* 23 entries including: US Constitution (series), bacteriophage revival (series), global supply chains (series), light from vacuum, return of the Aptera EV & electric drives in wheels, solar methane & ammonia production, digital Earth & hybrid Earth simulations, China robocars, printed fake steak, and US directed-energy weapon development.
* NEWS COMMENTARY FOR JANUARY 2020: In the continuing misadventures of the Era of Trump, last month got started out with the House and the Senate failing to come to a meeting of minds on an impeachment trial in the Senate. GOP Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made it clear that, once impeachment got to the Senate, it would be put on a fast track and dismissed. In response, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi held up passing the articles of impeachment on to the Senate, until McConnell clarified how impeachment would proceed in the Senate.
McConnell complained loudly in response and mocked the Democrats for the ploy, but Pelosi simply wanted to shine a light on, and slow down, the GOP's attempts to sideline impeachment. It had the desired effect.
The focus of controversy shifted abruptly towards Iran on 3 January, when Iranian General Qasem Solemani -- head of the elite Quds black-ops force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps -- was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad. The Trump Administration claimed the assassination was necessary, but failed to provide convincing evidence to Congress. The Iranians called it an act of war and promised retaliation.
On 8 January, the Iranians launched at least 15 ballistic missiles at US targets in Iraq, particularly al-Asad Air Base. The Iranians provided advance warning to the Iraqi government, which was of course relayed on to the Americans, and so no one was killed. Satellite photos revealed several structures cratered out; the missile strikes were impressively precise. Dozens of troops were hospitalized for concussive brain injuries.
Everyone held their breath at what Trump would do; responding in kind would certainly lead to a spiral of escalation. Trump sensibly did not escalate, declaring so in a blustery address in which he declared victory, cast Iran as the loser, and blamed Obama for America's troubles with Iran. However, the Iranians obviously took note of Trump's reluctance to go to war and pocketed the lesson for later. It was obvious they weren't done with retaliation yet, but further steps would be indirect.
Everyone breathed a sigh of relief, war having seemed imminent. The next day, 9 January, the House of Representatives passed a non-binding War Powers Resolution to attempt to leash in Trump. Actually, having had a close brush with war, it seems unlikely -- if hardly impossible -- that Trump will take reckless military action again any time soon.
Unfortunately, as a consequence of the excitement, after the missile strike, jumpy Iranian air-defense personnel fired two surface-to-air missiles (SAM) at a Ukrainian Boeing 737 jetliner, blowing it out of the sky and killing all on board. The incident came to light because the SAMs were picked up by a US missile-launch warning satellite; the Iranian government denied the incident for three days, insisting the airliner had simply crashed, leaving everyone confused as to who was lying and who was telling the truth.
The Iranians finally admitted to shooting down the jetliner, leading to angry protests by Iranian citizens. They followed protests in the fall, triggered by a rise in fuel prices, with demonstrations brutally suppressed. REUTERS.com claimed as many as 1,500 Iranians had been killed in the fall demonstrations, obtaining their figures from Iranian government officials; it appears not everyone in the government was enthusiastic about the brutality, since it was as bad, or worse, than anything that the detested Shah had done.
Trump succeeded in helping destabilize Iran, but it would be a dubious plan that relied on disastrous "own goals" from an adversary. If he were seeking a boost to his embattled presidency, that didn't work at all, his approval ratings remaining the same as always.
In the meantime, the impeachment proceedings rolled on, with the Democrats making their case and the president's counsel replying, with a torrent of falsehoods and bizarre legal reasonings. However, the defense case was upstaged by John Bolton, noted Right-wing hawk and previously White House national security advisor, who was publishing a book of his misadventures in the service of Trump, and was willing to testify.
There matters stand at the moment. It is not clear what will happen with Bolton; only a few GOP senators would have to vote to call him as a witness, but there's no certainty that enough will. Public support is running at about 75% for calling Bolton, but the White House has been making threatening noises against him. He's obviously not the kind of person who is easily intimidated, but legal action against him might complicate things. One suggestion is that Congress, which does have arrest powers, arrest him -- obviously with his consent -- and compel testimony from him. That would mean the White House would have to take legal aim at Congress, which would be a non-starter.
The Democrats would like to get others to testify, for example Rudy Giuliani -- the president's personal lawyer and at the center of the impeachment controversy -- but that may not be possible. Not such a problem, since refusing to testify is an effective admission of guilt. The GOP has made noises about calling Joe Biden's son Hunter to testify; for those not familiar with that issue, it's all about smoke and mirrors, and nothing is likely to come of tomfoolery over it.
We shall soon see what happens. One of the issues in the impeachment trial is that the president's State of the Union Address is on 4 February, and the Democrats would obviously not want Trump to use the speech to take victory laps for an acquittal. That means stretching out the trial, and that seems likely to happen. One might expect provocations from Nancy Pelosi before the address, in hopes of getting a public melt-down out of Trump. That would be easy to do.
* In the meantime, Australia is in recovery after an apocalyptic brushfire season. The ghastly fire season is widely seen as having been fueled by climate change -- which is awkward for Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who is a climate-change denier. That is no longer a credible position with Australian voters. The Australian Right leadership, boosted by Rupert Murdoch's media machine, has been attempting to shift blame, claiming the fires were caused by a massive arson campaign -- in some reads, the arsonists being "Greenies" who are trying to sell the climate-change "hoax". That's not working, either. Climate-change denial is on the way out. It can't be too soon.
THE ECONOMIST had an essay of the changes in language from climate change. The Germans, it seems, coined the word "Heisszeit (Heat Age)", which neatly rhymes with "Eiszeit (Ice Age)". Those words have a nice ring to them. They also rhyme with the proper name for the Era of Trump -- the "Scheisszeit".
Sorry, I couldn't pass that one up.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* LIGHT FROM VACUUM: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Physicists Predict A Way To Squeeze Light From The Vacuum Of Empty Space" by Adrian Cho, 29 March 2019), physicists have now figured a way, in principle, to get empty space to emit light, by firing charged particles through an electromagnetic field. Doing so would not be just a cute stunt, of course; it would provide a new test of a fundamental theory of electricity and magnetism, known as "quantum electrodynamics". However, the phrase "in principle" is significant, in that such a test would demand lasers and particle accelerators much more powerful than any available now.
Physicists have long known that when energetic charged particles travel through transparent medium, such as water or air, they can emit what is called "Cherenkov radiation". Light slows down in such mediums, meaning a fast particle can exceed the speed of light in that medium. The result is that the particle generates an electromagnetic shockwave, in a way that's similar to the shockwave generated by a supersonic aircraft. The shockwave generates blue light, which is why the cores of nuclear reactors glow blue; the phenomenon has proven useful in particle detectors.
Dino Jaroszynski -- a physicist at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, UK, and colleagues -- believe that Cherenkov light can actually be produced by energetic particles moving through a vacuum that's saturated by a very intense electromagnetic field. Quantum physics theorizes that the vacuum is not empty, instead being full of particle / anti-particle pairs that are created, then rejoin too quickly to observe directly. A strong electromagnetic field, however, polarizes the "virtual pairs", driving positively-charged and negatively-charged particles apart.
An energetic photon then interacts with the pairs, so that the polarized vacuum acts a bit like a transparent medium in which light travels slightly slower than in an ordinary vacuum. The consequence should be production of Cherenkov light. The idea was not new, but Jaroszynski and his team have developed it much farther than anyone had before.
However, spotting vacuum Cherenkov radiation would be difficult. First, the polarized vacuum doesn't slow light down much, a tiny fraction of a percent under optimum conditions. In water, in comparison, light slows down by 25%. Second, charged particles in an electromagnetic field spiral and emit another kind of light, known as "synchrotron radiation", that will usually drown out any Cherenkov radiation.
In principle, it should be possible to generate vacuum Cherenkov radiation by firing high-energy electrons or protons through overlapping pulses from the world's highest intensity lasers, which can generate a petawatt -- 10E15 watts -- of power. However, the particles would have to be extremely energetic; those that can be produced by the biggest particle accelerators on the planet today would produce much more synchrotron radiation than Cherenkov radiation.
Another place where the effect might be found is in distant space, in the environs of a pulsar, a spinning neutron star Extremely high-energy protons passing through the intense magnetic field of a pulsar should produce more Cherenkov radiation than synchrotron radiation. The problem there is that pulsars don't produce many protons themselves, and protons that fall into one tend to get wrapped up in its intense magnetic field and produce synchrotron radiation.
Despite the obstacles, researchers may spot the effect one of these days. Physicists in Europe are building a trio of 10-petawatt lasers, one each in Romania, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, while their counterparts in China are developing a 100-petawatt laser. Researchers are also trying to devise compact laser-driven accelerators that might produce highly energetic particle beams far more cheaply. Ben King, physicist at the University of Plymouth in the UK, suggests that these elements may come together to allow the detection of vacuum Cherenkov radiation.
Others researchers are working on alternate ways to use high-power lasers to probe the polarized vacuum. According to King, the ultimate goal of the work is to test quantum electrodynamics in new ways. The theory has been validated to a few parts in a billion, but it's never been tested in extremely strong fields. King says such tests can be seen on the horizon: "The future of this field is quite exciting."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* RETURN OF THE APTERA? The Aptera -- an advanced three-wheel electric vehicle (EV) concept -- was discussed here in 2008. As is so often the case with advanced-tech concepts, it didn't fly, with the Aptera company deciding to call it quits in 2011. As discussed by an article from SPECTRUM.IEEE.COM ("3-Wheeled Aptera Reboots as World's Most Efficient Electric Car" by John Voelcker, 28 August 2019), the dream didn't die, the company now having risen from the ashes to try again.
The revived Aptera will be sold with a range of battery capacities, from 40 kwh to 100 kwh. With the biggest battery pack, it is expected to have a range of 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) on a single charge-up -- almost three times the range of typical EV. That equates to an average power consumption of 100 watt-hours per mile.
The new Aptera will have a weight of about 800 kilograms (1,800 pounds), about half that of a Nissan Leaf. The Aptera's body shell will be made of lightweight sandwich-core composite sections bonded together. Company officials say safety won't be compromised, that the vehicle's passenger shell will be "stronger than that of any other vehicle on the road today."
The aerodynamics of the vehicle have been refined, thanks to computational fluid dynamics software much more capable than that available a decade ago. Similarly, modern structural design software, driving 3D printing, has reduced the weight of elaborate metal parts. The interior has been largely redesigned, with a liquid-cooled battery pack at the rear, in the cabin floor. The production machine will have three-wheel power.
The revived company doesn't have a prototype yet, but it is accepting crowd-funded money. Aptera won't accept pre-orders until they can guarantee a delivery date. Farther out, the company has ideas for a six-seat electric shuttle.
* As discussed by a related article from ECONOMIST.com ("A New Type Of Engine For Electric Cars", 11 July 2019), modern EVs typically have a drivetrain much like that of a piston-powered vehicle, with a central electric motor rotating the tires through a transmission, a driveshaft, and axles. It would greatly simplify, and lighten, the vehicle frame if there were an electric motor at each of the drive wheels instead.
EV makers have tinkered with the idea, but it hasn't appeared in production machines yet. There are two problems with the concept:
Engineers at Indigo Technologies of Cambridge, Massachusetts, believe the obstacles can be overcome. The company was founded in 2010 by Ian Hunter -- a professor of mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology -- and has since worked on an in-wheel drive system designated the "T1". It's a module that incorporates brakes, steering, and an active suspension, along with the motor.
The T1 runs at 48 volts DC, not the 400 VDC used by motors in most EVs. 48 VDC is a convention for powering other auto systems such as lighting, climate control, entertainment systems and adjustable seats. The reduction in voltage, more importantly, makes the T1's motor easier to protect and insulate, the result being lower cost and improved reliability. The lighter weight of the overall vehicle also means the motors don't have to be as powerful. Coupled to an optimized vehicle design, the end result would be a much more energy-efficient vehicle. Indigo Technologies is currently in discussions with carmakers and components firms, with hopes of landing a production contract in the near future.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SOLAR METHANE: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Taking A Cue From Plants, New Chemical Approach Converts Carbon Dioxide To Valuable Fuel" by Robert F. Service, 8 January 2020), there's been a great deal of interest in using solar power to generate fuels from atmospheric carbon dioxide. Now, a research team has developed a new copper / iron-based catalyst that helps convert CO2 into methane (CH4), the main component of natural gas.
