* 23 entries including: US Constitution (series), global decarbonization (series), using AI to convert brain activity to speech, vertical farming, phages versus resistance, internet of things, plant kin assistance, DOJ rules on genomics, Mozilla, PrEP against HIV, & investing for climate change.
* NEWS COMMENTARY FOR OCTOBER 2019: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("The Spy Who Came In From The Cold", 24 October 2019), when Russian President Vladimir Putin went to Brisbane in 2014 for the G20 meeting, he was thoroughly snubbed. Russia had annexed Crimea, intervened in the eastern Ukraine, and shot down a passenger airliner. Russia had been kicked out of the G7 group, and was under sanctions.
Now Putin is flying high, holding the good cards in Syria, solidifying an alliance with China, and brazenly disrupting Western nations. On 22 October, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan went to Putin's residence in Sochi to cut a deal to carve up Kurdish territory in Syria. Earlier in the month, Putin was given a grand reception in Saudi Arabia. The Saudis are cognizant of the fact that Russia is the world's second-largest oil producer; they have other reasons to like Putin. European leaders seem to be seeking a thaw in relations, and have been pressuring Ukraine to come to an accommodation with Russia -- even though it's not likely to be one that much benefits Ukraine.
That's impressive for a country with an economy the size of Spain's, runaway corruption, and life expectancies on a par with those of developing nations. One key to Putin's success was his ability to rebuild Russia's decrepit armed forces into a modern, professional fighting force. However, he has also been politically astute, both in recognizing and seizing opportunities, and in sticking by his allies regardless.
Neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump have been inclined to do much in Syria. Putin accordingly recognized that Russia had a free hand there, able to take actions without fear of a Western response -- and to an extent, was similarly emboldened to take actions against Ukraine. Putin backed up Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a brutal dictator, with the West remaining generally indifferent to what went on in Syria. That lesson was not lost on other actors in the Middle East, particularly Saudi Arabia. Russia did not care about their human-rights abuses, while the West came across as weak, preachy, and two-faced.
In short, to a large extent, Putin is strong only because the West is weak, and he knows it. Syria is more or less a failed state, a prize of little real value. In the relationship with China, Russia is the junior partner. At home, Russians are becoming poorer every year, and they are getting sick of corruption that flows down from the very top to the bottom. Putin's grandstanding military adventures used to rouse patriotic enthusiasm, but that has faded, to be replaced by public irritation. In Moscow municipal elections in September, Putin's United Russia Party took a drubbing.
Russia is still under Western sanctions; Putin would like the sanctions lifted, his presidency-for-life accepted, and a free hand in Ukraine and other nations in Russia's backyard. As THE ECONOMIST put it, the West should ...
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... learn -- selectively -- from Mr. Putin: support your allies, play to your strengths, do not buckle under pressure, and do not create a vacuum that can be filled by a rival power. The West needs a muscular foreign policy to face down the world's new strongman.
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* As discussed by a related article from ECONOMIST.com ("The Art Of Darkness", 24 October 2019), Vladimir Putin's skills have been amply demonstrated in Africa. In 2017 Faustin Archange Touadera, the president of the Central African Republic (CAR), was in big trouble. The country is poor and rebellious, with about a dozen militias fighting the government and each other. France had pulled out its troops in 2016, and the CAR was under an arms embargo, With no alternatives, Touadera turned to Russia.
That got results. The Russians managed to get the arms embargo lifted, and then sent arms and merceneries to help Touadera -- with Touadera acquiring a Russian security advisor who had once been with the GRU, Russian military intelligence. Russian companies set up offices in Bangui, the capital, to obtain concessions for mining. When three Russian journalists had the bad judgement to investigate what Russia was doing in the CAR, they were murdered in 2018.
During the Cold War, the Soviet Union competed with the United States for influence in Africa, with both sides ultimately finding out there was little payback for the cost of doing so. Russian interest in Africa collapsed along with the Soviet Union -- but from 2015, Putin became interested in Africa, partly as an end-run around Western sanctions. Russian trade with Africa has more than tripled since 2006, while Russia is now the single biggest arms exporter to the continent. To demonstrate his influence in Africa, on 23 and 22 October -- right after talking to Turkish President Erdogan to carve up Kurdish territory in Syria -- Putin hosted 40 African leaders at his residence in Sochi.
Russian arms sales end up being only a part of Russian involvement in the internal affairs of African countries. CAR is a prime example of this approach: for less than $6 million USD in military aid, Russia obtained minerals concessions and refined tricks for manipulating other states. The Russians have similarly meddled in Madagascar, Zimbabwe, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Guinea. The Russians work to procure favors and help elect officials friendly to the Russian cause. They are now pursuing the same strategy in Mozambique.
Some in the West are worried about creeping Russian influence in Africa -- but that is overestimating Putin. Russia has little economic clout in the continent, lagging behind the USA, EU, and China. Alexander Gabuev, Russia's leading expert on China, says: "China got the juiciest bits. Russia was left to mop up the leftovers." Russian military assistance to Africa tends to be modest and on the cheap. Meddling in the politics of African governments isn't always that rewarding, either; African politics tends towards the devious and treacherous, with some African governments playing Russia off against the USA and China.
The growth in trade was from a very low level. In 2018, the total value of Russian trade with sub-Saharan Africa was $5 billion USD, less than that of Turkey, Singapore, or Thailand. In comparison, US and Chinese trade was worth $120 billion USD and $35 billion USD. Deals between Russia and African states may be announced with great fanfare, and then amount to nothing. Russia is particularly hobbled by the fact that it has relatively little to sell to African countries.
Russia is a bit player in Africa, inclined to cultivate dodgy leaders who the other players don't greatly like to deal with. Putin would like Africans to see Russia as a great power -- but in reality, it isn't, any place in the world. Once the Western democracies get rid of Trumpism and its equivalents, the democracies will hopefully re-assert themselves, with Putin's authority declining accordingly.
* As discussed by yet another article from ECONOMIST.com ("Breaking Up Is Hard To Do", 24 October 2019), in recent years, America's Big Tech firms -- Amazon.com, Facebook, Google, Apple -- have come up heavy fire, with proposals that they be brought to heel, and possibly broken up. Presidential hopeful Senator Elizabeth Warren is particularly focused on breaking up Big Tech, having adopted a two-pronged strategy towards that end.
First, she wants to revoke tech mergers judged "anticompetitive", because they were undertaken to neutralize potential competitors. The primary target of this effort is Facebook, which in 2012 bought Instagram, a picture-heavy social network, for $1 billion USD; and in 2014, paid $19 billion USD for WhatsApp, an instant-messaging service. Industry observers believe FaceBook bought out these two companies because they promised to be serious rivals. Warren also wants to tackle other buyups, such as DoubleClick, an advertising exchange bought by Google, and Whole Foods, a grocery chain acquired by Amazon.
Second, she wants Big Tech to establish a more level playing ground. For example, Amazon is both a retailer that sells products made by other companies, and also sells products under the company label, notably Amazon Basics. Apple similarly hosts the app store on the iPhone, but also offers its own apps. That gives Amazon and Apple an incentive to undercut other companies selling through their stores. Warren wants operators of any online marketplace which generates annual global revenues of more than $25 billion to be declared "platform utilities" and prohibited from both owning a platform and doing business on it.
The big difficulty in both cases is trying to figure out the actual effect of such actions. What would Facebook's business environment look like if it hadn't bought Instagram and WhatsApp? What if Facebook had simply tried to compete directly with them? Who knows? Similarly, do Amazon Basics products unfairly compete with other products sold on Amazon.com? They're typically bare-bones offerings, made by other companies on contract to Amazon.
It's very hard to put a value on the economic benefit of Warren's measures. They also put the government in the tricky position of micro-managing big companies. Governments are not, and should not be in business; they can establish constraints on business and set broad goals, but they don't know how to run businesses. That's even more the case for Big Tech, which still exists in a dynamic business environment, kept chaotic by rapidly changing technology. The politics of implementing Warren's measures would also be tricky, with Congress and the courts not necessarily playing along.
Even if, say, Facebook is broken up, will it really do anything to slow the company down? Harold Feld of Public Knowledge, a Leftish think-tank, likes to talk of the "starfish problem". Some starfish have great powers of regeneration: cut them up, and the pieces quickly grow into complete new starfish. Similarly, one component of a tech giant could become dominant again because of network effects. Break-ups, Feld argues, need to be complemented by regulation that weakens this effect -- for instance, with requirements that a user of one instant-messaging service can exchange texts with another.
Nonetheless, breakups are still possible, with the widely-detested Facebook being a particular target. Facebook would fight back legally -- a leaked comment to that effect drew an angry response from Warren, though it is obvious the company would do so -- and the battle would be long and difficult. If Facebook were broken up, that leads to the question of whether it would really do much good. Maybe it would be better, meaning less troublesome and more effective, to zero in on specific company policies, and mandate less ambitious, more focused changes that clearly make sense.
ED: Facebook got a lot of flak recently for saying they wouldn't challenge false statements in political ads. There was a lot of outrage over that, with Elizabeth Warren taking out an ad telling ridiculous lies about Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg -- but, taking Facebook's point of view, what else could the company do? Facebook is under heavy fire from the Right for "censorship", and insisting that the company supervise the content of political ads places the firm in an impossible position.
There is clearly a problem here, but as Zuckerberg himself has more or less pointed out, in the absence of any consistent laws regulating what the Facebook should or should not do, the company ends up doing what it thinks best to do. Somebody's going to complain, no matter what Facebook does.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* BRAIN TO SPEECH: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Artificial Intelligence Turns Brain Activity Into Speech" by Kelly Servick, 2 January 2019), there are unfortunate people who have been, through a stroke or other affliction, robbed of their ability to speak. They can communicate to a degree using systems like eye trackers -- but researchers have long wanted to develop some way of translating the brain activity of such patients into speech.
They haven't got there yet, but three research teams have now made progress in turning data from electrodes surgically placed on the brain into computer-generated speech. Using a neural network, they were able to reconstruct words and sentences that were, in some cases, intelligible to listeners.
The researchers didn't manage to recreate speech from the imaginations of test subjects, instead monitoring brain activity as people either read aloud, silently mouthed speech, or listened to recordings, to give a reference for monitored brain activity. Nima Mesgarani, a computer scientist at Columbia University in New York City involved with the project, comments: "We are trying to work out the pattern of ... neurons that turn on and off at different time points, and infer the speech sound. The mapping from one to the other is not very straightforward."
The mapping effort is tricky because it really involves invasive monitoring of the brain, meaning it can only be done during brain surgery, or through the implantation of electrodes into the brain -- which is most ordinarily done to epileptics to pin down where surgery should take place. That gives only a narrow window for study.
Mesgarani's team worked with five people with epilepsy. The neutral network analyzed recordings from the auditory cortex, which is active during both speech and listening, as the patients heard recordings of stories and people naming digits from zero to nine. The computer then reconstructed spoken numbers from neural data alone; when the computer "spoke" the numbers, a group of listeners named them with 75% accuracy.
