with the IEC by setting up a Commenting Account to access the redline linked below:
It is our custom to follow the lead of the the US National Committee to the International Electrotechnical Commission (USNA/IEC) primarily, though we have significant professional relationships with academic scholars in other nations through the IEEE Standards Association and the E&H Committee. We are happy to discuss any consensus product, any day at 11 AM Eastern time, however the expertise for responding to invitations for public comment like this is usually present during the E&H Committee meetings which take place four times monthly in European and American time zones.
Issue: [11-66]
Category: Electrical, Healthcare Facilities, International
*This is a carry-over workspace from the original University of Michigan facility standards enterprise — @StandardsUMich — and has been re-purposed for educational use and collaboration with the IEEE E&H Committee and the IEEE Engineering in Medical and Biology Society
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New update alert! The 2022 update to the Trademark Assignment Dataset is now available online. Find 1.29 million trademark assignments, involving 2.28 million unique trademark properties issued by the USPTO between March 1952 and January 2023: https://t.co/njrDAbSpwBpic.twitter.com/GkAXrHoQ9T