Methane can be used as a fuel for transport, heating, or power generation. It burns into CO2 and water:
CH4 + 2 x O2 --> CO2 + 2 x H20
Producing methane from sunlight effectively reverses that reaction, converting CO2 and water into methane and oxygen. Energetically, this is troublesome; it means using energy to break down CO2 and H20, and then using energy to combine four hydrogens with one atom of carbon. Metal catalysts can help.
Some years ago, scientists found that copper particles, when paired with light-absorbing materials, showed some promise in converting CO2 into more energy-rich compounds. However, both the efficiency and rate of the conversion were uselessly low. That led to tinkering with adding other metals, with the researchers growing two-metal particles on top of fields of tiny, hairlike nanowires designed to act like mini-solar cells. The cells generate electricity that feed electrons to the catalysts to promote the reactions.
In 2016, researchers reported that catalysts containing copper and gold deposited atop light-harvesting, silicon nanowires helped convert CO2 to carbon monoxide (CO), which is often used as an intermediate in industrial chemical reactions. In early 2019, Zetian Mi -- an electrical engineer at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor -- and his colleagues discovered that a ruthenium- and zirconium-based catalyst grown on top of arrays of light-absorbing gallium nitride (GaN) nanowires efficiently converted CO2 to formate (HCOOH), another industrially useful compound.
However, neither of these exercises produced a useful fuel. Now Mi and his colleagues have figured out a way to do that. They began with the same GaN nanowires, grown on top of a commercially available silicon wafer. They then used a technique called "electrodeposition" to add tiny 5- to 10-nanometer-wide particles consisting of a mix of copper and iron. Under light and in the presence of CO2 and water, the scheme converts 51% of the energy in light into methane, and works rapidly.
Another research group had come up with a scheme that was more efficient, but was much slower. The researchers are now working towards making the scheme more efficient; they are not yet near to a production system.
ED: Of course copper and iron are cheap and readily available, but what about gallium? It turns out that it's almost as common as zinc in the Earth's crust, but it doesn't form concentrated ores. It is obtained as a by-product of refining of aluminum and zinc. It's not exactly common, but it's not rare, either.
* EFFICIENT AMMONIA PRODUCTION: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("New Reactor Could Halve Carbon Dioxide Emissions From Ammonia Production" by Robert F. Service, 6 November 2019), the century-old Haber-Bosch process seems like a marvel, extracting nitrogen from the atmosphere, plus methane from natural gas, to produce huge amounts of ammonia, primarily for fertilizer.
Of course, this is engineering and it has a catch, in that it belches out more than 450 million tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) each year -- which is about 1% of all human emissions, more than produced by any other industrial chemical. Now researchers have developed a new type of ceramic reactor could cut emissions from the Haber-Bosch process in half. If it can be scaled up, the new scheme could also reduce fertilizer prices, by making it easier to produce in small chemical plants close to where it's used.
The Haber-Bosch process uses three separate reactors to generate hydrogen from methane, then combine the hydrogen with nitrogen to make ammonia. In contrast, the new approach combines all three reactors into one.
The first stage of the Haber-Bosch process is called "steam methane reforming", in which steam and methane mix over a solid nickel catalyst at high pressure and temperatures up to 1000 degrees Celsius (1800 degrees Fahrenheit). The output is molecular hydrogen (H2) and carbon monoxide. The second stage converts the toxic CO into CO2, which is released as waste gas. The third stage converts the hydrogen and nitrogen into ammonia.
One of the problems is that, in the first stage, the H2 that is produced interferes with the nickel catalyst, slowing down the process. To keep the catalyst working effectively, Vasileios Kyriakou -- a chemical engineer at the Dutch Institute for Fundamental Energy Research in Eindhoven -- and colleagues from Greece came up with a reactor design that gets rid of hydrogen atoms as soon as they are stripped off methane molecules.
They fabricated a thin ceramic tube through which steam and methane flow. A nickel catalyst on the inner surface of the tube turns out positively charged hydrogen ions, electrons, and CO2. The CO2 flows out of the tube as exhaust, while an applied electric voltage pushes the negatively charged electrons through a wire to a second catalyst coating the tube's outer surface.
This accumulation of negative charges then draws the positively charged hydrogen ions through the wall of the ceramic membrane to the tube's outer surface. Getting rid of the ions allows the catalyst inside the cylinder to work more efficiently. It also allows the reaction to occur at about 600 degrees Celsius (1,100 degrees Fahrenheit), which produces only CO2, not CO. On the tube's outer surface, the second catalyst -- made up of vanadium, nitrogen, and iron -- uses the hydrogen ions, electrons, and nitrogen molecules piped in separately to form ammonia, all at atmospheric pressure.
The reduced energy needed to drive the reaction let the team create ammonia with just half the CO2 of conventional steam methane reforming. The catalyst that generates the ammonia also generates H2, which can be fed to a fuel cell to combine with oxygen and produce electricity that supports the process. For now, the catalyst that generates the NH3 is still too slow to compete with steam methane reforming. The researchers are now investigating better catalysts.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS (8): The shipping industry is becoming smarter at a rapid pace. Singapore is building a massive new port that will rely on automated cranes and driverless vehicles; it has also launched an international effort to digitize trade. Tan Chong Meng, head of Singapore's PSA, a giant port operator, explains that "like the SWIFT codes used in banking, we need common digital standards."
IBM and Maersk are using blockchain to try to make shipping paperless and transparent. Their TradeLens initiative got a big boost recently when CMA CGM and MSC, two big European shipping firms, joined up. The consortium accounts for almost half the world's cargo-container shipments. Every participant in the process, from shipper to customs agent to auditor, will be able to track shipments from start to finish by tracing through the blockchain, instead of plowing through piles of paperwork.
Standing at Flex's Pulse command center near Silicon Valley, Tom Linton maintains a far-reaching watch over the company's domain. His system gives him access to 92 variables from his supply chain in real time. Since the information gains more value from greater use, it is widely distributed to employees, suppliers, and clients using computers and mobile phones. His "data democracy" has decentralized a lot of decision-making and sped up the flow of parts. In the first two years of using Pulse, Flex reduced inventory by 11 days and freed up $580 million USD of cash. Linton says: "The theory of everything is speed, and you need visibility to get velocity."
To get that speed, product design is undergoing a transformation. Spencer Fung is chief executive of Li & Fung, an Asian supply-chain firm that has helped Western MNCs with sourcing for over a century. Getting a new fashion item from paper sketch to the high street used to take 40 weeks, he recollects; now it can take half that.
Ford's Hau Thai-Tang says the use of 3D prototyping and digital design shortened the development of the new Mustang GT500, a sports car, by 18 months. Carbon, a Californian 3D-printing startup, is now printing parts used on production lines that produce hundreds of thousands of Ford vehicles and Adidas running shoes a year.
Logistics innovators are making use of platform technologies like those pioneered by Uber and Airbnb. Warehouse Exchange, a startup, matches owners offering bits of warehouse spaces on short-term contracts to firms with uncertain or highly variable storage needs. In 2018, American parcel giant UPS launched Ware2Go, a platform that connects firms with warehouse space, inventory management and other logistics services.
Fast Radius, a Chicago-based startup, has an advanced manufacturing facility located at a big shipping hub in Kentucky run by UPS, one of its investors. It relies heavily on a battery of 3D printers from top manufacturers. An aerospace firm urgently needed a tool to restart production; making and shipping it using normal manufacturing methods would have taken 45 days. Lou Rassey, the boss of Fast Radius, says his firm got the digital file, printed the tool, and delivered it via UPS -- all within two days.
At a bustling warehouse in Yantian -- a port district in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen -- Flexport, a Californian firm, is digitizing the freight-forwarding business. As trucks arrive at the loading bay, cargoes are measured digitally, with no manual entries or paper forms, to capture dimensions straight to handheld devices and the cloud. Every pallet is barcoded and weighed on a digital scale. Computer vision turns analog forms into digitally searchable ones, and machine learning (ML) optimizes loading. Flexport is currently valued at over $3 billion USD.
Ryan Petersen, the boss of Flexport, believes that the old model of shipping 40-foot-containerloads of a single product from China to a handful of big distribution centers in America or Europe doesn't fit the contemporary model of endless variety and speedy delivery. Rivals send containers across the Pacific to America that are only 65% full. Because his firm digitizes packing lists using ML and can run real-time analytics, it is often able to fill the empty third of the container quickly with smaller loads also waiting to ship. To match supply and demand in smaller and varied shipments, says Petersen, "brains, spreadsheets and phone calls aren't enough. You need technology and data to make decisions right."
Dave Clark, a senior operations executive at Amazon, agrees. According to Clark, supply-chain management has gone from a negotiation and procurement job to a technology and science function. Two decades at Amazon have convinced him that managers are too dependent on gut instincts, leading to widely varying results. Instead of machines eliminating human labor downstream in the warehouse, as techno-pessimists fear, he sees a future in which ML replaces human judgment upstream in prediction and planning. He sums up Amazon's thinking neatly: "We are a supply-chain technology company." [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (89): FDR died of cerebral hemorrhage on 12 April 1945, with Harry Truman becoming president. Roosevelt had generally ignored Truman, and he was not well prepared to take control of the government. However, he was a competent and assertive man, and quickly shouldered the job. The war in Europe was drawing to a close; Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his bunker on 30 April, with Allied forces then quickly suppressing scattered German resistance.
Truman continued on the trajectory set by FDR, retaining Roosevelt's cabinet secretaries at the outset. The war in Europe formally ended on 8 May, with the Allies then working to establish the postwar order. On 25 June 50 nations, including America, signed the United Nations Charter. Unlike the League of Nations, Congress approved US membership.
In July, Truman went to Europe for the Potsdam Conference, to confer with Stalin and Churchill. While Truman was there, he was informed that the first atomic bomb test -- codenamed TRINITY, having taken place on 16 July 1945 -- had been successful. He told Stalin about the test in general terms, only to find the Soviet dictator strangely indifferent. In reality, Stalin knew almost everything about the US atomic bomb program, with multiple Red spies in the program keeping Soviet intelligence carefully informed.
At the conference, the Western Allies issued a statement demanding the unconditional surrender of Japan or face "immediate destruction". The demand was ignored, and so atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and then Nagasaki in August 1945. The Japanese promptly surrendered. The Americans arrived in Japan and set up an occupation authority -- working to create a more democratic Japanese government derived from the existing system, if one in which Communist influence was suppressed.
The end of the war meant a degree of economic dislocation for the United States. Truman had little choice but to draw down the giant, costly military machine the USA had put together for the conflict, which meant much less money pumped into war industries. On the other side of that same coin, large numbers of military personnel were returning to civilian life, seeking jobs and prosperity. Congress was also not as cooperative with the executive as it had been during the global emergency.
There were fears of a renewed Depression; the country slid into some instability -- with strikes and labor-management disputes, rising inflation, as well as housing and consumer-goods shortages. Truman's response was seen as ineffectual, even crack-brained. In 1946, Truman responded to the threat of a national rail strike by seizing control of the railroads -- but two railway unions struck anyway, shutting down the nation's railroads.
Truman drew up an irate message to Congress, which suggested that veterans form of lynch mobs against union leaders. Aides managed to tone it down before it was delivered, with Truman proposing that Congress pass a law to permit drafting the strikers into the military. The strike was quickly settled; the law didn't make it through Congress. That was not out of sympathy with the strikers, since in 1947, Congress passed the "Taft-Hartley Act", which severely curtailed the rights of unions to strike. Truman vetoed the bill, with Congress overturning the veto.
Truman, although entirely different in style from the patrician FDR, still wanted to carry on the New Deal. As he ramped up his efforts for the 1948 election, he pushed for a national health-insurance program, repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act, and a focus on civil rights, as part of a package he called the "Fair Deal". It didn't happen, the only significant result of the effort being the Housing Act of 1949. He did manage to prevent further encroachments on the New Deal. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed by an article from AIRFORCE-TECHNOLOGY.com ("TWISTER Missile Defense Project Wins Key European Approval", 15 November 2019), the European Union Council has approved the "Timely Warning & Interception with Space-based Theater surveillance (TWISTER)" defense project, under the EU "Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO)" initiative.
Supported by five European nations, TWISTER will develop a multi-role endo-atmospheric interceptor to tackle emerging threats -- such as hypersonic cruise missiles, hypersonic glider warheads, and maneuvering intermediate-range ballistic missiles. The interceptor will be available by 2030. The program will also address the problems of detecting, tracking, and targeting such threats. In addition, TWISTER will work on defense against next-generation combat aircraft, with European defense firm MBDA contributing to the development of a land and sea-based interceptor.