Another team, led by neuroscientists Miguel Angrick of the University of Bremen in Germany and Christian Herff at Maastricht University in the Netherlands, relied on data from six people undergoing brain tumor surgery. Their voices were recorded as they spoke single-syllable words -- while electrodes recorded signals from the brain's speech planning areas and motor areas, which send commands to the vocal tract to articulate words. The neural network mapped the correlation between the words and signals, then reconstructed words from new scans of brain activity. About 40% of the words were understandable.
Finally, neurosurgeon Edward Chang and his team at the University of California, San Francisco, performed an experiment like that of Mesgarani's, recording brain activity captured from speech and motor areas while three epilepsy patients read aloud. The big difference was that the subjects spoke complete sentences. A multiple-choice online test showed a match for some sentences about 80% of the time. The subjects went on to mouthing words instead of speaking them, which was a step closer to reading speech out of the brain.
It was only a step, however, since the brain signals when a person silently "speaks" or "hears" their voice in the head aren't identical to signals of speech or hearing. Without external sound to match to brain activity, it is difficult for a neural net to pick out what is being said. One approach being considered to help people who can't speak is to let them hear the speech derived from their brain signals, and learn to shape their speech accordingly. With enough training of both users and neural networks, brain and computer might meet in the middle.
Still, Gerwin Schalk -- a neuroengineer at the National Center for Adaptive Neurotechnologies at the New York State Department of Health in Albany -- says that decoding imagined speech is a "huge jump ... It's really unclear how to do that at all."
One approach, Herff says, might be to give feedback to the user of the brain-computer interface: If they can hear the computer's speech interpretation in real time, they may be able to adjust their thoughts to get the result they want.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* VERTICAL FARMING ON THE PAD: The notion of "vertical farming", or growing crops in high-rise structures, has been discussed here in the past, last in 2010. As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Growing Higher", 29 August 2019), there has been some progress in the exercise since that time, but questions remain.
Welcome to Invergowrie, near Dundee, in Scotland. There, a facility run by Intelligent Growth Solutions (IGS), a vertical farming company, is marked by four of 9-meter (30-foot) tall towers, clad in metal and resembling tall barns, each with a footprint of about 40 square meters (430 square feet). One enters through an airlock, which keeps out pests, to walk down a central aisle, with tall racks on each side. Each rack has a dozen or so trays on which are growing strawberries, kale, red lettuce, and coriander; each tray is bathed in vivid light of different colors, mostly hues of blue and magenta.
A manager runs the tower with a smartphone, using an app that can roll trays in or out; change the brightness and colors of the thousand or so LEDs strung above each tray; monitor and control the hydroponic system in which the plants grow -- as well as the temperature, humidity, and ventilation of the unit. The four towers can turn out from 15 to 25 tonnes (16.5 to 27.5 tons) a year of herbs, salad leaves, fruit, and vegetables.
The concept is not at all new, the term going back to 1915, but it took a century for the first commercial vertical farms to be built. More are rising. SoftBank, a Japanese firm; Google's former boss Eric Schmidt; and Amazon's founder Jeff Bezos have between them invested more than $200 million USD into Plenty, a vertical-farming company based in San Francisco. In June 2019 Ocado, a British online grocery, spent out 17 million GBP ($21.3 million USD) on vertical-farming businesses to grow fresh produce in its automated distribution depots.
The idea is to apply factory processes to farming. The LEDs used in IG's demonstration units are optimized, so that they generate the light the plants need, and little else. The hydroponics system is closed-loop, recycling water, so that the major loss is in the plants going out the door -- running to about 5% per crop, to be replenished by rainwater. The IGS system is modular, allowing it to be readily scaled up. Most of the systems that IGS plans to start delivering to customers early in 2020 will feature ten or more towers. The vertical format makes efficient use of land.
There is still skepticism that vertical farms make sense. The same technologies can be applied to greenhouses, and they are not so dependent on LEDs for growing plants. The cost of electricity means it's only cost-effective high-value, perishable produce, such as salad leaves and herbs. That's a profitable market, but others remain out of reach. In 2014 Louis Albright -- an emeritus professor of biological and environmental engineering at Cornell University in America -- calculated that a loaf of bread made from wheat grown in a vertical farm would cost over $20 USD.
It helps to have highly efficient LEDs that only generate the colors of light plants use to photosynthesize, which happen to be the blue and red bands at either end of the light spectrum. The LEDs at the test farm at Invergowie go one step further, being tunable. They mostly produce blue and red light, but IGS officials say that researchers have learned that other colors play an important role at various stages of a plant's development. For example, generating green light at the right time results in a higher yield.
The LEDs are run by an efficient low-voltage power-distribution system. The lighting and the environmental conditions in the towers are modified in an ongoing way for each crop. Company officials say the towers are two to three times more efficient production than greenhouses, and have a similar cost-per-kilogram.
IGS has been able to grow some root vegetables, such as radishes and baby turnips. Bulk field crops, such as wheat and rice, may never make sense for a vertical farm, and larger, heavier vegetables would be tricky to raise. Full-size potatoes are likely off the menu for now -- but it would be possible to raise seed potatoes, protected against pests and disease, for field planting. IGS is casting a wide net for prospective crops, including some old varieties that might do well in a vertical farm. Vertical farming may never feed the world, but it stands to have its place. There's nothing to prevent the development of household vertical-farm systems, so people can grow their own produce, even if they live in a flat. However, that remains a future.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DECARBONIZING THE WORLD (10): Air travel is a significant component of carbon emissions. On average, each person on Earth going about their normal business produces the equivalent of five tonnes of CO2 a year -- but a single person taking a transatlantic round trip produces the equivalent of about one tonne, even in economy class. Worse, on current trends, air-passenger numbers are expected to double within the next 20 years, mostly because of growth in Asia.
Air travel is too useful and convenient to junk, but the industry is not yet up to the challenge of seriously fighting climate change. The International Air Transport Association, an industry group, has pledged to halve emissions by 2050, while airlines are continually acquiring more fuel-efficient aircraft -- the focus being to reduce fuel cost, but also reducing emissions in the process. That's not going to be enough.
There has been work on electric / hybrid-electric aircraft powered by batteries or hydrogen fuel cells -- but for now, that's only an option for light, short-range aircraft. Both the airlines and the military have been focused on biofuels, and synthetic fuels, as a solution that would be compatible with current aircraft technology.
In Finland, a refiner named Neste has produced biofuels from the waste products of slaughtered cows and pigs. It has blended small quantities of them into the fuel powering Boeing Dreamliners. However, large-scale use of biofuels is constrained by the lack of land; there's been work on producing biofuels from plant waste, or plants that can be grown on lands not suitable for crops, but progress has been slow.
At Finland's Lappeenranta University of Technology, researchers are looking at synthetic fuels as an alternative. Christian Breyer believes that if electrolysis were used in places with abundant renewable resources, such as the Atacama Desert in Chile, hydrogen could be produced cleanly at low cost. The hydrogen could then be used as a feedstock to produce synthetic fuels, with atmospheric CO2 obtained from the air -- through "direct air capture (DAC)" -- as the other feedstock. The CO2 would be broken down into oxygen (O2) and carbon monoxide (CO), with the hydrogen and CO combined using the long-established Fischer-Tropsch process to produce a range of liquid fuels.
DAC isn't very far along yet -- but it is attracting the attention of influential promoters, such as billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. DAC was originally conceived as a means of sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere; converting the CO2 to synthetic fuel doesn't further that goal, but it doesn't add any more emissions.
Gates has backed the Canada-based firm Carbon Engineering -- discussed here in 2018 -- which has run a DAC pilot project since 2015 that can extract a one tonne of CO2 per day, and has produced synthetic fuels since 2017. Climeworks of Switzerland is also developing carbon-capture schemes. Estimates have placed the cost of DAC per tonne of CO2 extracted as painfully high, but Geoffrey Holmes of Carbon Engineering and others argue that costs can be cut by almost an order of magnitude if done at scale.
Holmes says Carbon Engineering has leveraged off existing technology to make sure it's not re-inventing the wheel. The pilot plant sucks in lots of air using a modified version of cooling-tower technology, and draws it through corrugated sheets of plastic sprayed with a hydroxide solution. The CO2 absorbs into a liquid film to form a carbonate solution, which goes through a pellet reactor, using chemistry common in water treatment, to form calcium carbonate pellets. These pellets are heated to 900 degrees Celsius in a high-temperature reactor to produce calcium oxide and CO2. The heating process can be fired by natural gas, with the CO2 from its combustion captured as well.
Of course, the captured CO2 could simply be buried as well. There are other proposals for sequestering CO2 -- but a report by America's National Academy of Sciences says that even the cheapest negative-emissions technologies are still too limited in scale to make a big dent in atmospheric CO2. Along similar lines, a study by Britain's Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering stated a carbon price of $100 USD a tonne may be needed to make most negative-emissions projects feasible. There are worries that policy-makers won't try to reduce emissions if they believe CCS will solve the problem in the future.
* In fact, to head off climate change, emissions will need to be reduced and carbon captured on a huge scale. Things are moving along towards that end, but not at anywhere near the rate required. Nonetheless, there's no shortage of technical options, and more are popping up all the time. We are intimidated by the prospect of decarbonizing the world, because we've never done anything like it before.
All we can do is proceed, and have some uncertain faith that the task won't prove as difficult as it seems in prospect. After all, who in 1910 could have foreseen that, within a half century, freeways would cross continents, supported by an extensive automotive infrastructure? Who would have foreseen national power grids? By the same coin, who in 1970 would have predicted that networked computing would be universal within a half century, or its transformations of how the world works? Our projections of the future are only, can only be, based on our knowledge of the past; the visions of the current day, seen from the future, are guaranteed to seem quaint. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (78): The Wilson Administration ended up unpopular, partly because of the overbearing measures taken to further the war effort, including the suppression of dissent. That was coupled to a growing sense among the public that US participation in the First World War had been a mistake, that America shouldn't have become involved in other people's quarrels. More significantly, the US fell into a postwar depression in 1920.
Warren Harding, an Ohio Republican, won the election of that year, to become POTUS 29. World War I being effectively over, he campaigned on a "return to normalcy" -- and he meant it, pardoning Eugene Debs and a number of other antiwar figures still in lockup in 1921, after the peace treaty had been signed. Debs, incidentally, had run as the Socialist candidate in the election while still in prison.
In another return to normalcy, the Progressive era was more or less over, for the time being, with the Harding Administration proving a friend to business, slashing regulations and government spending. With the war ended, of course, there was no need to maintain a large military, though the cuts in defense spending were to the bone. The administration also cut taxes, the architect of the tax reform being Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, a wealthy financier. Mellon argued that confiscatory tax rates were counterproductive, in that they led to money either going underground or being off-shored; the top tax rate was gradually cut to 25%, from its high of 73%.
