* 21 entries including: US Constitution (series), quantum thermodynamics (series), drone delivery (series), how we think something is real, genes underlying big human brain, virtual twins for factory support, Ebola vaccine trial, Chinese radio astronomy beyond the Moon, Indonesia's volcanoes, and we can't afford climate change.
* NEWS COMMENTARY FOR JUNE 2018: As discussed by an article from THE ECONOMIST ("In Retreat", 14 June 2018), only a decade ago, Turkey seemed to be solidifying democratic rule and aspiring to join the European Union. Now President Recep Tayyip Erdogan rules with an iron fist, his presidency having been confirmed by a recent election, which he won with a handy majority. Many Turks are frightened of him; but more regard him as heroic.
Welcome to "Erdoganistan". Unfortunately, Turkey does not seem like an outlier today. In the wake of the fall of the Axis Powers in World War II, the planet did become more democratic. In 1941, there were only a dozen democracies; by 2000, only eight states had never held a serious election. Unfortunately, since the financial crisis of 2007-08, the trendline has turned downward, with government after government becoming more authoritarian.
The irony is that authoritarianism lies latent in democracy. As discussed by Yascha Mounk of Harvard in his book THE PEOPLE V DEMOCRACY, voters tend to have double standards on rights: "Great for us; you go to hell." They will vote for a government that censors speech they disagree with, or steps on unpopular minorities. In a healthy state, a separation of powers -- executive, legislative, and judicial -- operates to check this tyranny of the majority. That system is now under siege, with Viktor Orban, Hungary's prime minister, proud of his "illiberal democracy". An overbearing executive can take over, by shutting down the opposition -- as in Turkey -- or neutering the legislature -- as in Venezuela, where the government staged a sham election in May.
The mature democracies of the West are not yet in serious danger. Donald Trump loudly denounces the democratic norms of the American Republic, but he nonetheless remains bounded by the system, amounting to far more a cartoon version of a tyrant than the real thing. In time, he will pass: he can't be president for life, and seems more likely to end up in jail than found a dynasty. The real threat is to less mature democracies, where institutions are weaker and democratic habits less ingrained. Unfortunately, what happens in the West influences what happens elsewhere. The USA once tried to promote democracy around the world; however wildly inconsistent the results, it was more constructive than Trump's toadying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin.
Xi Jinping's China offers an alternative. There were hopes at one time that China was on a gradual path to liberalization, but under Xi power has been centralized. Some wanna-be autocrats see China as evidence that authoritarianism promotes economic growth -- though what they often mean is that they, too, want to be presidents for life. Possibly more significantly, China has proven only too ingenious at using technology to reinforce authoritarian rule, setting up a controlled internet, and deploying increasingly pervasive surveillance networks. China is doing a good export business of oppression tech to autocrats elsewhere.
Fortunately, public support for democracy remains high. A Pew poll of 38 countries found that a median of 78% of people agreed that a system where elected representatives make laws was a good one. The problem is that large minorities don't agree: 24% say that military rule would be fine, while and 26% liked the idea of "a strong leader" who "can make decisions without interference from parliament or the courts". There was a strong correlation between a desire for autocracy and a lack of education.
Autocrats leverage off the sympathetic minority to gradually undermine democracy, maintaining its form while hollowing it out. The process, in simple form, works like this:
Hungary's weak democracy was undermined by two shocks. The first was the financial crisis. Before that, many Hungarians had taken out absurdly risky foreign-currency mortgages. When the Hungarian forint crashed against the Swiss franc and they lost their homes, they were enraged. It was only too easy for unscrupulous demagogues to denounce the old order, while promising easy relief for those who had been ruined.
The second shock was the Syrian refugee crisis of 2015-16. Very few Syrians settled in Hungary, but they were highly visible while passing through the country. Orban was able to scare the people with "Muslim hordes" and denounce the ruling system that had let them in. Orban shut down the flow, but told the citizens they were still under threat, playing up a wild conspiracy theory in which George Soros -- a Hungarian-American billionaire, Jewish, one of the Right's favorite boogeymen -- was planning to relocate a million Middle Eastern and African migrants to Hungary. The people bought it, voting to keep Orban's party in power. The office of the Soros Foundation in Budapest had to shut down.
The autocrats exploit identity politics, standing up for "us" against "them", with "them" being minorities who are easily victimized. The autocrats also indulge the desire for brute-force solutions. Rodrigo Duterte won the presidency of the Philippines in 2016 on a promise to kill drug dealers. An estimated 12,000 extra-judicial slayings later, the country is no safer, but his government has an approval rating of around 80%. As the autocrats grow bolder, they tame the judiciary, suppress the independent media, and bind the state security services to them. That done, the autocrats do as they please.
While modern autocracy tends to come from the Right, the Left can become autocratic as well. President Daniel Ortega of Nicaragua started as a revolutionary Marxist, seizing power in 1979. He lost an election in 1990 partly because he was anti-Catholic. He then rebranded himself as a devout Catholic -- pushing a ban on abortion even if the mother's life is at risk -- and was re-elected in 2006 against a divided opposition. In 2017 his wife, Rosario Murillo, became vice-president, establishing a dynasty like that of the Somoza dictatorship he once overthrew.
Ortega and his Sandinistas commandeered the supreme court, which then abolished presidential term limits, and created shell "opposition" parties to simulate choice while repressing genuine opponents. Critical media find themselves under new ownership, often that of Ortega's family. None of this generated public opposition -- but then he blundered. The ruling Sandinistas' mismanagement and graft hollowed out the public-pension pot all but empty. Ortega told the workers, in effect, to suck it up, with tens of thousands taking to the streets in response. Ortega only stayed in power by ordering the security services to open fire.
The autocrats have made progress because of the failures of liberal democracies. While developed countries are generally prosperous and peaceful, a certain unrest has taken hold. Globalization and technology have made them fear for their jobs, while culture wars stoke division. The autocrats have learned to exploit that restlessness, tearing down existing leadership. Once in power, they don't really fix any of the problems, instead enriching themselves at public expense. What else might be expected? The purpose of authoritarianism is not to promote efficiency, but to deny accountability. It doesn't lead to corruption; it is corrupt in itself.
The autocrats don't always win, with autocratic rulers having been recently given the boot in Sri Lanka, Gambia, South Africa, Armenia, and Malaysia. Liberal democracy, for all its problems, is well stronger over the long run than the autocrats: as Churchill put it, democracy is the worst system there is, except for all the others. It is easy to think that the tide towards authoritarianism will turn back, as citizens realize they have been fed empty promises, only to be cheated in the end. Alas, people who are complicit in being defrauded are often slow to admit they've been ripped off, and there is no certainty as to when the pendulum will turn back again.
* As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Making The Best Of A Bum Deal", 16 June 2018), when Britain voted to leave the European Union in 2016, nobody in Britain had a real plan for how Brexit was going to happen. Prime Minister Theresa May read the signs as saying the fullest separation was required, with her government set on course for a "hard Brexit". Britain would free itself from the whims of European judges, trade policy, and migration rules -- at painful cost to its economy and security.
The prime minister didn't involve Parliament in her decision -- and for a time, Parliament was too weak to effectively protest. Parliament, however, is now much more assertive, with rebel Tory MPs moving to assert influence over Brexit, and Number 10 assuring MPs that they will get a "meaningful" vote on the process. More significantly, the lack of advance planning for Brexit meant that unavoidable realities had been swept under the rug. One of the nastiest was the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. The two components of the Irish Isles are so socially and economically interdependent as to make a full severance effectively impossible. That means leaving the status quo of an open border in place.
The Irish Republic is an EU member: Britain cannot make a deal with the Irish Republic without making the same deal with the rest of the EU. The British government has acknowledged that the border between the two Irelands cannot be a wall, and so the drift is towards a "soft Brexit". In a soft Brexit, Britain would stay in the European customs union and generally obeying EU policies. The model invoked is Norway, not part of the EU, but linked to it in such a fashion. A soft Brexit might well be sold as a temporary arrangement until Brexit can seriously be implemented -- but Norway established a "temporary" arrangement with the EU in 1994, and that arrangement is still in force.
Hardcore Leavers are having none of it. Glossing over their failure to plan ahead, they bluster that the problems of a hard Brexit are not as great as they have been made out to be, proclaiming that Britain will be better off for striking out on its own. As Leavers instinctively know, time is not on their side. Their arguments for Brexit were well more emotional than practical; over time, emotion tends to fade, while practical obstacles become more obvious. People don't stay tricked indefinitely.
The crunch is that nobody wants a soft Brexit: Leavers don't want it, and Remainers don't want a Brexit at all. A soft Brexit would leave Britain still obeying EU rules, without having a say any longer in how the EU is run -- the worst of both worlds. Britain, by all political appearances, is committed to Brexit, but a hard Brexit is a practical absurdity, and a soft Brexit absurd on the face of it. The logic of circumstances points to the crash of Brexit before the year is out. There's no predicting that it actually will crash; only that the future is a choice between that, and open-ended chaos.
* Incidentally, Britain's Royal Mail recently issued a set of stamps commemorating the TV series "Dad's Army", about a bungling gang of British Home Guardsmen during World War II. Some wondered whether the citations of the characters on the stamps weren't a commentary on Brexit:
* As discussed by another article from ECONOMIST.com ("What Tariffs?", 14 June 2018), as everyone has noticed, US President Donald Trump is fond of recklessly waving around the tariff weapon, claiming that America's trading partners have been unfairly exploiting the USA in trade deals.
Well, is that so? The reality is: "Free Trade, isn't." It's a worthy ideal, but not exactly how things work, or could work, in practice. Trump's claim that America is being exploited because of its open markets doesn't hold up to inspection. He likes to complain about Canada's 270% levy on dairy products -- which only applies after quotas with much lower tariffs have been filled -- and blasts European Union's 10% tariff on cars. However, once quotas are filled, shelled peanuts going into America face a tariff of 132%, and raw tobacco duties of 350%. Incoming train carriages are slapped with a 14% tariff.
Averages are more informative than examples. According to the World Trade Organization (WTO), on a trade-weighted basis, in 2015 America's tariffs averaged 2.4%, slightly higher than Japan's at 2.1%, but a bit lower than Canada's at 3.1%, and the EU's at 3.0%. Calculating these figures is also tricky, tariffs schemes tending to be maddeningly picky and convoluted.
America allows in more products tariff-free than the EU, for example, but the duties it does charge are higher. High tariffs are often placed on low-volume imports, meaning their broader impact is slight. Tariff figures may also leave things out, like defensive duties against imports that are subsidized or sold below cost -- America is a heavy user of both, far more than the EU, Canada or Japan.
Actually, although Trump is obsessed with tariffs, they're not such a big deal: developed-world tariffs are, broadly speaking, not all that stiff. The trick is that trade protectionism takes disguised forms. Agricultural subsidies are one example, with others including the obnoxious "Buy American" rules that favor American suppliers for public procurement -- discussed here in 2017 -- as well as elaborate labeling requirements. Things like labeling were not necessarily implemented as protectionist measures, but trade geeks suspect they crimp commerce among rich countries more than tariffs do.