* As discussed by an article from JANES.com ("Iran Holds Unveiling Event For Precision-Guided Bombs" by Jeremy Binnie, 8 August 2019), on 6 August 2019, the Iranians unveiled a set of guided munitions. Some had been revealed before; the one that was new was a glide bomb with folding wings named the "Balaban". An Iranian Ministry of Defense (MoD) statement said the munition is programmed with target coordinates before its carrier aircraft takes off. It has a maximum glide range of 50 kilometers (31 miles), and midcourse guidance by a satnav / INS system. It can be carried by the Karrar jet-powered drone.
A smaller guided bomb named the "Ghaem / Qaem" appeared when the Mohajer-6 tactical drone was unveiled in early 2018. Three different sizes of the Ghaem were displayed at the recent event, including the "Ghaem-1", "Ghaem-5", and "Ghaem-9", in increasing order of size. They can be carried by various drones; all have cruciform fins, and using a video camera for guidance. Once locked on target, they will home in on the target without further operator intervention. The Ghaems can carry a number of different types of warheads. Iranian news says they were used in cross-border attacks on Iranian Kurdish rebels in Iraq in July 2019.
* As discussed by an article from JANES.com "Lockheed Martin To Develop 'Silent CROW' for US Army" by Gerrard Cowan, 14 February 2019), US defense giant Lockheed Martin has now been contracted to provide the US Army with the company's "Silent CROW" electronic warfare (EW) pod, for the Army's "Multi-Function Electronic Warfare (MFEW)" program. The pod's intended carrier is the Army Gray Eagle Drone, though it could be carried by other platforms.
According to Lockheed Martin officials:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Silent CROW is an open architecture system that can be configured for different airborne and ground platforms. It is meant to enable US soldiers to disrupt, deny, degrade, deceive, and destroy adversaries' electronic systems, through a variety of electronic and cyber techniques.
END QUOTE
The development effort will last three years, being split in two phases of 18 months each. The Army may accelerate fielding of the pod if need be.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DEEP-TIME DIGITAL EARTH: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Earth Scientists Plan To Meld Massive Databases Into A 'Geological Google'" by Dennis Normile, 26 February 2019), scientists have been collecting data for a long. For example, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has accumulated one of the world's most impressive collections of geologic samples. Housed in three huge warehouses in Nottingham, it includes about three million fossils, found over more than 150 years at thousands of sites across the UK.
Michael Stephenson, a BGS paleontologist, says the collection had a problem, in that it "was not really very useful to anybody." All the data available on the samples "were sitting in boxes on bits of paper." Now 19th-century data-gathering is being brought into the 21st century, through an emerging international effort to meld Earth science databases into what backers are describing as a "geological Google."
This network of earth science databases, called the "Deep-time Digital Earth (DDE)", would give Earth scientists full access to all the data they need to take on big questions -- such as patterns of biodiversity over geologic time, the distribution of metal deposits, and the flows of Africa's elaborate groundwater networks. There have been similar efforts before, but DDE is different, because it has funding and infrastructure backing from the Chinese government.
DDE has its roots in a Chinese data digitization scheme called the "Geobiodiversity Database (GBDB)", initiated in 2006 by Chinese paleontologist Fan Junxuan of Nanjing University. China had long conducted Earth science research, but the data were scattered among numerous collections and institutions. Fan, then at the Chinese Academy of Sciences's Nanjing Institute of Geology & Paleontology, set up GBDB around the stacks of geologic strata known as "sections", and the rocks and fossils in each stratum.
The problem with earlier efforts to put together such databases was that they were ad-hoc, based on volunteers trying to do everything as more or less a side project. GBDB took a much more methodical approach, supported by consistent funding. Nonspecialists were hired on to input reams of data gleaned from earth science journals covering Chinese findings. The data was then reviewed by paleontologists and stratigraphers for accuracy and consistency, while information technology specialists managed the database, and wrote software to search and analyze the data.
Earth scientists outside China began to use GBDB; it became the official database of the International Commission on Stratigraphy in 2012. BGS decided to collaborate with GBDB to similarly upload British data -- with European and Chinese scientists then thinking about applying GBDB over the entire world.
DDE got the endorsement of the executive committee of the International Union of Geological Sciences in December 2018. Two months later, 80 researchers from 40 geoscience organizations -- including BGS and the Russian Geological Research Institute -- met in Beijing on how to get DDE operational by the time of the International Geological Congress in New Delhi in March 2020.
Chinese funding agencies are providing $75 million USD over 10 years to support the effort, with backers working to get other governments involved as well. China will host in Suzhou a "DDE Center of Excellence", which will develop databases and analytical tools for focused interests. The facility will also be home to the DDE secretariat. The hope is that other centers will follow elsewhere.
DDE backers want to cooperate with other geodatabase programs, such as BGS's OneGeology project, which seeks to make geologic maps of the world available online. Fan also hopes individual institutions will share data, developing analytical tools, and encourage their scientists to participate. Fan says that once Earth scientists are freed of the drudgery of combing scattered collections, they will have time for more important challenges, such as answering "questions about the evolution of life, materials, geography, and climate in deep time."
* HYBRID SIMULATIONS: As discussed by an editorial from NATURE.com ("Artificial Intelligence Alone Won't Solve The Complexity Of Earth Sciences"), machine learning (ML) has had a huge impact on the sciences, with new uses announced every week. ML has the ability to sort through massive volumes of data and find patterns in it.
ML, however, can't accomplish miracles. It is certainly helpful in the study of the Earth -- its climate, oceans, and geochemistry -- where the flood of data from satellites and other platforms is a challenge to even store, much less assess. However, a machine learning system is not useful for simulating, say, climate systems, and obtaining projections decades down the road.
Now researchers are working on a hybrid approach, in which machine learning becomes part of a simulation system. The simulation system can use conventional physical modeling where that works best, like fluid dynamics, then call on machine learning to handle otherwise intractable problems, like simulating the particle-formation processes that govern cloud convection.
For now, the Earth science community is focused on traditional simulation. For example, ExtremeEarth is a proposal for a massive research project by the European Commission to simulate the physical processes underlying phenomena such as the control of cloud dynamics. ExtremeEarth is likely to be roughly as expensive as the EC's Graphene Flagship project, budgeted at a billion euros -- $1.1 billion USD.
That's the problem with advances in traditional simulation, in that going to the next level tends to mean spending a lot more. For those researchers with more constrained budgets, hybrid modeling promises a lot more bang for the buck. It's going to take considerable effort to produce workable systems, but the potential benefits are enormous.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* CHINA ROBOCARS: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Autonomous Ways", 12 October 2019), Chinese tech firms are, to no surprise, very interested in autonomous vehicles (AV). South Ronghua Road in south-eastern Beijing is one of a number of "National Test Roads" where they test out their robocars, bearing decals of Baidu, Pony.ai, and WeRide.
Robocars have been hyped for years; they haven't caught on as fast as was expected early on, but work persists. The West, at least on the face of it, has a head start on the Chinese, one Chinese AV executive admitting: "Everybody is behind Waymo and Cruise." -- referring, respectively, to a subsidiary of Alphabet, Google's holding company, and of General Motors (GM), the giant US carmaker. Waymo's AVs have self-driven more miles than all of China's put together, CB Insights, a research firm, estimates that $11.9 billion USD has been invested in American AV firms since 2014, compared with $4.4 billion in China.
However, China has some advantages in the race. Chinese cities, at least the old ones, have ancient and tangled road networks that are a challenge to AVs. Some Chinese firms believe that the only way forward is to make the streets smart, along with the cars. The strategy involves:
These measures are easier in authoritarian China than in the disorderly, democratic West. The government can set up "National Test Roads" into the urban fabric, without the protests Western authorities could expect from residents.
The strategy also involves discussions with companies not focused on AVs. Mobile-network operators, such as China Mobile, and telecoms-equipment manufacturers, like Huawei, are building enabling technologies into their systems which may, eventually, support Chinese robocars. Huawei wants its 5G mobile antennas to offload a good chunk of the processing required to run an AV -- which implies getting a piece of AV profits. That means less profit for the AV companies, but since nobody's making much money until AVs are in full use, that's still all for the good.
Chinese firms are already making some money from autonomous vehicles. Cowa Robot has sold autonomous street-sweeping robots to authorities in Changsha, the capital of Hunan province. The ability to make money now by automating simpler tasks keeps the firms going on the way to fuller autonomy. Western AV makers, confronted with more hidebound municipal-services organizations, don't have the same options. At the same time, Chinese AV makers are shielded from foreign competition by rules that limit overseas AV companies to minority stakes in Chinese-led joint-ventures.
Along the same lines, Chinese AV companies have one particular advantage over their Western peers: strong support from the Chinese state for new technology infrastructure. The government will spend up to $220 billion USD on 5G by 2025, and plans to install AV infrastructure throughout the 2020s, including telecoms networks to capture data from vehicles and their surroundings; cloud-computing capacity to process the data generated; and map services to guide the cars.
There are difficulties, one being the USA's current trade war with China. Huawei has been heavily bashed with sanctions, with other Chinese companies joining the list. The AV firms tend to be heavily dependent on tech imported from the USA, which is being cut off, and work on developing local sources has been moving along slowly.
They also share one problem with their Western counterparts: they're pumping a lot of money into tech, with no near-term prospect of a payout. Nobody, anywhere, has a particularly strong business model for AVs. In addition, fully-robotic AVs may be the wrong solution to China's automotive problems, one global car executive says: "If drivers are abundant, but space on the road is not, the problems you should be solving first are not about taking the driver out of the car."
China's approach to self-driving cars reflects the development strategy of China as a whole: strong on infrastructure and government oversight, lighter on cutting-edge technology and civil liberties. It may lead to AVs sooner than the Western approach, but nobody's really sure if there's much going to be much money in AVs in the end.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS (7): Amazon and Alibaba are on the leading edge of digitization of their supply chains and other processes. Not all MNCs are operating with that level of sophistication; three decades after the introduction of the internet, most remain backward-looking, slow to change.
Now the frozen mindset seems to be thawing, with companies in many industries experimenting with a variety of new technologies and methods that promise to improve how they plan, source, produce, and deliver. These innovations are making supply chains smarter by increasing their predictability, transparency, and speed.
First, consider predictability. Firms have long used historical sales data to come up with demand forecasts, then manufactured and distributed according to the plan. This antiquated approach is too sluggish for today's on-demand economy -- and so firms are experimenting with AI to assess everything from social-media trends and shifts in demand, to inventory turnover and vendor behavior. Their goal is to fine-tune supply chains in real time.
The 2019 annual survey by KPMG, a consultancy, and JDA, a supply-chain software firm, asked executives which technologies had the greatest potential impact on supply chains and were most likely to be adopted. Cognitive analytics and AI came out on top, well up from their rankings the previous year, while blockchain and drones were down.
JDA uses deep-learning algorithms developed by Blue Yonder, a German startup firm it acquired that originally created the software for particle-physics experiments at the CERN laboratory in Geneva. Morrisons, a British grocery chain, reduced the incidence of out-of-stock items on its shelves by 30%, and cut its inventory needs by several days, by replacing manual stock planning with JDA's AI system for demand forecasting and replenishment. In 2018 ORSAY, a German fashion retailer, used JDA's self-learning algorithm to make 112,000 autonomous pricing decisions. That allowed the firm to reduce the volume of stock that needed discounts of over 30% to sell.
McKinsey estimates that 40% of all procurement tasks -- vendor management, order placement, and invoice processing -- can be automated today, and 80% in the near future, meaning annual cost savings of 3% to 10%. In sum, McKinsey suggests application of AI to manufacturing and supply-chain management could create $2 trillion USD of value.
Second, consider transparency. Adam Mussomeli of Deloitte, a consultancy, says that an ancient question still plagues supply-chain managers: "Where's my stuff?!" That may seem surprising in an age when those who buy from Amazon can easily trace their purchases, but the rest of the world is not so sophisticated. Pawan Joshi of E2Open, a supply-chain-software firm, explains why transparency is tougher for MNCs:
He says "the data needed to make real-time decisions are not inside the ecosystem of the manufacturer." Data inside firms are also compartmentalized into specialized software used by different divisions. E2Open connects and makes sense of all these data.
In November 2017, a strike by German cargo-handlers stranded a shipment of IBM mainframe computers at Frankfurt airport. Not knowing where it was and what was happening to it, the firm assumed the expensive cargo was safe inside an airport warehouse. In reality, it was sitting on airport tarmac, exposed to the elements in mid-winter. When it was eventually located the kit, reportedly sitting in a deep puddle of water, was a total write-off.