Harding also took a businesslike approach to administration, signing the "General Accounting Act" AKA the "Budget & Accounting Act" in 1921, which normalized the Federal budgeting process. The president now was required to submit a comprehensive budget to Congress annually, as compared to the earlier "balkanized" budget submission process. The act also created the "Bureau of the Budget" -- now the "Office of Management & Budget (OMB)" -- to provide expert advice to the White House on putting together a budget, as well as the "General Accounting Office" -- now the "Government Accountability Office (GAO)" -- which similar provides expert accounting advice to Congress. The GAO has been labeled the "supreme audit organization" of the Federal government.
What is now the OMB was once a component of the Treasury Department, but now reports directly to the president. The GAO is under the direction of the executive, but is at the service of Congress. The president appoints a "comptroller general" to run the office, with a 15-year non-renewable term.
On the international stage, Harding's time in office was marked by the Washington Naval Conference of 1922, signed by nine parties. The treaty set limits on naval fleet strength; it that would prove effective, at least through the decade. Harding's White House also promoted (somewhat) better relations with Latin America, with one major consequence being recognition of the new revolutionary government of Mexico in 1923. The Harding Administration was more reluctant to recognize the new revolutionary government of the Soviet Union.
Harding was in favor of greater racial equality, though he did little to advance that cause; there wasn't really much he could do, in any case. He was a pleasant, warm, fun-loving fellow, and was generally liked by the public. Harding's presidency has often been ranked at the bottom of the list by historians, but he still has his defenders on the Right, who admire his willingness to reduce the size of government, and to give business a free hand in its actions -- with an economic boom, the "Roaring Twenties", following. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed by an article from JANES.com ("NAVAIR Awards APKWS II Upgrade Contract" by Robin Hughes, 15 May 2019), defense giant BAE Systems has made a big "hit" with their "Advanced Precision Kill Weapon System II (APKWS II)" 70-mm (2.75-inch) guided rocket.
The 70-mm Hydra 70 unguided rocket has been around for decades; it can accommodate a variety of warheads. APKWS adds a "distributed aperture semi-active laser seeker (DASALS)" modular guidance section that screws into the front of a rocket, with the warhead of choice screwed in on top of that. The DASALS module pops out four control fins, with laser sensors on the fins, providing a 40-degree field of view.
The low cost, light weight, accuracy, and relatively light punch of the APKWS makes it an excellent weapon for the current era of "dirty little wars". There are two versions of APKWS, one for helicopters, one for fixed-wing aircraft. The US Navy is now requesting that BAE come up with a module that is smart enough to do both jobs. Exactly why different modules were needed for the two platforms is unclear.
* Miltech, in recent decades, has moved to increasingly modularized systems. For example, as discussed by an article from JANES.com ("EOS Defence To Commence T2000 Turret Firing Trials In Fourth Quarter 2019" by Robin Hughes, 13 May 2019), EOS Defence Systems of Australia is set to conduct trials of its T2000 modular medium-caliber turret.
The T2000 is being developed in collaboration with Elbit Systems of Israel. It uses the basic structure and electric turret drive of the Elbit MT30 Mark 2 30 mm uncrewed weapon station, kitted up with the fire control system (FCS), sensors, and user interface from the EOS Remote Weapon Station (RWS) range of products. It can be integrated onto any tracked or wheeled combat vehicle capable of handling its weight. The turret features:
The turret features imaging and targeting sensors; defensive sensors including radar and a laser warning system; plus smoke grenade launchers and an "Iron Fist" active defense system, to shoot down incoming munitions.
* As discussed by an article from JANES.com ("IGG, Valhalla Turrets Team To Develop 57 mm Desert Spider" by Christopher Foss, 26 February 2019, the United Arab Emirates' (UAE) International Golden Group (IGG) teamed with Slovenia's Valhalla Turrets to develop a 57-millimeter "Desert Spider" remote-controlled weapon system (RCWS). It is designed to protect high-value targets such as powerplants, oil fields, or military forward operating bases.
The five-tonne robot turret is mounted on four arms that adjust to the terrain. Its primary armament is the 57-millimeter L/76.6 cannon from the Russian S-60 towed anti-aircraft gun, with a "pepper pot" muzzle brake. Secondary armament is a Russian KPV 14.5-millimeter heavy machine gun, mounted co-axially with the 57-millimeter cannon. Although the L/76.6 gun is fed by four-round clips, the Desert Spider using a chain-drive feed from a magazine storing 92 rounds of 57 x 348 millimeter ammunition. Range is about 6,000 meters (19,700 feet), and rate of fire is 120 rounds a minute. It can fire a variety of ammunition, including armor-piercing rounds.
ED: The fun thing about the Desert Spider is that the reaction to it is: "Gee, this thing looks like a prop out of STAR WARS."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* PHAGES VERSUS RESISTANCE: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("A Novel Way To Stop The Spread Of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria", 29 November 2018), some bacteria can generate an enzyme named "New Delhi metallo-beta-lactamase (NDMBL)" that is bad news for humans -- since it gives the bacteria the ability to resist carbapenems and other beta-lactam antibiotics, used as a last-ditch defense against stubborn infections. Worse, it also gives those bacteria protection against sunlight.
Sunlight is useful as a disinfectant. Part of the treatment of sewage water in sunny regions can be to leave it out in the Sun, with the ultraviolet in sunlight damaging the biomolecules that keep bacteria alive. Bacteria that can resist UV can present a hazard. In 2015, a strain of Escherichia coli -- a common inhabitant of the human lower digestive tract, usually but not always harmless -- had acquired the ability to synthesize NDMBL.
Peiying Hong -- of the King Abdullah University of Science & Technology in Thuwal -- has been investigating this strain of E. coli, and believes she has come up with a way to defeat its resistance to UV. The trick is to leverage off bacteriophages, the viruses that target bacteria.
Hong knew from her earlier work that sunlight promotes the activity of some of the bacteria's genes, and suppresses that of others -- and she believed the process was mediated by NDMBL. Among other things, the promoted genes affected cell-wall synthesis, DNA repair, and the production of compounds that mop up harmful oxidizing agents produced by sunlight. The suppressed genes included many related to defense against phages.
In other words, the bacteria weren't getting something for nothing, their sunlight resistance making them more vulnerable to phages. She and her colleagues collected naturally-occurring phages from Saudi wastewater plants -- and found seven variants which, when thrown at the photoresistant strain of E. coli, handily destroyed it. Three of the seven seemed particularly useful as weapons, since they only infected the photoresistant bacteria, and were also tolerant of sunlight.
The researchers put the matter to the test. When suspensions of the three phages were mixed together as a cocktail, then added to a suspension of photoresistant E. coli, the bacteria began to fade out within two hours. In phage-free suspensions, in contrast, they held out for more than four hours.
There's nothing new in using phages to attack bacteria in waste-water plants, the viruses having long been used to clean off stubborn biofilms that form on a plant's systems. Hong's approach is new, and may be particularly useful in Saudi Arabia, since water is scarce -- and so, making sure that treated water released for use isn't carrying along nasty pathogens is important.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* INTERNET OF THINGS: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Chips With Everything", 12 September 2019), it is a truism that computer technology is finding its way into everything. It's been doing it for years -- to the point where talk of computer-enabled houses gets dull stares in response: "Oh, this again!"
In reality, all but the humblest houses are now full of computers, though they may not be all that obtrusive, often being integrated into household appliances. Indeed, even cars today are full of computers -- and they are often connected to the internet, resulting in an "internet of things (IoT)". The move towards the IoT is only getting started: one forecast suggests that, by 2035, the world will have a trillion connected computers, built into everything from food packaging to bridges and clothes.
The new, smart products will have capabilities consumers never had before, and didn't know they needed. Amazon's Ring smart doorbells, for instance, come equipped with motion sensors and video cameras. That seems handy enough, but they can also collaborate to set up what is, in effect, a private CCTV network, creating a "digital neighborhood-watch" scheme, with any interesting video passed along to the police.
Smarter machinery means greater efficiency. Smart lighting in buildings saves energy; smart machinery can predict its own breakdowns and schedule preventive maintenance. Connected cows can have their eating habits and vital signs tracked, which means they produce more milk and require less medicine when they get sick. Any one such improvement is petty, but they add up.
In the long term, the IoT will amount to a second internet revolution. It will feature it the business models that have dominated the first revolution -- such as sprawling "platform" monopolies, for instance, or the data-driven approach that critics call "surveillance capitalism". Ever more companies will become tech companies; the internet will become inescapable. This means that the unresolved arguments about ownership, data, surveillance, competition, and security will become inescapable as well.
Consider ownership. The IoT means companies may stay connected with their products even after they've been sold, with the result that they become something more like services than goods. This implies, among other things, a weaker notion of ownership. When Microsoft closed its ebook store recently, for example, its customers lost the ability to read titles they had bought -- the firm offered refunds. Some early adopters of smart home gadgets have found that they stopped working after the firms that made them lost interest.
In short, the balance of power shifts from buyer to seller. John Deere, an American maker of high-tech tractors, has become tangled up in an argument over software restrictions that prevent its customers from repairing their tractors themselves. On top of that, since software is not sold but licensed, the firm even argued that, in some circumstances, a tractor-buyer may not be buying a product at all -- instead only obtaining a license to operate it.
That mindset doesn't go over well with buyers. Users of tech gadgets generally accept that they have bugs and limited lifetimes; that mindset doesn't apply to, say, refrigerators. Instead of a five-year lifetime, a "smart" refrigerator can run for ten, twenty years, with the vendor required to support it, even after all the programmers who worked on it have moved on.
Data rights, of course, are a big problem. For much of the internet the business model is to offer "free" services that are paid for with valuable and intimate user data, collected with consent that isn't always well-informed. That is true of the IoT as well. Smart mattresses track sleep; medical implants observe and modify heartbeats and insulin levels, with varying degrees of transparency. More controversially, the insurance industry is tinkering with using data from cars or fitness trackers to adjust customers' premiums. Tracking of data then gets personal.
That data amounts to a competitive advantage, just as valuable as that obtained from Facebook posts or a Google search history. That implies a push for standardization, to simplify data-gathering, and of course improve interconnectivity. Unfortunately, along with this connectedness comes worries about the vulnerability of internet-connected cars, medical implants, and other devices to hacking.
The arrival of the internet, a quarter-century ago, seemed to offer wide-open prospects. These days, it is the internet's defects -- from monopoly power to corporate snooping and fake news -- that make headlines. The IoT is focusing the shrill debate over benefits versus drawbacks. Fortunately, we aren't flying blind: the first internet revolution offers lessons to help inform our response to the second.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DECARBONIZING THE WORLD (9): Cement is an even bigger challenge for decarbonization than steel. It is the world's most widely used construction material, being mixed with water and aggregate to make concrete -- and development of regions such as India and Africa mean its use it likely to soar. The cement industry is highly fragmented, consisting of many small works that will be difficult to lead out of the carbon era.
About 60% of the carbon emissions in cement production comes from producing clinker, one of its main ingredients. This process, known as "calcination", involves heating ground limestone to more than 1,600 degrees Celsius (2,850 degrees Fahrenheit) in a kiln, producing calcium oxide and CO2.