Finally, there are barriers to trade in services as well as goods -- such as rules requiring foreign insurers in New York City to retain more capital than domestic ones; or laws like the Jones Act, which says that boats traveling between American ports must be made in America, carry the American flag, and be owned and operated by American citizens. Of 22 sectors measured in 44 countries in the OECD's Services Trade Restrictiveness Index, America had seven that were more restrictive than average. Italy was the only country in the G7 with more. The USA is being exploited because of its open markets? Yes, America may be taking it -- but can definitely dish it out at least as well.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed by an article from JANES.com ("Iran's Mohajer 6 Armed UAV Goes Into Production" by Jeremy Binnie, 07 February 2018), the Iranians have a lively tactical drone industry -- and have now displayed their new "Mohajer 6" drone, with a small "Ghaem" guided glide bomb under each wing.
The Mohager 6 is a typical tactical drone: a twin-tailboom aircraft with fixed tricycle landing gear, a pusher prop driven by a piston engine, and a sensor turret under the nose. The Ghaems displayed had different target seekers, one with an opaque window in the nose of the munition, the other with a transparent window. The munition with the opaque window apparently uses an infrared homing seeker, while the one with a transparent window may use a laser-homing seeker. A video released by the Iranians showed the Mohager 6 using a Ghaem to destroy a floating target.
* Mine detectors have been military issue since the Second War, having changed little in basic concept: a soldier sweeps the ground with a magnetic-field generator plate on an arm, with alterations in the magnetic field due to the presence of metal in the ground resulting in an alteration of tone in a a headphone unit. As discussed by an article from JANES.com ("US Army Seeks Improved Handheld Mine Detection Capability" by Geoff Fein, 24 January 2018), the US Army is now adding an "augmented reality" capability to the mine detector, by converting the traditional audio signals into cues that are presented onto a visual display.
The investigation is being performed by researchers at the Army's Night Vision & Electronic Sensors Directorate (NVESD). The soldier using the mine detector would wear a head-up display or augmented-reality glasses, with the detector system providing a colored representation of the area being swept. For example, a large metallic object could be marked with red in the display.
According to Christopher Marshall, a researcher of the NVESD, the major significance of the system is that it will allow a minefield to be electronically mapped out, with the map transmitted to other sweepers: "Operationally, if you are getting tired and someone takes your place, imagine them coming up and they can watch this while walking up to where you are. It won't be like they are starting cold; they will see the layout, what you've [swept over]."
He adds that the visual cues are stronger than the audio cues: "What we found is that the largest and biggest step in improved performance is the immediate ability of the operator to see what they heard." The researchers also say that the mapping ability is useful for training.
* As discussed by an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("Boeing Unveils Hypersonic 'Son-Of-Blackbird' Contender" by Guy Norris, 11 January 2018), US aerospace giant Boeing has revealed details of a reusable Mach 5-plus demonstrator vehicle design that could be the basis of a future high-speed strike and reconnaissance aircraft.
The sharply swept, delta-winged vehicle concept is based on two decades of Boeing's experience with the X-43 and X-51A hypersonic demonstrator programs. However, it also incorporates design features from other legacy Boeing high-speed projects, such as the Mach 3 XB-70 experimental bomber. Like the configurationally similar SR-72 concept revealed in 2013 by Lockheed Martin, the Boeing design is also aimed at a hypersonic successor for the late 2020s to the long-retired SR-71 Blackbird reconnaissance aircraft.
Should the project move to full-scale development, Boeing envisions starting out with a single-engine flight demonstrator, about the size of an F-16 fighter, for proof of concept; to then move on to a twin-engine operational vehicle roughly the same size as the 32.6-meter (107-foot) long SR-71. A concept model was publicly unveiled in early January 2018 at the American Institute of Aeronautics & Astronautics SciTech forum at the sprawling Gaylord Palms Hotel in Kissimmee, Florida. Speaking at the forum Kevin Bowcutt, Boeing's chief scientist for hypersonics, commented:
BEGIN QUOTE:
It's a really hard problem to develop an aircraft that takes off and accelerates through Mach 1 all the way to Mach 5 and beyond. The specific impulse of an air breathing engine goes down with increasing velocity, so you have to make the engine bigger to get to Mach 5. But doing that means a bigger inlet and a bigger nozzle, and trying to get that through Mach 1 is harder.
END QUOTE
Specific impulse, by the way, is the change in momentum (impulse) of a flying vehicle per unit of fuel burned, equivalent to thrust divided by mass flow rate; it's given in units of velocity. According to Bowcutt, careful integration of the airframe and the propulsion system into a workable design was achieved using "multidisciplinary design optimization (MDO)" -- in which all relevant disciplines are involved in the design in parallel. MDO was previously used by Boeing to develop the "X-51A Waverider", the first air vehicle to demonstrate sustained air-breathing hypersonic flight.
Although Boeing's research on hypersonic vehicle development was originally company-funded, work is now continuing under the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) "Advanced Full Range Engine (AFRE)" initiative and a closely-related "Turbine-Based Combined Cycle (TBCC)" flight demonstration concept study, run by the U.S Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Boeing is partnering with Orbital ATK in the AFRE and TBCC efforts.
The vehicle configuration is determined by the TBCC propulsion system, which combines conventional turbine engines with dual-mode ramjets-scramjets (DMRJ). The turbine engines will operate up to a high Mach number, and then transition to the DMRJ. The engines will share a common inlet and nozzle, with the turbine cocooned after transition, then restarted once the hypersonic vehicle slows down for return to a runway landing. The inlets are have a configuration derived from that of the XB-70. Other propulsion options are being investigated.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GETTING REAL: As discussed by an article from SCIENCMAG.org ("How Your Mind Protects You Against Hallucinations" by Emily Underwood, 10 August 2017), we have a certain confidence in our brain not playing tricks on us. We are generally able to sort out illusions from reality. Not everyone can do that reliably, however, and everyone drops the ball now and then -- which leads to the question of how the brain sorts out illusions from reality. A new study suggests that our brain keeps tabs on reality by constantly questioning its own past expectations and beliefs. When this internal fact-checking fails, hallucinations result. The finding could help establish better treatments for schizophrenia or other psychiatric disorders.
It has long been known that our brain can play subtle tricks on us. As far back as the 1890s, for example, Yale University researchers repeatedly showed volunteers an image paired with a tone. When they showed the image without the tone, the volunteers thought they heard it anyway. It happens all the time -- people thinking their cellphone has rung when it hasn't. Albert Powers, a psychiatrist at Yale University and an author of the new study, says: "People come to expect the sound so much that the brain hears it for them."
Philip Corlett, another Yale psychiatrist and author of the study, believes such hallucinations occur when the brain gives more weight to its expectations than to the evidence of the senses. To test that idea, he, Powers, and colleagues decided to perform a version of the 1890s experiment with four different groups:
The researchers trained the subjects to associate a checkerboard image with a 1-kilohertz, 1-second-long tone. Participants were asked to press a button when they heard the tone, increasing or decreasing pressure to indicate how clearly they heard it, with the researchers changing the volume of the tone and sometimes dropping it entirely. They tracked the brain activity of the test subject with magnetic resonance imaging.
The researchers suspected that test subjects who heard voice would be more likely to "believe" in auditory hallucinations, and that's what they found. Both the schizophrenics and self-described psychics were almost five times more likely to say they heard a tone that wasn't there than healthy controls. They were also about 28% more confident that they had heard the tone when none was there.
Both schizophrenics and self-described psychics also demonstrated abnormal neuronal activity in several brain regions responsible for monitoring our internal representations of reality. The more severe a person's hallucinations were, for example, the less activity they displayed in the cerebellum, a wrinkled nodule at the back of the brain. The cerebellum plays a critical role in planning and coordinating future movements, a process that requires constantly updating personal perception of the outside world.
Future research is likely to investigate whether there are any noticeable differences between the healthy and the unhealthy brains at rest. The research could help guide experimental therapies such as transcranial magnetic stimulation, which can perform noninvasive stimulation of specific brain regions. It should also prove useful in early diagnosis of schizophrenia.
ED: I recently read a book by French neuropsychologist Stanislas Dehaene, whose research suggest that consciousness is due to a "broadcast network" of neurons that link together the semi-independent subsystems of the brain. A subsystem gains control of the broadcast network and then "speaks" to all the other subsystems, with our stream of consciousness due to the jumpy transitions of control from one subsystem to another. The interesting suggestion about people who hear voices is that they have a brain defect that prevents one subsystem from properly integrating into the stream of consciousness, and sounding like a dissociated voice to the rest.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* RAIN BOOST: Humans are not biologically extraordinary among mammals, except in one significant way: a proportionally much bigger and more capable brain. As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Trio Of Genes Supercharged Human Brain Evolution" by Elizabeth Pennisi, 31 May 2018), researchers have now tracked down three genes that may help explain why humans have such big brains. The newly-identified genes may also help explain how brain development sometimes goes wrong, resulting in neurological disorders.
The three genes are descendants of an ancestral developmental gene that multiplied and changed in the course of evolution. They aren't the only genes implicated in human brain expansion; but according to James Noonan -- an evolutionary genomicist at Yale University -- they are particularly significant, since so much is known about how they work. Research has shown that these three genes boost the number of possible nerve cells in brain tissue; one team has identified protein interactions likely to be responsible.
Four related genes were found, one being inactive. Until now, the four were thought to be one, NOTCH2NL, itself a spinoff of the NOTCH gene family, which controls the timing of development in everything from fruit flies to whales. However, two studies from CELL traced a series of genetic accidents in recent evolutionary history that yielded the four very closely related NOTCH2NL genes in humans.
David Haussler, a bioinformatician at the University of California in Santa Cruz, and his colleagues got interested in these genes after they found that the NOTCH pathway works differently in human and macaque brain organoids -- which are test tube models of the developing brain. NOTCH2NL was missing in the macaque organoid and, later studies showed, in the other nonhuman apes as well. That suggested NOTCH2NL might have played a significant role in human evolution.
By comparing NOTCH2NL-related DNA in the genomes of humans against other primates, Haussler's team reconstructed the genes' evolutionary history. They determined that during DNA replication, roughly 14 million years ago, part of an ancestral NOTCH2 gene was copied by mistake. The new "gene" was incomplete and nonfunctional, but about 11 million years later -- just before the brains of human ancestor species began to expand -- an additional piece of NOTCH2 got inserted into this copy, making the gene functional. Frank Jacobs -- a co-author of the first study, an evolutionary genomicist at the University of Amsterdam -- comments: "This event marks the birth of the NOTCH2NL genes we now have in our brains."
That active NOTCH2NL gene was then duplicated twice more, yielding three active NOTCH2NL genes in a row at one end of human chromosome 1, and one inactive copy on the other end. Gene copies can be evolutionarily useful since one copy continues its necessary job, leaving the others free to be modified to do something new.
Pierre Vanderhaeghen, a developmental neurobiologist at the Free University of Brussels, found the same set of genes while working on a way to screen human fetal brain tissue for duplicated genes. To determine what they do, his team boosted NOTCH2NL activity in cultured brain tissue, with the tissue generating more stem cells -- as reported in the second CELL paper.
That finding complements one reported earlier in 2018 by Wieland Huttner, a neurobiologist at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. He and his team had decided to focus on NOTCH2NL -- which they thought was a single gene -- after finding it was highly active in fetal brain cells. When they put a human NOTCH2NL gene into incipient brain tissue from mouse embryos, more stem cells developed. That suggests the human gene delays the specialization of those cells so they have a chance to produce many more copies of themselves.
In their CELL paper, Vanderhaeghen and his colleagues followed up that hint, describing molecular details of how NOTCH2NL works to boost neuron formation. They found that a protein generated by NOTCH2NL blocks a key step in a signaling pathway that causes stem cells to differentiate and stop dividing. As a result, the cells persist and keep producing progeny, ultimately meaning more neurons.
