* 22 entries including: US Constitution (series), encryption wars (series), internet of things (series), global supply chains (series), Vietnam & Brazil solar power, drug discovery database, ventilators, modeling pandemics, & China under stress.
* NEWS COMMENTARY FOR APRIL 2020: Of course, the big news continues to be of the COVID-19 pandemic, the biggest global crisis since World War 2. At last count, there were over 3 million diagnosed cases and over 200,000 deaths, with 60,000 in the USA. The coronavirus has been compared to the flu, but it's more contagious -- if not as contagious as measles -- and it is at least twice as deadly, or even an order of magnitude deadlier. The USA has become an epicenter of the pandemic, with New York City being very badly hit.
The world remains largely in lockdown, and it seems to be proving effective, with the death rate having peaked and now in decline -- though still at a high level. The pandemic and lockdown have resulted in massive economic dislocation. We're facing a prolonged recession or a depression.
The Trump Administration has come under for its handling of the crisis. Yes, the right things are generally being done, but nothing happens in the White House that suggests an organization that's on top of events, and President Donald Trump inspires little public confidence -- often changing direction, doing all he can to deflect blame onto others, and acting capriciously. He took to conducting "public briefings" that amounted to campaign rallies where he peddled misinformation and attacked the news media.
In parallel, Trump has also been targeting the Federal inspector-general system, in particular firing the IG responsible for the massive government COVID-19 public aid program. When asked how oversight would be performed, he replied: "I'm the oversight." -- which was exactly the wrong answer. It is difficult to believe that his actions do much to inspire a frightened public. His approval ratings blipped up for a time after the crisis started, a phenomenon known as "rally around the president" -- but have since fallen back to their static normal. Ignoring the 5% or so who don't care, his approval is about +45% / -55%, and it varies little over time. Those who like him aren't changing their minds; those who don't like him aren't changing their minds either.
Trump has been inconsistently pushing to relax the lockdown, then warning that it shouldn't be relaxed too soon. Clearly, Trump knows that he has little chance of re-election in November if things are still bad. The central question of a US presidential election is: Are you better off than you were four years ago? If the answer is NO, the party in power is in big trouble. Things are likely to be looking up by then, but they are not going to be remotely back to normal. They won't get back to normal until we have everyone vaccinated, and that may not be until well into 2021 at the very earliest, and possibly more like well into 2022.
* The pressure seems to be getting to Trump. In mid-month, small groups protesting the lockdown began to demonstrate in various states. In response, Trump tweeted: LIBERATE [various states]! That was clearly an encouragement of the protests; when challenged, Trump complained about Virginia's gun control laws, saying the state government was trying to take away everyone's guns. It is becoming unpleasantly possible that Trump will promote an armed insurrection if he loses in November. He's so mentally incoherent he won't understand or care what he's doing.
The quarantine protests are baffling. British comedian John Oliver, host of the late-night LAST WEEK TONIGHT show, ran a segment on the "Resistance", and showed that it was a product of Right-wing media (RWM), most significantly but not exclusively Fox News. COVID-19, of course, is an overwhelming emergency that would strain even the most competent government, and the Trump Administration is not noted for its competence. Rather than making Trump look bad, the RWM has sought to use COVID-19 to make the Democrats look bad, by relying on sets of bogus arguments:
Oliver is a professional hothead, but his bottom line is hard to argue with: that Fox News is selling lunacy to make money. Fox News is on quarantine, and not trying to resist it -- while encouraging its audience to do so. They don't care that the result may be thousands of unnecessary deaths. It is so monstrous that it is hard to believe, all the more so because Trump listens to the RWM and accepts what they tell him. I can only hope that, after the fall of Trump, Fox News and the other RWM talking heads will be called to answer for their actions by Congress.
* Not incidentally, the pandemic has complicated the election process, leading to a push to voting by mail. This is perfectly normal in places like Colorado or Washington State, and it's never been particularly problematic. However, there was a primary vote in Wisconsin early in the month; the governor had tried to delay it and introduce a mail vote, but the Republican-controlled state assembly refused to allow it. When the governor tried to do it by executive order, the state supreme court shot him down -- and appallingly, SCOTUS let it the state court decision stand. That was not the worst judgement SCOTUS has ever made, but it definitely resides in the hall of shame.
Wisconsans bit the bullet and voted anyway, with long spaced-out lines and drive-through voting. It appears the state legislature was trying to protect a state supreme court seat, which they lost anyway; one suspects that the betrayal of the voters will cost the Republicans in November. Trump has been vocal in denouncing voting by mail, claiming without evidence that it is "corrupt". When a reporter said he had voted by mail in Florida and asked how he could justify that, Trump simply replied: "Because I'm allowed to." Words fail me.
In reality, voting by mail is even-handed, not giving an advantage to either side. There was a case of election fraud relative to absentee ballots in North Carolina in 2018. Inconveniently for the Republicans, they owned it. One Leslie McCrae Dowless ended up being indicted on felony charges; it doesn't seem the case has gone to trial yet.
* In any case, the Democrats are solidly lining up behind Joe Biden as their presidential candidate. His last rival for the nomination, Bernie Sanders, threw in the towel and endorsed him, with Liz Warren chiming in a few days later. With all obstacles gone, Barack Obama promptly stepped forward and endorsed his former VP -- ending the endorsement with an earnest plea to the voters:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Our country's future hangs on this election. And it won't be easy. The other side has a massive war chest. The other side has a propaganda network with little regard for the truth.
On the other hand, pandemics have a way of cutting through a lot of noise and spin to remind us of what is real, and what is important. This crisis has reminded us that government matters. It's reminded us that good government matters. That facts and science matter. That the rule of law matters. That having leaders who are informed, and honest, and seek to bring people together rather than drive them apart -- those kind of leaders matter.
In other words, elections matter. Right now, we need Americans of goodwill to unite in a great awakening against a politics that too often has been characterized by corruption, carelessness, self-dealing, disinformation, ignorance, and just plain meanness. And to change that, we need Americans of all political stripes to get involved in our politics and our public life like never before.
END QUOTE
Although Bernie Sanders' supporters have long tended to snipe at Biden and Moderate Democrats in general, Bernie has been pushing back, telling them that a failure to support Biden would be, given Trump as the alternative, "irresponsible". Most of his supporters are likely to fall in line -- however grudgingly. Joe Biden has promised Bernie a role in his administration, but it's hard to figure out one to which he is particularly well-suited. No worries, really; as Biden knows, Bernie isn't a team player, and is unlikely to want to be on the Biden team. Bernie will prefer to go back to Congress.
That out of the way, the primary focus of the Biden campaign is to select a VP candidate, who will have to be a woman. There's a push on Biden to select a black woman; on being asked if Michelle Obama could fit the bill, he gave an enthusiastic YES. However, as Biden also knows, Michelle Obama has made it clear she is not interested in being vice president, or president.
Just as COVID-19 is America's biggest national crisis since WW2, the election is the decision point in America's biggest political crisis since the Civil War. It is not much consolation that in neither case is the crisis close to as bad as its predecessor. Exactly what happens in or after the election, no one knows. We'll just have to see when we get there.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* VEGAN CROCS: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Vegetarian Crocodiles Once Roamed The World", 29 June 2019), modern crocodiles have boring dentition: they have conical, pointy teeth, with one tooth in a mouth not all that different from another. Such teeth are well suited to a diet of fish, or other such meat as a crocodilian encounters.
However, in Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, during the heyday of the dinosaurs, crocodilians had a wild diversity of tooth structures -- some of which were so bizarre that some paleontologists suggested the crocodilian owners of those teeth ate plants. A recent study by Keegan Melstrom and Randall Irmis, of the University of Utah, lends weight to that idea, and further suggests that plant-eating crocodilians evolved on multiple occasions.
To get an idea of what ancient animals ate, paleontologists typically try to make comparisons with contemporary animals -- working on the assumption that if a modern animal has a certain diet, an ancient animal with similar teeth will have a similar diet. With extinct crocodilians, however, this approach has been frustrated because which feature many rows of cusps and wrinkled enamel, look nothing like what is found in the mouths of any animals.
What, then, did ancient crocodilians eat? To find the answer, Melstrom and Irmis used to "Orientation Patch Count Rotated (OPCR)" analysis, which obtains a measure of the complexity of a tooth's surfaces. OPCR has persuasively demonstrated that diet is closely related to tooth complexity: carnivores tend to have simple teeth, omnivores have more complex teeth, while herbivores have very complex teeth.
OPCR has been validated by applying it to contemporary animals. Melstrom and Irmis, assuming it would work for extinct animals as well, examined 146 teeth from 16 extinct crocodilians -- along with the modern caiman. Two of the extinct species, like the caiman, were judged to be carnivorous. However, even these two species had dentition different from that of the caiman: one having serrated steak-knife-like teeth, while the other had triangular teeth that made contact with one another when the animal closed its mouth, which isn't seen in modern crocodilians.
OPCR identified two of the other extinct species as the species as "durophagus", meaning that their teeth looked like they were good at crushing the shells of clams, crabs, and other armored invertebrates. One species was identified as omnivorous, while eight were tagged as pure herbivores. The remaining three were hard to classify, but may have been insectivores.
What particularly surprised Melstrom and Irmis in their study is how the herbivorous lifestyle emerged in the crocodilian family tree. Instead of evolving once at some time long ago, to become a branch of its own, the herbivore lifestyle emerged at least three separate times during the age of dinosaurs. It doesn't appear to have emerged again during the modern age of mammals -- suggesting that crocodilian herbivores couldn't compete with mammalian herbivores.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* VIETNAM SOLAR: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Vietnam Grapples With An Unexpected Surge In Solar Power", 25 January 2020), in 2017 solar power amounted to very little in Vietnam -- leading the government to offer to pay electricity producers a generous $0.09 for every kilowatt-hour (kWh) produced by big solar farms, but only if they started operations within the following two years.
The government expected that about 850 megawatts (MW) of capacity would be installed. By the end of 2019, Vietnam had 5 gigawatts (GW) of solar power capacity -- more than Australia, with an economy almost six times as big. This was even more surprising, because the terms of the deal weren't that great. The country's electrical service, Electricity Vietnam (EVN), was offering better rates for power than the norm -- that being in the range of $0.05 to $0.07 USD per kWh -- but only promised to pay for power that was actually used. Developers shrugged and jumped in.
The Vietnamese economy has been growing by 5% to 7% a year for the past two decades. The government plans to double power generation by 2030, but estimates that power may run short as early as 2021. Vietnam's power generation system is dominated by coal, with existing plans projecting that the number of plants will soon triple. That's been floundering because of regulatory issues, local opposition, and fading investor interest. Putting up a new coal plant can take up to a decade. Solar plants create much less opposition, and can be operating in about two years' time.
The solar boom has had its difficulties. Most of the new facilities are in the sunny south-east, and the power grid hasn't kept up with development; occasionally, the solar plants simply can't deliver power, and the EVN won't pay them for the power squandered. Also, the $0.09 USD power rate is too expensive for the government, given the solar boom. Nobody said it was going to be continued indefinitely, and now the government is planning to auction the right to sell solar power to the grid, with the winner being the firm that offers to do so at the lowest price.