The clinker is ground and mixed with other materials to form what is known as "Portland cement", with the power used for the grinding also traditionally producing CO2. The bulk of the remaining emissions come from the fuels used to heat the kilns, typically coal or coke. That component of the process can be replaced with alternatives, such as biomass or municipal waste -- but not electricity, since there's no straightforward way that electricity can produce the high temperatures required.
Calcination is the part of the process that is troublesome to decarbonize. CCS could be used to capture the carbon; current kiln designs are far from optimum for CCS, but an EU-backed project in Belgium named LEILAC is working on new kiln designs that will make CCS more effective. The more elegant solution is to device low-carbon alternatives to clinker. A report by Johanna Lehne and Felix Preston of Chatham House, a think-tank, doesn't project much happening for now -- but did determine, on the basis of sifting through thousands of patents, that "the cement sector is more technically innovative than its reputation suggests."
"Novel cements" -- alternatives to Portland cement -- are being developed by Solidia, an American startup now partnering with LafargeHolcim, a big cement producer. Solidia claims that its low-clinker concrete slashes CO2 emissions, partly by containing them within the material. However, cement and concrete standards usually dictate the Portland clinker content, and builders, architects and customers are understandably cautious of new technology, since they don't want their buildings to fall down.
There are other options for decarbonizing industry, not all of which are so troublesome. One of the companies exploring potentially profitable opportunities is Elysis, a joint venture between Alcoa and Rio Tinto which could revolutionize aluminum smelting for the first time since it was invented in 1886. At present, aluminum comes from the combination of three ingredients: aluminum oxide (alumina), electricity, and carbon. Electricity is run between a negative cathode and a positive anode, both made of carbon. The anode reacts with the oxygen in the aluminum oxide, producing CO2 and liquid aluminum, which is then cast.
The quantities of CO2 can be huge. China uses coal for smelting, with the result that 16 tonnes of CO2 are generated for each tonne of aluminum produced. Elysis plans to eliminate emissions by using an undisclosed proprietary, non-carbon material for the anode, producing oxygen instead of CO2.
The project is backed by Apple, which wants to lower the carbon footprint of its products. By 2024, Elysis hopes to sell a technology kit that can be used around the world to retrofit existing smelters or build new ones. The goal is to produce zero-carbon aluminum 15% more cheaply and 15% more productively than with existing technology, partly because the anode will last 30 times longer.
However, in the end much will depend on China, which produces and uses most of the world's steel, cement, aluminum and other industrial materials. There hasn't been much work in China on zero-carbon steel, but the country has been investing big sums in cement research and development. China may get help from Japan, which has been pursuing both the hydrogen and CCS approaches to decarbonizing industry.
Much also depends on governments assisting and regulating industry to make the transformation. Governments can ramp up renewable energy and establish carbon-storage sites to support decarbonization of industry, and provide incentives for hydrogen production and CCS -- through carbon taxing, or financial support, or both. Eventually, governments can encourage the use of green cement, steel, and other zero-carbon materials in public infrastructure projects, to prime the move to new ways of doing things. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (77): Woodrow Wilson's administration saw a burst of new amendments to the Constitution, not all of which would prove successful. In 1919, the states ratified the 18th Amendment, which banned alcoholic beverages. It reads as follows:
BEGIN QUOTE;
EIGHTEENTH AMENDMENT: After one year from the ratification of this article the manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors within, the importation thereof into, or the exportation thereof from the United States and all the territory subject to the jurisdiction thereof for beverage purposes is hereby prohibited.
The Congress and the several States shall have concurrent power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
This article shall be inoperative unless it shall have been ratified as an amendment to the Constitution by the legislatures of the several States, as provided in the Constitution, within seven years from the date of the submission hereof to the States by the Congress.
END QUOTE
"Prohibition" would go into effect the next year, 1920. Some states had passed prohibition laws even before the Civil War, though such early efforts were all quickly overturned. Later in the 19th century, the "Temperance" movement began to gain momentum, which was coupled to the women's suffrage movement -- the connection being that drunks didn't make good husbands and fathers. By the time of the passage of the 18th Amendment, about half the states were "dry".
Notice the third section of the 18th Amendment, which set a time limit of seven years on ratification. No other amendment before that time specified a time limit, and there's nothing in Article V of the Constitution that requires a time limit. To get around that gap, the amendment would simply be "inoperative" if passed after seven years. It could still be ratified after seven years, but it would be rendered null and void. The time delay in going into effect was also an innovation in the 18th Amendment. Other peculiarities were that it was the only amendment to focus on a specific product; and also that it partly delegated enforcement to the states.
The picky details and enforcement of Prohibition were specified in the "Volstead Act", which was also passed in 1919. The Volstead Act was named after Representative Andrew Volstead, a Minnesota Republican, who was one of the driving forces behind Prohibition. The act specified that the Treasury Department enforce prohibition, and also defined which "intoxicating liquors" were forbidden, and exceptions to the ban, such as use of alcohol for medicinal or religious purposes. Wilson was not that keen on Prohibition and vetoed the bill, largely because it was based on wartime measures, and the war was over. Congress overrode the veto.
In October 1919, Wilson suffered a severe stroke, and was incapacitated for the rest of his time in office. This led to yet another crisis of leadership, since he wouldn't resign. His wife Edith orchestrated an effort to conceal, as much as possible, the president's disability, with Edith acting as the president in effect. It was a hidden constitutional crisis that only passed without much incident because the war was over, and Wilson's remaining time in office was not long.
That twilight time of the Wilson presidency did, however, see the passage of one of the most significant amendments to the Constitution: the 19th Amendment, ratified in 1920, which granted women the right to vote. It read:
BEGIN QUOTE:
NINETEENTH AMENDMENT: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex. Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
END QUOTE
Women's suffrage, like Prohibition, had been catching on in the states, if not as rapidly. Wyoming Territory had given women the right to vote and hold office in 1870; when it became a state in 1890, it was the first with women's suffrage. Colorado, Utah, and Idaho followed. The pioneering states for women's suffrage were, not incidentally, noted for varying degrees of gender imbalance, and had a motive to attract more women settlers. At the same time, the fact that women were a relative minority meant that males didn't have cause to fear that women would outvote them.
There matters sat until 1909, when more states started to give women the right to vote -- some of them only allowing the right to vote for president, not for congressmen or state legislators. The growing number of states with women's suffrage meant that politicians seeking the presidency had to come to terms with it, or lose those states. By 1919, women's suffrage was an idea whose time had come, and there was no stopping it. The arguments against it make curious reading from the perspective of the 21st century.
It was the biggest enfranchisement in American history, effectively doubling the electorate. Incidentally, in principle it gave black women the right to vote, but Jim Crow made sure that amounted to nothing. It would amount to something eventually. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for September included:
-- 12 SEP 19 / ZIYUAN 1-2D -- A Chinese Long March 4B booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0326 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Ziyuan 1-2D" Earth observation satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit. Ziyuan 1-2D was developed by the China Academy of Space Technology. It had a five-year design life, and carried:
It follows the Ziyuan 1-2C satellite, launched in 2011. According to Xinhua, Ziyuan 1-2D will support applications including "natural resources asset management, ecological monitoring, disaster prevention and control, environmental protection, urban construction, transportation and contingency management, The satellite can also be used to observe chlorophyll concentration, water transparency and total suspended matter concentration in lakes to help monitor the environment and prevent water pollution."
Two secondary payloads also rode the Long March 4B rocket into orbit, including;
-- 19 SEP 19 / ZHUHAI 1 x 5 -- A Long March 11 solid-fuel booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0642 UTC (local time - 8) to put a set of five "Zhuhai 1" remote sensing satellites into Sun-synchronous orbit, as elements of a commercial constellation of Earth-imaging craft being created by Zhuhai Orbita Aerospace Technology Company LTD.
Four of the Zhuhai 1 satellites carried hyperspectral imaging sensors sensitive to light in 256 spectral bands. The other satellite carried a video imager with a resolution of about 90 centimeters (3 feet). Including this new batch of satellites, Orbita has launched 12 Earth-imaging microsatellites since 2017. The company's Zhuhai 1 constellation will eventually number 34 spacecraft, including video, hyperspectral, high-resolution optical, radar and infrared imaging satellites.
This was the third batch launch of the Zhuhai 1. The Long March 11 is sized to loft small satellites into low Earth orbit, total payload capacity being 350 kilograms (770 pounds). The Chinese Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) is currently developing a "Long March 11A" booster, with a heftier first stage and greater payload. CALT is also developing a bigger payload shroud for the Long March 11, to provide more payload volume.
-- 22 SEP 19 / BEIDOU 3 -- A Chinese Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 2110 UTC (previous day local time - 8) to put two "Beidou 3 M23" and "Beidou 3 M24" navigation satellites into medium-Earth orbit. The satellites were the 47th and 48th satellites launched in the Beidou navigation program since 2000. That number includes test satellites and older-generation navigation craft, some of which are no longer in service.
-- 25 SEP 19 / HTV 8 -- An H2B booster was launched from Tanegashima at 1605 UTC (next day local time - 9) to put the eighth "H-2 Transfer Vehicle (HTV 8)" AKA "Kounotori (White Stork) 8", an uncrewed freighter, into orbit on an ISS resupply mission. It docked with the ISS Harmony module two days later. The freighter's cargo included three CubeSats, to be deployed later from the ISS:
-- 25 SEP 19 / YUNHAI 1-02 -- A Chinese Long March 2D booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0054 UTC (local time - 8) to put the second "Yunhai 1" satellite into orbit. It was vaguely described as a platform for "detecting the atmospheric and marine environment and space environment, as well as disaster control and other scientific experiments."
-- 26 SEP 19 / SOYUZ ISS 61S (ISS) -- A Soyuz Fregat booster was launched from Baikonur at 1357 UTC (local time + 6) to put the "Soyuz ISS 61S" AKA "MS-15" crewed space capsule into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) support mission.
The crew included Oleg Skripochka of the RKA (3rd space flight), Jessica Meir of NASA (1st space flight), and Hazzaa Ali Almansoori of the UAE (1st space flight). They docked with the ISS a little under six hours later -- to join the ISS Expedition 60 crew of Alexey Ovchinin, Alexander Skvortsov, Luca Parmitano, Nick Hague, Christina Koch, and Drew Morgan.
-- 26 SEP 19 / EKS 3 (COSMOS 2541) -- A Soyuz 2-1B booster was launched from Plesetsk at 0746 UTC (local time - 3) to put the third "EKS (Tundra)" early warning satellite into highly elliptical Molniya orbit for the Russian military. It was assigned the sequence designation of "Cosmos 2541". The nature of the payload was not announced, but its orbital parameters and other details suggested a missile launch warning satellite. EKS is a Russian acronym that translates to "Integrated Space System". The EKS satellites have replaced Russia's Oko early warning system, which had its last satellite launch in 2012. The first EKS space platform was launched from Plesetsk in 2015, the second in 2017.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* PLANT KIN ASSISTANCE: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Once Considered Outlandish, The Idea That Plants Help Their Relatives Is Taking Root" by Elizabeth Pennisi, 3 January 2019), it is not unusual that animals of the same species will collaborate with each other, with such "kin selection" boosting the prosperity of the species as a whole. Traditionally, few thought that kin selection applied to plants -- but now, it's becoming more plausible that it does.