The location of the three active NOTCH2NL genes is also significant, Haussler says. They are right in the middle of DNA implicated in autism, schizophrenia, and a developmental delay syndrome. Such duplicated DNA is prone to getting copied extra times or losing DNA during replication, and instability is a hallmark of these disorders.
To Greg Wray, an evolutionary developmental biologist at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, this clue to brain diseases is the most important result of the new studies: "These genes likely play an important role in cortical development, and misregulation leads to disease." Wray is not so sure they had a prominent role in human evolution: the chromosomal region in which they reside is elaborate and difficult to sequence, while the evidence for an evolutionary difference in gene function between humans and other species is indirect.
Haussler still thinks these genes will prove key players in human brain expansion: "One change didn't do it alone, but some will be found to be more fundamental than others. NOTCH2NL has a shot at this."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* QUANTUM THERMODYNAMICS (2): In 2017, in pursuit of the laws of quantum thermodynamics, a research team under Tobias Schaetz -- a quantum physicist at the University of Freiburg in Germany -- demonstrated that, under certain conditions, strings of five or fewer magnesium ions in a crystal do not reach and remain in thermal equilibrium with their surroundings, as macroscale systems do. In the experiment, each ion started in a high-energy state and its spin oscillated between two states corresponding to the direction of its magnetism - UP and DOWN.
Standard thermodynamics predicts that such spin oscillations should fade out as the ions cool by interacting with the other atoms in the crystal, in the same way that hot coffee cools when its molecules collide with molecules in the colder surrounding air. Such collisions transfer energy from the coffee molecules to the air molecules. A similar cooling mechanism is at work in the crystal, where quantized vibrations in the lattice called "phonons" transfer heat away from the oscillating spins.
The researchers that their small ion systems did stop oscillating, suggesting that they had cooled -- but after a few milliseconds, the ions began oscillating energetically again. Schaetz determined that instead of dissipating away entirely, the phonons bounced off the edges of the crystal and returned in phase to their source ions, restoring the original spin oscillations. Schaetz says that gives warning to engineers attempting to obtain further reductions in the size of electronics:
BEGIN QUOTE:
You may have a wire that is only 10 or 15 atoms wide, and you may think that it has successfully carried the heat away from your chip, but then BOOP -- suddenly this quantum revival happens. It is very disturbing.
END QUOTE
Quantum thermodynamic effects are not necessarily problematic, however; they could be useful in some applications, though so far nobody has figured out how. Researchers see leverage in an idea posed by James Clerk Maxwell, one of the founders of classical thermodynamics, who postulated what is now called "Maxwell's demon".
There's a lot of energy in the motions of molecules in, say, ambient air. The problem that, as per the Second Law of Thermodynamics (SLOT), there's no way to extract the energy, to do work, without having a source of warm air that gives up its energy in being transferred to a sink of cool air. Maxwell imagined what is now called a "demon" that could sort out the fast-moving molecules in ambient air from the slow-moving molecules, by opening a door to admit fast-moving molecules, then closing it against slow-moving molecules. In this way, the demon could build up a warm reservoir that could be used to do work.
In classical thermodynamics, this is not the way things really work: such a violation of the SLOT could be used to build a "perpetual motion machine of the second kind", and nobody can think of a way of doing that. Maxwell was simply asking: "Very well, so why can't the SLOT be violated?" Physicists have spent a lot of effort answering his question -- and eventually determined that the demon would not be able to get a thermodynamic free lunch.
The demon would have to process data on the speed of a molecule, then decide whether to open or close the door, and take the appropriate action. Although there was a time when people were inclined to believe thoughts were immaterial, a "free lunch", in reality either a biological or electronic brain would consume energy performing those cognitive steps, and there would be a net increase in entropy. No free lunch -- but might there be a loophole at the microscale? [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (18): The 5th clause of Section 1, Article II, stipulated that a president had to have been born in the USA -- or was a citizen at the time of ratification of the Constitution, a qualification now irrelevant -- and spent 14 years in the USA. That was done primarily to derail attempts to haul in foreign nobility to take charge, which had happened from time to time in British history. The president also had to be at least 35 years old; as with Congress, one reason being to obstruct attempts by a powerful individual to create a dynasty by installing a son.
Note, as with Congress, there were no property and no religious qualifications for the presidency. Also note that there was a tale that the native qualification was implemented to deny Alexander Hamilton, born in the West Indies, the presidency -- but having been a British citizen of the American colonies, he was judged a native American citizen.
The 6th clause stipulated that, should a president be unable to fulfill the duties of the office -- from impeachment, disability, or death -- the vice president would assume the presidency. If the vice president were removed in turn, Congress would then select a replacement. The means by which Congress would do so were not specified.
Recognizing an "Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office" would prove troublesome in practice. Woodrow Wilson, POTUS 28, suffered a stroke that left him effectively incapacitated for most of his last two years in office; Dwight Eisenhower, POTUS 34, suffered a major heart attack that kept him from fulfilling the duties of office for six weeks. In neither case did the vice president assume the presidency. The problem of presidential succession has not yet been completely resolved.
The 7th clause stipulated that the president would be paid by the government for the job, to ensure that the president wouldn't have to be a member of the independently wealthy. The clause added the cautions that the compensation wouldn't be changed during that president's term in office -- to prevent a president in office from upping the pay scale to loot the treasury, or less possibly lowering it as a means of reserving the presidency for the wealthy.
The 8th clause simply gave the oath of office, and generally defined the job: execute the laws. Notice that there was no mention of religion in the oath itself, and no requirement that the president swear on a Bible, the procedure for taking the oath being defined by custom.
* Section 2 defined the president as "Commander in Chief" of America's armed forces, and authorized the president to grant pardons -- but not annul an impeachment by Congress. The president could establish treaties, under the "Treaty Clause", with the approval of the Senate, as per the "Advice & Consent Clause"; and appoint ambassadors, Supreme Court justices, and government officials under the "Appointments Clause", again with the approval of the Senate:
BEGIN QUOTE:
1: The President shall be Commander in Chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the Militia of the several States, when called into the actual Service of the United States; he may require the Opinion, in writing, of the principal Officer in each of the executive Departments, upon any Subject relating to the Duties of their respective Offices, and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.
2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur; and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
3: The President shall have Power to fill up all Vacancies that may happen during the Recess of the Senate, by granting Commissions which shall expire at the End of their next Session.
END QUOTE
[TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for May included:
-- 03 MAY 18 / APSTAR 6C -- A Chinese Long March 3B/E booster was launched from Xichang at 1606 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Apstar 6C" geostationary comsat into orbit for the APT Satellite Company LTD of Hong Kong.
The satellite was built by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), being based on the CAST DFH4 comsat platform. It had a payload of 45 C / Ku / Ka-band transponder, and a design life of 15 years. It was placed in the geostationary slot at 134 degrees east longitude to provide commercial video broadcast, VSAT connectivity and cellular backhaul services over the Asia-Pacific and Southeast Asia for APT Satellite.
-- 05 MAY 18 / INSIGHT -- An Atlas 5 booster was launched from Vandenberg AFB at 1105 UTC (local time + 7) to put the NASA "Interior Exploration Using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, & Heat Transport (INSIGHT)" probe on a course to Mars. It was scheduled to arrive at Mars in November 2018.
INSIGHT had a launch mass of 694 kilograms (1,530 pounds), the all-up space vehicle being intended to deliver a lander with a launch mass of 358 kilograms (790 pounds). The lander was powered by twin solar arrays; after touchdown, it was to place a French-made seismometer on the Martian surface, and use a German-made drill to bore as deep as 5 meters (16 feet) into the soil for temperature measurements. The lander also featured a magnetometer; a weather station; a robot arm; and two monochrome cameras; with the Doppler shift of the radio signals from the lander's communications system being used for analyzing small variations in the rotation of the Red Planet. In addition, it was fitted with a laser retroreflector array, to allow Mars orbiters to pinpoint its location.
The launch included two "nanospacecraft" named "Mars Cube One A" and "Mars Cube One B", AKA "WALL-E" and "Eva", being characters from the Disney-Pixar WALL-E movie. Both "Marco" spacecraft were in the 6-unit (6U) CubeSat configuration, in a 3x2 format, being about the size of a box of breakfast cereal. They flew near Insight, to perform a flyby of Mars. Their only instrument was a camera, the flight being intended as a test of the nanosat scheme, particularly its long-range communications link. They were to relay data from the lander during its descent.
The booster was in the "401" vehicle configuration with a 4-meter (13.1-foot) fairing, no solid rocket boosters, and a single-engine Centaur upper stage.
-- 08 MAY 18 / GAOFEN 5 -- A Long March 4C booster was launched from Taiyuan at 1828 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put a "Gaofen (High Resolution) 5" civil Earth observation satellite into Sun-synchronous low Earth orbit. Gaofen 5 carried a payload of six instruments, including a hyperspectral imager to track variations in land cover and water clarity, plus payloads to track air pollution and greenhouse gases. It had a design life of eight years.
-- 11 MAY 18 / BANGABANDHU 1 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida at 2014 UTC (local time + 4) to put the "Bangabandhu 1" geostationary comsat into orbit for the Bangladesh Telecommunication Regulatory Commission. The satellite was built by Thales Alenia Space; it had a launch mass of about 3,750 kilograms (8,200 pounds), carrying a payload of 26 Ku / 14 C-band transponders. It was placed in the geostationary slot at 119.1 degrees east longitude to provide broadcasting and telecommunication services to rural areas; it also introduced direct-to-home television programming across Bangladesh and neighboring countries. This was the first flight of the crew-rated "Block 5" Falcon 9. The first stage performed a soft landing on the SpaceX recovery barge.
-- 20 MAY 18 / QUEQIAO -- A Chinese Long March 4C booster was launched from Xichang at 2128 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Qieqiao" communications relay satellite in a halo orbit around the outer Earth-moon Lagrange point, to provide communications support for the Chang'e 4 lunar lander and rover on the far side of the moon. The space platform was based on the CAST1000 bus. Two Chinese microsatellites, "Longjiang 1" and "Longjiang 2", were also on the flight, being used to conduct radio astronomy observations.
-- 21 MAY 18 / CYGNUS 9 (OA-9) -- An Orbital Sciences Antares booster was launched from Wallops Island off the coast of Virginia at 0844 UTC (local time + 4) to put the ninth operational "Cygnus" supply capsule, designated "OA-9", into space on an International Space Station support mission. Along with supplies, the flight carried a "Cold Atom Laboratory" experiment, to investigate the behavior of atoms at ultracold temperatures, and also an experiment to investigate solidification of concrete in microgravity.
In addition, the cargo craft hauled 15 CubeSats to the ISS -- 9 in the pressurized compartment, to be deployed from the station, 6 in the unpressurized section, to be deployed when the capsule departs the station. The 9 CubeSats carried in the pressurized section included:
All six CubeSats deployed directly from the capsule were of 3U configuration, including:
The booster was in the Antares 230 configuration, with two RD-181 first stage engines and a Castor 30XL second stage.
-- 22 MAY 18 / IRIDIUM NEXT 51:55, GRACE FO -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg AFB at 1948 GMT (local time + 7) to put five "Iridium Next" satellites into orbit, along with two "Gravity Recovery & Climate Experiment (GRACE) Follow-On" satellites for NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences (GFZ).