Environmentalists hope that the success of renewables will encourage the government to scale back its plans for coal. Wind and solar have almost already met their current goal of providing 10% of power, ten years ahead of schedule, and could easily cut into the capacity being planned for coal. Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy, believes power from large solar farms in South-East Asia will be at least as cheap as that from almost all coal plants within five years. Given that coal plants have lifespans measured in decades, Vietnam and others risk locking in expensive and dirty generation capacity.
In Malaysia, a recent auction to build 500 MW of solar capacity drew bids for 13 times that. In Cambodia, the winning bidder to build a 60 MW plant said it would supply power at less than $0.04 USD per kWh, which is a record low for the region. While Southeast Asian governments still see coal as the primary power source for the future, the International Energy Agency think-tank, has noticed a gradual shift over the past five years -- with approvals for coal plants slowing, while new solar capacity has jumped. It is likely that not all the planned coal plants will be built. Whether renewables can put them out of business completely remains to be seen.
* BRAZIL SOLAR: As discussed by a related article from REUTERS.com ("Solar Energy Expands Quickly In Brazil, Attracts Chinese Firms" by Luciano Costa, 20 February 2020), although Brazil was a late adopter of solar power, the country has been making up for lost time -- with smaller "distributed generation (DG)" solar power plants being set up at a rapid pace, thanks to generous sunlight and government subsidies. DG has a cost advantage, in reducing the need for long-distance power trunk lines.
According to Absolar, Brazil's solar power industry group, DG investments are to triple from 16 billion reais ($3.64 billion) in 2020 from 2019, with those installations adding 3.4 GW of power generation capacity in Brazil. With an investment of 12,000 to 20,000 reais, a home owner can install a small individual DG system that would run for 25 years, paying for itself within about four years with savings from grid-power bills.
The Brazilian unit of Chinese solar panel maker BYD is working around the clock to meet demand, according to unit marketing director Adalberto Maluf: "We have almost 20 hours per day of production to meet the pipeline of orders." Other companies are similarly competing for the market. Subsidies make solar a very good deal for Brazil. In 2019, Brazil's power regulator Aneel wanted to scale back subsidies, but President Jair Bolsonaro held off -- somewhat surprisingly, Bolsonaro not being noted for his environmental consciousness.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* INTERNET OF THINGS (2): The Internet of Things starts at home. The notion of home automation is yet another thing that isn't all that new, but in previous decades, it was mostly just a gimmick. Now home automation is catching on, in ways that are not entirely obvious.
Mathew Ball, previously the head of strategy at Amazon studios, the video entertainment arm of Amazon.com, thinks there's a big potential for immersive video entertainment in the smart home. For example, he suggests, a smart TV might use gaze-tracking cameras to see when a viewer is paying full attention, before having a monster jump out from behind a door. A horror movie might take control of house lighting to make the lights flicker, or generate eerie sounds from speakers in another room.
OK, those are gimmicky ideas, but some of them may work. The technology is already here. Consumers can buy smart light bulbs, such as Hue from Philips, a Dutch electronics giant, which can be switched on or off by phone or voice, and can produce thousands of tones and shades.
GSMA Intelligence, the research arm of a mobile-industry trade body, reckons that smart homes will be the biggest part of the consumer side of the IoT, For now, most of the applications are more pragmatic than "aware" home cinema. Besides light bulbs, technophile consumers can use voice-activated window-blinds; robot vacuum cleaners; and mattresses that track heart rate, movement and sleep patterns. Wi-fi-connected, camera-equipped fridges can let owners check their contents while they're at the supermarket.
Security is another popular use of IoT. Smart doorbells have surveillance cameras and motion detectors; they can relay sound and imagery to a smartphone, with the smartphone user unlocking the door if desired. Hundreds of millions have been sold. It all sounds great in theory -- but Ben Wood, the chief of research at CCS Insight, an analytical firm, says that installing, maintaining, and integrating smart gadgets can be a chore. "It's a very Heath Robinson kind of patchwork, a jigsaw puzzle of connectivity." Heath Robinson, for Yanks, was Britain's answer to Rube Goldberg.
Wood knows that from experience, having wired up his house to a level that won him a European award in 2017, featuring voice-activated lighting and windows, heating controlled by room, smart audio and TV systems, and a smart door. He installed 2 kilometers of wiring, with a rack of computers running the show. One of the big problems is integration: products from one manufacturer don't necessarily play well with those from another. There are some standards, such as the Zigbee and Z-Wave low-power home-networking standards -- but some vendors have proprietary schemes, or don't do a proper job of adhering to a standard.
There's a lot of players involved. Telecoms firms, for example, would like to find new, higher-margin businesses instead of simply acting as "bit pipes", so they have jumped into the smart-home market. Vodafone, a telecoms company, advertises the "V-Home Hub" as a central control point for smart-home devices. SK Telecom, a South Korean firm, has the "Nugu", while AT&T of the US offers its "Smart Home Manager". Of course, startup are heavily involved as well -- for example Wink, backed by General Electric. In Britain, even British Gas, a former state-owned energy monopoly, has got in on the act, having launched Hive, a smart-home ecosystem, in 2013.
The large numbers of players means a certain chaos. In 2018 Logitech, a Swiss firm, company, stopped supporting its "Harmony Link" smart hub, which was designed to allow smartphones to act as universal remote controls. In 2016 Revolv, a smart-home startup that had been bought by Google, announced that its app and home hub were being abandoned. One disgusted customer wrote: "My house will stop working." [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (100): President Eisenhower was more at home as a technocrat than with civil rights. One of his proudest achievements was to help drive through, so to speak, the Interstate Highway System, signing it into law in 1956 -- following up FDR's earlier and stalled Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1944. Instead of the existing loosely-knit hodgepodge of state highways and roads, the USA was to be overlaid with a web of high-speed highways that would link all the nation's major cities. Eisenhower, while inspecting postwar Germany, had been impressed by the German Autobahn, and thought the USA should emulate that example. He partly justified the highway system as a military necessity, in that it would facilitate evacuation of the cities and support military movements.
The 1950s were a decade of rapid technological advances, with military applications being the biggest driver. The push towards long-range missiles led, almost inevitably, towards space exploration. In October 1957, the Soviet Union put the first artificial satellite, "Sputnik 1", into orbit. The USA could have done so first, but didn't place any priority on it. Eisenhower thought, rightfully, that Sputnik was just a stunt.
However, Sputnik 1 led to a degree of hysteria in the USA, with a loud cry of: "The Russians are ahead!" The hysteria got worse as early attempts of the US to orbit a satellite proved busts. The US did finally orbit a satellite; Eisenhower then established the US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) in October 1958, a year after Sputnik 1, to direct America's civil space activities.
NASA was partly established to counter attempts by the US armed services to control space exploration. Eisenhower instead wanted space exploration to be conducted by a civilian and open agency, to prevent the militarization of space. He had no intention of lavishly funding the effort -- though, thanks to Khrushchev's focus on space stunts, a "Space Race" began anyway. More broadly, Eisenhower greatly valued the counsel of scientists, and gave them a high profile in his administration. He also signed into law a landmark science education bill.
More broadly, Eisenhower greatly valued the counsel of scientists, and gave them a high profile in his administration. He also signed into law a landmark science education bill -- and, at the beginning of 1958, had created the "Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)", later the "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA)". ARPA was originally tasked with conducting America's civil space effort, but that was only a stopgap effort, quickly passed on to NASA. ARPA was intended to perform long-range research for the Pentagon that the armed services themselves would have been reluctant to fund, having more immediate demands to deal with. The agency would prove highly successful.
The civilian Space Race also masked a military space race that was going on at a fast clip in parallel. Although the Soviets had rebuffed Eisenhower's Open Skies proposal, he still believed in the concept, and supported the secret CORONA program to put spy satellites in orbit, which would take photos and return the film in re-entry capsules. There had been a great advantage for the USA in the USSR being the first to orbit a satellite, in that it established space as open territory, like the high seas. The Soviets, having flown a satellite over the USA, were not then likely to complain very loudly if the Americans flew a satellite over the USSR.
CORONA was a major technical challenge, however, and in the meantime, from 1956, the CIA performed reconnaissance over the USSR with the high-flying Lockheed U-2 spy plane. It was recognized early on that the Soviets would eventually acquire the means to shoot down the U-2, but delays in the CORONA program meant that the U-2 Eisenhower selectively authorized continued U-2 overflights of the USSR. One was finally shot down in 1960, which led to the collapse of the "Four-Power Summit" in Paris.
However, not long after that, CORONA missions started flying right, with Open Skies becoming an effective reality. The Air Force had been working with the CIA to get CORONA flying; Eisenhower hadn't been happy with the arrangement, and established the "National Reconnaissance Office (NRO)" in 1960 to manage America's space intelligence assets.
It was something of a marker of the stability of Eisenhower's term in office that no constitutional amendments were established during that time -- though as discussed below, one was in the works at the end of his term. The Eisenhower Administration did see the introduction of Alaska and Hawaii into the Union in 1959, bringing the total number of states to a nice round 50. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed by an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("First Pieces Of USAF Hypersonic Interceptor Enter Development" by Steve Trimble & Guy Norris, 7 August 2019), there's been considerable in hypersonic vehicles as of late -- as warhead delivery systems for long-range missiles.
In response to the emerging threat, the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) has devised a hypersonic defense architecture, which some industry and military officials describe as potentially broader in scope and more challenging to achieve than its offensive counterparts.
The MDA's ultimate goal is to field a new "Hypersonic Defense Weapon System (HDWS)" that will plug the gaps in the US military's missile defense systems. Russia and China are both developing a new class of hypersonic weapons that can maneuver at speeds above Mach 5, and stay below the field of view of existing early-warning and tracking sensors, the intent being to slip through or around Western defensive systems.
The MDA is drafting requirements for a defensive architecture that covers new interceptors, sensors, and command-and-control systems. The agency is also awarding contracts for development of "enabling technologies" that will lead to a new, purpose-built hypersonic interceptor -- such enabling technologies including cooling mechanism for new sensors, space-based sensor platforms, and multi-stage launch vehicles.
In addition, the MDA is updating existing equipment, including the Theater High-Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system, to be used as an interim interceptor for hypersonic weapons. In 2015, Lockheed Martin unveiled a concept to develop a two-stage, extended-range version of THAAD. Lockheed described the THAAD-ER concept as a possible approach to be used in defeating the emerging class of offensive hypersonic missiles; presumably, the MDA is interested in that study.
The MDA is also evaluating a broad range of options for intercepting incoming hypersonic weapons -- including concepts based on high-powered microwaves, directed energy, railgun-launched high-velocity projectiles, and rapid-firing guns. There's been calls for increased funding for such defensive systems, and the chances are good funding will be increased.
* As discussed by an article from JANES.com ("Bell Emphasizes Affordability, Speed With New 360 Invictus Aircraft For FARA-CP" by Pat Host, 2 October 2019), from the 1990s, the US Army pumped about $7 billion USD into a high-tech scout helicopter, the Boeing-Sikorsky RAH-66 Comanche. The Comanche was canceled in 2004, and since then, the requirement for a new scout helicopter has remained unmet.