A Canadian biologist suggested the notion more than a decade ago, but many plant biologists couldn't see that it made any sense. Collaboration requires an ability to think to a degree, doesn't it? And nobody sensibly believes plants think in any way, since they don't have a nervous system.
However, it is becoming apparent that plants will collaborate, even though they don't think. Some species limit how far their roots spread; others change how many flowers they produce; while a few tilt or shift their leaves to minimize shading of neighboring plants, favoring related individuals.
Susan Dudley, a plant evolutionary ecologist at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, was a pioneer in plant kin recognition studies. She comments: "We need to recognize that plants not only sense whether it's light or dark or if they've been touched, but also whom they are interacting with." The work has clear applications in horticulture. In 2018, Chinese researchers reported that rice planted alongside close kin grows better, suggesting kin assistance might improve crop yields.
Kin selection is common among animals, implying it provides a strong selective advantage. Dudley suspects the same evolutionary forces apply to plants. Not long after researchers proved that plants can distinguish "self" from "nonself" roots, she tested whether they could also pick out and favor kin.
She grew American searocket (Cakile edentula), a succulent found on North American beaches, in pots with relatives, or with unrelated plants from the same population. With strangers, the searocket greatly expanded its underground root system -- but with relatives, it restrained its growth, leaving more space for kin roots get nutrients and water. She published her results in 2007, with her colleagues finding the idea startling. Some of them sharply criticized her experimental methodology.
However, her results have since been confirmed. In one recent study with Moricandia moricandioides, a Spanish herb, Ruben Torices and his colleagues at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and the Spanish National Research Council observed cooperation in flowering. After growing 770 seedlings in pots either alone, or with three or six neighbors of varying relatedness, the team found the plants grown with kin put out more flowers, making them more alluring to pollinators. The floral displays were especially big in plants in the most crowded pots of relatives. Torices judges the kin effects "altruistic" because each individual plant gives up some of its ultimate seedmaking potential to expend more energy making flowers. He judges that more seeds are fertilized overall in the pots of closely related plants.
There is still some skepticism. For example, is a plant recognizing kin, or just a plant that happens to be similar? The mustard Arabidopsis thaliana, a common "lab rat", has provided another clue. About eight years ago, Jorge Casal, a plant biologist at the University of Buenos Aires, noticed that Arabidopsis plants growing next to relatives shift the arrangement of their leaves to reduce shading of their neighbors, but don't do that when the neighbors are unrelated.
He didn't quite understand how the plants figured out they were among relatives -- but in 2015, Casal's team discovered that the strength of reflected light striking nearby leaves signaled relatedness and triggered the rearrangements. Plants, though they don't have eyes, do respond to light. Related Arabidopsis plants tend to sprout leaves at the same height, reflecting more light onto each other's leaves. By rearranging leaves to reduce how much they shade each other, the relatives cumulatively grow more vigorously and produce more seeds, his team found.
Since then, he has shown that when sunflower kin are planted close together, they also arrange themselves to stay out of one another's way. Taking advantage of the effect, they planted 10 to 14 related plants per square meter -- an extraordinary density for commercial growers -- and got up to 47% more oil from plants that were allowed to lean away from each other than plants constrained to grow straight up.
Kong Chui-Hua, a chemical ecologist at the China Agricultural University in Beijing, has investigated a similar effect to boost rice yields. His lab studies rice varieties that give off weed-killing chemicals in their roots. These varieties don't have high enough yields to displace commonly-grown varieties that need herbicides. However, a three-year study showed that kin-recognizing versions of these self-protective rice varieties produced a 5% increase in yield when grown with kin, instead of unrelated plants. The researchers are now engaged in larger field tests.
Brian Pickles, an ecologist at the University of Reading in the United Kingdom, suggests that kin recognition could even help forests regenerate. By tracing flows of nutrients and chemical signals between trees connected by underground fungi, he showed that the firs preferentially feed their kin and warn them about insect attacks. The finding suggested a family of firs would grow faster than unrelated trees.
Some still feel the evidence is too thin, and that studies so far have not been rigorous enough. Those engaged in the research are indeed trying to tighten up their work, but feel their work will be vindicated. Ecologist Richard Karban at the University of California, Davis -- who has done research on cooperation among sagebrush bushes -- comments: "We are learning that plants are capable of so much more sophisticated behavior than we had thought. It's really cool stuff."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GENOMICS & THE LAW: The legal implications of searches of public DNA databases set up for genealogy hobbyists was discussed here in July. As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("New Federal Rules Limit Police Searches Of Family Tree DNA Databases" by Jocelyn Kaiser, 25 September 2019), the US Department of Justice (DOJ) has now released a set of rules governing how police can search such databases. This is the first US government policy statement on the subject.
The new rules are intended to balance privacy and public safety concerns. The value of public DNA websites for law enforcement was highlighted in 2018 when Joseph DeAngelo was charged with a series of rapes and murders that had occurred decades earlier, the perpetrator being labeled the "Golden State Killer". Investigators tracked down the suspect by uploading a DNA profile from a crime scene to a public ancestry website, identifying distant relatives, then using traditional genealogy and other information to zero in.
This approach has led to arrests in at least 60 cold cases around the country. However, to no surprise, these searches lead to privacy worries. Relatives of those in the database can fall under suspicion, even if their own DNA isn't listed in a database; while those who are in a database may not have given informed consent to allow their data to be used for law enforcement searches.
The DOJ interim policy says that "forensic genetic genealogy" should generally be used only for violent crimes such as murder and rape, as well as to identify human remains. The policy does permit broader use if the ancestry database's policy allows for such. Police should first exhaust traditional crime solving methods, including searching their own criminal DNA databases. Under the new policy:
Law professor Natalie Ram -- of the University of Maryland School of Law in Baltimore -- comments: "This policy is a big step forward in addressing some of the most pressing privacy concerns in this area." However, Ram believes that police should need a search warrant or other judicial oversight to conduct any genetic genealogy search.
The new policy only applies to DOJ agencies and state or local agencies with Federal funding. Bioethicist Amy McGuire -- of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas -- thinks it will become a national model. She also believes it will make the public more willing to allow access to DNA, some of the genealogy websites allowing their users to "opt out". McGuire says that placing "limitations on use of the technology is a really important step towards building public trust."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DECARBONIZING THE WORLD (8): Getting industry off the carbon addiction is no small challenge, requiring a radical rethinking of industrial processes. To illustrate, consider the new steel plant being built near the town of Lulea in Sweden, which is to make Sweden the first country to produce steel without carbon emissions.
There's already a steel plant in Lulea, which is built around a traditional blast furnace. It generates 1.6 tonnes of CO2 for every tonne of steel it produces. That isn't consistent with the Swedish drive to be carbon-neutral by 2045. Indeed, the steel industry currently generates a tenth of Sweden's total emissions.
HYBRIT Development, the zero-carbon-steel joint venture between commercial steel producer SSAB; LKAB, a state iron-ore producer; and Vattenfall, a state-owned power company, is rethinking steel production. Instead of using coking coal to produce steel, the new plant will exploit Sweden's abundant renewable energy to generate hydrogen via electrolysis, and use the hydrogen to produce a product called "direct-reduced iron (DRI)". The plan is to complete the experimental phase by 2024, then move on to a full-scale trial in the decade up to 2035.
According to consulting firm McKinsey, almost half of the CO2 emitted by the entire industrial sector comes from four industries; cement, steel, ammonia, and ethylene. All will have cut emissions, in the face of rising demand for cars, buildings, plastics, and infrastructure. They will also have to do so in a cost-effective fashion, since otherwise they will be out-competed by firms in countries that don't worry much about climate -- a problem known as "carbon leakage".
Recycling steel and other commodities will help reduce emissions, but that won't be nearly enough; the way such materials are made will have to change. HYBRIT is leading the way. Currently, 75% of the world's steel -- including SSAB's -- is produced using a blast furnace into which carbon, in the form of coke, is added to "reduce" the iron. In this "basic oxygen furnace" system, the iron oxide and the carbon react, under a blast stream of oxygen, to form molten iron, carbon monoxide, and CO2. The alternative DRI process starts out with iron ore in a furnace, but uses natural gas as the reductant instead of coke, producing sponge iron that is then converted to steel via an electric arc furnace.
The reduction process generates as much as 90% of the CO2 emissions in steelmaking, and so HYBRITT plans to rethink the DRI process, using hydrogen instead of natural gas as the reducing agent. The hydrogen will react with iron oxides to form water, not CO2. The hydrogen will be produced by renewable energy, which is abundant in Sweden. The arc furnace will also be powered by clean energy.
HYBRIT considered using CCS to remove the carbon gases from the blast furnace, but found it would only get about half the CO2 -- not good enough. It also rejected the idea, used by some Brazilian steel companies, of using renewable charcoal instead of coke in the reduction process, because it would be too much of a drain on Sweden's forests. And it estimated that electricity prices in Sweden will be low enough to make it cheaper to use hydrogen from electrolysis, instead of biogas, in the DRI process.
Even given an optimistic assessment, the revised process will raise steel prices by 20% to 30%, assuming that electricity prices remain level. The process demands a lot of electricity -- on a full-production basis, 15 terawatts a year, or about a tenth of Sweden's power-generation capacity. The scheme is not expected to reach commercial scale until 2035 at earliest. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (76): While sending troops to Europe, the Wilson Administration also took strong measures to ensure security on the home front, beginning with the 1917 "Espionage Act". The US had always had laws against spying, but the Espionage Act was focused on domestic subversion, the German-American community being regarded with a great deal of public suspicion. The act banned the dissemination of media that worked against the war effort, and also explicitly criminalized interference with the draft.
The next year, 1918, Congress passed a new "Sedition Act", extending the broad coverage of the Espionage Act, following in the steps of the Sedition Act of the first Adams Administration. It effectively criminalized any anti-war activism, forbidding use of "disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language" about the US government, the flag, or America's armed forces.
Two members of the Socialist Party in Philadelphia, Charles Schenk and Elizabeth Baer, sent out fliers encouraging men not to submit to the draft. They were arrested and convicted, to then appeal their case to the Supreme Court. In the 1919 case of SCHENK V. UNITED STATES, the court unanimously judged against the two. Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes JR wrote the court's decision, arguing for limits to the First Amendment right of free speech:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing a panic. ... The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such a nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent. It is a question of proximity and degree.
END QUOTE
Public feeling running hot, there was little general dissent against the Espionage and Sedition Acts at first. Labor organizer and radical Eugene Debs, after speaking out publicly against the war, was arrested, convicted under the Espionage Act, and sentenced to ten years in Federal prison. Debs appealed his conviction to the Supreme Court; SCOTUS unanimously confirmed the conviction. However, Justice Holmes, with the court under criticism, began to have doubts -- though with the war on, the status quo remained unchanged.