The Iridium communications constellation consists of 66 space platforms, in low Earth orbit. They support mobile communications, notably the Global Maritime Distress and Safety System. Iridium Next adds an L-band broadband service, and an Aireon aircraft-tracking system. The five Iridium Next satellites brought the new fleet up to 55 spacecraft, from initial launch in January 2017. 19 first-generation satellites were still in operation at the time.
The two GRACE-FO satellites were built by Airbus Defense & Space; each had a launch mass of 600 kilograms (1,325 pounds). They were enhanced versions of the original GRACE pair, which performed sensitive gravitational measurements of the Earth to track water distribution from 2002 to 2017. The GRACE-FO satellites fly in the same orbit 220 kilometers (137 miles) apart, tracking each other with a precision microwave link to observe deviations in orbit. They feature updates relative to the original GRACE satellites:
The first stage had been flown on a previous flight. It was not recovered, being an early recoverable stage that was only intended for two flights. An attempt was made to recover the payload fairings, but failed.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* VIRTUAL TWINS: As discussed by an article from THE ECONOMIST ("The Gemini Makers", 13 July 2017), the Siemens plant in Amberg, a small town in Bavaria, turns out industrial controller systems. They're computers that keep factories running, including the Amberg plant.
The Amberg plant produces 15 million units a year. That's an order of magnitude more than it made in 1989, when it first opened -- even though the facility hasn't been expanded, and the number of employees there hasn't changed dramatically. One of the reasons is that the factory is highly automated, with about 75% of the work done by machines; there's still plenty of work left for the employees, they just make a lot more than they used to. The defect rate of products is close to zero, which is particularly impressive since the plant produces about a thousand variations of product.
Along with automation, the high productivity of the factory is due to its "digital twin" AKA "virtual twin" -- a duplicate of the factory implemented in software. If a production line is to be set up in the real factory, it is trialed in the virtual factory, with the virtual production line run by virtual controllers. The flow of product through the virtual production line is simulated; once the production process is validated, the production line is implemented in the real world, with the software devised to run the virtual controllers used to program the real-world ones.
Twinning is not a new idea; it goes back to the early days of space exploration, when the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration began to build ground models of deep space probes and the like. Once a probe was launched, it was beyond direct inspection, and so troubleshooting or alterations in mission plans were performed with the ground model.
The virtualization of production systems and high-tech products in software has made twinning far more widely applicable. It's not trivial to build such virtual twins, requiring software that understands computer-aided design; process control; simulation; and product life-cycle management. The latest systems incorporate more artificial-intelligence trickery, and may have virtual-reality capabilities so the people running them can see what's going on the virtual world.
Other companies, such as Siemens' US rival General Electric (GE) and the French Dassault firm, also sell virtual-twin systems. Customers are in industries ranging from aerospace and defense to automotive, consumer products, energy, heavy machinery and pharmaceuticals. Suppliers are now getting into the act, providing a virtual twin of their product to a manufacturer for integration into the manufacturer's virtual twin system.
Virtual twins can be used for accelerated product development and modification, with innovations trialed in the virtual world before they are implemented. Virtual twins now also follow products out into the world, monitoring them to acquire use data, and to provide after-sales support. As products become smarter, with more sensors and resident intelligence, and more internet-enabled, the more tightly they can be integrated into the virtual system. GE creates virtual twins of its wind turbines and jet engines to monitor their performance and support preventive maintenance. Data transmitted from a jet engine while planes are in the air can provide 15 to 30 days' advance notice of potential failures.
Even mass-produced goods that are far less elaborate than jet engines are now being incorporated into virtual systems, though of course there's less to monitor with food and pharmaceutical products. Each unit of product can be shipped with a unique ID code, allowing it to be traced from production to end use; an end user could scan the code on, say, a bottle of wine, to verify that it is genuine and not a counterfeit. The inevitable downside is that effectively everything we buy is becoming traceable. Like it or not, that's the unavoidable deal we've made for an information-rich world.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE MIDDLE EAST & CLIMATE CHANGE: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Too Hot To Handle", 31 May 2018), there's so much trouble in the Middle East that environmental issues don't rank high on the priority queue. Nabil Musa, a Kurdish environmentalist, says: "One of the last things we want to think about is climate change."
Unfortunately, climate change promises to make life much more wretched across the Middle East. According to Germany's Max Planck Institute for Chemistry. Longer droughts, hotter heatwaves and more frequent dust storms will occur across the region. Dry seasons, already long, are getting longer and drier, scorching crops. Heat spikes are becoming a bigger problem too, with days of lethal temperatures becoming more common. Project such trends out a few years, and they seem frightening; a few decades, they become apocalyptic.
The Max Planck Institute forecasts that summer temperatures in the Middle East and North Africa will rise over twice as fast as the global average. Extreme temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius (115 degrees Fahrenheit) or more will be about five times more likely by 2050 than they were at the beginning of the century, when similar peaks were reached, on average, 16 days per year. According to a study in NATURE, if nothing is done to reduce emissions, "wet-bulb temperatures" -- which factor in both heat and humidity -- could get so high in the Gulf region as to make staying alive difficult. In 2017, Iran came close to breaking the highest reliably recorded temperature of 54C (129F), which Kuwait had reached in 2016.
And then there's water, which is scarce enough in the region to begin with; it is likely to become even more scarce as warming depresses rainfall. In some areas, such as the Moroccan highlands, it could drop by up to 40%. Some coastal countries will get more rainfall, but that is likely to be offset by higher evaporation rates. Farmers are digging deeper wells, depleting aquifers. Observations by NASA satellites show that the Tigris and Euphrates basins lost 144 cubic kilometers of fresh water, about the volume of the Dead Sea, from 2003 to 2010.
To no surprise, climate change is already aggravating political problems. Eastern Syria was afflicted by drought from 2007 to 2010, with 1.5 million people fleeing to the cities, helping to destabilize the country. In Iraq, since the 1990s drought similarly drove many farmers out of the countryside. Squabbling over water supplies is intensifying. When Ethiopia started building an enormous dam on the Nile, potentially limiting the flow, Egypt, which relies on the river for nearly all of its water, threatened to go to war. Turkish and Iranian dams along the Tigris, Euphrates, and other rivers have similarly antagonized the Iraqis.
Researchers have suggested a number of fixes:
Unfortunately, governments in the region are usually too busy dealing with war or social instability to implement such measures. Some of the more stable governments are taking measures to curb emissions. Morocco is building a huge solar-power plant in the desert, as is Dubai, part of United Arab Emirates. Saudi Arabia will continue to export oil, but is planning to a solar plant that will be about 200 times the size of the biggest such facility operating today.
The Saudis aren't that environmentally conscious; they just see solar power as a cost-effective way to increase the electricity supply and cut energy subsidies. After all, the region has no shortage of sun power. Safa al-Jayoussi of IndyACT, a conservationist group in Beirut, says: "When I first started, people looked at environmentalists as tree-huggers. But now I think the most important argument is the economic one."
Nonetheless, the forecast for the Middle East and North Africa is for hotter temperatures. The people of the region can't solve the problem on their own, and so far they haven't been able to contribute much to the solution. Says Nabil Musa: "Sometimes I feel like I'm on a treadmill."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* QUANTUM THERMODYNAMICS (1): As discussed by an article from NATURE.com ("The New Thermodynamics: How Quantum Physics Is Bending The Rules" by Zeeya Merali, 01 November 2017), quantum physics did not overthrow the laws of classical physics, which still generally apply to the macroscale world of our daily experience. However, probe down towards the quantum level, and the laws of classical physics become increasingly twisted.
In a lab at the University of Oxford in the UK, quantum physicists probe a small synthetic diamond, buried in a matrix of optical fibers and mirrors. They switch on a green laser, which illuminates defects in the diamond, making it glow red. Analysis of the test run shows the diamond has a power output above the level defined by classical thermodynamics, suggesting a gateway to the understanding of quantum thermodynamics.
Classical physics and quantum physics are linked by what is called the "correspondence principle" -- that is, while the rules of quantum physics seen in the microscale Universe seem to be at odds with the laws of classical physics seen in the macroscale Universe, in the sum, events in the microscale Universe bridge to the rules observed in the macroscale Universe. This is necessarily so: if they didn't, the macroscale Universe would have different observed properties. Turning the correspondence principle around, the classical rules observed in the macroscale Universe give way to the rules of quantum physics when observations are taken into the microscale.
This applies to thermophysics, of course. Over the past five years or so, a quantum-thermodynamics community has emerged; Ronnie Kosloff, an early pioneer of the field at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in Israel, comments: "The field is moving so fast I can barely keep up." It's not just a purely theoretical exercise, either: A number of quantum thermodynamicists hope to find behaviors outside the domain of "classical" thermodynamics that could have practical applications -- like improving lab-based refrigeration techniques, coming up with enhanced capabilities, and refining technology for quantum computing. Effects in the microscale can have subtle effects in the macroscale.
For the time being, however, the focus is necessarily on theory; applications aren't here yet. Ronald Walsworth, a physicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who works on precision atomic-scale tools -- comments: "Quantum thermodynamics is clearly hot -- pardon the pun. But for those of us looking in from the outside, the question is: can it really shed new light on the development of technologies?"
Classical thermodynamics emerged in the nineteenth century, starting from the need to understand steam engines and other macroscale thermal engines. The founders of the science turned to statistical analysis to define quantities such as temperature and heat in terms of the average motion of large numbers of particles. Back in the 1990s, Kosloff began to wonder just how much this picture changes in the microscale. There wasn't a lot of interest in the question at the time, few seeing that it amounted to much. Kosloff says: "I was alone for years."
That changed about a decade ago, as fabrication of microscale solid-state devices began to reach farther into the microscale, with the behavior of the devices increasingly deviating from what was seen at a larger scale. That led to questions of how classical thermodynamics changed in the microscale. The work at the time, however, tended towards the confused -- some claiming that at the quantum level, the Second Law of Thermodynamics didn't hold any longer, meaning that perpetual-motion machines could be possible.
Others suggested there would be no change from classical thermodynamics at the quantum level. Kosloff comments: "In some sense, you can use the same equations to work out the performance of a single atom engine and your car engine. But that seems shocking, too -- surely as you get smaller and smaller, you should hit some quantum limit."
Actually, it's obvious that classical thermodynamics doesn't apply at the quantum level. If quantities like temperature are defined through the statistics of large assembly of particles, then the statistics are increasingly off base as the assembly gets smaller. In the quantum limit of a single particle, the concept of classical temperature makes no sense.
At first, the theoretical bickering of the quantum thermodynamics community undermined their credibility, skeptics suggesting they talk less about theory and do more experiments. The criticisms were taken to heart, with more effort focused on experiments to uncover the threshold at which the classical laws of thermodynamics cease to correctly apply to quantum systems. [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (17): The first part of 1st clause of Section 1 of Article III gave the president a blanket authority: "The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America."
The working definition of "executive power" was left to be determined through experience, and it is still being figured out. It had similarities to the Elastic Clause of Congress, saying in effect: "As long as the president understands the expressed limitations on the power of the office, the chief executive can take any measures necessary to get the job done."
The difference is that Congress is granted a list of specific enumerated powers, with the Elastic Clause at the end to say that the list is more or less open-ended; while the executive power is granted to the president as the first item of business, with stipulations then placed on that power. In any case, Congress could make the laws, the judiciary could pass judgement on them; but neither could look over the president's shoulder and tell the POTUS how to do the job.