Now the Army is trying again, under "Future Attack Reconnaissance Aircraft (FARA)" Competitive Prototype effort, with Bell Helicopters submitting its "360 Invictus" tandem-seat scout helicopter. Although it has some resemblance to the Comanche, it owes more to the Bell 525 Relentless commercial helicopter, leveraging technologies including a low-drag rotor hub and high-speed rotor blades.
Relentless has exceeded 370 KPH (230 MPH / 200 KT) in testing, which should allow the 360 Invictus to easily exceed the FARA requirement of 335 KPH (205 MPH / 180 KT). The prototype will be powered by the General Electric (GE) "simple improved turbine engine" -- apparently a variant of the GE T901. It will also have a supplemental booster unit to provide additional speed and power when necessary.
360 Invictus will have a nose sensor turret, a Gatling gun in a chin turret, internal munitions storage, and a fenestron tail fan. It will have a lift-sharing that wing will offload about 50% of lift once the aircraft reaches combat speed. The 360 Invictus will not have a pusher prop.
* As discussed by an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("Sikorsky Unveils Raider-X Proposal For FARA Armed Scout" by Graham Warwick, 14 October 2019), Sikorsky is offering its "Raider-X" for the FARA. Raider-X is a coaxial-rotor compound helicopter, derived from the company's "S-97 Raider" demonstrator.
Raider-X is about 20% larger, with a 6,350-kilogram (14,000-pound) gross weight -- compared to 4,990 kilograms (11,000 pounds) for the S-97 -- and a rotor diameter of 11.9 meters (39 feet), compared to the 10.4-meter (34-foot) rotor diameter of the S-97. The Army specification dictates a rotor diameter of no more than 12.2 meters (40 feet), so the rotorcraft can fly between buildings in urban combat. Raider-X will exceed FARA's threshold maximum speed of 335 KPH (205 MPH / 180 KT). Sikorsky is not say how fast it will fly, but say that the S-97 has exceeded 380 KPH (235 MPH / 205 KT), which was FARA's original target speed.
Raider-X is also powered by a T901 turboshaft, in the 2,250-skW (3,000-SHP) category, with the engine provided to all FARA bidders. The rotorcraft has two contra-rotating four-blade rotors and a pusher propulsor. The coaxial rotors generate lift only on the advancing sides, eliminating retreating-blade stall and enabling higher speed. At high speed, 90% of the engine power goes to the propulsor, according to Bill Fell, senior Sikorsky test pilot. The propulsor is uncoupled at low speed to reduce noise.
Raider-X closely resembles the S-97 prototype, with side-by-side seating. A large internal weapons bay is behind the cockpit. Internal carriage of missiles and drones -- which the Army collectively calls "air-launched effects (ALE)" -- is a FARA requirement; the FARA weapons bay is large to take future payloads into account. The S-97 prototype is being used to trial technologies for the Raider-X, including new rotor blades that cut down on drag and vibration. The Army competitive flyoff for FARA is planned for 2023, with the first unit to be equipped by 2028.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DRUG DISCOVERY DATABASE: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Vast Chemical Library Could Yield Trove Of New Medicines" by Robert F. Service, 7 February 2019), researchers have scanned a chemical database containing some 170 million molecules -- a hundred times bigger than earlier, similar databases -- to zero in on a handful of new compounds that could serve as starting points for new antibiotics and anti-psychotic medications.
To find drug molecule candidates, researchers use "virtual screening", in which a candidate molecule is evaluated to see how well it might bind to a protein or other biological target in the body. Researchers use software called "molecular docking programs" -- as well as other software -- to examine the thousands of orientations a molecule might take as it binds to its target. This is, of course, a computation-intensive process. The binders are then ranked, and the tightest ones synthesized so they can be tested experimentally.
There's no sense in asking for a molecule that is difficult to obtain, or to synthesize even when it can be obtained. In consequence, researchers have established collaborations with chemical supply companies that use a "building block" approach to generate a vast range of molecules on demand. As a significant example Enamine, a Ukrainian company in Kyiv, starts out with 70,000 small chemical building blocks that they can link to each another using 130 familiar chemical reactions. The company has a database of more than 700 million compounds that can be synthesized in small quantities on request. That's two orders of magnitude bigger than the libraries scanned by pharmaceutical companies.
In 2016, researchers led by Brian Shoichet -- a computational chemist at the University of California, San Francisco -- scanned Enamine's database, which at the time included 3 million molecules, for drug candidates. They pinpointed a potential opioid painkiller that might not have the addictive properties of today's opioid drugs. A biotech company called Epiodyne is now working to turn the candidate into a medicine.
More recently, Shoichet and his team have screened 170 million of Enamine's compounds against two targets:
Shoichet worried that searching through so many molecules would be worse than hunting for a needle in a haystack: "We were terrified as to how we were going to find the interesting molecules, spotting the signal in the noise."
As a preliminary test, the researchers first decided to hunt through the database for the hundreds of molecules that were already known to bind to these targets. Using an array of 2000 computer processors, they found that the top-scoring molecules included known inhibitors and their structural cousins. Enamine researchers then came up with hundreds of new high-scoring compounds that hadn't previously been identified, with some suggesting very high effectiveness.
The sheer size of the Enamine database, containing a large component of molecules that nobody had ever investigated before, effectively guaranteed the discovery of promising new candidates, Shoichet saying: "I feel like a door has finally popped open."
Laurie Nadler -- a program officer for the National Institute of Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland, which helped sponsor the research -- believes the ever-growing database will also help a wide range of basic biology researchers. As they come across more protein targets, they'll be able to scan the publicly-available Enamine database for compounds that could nail those targets. She says: "The large size of the virtual library and the fact it is publicly available will have a large impact on pharmacology and drug discovery."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* VENTILATOR CHALLENGE: The global coronavirus-19 pandemic has killed tens of thousands to date, and is certain to kill many more. It's a respiratory infection, killing by destroying the function of the lungs. That has led to a desperate scramble for medical ventilators, which artificially support breathing. Although modern ventilators are high-tech, with sensing and digital controls, according to an article from TIME.com ("The Surprisingly Long History of the Ventilator" by Alejandro de la Garza, 7 April 2020), the technology has actually been available for a century.
The first formal use of artificial ventilation was in the late 18th century, when the Royal Humane Society of England began supporting the use of bellows, like to those used by blacksmiths at the time, to force air into patients. It was a wretchedly crude scheme, but it did demonstrate one of the basic principles of artificial ventilation: forcing air into the lungs, or "positive-pressure ventilation".
In the 1830s, a Scots doctor devised a different scheme, "negative-pressure ventilation", in which the torso of, say, a victim of drowning was placed in an airtight box that was evacuated, with the victim's lungs expanding in the partial vacuum. This was a popular approach to artificial ventilation in the 19th century; one Viennese doctor devised an infant resuscitator box that was used successfully, while the American inventor Alexander Graham Bell developed a workable "vacuum jacket".
The most famous of the early ventilation devices was the "iron lung", a metal cylinder used for negative-pressure ventilation. It became famous, or infamous, with the rise of polio, which caused paralysis, including paralysis of the respiratory system. The disease struck every summer, killing thousands of children. In the 1950s, polio vaccines effectively eliminated polio as a threat, and the iron lung became history.
There was still a need for ventilators, but improvements in positive-pressure systems rendered the iron lung obsolete. The Pulmotor, an early device for positive pressure ventilation, was introduced in 1907 by German businessman and inventor Johann Heinrich Draeger and his son Bernhard. The Pulmotor was a transportable device that pushed oxygen through a face mask until a set pressure was reached in the lungs, at which point it switched to exhalation. Another early 20th century device, the "rhythmic inflation apparatus" pumped air into a sealed box around a patient's head.
During World War II, breathing devices were developed to allow aircrew to survive while flying at high altitudes. That technology led in the postwar period to medical ventilators, a prominent example being the "Bird Mark 7 Respirator" -- developed in the mid-1950s by Forrest Bird, a former US Army Air Forces pilot who had worked on aviation breathing apparatus and anti-gee-force suits. Some call it the first modern medical respirator.
Since then, there have been many refinements of the technology, including digital control systems. At least as important has been a better understanding of how to use ventilators.
For example, one such study in 2000 altered traditional notions about how much air should be forced into patients' lungs in each breath, or "tidal volume". The paper demonstrated significantly higher survival rates when physicians lowered the volume of air their machines were producing. There should be no more air than necessary; figuring out how much was necessary took some work. In severe cases, patients must be given "invasive ventilation", in which an endotracheal or tracheotomy tube is inserted to permit them to breathe. It's a last resort; it requires that a patient be sedated, in part to suppress the gag reflex from the tube.
The COVID-19 pandemic has driven the development of a new generation of ventilators, focused on low cost and rapid production, using new technologies such as 3D printing. However, even the most easily-built ventilator still demands production lead times, and there's a frantic race to build and deliver more ventilators. It can't be fast enough.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* INTERNET OF THINGS (1): As discussed by a survey from ECONOMIST.com ("Ubiquitous Computing", 12 September 2019), from about 1950, the computer revolutionized the world. In the first era, governments and big corporations acquired mainframe computers for administrative and research word; in the second era, the broader public acquired desktop computers, laptops, and then smartphones.
The third era is beginning now, with computers embedded in things that aren't computers themselves, from factories and toothbrushes to pacemakers and beehives. Vast numbers of chips will be integrated into buildings, cities, clothes, and human bodies. Processors have, of course, been integrated into a wide range of devices, from toys to smart munitions, for decades -- but for the most part, they didn't communicate with each other. Now they are adding a new level to the internet, an "internet of things (IoT)".
Consider the possibilities:
At a higher level, the flows of data, if monitored and assessed, will show exactly how the world works. Martin Garner -- of CCS Insight, a firm of analysts -- compares the IoT with the electric power grid. The rise of the electrical power grid has provided businesses and consumers with an enabling technology that they can put to endless different uses. The IoT will do much the same for information flows that the power grid did for electricity.
Industry observers project huge growth in IoT. Bain & Company, a management consultancy, estimated total spending on it will reach $520 billion USD by 2021; while McKinsey, another consultancy, believes the economic impact of IoT will be over $10 trillion a year by 2025. Arm, the chip-design firm behind the low-cost low-power Arm processor suggests there may be a trillion such devices by 2035. That would mean well over a hundred processors for every human on the planet.
Again, processors have been embedded in a wide range of devices for decades, but computing power has become ever cheaper. The price of computation today is roughly one hundred-millionth what it was in the 1970s; the number-crunching possible with a kilowatt-hour of electricity grew roughly a hundred-billion-fold from 1950 to 2010. A cheap smartphone has more processing power than a supercomputer of the 1970s.
Smartphones also carry sensors, such as arrays of cameras and accelerometers; the cost of sensors is also falling at a rapid clip. On top of that, add the falling cost of communications. In 1860, sending a ten-word telegram from New York to New Orleans cost $2.70 USD, about $84 USD in today's money. Connection speeds of tens of megabits per second can now be had for a few tens of dollars a month. People can now access websites and send emails all over the world.
Connectivity is growing as well. The International Telecommunications Union, a trade body, estimates that over half of the world's population had internet access in 2018, up from less than a quarter ten years earlier. A growing global internet also implies the need to cope with and comprehend internet traffic. Artificial intelligence can sort through and assess the tremendous volumes of data, with cloud-computing data centers providing the processing horsepower.