The emerging "internet of things (IoT)" will help. Products will be shipped with modules that identify them, and report their location -- along with such factors as orientation, temperature, and humidity. IBM has recently launched a "track & trace" service in partnership with Sigfox, an IoT service provider. Initially it only tracked containers traveling from suppliers to factories run by Groupe PSA, a big French car manufacturer, but the service has now expanded across Europe. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (88): Roosevelt was the first commander-in-chief to leave the United States in wartime. In early 1943, he met with Winston Churchill in Casablanca, Morocco, to plan strategy. The most significant was the doctrine of "unconditional surrender" -- that the Allies would not accept anything less than complete surrender of the Axis powers. Unconditional surrender remains deeply misunderstood; the foremost reason for insisting on it was to reassure the Soviets, who were deeply suspicious of the Western Allies, that the Western Allies would not cut a deal with Hitler to sell out the USSR. Critics of the unconditional surrender policy still maintain that it prolonged the war, but all factors considered, it is impossible to show it extended the fighting by a single day.
During 1943, the Axis was pushed back on all fronts. In November 1943, FDR met with Churchill and Josef Stalin in Tehran, Iran, this being the first meeting of the "Big Three" leaders, where they hammered out a joint plan for bringing the war to a close. Roosevelt chose to court Stalin and, to a degree, snub Churchill, in hopes of exerting more influence over Stalin. As it would turn out, Stalin was only interested in dealing with the Western Allies for what he could get out of them, and otherwise regarded them as class enemies.
As the war slowly went towards a close, FDR's primary concerns were ending the conflict, and establishing America's postwar world. That had two components, one international, the other domestic. The international component was being hammered out in discussions with the other Allies -- though, closer to home FDR courted Latin American nations, offering them military aid if they joined the war against the Axis. Most did, Brazil even sending a division of troops to Italy.
As far as the domestic component went, FDR wanted to perpetuate and extend the New Deal. On 11 January 1944, in his State of the Union Address, he suggested that the Constitution's Bill of Rights hadn't gone far enough -- that it needed to be augmented by an "economic bill of rights" that would guarantee the right:
The economic bill of rights was far-sighted. It didn't actually commit the USA to any particular programs; instead, it declared that matters of employment, compensation, fair business practices, education, home ownership, medical care, and retirement were the rightful concerns of the government -- in support of the constitutional principles of "We the People" and supporting the "general Welfare". The same principles were inherent in the New Deal. However, the nation's central preoccupation remained the war. On 6 June 1944, the Western Allies landed in France at Normandy. The Japanese were falling back towards their home islands; the outcome of the war was no longer in doubt, though more hard fighting remained.
While the economic bill of rights went nowhere in particular, just after D-Day, Congress passed the "Servicemen's Readjustment Act", better known as the "GI Bill". It was a package of benefits for servicefolk, including low-interest loans to start a business, low-cost mortgages, and in particular funding veterans to go back to school. Everyone remembered how shabbily World War I veterans had been treated, and there was a consensus that the country should do better the second time around. The GI Bill would prove an enormous success -- not merely staging a generation of young war veterans for useful careers, but helping foster a postwar economic boom. The infusion of money into the program also boosted the economy.
Despite the fact that FDR's health wasn't good, he didn't feel he could leave office while the war was still raging, so he ran for a fourth term, against New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. Roosevelt won handily; he had dumped his previous vice-president, Henry Wallace, who was too far Left for comfort, selecting Missouri Senator Harry Truman, regarded as a centrist, instead.
America remained united under the war effort as the conflict approached its end. In a decision delivered late in 1944 in the case of KOREMATSU V. UNITED STATES, SCOTUS judged that the internment of Japanese-Americans was constitutional. Fred Korematsu, a young Japanese-American man, evaded internment, to eventually be arrested and imprisoned. He appealed to the judiciary, but SCOTUS confirmed government policy, saying it was dictated by military necessity, not racial prejudice.
Justice Frank Murphy angrily dissented, calling the decision a "legalization of racism" and "utterly revolting among a free people". A later generation would side with Murphy, with the decision being judged one of the worst, if not close to the worst, decisions ever made by SCOTUS. In 1988, legislation was passed to provide reparations of $40,000 USD each to the survivors of internment.
In his last foreign trip, FDR attended a Big Three conference at Yalta in Crimea, to discuss ending the war in Europe and establishing the postwar order, and also confirm that the Soviet Union would join the war on Japan once the war in Europe was over. A declaration was issued on the last day of the conference, repeating the principles of the Atlantic Charter and the Casablanca conferences. A meeting was also planned for San Francisco to lay the foundations for the peacetime United Nations organization. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* December is typically a busy month for space launches:
-- 05 DEC 19 / SPACEX DRAGON CRS 19 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1729 UTC (local time + 4), carrying the 19th operational "Dragon" cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS). It docked with the ISS two days later, and returned to Earth on 8 January 2020.
One of the most significant payloads on the Dragon was the "Hyperspectral Imager Suite (HISUI)" -- an Earth remote sensing payload from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA). HISUI was to be mounted on the exposed facility of the JAXA Kibo module, where it could image a 20-kilometer (12-mile) swath of the Earth's surface at resolutions of up to 20 meters (66 feet). HISUI incorporated a visible and near-infrared spectrometer and shortwave infrared spectrometer, allowing it to cover 185 spectral bands at wavelengths between 0.4 and 2.5 micrometers. HISUI follows on from the "Sasuke / ASNARO 1", satellite launched in 2014, and the "Fuyo (JERS 1)" satellite before it.
Another significant payload was NASA's "Robotic Tool Stowage (RiTS)", which provided a storage area to house robotic devices operating outside the space station, such as the "Robotic External Leak Locators (RELLs)" that are currently stored inside the station when not in use. Storing these devices outside the station saved space, and simplified their deployment.
The cargo also included seven CubeSats, to be deployed later:
The CubeSats were flown as part of NASA's Educational Launch of Nanosatellites (ELaNa) initiative.
-- 06 DEC 19 / ALE 2 -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from a facility on the Mahia Peninsula on New Zealand's North Island at 0818 UTC (local time - 11) to put the "ALE 2" microsatellite into orbit for ALE CO LTD of Japan to create human-made shooting stars by simulating re-entering meteor particles. It had a launch mass of 75 kilograms (165 pounds). Also on the launch were six 5-centimeter (2-inch) "PocketQube" picosatellites from satellite manufacturer and mission management provider Alba Orbital. The mission was nicknamed "Running Out Of Fingers." The booster stage performed controlled maneuvers on descent, as a step towards the eventual flight of a recoverable booster.
-- 06 DEC 19 / PROGRESS 74P (ISS) -- A Soyuz 2.1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 0934 UTC (local time + 6) to put the "Progress 76P" AKA "MS13" tanker-freighter spacecraft into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) supply mission. It was the 74th Progress mission to the ISS.
-- 07 DEC 19 / JILIN 1 GAOFEN 2B -- A Chinese Kuaizhou 1A booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0255 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Jilin 1 Gaofen 2B" satellite for the Jilin 1 commercial Earth-observation constellation into orbit.
The Jilin 1 satellites were developed by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology CO LTD under the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics & Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The satellite had a launch mass of 230 kilograms (505 pounds), and could obtain a static push-scan image with a full-color resolution better than 75 centimeters (30 inches), and a multi-spectral resolution better than 3.1 meters (10 feet), across a swath width of 40 kilometers (25 miles).
Jilin, one of the country's oldest industrial bases, is developing its satellite industry, with the province planning to launch 60 satellites by 2020, and 137 by 2030:
Jilin 1 Gaofen 3B, of course, was much the same as Jilin 1 Gaofen 3A. With the December launch, a total of 14 Jilin satellites had been put into orbit. The original Jilin plan was to have 16 satellites in orbit by the end of 2019, establishing a remote sensing network to cover the entire globe, with revisit times of 3 to 4 hours. From 2020, plans indicate a 60-satellite orbital constellation, capable of a 30-minute revisit time.
From 2030, the Jilin constellation will have 138 satellites in orbit, establishing all-day, all-weather, full-spectrum data acquisition system with a 10-minute revisit time. The Kuaizhou 1A booster was derived from military ballistic-missile technology. It can deliver satellites of up to 300 kilograms (660 pounds) into low Earth orbit.
-- 07 DEC 19 / SMALLSATS x 6 -- A Chinese Kuaizhou 1A (KZ1A) booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0852 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put a set of smallsats into orbit. They included:
Like previous Kuaizhou 1A launches, the two Kuazhou 1A launches on 7 December were managed by the China Space Sanjiang Group Corporation (Expace) -- a subsidiary of China Aerospace Science & Industry Corporation.
The solid-fuel KZ1A booster was developed by China Aerospace Science & Technology Corporation (CASIC) and commercialized by Expace. The booster can place a 200-kilogram (440-pound) kg payload into a low Sun-synchronous orbit. The KZ1A is 20 meters (66 feet) long, has a maximum diameter of 1.4 meters (4.6 feet), and a lift-off mass of 30 tonnes (33 tons). It can be fitted with payload fairings with a diameter of 1.2 or 1.4 meters (3.9 or 4.6 feet).
The booster may be based on the road-mobile DF-21 missile, with two additional upper stages. The KZ1A is fired from a mobile launcher. The difference from the earlier KZ1 appears to be that 1 the payload remains attached to the fourth liquid stage of the KZ1, while the KZ1A can deploy multiple payloads.
-- 10 DEC 19 / GLONASS M (COSMOS 2544) -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Plesetsk at 0854 UTC (local time - 4) to put a GLONASS M navigation satellite into orbit. It was assigned the series designation of "Cosmos 2544".
-- 11 DEC 19 / RISAT 2BR1 -- An ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) was launched from Sriharikota at 0955 UTC (local time - 5:30) to put the RISAT 2BR1 radar Earth observation satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit. The flight used the "Core Alone" version of the PSLV, with no strap-on solid rocket boosters.
RISAT 2BR1 was a radar Earth observation satellite, built by ISRO, the second in a series of RISAT 2B satellites which were to replace and upgrade India's space radar imaging capabilities. The first RISAT 2B satellite was launched in May 2019. RISAT 2BR1 was nearly identical to the first satellite -- though, at 628 kilograms (1,385 pounds), it was slightly heavier. It carried an X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payload. It was primarily intended for military use.
There are two different series of RISAT satellites. RISAT 2 and RISAT 2B carried carry X-band payloads. The original RISAT 2 satellite was launched in April 2009. RISAT 2 was developed under a partnership between ISRO and Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI), being based on the Israeli TecSAR radar-imaging satellite which ISRO launched as part of the agreement. RISAT 1 satellites, in contrast, operated in the lower-frequency C-band. RISAT 1 was launched in April 2012, but failed after four and a half years in orbit. A replacement, RISAT 1A, is due to launch in 2020.
The launch also included the "QPS-SAR 1" AKA "Izanagi" smallsat. It was a radar-based Earth observation satellite, for Japan's Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space Incorporated (iQPS). It was a pathfinder for a constellation of satellites. The other smallsats were in the CubeSat configuration:
The PSLV-QL configuration used for this launch is one of two new configurations that have been added to the PSLV family in 2019 to fill the gap in performance between its smallest and largest versions. The PSLV has evolved through a series of configuration:
PSLV-C48 was the second PSLV-QL to fly,
-- 16 DEC 19 / BEIDOU 3 x 2 -- A Chinese Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 0722 UTC (previous day local time - 8) to put the "Beidou 3 M19" and "Beidou 3 M20" navigation satellites into medium-Earth orbit (MEO). This completed the constellation of 24 third-generation MEO satellites in the system, giving Beidou global and continuous coverage.
The Beidou system includes 24 satellites spread among three orbital planes in MEO, and six satellites in geosynchronous orbits -- three in inclined geostationary orbits, three in stationary orbits. China has launched 53 Beidou satellites since 2000, including prototypes and older-generation spacecraft no longer in operation.
-- 17 DEC 19 / JCSAT 18 (KACIFIC 1) -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0100 UTC (previous day local time + 4) to put the JCSAT 18 (Kacific 1) geostationary comsat in orbit. The Boeing-built satellite was jointly owned by SKY Perfect JSAT Corporation of Japan, and Kacific Broadband Satellites of Singapore. It was flown to provide mobile and broadband services across the Asia-Pacific region.
The satellite had a launch mass of 6,055 kilograms (15,335 pounds) and a design life of 15 years. Sky Perfect JSAT used the satellite's Ku-band payload, while Kacific used the satellite's Ka-band capacity. Kacific had previously leased capacity on third-party satellites to provide broadband connectivity to millions of underserved people across the Asia-Pacific region. It was placed in the geostationary slot at 150 degrees east longitude.