This executive power is most clearly manifested in "executive orders", which are presidential decrees establishing an action or imposing a regulation. As long as a president doesn't go outside of the law and doesn't step on Congressional toes, a president can take actions as necessary. There has always been a tug of war between the three branches of government over what the president could or could not do. Incidentally, there was talk in the Philadelphia Convention of having an executive triumvirate instead of a single executive, but that was inconsistent with the idea of an effective president, and quickly shot down.
The 2nd through 4th clauses of Section 1 specified that:
The Constitution was vague on the electoral college, specifying only that the elector could not be a member of the Federal government; it allowed the states to appoint electors as they saw fit. For a time, the legislatures of some states directly appointed electors, though popular election would eventually be the norm. The Constitution also did not specify how electors were to vote, though in practice electors would follow the popular vote for president in their district, at least for a time -- in the present, most US states follow the "winner take all" system, in which all the electors of a state copy the popular vote for all the state, and all vote the same way. Electors aren't legally restricted from voting any damn way they feel like voting, but such "faithless electors" have never been an issue.
What would eventually become an issue was that, thanks to the electoral college, a president might be elected on the basis of the electoral vote, even after losing the popular vote. That wouldn't happen for almost a century until after the ratification of the Constitution -- but still, the electoral college seems like an awkward contraption. There was talk in the Philadelphia Convention of a direct public vote for the presidency, but the electoral college won out.
Why? There were a number of considerations, one being the logistical difficulty of handling a direct popular vote; but deciding factor may well have been the 3/5ths Clause, giving slave states a bonus in national representation. At the outset, the electoral college system also had a feature that is now hard to understand: the electors only voted for a president, not a vice president as a "running mate" for a presidential candidate, with the runner-up in the election becoming vice president.
The idea that a president would have as vice president a person who was almost certainly a political rival, or outright enemy, appears completely unworkable -- and would prove so in practice. Why did the Framers, who were hardly ignorant people, come up with such a contraption?
One of the issues was that a chief executive who was popularly elected was something of an unusual and uncertain notion at the time. More typically, they were monarchs; or prime ministers, put into office by monarchs or legislatures. In addition, at the time of the Philadelphia Convention, political parties hadn't yet emerged, politics instead rotating around personalities. Parties would emerge soon enough, and demonstrate the need to rethink the selection of the vice president. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed by an article from CNN ("Switzerland Unveils World's Steepest Funicular Railway" by Rob Hodgetts, 15 December 2017), the Swiss alpine resort of Stoos, not far from Lake Lucerne, has now installed the world's steepest funicular railway.
So, what's a funicular railway? It's a type of cablecar system, used for climbing slopes. It features two trains on parallel tracks, linked by a cable, with one going up as the other goes down. The tracks actually don't have to be separate; since the movement of the trains is synchronized by the cable, they can both use the same track, as long as it's got a switched two-track bypass element in the middle. It's a little easier to use three rails, the middle being shared, to simplify routing of the cable system.
Funicular schemes are not news; the basic technology goes back to the 16th century, being originally used to help canal boats get upstream by hooking up boats going upstream with those going downstream. The antiquity of the idea is not surprising, since the idea's so straightforward and brute-force. Funicular railroads as currently understood go back to the 1860s; one still running in Quebec City went into operation in 1879.
The new funicular runs from the floor of a valley, near the town of Schwyz, to Stoos, on a plateau at an altitude of 1,300 meters (4,300 feet), rising a distance of 743 meters (2,437 feet) at a speed of 36 KPH (22 MPH), up grades as steep as 110%. It has four cabins, in the shape of drums that pivot to keep the passenger seats on the level, with 34 seats per drum. The new line replaces an older funicular, which had gone into operation in 1933.
* As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("Oregon Family Finds Amazon's Alexa Has A Mind Of Her Own" by Jeffrey Dastin 24 May 2018), a family in Portland, Oregon, encountered what Amazon.com officials called a "unlikely ... string of events" that led to the family's Amazon Alexa smart speaker to send an audio recording to one of their contacts at random.
The woman of the household, identified only as "Danielle", got a call in mid-May from her husband's employee, who said Alexa had recorded the family's conversation about hardwood floors and sent it to him. Danielle was not happy: "I'm never plugging that device in again, because I can't trust it."
Alexa starts recording when it hears its name or another "wake word", selected by users. The problem is that anything that sounds like the wake word, not just in household conversation but also from TV commercials and such, can activate Alexa. Amazon officials commented in a statement:
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Subsequent conversation was heard as a "send message" request. At which point, Alexa said out loud: "To whom?" The background conversation was then interpreted as a name in the customer's contact list. We are evaluating options to make this case even less likely.
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Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, says he wasn't surprised by the incident: "Background noise from our television is making it think we said 'Alexa'. It happens all the time."
* For those made paranoid by Alexa's insubordination, an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Watch Researchers Turn A Wall Into Alexa's Eyes And Ears" by Elizabeth Pennisi, 27 April 2018) will reinforce that uneasiness. The article discussed how a group of researchers figured out how to turn walls into giant touch sensors that can also sense what a person is doing nearby and when the TV, microwave, or computer are turned on and off, giving Alexa or some other virtual assistant an "all-seeing eye". Imagine, for example, a TV that turns on when people sit down facing it, Alexa providing alerts to tell parents where the kids are in the house, and what they're doing.
First, the researchers converted a wall into an antenna. They taped a grid onto the wall, then painted over it with a water-based compound containing nickel; removing the tape left behind a pattern of metallic diamonds that acted as electrodes. They then connected the electrodes to a computer and painted the wall with ordinary latex paint, concealing the antenna.
Touching or moving an arm or limb close to the wall changed the wall's electrostatic fields. Similarly, the walls could sense the distinctive electromagnetic fields of when TVs, computers, and other electronic devices were turned on. It seems likely an operational system would require some training to know what devices were present.
ED: It is not surprising that some people will get nervous at such innovations, but any time we get a new technology with capabilities we haven't had before, we end up finding that it introduces complications. Either we accept them, or we fix them, and there's no more problem. Still, a headline from THE ONION is worth a laugh:
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Jeff Bezos Announces Customers Can Delete All Of Alexa's Stored Audio By Rappelling Into Amazon HQ, Navigating Laser Field, Uploading Nanovirus To Servers
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Cue MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE theme.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* FIGHTING EBOLA: As reported by an article from REUTERS.com ("In Congo Outbreak, Ebola Vaccine Faces Reality Tests" by Kate Kelland, 18 May 2018) the lethal Ebola virus has made a comeback in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Dozens of cases have been diagnosed, the fatality rate being about 50%.
Now, Merck & Company are trying out a new vaccine named "VSV-EBOV" in hopes of stopping Ebola, with the exercise underlining just how difficult field trials can be. Poor communications, health facilities, and electrical supply pose challenges, as does the need to store the vaccine in deep cold. According to Peter Salama, the World Health Organization's (WHO) deputy director-general for emergency preparedness and response: "This is going to need a highly sophisticated operation in one of the most difficult places on earth. It's very hot and very humid, and we're talking about hundreds of kilometers of densely forested areas."
The vaccine is largely unproven, and so it is being tested under a "compassionate use" protocol, agreed to by national / international health and ethics authorities. That further complicates trials, since means fully informed, signed consent is required from every person who wants the shot. The logistical obstacles are compounded by cultural and language barriers.
Micaela Serafini -- a medical director for the international charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF), which is involved in the effort -- says the MSF teams plan for at least 45 minutes of discussion and information-sharing with each person, with a translator present, before signed consent is obtained. Those who consent are vaccinated the next day.
The field trial is focused on what is called "ring vaccination". When a new Ebola case is diagnosed, all people who might have been in recent contact with that person are traced down and vaccinated in hopes of heading off the spread of the disease. The initial trial came into Congo with enough vaccine to inoculate 50 rings of 150 people. Tracing down the people in a ring is difficult -- made more difficult by the need to use translators for several local languages, and explain the vaccine to leaders from different communities.
This is the second trial of VSV-EBOV; the first was in 2015 in Guinea, West Africa, with the vaccine demonstrating 100% effectiveness in protecting those vaccinated immediately. Those administering the trial in Congo hope it will prevent Ebola from running wild; but worries have grown after the discovery of a case in Mbandaka, a city of a million people. Jeremy Farrar -- a specialist in infectious diseases and director of the Wellcome Trust global health charity -- says the epidemic now has:
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... all the features of something that could turn really nasty. You can't over-respond in this scenario. But the vaccine must be seen in the context of an overarching public health response. Critically that means early diagnosis, early isolation, safe burials and understanding the social context. The vaccine can only be a part of the solution.
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Despite a degree of suspicion in some remote parts of Africa of Western medicines, given how fearsome Ebola is -- panicky rumors can hardly make it out as worse than it is -- experts expect widespread public acceptance. Indeed, Salama says one of the difficulties is that people will feel left out:
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We want to make sure we are engaging whole communities so that the broader community understands what we are doing and why. That is particularly important when you're not targeting everyone, because naturally people will ask: "How come you're vaccinating that person but not me?"
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COMMENT ON ARTICLE* MISSION TO FARSIDE: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("China's Moon Mission Will Probe Cosmic Dark Ages" by Daniel Clery, 16 May 2018), China has been conducting a series of "Chang'e" robotic lunar missions, with the fourth to be launched late in 2018. The Chang'e 4 mission will include an orbiter, lander, and rover; the spacecraft system will be effectively the same as the successful Chang'e 3 mission, launched in 2013.
The difference between the two missions is that Chang'e 4 will touch down on the lunar farside, out of line of sight to Earth; it will be the first Moon landing on the farside. That makes communications difficult, and so on 21 May the Chinese launched a communications relay space platform named "Queqiao" -- which will take up a "halo" orbit, looping around the "L2" Earth-Moon libration point, beyond the Moon.
As a secondary mission, Queqiao will perform radio astronomy experiments, using a Dutch-made radio receiver on board the space platform. In the radio-quiet lunar environment, the receiver will listen in on low frequencies to obtain clues about the state of the Universe a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, when clouds of hydrogen gas were spawning the Universe's first stars.
The "Netherlands-China Low-Frequency Explorer (NCLE)" project began with a 2015 Dutch trade mission to China, during which the two countries agreed to collaborate on space missions. The Dutch are big on radio astronomy: the country's "Low-Frequency Array (LOFAR)" sprawls across much of Northern Europe. NCLE Principal Investigator Heino Falcke, of Radboud University in the Netherlands, has long pushed for a "LOFAR on the Moon."
China having an energetic Moon program, Falcke eagerly seized the opportunity: "We put together a proposal in 2 weeks." It only took a year and a half to build the instrument, and Falcke says much of the effort was just trying to figure out how to work together. Jinsong Ping of the National Astronomical Observatories of China in Beijing, head of the Chinese NCLE team, agrees: "It is really challenging both sides. Different culture, habit, language, working manner."
To inspect the dark time before the first stars, astronomers leverage off the radio emissions, at a wavelength of 21 centimeters, generated when the electrons in neutral hydrogen atoms flipped their orientation. 21 centimeters is in the microwave region of the electromagnetic spectrum, but over their 13-billion-year-plus flight to Earth, the Universe's expansion stretched them out to wavelengths measured in hundreds of meters, in the low megahertz frequencies. Once the first stars lit up, they ionized the neutral hydrogen, shutting off the signal.