With American help, the Allies finally defeated the overstretched Germans in 1918. Wilson, however, was less concerned about winning the war than winning the peace, advocating the "Fourteen Points" for a new postwar order, including: open diplomacy; freedom of navigation on the seas; free trade; arms limitation; resolution of territorial disputes on the basis of "national self-determination" of peoples; and most significantly, what would become a "League of Nations" that would support a just new order, and prevent war.
Wilson envisioned a far-reaching internationalism, but it proved a reach too far. The USA was not a complete stranger to international agreements, for example having one of the founders in 1874 of the Universal Postal Union, which normalized rules for international mails.
The drive towards a much more ambitious international order didn't go well. At the Paris Peace Conference in that year, 1918 Wilson pushed for his Fourteen Points and the League of Nations -- but he was sorely disappointed, the peace treaty being punitive, and the victors engaging in power politics and the continuation of the colonial order. The League of Nations was established, but to add to his disappointment, Wilson couldn't get the Senate to allow America to join the League -- which was a major contributing factor to its ultimate failure and collapse. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("This Chip Can Quickly Identify The Microbes Living In Your Body" by Robert F. Service, 16 July 2018), current tests to identify microbes are time-consuming, usually requiring that samples be grown in a petri dish before they can be analyzed.
Now researchers at InSilixa -- a biotech company in Sunnyvale, California -- have announced they've created a new biochip that can complete microbial scans in less than 2 hours, with no culturing needed. When a sample -- for example, a cheek swab or blood draw -- is loaded on the chip, the reader carries out five separate chemical procedures to isolate genetic material and screen it against known pathogenic sequences. They have demonstrated that the chip can simultaneously identify mutations that confer antibiotic resistance in seven different microbes.
They also used a different chip to spot 54 different mutations associated with antibiotic resistance in different strains of the microbes that cause tuberculosis. The results were validated against existing genetic profiling techniques. The researchers expect to be able to profile up to 100 microbes simultaneously in the future. InSilixia intends to create an open-source platform to enable clinicians around the world to create custom chips to scan for microbes found in their regions.
* Back in the old days, cheap coolers made completely of styrofoam were commonly seen on beaches and other vacation spots. Styrofoam got a deservedly bad reputation, however, since it tends to clutter up the environment: it isn't recyclable, and it takes forever to break down.
In much the same way that styrene foam bracings in boxes for products have been largely replaced by biodegradable bracings -- which are much easier to dispose of, and not so troublesome after they have been -- cooler maker Igloo is now offering a cheap cooler made out of wood pulp. The "Recool" can be re-used a number of times; and when it finally gives up the ghost, it can be shredded and put into a compost pile. Igloo expects to sell the biodegradable cooler for like ten dollars.
* In loosely related tech news, as discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Just 10% Of US Plastic Gets Recycled" by Alex Fox, 22 April 2019), plastics are not easy to recycle, one problem being that dyes and flame retardants added to the plastics are hard to sift out of them. Now, researchers have developed a new plastic that can be easily broken down, and separated from additives -- yielding plastic that looks like new.
To make the new material, researchers tweaked a "vitrimer" -- a class of glasslike plastics developed early in this decade -- by adding molecules that alter the chemical bonds holding it together. These new bonds, called "dynamic covalent diketoenamine bonds", can be broken with less energy than needed to break down traditional plastics. As a result, the new plastic can be broken down into its constituents using just a solution of water and a strong acid at room temperature.
The process also doesn't need catalysts, reducing cost, and eliminating the need to separate the catalyst for re-use. The plastic isn't weak, either; it needs strong acids to break it down.
Traditional plastic recycling produces dirty gray pellets, known as "nurdles", that don't have much value, but this new process results in like-new material, and the plastic doesn't need to be sorted out from other plastics because it separates from the other plastics in the process. The question remains of whether manufacturers will use it; possibly some regulatory incentives might help.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE MOZILLA PARADIGM: As discussed in an essay by Schumpeter, ECONOMIST.com's business blogger ("Firefox And Friends", 20 July 2019), fans of the Mozilla Firefox web browser tend to be a low-profile lot, knowing it's trailing-edge technology. Its share of the browser market has fallen from 30% to 10% over a decade, both because of more popular competitors, like Google's Chrome browser -- with 60% of the market -- and because smartphone apps have reduced the need for browsers. Ironically, Google is keeping Firefox alive, providing most of Mozilla's revenue, in exchange for the privilege of being Firefox's default search engine.
Mitchell Baker, Mozilla's chairwoman, doesn't seem cowed by Firefox's minority status; in fact, she proclaims that tech really needs an organization that "puts people first and doesn't squeeze every last penny out of the system." Does it, really? Or is that just bravado?
Mozilla was founded in 1998, in the wake of the "browser war" between Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Netscape's Navigator. The fight got Microsoft in trouble with the authorities, who threatened to break up the company -- but Netscape had to cave in. However, Netscape then released the source code for Navigator, with a collective of volunteer developers forming to keep it alive as Firefox.
Two decades on, Mozilla has a volunteer workforce of almost 23,000, which mostly hunts down bugs and helps with customer service. The volunteers are unpaid, doing the work for the fun of it. Mozilla does also have 1,100 paid employees, two-thirds of them programmers -- most developing software, but others providing software services. The organization has two heads: the Mozilla Foundation and the Mozilla Corporation, both based in Silicon Valley. The Foundation is a charity, which owns the Corporation and provides oversight.
The corporate arm handles products and the cash that Mozilla obtains from search engines listed by Firefox. In 2017, Mozilla got a total of $542 million USD for query traffic routed from Firefox Google, China's Baidu, Russia's Yandex, and a number of smaller firms. That sum compares favorably to Mozilla's expenses of $422 million USD. Mozilla's structure isn't optimal for a business, the organization being slow to react. Firefox fell badly behind the competition in terms of speed, and Mozilla failed to match the competition for several years -- though now some say Firefox is faster than Chrome.
Mozilla also pumped too many resources into a browser-based operating system for smartphones, finally passing it off to another organization; it has now emerged as KaiOS, discussed here a few months ago. The organization hasn't been able to find other major sources of revenue besides the browser, and power is greatly concentrated in Mitchell Baker -- who chairs both arms of Mozilla. Nonetheless, Mozilla remains noteworthy in three respects:
Although the open-source movement extends well beyond the Mozilla, the organization has been instrumental in pushing them along, as even competitors admit. Firefox was the first browser to block pop-up ads and allow users to surf anonymously, prompting commercial browsers to offer similar features. Google appears to be adopting Firefox's anti-ad-tracking feature for Chrome.
The Mozilla model isn't for everyone, but it has proven a source of good ideas. Facebook, having been given a public thrashing for its sins, is now adopting an "oversight board" to make sure the company stays on the straight and narrow. With privacy concerns voiced over digital assistants like Amazon's Echo, Mozilla is working on Common Voice, to set a model for how digital assistants should be implemented.
There's been a lot of talk as of late about breaking up Google, Facebook, and other tech giants. That's a brute-force approach, and unlikely to succeed. Possibly, all they need is to learn to behave themselves, with Mozilla providing useful examples.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* BEST DEFENSE: According to an article from CNN.com ("Use Of HIV Prevention Pill, PrEP, Rises 500%, Report Says" by Arman Azad, 11 July 2019), while nobody has yet developed a cure for AIDS, significant progress is still being made against the affliction. One measure, which involves use of taking a pill every day to ward off infection, is known as "pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP)", and it's proven effective.
A new study published by the US Centers for Disease Control & Prevention says that use of PrEP increased almost 500% from 2014 to 2017, with more than a third of people at risk of HIV infection now protected by the medication. The CDC says it is more than 90% effective.
Most demographic groups reported increased use of PrEP, but use has remained low in gay black, Hispanic and Latino men. Those groups are at particular risk for HIV infection, accounting for about 40% of all HIV infections in 2017 -- the last year for which data is available. Among men who have sex with men, 42% of white men reported using PrEP, while just 26% of black men reported doing so. Researchers say there are "structural barriers associated with race that influence access to high quality care", and have recommended targeted efforts to increase PrEP use among minorities.
The study was conducted in 20 urban areas, and surveyed more than 4,000 HIV-negative men who reported having sex with men. In 2014, just 6% of those at risk were on the pill, but that number increased to 35% in 2017. Awareness of PrEP increased as well, from 60% to 90% over three years. One of the biggest barriers has been the cost of the PrEP drug. In the USA, PrEP costs about $1,800 USD a month for those with no medical insurance. In countries such as South Africa and Kenya, it costs only about $75 USD per year.
In early 2019, the drug's maker, Gilead Sciences, agreed to donate enough medication to cover 200,000 people for up to 11 years; in June, the US Preventive Services Task Force recommended that people at significant risk for HIV infection take PrEP. Under Obamacare, private insurance is generally required to cover services that get the task force's "A" rating, such as the PrEP recommendation. States with expanded Medicaid would also typically go along.
For people on PrEP, the drug is well-tolerated and effective, with no major side effects. Some users report nausea, but it generally fades over time. Those who take the drug have to check in with a doctor every three months for blood tests; doctors recommend that people continue using condoms to ward off other sexually transmitted infections.
* As discussed by a related article from TIME.com ("How an Experimental Injection Could Revolutionize HIV Treatment" by Alice Park, 17 April 2019), there's been great progress in treating HIV. Patients can now take various combinations of dozens of medications that keep the virus under control, and prevent it from destroying the host's immune system, with fatal results.
However, users have to take the drugs faithfully every day; skipping days can encourage the rise of drug-resistant HIV strains that result in a new surge of viruses in the body. In a recent study, researchers at Taiwan-based United BioPharma report encouraging results with a single injection that seems to suppress HIV as well as daily pill regimens. Along with other research, the work suggests HIV patients may be able to take holidays from the pills.
In the study, 29 people who were HIV-positive and had received anti-HIV treatment in pill form for a little more than five years on average were randomly assigned to receive one of two doses of an injectable antibody named "UB-421". The antibody binds to the same site on immune cells that HIV uses to infect cells, helping to keep the virus from infecting cells. UB-421 is very effective at its job, binding to HIV with 50 to 100 times greater affinity than HIV does. It can even dislodge HIV when it's locked to a target cell.
All of the volunteers got eight injections. One group received the shot once a week, while the other received it once every two weeks, at a higher dose. The trial lasted eight to 16 weeks, with all the test subjects keeping HIV to below-detectable levels. Wang Chang-Yi, chief scientific officer and chairperson of the company, and the research team head -- commented:
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Such a durable maintenance is unprecedented, and it opens up a host of potential new treatment options for patients with resistance-prone HIV infection. We were able to use this antibody to maintain durable viral remission using a single agent instead of a cocktail of drugs.