The Falcon 9 first stage was recovered on the SpaceX drone barge. The first stage had flown twice before.
-- 18 DEC 19 / CSG 1, CHEOPS, CUBESATS x 3 -- A Soyuz ST-B booster was launched from Kourou in French Guiana at 0854 UTC (local time + 3) to put the "CSG 1" and "CHEOPS" satellites into orbit. CSG 1 was the "COSMO-SkyMed Second Generation 1" radar surveillance satellite built by ASI, the Italian space agency; while CHEOPS was the "Characterizing Exoplanet Satellite", flown as a secondary payload by the European Space Agency (ESA).
CSG 1 had a launch mass of 2,205 kilograms (4,860 pounds), and carried an X-band synthetic aperture radar with a resolution of a meter. CHEOPS had a launch mass of 275 kilograms (600 pounds), and carried an instrument to detect transits of planets across distant stars. The launch also included three CubeSats:
-- 20 DEC 19 / CBERS 4A -- A Chinese Long March 4B booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0322 GMT (local time - 8) to put the collaborative "China-Brazil Environmental Satellite (CBERS) 4A" into Sun-synchronous orbit. It was the fifth in the CBERS series.
CBERS 4A had a launch mass of 1,730 kilograms (3,815 pounds), and a design life of 5 years. It had the same configuration as the CBERS 3 and CBERS 4 satellites, with imaging payloads operating in the visible spectrum with resolutions in the range of 2 to 60 meters (6.6 to 200 feet). The payload included:
The Chinese refer to the CBERS series as "Ziyuan (Resource) 1". These satellites are the result of a 1988 agreement between China and Brazil to develop an Earth remote sensing network, with both space and ground elements.
Eight smallsats also flew on the launch:
-- 20 DEC 19 / CST 100 STARLINER -- An Atlas 5 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1136 UTC (local time + 5) on an uncrewed flight test of the Boeing "CST 100 Starliner" space capsule. The capsule was to dock with the International Space Station, but its orbital insertion burn went wrong, and the capsule missed the rendezvous window with the ISS. It soft-landed at White Sands NM two days after launch. The Atlas 5 vehicle configuration featured two solid rocket boosters, and a twin-engine Centaur upper stage.
-- 24 DEC 19 / ELEKTRO-L 3 -- A Russian Proton M Block DM booster with a Russian Fregat upper stage was launched from Baikonur at 1203 UTC (local time - 6) to put the Russian "Elektro-L 3" geostationary weather satellite into space. Launch of the first was in 2011, with the second following in 2013. They operate at longitudes of 14.5 and 77.8 degrees east respectively. The third satellite completed the constellation, being was placed in the geostationary slot at 165.8 degrees east longitude.
The Electro-L satellites are comparable to the US Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) satellites, Europe's EUMETSAT series, and China's Fengyun II. The satellite was built by NPO Lavochkin, being based on the company's "Navigator" satellite bus. It had a launch mass of 1,740 kilogram (3,840 pounds), and a design lifetime of ten years. Its payload included:
-- 26 DEC 19 / GONETS M x 3, BLITZ -- A Rockot Briz-KM booster was launched from Plesetsk Northern Cosmodrome in Russia at 2311 UTC (next day local time - 4) to put three "Gonets (Messenger) M" store-&-forward civil communications satellites into orbit. Each of the 280-kilogram (617 pound) Gonets M satellites was built by ISS Reshetnev, and had a five-year design life; the payloads were designated Gonets M satellites Number 24, 25 and 26.
Gonets is a civilian program, operated by JSC Satellite System GONETS, a company in which the Russian Federal Space Agency, Roskosmos, owns a 51% stake. Gonets M satellites share a common design with the military Rodnik communications satellites and are used for store-and-dump operations where data is uploaded to a satellite, stored in its memory, and later downlinked to another user.
Gonets M is the second generation of the Gonets system, earlier Gonets satellites were derived from Strela 3 satellites, and launched aboard Tsyklon 3 boosters between 1992 and 2001. The first prototype Gonets M was launched aboard a Kosmos 3M rocket in 2005, alongside an analogous Rodnik satellite. Subsequent launches using Rokot vehicles began in 2010. Following Rokot's retirement, Gonets launches will initially move to Soyuz 21b boosters. Around 2021, after it has fully entered service, the new Angara 2.1 rocket will take over from the Soyuz in this role.
The launch also included the first "BLITS-M" satellite. BLITS meant "Ball Lens in the Space", being a series of small satellites used for laser-ranging experiments. A glass sphere measuring 22 centimeters (8.7 inches) across, one side of BLITS-M is covered in an opaque coating and the other retroreflects light transmitted from the ground. BLITS-M is a follow-up to the BLITS satellite, launched in 2009. This was the final flight of the Rockot booster, which was a conversion of a UR-100NUTTKh booster.
-- 27 DEC 19 / SHIJIAN 20 -- A Long March 5 booster was launched at 1245 UTC (local time - 8) from the Chinese Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island, to put the "Shijian 20" geostationary comsat into orbit. It was the first spacecraft based on the new DFH-5 communications satellite platform, a heavier, higher-power next-generation DFH design. This was the third flight of the heavylift LM5.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* PHAGE REVIVAL (2): Mzia Kutateladze, director of the Eliava Institute in Tbilisi, is pleased to see phage therapy gaining traction in the West. It wasn't so long ago that phage therapy was ignored, sometimes even derided. Kutateladze says: "I really proudly can say, together with the Georgians, that we have many international patients who are coming to us. And we have very nice results with very, very desperate and chronic infections."
The biggest problem with phage therapy is that it's a boutique therapy, Hatfull saying: "The specificity is a double-edged sword." It's laborious to come with a treatment for any one patient, and that treatment may well be useless for another patient with a different strain of the same superbug. Strathdee believes that a massive open-source phage library is key to making phage therapy workable. Doctors could sequence a pathogen, plug the sequence into the library system, and get back a prescription for the appropriate cocktail of phages.
Jean-Paul Pirnay -- a researcher at Queen Astrid Military Hospital in Brussels -- is more ambitious, working towards tailor-made phages, modified from natural phages, tweaked to target specific pathogens, then turned out in quantity. Pirnay believes that ultimately, a pathogen could be specified to a phage fabrication system, with the system using artificial intelligence to create the appropriate killer phage from scratch. Since each synthesized phage batch would be tailored to a particular patient or group of patients, resistant bacterial strains wouldn't be such a problem.
Pharmaceutical companies are now pumping money into phages, one reason being that they can patent genetically modified phages. Johnson & Johnson has established a partnership with Locus Biosciences, a North Carolina-based company which specializes in using boutique phages to inject CRISPR-Cas3 into bacteria.
CRISPR defines a sequence of DNA that can identify target sequences, marking them for an accompanying enzyme. The Cas9 enzyme most typically associated with CRISPR tech acts as scissors into the sequence, as a step in precision editing; Cas3 is more a destructor. CRISPR-Cas3 is often compared to Pac-Man: once inside the bacteria, it shreds the bacterial DNA, killing them. Locus' genetically modified phages address one of the difficulties with phage therapy, which is that lytic phages don't always kill every bacterium. Locus can engineer the phages to have a more effective "depth of killing profile" -- or in other words, they slaughter more bacteria.
Joseph Nixon, senior vice president of business development at Locus, believes that phages have much more promise than as highly effective hunter-killers. Nixon says: "In theory, you can deliver all different kinds of enzymes that do all different kinds of things." Nixon envisions phages being used to pinpoint cancer and central nervous system targets. It is also possible in principle to use phages to make bacteria more dangerous, but Pirnay doesn't believe they will be used in that way, since CRISPR-Cas tools would be more useful for that purpose -- which is not exactly reassuring.
Sandro Sulakvelidze is active in the US phage scene, having founded Intralytix, a phage-oriented company based in Baltimore, Maryland. One of Intralytix's specialties is evolving phages for food safety. These phages target specific food-borne bacteria that cause food contamination. The phages are not only effective, but are certified kosher and halal, non-genetically modified, and are more benign than the chemical methods commonly used. The phages are sprayed onto the food; they cost slightly more than food safety chemicals, but are well cheaper than other non-chemical protections like irradiation and high-pressure pasteurization.
Intralytix is also working on phages for veterinary medicine, notably to treat livestock, as an alternative to antibiotics, which have been notoriously overused. The company has established a partnership with Ferring Pharmaceuticals and the Eliava Foundation, a Georgian nonprofit that is a separate entity from the Institute, to conduct research for reproductive and women's health.
There are obstacles, one being that bacteria have CRISPR-Cas defenses against phages, which will have to be overcome; that may well lead to an evolutionary arms race between bacteria and designed phages. Much also needs to be learned about the details of how phages actually work. Finally, there's also the need to improve public perception of phages; not everyone knows about them, and some who do know about them, don't take them seriously. Everyone in the field, however, sees the future as open-ended. [END OF SERIES]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* FAKE STEAK: As discussed by an article from BLOOMBERG.com ("A Realistic Steak Is Fake Meat's Holy Grail" by Agnieszka de Sousa, 21 November 2019), this is the boom era of artificial meats, with Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat taking the plant-based hamburger world by storm; sausages are now arriving as well. Right now, the fake-meat industry is running at an estimated $14 billion USD in annual sales worldwide, and is expected to get ten times bigger in a decade's time.
However, the market's not going to get that much bigger just on hamburgers and sausages. They're relatively easy to make, since all the ingredients are mixed up into a ground mash and then squeezed out into the desired format. Actual cuts of meat are more challenging. Dan Altschuler Malek -- managing partner at Unovis Partners, which manages New Crop Capital, a venture fund that invests in alternative protein businesses -- says: "We have a lot of burgers in the market; many, many burgers. When will fillet come about? When will sirloin come about? Consumers will want to have a choice."
There's no lack of effort to create fake steak. Welcone to Redefine Meat LTD's lab in Rehovot, Israel, where the walls are decorated with pictures of cuts of beef, such as sirloins and rib-eyes. The company's engineers and food researchers are out to make plant-based steaks a reality -- focusing on a 3D printer that will turn out fake steaks that look and taste like the real thing. Eshchar Ben-Shitrit, Redefine Meat's chief executive officer, says: "All meat alternatives today are basically a meat-homogeneous mass. If you 3D-print it, you can control what's happening inside the mass to improve the texture and to improve the flavor."
3D printing of meats starts with a detailed digital model of the particular cut of meat, including the muscle, fat, and blood. The digital model then drives a 3D printer, loaded up with plant-based "inks". To do the job right demands creating a realistic texture, with the proper mouthfeel, chewiness, and the sensation of multiple tastes in a single bite. That demands precisely re-creating layers of thin muscle fibers and fat.
Ben-Shitrit of Redefine Meat believes the key is fat. "Fat is flavor, fat is texture. You need to have this play between the muscle fibers and the jelly kind of consistency coming from the fat." In a seeming irony, Ben-Shitrit is a vegan; apparently, he sees fake meat as subversive to the global meat-eating order.
Giuseppe Scionti -- founder of Novameat Tech SL, a Spanish firm working in the fake meat field -- says: "You need to create at the same time the taste, the texture, and appearance of the fibrous meat, the whole muscle tissue," It's not easy to do; Scionti unveiled a prototype 3D-printed steak to the world in early 2019, but it looked more like a pancake than a steak. Scionti says the initial focus was on texture, with follow-on work to improve the look, and then get the flavor right. He hopes to have a much better prototype by 2021.
At the outset, neither Redefine meat nor Novameat are focused on fake-meat production themselves. Their plan is to supply customers -- including restaurants, meat distributors, and retailers -- with both printers and cartridges, ultimately scaling up to industrial-size printers. One of the difficulties with printing a steak is that it takes time; Redefine Meat's current printer can generate five 7-ounce steaks in an hour. The company plans to introduce a production printer at the beginning of 2021 capable of turning out 50 times as much fake meat in an hour.
Since the plant ingredients are cheap, Scionti is confident that, in a few years, his steak will cost less than the real thing. Printing a 7-ounce steak on his company's prototype printer costs $4 USD now, but Scionti expects it to cut that in half by the end of 2020, using a $15,000 USD full-production machine. Scionti says: "Plant protein is more efficient to produce than animal protein. In the next few years, we are sure that we can be competitive with and even cheaper than normal meat."
* In closely related news, an article from CBSNEWS.com (3 July 2019) posed, as a title, the question: "Are Plant-Based Meats Actually Healthier Than Meat?"