Radio telescopes such as LOFAR have attempted to detect the ancient signal and use it to map the distribution of primordial matter; but the signal is hard to pick out of the radio background noise, both from terrestrial sources and cosmic sources. In addition, the atmosphere obscures low-frequency radio signals. Only one instrument -- the "Experiment to Detect the Global Epoch of Reionization Signature", a set of ground-based antennas in Australia -- has so far claimed a detection.
The position of Queqiao beyond the Moon will reduce exposure to terrestrial radio sources, but the space platform's halo orbit around the L2 point means it won't be completely shielded. In addition, Quieqiao itself may be a source of interference. Those aren't show-stoppers, NCLE being a proof-of-concept mission to pave the way towards an operational system.
NCLE will have to wait until the Chang'e 4 lander has completed its primary mission -- exploring the South Pole-Aitken Basin, a huge farside depression. Around March 2019, NCLE will three 2-meter-long carbon-fiber antennas, each at right angles to the others, and start listening in to low-frequency radio waves. Falcke says the dark age signal is a long shot, but NCLE will observe other phenomena, including solar flares, the aurora of Jupiter, and the Galaxy's radio emissions. He emphasizes that the mission is about "gaining expertise to build a follow-up."
The Chinese NCLE team has its own plans for the mission. Basic receivers placed on the Chang'e 4 lander -- and two microsatellites named "Longjiang 1" and "Longjiang 2", released by Queqiao into lunar orbit -- will be used to study solar radio bursts. The Chinese team will also attempt, as a demonstration, to hook up NCLE observations with those of Earth-based instruments, a scheme known as "long-baseline interferometry".
Jack Burns, an astrophysicist at the University of Colorado Boulder, is driving a proposal for a small satellite called the "Dark Ages Polarimetry Pathfinder", which will be better optimized to pick up the dark ages signal. Ultimately, he expects to see a NASA-funded low-frequency telescope on the surface of the Moon. Burns says: "There's great interest in the far side."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DRONE DELIVERY IN PROGRESS (2): A drone delivery trial begun in August 2017 in Reykjavik, Iceland, by Israel's Flytrex and Icelandic e-commerce company Aha is now being expanded. To date, one drone has been flying food in tests 2.5 kilometers (1.5 miles) across a wide river that separates two parts of the city. Previously, a van took almost a half hour to make a delivery; now it takes less than five minutes. Aha is planning to operate a dozen or more delivery lines once the system goes into operation.
Aha will use commercially-available drones for the exercise, with the drones operating in segregated airspace. As sense-and-avoid technology is not yet mature enough, the drones will fly fixed routes. Aha stays in touch with local air traffic control (ATC) when operating the drones. As with the Project Wing experiment, customers place orders and track the drones with a smartphone app.
In Switzerland, a hospital drone network established in Lugano in the fall of 2017 by Swiss Post and US startup Matternet has made hundreds of deliveries, running 5 to 15 autonomous flights a day, carrying laboratory samples or urgently needed medication between two hospitals. Regular drone transport between the hospitals will start in the summer of 2018. The drones will be controlled by automated Matternet stations, set up on the ground or or on rooftops. A station will guide a Matternet M2 drone to a landing, lock in place, handle the payload, and swap out the battery. A user scans a package into the station to send it, or scans a QR code to receive a delivery.
In Zurich, Matternet, Mercedes-Benz Vans, and Swiss online marketplace Siroop launched a three-week pilot program in September 2017 to test an automated drone / van delivery system. This involved the first extensive BVLOS drone operations in a major urban area using vans as landing platforms. Items were ordered online and flown directly from the merchant to delivery vans waiting at prespecified rendezvous points within the city. During the pilot test, the drones completed 100 deliveries of ground coffee to two vans at four fixed stops, flying distances up to 17 kilometers (10.5 miles). Further trials are planned.
In February 2018, in Singapore Airbus Helicopters conducted the first demonstration flight of its "Skyways" urban drone delivery system at the National University of Singapore (NUS), the project also involving the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore and logistics partner SingPost. In the tests, a purpose-designed drone, operating from a maintenance center, flew to a station, where a robot arm attached or detached a package. Trial service will begin later in 2018, with the autonomous drones carrying parcels with a weight of up to 4 kilograms (8.8 pounds) between stations on the NUS campus. At least initially, the autonomous drones will be closely monitored from an operations center.
The Zipline drone system for Africa, discussed here in 2017, has been delivering blood to remote medical centers since October 2016. In March, Zipline fielded a major upgrade of the drone logistics system that cuts the time from receipt of an order, to launch of a delivery flight, from 10 minutes to 1 minutes. The fixed-wing drones have also been enhanced, with speed increased from 80 to 101 KPH (50 to (63 MPH); round-trip range is 160 kilometers (100 miles) carrying 1.75 kilograms (4 pounds) of cargo, with the cargo dropped by parachute at the destination.
For recovery, the drone is snagged by a nylon line strung between two trusses, to be lowered to the ground. The upgrades allow a distribution center to perform 500 sorties a day, ten times more than previously. Since beginning operations in Rwanda, Zipline has delivered more than 7,000 units of blood on more than 4,000 flights. A second distribution center is being opened in Rwanda, and operations in Tanzania will begin this year.
In Canada, Drone Delivery Canada (DDC) is working towards a pilot project with the remote Moose Cree First Nation community in northern Ontario. The drones will carry payloads weighing up to 4.5 kilograms (10 pounds) up to 13 kilometers (8 miles) over the Moose River, to deliver mail, food, medicines and other goods. DDC is planning commercial drone networks if all goes well. The scheme provides BVLOS flight, using the Flyte mission management software and DroneSpot, a secure take-off-and-landing platform that provides local weather and aircraft awareness, weight and balance monitoring, and other data needed for operations.
In the US, a startup named Flirtey is focusing on the delivery of urgently needed medical aid, starting with automated external defibrillators, but potentially including medicines to treat allergy attacks and drug overdoses. The company has been testing the delivery of defibrillators on the outskirts of Reno-Sparks with Nevada's Regional Emergency Medical Services Authority and the police and fire departments. Drone delivery isn't here yet; but it's no longer seen as a fantasy. [END OF SERIES]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (16): Article II of the Constitution defined the office of the President of the United States (POTUS), in four sections. Elements of Section 1 included the general powers of the president, under the executive "Vesting Clause"; the method of electing the president; the essential qualifications to be president, under the "Qualifications Clause"; and some details of the job:
BEGIN QUOTE:
1: The executive Power shall be vested in a President of the United States of America. He shall hold his Office during the Term of four Years, and, together with the Vice President, chosen for the same Term, be elected, as follows
2: Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or Person holding an Office of Trust or Profit under the United States, shall be appointed an Elector.
3: The Electors shall meet in their respective States, and vote by Ballot for two Persons, of whom one at least shall not be an Inhabitant of the same State with themselves. And they shall make a List of all the Persons voted for, and of the Number of Votes for each; which List they shall sign and certify, and transmit sealed to the Seat of the Government of the United States, directed to the President of the Senate. The President of the Senate shall, in the Presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted.
The Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President, if such Number be a Majority of the whole Number of Electors appointed; and if there be more than one who have such Majority, and have an equal Number of Votes, then the House of Representatives shall immediately chuse by Ballot one of them for President; and if no Person have a Majority, then from the five highest on the List the said House shall in like Manner chuse the President.
But in chusing the President, the Votes shall be taken by States, the Representation from each State having one Vote; A quorum for this Purpose shall consist of a Member or Members from two thirds of the States, and a Majority of all the States shall be necessary to a Choice. In every Case, after the Choice of the President, the Person having the greatest Number of Votes of the Electors shall be the Vice President. But if there should remain two or more who have equal Votes, the Senate shall chuse from them by Ballot the Vice President.8
4: The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
5: No Person except a natural born Citizen, or a Citizen of the United States, at the time of the Adoption of this Constitution, shall be eligible to the Office of President; neither shall any Person be eligible to that Office who shall not have attained to the Age of thirty five Years, and been fourteen Years a Resident within the United States.
6: In Case of the Removal of the President from Office, or of his Death, Resignation, or Inability to discharge the Powers and Duties of the said Office, the Same shall devolve on the VicePresident, and the Congress may by Law provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President, and such Officer shall act accordingly, until the Disability be removed, or a President shall be elected.
7: The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be encreased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.
8: Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States."
END QUOTE
[TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("How To Escape A Venus Flytrap, In One Easy Step" by Lakshmi Supriya, 9 February 2018), there's a common fascination with predatory plants, the best-known being the Venus flytrap, native only to a small region in the Carolinas. A study now shows that there are some insects that don't get trapped by the plant -- the insects that pollinate it, leading to the question of how the plant tells the difference.
The researchers collected more than 600 insects -- two-thirds obtained after visiting the flowers of Venus flytrap plans, a third victims that had been grabbed by the plants. The samples were checked for Venus flytrap pollen to see if they were regular pollinators of the plant. They didn't see much overlap between the two sample sets: the pollinators were rarely eaten.
It was really obvious as to why, and the researchers were only being thorough to investigate: the flowers of the Venus flytrap were well above the plant's traps -- like about 15 to 35 centimeters (6 to 14 inches), and the flying pollinators didn't get close to the traps. Any insect crawling up the plant was likely to run into them, however, and become a meal.
* As discussed by an article from SCIENCEDAILY.com ("Viruses -- Lots Of Them -- Are Falling From The Sky", 6 February 2018), a study by a collaboration of researchers in Canada, Spain, and the US has determined that huge numbers of of viruses are in circulation in the Earth's atmosphere.
Using measurement systems on platforms high in Spain's Sierra Nevada Mountains, the researchers found billions of viruses, and tens of millions of bacteria are being deposited per square meter per day. Bacteria and viruses are carried by winds up into the atmosphere on soil-dust and sea spray. Genetic analysis shows that most are oceanic species, meaning sea spray is the predominant mechanism. They reach the troposphere -- above the weather, below the stratosphere -- where they are circulated rapidly around the globe by high-altitude winds. According to virologist Curtis Settle of the University of British Columbia virologist Curtis Suttle, one of the researchers in the collaboration:
EGIN QUOTE
Every day, more than 800 million viruses are deposited per square meter above the planetary boundary layer -- that's 25 viruses for each person in Canada. Roughly 20 years ago, we began finding genetically similar viruses occurring in very different environments around the globe. This preponderance of long-residence viruses traveling the atmosphere likely explains why -- it's quite conceivable to have a virus swept up into the atmosphere on one continent and deposited on another.
END QUOTE
The bacteria and viruses fall back to earth in rain and as dust deposit, dust appearing to be the predominant mechanism. There's no reason to believe that such atmospheric distribution has anything to do with the spread of pandemics -- though such a mechanism can't be ruled out.
* As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Could Ultraviolet Lamps Slow The Spread Of Flu?" by Jon Cohen, 3 January 2018), hospitals and labs often used ultraviolet (UV) light to kill microbes -- but UV isn't all that good for humans either, and so it's only used in empty operating rooms, or when humans are otherwise not exposed to it. Now researchers have found that short-wavelength UV may not cause humans any harm, which means it could be used to prevent the spread of diseases in schools, airliners, food processing plants, as well as operating rooms and labs.
