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'''[[Félix d'Hérelle]]''' (April 25, 1873 – February 22, 1949) was a French-Canadian scientist, who, with only a high-school education, became one of the most accomplished bacteriologists of his day. d'Herelle is credited with discovering bacteriophages  and inventing phage therapy and modern biological pest control. Subsequently, bacteriophages became the model organisms for the studies that spawned much of our knowledge of molecular genetics.<BR><BR>[[Image:Young d'Herelle.jpg|thumb|200 px|Félix d'Hérelle]]
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==== Early Years ====
==Footnotes==
 
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D'Herelle was born in Montreal, Quebec, the son of French emigrants. His father, 30 years older than his wife, died when Félix was 6 years old. Following his father's death, Félix, his mother and his younger brother Daniel, moved to Paris. From 7 to 17 years of age, d'Herelle attended school in Paris, including the lycee. In the fall of 1891, d'Herelle traveled to Bonn where he attended lectures at the University of Bonn "for several months." Thus, d'Herelle only obtained a high school education and was self-taught in the sciences.
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Between 16 and 24, d'Herelle traveled extensively via money given by his mother. When 16 years old, he started to travel through western Europe on bike. When 17, after finishing school, he traveled through South America. Afterwards, he continued his travels through Europe, including Turkey, where he, at 20 years of age, met his wife, Marie Caire.
 
At age 24, now father of a daughter, d'Herelle and his family moved to Canada. He built a home laboratory and studied microbiology from books and his own experiments. Through the influence of a friend of his late father, he earned a commission from the Canadian government to study the fermentation and distillation of maple syrup to schnapps. His father's friend shrewdly pointed out that Pasteur "made a good beginning by studying fermentations, so it might be interesting to you, too." He also worked as a medic for a geological expedition to Labrador, even though he had no medical degree or real experience. Together with his brother, he invested almost all his money in a chocolate factory, which soon went bankrupt.
 
During this period, d'Herelle published his first scientific paper, "De la formation du Carbone par les vegetaux" in the May 1901 issue of ''Le Naturaliste Canadien''. The paper is noteworthy for two reasons: it shows an exceptional level of scientific development for a self-taught scientist and reveals a broad level of interest, namely the global balance of carbon in nature. However, the claims of the paper were in error, as d'Herelle contended that the results of his experiments indicated that carbon was a compound, not an element.
 
==== Guatemala and Mexico ====
 
With his money almost gone and his second daughter born, d'Herelle took a contract with the government of Guatemala as a bacteriologist at the General Hospital in Guatemala City. Some of his work included organizing defenses against the dread diseases of the time: malaria and yellow fever. He also studied a local fungal infection of coffee plants, and discovered that acidifying the soil could serve as an effective treatment. As a side job, he was asked to find a way to make whiskey from bananas. Life in the rough and dangerous environment of the country was hard on his family, but d'Herelle, always adventurer at heart, rather enjoyed working close to "real life", compared to the sterile environments of a "civilized" clinic. He later stated that his scientific path began on this occasion.
 
In 1907, he accepted an offer from the Mexican government to continue his studies on fermentation. He and his family moved to a sisal plantation near Mérida, Yucatán. Disease struck at him and his family, but in 1909.... ''[[Félix d'Hérelle|(read more)]]''

Latest revision as of 10:19, 11 September 2020

Categories of smart home devices shown on Amazon's website in April 2023.

The phrase smart home refers to home automation devices that have internet access. Home automation, a broader category, includes any device that can be monitored or controlled via wireless radio signals, not just those having internet access. Whether the device is powered by the electrical grid or by battery, if it uses the home Wi-Fi network and if an internet logon needs to be created to use it, then it is smart home technology.

Collectively, all the smart home devices on every home's Wi-Fi network helps to make up what is called the Internet of Things (IoT), a huge sea of sensors and control devices across the world that are capable of being accessed from afar via the internet. One of the key reasons such devices need internet access is so that the manufacturer can periodically download updated firmware to the device to keep it up-to-date. However, being available via the internet also means that such devices are, potentially, available for spying or hacking. Today, homes may contain dozens or even hundreds of such devices, and consumers may enjoy their benefits while knowing little about how they work, or even realizing that they are present.

Not all home automation is "smart"

Many remotely controllable devices do not require internet access. They may instead have physical control devices that use either RF (“Radio Frequency”) or IR (“Infrared”) beams, two different kinds of energy used in remote controls to communicate commands. Non-"smart" home automation may also present security risks, because the control signals can be hijacked by bad actors with the right signaling equipment. Garage door openers are of particular note in this regard. Modern automobiles, in fact, are full of automation similar to home automation, and cars are hackable by bad actors in a number of ways. See Wikipedia's Automotive hacking article for more information.

Incompatibility hassles

At present, consumers must make sure that the smart device they wish to use is specified to be compatible whichever phone/tablet operating system they use (Apple vs. Android). Since smart home products emerged in the absence of any standard, a morass of competing methods for networking, control and monitoring now exist. For some products, consumers may need to buy an expensive hub, or bridge, a device that is specific to one vendor. Products made by different manufacturers but performing the same function are typically not interoperable. Consumers often need to open a different app on their smartphone or tablet in order to control devices by each manufacturer. This may make it too expensive and awkward to try out competing devices, leaving consumers stuck with the product they bought originally or else having to add yet more apps to their phones.

Security concerns

Security for smart home products has been uneven and sometimes seriously inadequate. Smart thermostats which can monitor whether a home's occupants are present or not, entry-way locks, robotic vacuums that work with a map of the house, and other smart home devices can present very real dangers if hackers can access their data.

Matter, an emerging standard

Matter is emerging standard in 2023 intended to increase security, reliability and inter-operability of smart-home devices. About ten years ago, industry consortiums formed to work on standards for smart home device communications, and their underlying wireless communications, which would make it possible for products from all vendors to work together seamlessly and provide fast performance, privacy, and security and would work even if there is not connection to the outside internet (i.e., no connection to "the cloud" or to servers).

Footnotes

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