The big tech players are rushing in, with giants such as Microsoft, Dell, Intel and Huawei offering to help industries computerize by supplying the infrastructure to smarten up their factories, the sensors to gather data, and the computing power to analyze what they collect. They are competing and co-operating with older industrial firms: Siemens, a German industrial giant, has been on an IoT acquisition spree, buying up companies specializing in everything from sensors to office automation. Consumer brands are scrambling, too: Whirlpool, the world's biggest maker of home appliances, already offers smart dishwashers that can be controlled remotely by a smartphone app that also scans food barcodes and conveys cooking instructions to an oven.
IoT does present challenges; if connected computing power is everywhere, it potentially means universal surveillance, and certainly means a target-rich environment for hackers. However, nobody sees such obstacles as show-stoppers. [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (99): The Supreme Court's decision in BROWN partially overturned PLESSY V. FERGUSON by the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause to declare that the concept of "separate but equal" notion was unconstitutional for American public schools and educational facilities. Although Topeka's school segregation was not onerous in itself, Warren, writing in the decision, noted that:
BEGIN QUOTE:
To separate [black children] from others of similar age and qualifications solely because of their race generates a feeling of inferiority as to their status in the community that may affect their hearts and minds in a way unlikely to ever be undone.
... We conclude that in the field of public education the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
END QUOTE
The Topeka school district agreeably moved to integrate its schools. The decision in BROWN applied to the states, representing the "incorporation" of the 14th Amendment into domains of the Constitution. The decision on BOLLING V. SHARPE, which was issued at the same time, considered school segregation in the District of Columbia, under direct Federal Control. SCOTUS also judged that school segregation was unconstitutional in Washington DC.
The 14th Amendment wasn't directly relevant in that decision, since it only applies to the states -- with the Court instead basing the decision on the Due Process clause of the 5th Amendment, stating that "discrimination may be so unjustifiable as to be violative of due process." That legal reasoning has had its critics, but nobody has legally established since that time that school segregation is okay after all.
However, it wasn't for lack of objection to school desegregation; the Deep South was appalled by the decision, some hysterically calling it a "second Pearl Harbor". Earl Warren became an object of hatred, with calls for his impeachment, Warren being accused of judicial over-reach -- though in reality, it was the disingenuous "separate but equal" concept that was the judicial perversion of the 14th Amendment.
In any case, BROWN set off what became known as a "Massive Resistance" movement, set up by Virginia Senator Harry Byrd, to resist school integration. The state of Arkansas went so far as to amend its state constitution to hobble school integration, and passed a law to relieve children from compulsory attendance at integrated schools. The city of Little Rock and its school board went ahead with desegregation, in the face of resistance from the state government.
It came to a head in September 1957, when nine black students tried to enter Little Rock Central High School. In a grand over-reaction, Arkansas Governor Orval Faubus ordered the Arkansas National Guard to block their entry -- with photos of a line of soldiers confronting a clutch of black kids making front-page news. President Eisenhower talked with Faubus, but the governor was unmoved; as a result, at the request of the municipal government of Little Rock, the US Army 101st Airborne Division was mobilized, and sent to Little Rock to enforce integration.
The black troops of the 101st were left behind, at the outset, to prevent from inflaming the situation. Eisenhower then took control of the Arkansas National Guard, and ordered them to enforce integration as well. Ironically, in early 1958, the school board of Little Rock, citing all the chaos due to resistance against school integration, filed suit in the Federal court system to delay implementation of their integration plan. Under the case of COOPER V. AARON, SCOTUS unanimously rejected the suit.
The decision noted that the school board was acting in good faith, and it was the actions of the state government that were the problem -- with the effect of telling the state governments that the Massive Resistance campaign was against Federal law, and the states were not going to subvert Federal law. Nullification was not going to come back. The resistance didn't cease, but it became subtler, and only slowly died out. Today, school integration is widely accepted, if imperfectly implemented.
The irony of the groundbreaking efforts in civil rights by the Warren Court was that Eisenhower wasn't all that enthusiastic about them. Once, at a White House dinner, the president told Warren: "These [southern whites] are not bad people. All they are concerned about is to see that their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big overgrown Negroes."
Nonetheless, as demonstrated in Little Rock in 1957, Eisenhower firmly backed up the court's decisions. He also signed into law the "Civil Rights Act of 1957", which focused on protecting the voting rights of black Americans. It was followed up by the "Civil Rights Act of 1960", which addressed some defects in the 1957 act. In reality, the two bills were ineffectual, their only real importance being that they were the first national civil rights legislation since 1875. Those in Congress who pushed through the bill -- notably Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ), a Texas Democrat and Senate majority leader -- did so on the basis that getting people to agree on a principle was a big step towards getting them to make serious agreements in practice. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for March included:
-- 07 MAR 20 / SPACEX DRAGON CRS 20 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0450 UTC (previous day local time + 5), carrying the 20th operational "Dragon" cargo capsule to the International Space Station (ISS). CRS 20 was the last flight of the first-generation Dragon spacecraft, with the cargo version of the upgraded Dragon 2 spacecraft slated to take over in 2021. This was the third flight of this particular capsule.
The capsule carried 1,980 kilograms (4,360 pounds) of cargo to the ISS. The unpressurized section carried the "Bartolomeo" research platform, developed by Airbus Defense and Space and will be operated with the support of the European Space Agency (ESA). Bartolomeo was mounted on the forward-facing side of the European Columbus module, and offered thirteen payload sites to host external commercial scientific payloads and experiments. The flight also carried two one-unit CubeSats:
The Falcon 9 first stage soft-landed near Cape Canaveral.
-- 09 MAR 20 / BEIDOU 3 -- A Chinese Long March B booster was launched from Xichang at 1155 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Beidou 3" navigation satellite into geostationary orbit. It was the 46th Beidou satellite to be put into space. The satellite was built by the China Academy of Space Technology, part of China's government-owned aerospace industry, and was based on the DFH 3B satellite platform. The Beidou satellites also have a communications store-&-forward ability.
-- 16 MAR 20 / TJS 6 (FAILURE) -- A Long March 7A booster was launched at 1334 UTC (local time - 8) from the Chinese Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island to put the "TJS 6 (XJY 6)" satellite into orbit. This was the first flight of the Long March 7A variant, featuring a third stage to place spacecraft into high-energy orbits. The vehicle did not make orbit.
-- 16 MAR 20 / GLONASS M (COSMOS 2545) -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Plesetsk at 1828 UTC (local time - 4) to put a GLONASS M navigation satellite into orbit. It was assigned the series designation of "Cosmos 2545" and the GLONASS sequence number of 60.
-- 18 MAR 20 / STARLINK 5 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1216 UTC (local time + 4) to put 60 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). This was the sixth Starlink batch launch. This was the fifth flight of the first stage; it wasn't recovered. One of the Falcon 9's first-stage engines failed on ascent, but the payload made orbit anyway. Since the first stage had been re-used so many times, SpaceX only launched their own payload on it.
-- 21 MAR 20 / ONEWEB 3 -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Baikonur in Kazakhstan at 1706 UTC (local time - 3) to put 34 "OneWeb" low-orbit comsats into space. OneWeb plans to put a constellation of hundreds of comsats into near-polar low Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles).
-- 24 MAR 20 / YAOGAN 30 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from Xichang at 0343 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "Yaogan 30" payloads into orbit. The three satellites were part of China's "Yaogan 30" family. Five Yaogan 30 triplets have been launched on Long March 2C rockets from Xichang into the same type of orbit since late 2017. The trio of satellites launched Tuesday are designated as "Yaogan 30-06". They may be a "flying triangle" signals intelligence system, intended to track Western naval forces. The Yaogan 30 satellites were developed by the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
-- 26 MAR 20 / AEHF 6 -- An Atlas 5 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2018 UTC (local time + 4) to put the sixth and last "Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF)" military geostationary comsat into orbit. It featured encrypted / low probability of intercept communications along with jam resistance and resistance to electromagnetic pulse.
The satellite had a launch mass of 6,150 kilograms (13,565 pounds) and was based on the Lockheed Martin A2100 comsat bus. AEHF is planned to eventually replace the long-standing Milstar military comsat network, with one AEHF having more bandwidth than all five current Milstar spacecraft put together. The Atlas 5 booster was in the "551" configuration, with a 5-meter (16.4-foot) fairing, five solid rocket boosters, and an upper stage with a single Centaur engine.
AEHF 6 was the sixth satellite to be launched in the US Air Force's Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) program. This is a system of satellites dedicated to providing global survivable, secure, protected and jam-resistant communications to the armed forces of the United States and her allies.
AEHF augments the legacy Milstar communications system -- a network of satellites deployed from 1994 to 2003, with AEHF being backwards-compatible with the Milstar system. AEHF will eventually replace Milstar, as the Milstar satellites go out of service.
AEHF was originally conceived as a constellation of six satellites -- but that was scaled back to three, when the "Transformational Satellite (TSAT)" was proposed. When TSAT was canceled in 2010, additional AEHF satellites were reinstated -- bringing the constellation up to five, and then back to six satellites. The first three satellites were launched in August 2010, May 2012 and September 2012, all aboard Atlas V rockets.
The AEHF constellation adds new enhancements over its Milstar predecessors, including an extreme data rate (XDR) capability in addition to the legacy low data rate (LDR) and medium data rate (MDR). XDR became fully operational with the entry into service of the AEHF 4 (USA 288) satellite, launched in October 2018. It was followed by AEHF 5 in August 2019.
AEHF 4 completed the basic geostationary AEHF constellation, allowing signals to be routed around the world. XDR offers data transfer at speeds of up to 8.192 megabits per second -- up from maximums of 2.4 kilobits and 1.544 megabits per second with LDR and MDR respectively. A single AEHF satellite provides greater total bandwidth than the entire legacy Milstar constellation.
Several different types of communications antennas are carried aboard AEHF 6:
The MRCA and HRCA use phased-array antennas to direct their beams. An AEHF satellite provides enhanced global coverage compared to Milstar, operating up to 68 simultaneous worldwide beams.
Two cross-link antennae allow AEHF satellites to conduct bi-directional communications with other spacecraft in the AEHF and Milstar constellations. This allows signals to be routed across the constellation, passing directly between satellites without using a ground station as a relay. AEHF crosslinks have a bandwidth of 60 megabits per second, compared to the 10 megabits per second possible between Milstar satellites.
Along with the USA, users of the AEHF system include the United Kingdom, Canada and the Netherlands. AEHF, with its focus on secure tactical communications, complements other elements of the US defense comsat system:
The mission also flew "TDO 2", a 12-unit CubeSat that apparently released a set of optical calibration targets.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ENCRYPTION 2020 (2): In March 2019, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg published a memo describing his vision for a new privacy-focused social network. The plan was to gradually incorporate encryption in all of the company's different messaging apps. Zuckerberg believed the company was obligated to do so, writing: "People expect their private communications to be secure and to only be seen by the people they've sent them to -- not hackers, criminals, over-reaching governments, or even the people operating the services they're using."
The reaction of the authorities of the authorities was strongly negative, with Attorney General William Barr leading the charge. In a letter to Facebook, Barr -- in concert with officials in the United Kingdom and Australia -- wrote: "Companies should not deliberately design their systems to preclude any form of access to content, even for preventing or investigating the most serious crimes."