UV works by breaking down microbial genetic material or proteins, with the most commonly used wavelength being 254 nanometers (nm). At that wavelength, it can penetrate the skin and eyes, leading to cancers and cataracts. For the past few years, physicist David Brenner at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City has tested shorter wavelengths, known as "far UVC light" that, while more energetic, can't penetrate the outer layers of the eyes or skin. The researchers found that far UVC killed bacteria on surfaces, but did not harm lab mice.
Brenner and his team decided to see if far UVC would be effective against airborne microbes, the primary agent of contagion in public places. They first aerosolized influenza viruses inside a chamber, exposing them to UVC light with a wavelength of 222 nm. Samples collected from the chamber were then introduced to cultures of dog kidney cells. Samples from the chamber that hadn't been exposed to UVC could infect the cells; those that had been, didn't infect them.
Brenner got interested in fighting microbes when a friend went to a hospital for minor surgery, to be infected with drug-resistant bacteria that killed him. Brenner, who works in a radiological research institute, specializes in ionizing radiation, X-rays, and gamma rays; it was natural for him to turn to UVC to fight back. The research team leveraged off recent improvements in excimer lamps -- best known for their use in LASIK eye surgery. The lamps use a mix krypton and chlorine gases to produce narrowband light that can range from 207 nm to 222 nm. The researchers added filters to the lamps to remove all but the desired wavelength. An excimer lamp costs about $1,000 USD right now, and will cost much less in mass production.
Brenner and his team plan to conduct more studies with far UVC light and microbes to assess safety and effectiveness. Assuming things go smoothly, Brenner thinks he should be able to go after regulatory approval within the next few years.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* LAND OF VOLCANOES: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Smoke & Tremors", 2 December 2017), Indonesia is a far-flung, populous equatorial country -- distinctive in a number of ways, one being that it has 127 active volcanoes. It was home to both the biggest eruption of modern times, of Tambora in 1815, and the second-biggest, of Krakatoa in 1883.
The volcano named Agung, on the island of Bali, erupted in 1963, being the biggest explosion in the archipelago in the 20th century. Gas, rock, and ash were blasted to an altitude of 25 kilometers (15.5 miles); over a thousand people died. Earlier eruptions of Agung, in 1843 and 1710:1711, were comparably destructive. On 25 November 2017, Agung lit up again.
Indonesia's geologists divide the archipelago's volcanoes into three categories:
Agung, of course, is in the first category. It is monitored continuously from a nearby station, with data fed back to the Volcanology & Geological Disaster Mitigation Center (PVMBG) in Bandung, where hundreds of staff monitor computer displays showing seismic traces and other data. The geologists keep track of the earthquakes under the volcano; its bulges and other shifts in surface features; and the type and volume of gas it emits. When it started acting up, a team with additional instruments was dispatched from Bandung.
Volcanic activity never happens without warning; the signs are there for those who are watching. In September 2017, it was obvious new magma was rising in Agung, the conclusion being that an eruption was imminent. The 1963 eruption was preceded by two days of earthquakes, and produced calamitous flows of lava and ash within four weeks. The evacuation order was premature -- it wasn't until 21 November that steam began to billow out of the volcano, with the eruption beginning four days later.
Volcanoes, in short, are predictable, but they're hard to predict with precision. Sinabung, on the island of Sumatra, erupted suddenly in 2010, then again in 2013 and 2016. However, before that it hadn't erupted for more than 400 years, and PVMBG wasn't monitoring it; the 2010 eruption came as a surprise, with a handful of people killed. Sinabung is still active. Thousands of people had to be permanently relocated.
Even with volcanoes known to be active and kept under close watch, it's hard to know how imminent or cataclysmic an eruption will be. According to Matthew Watson of the University of Bristol, a decision to raise the alarm requires a "good deal of expert judgment under great uncertainty". Call for an evacuation too early, and people might decide the risk is overblown, then return to their homes.
Dr. Surono -- that's his full name, though being a senior figure in the Indonesian geological community he's often called "Grandfather Rono" -- says that he monitored Merapi, on the island of Java, for years, discussing plans for evacuations with colleagues. Late on October 24th 2010, he decided that an eruption was about to occur, and called for an evacuation. The National Disaster Management Authority managed to get some 350,000 people to safety before the eruption actually took place, on the evening of the 25th. Surono felt that was a good call, since the short interval minimized the time evacuees spent away from their homes. Unfortunately, many people refused to leave, and more than 350 were killed.
Indonesia's disaster-management budget is only 4 trillion rupiah, about $300 million USD. That's not really enough to handle the 127 active volcanoes in Indonesia, not to mention tsunamis, typhoons, and other disasters that occur every now and then. Staff of PVMBG tend to stay on the move, trying to cover the potential trouble spots.
The widespread availability of smartphones does help; villagers, who might have been more willing to listen to village elders or shamans in the past, have become dependent on their phones, grant them a high degree of authority, and pay attention to alerts. Drones, too, have proven useful, allowing craters to be inspected after humans have been forced to retreat. Indonesia's volcanologists are also getting help from elsewhere, with the monitoring center making use of satellite images provided by colleagues in the US, France, and Japan. With such an overwhelming job, they can use all the help they can get.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* UNAFFORDABLE: As discussed by an editorial from NATURE.com ("Curbing Global Warming Could Save US $20 Trillion", 23 May 2018), in 1991 economist Bill Nordhaus of Yale published a paper titled: "To Slow Or Not To Slow: The Economics Of The Greenhouse Effect". The 18-page study was a pioneer in assessing the economic impact of climate change; Nordhaus evaluated the costs of acting on emissions, the estimated costs of not doing so -- to conclude that it would be economically much wiser to address the problem, instead of just reacting to problems as they arose.
Economists and analysts have repeated the exercise many times, prominently with the British government's Stern Review in 2006. The studies overwhelming agree with Nordhaus's conclusion: it will be much cheaper to spend money to curb emissions than to pay for the impact of the resulting climate change. But how much cheaper? That's been argued.
Now, a study published in NATURE offers the latest, most comprehensive attempt to put a pricetag on climate change. Marshall Burke and his colleagues modeled the impact of historical temperature changes on the gross domestic product (GDP) of 165 countries between 1960 and 2010, and then used the model to extrapolate to conditions at the end of this century. The result was that every increment in action to deal with climate change generated greater economic benefits -- or more precisely the avoided damages, measured as impact on GDP.
In specifics, there is a 75% probability that limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius to the end of the century -- that being a goal of the Paris climate agreement -- will be much better than letting temperatures rise by 2 degrees. The savings will amount to a cumulative $20-trillion USD increase in world GDP by the end of the century. For comparison, global GDP in 2016 was about $76 trillion USD.
To be sure, like all experts, economists and climate-policy wonks are an argumentative bunch; they won't, aren't expected to, take the paper at face value, and will give a stiff wire-brushing. As an example from the past, the 2006 Stern review was criticized by economists for the way it placed great importance on the burden to future generations, who are usually discounted in models of economic impact because it is assumed that they will be considerably richer, and so better able to deal with problems than the present generation.
In the spirit of wire-brushing, NATURE published two commentaries alongside the paper. One concern it raised was the validity of simply extrapolating from past trends into the future. How can we know future generations won't come up with some unforeseen fix that will dramatically change the course of events? The answer is that we can only make projections on the basis of what we know about; we can't make plans on the basis that we'll win the lottery.
Another issue with the new model is that it assumes that climate change, and the extreme weather it will bring, will have a compound impact on a nation's GDP: that is, a devastating storm or washed-out summer would affect not just that year's economic performance, but also the economics of subsequent years. Previous studies have taken a more optimistic view that damage would be isolated to specific incidents, with little carry-over.
There's also the more general issue of the reliability of GDP as a metric. Traditionally, it assumes that the market price of goods and services fully reflects the costs of their production and use. However, the economics of climate change don't always do that: the price of fossil fuels, for one, doesn't take account of the costs associated with future warming.
In any case, these economic projections will be given a thorough inspection, with data collected to obtain further refined models. In the broad view of things, the conversation doesn't matter: the bottom line of the studies in aggregate is that human burning of fossil fuels is writing cheques that the global economy can't afford to cash.
ED: This article implicitly reflects on the games of anti-science cranks, in which they proclaim that scientists are complacently too sure of themselves in their studies, with the science community giving the studies a free pass. The reality, of course, is that the science community, as is typical of professional communities, is highly argumentative -- which the cranks then play up as proving that scientists don't really know anything. "Heads I win, tails you lose."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DRONE DELIVERY IN PROGRESS (1): As discussed by an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("Delivery By Drone Matures In Real-World Testing" by Graham Warwick, 13 April 2018), the concept of using drones to deliver purchases directly to the homes of customers has been treated as something of a fantasy -- but now there's work in progress towards developing and testing procedures for drone delivery, as well as the umbrella unmanned aerial system (UAS) traffic management (UTM) system to get the exercise out of the hand-holding phase.
Project Wing -- run by Alphabet X, the research arm of Alphabet, the parent company of Google -- is one of the first five "UAS service suppliers (USS)" selected by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), with the USS able to obtain automated approval of requests for flights of drones in controlled airspace near airports -- using the "Low-Altitude Authorization And Notification Capability", viewed as the first piece of UTM. Project Wing has used several different configurations of drones.
Project Wing conducted its first delivery demonstration in Australia in 2014 to a farm in the Queensland Outback. In 2017, Project Wing came back to begin a regular drone delivery service to a satellite community near Canberra. According to James Ryan Burgess, project co-lead:
BEGIN QUOTE:
From October to March, we were able to expand our operations from line-of-sight to extended-light-of-sight, with a spotter watching the airspace all the way, to true beyond-visual-line-of-sight [BVLOS]. We were flying over people, and all the routes were on-demand.
END QUOTE
The trial was conducted with Mexican food chain Guzman y Gomez and pharmacy chain Chemist Warehouse, with customers using a smartphone app to order items for delivery. Burgess says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
We were close to 900 customer flights and, of the 300-odd homes, we had 100 people try it, and 89 of those became repeat customers. It was validation for us that what we are creating really does provide value.
END QUOTE
The test program is being expanded to increase the number of homes being served, including those with smaller spaces for drone delivery:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Does the technology fit in those environments? Can we navigate precisely enough into very small back or front yards versus the large lots in a rural area? We also have to make sure our systems for detecting and avoiding obstacles, power lines, trees, ETC, all work properly.
But also the closer in we get, the more competition of value we are up against. In a rural community, there may be no way to get delivery; you're too far from town. But in a suburban area, there might be 10 different ways to get delivery, so we want to make sure that people still see value in a drone system when they have alternatives. That will hold us to higher standards.
END QUOTE
The procedure works like this:
[TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ANOTHER MONTH: In the "life imitates TV shows" category, on 29 May, Ukrainian authorities announced the killing in Kiev of Arkady Babchenko, a 41-year-old correspondent and critic of the Russian state. A day later, at a press briefing, Babchenko showed up, alive and well -- to explain that he had been recruited as part of a "sting" operation to foil an assassination plot. The person who paid for his assassination and the assassin who had received the payment were in police custody.
Obviously, there's an elaborate story here, but it's unlikely to be fully revealed. Babchenko did play dead, being hauled off in an ambulance covered with pig's blood, to be "revived" at the morgue: "Then I watched the news and saw what a great guy I had been."
Some commenters were angry at the ploy, saying it undermined the credibility of the news media and government. Babchenko replied: "Everyone who says this undermines trusts in journalists: what would you do in my place, if they came to you and said there is a hit out on you?" He didn't want to end up like Sergei Skripal, struggling for life after being dosed with nerve agent; the fact that Skripal's daughter Yulia was also poisoned certainly would have suggested to Babchenko that his wife was in danger as well.