The answer is: not necessarily. The Beyond Burger is made with ingredients like peas, mung beans, and rice, while the Impossible Burger includes soy protein concentrate, coconut oil, and sunflower oil. Impossible Burger differs from the Beyond offering by including "heme", an iron-containing molecule found in all animals and plants. In both cases, the burgers are very similar to the real thing. They have calorie counts about the same as lead ground beef, running to roughly 250 calories per patty and 20 grams of protein. The plant-based meat also has a fair amount of sodium and saturated fat. Dr. Tara Narula, speaking to CBS NEWS, said:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Just because something says it's plant-based doesn't mean it's healthy. So you do have to read the labels. About 6 to 8 grams (saturated fat) and the recommendation is to have 13 per day. So 6 to 8 is already a fair amount. And then they all have no cholesterol. So, you know, they are relatively healthy. It's not something you'd want to put in your diet every single day, but you can build it in.
END QUOTE
ED: In other words, the veggie meats are close analogues to the real thing, with only modest health benefits. For myself, I don't digest meat well, and I would like to see if the veggie alternatives would be easier to digest. In any case, once veggie meats get up the production curve, as noted above, they'll be cheaper than the real thing, and will start to edge it out. Once the market for meat starts shrinking, meat will no longer be seen as a profit sector. Over time, veggie meats will be improved and extended -- veggie shrimp, anyone? Or fish sticks? And possibly, we'll get "designer meats", with hybrid flavors from those of real meats.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS (6): Amazon.com has set the pace for 21st-century retailing, with a sales model of: "low cost, always in stock" -- and: "next-day delivery". Amazon's customers like to get their purchases quickly; over half of them in the USA, about 100 million people, are Amazon Prime members who pay a yearly fee for no-charge two-day shipping. As sweeteners, they get perks, notably Amazon's expanding Prime video download channel. Prime members spend about $1,400 USD with the company each year, more than double the amount spent by non-Prime members.
Amazon runs dozens of fulfillment centers in the US, and is investing heavily in automation. Boosted by machine-learning software, robots partner with humans to efficiently pick and pack items. By one estimate, Amazon can usually ship a package just hours after an online purchase, despite operating with a third less inventory than typical retailers.
Through the use of predictive models, the firm works out where orders are likely to come from -- and then uses the mountain ranges of data it has accumulated on its consumers to manage capacity, place products closer to them, and determine delivery routes. According to Udit Madan, Amazon's last-mile-delivery guru, its integrated business model gives it a massive data advantage over competitors that allows it "to have visibility through the entire supply chain ... and make better decisions."
In April 2019, Amazon announced plans to spend $800 million USD upgrading its supply-chain infrastructure to speed up free delivery worldwide, from two days to one. In May, Walmart shot back with free one-day delivery on over 200,000 items in its online store for orders over $35 USD, with the service to be available in most of the United States by the end of this year. Walmart won't charge a subscription fee. The company will spend over $200 million USD on infrastructure.
Amazon's Udit Madan says: "We like larger cities, as density increases the number of deliveries we can make in a given time and speed is usually faster." In emerging markets, it's not quite so easy -- because of the lack of formal addresses, for example, and gridlocked traffic -- but Amazon is working on such challenges. In such markets, Madan's drivers carry handheld units that allow the cancellation of orders up to a minute before delivery.
Amazon doesn't regard the developing world as of secondary interest; indeed, as a company that thrives on innovation, it sees the developing world as a rich source of inspiration. China is leapfrogging from ramshackle logistics to supercharged supply chains, just as it did with e-commerce and mobile payments, in which it went from also-ran to world-beater.
As evidence of that progress, the robots come out after dark in Hangzhou, with 700 of them in motion around the upper floor of a large distribution center run by China Post, the state-owned postal carrier. The flat yellow machines made by Libiao, a local startup, work through the night sorting packages for delivery across China. Workers scan packages and place them on the devices. The robots make their way to the chute for the destination city among an array of openings and drop the packages in. On the floor below, the packages are pulled from the chutes to waiting trucks.
Amazon leads in the use of AI-powered robots in logistics, but China's entrepreneurs are more agile. True, they can develop leading-edge tech, for example in facial-recognition software -- but they are inclined to fast-track engineering, using quick and straight-forward solutions to get a product out the door faster. Xia Huiling, who co-founded Libiao with her husband, didn't worry about elaborate AI and navigation systems to make the robots autonomous; a central system provides all the smarts, and tells the machines where to go. Through Tompkins, an American supply-chain firm, with which Libiao has a partnership, the company has embraced an inventive business model too. Retailers facing seasonal demand spikes can lease a handful of robots for as long as needed, and just add or delete robots as needed.
Not far from the China Post warehouse is the headquarters of Alibaba, the world's biggest e-commerce firm by transaction volume. On its campus is an outlet of Hema Xiansheng, a chain in which Alibaba has a stake. It looks like a conventional supermarket, if with an unusually large selection of Maine lobsters. On closer inspection, many shoppers simply walk out the door with their purchases. They can pay with facial recognition, though older buyers prefer to do it the traditional way. Bags of groceries fly by on an overhead conveyor system to a brigade of couriers, who deliver online orders free within a 3-kilometer radius within 30 minutes.
Cainiao, Alibaba's logistics platform, is investing 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion USD) upgrading logistics to ensure next-day delivery in China and three-day delivery worldwide. On 11 November 2018, during a shopping extravaganza known as Singles Day, the firm sold $30 billion USD worth of goods. Shoppers wearing virtual-reality goggles could buy stuff with a flick of the head. Cainiao delivered the first 100 million parcels (of a billion orders) within 2.6 days, better than 2.8 days a year earlier.
As for Amazon, it's been a pioneer in drone delivery of products, having introduced a Prime Air drone, preparatory to officially beginning aerial deliveries. Udit Madan, looking five years ahead, says deliveries will get even faster. How fast? "Thirty minutes." He pauses, then adds: "Maybe 15." Amazon and Alibaba are setting the pace for the industry. The only way they can keep up is to make their supply chains smarter. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (87): Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor was a national shock. Attention had been focused on Europe, and for most of the public the raid on Pearl Harbor was an abrupt and infuriating surprise. The Japanese had believed that the pacifistic Americans would not have the stomach for a war, but pacifism had gone completely out of style, with isolationist groups immediately disbanding. Congress declared war on Japan on 8 December; Germany and Italy, standing by the Tripartite Pact, then declared war on America, with the USA reciprocating on 11 December. There would declarations of war on the smaller Axis partners -- Bulgaria, Hungary, and Rumania -- six months later, these being America's last declarations of war.
Of course, the government quickly imposed controls on enemy aliens. Ironically, although German-Americans had been particular targets of public hostility in the First World War, there was no widespread animus against them in the Second World War -- presumably an indication of how thoroughly Americans of German origin had become assimilated into American society. However, pro-Nazi organizations like the German-American Bund, which had been under government pressure from 1939, were shut down.
There was a heavier crackdown on Italian-Americans, who were not so integrated into society. Many who had done nothing suspicious were investigated and harassed by the authorities, with a curfew and travel restrictions imposed on hundreds of thousands of Italian-Americans. The formal restrictions on them were relaxed in the fall of 1942, when FDR declared Italian-Americans were full and patriotic citizens. However, the FBI and other government entities still continued to keep an eye on them.
Japanese Americans, the target of widespread public hostility after Pearl Harbor, got special treatment. On the basis of Executive Order 9066, issued on 19 February 1942. Japanese in America -- residents and citizens -- were restricted from "military exclusion zones", with over 110,000 interned in camps in the US interior. That was the great majority of those of Japanese ancestry in the continental USA, with over 60% of them being US citizens. Even those of partial ancestry were interned. In contrast, although there were about 150,000 Japanese in Hawaii, only about a percent of them were interned. The Japanese in Hawaii never presented a serious security threat all through the war.
For the first six months of US involvement in the conflict, America suffered repeated setbacks. American strategy, on consultation with the British, focused on the defeat of Germany, with the war in the Pacific to be conducted as a holding action. In reality, the logic of war ensured that the US would take the offensive against both Germany and Japan as soon as possible. Although the Soviets had pressured the US into committing to a "second front" in Europe, the simple mechanics of ramping up forces and getting them across the Atlantic, particularly in the face of attacks by German U-boats, meant it couldn't happen in the short term.
The first half of 1942 was a time of America on the defenses, while the country rapidly mobilized. Although there was some rationing of critical resources -- and production of civilian cars was suspended for the duration, with factories shifted to war production -- there was still plenty of production of civilian niceties that didn't compete with, or complemented, war production. Visitors from Britain, having become used to rationing of everything, were astounded at the plenty in the USA.
Production and resource mobilization was performed by the Office of Production Management. The conflict involved an unprecedented race to develop new technologies, with the US technical effort directed by the "Office Of Scientific Research & Development (OSRD)", which had open-ended funding and access to resources. In 1942, the OSRD began a massive, ultra-secret project to develop an atomic bomb, with the effort hidden under the cover of the "Manhattan Engineer District". It would become known as the "Manhattan Program".
By the fall of 1942, the Americans had conducted amphibious assaults in the South Pacific and, working with Britain, against North Africa. While the North African invasion was regarded as something of a sideshow action by American military leaders, it was the biggest amphibious operation in history to that time -- making the idea that a credible second front could be created in Europe in the short term more evidently unrealistic. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: It is not remotely news that renewable energy is on a roll -- while coal, once the mainstay of electric power generation, is in terminal decline. An article from CNN.com ("Solar, Wind, & Hydro Power Could Soon Surpass Coal" by Matt Egan, CNN Business, 26 November 2019), pounded another nail into the coffin of coal.
Projections from the Institute for Energy Economic & Financial Analysis suggest that the USA will get more power from renewable energy than coal by 2021. P.J. Deschenes -- a partner at Greentech Capital Advisors, an investment bank focused on clean energy -- comments: "The next piece of the energy transition is very close at hand. Coal is coming offline as fast or faster than we anticipated."
Coal provided about half of America's power generation from 2000 to 2010. However, coal usage started to fall sharply late in that decade because of the abundance of cheap natural gas, with natural gas overtaking coal in 2016. US President Donald Trump's campaign promise to save has proven hollow, underlined by the 2019 bankruptcy of Murray Energy, America's largest private coal mining company. US power companies are rapidly retiring old coal plants and replacing them with wind and solar farms. Utility companies like PSEG (PEG) and Xcel Energy (XEL), which long relied on coal, are now promising to deliver carbon-free electricity. Not everyone is convinced of their sincerity, but the direction is clear.
Navajo Generation Station, the largest coal-fired power plant in the West, permanently closed late in 2019. The shutdown means that South Nevada's electricity is now coal-free. This transition has already played out in Texas, which was long a coal-first state. During the first half of 2019, wind power surpassed coal for the first time in Texas history. Wind made up just 0.8% of the Lone Star State's power in 2003; that figure has climbed to 22%, compared with 21% for coal.
US power plants are expected to consume less coal next year than at any point since 1978, according to the EIA. That will cause coal's market share to drop below 22%, compared with 28% in 2018 -- which will make coal even less profitable, Deschenes saying: "It's a negative feedback loop."
This trend is happening overseas as well. Global electricity production from coal is projected to fall by a record 3% in 2019. That drop is being driven by record declines from Germany and South Korea, as well as the first dip in India in at least three decades.
* As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("Yemenis Go Solar Amid War Energy Shortage", 17 November 2019), war-torn Yemen might not seem the optimum place for renewable energy, but necessity is the mother of invention, and Yemenis are finding that solar power is a good thing to have when the going is tough.
When electricity was cut to Sanaa, Yemen's capital, four years ago after war broke out, Ebrahim al-Faqih saw an opportunity and started selling solar panels and solar water heaters, obtained from vendors in China and India. Solar make sense in a war zone because it can be installed in increments, and is distributed. Ebrahim is now a player in a booming solar sector, meeting a need in a poor country with little rural power access even before conflict knocked out most of the national grid.
The United Nations estimates that only 10% of the population had access to electricity after the conflict began. Many areas need pumps to obtain drinking and irrigation water; fuel became hard to get, and so diesel motors end up idled. Muhammad Yahya, whose home in Sanaa is powered by rooftop solar panels, say: "Electricity these days isn't just for lighting -- electricity is life."
He hopes mains power will return after the fighting ends. Another Sanaa resident, Akram Noman, says: "Alternative energy is better, it changed my life dramatically. Now I barely rely on normal electricity." He wants tax reforms to encourage solar energy use, and loans for farmers to buy solar systems.