The letter added that encryption created threats "by severely eroding a company's ability to detect and respond to illegal content and activity, such as child sexual exploitation and abuse, terrorism, and foreign adversaries' attempts to undermine democratic values and institutions, preventing the prosecution of offenders and safeguarding of victims." Barr asked Zuckerberg to allow "law enforcement to obtain lawful access to content in a readable and usable format." The company did not comply.
Prominent Democrat politicians are supportive of end-to-end encryption. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) said that "the government can enforce the law and protect our security without trampling on Americans' privacy. Individuals have a Fourth Amendment right against warrantless searches and seizures, and that should not change in the digital era." Ex-South Bend, Indiana mayor Pete Buttigieg said: "End-to-end encryption should be the norm."
The controversy over encryption is intertwined with the controversy over Section 230 of the 1996 Communications Decency Act, which "protects websites from lawsuits if a user posts something illegal." In January 2020, one proposed bill titled "Eliminating Abusive & Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies Act (EARN IT)" sought to strip tech companies of their Section 230 protections if they didn't comply with new rules for finding and removing content related to child exploitation. The bill was not all that specific, but complying with it clearly meant limits on encryption.
Apple has taken the lead on the fight for strong encryption to date. While the company has been careful to give law enforcement its due deference, it has also firmly rejected a backdoor. As Apple CEO Tim Cook put it in an open letter at the beginning of the San Bernadino case, Apple is willing to cooperate with the authorities, for example turning over iCloud logs and other user data, but is not willing to unlock device encryption, Cook writing: "Up to this point, we have done everything that is both within our power and within the law to help [the FBI]. But now the US government has asked us for something we simply do not have, and something we consider too dangerous to create. They have asked us to build a backdoor to the iPhone."
For the most part, other tech companies have lined up behind Apple -- with Facebook subsidiary WhatsApp leading the way. In response to Barr's letter in 2019 Will Cathcart, head of WhatsApp, and Stan Chudnovsky, who works on Messenger, said the company was not prepared to build backdoors, writing: "Cybersecurity experts have repeatedly proven that when you weaken any part of an encrypted system, you weaken it for everyone, everywhere. It is simply impossible to create such a backdoor for one purpose and not expect others to try and open it."
However, many tech companies that rely on government contracts have had to tread softly. Microsoft supported Apple publicly during the San Bernardino case, but more recent statements from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella have been cautious. In January 2020, Nadella said he was opposed to backdoors, but was open to discussion: "We can't take hard positions on all sides."
Nadella has reason to believe that the discussion will be to Microsoft's benefit. In 2019, Representative Ted Lieu (D-CA) reintroduced a 2016 bill named the "Ensuring National Constitutional Rights for Your Private Telecommunications Act (ENCRYPT)", which would create a national standard for encrypted technology. Similarly, Representative Zoe Lofgren (D-CA), along with a bipartisan coalition, introduced the "Secure Data Act", which would stop Federal agencies from forcing tech companies to build backdoors into their products. However, the push back against strong encryption and Section 230 also remains evident.
ED: It should be noted that the Trump Administration's assault on Chinese tech vendor Huawei is predominantly based on the alleged security threat posed by Huawei's products. That puts the administration in the conflicted position of denouncing backdoors in Chinese technology, while pushing for backdoors in American technology. How could Apple sell iPhones overseas if everyone knew that the US government could listen in on them? Even US customers would object.
Britain has dealt with the Huawei "security threat" by setting up a lab, funded by Huawei, to give the company's products a good security "wire brushing". The UK lab can be seen as first step towards an international data security authority that validates everyone's products -- and by implication, an international treaty defining the data rights of the people of the world. One of the foundation stones of that is very likely a right to strong encryption. [END OF SERIES]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* MODELING PANDEMICS: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Mathematics Of Life & Death: How Disease Models Shape National Shutdowns & Other Pandemic Policies" by Martin Enserink & Kai Kupferschmidt, 25 March 2020), there is a science of pandemics, as demonstrated by the computer models that inform public decision-making.
At the outset of the pandemic, the British government implemented relatively soft measures for containment, as informed by a model developed at Imperial College London (ICL). The decision was made to avoid citywide lockdowns and school closures, the model predicting that they would only have a temporary effect, with the virus making a big comeback once the controls were lifted. However, the course of the pandemic didn't follow the model. The ICL group revised the model and in mid-March recommended more drastic measures. The UK government promptly ordered a strict lockdown. The Netherlands took a similar approach early on, and then had to invoke much more severe measures.
Epidemic modelers freely admit that their models don't always work well. They are fond of quoting statistician George Box, who once said: "All models are wrong, but some are useful." A popular expression also applies: "Predictions are always difficult, particularly of the future."
There's nothing controversial about the construction of the models. Jacco Wallinga -- a mathematician and the chief epidemic modeler at the Dutch National Institute for Public Health & the Environment (RIVM) -- uses well-established epidemic model that divides the Dutch population into four groups, or compartments in the field's lingo: healthy, sick, recovered, or dead. Equations determine how many people move between the compartments over time. Wallinga says: "The mathematical side is pretty textbook."
The problem is determining the values of variables in the model that reflect the characteristics of a pathogen, and of the affected population. For a pathogen that has been encountered before, that's not too bad a problem, but COVID-19 was something new, and the data was lacking. The modelers had to fall back on models of the virus itself, including assumptions about its behavior. One critical factor in the models is "R0", which gives the rate of growth of infections if no preventive measures are taken. By late January 2020, several groups had published similar estimates of R0 for COVID-19, with pandemic models constructed on that basis.
The models assumed an R0 of about two, and a latency time -- that is, how long it takes one person who was infected to infect others -- of three to six days. The models also factored in estimates of how many contacts people of different ages have at home, school, work, and during leisure. There was more uncertainty about the susceptibility of each age group to infection, and the rate at which people of various ages transmit the virus.
Compartment models assume the population is homogeneously mixed, a reasonable assumption for a small country like the Netherlands. Some other modeling groups don't use compartments, but simulate the day-to-day interactions of millions of individuals -- these models being better able to depict heterogeneous countries, such as the United States, or all of Europe. The World Health Organization (WHO) works to keep the simulation groups in touch with each other. Wallinga says: "That's a huge help in reducing discrepancies between the models that policymakers find difficult to handle."
Nonetheless, different teams can end up with models giving very different outcomes. There's also a lot of unknowns. In the absence of comprehensive testing for COVID-19, it is hard to say just how widespread COVID-19 really is. What if most of us shrug the virus off?
Adam Kucharski, a modeler at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, believes it is unlikely that there are large numbers of healthy carriers. Testing data from the DIAMOND PRINCESS -- a cruise ship docked in Yokohama, Japan, for 2 weeks that had a big COVID-19 outbreak -- and from repatriation flights and other sources did not show a large number of asymptomatic cases. Kucharski says: "We don't know at the moment -- is it 50% asymptomatic, or is it 20%, or 10%? I don't think the question is: Is it 50% asymptomatic or 99.5%?"
There's also a lot that models don't capture. They cannot anticipate, say, the introduction of better test, or of better antiviral treatments for patients. Ira Longini, a modeler at the University of Florida, says: "That's the nature of modeling: we put in what we know."
In any case, it's necessary to follow the progress of a pandemic to see if it really tracks the model. The models used early on in the UK and the Netherlands turned out to be too conservative, and so they had to be tweaked to reflect reality. That doesn't necessarily inspire a lot of confidence in decision-makers, but then what is the alternative?
Epidemiologist Caitlin Rivers, of the Johns Hopkins University Center for Health Security, who co-authored a report about the future of outbreak modeling in the United States, argues that decision-makers would feel more confident in the models if the modeling were more of a government function. Rivers argues for the creation of a National Infectious Disease Forecasting Center, similar to the National Weather Service. It would be the primary source of models in a crisis, and strengthen outbreak science in "peacetime." After all, even though everyone knows weather forecasting is tricky, nobody seriously disputes its necessity and utility.
Decision-makers also have to weigh the economic fallout of a pandemic, which Longini freely admits pandemic models don't take into consideration. He says that needs to change: "We should probably hook up with some economic modelers and try to factor that in." Since protests against quarantine measures are often based on economics, it would be useful to know if they make the economics better or worse. Given the devastation caused by a pandemic running out of control, it's a good bet they'll look worse.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS (17): As discussed by yet another article from ECONOMIST.com ("Baby Amazons Take On Their American Role Model" 2 August 2019), giant online retailer Amazon.com is clearly attempting to conquer the world -- more or less in a nice sort of way, but the ambition is obvious. However, as it turns out, much smaller local online retailers can, and do, successfully take on Amazon.
Welcome to Lagos, Nigeria, and the wig shop run by Delight Ogualu and her husband. They were getting customers coming through the door, but then decided to widen their vision -- and began to sell wigs on Jumia, Nigeria's answer to Amazon. Now they sell about 60% of their wigs online. Jumia provides a sales forum for over 80,000 African firms, while also handling logistics and payment. The company currently has over 5,000 employees, and has been on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) since the spring of 2019.
Jumia is not an isolated example -- e-commerce firms have been popping up across the emerging world for over a decade:
These "baby Amazons" are modeled on Amazon itself, but they aren't in its league. Ignoring business in North America, over a quarter-trillion dollars of goods changed hands on Amazon in 2018 -- compared to somewhat over a tenth that on the biggest emerging-world firms. Their total revenues, about $6 billion USD, are also about a tenth of that of Amazon's. However, while Amazon's international e-commerce has, as of late, been growing at about 12% a year, sales by the baby Amazons are growing by the high double digits, even triple digits, with Shopee's sales booming by well over 300% in a recent quarter. They have no problem finding investors.
While Amazon was able to leverage off the US Postal Service and credit-card networks early on, the baby Amazons had to build their own such services, or otherwise get along as best they could. Now better infrastructure is in place, and they're growing much more rapidly. These companies share four characteristics. First, they could handle tricky local markets. Walmart pulled out of Brazil in 2018, when it became clear that, in large part because of Brazil's long-standing protectionism, the giant American retailer could not easily access global supply chains it relies on to offer low prices elsewhere. Foreign firms couldn't deal with the red tape related to tax, shipping, and payments; they couldn't compete with local firms on a level basis. There's also the fact that some, if not all, developing countries have corrupt officials demanding bribes; international firms can get into trouble paying bribes, but it's not such a problem for local companies.
Of course, that points to the fact that local firms do have difficulties of their own -- most significantly the fact that they had to devise their own payment and delivery systems. This is the second shared feature. Many of Jumia's customers don't have an address, so delivery men phone ahead for directions. The company works with over 100 logistics providers and, in cities like Lagos, runs its own last-mile fleet of motorbikes and lorries. In Indonesia -- a booming market of 265 million people living on 15,000 islands -- there are few good roads or, as in Nigeria, precise addresses. Shopee and its regional rivals, Tokopedia and Lazeda, recruit local shopkeepers who know the area to direct deliveries to the right recipients.
Jumia, Souq (an Emirati firm bought by Amazon in 2017), and MercadoLibre have all built their own sophisticated payment networks. MercadoLibre's has turned into a fully fledged money-management system, including payments to friends, investment options and small loans.