It seems likely the protests were pro-forma; having been made, with apologies in return, they will be forgotten by all. As for Babchenko: "I plan to get some decent sleep, maybe get drunk, and then wake up in two or three days."
* On top of that, on 26 May a four-year-old child fell from a sixth-floor balcony in a Paris apartment block, the child's father having stepped out for a moment. The child managed to snag the fifth-floor balcony, but remained there, dangling perilously. He was seen from the street by Mamoudou Gassama, a 22-year-old immigrant from Mali -- who immediately scaled up the front of the apartment building, pulling himself up floor by floor, and rescued the child.
Of course, with millions of camera phones in Paris, the incident was recorded, and went viral. Gassama was nicknamed "Spiderman" in social media; he was feted by French President Emmanuel Macron, and granted French citizenship. One wonders if French media actually called him "Spider Man" -- Anglais? NON! "Homme d'Araignee!"
* A link on Twitter led to article on THE ONION, from a few years back ("Monsanto Lab On Lockdown After Scientists Find Shattered Tomato Containment Unit", 14 January 2016) that discussed terrifying events at a Monsanto laboratory in Socorro, buried more than 300 meters (1,000 feet) deep below the New Mexico desert.
Technicians, on being unable to communicate with the lab's secure vegetable isolation chamber, investigated -- to find that the containment vessel for tomato Specimen 323A, with walls of tempered glass 15 centimeters (6 inches) thick, had ruptured from the inside. All the armed guards in the isolation chamber were dead. Monsanto officials haven't announced how many are dead, but acknowledged that Specimen 323A remained at large in the sprawling facility.
Head biotechnologist Stewart Klein ordered the facility to go in lockdown. Klein says: "We have suffered a CODE 9 containment breach. This hardy, disease-resistant tomato appears to have overridden all of our fail-safe backup protocols. This is our worst nightmare."
The rogue produce has since found its way into the facility's germination module, according to reports, where it is believed to have consumed dozens of experimental fertilizers and a generous supply of mulch, possibly attempting to increase its size, strength, and shelf life.
Reports from the facility describe steel doors torn completely from their hinges; tunnels bored through solid concrete by means of a highly concentrated form of citric acid; and the ineffectiveness of high-strength herbicides sprayed by the sprinkler system. Monsanto security chief Lydia Jarrett says: "We've been trying to find some way to take the damned thing down, but so far nothing's worked. It's always one step ahead of us. It's like it knows what we're planning."
Klein says: "We're running out of time. If all else fails, I'll initiate the self-destruct sequence. After an hour countdown, a fusion bomb will vaporize this facility and everything else within a ten-mile radius. We'll die, but better that than let Specimen 323A make its way to the surface."
Klein added that if the escaped tomato specimen could be safely recaptured, it would be marketed under the trade name "Ruby Gold".
* A more recent article from THE ONION ("NSA Scrambling To Re-establish Whereabouts Of Man Who Covered Laptop Camera With Tape", 16 May 2018), officials at the US National Security were shocked when a man covered the camera on his laptop computer with a piece of black electrical tape. A recording surfaced, giving the reaction of an NSA official:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Dammit, we've lost him! It's like he just vanished into thin air! He could be absolutely anywhere! C'mon, people -- I want status reports every 30 minutes until we track this bandit down! We can't let him fall completely off the grid. The only thing we have to go on now is all the data from his smartphone and every email he's ever sent or received.
END QUOTE
Sources inside the agency confirmed they had already sent a memo to the House Intelligence Committee demanding stricter controls on sales of opaque adhesives to civilians.
* As for the Real Fake News for May 2018, it could be described as "more of the same" -- which, considering that "the same" has become "ongoing crazy" does not suggest any establishment of normalcy. President Trump continues his legal dance with porn star Stormy Daniels, and with Robert Mueller's investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election.
Trump did score a victory of sorts after claiming the FBI had "infiltrated" his campaign, with the Justice Department replying in effect: "Oh very well, if you insist, we'll cover that." It was nothing on the face of it, the FBI simply having had an informant ask a few questions. Rod Rosenstein of the Justice Department, in effect Mueller's boss, briefed Congress on the matter, and then went on about his business.
More significant were Trump actions on two related fronts: North Korea and Iran. Trump supporters played up Trump's seeming progress in getting North Korea to be agreeable, calling it a triumph of his diplomatic skills. This ignored three realities:
Old Korea hands weren't expecting any breakthrough, and were proven prudent. On 22 May, after a spat with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, Trump canceled a planned summit in Singapore -- though he quickly said he might reconsider. As far anyone could see, however, it was just back to still more of the same, and all observers could do was shrug, to wait and see. THE ECONOMIST summed up the incident neatly: NO KIM DO.
As far as Iran goes, Trump did as he was expected to do, and pulled out of the Iran nuclear agreement -- to then ramp up the war of words with Iran. None of the other signatories to the deal are willing to give it up, and so far Iran says it will abide by the agreement. Exactly what happens next is very unclear: it appears that the US can't do much to Iran, so in effect Trump is taking punitive actions against our European allies who don't go along with sanctions.
What makes that very puzzling it that it is unclear the US can do much to inhibit Chinese dealings with Iran. The net effect, then, would seem to be handing all the good Iran cards to China. Vladimir Putin, always eager to inflate his own image at the expense of others, also seems happy with the US playing the spoiler. On top of that, obviously North Korea is not going to take US nuclear diplomacy very seriously if Trump discarded the Iran agreement so frivolously.
CNN commenter Fareed Zakaria suggested that if there was any strategic thinking behind Trump's action against the Iran deal, it was a hope for regime change in Iran. Zakaria observed that there was no prospect of that happening, and even if the Iranian regime could be toppled, it might well make matters worse; regime change has an infamous history in the Middle East.
Trump, of course, thinks in terms of grandstanding, and doesn't concern himself with realities. Zakaria presumably knows that, being by no means a stupid man; it appears he was merely suggesting that regime change is the only motive that makes any sense. Possibly it's more a fever dream by National Security Adviser John Bolton than anything Trump bothers to think about. Alas, it doesn't really make sense. Comedian Jimmy Kimmel commented:
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The Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Khamenei, in response to our threat of the strongest sanctions against them yet, pulling out of our deal, said this about America yesterday. This is a real quote. He said: "Like the famous cat in TOM & JERRY, they will lose again."
I guess they just got Saturday morning cartoons over there? I love to imagine the Ayatollah watching TOM & JERRY: "Praise Allah, the accursed cat has been incinerated again!"
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Trump does get mileage out of his grandstand plays with his admiring public, but he's gradually running out of significant grandstand plays. After dropping a bomb, all he's got is a mess, and he won't get any mileage out of that.
* In the meantime, Congress continues to spin its wheels. Congress did manage to pass a revision to the Dodd-Frank financial control law; the revision was not much more than a tweak, making life easier for smaller financial firms, while not significantly changing the status quo for the big ones. Indeed, it appears the sorehead Right faction in the House was very disappointed in the bill, seeing that it didn't go anywhere near far enough. However, other efforts went nowhere:
Along similar lines, Trump has continued talk of a government shutdown in August if he doesn't get money for his border wall. The Democrats are clearly looking forward to him doing so, since it puts the Republicans in the wretched position of either overriding Trump's veto, or aiding in the government shutdown -- right before mid-term elections. Given that, in the "second season of the Trump Show", the star has shown that he has abandoned any pretense of sensibility, it's a fair bet he'll follow through on the threat. To which the Democrats are thinking: "Bring it on."
* Paul Bergala, a political analyst for CNN, previously a Clinton Administration staffer, published a curious essay on CNN.com on 1 May, suggesting that calling Trump an "idiot" is misplaced, that he is very shrewd in some ways, but not competent to be president. Okay, this was belaboring the obvious: everyone with sense knows Trump has a formidable low cunning, while being worse than inept as president. As comedian John Oliver put it, it's a good bet the Trump Administration is going to willfully do the wrong thing: "Paper or plastic? Whichever kills more birds."
Chris Cillizza of CNN observed some time ago that, after his upset presidential win, many thought Trump was incredibly devious, playing political "three-dimensional chess." How many people honestly thought that? Trump won the presidency by having absolutely no scruples. Cillizza concluded that, instead of three-dimensional chess, Trump plays "zero-dimensional chess" -- he doesn't really have any moves.
Actually, it's more like "pigeon chess", a notion devised for creationists: the pigeon knocks over the pieces, dirties the playing board, to then fly to the top of a flagpole and tell the world what a winner he is. In any case, as THE ECONOMIST put it:
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Power corrupts, goes the old saw. Yet Donald Trump's presidency is the opposite case. It reflects the still-dumbfounding reality that one of the world's oldest democracies elected a fully formed rascal to its highest office. Mr. Trump did not even try to hide his designs. He promised to run the country as he ran his family business, which would logically mean nepotistically, autocratically, with great regard for his personal interests and little for the rules. And so he has.
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However, Trump has played very fast and loose with the presidency, and it is not wishful thinking to see that he is digging a very deep hole for himself. The system moves slowly, but methodically, and once in motion it doesn't stop. While fuss goes on, in the background Robert Mueller discreetly continues his investigation, with a "surgical strike" precision. Following in the steps of traditional government investigations of racketeers, he's been methodically bringing down players, pressing charges on them, to then use plea bargaining to get their cooperation. The dominoes are falling, and the trail clearly leads toward Trump.
It was never all that plausible that the Mueller investigation would drop a bomb on Trump, for example revealing that he had conversations with Russian agents on the campaign against Hillary Clinton. However, no bomb is necessary. Trump does anything he thinks he can get away with; the problem for him is that what a property mogul and trash-TV star can get away with, is not at all what the President of the United States can get away with. He's made a lot of dangerous enemies -- and sooner or later, Trump won't be president any longer, and they will move in on him.
Trump clearly never realized that, as POTUS, absolutely everything he ever did was guaranteed to end up under the public microscope, and was oblivious to the fact that such inspection would be a disaster to him. This was particularly obtuse, given his persecution of Hillary Clinton on flimsy pretexts, indifferent to the reality that all investigations of her actions showed her guilty of nothing worse than occasional lapses of judgement. Trump is thrashing, throwing out wild tales of an FBI conspiracy against him -- to find that Mueller pays absolutely no mind, continuing to relentlessly zero in. Low cunning is a bottom grade of intelligence.
There has been a perplexity in the Trump presidency, in that the situation is clearly unsustainable, but it's hard to see how it can be derailed, either. Nobody knows what will happen next, we don't have good precedents as a guide. One might contemplate, as a long shot, Trump resigning, with President Pence then giving him a pardon to get him off Federal charges. That would leave open New York State charges against him, but that seems complicated by double-jeopardy. In any case, this is nothing but idle speculation. We have no clear idea of what's going to happen.
* As a final note, with regards to the comments about comedienne Roseanne Barr here last month ... in late May, Barr went on a Twitterstorm, talking a stream of trash, including a comment about a black Obama Administration staffer that was too nasty and bigoted to feel good about repeating. There was a wild uproar, and ABC TV canceled Barr's show, even though it was a hit. Trolling, it is becoming clear, has a price. Of course, in response to the incident, Trump complained about the unflattering coverage he'd received from ABC. Like we'd expect different?
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