* As discussed by an article from GIZMODO.com ("Without Wires or Bluetooth, This Case Lets You Add Buttons and Scroll Wheels to Your Smartphone" Andrew Liszewski, 12 June 2019), smartphones have been gradually drifting away from connectors and buttons. Not all users are happy about that -- some like buttons -- and so have researchers at Columbia University in New York City have come up with a clever solution: a customizable smartphone case that can be configured with buttons and scroll wheels, which works without batteries, wires, or even a bluetooth connection.
The case has slots in the back, into which buttons or other input devices are plugged. The buttons and scroll wheels, known as "Vidgets", were designed to create very specific vibrations and tiny motions when used -- to be picked up by the smartphone's gyro systems, and translated into appropriate user inputs by software that can determine which input device was activated.
The case would make smartphone apps like games much more responsive to user inputs. That's a potential, of course, because the Vidgets are work in progress. Overlapping button presses can confuse the software, and the scheme doesn't work so well high-vibration environments. However, Vidgets do have potential, and it seems more can be made of the idea.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE
* PHAGE REVIVAL (1): The idea of using bacteriophages -- viruses that
infect bacteria -- to treat bacterial infections goes back to World War I. As
discussed
in 2006, the Soviets were fond of phages, with the Eliava Institute in
Tbilisi, Georgia, founded in 1923, turning out bacteriophage treatments in
quantity. However, phage therapy never caught on elsewhere, being
overshadowed by antibiotics. The 2006 article suggested they might be poised
for greater use.
As discussed by an article from THEVERGE.com ("These Superbug-Fighting Viruses Are Making A Comeback" by B. David Zarley, 5 July 2019), phage therapy is building up steam. Ironically, it is antibiotics that have boosted phage therapy, by creating antibiotic-resistant bacteria, AKA "superbugs". Bacteria will gradually evolve resistance to antibiotics -- but if they evolve to defeat phages, phages can be evolved to overcome them again.
Alexander "Sandro" Sulakvelidze, a researcher from Georgia, didn't realize how unknown phage therapy was in the West until he was on a fellowship at the University of Maryland in the 1990s. One of his mentors said he had lost a patient to a drug-resistant bacterial infection; Sulakvelidze asked why phages hadn't worked, with his mentor asking what he was talking about. Sulakvelidze says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
It was one of those moments in life when it really hit me. Somebody's father, brother, husband, friend just died in the most developed country in the world ... has just died really unnecessarily, probably, from a simple infection that probably could have been treated in Georgia.
END QUOTE
Three decades later, phages saved Thomas Patterson's life. The UC San Diego psychologist caught a stomach bug on a vacation to Egypt. Thing went from bad to worse, with bloodwork revealing he had been infected with Acinetobacter baumannii -- a superbug nicknamed "Iraqibacter" for its proliferation in the Iraq conflict. The prognosis looked bad, and so his wife -- epidemiologist Steffanie Strathdee -- scoured medical research, and uncovered papers on phage therapy. She called doctors around the world, finally obtaining phage therapy that saved her husband's life. The couple told their story in the book THE PERFECT PREDATOR.
Phages also rescued Isabelle Carnell. A cystic fibrosis patient in London, she had a double lung transplant -- which led to an infection by another superbug, Mycobacterium abscessus. A research team led by Graham Hatfull of the University of Pittsburgh devised a phage treatment for Carnell, this being the first use of genetically modified phages for treatment. This was also the first time phages were used to treat an infection of the bacterial genus Mycobacterius, which includes tuberculosis. Six months of treatment put Carnell's infection down.
After languishing on the margins for years, activity in phage research is growing. In 2010, Texas A&M University opened the Center for Phage Technology, while the US Naval Medical Research Center began studying phages in earnest in 2011. In 2018, inspired in part by THE PERFECT PREDATOR, UC San Diego founded the Center for Innovative Phage Applications and Therapeutics (IPATH). Strathdee is now co-director of IPATH.
Hatfull says that phages have been locked in an evolutionary war with bacteria for about 3 billion years. The typical phage depicted in science books -- and as phage center mascots -- are from the family Myoviridae. They're something like a molecular-scale syringe, with a tube for a body, a polyhedron loaded with molecular material for a head at the top of the tube, and a set of wirelike feet at the bottom of the tube. The feet identify and lock onto a target bacterium, with the phage then making a hole in its victim, and injecting its genomic material through the tube. The virus replicates inside the hijacked bacterium, eventually destroying it as the viral particles break out. This process is called the "lytic cycle"; hunter-killer phages are called "lytic" to distinguish them from other phages that do not kill their targets.
Different kinds of lytic phages can be used together, and the lytic phages can be used in combination with antibiotics. The combinations make it harder for the target bacterium to evolve resistance, since the bacterium has to acquire multiple advantageous mutations to keep from being destroyed. Strathdee says: "We don't know enough about this kind of synergy." She adds that there's a lot of interest in learning more: "Many of us don't think that phages are ever going to replace antibiotics. We think they're going to be an adjunct to antibiotics." [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* EMERGING DIRECTED-ENERGY WEAPONS: Ever since the invention of the laser, there's been talk of using it as a weapon -- but progress to that end has been slow. As discussed by an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("As Era Of Laser Weapons Dawns, Tech Challenges Remain" by Steve Trimble, 30 October 2019), the US Air Force is about to put a laser weapon into operational service. In the meantime, the Pentagon is working on other laser and directed-energy weapons, attempting to overcome obstacles.
According to Kelly Hemmett -- boss of the Air Force Research Laboratory's (AFRL) Directed Energy Directorate -- in October 2019, the USAF performed a set of tests at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, to evaluate the Raytheon "High Energy Laser Weapon System (HEL-WS)" in a realistic operational environment. The tests involved other directed energy weapons, such as the AFRL's "Tactical High Power Microwave Operational Responder (THOR)".
Although much of the test was secret, AFRL's "Strategic Development, Planning & Experimentation (SDPE)" office -- the acronym, incidentally, is read as "Speedy" -- had HEL-WS and THOR engage swarms of small drone aircraft. The experiments also demonstrated new diagnostic tools, allowing AFRL testers to understand the atmosphere's effect on energy propagation in a realistic environment. SDPE awarded Raytheon a contract in August 2019 to deliver a "handful" of systems to the Air Force for a one-year deployment, scheduled to conclude in November 2020. HEL-WS will be used to defend a number of unspecified Air Force bases from attacks by small drones and cruise missiles.
AFRL also is preparing THOR for an operational debut. As its name implies, it's not a laser weapon, instead generating a powerful microwave beam to disrupt or damage the electronic systems of a target. Microwave directed-energy weapons have already been used operationally, but THOR is a "second-generation" system, much better suited to operational use. It is rugged, and compact enough to be hauled in a single container on a Lockheed Martin C-130 cargolifter. On arrival at its operational site, it can be put into operation in a few hours, or packed up again in the same period of time.
Hemmett says that the Air Force directed-energy effort was, at one time, unfocused, and going nowhere in a hurry:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Directed energy zealots like myself have been blamed, rightly so, of saying directed energy can do almost anything you want it to do. And we pursued multiple applications to the effect that we were diffusing some of our efforts.
END QUOTE
In 2017, the Air Force finally came up with a definition document that imposed order on a fragmented research organization that attempted to address too many missions. The 2017 plan focused on three initial use cases: air base defense, precision strike, and self-protection. HEL-WS and THOR are addressing the first mission, while the "Joint Navy-Air Force High Power Electromagnetic Non-Kinetic Strike (HIJENKS)" program is developing a missile to address the precision strike requirement.
The HIJENKS weapon will carry a directed-energy microwave payload; it is seen as a "Counter-electronics High Power Microwave Advanced Missile Project (CHAMP)" that concluded in 2014. In the longer term, In the long-term, AFRL plans to demonstrate the "Self-Protect High Energy Laser Demonstrator (SHIELD)", which will be a podded defensive weapon for aircraft.
Directed-energy technology has come a long way, but engineers are still faced with challenges -- particularly power generation and thermal management. Hemmett says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
If you're willing to have very limited duty-cycle, very limited magazine, the power and thermal management aren't very challenging, Of course, that's not what we want from directed energy weapons. We want deep magazines. We want to be able to handle wave attacks as favorably or more favorably than kinetic weapons.
END QUOTE
Others working in various Pentagon directed-energy projects say that the "rule of thumb" for a high-energy laser is an efficiency of about a third, meaning a 300-kW generator is needed to produce a 100-kW laser beam, resulting in 200 kW of waste heat that must be handled in some way. On naval vessels, that puts lasers in competition with electronic warfare and radar subsystems for power and thermal management loads. Work on new amplifier diodes for fiber-optic lasers promised to break the "rule of thumb", simplifying the issues of power generation and heat disposal.
Other Defense Department directed-energy programs are looking farther out. The Strategic Capabilities Office is selecting suppliers to demonstrate small, 10 MW-size nuclear reactors, to provide power for energy weapons at austere forward operating bases. The AFRL is even considering solar power satellites, which would transmit power to forward bases using a microwave beam. AFRL has awarded Northrop Grumman a $100 million USD contract to begin work on the technology. For now, however, weapons like HEL-WS and THOR are using conventional electric generators.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS (5): Yet another dimension to the confusing changes in supply chains is the increased emphasis on fast delivery. As an example, consider Greg Smith, the top supply-chain executive for US retail giant Walmart. Smith is trying to update the company's distribution system, and he believes speed is of absolute importance. Strawberries are an issue to him: they only last about 12 days after being picked, and in the past, it wasn't always possible to get them onto store shelves fast enough. Now, with the changes he's making, he can cut the delay by three or four days.
According to Smith, Walmart once used the same procedures on everything flowing through the company's supply chain -- but now, it's fast-tracking certain perishable and quick-selling goods. It used to keep inventories buffered in warehouses, but now it is "flowing" priority goods directly to outlets. When trucks make deliveries, the perishable items go straight to shelves; they don't sit in a back room.
Walmart, as a "brick & mortar" firm, has a reputation for being behind the times, but it is losing that reputation. A visit to a Walmart outlet down the road from company headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas, reveals a robot made by Bossa Nova, a California startup, patrolling the aisles, scanning shelves for out-of-stock items. At the back of the store, a semi-automated system handles the unloading of trucks; the stockroom is mostly empty -- and the produce is fresh.
Despite its supposed stodginess, Walmart has long been an innovator, one industry veteran saying: "Retail before Walmart was slow, lumbering and inefficient." Even before the introduction of the internet, the firm was revolutionizing supply chains, by stripping out inefficiencies in logistics, and convincing the big brands that Walmart could do a better job of handling their supply chains than they could. Now, Walmart wants to do it again.
Smith says the company is replacing all its supply-chain systems, both physical and digital, to shift from batch processing to continuous replenishment. The firm is investing in technologies that he hopes will allow it to track individual stock-keeping units (SKU) through the supply chain. Its warehouses are introducing automatic storage and retrieval systems, plus autonomous vehicles (AV). The company has now opened an automated facility in California that will handle three times the volume of ordinary ones.
It is working with Alert Innovation, an automation startup, to develop a robot that can fill online grocery orders more quickly for dispatch from its retail outlets. It is crowdsourcing the last-mile delivery of orders through a service named Spark Delivery. The push is getting results: Productivity at Walmart's distribution centers, measured in cases per hour, went up 13% in a year and a half. Inventory has been trimmed back by billions of dollars. Store sales are improving, and e-commerce sales are growing by leaps and bounds.
Walmart has recently introduced a new policy, under which suppliers must meet tougher "On Time / In Full (OTIF)" targets for deliveries of stock, or else be penalized; and has introduced a new service that allows customers who order groceries online to have them delivered directly into their fridge. Why such a frantic need for speed?
A Walmart executive says: "A competitor who will remain nameless ... is forcing all of us to think differently, and we should." Everyone knows the name: Amazon.com. As Amazon grew in market strength, Walmart executives realized that its aggressive e-commerce model represented a dire threat to brick-&-mortar retailers like Walmart -- while at the same time, presenting Walmart with inspiration on how to remodel itself. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (86): The conflict in Europe remained largely a "sitting war" until the spring of 1940, when Hitler overran most of Western Europe, including France. By the summer of 1940, German bombers were pounding Britain. To that time, the war hadn't been taken very seriously in the USA, but the fall of France set off alarms, leading to an accelerated build-up of the US Army and Navy, most notably with the "Two-Ocean Navy Act", which projected a fleet that could fight both Germany and Japan. It also resulted in the nation's first peacetime draft, which was modeled on the draft law of the First World War.
Another major step towards US involvement in the war was the "bases for destroyers" deal in August 1940, established as an executive action. The US obtained access to British bases in exchange for handing 50 old destroyers over to Britain. There was quiet grumbling among the British over the deal, since the old destroyers were generally in poor condition, but enhancing America's offensive posture was largely to the benefit of the UK.