END QUOTE
The researchers now plan to give UB-421 to people who have been recently diagnosed with HIV, but are not yet taking medication. Further analysis of the data from the current study showed that not only did the antibody UB-421 block HIV from infecting new cells, but it also seemed to modify the test subjects' immune cells in ways that made them better able to fight off the virus. UB-421 may lead to improved injections that provide long-term protection -- possibly an injection once a year, or even longer.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DECARBONIZING THE WORLD (7): While Northern Gas sets up its pilot hydrogen network in Leeds, on the other side of the North Sea, Equinor -- an energy firm that is collaborating in the Leeds project -- is trying to see if carbon capture and storage can be made to work. On the west coast of Norway, Equinor is a partner with the Norwegian government, Shell, and Total in the Technology Center Mongstad (TCM) -- which cost the equivalent of about $600 million USD to build. Begun in 2012, it is now the world's largest test center for carbon-capture technologies. From December 2019 Fluor, an American engineering and construction company, will be the latest big firm to test a new CCS process at the site.
CCS has a long history of disappointment. Fossil-fuel producers really want to make it work, since it would keep them in business in a post-carbon future. However, the cost of capturing emissions and burying them -- estimated at $50 to $100 USD per tonne in the power sector -- is high, and hard to bear when there's no penalty for releasing emissions into the atmosphere. The IEA notes that for every large-scale CCS operation started or operating since 2010, at least two have been canceled.
Nonetheless, there is cause for optimism; CCS seems like a workable scheme in steam-gas reforming and in production of cement. In 2019, US President Donald Trump's administration, it seems as part of its clumsy effort to bring back coal, surprised everyone by issuing an updated "Section 45Q" -- a tax-credit scheme that sharply increased the amount of financial support per tonne of CO2 captured, and lifted a cap on how much of it could be stored. Environmentalists are suspicious, saying the credit is particularly attractive to firms that want to use the subsidized CO2 to inject into oil wells to boost recovery, which would simply mean more emissions. If that seems paranoid, it should be noted that, following the 45Q update, a US lobby group called the "National Oil Enhanced Recovery Initiative" changed its name to, ahem, the "Carbon Capture Coalition".
Despite that, there's no reason to believe all interest in CCS is driven by ulterior motives. TCM in Norway is testing two ways of capturing CO2. Ernst Petter Axelsen, its managing director, says the more widely used one involves injecting flue gases into a tall solvency chamber, and adding droplets of a solvent called amine -- a stripped-down form of ammonia, that binds with the CO2 in the flue gas to form a liquid. The liquid is then boiled at 120 degrees Celsius (250 degrees Fahrenheit), to drive off the CO2 for capture, with the amine then recycled. The other technology, using chilled ammonia as a solvent, is less popular because it is labor-intensive.
Companies are using the TCM facility to test their amine chemistry, which they view as a "secret sauce"; to explore new approaches, such as lung-like membranes, and to work with absorbent materials, instead of solvents. Axelsen says interest in CCS has been widely rekindled by 45Q. In fact, some of the world's biggest oil companies have set up a group named the "Oil & Gas Climate Initiative", with a $1 billion USD fund dedicated to supporting CCS projects.
That's the "capture" part. As for storage, As for storage, Norway is in the early stages of a big project to capture CO2 from Norcem HeidelbergCement, in the south of the country; as well as from a waste-to-energy Fortum Oslo Varme plant in Oslo. It will then use Equinor, Shell, and Total to ship the CO2 and inject it into a porous limestone formation 3 kilometers (1.85 miles) below the sea bed.
Equinor sees this exercise as the start of an industry that develops into transporting CO2 by ship or pipeline from Teesside in Britain. Some of that CO2 may come from the Leeds hydrogen project; Equinor is also working with Northern Gas on a related proposal to turn the north of England's biggest cities from methane to hydrogen. The CO2 could also be stored in former hydrocarbon deposits in Britain's North Sea waters.
The biggest challenge to CCS, it seems, is the cost, which is problematic in the absence of a carbon tax or other balancing mechanism. Ultimately, it will also rely on huge amounts of storage sites. On the other side of the coin, CCS promises to play a major role in industry. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (75): When the First World War broke out in Europe in August 1914, Woodrow Wilson pursued a policy of neutrality, and won re-election in 1916, on the slogan of: HE KEPT US OUT OF WAR. Nonetheless, America began to prepare for a fight.
In that year, 1916, in response to the conflict across the Atlantic, the Wilson Administration established the "Council of National Defense" -- which was staffed by the Secretaries of War, Navy, Interior, Agriculture, Commerce, and Labor, with an advisory group of prominent citizens -- to coordinate a possible mobilization for war.
In parallel, Wilson requested that the National Academy of Sciences create a "National Research Foundation", which would become the "National Research Council (NRC)", which collected personnel from the government, military, academia, and private research organizations to provide scientific advice for war mobilization. The NRC was supposed to be temporary, but ended up being permanent.
In an obscure action, the US also purchased the three Danish West Indies islands in the Caribbean from Denmark for $25 million, renaming them the "Virgin Islands" -- the primary motivation for the purchase being fears that the Germans might seize them for use a submarine base that could prey on shipping in American coastal waters. It was the last acquisition of foreign territory in US history, though America would later have temporary occupation and trust governments of foreign territories.
The preparations proved wise. When Germany implemented a policy of "unrestricted submarine warfare" in 1917, sinking neutral ships on sight when they were in the war zone, he was forced to go to war. Congress passed two declarations of war -- one against Germany, the other against Austria-Hungary.
Wilson's government ramped up a massive mobilization of the country in support of the Allied war effort. Come the declaration of war, the Council of National Defense established the "War Industries Board (WIB)", with a set of subordinate committees, to coordinate defense production. It would only persist for the duration of the war. The time delay involved in ramping up weapons production meant that the US would not contribute much in the way of heavy weapons to the conflict; the American contribution was mostly in terms of raw materials, commercial goods that had military uses, and above all manpower.
At the outset, the US Army only had a little more than 100,000 men. To expand US forces, Wilson signed into law the Selective Service Act of 1917, which instituted a draft, there would be an army of over two million men by the end of the conflict. The Selective Service Act absorbed the lessons of the botched Civil War draft act, with males from 21 to 31 years of age -- later expanded to 18 to 45 -- eligible for selection, the selection factoring in exemptions for dependency, occupations essential to the war effort, and religious conviction. Bounties, substitutions, and purchases of exemptions were forbidden. Administration was performed by local boards.
Unlike the Civil War draft act, the 1917 draft act was challenged in the Supreme Court by six men who refused to register. The plaintiffs came up with a list of arguments, the more significant being that the draft violated the 13th Amendment's prohibition against slavery, and the First Amendment's guarantees of freedom of conscience. The court decided in 1918 against the plaintiffs, pointing out that Article I / Section 8 empowered the Federal government to raise armies. As far as the First Amendment's protections of freedom of belief went, the draft act provided exemptions for religious belief. As for the 13th Amendment's prohibition of involuntary servitude, Chief Justice Edward D. White, writing the court's opinion, was scornful:
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Finally, as we are unable to conceive upon what theory the exaction by government from the citizen of the performance of his supreme and noble duty of contributing to the defense of the rights and honor of the nation, as the result of a war declared by the great representative body of the people, can be said to be the imposition of involuntary servitude in violation of the prohibitions of the Thirteenth Amendment, we are constrained to the conclusion that the contention to that effect is refuted by its mere statement.
END QUOTE
Thanks to the Selective Service Act, the USA would build up an army of two million men. An "American Expeditionary Force (AEF)" under the leadership of General John Pershing, was raised and sent to Europe, where it would play a significant role in the end-game battles of the conflict. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed by an article from CNN.com ("Researchers 3D-print Heart From Human Patient's Cells" by Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez, 16 April 2019), researchers have now 3D-printed a human heart using a patient's cells. Dr. Tal Dvir -- of Tel Aviv University's School of Molecular Cell Biology and Biotechnology, and lead of the research effort -- says: "This is the first time anyone anywhere has successfully engineered and printed an entire heart replete with cells, blood vessels, ventricles, and chambers."
The exercise started with a biopsy of fatty tissue that surrounds abdominal organs. Researchers then extracted cells in the tissue from the extracellular matrix linking the cells. The cells were genetically reprogrammed to become stem cells that could differentiate into heart cells. The extracellular matrix was processed into a "hydrogel", with the cells and hydrogel then used in the 3D printing process. The researchers started out with printing heart patches with blood vessels, and then an entire heart.
Dvir says: "At this stage, our 3D heart is small, the size of a rabbit's heart -- but larger human hearts require the same technology." The beauty of the scheme is that the host's immune system won't reject the printed heart, because it is derived from the host's own cells. There is the problem of getting the printed heart to pump properly, Dvir saying: "The cells need to form a pumping ability; they can currently contract, but we need them to work together."
The researchers plan to work up to printed heart transplants on animals; if that goes well, then they will perform printed heart transplants on humans. Dvir would like to think that in ten years, printed heart transplants will be ordinary.
* In further news of printing organs, an article from ENGADGET.com ("Bioengineers 3D Print Complex Vascular Networks" by Christine Fisher, 2 May 2019), a research team led by Rice University and the University of Washington have developed a tool to 3D-print complex and "exquisitely entangled" vascular networks. These artificial networks are critical to the fabrication of printed organs, providing passageways for blood, air, lymph and other fluids; without them, printed organs can't obtain nutrients and oxygen into the tissue, or remove waste.
This new scheme prints thin layers of a liquid, pre-hydrogel solution, which becomes solid when exposed to blue light. The printed structure is made up of biocompatible gels, and has an internal architecture similar to the human body's vascular networks. More significantly, the researchers have devised a system, named the "Stereolithography Apparatus For Tissue Engineering (SLATE)" -- and made it open-source, available to anyone who wants it. We're not close to printed organs on a practical basis just yet, but progress is rapid.
* As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Megalibraries Of Nanomaterials Could Speed Clean Energy And Other Grand Challenge Targets" by Robert F. Service, 20 December 2018), the development of "nanomaterials" -- built up of particles on the scale of nanometers -- has revolutionized 21st-century materials science, opening the door to lightweight armor, synthetic fuel, and improved solar cells.
Nanomaterials are noted for having different optical, electrical, and catalytic properties from the same materials in bulk form -- but the possible ways of putting together different elements to build nanomaterials leads to a "combinatorial explosion" that makes finding a nanomaterial optimized for a specific role like hunting for a needle in a haystack.
Modern computing power can help, researchers having come up with "megalibraries" of up to 5 billion combinations of different nanomaterials, with the different library entries having different proportions of elements and different particle sizes. The researchers used a microfabrication technique to build the megalibrary, with a "stamp" made up of an array of hundreds of thousands of pyramids used to create an array of wells in a polymer layer on a substrate.
Each well is loaded up with metal salts of interest. The array is then heated to burn away the polymer and form nanoparticles from the salts. On testing one such array, the researchers found a catalyst that could help form carbon nanotubes -- useful for advanced electronics devices and other applications -- more effectively than any other known catalysts. The researchers plan to use the technique to find other improved catalysts, as well as nanomaterials for new electronic and optical applications.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* CLIMATE INVESTMENTS: As discussed by an article from THEVERGE.com ("These May Be The Best Climate Investments $1.8 Trillion Can Buy" By Justine Calma, 10 September 2019), a new report from the Global Commission on Adaptation -- co-founded in 2018 by Ban Ki-Moon, previous UN secretary-general, with philanthropist Bill Gates and World Bank CEO Kristalina Georgieva -- concludes that investing $1.8 trillion USD to improve climate resilience between now and 2030 would yield benefits of $7.1 trillion USD.