Third, the baby Amazons tend not to hold and sell merchandise themselves. Some 40% of Amazon's sales come from products it stocks, not from third parties. In the case of MercadoLibre and Shopee, that number is close to zero. The baby Amazons focus their resources on payment and delivery systems, and are generally happy to offer a marketplace to retailers. In addition, regulators in developing countries take a dimmer view of anticompetitive behavior than their equivalents in America and Europe. India's competition authority recently ordered Flipkart to stop selling wares in its marketplace, since it could undercut third-party sellers.
Fourth, the baby Amazons aren't making much money at the moment; in fact, some are burning through cash at a great rate, pouring money in on growth. Investors aren't hard to find. Eghosa Omoigui of Echovc Partners, a venture capital fund in Lagos, believes that e-commerce has a big future in Africa -- but for now, "you have to keep shoving coal into the engine."
Investors are willing to bet big, since the prospects for growth are so obvious. In the market that Jumia services, less than 1% of retail sales take place online; analytical firm McKinsey believes that will grow, in Africa's biggest economies, to 10% in 2025. Jeremy Hodara, a co-founder of Jumia, says Africa's consumer class is growing rapidly, that customers come to Jumia and say: "Look, it's the Africa Cup of Nations [football tournament], and my country's qualified. I need my first TV."
In 2018, Shopee had 50 million active buyers, over twice as many as in 2017, Marcel Motta of Euromonitor International estimates that e-commerce's share of total retail in Brazil will double to 10% by 2023. In Russia, annual online sales of physical goods could reach $44 billion USD in 2023, from $24 billion in 2019. Having set up online retail systems in difficult markets, the baby Amazons are poised to offer other online services as well -- for example, MercadoLibre's foray into online finance. They're all banking big on the future, with every good reason to believe it will pay off. [END OF SERIES]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (98): In terms of domestic policy, arguably the most important thing that President Eisenhower did was to elevate Earl Warren to the seat of chief justice of SCOTUS. Warren was another Progressive Republican, who had run as Tom Dewey's vice-presidential candidate in 1948. Working with Justices William Brennan and Hugo Black, the Supreme Court acquired a level of social clout it had never really had before.`
Under Warren, the Supreme Court finally embraced the Reconstruction amendments, setting in motion a process that would, in the next decade, overthrow segregation. Warren saw that segregation was unconscionable in the context of the Cold War, that it undermined the claim of the USA to be the leader of the "Free World". In a 1954 speech to the American Bar Association, Warren said:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Our American system like all others is on trial both at home and abroad ... the extent to which we maintain the spirit of our Constitution with its Bill of Rights, will in the long run do more to make it both secure and the object of adulation than the number of hydrogen bombs we stockpile.
END QUOTE
In effect, the Supreme Court finally embraced the Reconstruction amendments, setting in motion a process that would, in the next decade, overthrow segregation -- beginning with the landmark 1954 ruling in BROWN V. BOARD OF EDUCATION OF TOPEKA.
In 1951, a group of black parents in Topeka, Kansas, brought a class-action suit against the Topeka Board of Education, against the policy of school segregation. The parents were not allowed to enroll their children in the nearest schools, instead being required to bus them to all-black schools; the suit claimed the segregation policy was unconstitutional. The lead in the group was Oliver Brown, a welder who was studying to be a minister, who spoke for his daughter, Linda.
A three-judge panel of the US District Court for the District of Kansas judged against the Browns, citing the unfortunate precedent of PLESSY V. FERGUSON. The Browns -- working through Thurgood Marshall, chief counsel of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) -- appealed to the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.
The BROWN case actually combined cases from four states, including Kansas, South Carolina, Virginia, and Delaware. A fifth case, BOLLING V. SHARPE, was from Washington DC, and accordingly had to be judged separately from the four state cases. All the cases were backed by the NAACP. The BROWN case was selected as the lead case, in part because Kansas wasn't in the South; SCOTUS didn't want to single out the South, in good part because segregation wasn't unknown in the North.
Nor was Topeka's segregation particularly troublesome; it was only the grade schools that were segregated, the black and white primary schools were roughly comparable in quality, and the city provided the busing for the students. It was the principle of segregation itself that was on trial.
In December 1952, the Justice Department filed a friend of the court brief in the case. The brief was unusual in its heavy emphasis on foreign-policy considerations of the Truman administration in a case ostensibly about domestic issues. Of the seven pages covering "the interest of the United States," five focused on the way school segregation hurt the United States in the Cold War competition for the friendship and allegiance of non-white peoples in countries then gaining independence from colonial rule. Attorney General James P. McGranery noted that:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The existence of discrimination against minority groups in the United States has an adverse effect upon our relations with other countries. Racial discrimination furnishes grist for the Communist propaganda mills.
END QUOTE
[TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: According to THEVERGE.com, Swedish furniture maker Ikea is introducing an automated ("robot") furniture system named "Rognan", developing in collaboration with US furniture startup Ori Living. Rognan is a big storage unit that can roll across a small room to divide it into dual living spaces. The storage unit contains a bed, desk, and a couch that are deployed as needed.
The automation scheme was developed by Ori; it uses Ikea's Platsa line of storable furniture, and leverages off of Ikea's Tradfri line of cabinet and wardrobe smart lighting. It is, of course, intended for people who live in small flats, and was to be introduced in Hong Kong and Japan during in 2020. Current circumstances suggest the introduction is on hold.
* As discussed by an article from GIZMODO.com ("MIT Researchers Designed this Robotic Worm to Burrow Into Human Brains" Andrew Liszewski, 28 August 2019), researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have developed a threadlike robot worm that can be guided by a controlled magnetic field to navigate the narrow and winding arterial pathways of the human brain. The ultimate goal is to develop a robot worm that can clear blockages and clots that contribute to strokes and aneurysms.
Currently, dealing with such blockages and clots requires a skilled surgeon to manually guide a thin wire through a patient's arteries up into a damaged brain vessel, followed by a catheter that can deliver treatments, or yank a clot. Not only is the procedure potentially damaging to the patient, the surgeon has to use a fluoroscope to guide the wire, meaning exposure to x-rays with every operation.
The MIT researchers based their design on water-based biocompatible hydrogels, and schemes to magnetically guide simple machines. They built the robot worm using:
The MIT researchers tested the robot worm by guiding it through a twisting path of small plastic rings, and then through a dummy brain model. They made another robot worm with a fiber-optic core that could be used to channel a laser, and have also considered payload systems, for example to deliver drugs. One particular challenge is building a "smart" magnetic guidance system, with some similarities to an MRI machine, to allow a surgeon to conveniently guide the worm.
* As discussed by an article from CNN.com ("Car Camera System Could Help Keep Drivers Awake At The Wheel" by Nell Lewis, 27 December 2019), the concept of using cameras in cars to watch drivers, lest they fall asleep or are distracted, has been around for a few years -- being discussed here in 2017. The European Commission has now revealed new auto safety standards, to go into effect in 2022, to include cameras to keep watch on drivers.
Bosch, the German engineering and technology company, is working to provide such technology, with camera systems driven by machine learning, trained on recordings of real driving situations. They make a judgement on driver fatigue, depending on eyelid position and eye-blink rate. The system will, if needed, generate an alarm -- the exact nature of which to be defined by the auto-maker -- or by reducing the speed of the vehicle. The system will also monitor passengers with a front and rear camera, ensuring seatbelts are fastened.
There are worries that drivers may depend too much on such aids and push themselves more than they should, and there are also concerns about privacy. Bosch officials say data collected by its system would only be evaluated by software in the car itself, and will neither be saved nor passed onto Bosch or third parties. If the automaker wanted to store any kind of data from the driver, they would have to receive consent first.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ENCRYPTION 2020 (1): As discussed by an article from THEVERGE.com ("What 2020 Means For Encryption" by Zoe Schiffer, 3 March 2020), the rise of the internet has led to a massive data security problem, leading in turn to the rise of encryption systems to protect data.
Encryption has proven controversial, however. When businesses are presented with a lawful warrant for a particular user's information, businesses are legally required to turn over all the information they have. If the information is encrypted, however, that doesn't do the authorities much good. Some businesses do hold copies of user keys and decrypt data when served with a warrant -- for example Gmail, Facebook pages, and most cloud storage providers. However, messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, and Signal do not, and the device encryption used by iOS similarly makes the phone's local data inaccessible. Apple has been particularly insistent on protecting user data, the philosophy being that the company itself should not be able to decrypt user data.
In 2014, James Comey, then the director of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), wrote a memo outlining his concerns about encryption, which read in part: "Those charged with protecting our people aren't always able to access the evidence we need to prosecute crime and prevent terrorism even with lawful authority. My question is, at what cost?"
A warrant is worthless if the authorities can't decrypt the information they've seized. Comey wrote that encryption "will have very serious consequences for law enforcement and national security agencies at all levels. Sophisticated criminals will come to count on these means of evading detection. It's the equivalent of a closet that can't be opened. A safe that can't be cracked. And my question is, at what cost?"
Comey's question hasn't gone away. In 2019, Attorney General William Barr and Senator Lindsey Graham argued that strong encryption makes it difficult to figure out when messaging platforms are used to coordinate crimes. If a large-scale terrorist attack is carried out, the government needs to react quickly.
In 2016, in the wake of a terrorist attack in San Bernadino CA, the FBI asked Apple to hand over information from iPhone of the suspect, who had been killed in the attack. At first Apple complied, giving the FBI data from the suspect's iCloud backup; then the FBI demanded that Apple help break into the iPhone itself. Apple bluntly refused, a company spokesperson saying: "We believed it was wrong and would set a dangerous precedent."
Apple's attitude was that if the authorities could crack user data, then so could the Black Hats, undermining user security overall. Besides, there was no stopping strong encryption, since anyone could download a free encrypted app like Signal. Attempting to suppress Signal and the like would simply force the apps underground; people would still obtain them, but would never be confident that they could be trusted, once again undermining user security. In addition, would the government dare use encryption that was known to be compromised? Or reserve strong encryption for itself? Apple no more felt the government could demand the company crack user data than demand a manufacturer of safes have a way to break into them. That would render the safe almost worthless.
The FBI legally pressured Apple to help, citing the All Writs Act of 1789. However, the case evaporated when the FBI was able to crack the iPhone using an anonymous third-party company. There was nothing much in the iPhone, but the issue didn't go away. In 2019, after another terrorist attack at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, the government again asked for Apple's assistance unlocking the iPhone of the suspect, who was again killed. Apple did not comply, but it did hand over data from the suspect's iCloud backups. President Donald Trump angrily tweeted: "We are helping Apple all of the time on TRADE and so many other issues, and yet they refuse to unlock phones used by killers, drug dealers and other violent criminal elements."
However, it was revealed a week later that Apple, under pressure from the FBI, had dropped plans to allow users to encrypt their iCloud backups. Apple had bent -- if not broken, the company having always conceded a need to compromise, within hard limits, on encryption. [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* CHINA UNDER STRESS: As discussed by an article from BLOOMBERG.com ("Coronavirus Stress-Tests China's Fragile Financial System" by Tracy Alloway & Bei Hu, 12 February 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic that began in China has stressed a country that was already in trouble before the pandemic began.