As a further escalation of tensions, in September 1940 Germany, Italy, and Japan signed the "Tripartite Pact", establishing a loose military alliance, the "Berlin-Rome-Tokyo Axis". It significantly escalated tensions between the US and Japan -- amounting to a Japanese provocation of their primary trading partner, in exchange for a mostly-symbolic link-up with European powers that brought Japan little practical benefit.
The looming conflict dominated the election of 1940. Faced with a crisis, FDR decided to break tradition and run for a third term. Roosevelt handily defeated his opponent, Wendell Wilkie. With a mandate from the voters, FDR outlined his war strategy -- saying the US would not send troops to Europe, but would arm for defense, and would serve as the "arsenal of democracy" for Britain and other opponents of Hitler. FDR didn't want to commit forces unless they were necessary, instead preferring to provide material assistance to other countries fighting Hitler. This agenda had the direct consequence of ramping up America's industrial machine, and bringing back full employment.
Even before his inauguration, in early January, FDR gave his State Of The Union address, and outlined a democratic agenda for America in the world, saying that all people are entitled to freedom of speech, worship, want, and fear. The "Four Freedoms", as they came to be known, represented an extension of the better aspects of the Constitution.
In March, in a major expansion of American involvement in the war, Congress passed the "Lend-Lease Act", in which the USA would "loan" combatants -- at the time, primarily meaning "Great Britain" and the Commonwealth nations -- weapons, which would be returned at the end of the conflict. In practice, there was never much expectation of getting the weapons back; combat grinds down weapons quickly, and so the Lend-Lease Act was effectively a military-assistance program. In June 1941, Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, with the USSR brought into Lend-Lease, and FDR working to build bridges with the Soviet government. That would prove frustrating.
In August 1941, to further cooperation with Britain in the war against Hitler, Roosevelt conferred with British Prime Minister Winston Churchill aboard a cruiser anchored off Newfoundland. Along with military staff discussions, the two leaders crafted a proclamation, called the "Atlantic Charter", in which they announced that their countries wouldn't pursue gains, "territorial or otherwise"; to guarantee that all countries could have their own form of government; to ensure freedom of the seas; and to carry on global trade.
By that time, the Japanese had exploited the fall of France by moving into French Indochina. While the movement was partly intended to shut off China's southern border, it also poised Japan to move against Western colonial possessions in Southeast Asia. The US responded with warnings and a gradual escalation of sanctions. In the meantime, the US government was putting together a "Victory Plan" -- a blueprint for America's future fight against the Axis powers. It was leaked and released by the press on 4 December 1941, with isolationists loudly denouncing the FDR Administration's plans for war. Nobody ever figured out who leaked the Victory Plan.
The outrage was upstaged by events a few days later. Under increasing pressure of sanctions and faced with a threatening US naval buildup, Japan decided to launch a strike that would cripple the US and give Japan a free hand in the Pacific. On the morning of 7 December 1941, aircraft of the Imperial Japanese Navy pounded the US fleet at anchor at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, inflicting major damage and loss of life. Simultaneously, the Japanese struck at the Philippines, and began a drive into Burma. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: Climate-change deniers talk a lot, but almost nothing they say is supported by the facts. One of their repetitive talking points is that climate studies in the past have been wildly wrong. As discussed by an article from CBSN.com ("Climate Models Have Been Impressively Accurate For Decades, Study Finds" by Jeff Berardelli, 5 December 2019), that's not supported by the facts, either.
Even the climate computer models of the 1970s, 80s, and 90s, which were much less sophisticated than those available now, as described in a paper released in GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH LETTERS. According to Zeke Hausfather, the paper's lead author: "We often hear [from climate-change deniers] that 'models always overestimate warming.'" Not true: "Climate models have by and large gotten things right. They haven't overestimated warming, but at the same time the warming we experienced isn't worse than we thought, it is what we thought it would be."
The research team examined 17 climate models published between 1970 and 2007, with forecast periods ending on or before 2017. They used two criteria for their assessment:
Estimating the rate of human-caused emissions is difficult. It turned out, unsurprisingly, that projections from models that factored in too much greenhouse gas were too warm, while models that underestimated greenhouse gases were too cool. Nonetheless, the climate models performed well in comparison to temperature projections. The model projections were compared to five different observed temperature datasets from trusted sources like NOAA and NASA. The researchers found that 10 of the 17 climate model projections showed results consistent with recent observations. Of the remaining seven model projections, four projected more warming than observed; while three projected less warming.
The research team wanted to know how much the models were affected by assumptions of future emissions, and how much they were affected by problems with the actual physical modeling. As a check, they plugged in observed emissions, as opposed to estimated emissions, into the old models -- to find that the models performed even better, with 14 of the 17 models giving results that matched actual surface temperatures.
Hausfather says: "The fact that early climate models got future temperatures broadly right is strong evidence that longer-term climate changes are predictable -- and that they have been driven by increased atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations in recent decades." However, at this late date, only nincompoops say otherwise.
* As discussed by an article from CNN.com ("A Blue Whale's Heartbeat Has Been Recorded For The First Time" by Amy Woodyatt, 26 November 2019), researchers at Stanford University got curious about the physiology of marine birds and mammals, starting out by measuring the heartbeat of diving emperor penguins and captive whales. They then got more ambitious, attaching electronic sensors to a blue whale's left flipper by suction cups to measure its heart rate.
They found that the blue whale lowered its heart rate to as low as two beats per minute when it dived for food. At the bottom of a foraging dive, the whale's heart rate increased to about 2.5 times the minimum, then decreased again; when the whale began to surface, its heart rate increased again. Its highest heart rate, running to between 25 and 27 beats per minute, occurred at the sea's surface, when it was breathing and restoring oxygen levels.
The researchers believe, on analysis of the data, that blue whale's heart is "working at its limit," and may be why blue whales have not evolved to be bigger. The researchers intend to similarly investigate other whales, such as humpbacks, minke whales and fin whales.
* As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("If You're Looking For Gold, Look In Trees", 25 May 2019) the stereotypical image of searching for gold is a prospector sluicing through gravel in a pan. Rich lodes of gold are largely a thing of the past, however, and so subtler methods have to be used these days -- for example, finding traces of gold in dirt or in water from boreholes to get hints of gold deposits.
As far back as the 1940s, there were suggestions that trees might be used to find gold. Trees can have root systems that reach deep underground. The roots soak up water, and trace minerals along with them -- with gold being one of the possible traces. In places where there is no gold, leaves may have a background level of 0.15 parts per billion (PPB) of gold; on gold-rich sites, that can rise to 4 PPB.
One could then find gold by collecting leaves across a site and mapping out their mineral concentrations. The scheme is best suited to dry regions, where trees tend to put down deep roots. Along with gold, it could also be used to locate elements associated with gold deposits, such as antimony and bismuth.
Of course, the scheme is tricky. Different species of trees accumulate gold in different ways, so the same species must be sampled across each site. Acacia is one of the trees of choice, but Australia has about 1,000 Acacia species, many of which look similar. To make things more difficult, the degree to which elements accumulate in leaves varies with season.
In proof-of-principle studies conducted over the last few years, Nathan Reid and his team at the Commonwealth Industrial & Scientific Research Organization (CSIRO), Australia's national science agency, have demonstrated that biogeochemical prospecting closely tracks with surface and groundwater analyses. Marmota, an exploration firm, accordingly put the method to the test at its Aurora Tank site, 50 kilometers (31 miles) from the highly-productive Challenger mine in South Australia.
As a control, the investigating team collected leaves on top of a known deposit, and indeed found traces of gold. The team then began taking samples further away from known deposits, to come up with inconsistent results -- in some cases, indicating gold when other tests said there was no gold. However, the leaves paid off: drilling found a vein several meters thick tens of meters below the surface, with 27 grams of gold per tonne, with the center of the vein having an impressive 105 grams per tonne. 5 grams per tonne is regarded in the industry as high-grade. Marmota is now following up other leads revealed by the leaves.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ANOTHER MONTH: At the start of 2019, I visited the Denver Zoo to take night photographs of the Christmas lights show there. It proved worthwhile; I mentioned it to a neighbor, and she told me that the botanical gardens in Fort Collins, Colorado, just north up the road, also put on a holiday lights show.
Come December, I checked it out online, thinking I had to make reservations like I did for the zoo. I called them up on Tuesday, 17 December, and they said: No, it wouldn't be that hard to get in, just drop by and pay admission at the door. I then wondered when I could find time to go. On consideration, since Tuesdays is my day for running errands, I could easily fit it in that evening before I went to bed: half-hour drive north, half-hour taking photos, half-hour drive back home.
I don't usually like to do things spur of the moment, it usually doesn't work out well, but this seemed straightforward. It was, almost everything going to plan. I got over 80 raw shots, and was able to render them down into 26 keepers. I only got 23 keepers from the zoo, and its display was at least twice as big.
The night photo mode on my Canon SX70 camera works pretty well. I think I can do better, though. I got a financial windfall and passed on some of it to my niece / heir Jordy; she bought an iPhone 11 Max Pro with the money. She travels the world in recruiting for Amazon.com, and it would be good to have a first-class camera phone to take with her. I keep bugging her about taking photos when she travels -- not just for my own curiosity, it's because it would be good for her to keep a record of what she's been doing. Being in her early 20s, it's not obvious to her that she may ask, when she's in her 40s: "What exactly was I doing two decades ago?"
A smartphone is a remarkable device, an extension of the mind, augmenting perception and memory. Might as well make the best use of it. In any case, I'm particularly curious about how well the iPhone 11 does for low-light / night shots. Samples I've seen online are really impressive; I'll have to see what Jordy does with it. I will get a good camera phone, but not until 2021, when things have settled out a bit, and I can get an older or refurbished phone.
I'll do some experimenting with the Samsung Galaxy smartphone I have now in the meantime. It has a 16-megapixel imager, and I can get enhanced camera apps for it. Assuming night mode gangs up pixels in quads, that should give me 4-megapixel night images, or 2500 x 1600 pixels, which is adequate, if not luxurious. I also found out about bluetooth shutter-button key fobs; one of the annoyances of a camera phone is having to clumsily poke the touchscreen to take shots, with the button fob solving that problem. They're cheap, less than ten bucks -- I'll get one soonest.
* A video from REUTERS.com hunted down "Perchten monsters". In Bavaria, in the depths of winter, people dress up in monster costumes, to perform torchlight drumbeat marches and circle dances. The monsters challenge the darkness and the cold, driving out evil spirits and bringing good luck.
Wikipedia says that Perchten monsters are also found in Austria, and are linked to the winter Fastnacht carnivals practiced through the Alpine region. They are derived from the old pagan goddess Perchta, who was originally a Brothers Grimm sort of spirit, doing gruesome things on occasion -- but now she is seen as the rewarder of the generous and punisher of the bad, particularly lying children, who are awarded lumps of coal.
Some Alpine ski resorts have Perchten festivals to bring in the tourists. It looks like fun; it's a bit surprising that Fastnacht carnivals haven't been performed to any noticeable degree in the USA. It seems like something that somebody would have tried back in the Psychedelic Sixties. Maybe one of these days ...
* I finally had to rethink posting comments to Twitter. It was just not a good use of time, it was dealing with endless numbers of loudmouthed dimwits, all the same stuff over and over again.
I still wanted to retain Twitter as a news feed, but I didn't want it to be too obtrusive. A little scouting around led me to a Firefox plugin that lists the Twitter feed, in smartphone format, as a sidebar in the browser. It's unobtrusive, easily turned on and off, without much switching of gears from what else I'm doing.
I found I couldn't stop commenting anyway, but I reconsidered how to do it. I will post replies to articles, but don't generally look at the comment stream; when I do, I usually regret it. I've also turned off notifications, so people can reply to my comments, but otherwise I don't know they're there. If they give me a hard time -- I can generally recognize that by reading no more than ten words of a reply -- I mute them. Muting means I just don't see the comment any more, with the commenter being none the wiser.
I delete all my comments at the end of the day, and un-mute most of those I've muted. Usually, having been snubbed once, they don't hassle me again. If they're repeat offenders, I keep them muted. I might clean out the list completely once a year or so, to see if they've gone away, and mute them again if they haven't.
I've always had the bizarre impulse to comment online, despite the fact that I know it's more bother than it's worth. Now I've got a formula that is sustainable: in effect, I'm making one-way comments to the world. I do, of course, announce blog updates on a separate Twitter account -- but that one's for work, and never a difficulty.
* Thanks to two readers for donations this last month. They are much appreciated.
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