The investments would be in five critical areas:
The $7 trillion USD payback wouldn't be directly in the form of cold hard cash. That number actually tallies all the damage avoided by better preparing for climate catastrophes, such as storms or heatwaves, plus the economic, and social and environmental benefits of the projects.
According to the report, early warning systems save lives and assets worth at least ten times their cost. Giving a warning 24 hours ahead of a storm or heatwave can minimize damage by 30%. Spending of $800 million USD on these systems in developing countries could prevent up to $16 billion USD in losses each year. Thanks to early warning systems, the death toll of cyclones in Bangladesh dropped from 138,000 in the 1991 cyclone that struck the region of Chittagong, to 3,363 deaths during Cyclone Sidr in 2007; Cyclone Fani in 2019 killed five people.
By reducing risk, adaptation lowers financial and insurance costs and makes investment more appealing in places that would otherwise appear too precarious. London's Canary Wharf and other real-estate developments in East London would not have been possible without the shield of the Thames Barrier -- a series of movable steel cylindrical gates that have been operational since 1982. By holding back storm surges and high tides, the barrier helps protect 1.3 million people who live or work below the Thames' average level of high tide, as well the property and infrastructure around them, from flooding. New York and New Jersey, unsurprisingly, are planning to build a storm barrier of their own.
The Thames Barrier holds another investment lesson: a small additional outlay upfront to climate-proof infrastructure delivers higher returns for longer. In a recent study, the World Bank estimated that making infrastructure more resilient adds about 3% to upfront costs, but increases returns 300%. That is being understood around the world:
Christiana Figueres -- previously the head of the United Nations' Framework Convention on Climate Change during the adoption of the Paris climate agreement -- commented on the report: "If we delay adaptation, we will pay such a high price that we would never be able to look at ourselves in the mirror. Either we delay and pay, or we plan and prosper."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ANOTHER MONTH: As reported by GIZMODO.com ("Swastika Ride Shut Down At German Amusement Park After Going Viral On Social Media" by Matt Novak, 22 August 2019), Tatzmania -- a little theme park in southern Germany -- got a lot of unwanted publicity when a new ride, the "AdlerFlug (Eagle Flight)" went into operation. It's a tower with a large spinning arm, with rotating crosses at each end of the arm, and a stylized metal eagle at each end of a cross for riders to strap into.
Nobody really noticed that, when in operation, the AdlerFlug looked like twin spinning swastikas on the spinning arm. Worse, the eagle motif is common in Nazi regalia. The Germans are, for good reasons, very touchy about all things Nazi, and displaying Nazi symbols is illegal. The ride went viral online, being dubbed "HoloCoaster" and "2Fast 2Fuehrerious".
The park director, Ruediger Braun, apologized for the ride, saying: "We didn't notice the gondolas are in the form of a swastika. It wasn't obvious from the manufacturer's sketches." It's also not particularly obvious before the ride gets to its full operational height. The ride won't be dismantled, but the number of spinning eagles at the end of each arm will be reduced from four to three, resulting in a triskelion instead of a swastika. Problem solved.
* In other unusual news, there was a video circulating on Twitter of a helicopter trimming tree branches away from power lines, using an array of circular saws on a sling. The general reaction in the comments was: "You must be kidding us!" For myself, I was curious about how well that worked, so I googled around and found an article on TDWORLD.com -- a website devoted to electrical power transmission and distribution -- titled "Aerial Saw Is Boon to Line Trimming" (by Rick Mowbray & William C. Cox IV, 16 May 2017).
It appears that the idea of aerial trimming began in the 1980s, somebody at US company Aerial Solutions INC coming up the idea of using a helicopter to trim trees away from power lines. Tree branches can sometimes damage or short out power lines, and so power companies need to keep trees trimmed back. This is particularly troublesome because power lines run over the hills and through the woods, meaning they're not always easy to access from the ground.
There was considerable skepticism that the idea would work, but Aerial Solutions proved that it did, and they've been doing it for over 30 years now. The current aerial saw design features ten 60-centimeter (2-foot) diameter saw blades, attached to a 27.4-meter (90-foot) long aluminum boom. The saws are driven through a set of belts by a 21-kW (28 HP) internal-combustion engine. The boom sling scheme features bracing to prevent it from twisting. Aerial Solutions uses MD 500 helicopters for the job, but it appears there are other companies in the business, using different cutter systems and helicopters.
The video showed the helicopter pilot swinging the boom around deftly, which did look unsafe, but of course the pilot is thoroughly trained and qualified -- in particular, for handling sling loads on a helicopter, which is hazardous to begin with. It is not done in near proximity to human habitation, and the work area is cleared of people before cutting begins. If the boom gets stuck in the branches, the pilot can cut it loose, for recovery by ground crew.
It turns out that aerial trimming is safer than ground trimming. Ground trimming involves getting crews out to remote places through which the power lines run, and then using ladders plus power cutters of some sort to do the job. Power cutters and ladders do not play nice with each other. Aerial cutting allows a small crew to do the job much faster, with less hazard overall. It's well-established, highly effective, and power-line companies regard it as a normal tool.
* As far as the Real Fake News for September goes ... it was obvious that Donald Trump would run out of cheap tricks in time. Now he's just generating the same trash talk, over and over, and to continue to misuse the levers of government -- taking measures that will mostly be revoked immediately by the next administration.
One of the few halfway interesting things that happened in the first half of the month was the resignation of uber-hawk John Bolton as national security advisor. Anyone who had been paying attention could see months ago he was going to be out of the White House by the end of the year. Few are sad to see him go, nor sad to realize it's unlikely Bolton will be given a position of authority again. It was, however, pointed out that Bolton at least was consistent and predictable in his behavior.
The tedium ended abruptly on 14 September, when Saudi Arabia's oil production complex was hit by about a score of cruise missiles, the bombardment cutting that country's oil production in half for a time. Responsibility for the attack was claimed by Yemen's Houthi rebels, while Iran denied having anything to do with it. Few believed that; the attack was very well-planned and precise, with nobody else besides the Iranians having the capability to carry it out, and the motive to do so.
Nobody could figure out where the cruise missiles came from, since they flew in low, and their flight paths weren't tracked. The US sent air-defense units to Saudi Arabia, but did not retaliate against Iran. Late in the mouth, the Iranians began a diplomatic offensive, clearly aimed at Saudi Arabia, for a regional peace treaty -- which included pointed messages to the USA to stay out of the region.
It became apparent that the Iranians were more or less ignoring the Americans and focusing on their real enemy, the Saudis. The message was clear: We hit you once, we can hit you again. You hit back, we retaliate. So tell the Americans to back off and end sanctions. The Trump Administration's abusive attitude to America's allies has left the USA diplomatically self-isolated in the confrontation. Exactly what's going on now is hard to tell from a distance, but it can be assumed that if the Saudis try to ignore the Iranians, they're going to get hit again.
Another reason it's not clear what's going on in the Persian Gulf is because the USA then got caught up in a domestic political storm. In the spring, Donald Trump had been promoting a fake scandal concerning Joe Biden, seen as his likely adversary in the 2020 election. When Biden had been vice-president, he had encouraged the Ukrainian government to get rid of a corrupt government prosecutor. Joe's son Hunter had an association with a Ukrainian firm at the time; Trump claimed that the Ukrainian government had been investigating Hunter Biden, and that Joe Biden had moved against the Ukrainian prosecutor to protect his son.
It was nonsense -- the EU had also been pressuring the Ukrainian government about the corrupt prosecutor; while the company Hunter Biden had been working for was under investigation, he was not. The company, Burisma, had brought an international team of luminaries to sit on its board as window-dressing; although Hunter Biden admitted that he shouldn't have taken the money, it's nothing unusual to bring prominent citizens onto company boards, with such folk having little or no operational authority. In mid-month, it came to light that a whistle-blower had reported to Congress that on 25 July, Trump had called up Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and pressed him to start an investigation of the Bidens.
The White House surprisingly ended up releasing a transcript of the 25 July call, which confirmed the whistleblower accusations. It appears that the Trump Administration is so ethically tone-deaf that nobody saw a problem with it. The result was that talk of trying to impeach Trump, which had been caught up in differences of opinion between Democrats, abruptly switched to a move towards impeachment, with an investigation put into full motion. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had been reluctant to do so, knowing impeachment was not likely to succeed, but it was impossible to passively accept such outrageous corruption in the White House. The indecision was over.
Under the changed circumstances, it is hard to believe that even a failed impeachment will do the Democrats any harm; refusing to act would have been worse for them. Complaints that an impeachment attempt would be "divisive" were laughed at: We've hit rock bottom, how could we be more divided? Indeed, the scandal may encourage some of the less-fanatical Trump supporters to, if not vote Democrat in 2020, at least not bother to vote.
In fact, it is the Republicans who are really in trouble, since if, or when, impeachment comes to a vote, they'll have to choose between voting YES -- and earning the wrath of their voters -- or voting NO -- and going on record as approving of outrageous corruption in the White House, which would destroy their credibility. It seems plausible that Republican leadership will lean hard on Trump to resign and get them out of the trap; they could obliquely offer a pardon from President Pence. It is, however, difficult to say they have the sense to do this, and impossible to say if Trump would resign. His behavior to date suggests that he believes he can always bluster his way through all obstacles.
Publicly, for the most part, the GOP has been trying to downplay the scandal. It's not working. Imagine if, in 2012, Barack Obama had called, say, the president of Mexico to get dirt on Mitt Romney, offering support from the Department of Justice -- would the Republicans have cheerfully accepted that? Of course not; they would have demanded Obama's head.
Troubles are now piling up on Trump. In 2018, he was on a tear, trying to destroy Barack Obama's political legacy; but having shot up the easy targets, now he's left with problems. On top of the scandal, the economy is showing signs of softening -- few imagine a recession in the near term, but it's clear the boom times are over. In addition, although Americans have largely forgotten about the Iranians in the last few weeks, the Iranians have clearly not gone idle.
CNN's Fareed Zakaria described the dilapidation of the Trump Administration's Mideast policy -- more specifically, the idea that Iran could be crushed with sanctions, and would do nothing to fight back. Zarakaria offered the military proverb: "The enemy gets a vote." The Trump Administration doesn't have a real plan, while the Iranians have carefully thought things out, and have taken the initiative. Zakaria concluded with a quote from the ancient Chinese general Sun-Tsu: "Victory is only possible with a leader who knows when to pick his battles, and is prepared. Defeat is all but guaranteed with a leader who is reckless, mercurial, and prideful."
One last comment: Twitter users have taken to sending out copies of Trump's tweets, rendered in a scribbled crayon font. It makes them much less grating to read.
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COMMENT ON ARTICLE