China underwent a remarkable boom for decades, but in recent years, it's been slowing down. Although China now appears to be recovering, COVID-19 gave the system a serious blow when it was already on the back foot. Pessimists said the crisis might lead to the long-awaited collapse of the country's over-indebted financial markets. Chinese regulators have managed to stave off such a disaster so far, even in the face of the debt crises that struck the US and Europe in 2008 and 2012. The collapse doesn't appear imminent, but longtime China watchers have had a more nuanced debate about the country's economic strength and the political stability of the ruling Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Even before COVID-19 began its rampage, China's economy seemed to be on increasingly shaky foundations. In part because of the trade war with the USA, gross domestic product officially grew 6.1% in 2019 -- which would be great for most developed nations, but reflected China's weakest expansion in almost three decades. Defaults in China's domestic bond market, once infrequent, hit more than 150 in 2019, surpassing 2018's record. In 2018 regulators seized Baoshang Bank, the first state-led take-over of a lender in China in about two decades.
Beijing has been trying to slow down corporate borrowing, but COVID-19 has put such activities on the back burner, as the government tries to cope with widespread lockdowns and business halts. The government's attempts to cope with the crisis have not inspired public confidence. George Magnus -- an economist at the University of Oxford's China Center and author of RED FLAGS: WHY XI'S CHINA IS IN JEOPARDY -- says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The controversy surrounding response and management speaks directly to a governance system which is good at large and draconian top-down action, but weak and brittle when it comes to prevention and people being allowed to take responsibility. You can map this governance conundrum onto the wider economy, including debt management, and see how flawed the whole system is.
END QUOTE
Xi's government was particularly embarrassed by the death of Dr. Li Wenliang, who tried to sound the alarm about COVID-19 but was sanctioned by the authorities, then died from the virus himself. The story couldn't be suppressed, and aggravated distrust of the government by Chinese citizens. It has done little to quiet the unrest in unruly Hong Kong. The failings of the Chinese government in response to the crisis have also proven convenient to the Trump Administration, as it tries to divert attention from its own failings.
David Webb -- a Hong Kong-based shareholder activist and publisher of WEBB-SITE.com -- says that the death of Dr. Li "demonstrates how oppression of free speech can damage the economy." He adds that if the authorities had listened to the doctor, they might have been able to contain the outbreak sooner, "and China wouldn't have suffered weeks of lost output."
The Chinese government has no alternative but to provide economic stimulus. The central bank has slashed money-market lending rates, and banks have been told to extend the terms of loans. Dan Wang -- a Beijing-based analyst at research firm Gavekal Dragonomics -- suggests that stimulus may not work as well as it once did: "Financial conditions are more fragile in terms of leverage and growth momentum. China doesn't need as much infrastructure as before, and it doesn't want to cut rates too much." Cutting rates has the effect of increasing leverage, which the government had been trying to limit.
According to Michael Pettis -- a finance professor at Peking University -- China won't suffer a "debt crisis as long as the financial system remains closed, and the regulator is all-powerful." That's not entirely good news: "Debt problems can be resolved in the form of a crisis or in the form of many, many years of stagnation. The latter tends to be in the long term much worse than the former."
For now, China seems to have dodged the bullet. The government may nonetheless be injured, and facing lingering problems down the road. Authoritarian societies tend to be brittle; they may persist in their heavy-handed ways for decades -- and then abruptly stumble into a crisis that breaks them.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GLOBAL SUPPLY CHAINS (16): An article from ECONOMIST.com ("Time's Up", 24 October 2019), surveyed the uncertain state of the financial system that supports global commerce.
The giant container ships that carry goods across the seas are highly visible; the underlying financial system that supports them is much more poorly understood. Four-fifths of global trade transactions, worth $15 trillion USD a year, are based on specialized loans or guarantees. Trade credit is nothing new, having long been a function of banks, and still trying to address the fundamental disconnect in trade: exporters want to be paid at time of sale, so they can finance more production, while importers would prefer to settle when they get the goods and can start selling them.
That leads to inevitable distrust between exporters and importers. Trade finance exists to bridge the disconnect. Typically, the importer's bank, once presented with a shipping bill or other proof, issues a "letter of credit" to the exporter to guarantee payment. With the letter in hand, the exporter can obtain credit from a bank, and then repay the lender when the ultimate customer pays up. The loans are short-term, usually less than four months, and of necessity, they are safe. Annual default rates on letters of credit averaged 0.08% of transactions in 2008 to 2017, compared with 1.6% for corporate lending. Such defaults as happen do little damage.
The process involves great numbers of small deals on an ongoing basis. It's not all that lucrative, but it's steady. Four-fifths of global transactions are processed by a mere ten banks, mostly in London, New York, or Singapore. Borrowers rarely change banks. Graduates entering the finance sector have no interest in stodgy trade finance, preferring instead to work on initial public offerings or multi-billion mergers. A senior banker says: "It's very incestuous."
As a result, trade finance is backwards and hidebound. From banks and insurers to warehouses and customs, processing trade credit involves the handling of 36 original documents and 240 copies, on average; each of the 27 parties involved spends hours, maybe days, in fact-finding and form-filling. Less than a quarter of banks use electronic documentation. Standards and terminology vary across the industry, and even within different offices in banks.
Since the financial crisis of 2007:2008, regulators have made banks set aside more capital against risky or exotic lending. As a result, trade finance is penalized, since it often serves small firms in poor countries. Watchdogs also want lenders to stop dodgy flows of cash, and the cost of scrutinizing customers makes small trade-finance deals unprofitable. Most lenders end up competing for big clients. Low interest rates have also crushed margins, which have shrunk by a third since 2014.
Banks have understandably fallen back. The top ten earned 19% of their transaction-banking revenue from trade finance in 2018, down from 27% in 2010, according to Coalition, a data provider. The Asian Development Bank (ADB) estimates that $1.5 trillion USD of financing proposals were rejected in 2018. Over half the banks cited "country risk" as a reason; almost half of applications by small firms got NO for an answer. As supply chains move from China to poorer countries, rejections are likely to increase. That even hurts the big multinationals, since many rely on small suppliers dumped by banks.
Fortunately, things are changing, in three ways:
There are threats to change as well. The economic boom is over, for the time being, with the slowdown bogging down global trade. The big financiers are in a position to weather the storm, but smaller players are more vulnerable. Competition for a shrinking volume of deals could force down interest rates, damping enthusiasm for the task. Trade protectionism, particularly the trade war between the US and China, and shift towards shorter and faster supply chains, is resulting in commerce becoming fragmented in regional blocs, further limiting trade finance. What happens to trade finance over the next decade remains to be seen. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (97): Domestically, Eisenhower did go along with the Red Scare of the era, though he took a dim view of Senator Joseph McCarthy and his demagoguery. He had the White House ignore McCarthy and refuse to deal with him any more than necessary. In 1954, McCarthy was discredited for his attacks on the US Army, leading to censure by the Senate, and rendering him a political nonentity. The next year McCarthy, attempting to regain lost ground, threatened to issue subpoenas to White House personnel. Eisenhower was furious, issuing an order to restrict access to his people:
BEGIN QUOTE:
It is essential to efficient and effective administration that employees of the Executive Branch be in a position to be completely candid in advising with each other on official matters ... it is not in the public interest that any of their conversations or communications, or any documents or reproductions, concerning such advice be disclosed.
END QUOTE
This level of confidentiality was unprecedented in the White House, establishing a tradition of what became known as "executive privilege". It was not a completely new idea -- both Thomas Jefferson and Andrew Jackson had invoked executive privilege -- but Eisenhower went further with it than before. It would become a significant issue in later administrations. McCarthy, in any case, went nowhere but to the bottle, with his alcoholism contributing to his death two years later.
As an adjunct to the "Red Scare" of the era, there was also a "Lavender Scare", in which lesbians and gays were targeted. Eisenhower was cooperative, signing "Executive Order 10450". The government attitude of the era was that "homosexual" was synonymous with "Communist", that LGBT were a national security risk because they were easily blackmailed and intimidated. That was true -- but only in a circular sense, because the prejudice against them was so strong. During Eisenhower's presidency thousands of lesbian and gay applicants were barred from Federal employment, and over 5,000 Federal employees were fired under suspicions of being homosexual.
There was very little controversy over the Lavender purges of the era, prejudice being so universal as to seem natural, remaining unquestioned. Eisenhower was not otherwise a political troglodyte, describing himself as a "progressive conservative", following in the footsteps of Teddy Roosevelt, being firmly committed to continuation of New Deal programs, particularly Social Security -- expanding its scope, extending benefits to ten million workers. He created the Department of Health, Education & Welfare to supervise his progressive agenda, and completed the integration of the armed services. He wrote in a private letter:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Should any party attempt to abolish social security and eliminate labor laws and farm programs, you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course, that believes you can do these things ... Their number is negligible, and they are stupid.
END QUOTE
He was genial, but he also had a clear understanding of his own importance, a fierce temper, and limited sufferance of fools. In the mid-term elections of 1954, the GOP was in danger of losing its majority in both houses of Congress, with Eisenhower blaming the decline on the Rightist Republicans. He commented privately:
BEGIN QUOTE:
I have just one purpose ... and that is to build up a strong progressive Republican Party in this country. If the right wing wants a fight, they are going to get it ... before I end up, either this Republican Party will reflect progressivism or I won't be with them any more.
END QUOTE
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed by an article from NATURE.com ("Should Scientists Infect Healthy People With The Coronavirus To Test Vaccines?" by Ewen Callaway, 26 March 2020), over the longer run, the only way to get out from under the shadow cast over the planet by the coronavirus COVID-19 is to develop a vaccine against it. Even a vaccine that's half effective would be enough to damp out the "chain reaction" of victims passing it on to more victims.
Few think that it is impossible to develop a vaccine against COVID-17 -- the problem is that developing and particularly testing a vaccine is time-consuming. Attempting to do so while a pandemic is in progress is like trying to design and produce a fire extinguisher while a fire is burning down the city. Nobody can commit to production of a vaccine until it's been put through extensive trials, which would ultimately involve testing the vaccine on large numbers of people in a population, and then seeing how much better they do against a disease than their neighbors in the same population.
One approach to speeding up testing is to deliberately infecting a handful of healthy volunteers with the virus to rapidly test a vaccine. Such a "human challenge" study would involve exposing, say, 100 healthy young people to the virus, and seeing how many of those vaccinate resist the infection. Given the fact that unvaccinated subjects would be certain to get the disease if deliberately infected, there would be no need for an unvaccinated control group. We already know what would happen to them.
Nir Eyal -- director of the Center for Population-Level Bioethics at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, who is proposing such a trial -- said in an interview with NATURE that the scheme, though it sounds shocking at first hearing, isn't that unusual:
BEGIN QUOTE:
We do human-challenge studies for less deadly diseases quite frequently. For example, for influenza, typhoid, cholera and malaria. There are some historical precedents for exposure to very deadly viruses. The thing that demarcates the design that we propose from some of these historical instances is that we feel there is a way to make these trials surprisingly safe.
END QUOTE
The subjects would be selected among the young and healthy, who are at the least risk. It would also be preferable to pick them from a population that is at risk of being infected by COVID-19 anyway. Those who fell sick would be immediately given high-quality treatment -- and treatments are likely to improve, further reducing risk. Eyal said:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The dramatic-sounding exposure of healthy volunteers to the virus is therefore adding less net risk than you might think. It might even be curiously safer for some to join the study than to await probable infection, and then try to rely on the general health-care system.
