The USS San Francisco grounding has got me kind of freaked out – the bit of the earth they hit really and truly was not on the chart. Wired breaks down why

This article at WaPost covers advances in medicine that offer an alternative to traditonal means of taking medication.

Many patients who find the means of taking medicine — what scientists call “the delivery system” — too painful or off-putting skip doses, or give up taking their medication altogether.

You probably think I’m posting this because of my phobia of pills getting stuck in my throat and/or because of the horse pills I take every night now-a-days, but the truth is a close friend (whose name rhymes with “hirsute Jewish man who used to live in the Castro — but he’s straight”) is doing engineering work for medicinal inhalers which are covered towards the end of the article.

Inhaler technology has proved so successful that other medications are now routinely available this way, including insulin and drugs to treat migraines. More than 300 drugs are in late-stage development for this “pulmonary delivery” method, which market analyst Perez projects to be a $9 billion business in the United States five years from now. They include epinephrine, the drug used in response to a severe allergic reaction. Today there is only one way to get this drug in an emergency: a large-bore needle jammed force fully into the meaty part of the thigh.

I keep telling my buddy that he’s in an industry that is going to explode and he’s cautiously derisive of my excitment.