END QUOTE
Of course, volunteers would have to be carefully briefed on what they were getting into, so they could give informed consent. Eyal had no objections to paying the subjects, but that might open the door to criticisms of exploiting the poor. Eyal concluded:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Do I believe that countries will jump on board? Judging from the response we are getting from various stakeholders since publishing the preprint, I believe that many will.
END QUOTE
Even if this measure is taken, we won't see a vaccine until well into 2021 at earliest. Until then, we'll have to rely on testing, quarantine, and a search for improved treatments. We'll probably get off lockdown after a while, but nobody's going to get on a jetliner without being tested first.
* On a related note, in late March a pandemic-modeling group at University College London released the results of a simulation that showed over 40 million people would have died had governments not taken social-distancing measures. The model that if governments implement these measures when fatalities reach 2 per week for each million of population, the total deaths will be a little less than 2 million. If they wait until it's 16 per week, the total deaths will be over 10 million.
There's been much discussion of wearing masks, which have become mandatory in some countries. There is considerable debate over whether they do any good, and concerns that mask production should be reserved for healthcare workers, who need them more and can use them properly. The professionals say that masks won't do much to prevent the public from picking up COVID-19, but they could do something to prevent somebody who's infected from passing it on.
One KK Cheng, a public health expert at the University of Birmingham in the UK, is in favor of face masks, with some qualifications. Cheng says: "Just imagine you're traveling in the New York [City] subway on a busy morning. If everyone wears a mask, I'm sure that it would reduce the transmission. Don't ask me to show you a clinical trial that it works."
* As discussed by an article from BBC.com ("Earthworms' Place On Earth Mapped" by Helen Briggs, 24 October 2019), the first global atlas of earthworms has been compiled, based on surveys at 7,000 sites in 56 countries. Earthworms are a vital environmental asset, playing a vital role in maintaining soils, but their global distribution and action are poorly understood.
The survey was conducted by a team of 141 researchers from 35 countries, with the investigation sampling the number and species of earthworms, and the correlation of that data with factors such as soil pH and the climate. The group's report suggests, unsurprisingly, that temperature and rainfall can shape patterns of earthworms in the soil, implying that climate change might have "serious implications" for both earthworms and the services they provide to nature.
Earthworms are abundant in soil; a single square meter can have a population of 150. They are also very diverse, with at least 6,000 known species, ranging from tiny to up to 3 meters (10 feet) in length. The study found that the number of species and the abundance of earthworms is lower in the tropics than in the temperate regions. For example, the soils of southern England are an earthworm paradise, with some of the highest diversity and abundances of earthworms in the world.
Dr. Helen Phillips -- of the German Center for Integrative Biodiversity Research in Leipzig -- says that we rely on earthworms for increasing crop yields and aerating the soil, but they tend to be overlooked:
BEGIN QUOTE:
As children, probably the vast majority of us held earthworms in our hands and probably weren't quite aware how significant they are in the environment and for the things that we rely upon. We should never stop looking at the above ground biodiversity, but we really shouldn't be overlooking what's beneath our feet as well.
END QUOTE
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ANOTHER MONTH: As discussed by an article from BLOOMBERG.com ("Health Scares Slow the Rollout of 5G Cell Towers in Europe" by Thomas Seal & Albertina Torsoli, 14 January 2020), there's been a lot of buzz over the past few years about the introduction of fast 5th-generation ("5G") cellphone technology -- one or two orders of magnitude faster than current cellphone tech. Alas, the rollout of 5G tech has run into an obstacle: people are scared of it, worried that it will cause cancers or other maladies.
Swiss communications provider Sunrise Communications AG has found setting up a 5G network in Switzerland troublesome, since many locales, including Geneva, have objected to setting up 5G towers. Yes, 5G does involve more broadcast power, but it still doesn't generate enough energy to do any real harm to the human body. Some experiments have shown high levels of electromagnetic radiation can cause cancers in rats -- but the levels are much higher than those generated by 5G towers, and regulatory authorities like the US Food & Drug Administration (FDA) have been unimpressed.
The International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection, which works with the World Health Organization on research and policy, agrees with the FDA. Commission Chairman Eric van Rongen, a radiobiologist, says: "There's no reason to be concerned" about the potential for 5G to raise the risk of cancer or other ailments.
There hasn't been much trouble over the matter in the USA so far, partly because the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is headed by Ajit Pai, who toes the Trump Administration line on de-regulation. That attitude may lead to trouble over the longer run, but for now resistance in the USA is scattered and inconsequential. Not so in Europe; the resistance varies from place to place, but it can be found from Bristol to Berlin.
Europe's biggest carrier, Deutsche Telekom AG, has had to modify its 5G program in areas where there's been pushback. In 2019, residents of the small Bavarian district of Graswang protested the company's plans to build a mast near their homes, in part because of health risks. Deutsche Telekom agreed to build the tower at a site that's farther away. In England, local governments including that of Glastonbury, are threatening to deny mast applications on health grounds, forcing providers to work around them.
Olat Swantee, previously CEO of Sunrise, says Swiss officials could help wireless carriers by providing reassurance to citizens -- but they haven't, so far. Swantee would like them to say: "This is fake news. Telecoms are applying normal laws. Birds are not falling from the sky because of 5G."
* Of course, in the age of COVID-19, nobody's paying much attention to 5G, for the moment. The pandemic is the biggest US national crisis since 9-11 -- indeed, it's the biggest US national crisis since Pearl Harbor.
As far as my personal life goes, it's not so different from before. I normally spend most of my time at home writing, and that's what I'm doing now. COVID-19 has yet to ravage Loveland, Colorado, though it could happen any day. I guesstimate my changes of getting the disease as about 1 in 3, not great odds; and my chances of survival if I do, about 9 in 10 -- not great odds either, in consideration of the downside.
Loveland is in lockdown. I can get a hamburger at McDonald's, but only via the drive-through; the local library is not only closed, I can't even return books through the drop slot. In my last two trips to the supermarket, the shelves were increasingly barren. I should hope they start to fill back up over the next few weeks, though given the interruptions in transport and labor, there are likely to be shortages and price hikes. I wash my hands before I eat, and when I return from an outing, singing the "Looney Toons Theme" to keep time. At least, I try to, I keep forgetting to, but I'm getting better at remembering. Fortunately, Walmart is not running low on Ivory liquid soap in the large-size squirt bottle -- it's my favorite, a good balance between quality and cost.
The cops haven't hassled me for my morning walk yet, though I consider it possible they may, even though I'm almost the only person walking the streets in the dark of the morning. I actually do walk in the streets when I can, there being less there to trip over in the dark. Nobody's expecting things to let up until May at earliest. Infections and deaths continue to rise for the time being.
Nonetheless, there's some humor in the matter, at least to help keep up our spirits. The online satirical website THE ONION scored a hit, they don't always, with an article titled: "Violently Bored Americans Begin Looting Puzzle Stores" -- featuring people hauling off shopping carts loaded high with jigsaw puzzles. In response to reader comments about getting jigsaw puzzles, I replied I had an app that I could use to convert wallpaper images into jigsaw puzzles, the app allowing me to select the number of pieces and their elaboration. That seemed to get some interest; I told people numbers of such apps can be found cheap in any appstore, just check the reviews.
* I mentioned last month that, after making purchases with the new touchscreen system at a local McDonald's, I was interested in using mobile money. That ended up being a protracted and troublesome exercise.
Mobile money, in itself, turned out to be a dead end. The problem is that I don't have a phone subscription -- I don't have any phone service but a free Google Voice number, which works through a web page. If I tried I try to set up a credit card under Google Pay, it would balk at the Google Voice number. That failing, I found out that Google Pay can use Paypal. That's what I really wanted; all I needed was a wallet account for running up petty expenses, and not have to bother to balance my account against them.
Alas, that ran into the same obstacle: a Google Voice number doesn't work. OK, I decided, mobile money is a dead end for me. That was really a shrug; a debit card is about as convenient, maybe more so. How about a Paypal debit card, then? On investigation, I found that Paypal does offer debit cards. That got my hopes up, only to have them dashed: Only for business accounts.
Next idea: aren't there online-only banks that offer debit cards? I didn't know for sure, but I poked around and found Chime. It seemed perfect, targeted at younger clients who made small debit-card purchases. Alas, on trying to set up a Chime account -- and at two other online banks -- my applications were rejected. I wasn't told why, but I had a fair idea it was the Google Voice number. Since it's a disposable number, it tends to imply: scam.
Well then, why not an online account at a brick-&-mortar bank? After some searching, I found that Bank of Colorado (BOC) offers a free checking account with a debit card. I got online to set it up, and was moving along well -- until they asked me for a copy of my Social Security card. I couldn't find it; I think that I had my folks put it in their safe-deposit box, and never retrieved it.
I got online to get a copy of the card from the Social Security Administration, then realized I had an outdated email address logged with them. Since they need email to do validations, I had to update the email. The reply was that they would slow-mail me a security code to allow me to do it. Well OK, but that left me hanging with BOC. I asked if they'd take a Medicare card; they said NO, but added: "Why not just go to a local branch bank and get an account?"
Well, DUH. I looked up branch locations in Loveland, Colorado, and realized there was a branch office across the street from the McDonald's. DUH again, I knew it was there. Anyway, I went in and, after an amiable chat with a staffer, got an account, with a pretty cobalt-blue Colorado Rockies debit card. Bank of Colorado, it turns out, is the official bank of the Colorado Rockies baseball team.
Next issue was transferring money from my normal bank account to the BOC account, which took about a week. My regular bank had to validate the hookup to the BOC account, by depositing and then withdrawing two petty sums, then asking me what they were. That took about three business days; then I transferred $3,000 USD to the account, which also took about three days. That was a reasonable wait, though I was getting impatient. Anyway, now I have a wallet account -- and it turns out, at precisely the right time. Until we come out of quarantine lockdown, I'm not handling cash unless I have to.
* As a side effect of this petty adventure, I got insecure about my Google Voice phone number -- worrying that if I didn't have a backup phone number, I might lose it some day. I decided to track down another free internet phone number, with exploration leading me to the "TextFree" app.
TextFree -- previously "Pinger" -- is an ad-supported smartphone app that comes with a free internet phone number. It offers unlimited texting, and comes with 60 free call minutes; I can buy more minutes, or acquire a minute by watching an ad video. The only trick is that they will recycle the number if I don't send out a text for a month. No problem, twice a month I send a text from TextFree to Google Voice, and then the reverse. I'll also watch an ad video on TextFree to get a free call minute. Since I do all my calling on Google Voice, I don't make any voice calls on TextFree, but it's fun to pile up call minutes, and the vendor should get a bit of revenue from me anyway.
Along with this exercise, I finally got Google Voice working on my smartphone. I normally use it on my desktop, plugging in a USB phone handset to make calls. I bought a cheap bluetooth headset with an earphone and lip mike to use on the smartphone -- I find talking into a smartphone awkward -- and tinkered with the Android Google Voice app a bit. I'd had some problems getting it to work, but it was just my misunderstanding; once I figured out what to do, it was trivial. In short, now I have my wallet account and phone communications all straight, at least for the time being.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE