* 20 entries including: US Constitution (series), the 1% (series), Pentagon & green energy (series), digital medicine, early era of Solar System, reconstructing fossil history via supercomputer, & mRNA vaccines.
* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (139): On 30 March 1981, Ronald Reagan and his entourage were attacked by one John Hinckley JR, who fired a 0.22-caliber revolver at the group as they were leaving the Washington Hilton Hotel. Reagan was hit, as was his press secretary James Brady, Washington police officer Thomas Delahanty, and Secret Service Agent Tim McCarthy; other Secret Service agents tackled Hinckley, and subdued him. The injured were rushed to George Washington University Hospital -- where Reagan insisted on walking in, though he collapsed after entering. He was badly hurt, but he was released less than two weeks later.
McCarthy was released sooner, with no serious long-term harm; Delahanty suffered nerve damage that seriously impaired use of his left arm, forcing him to retire from the police force. Brady had been hit in the head, and suffered brain damage that left him in a wheelchair. Reagan believed that God had spared his life so that he might go on to fulfill a higher purpose; the irreverent suggested it might have been much better had God prevented the shooting in the first place. It is certainly true that the assassination attempt led to a skyrocketing of Reagan's popularity, reaching 73% of the public -- citizens were particularly impressed by the way Reagan walked into the hospital.
The assassination attempt had political consequences, one being from the fact that Hinckley was judged not guilty by reason of insanity, and committed to an institution. There was a loud public outcry over the insanity verdict, leading to the "Insanity Defense Reform Act of 1984". Before the act, the prosecution had to establish that a defendant was sane, with the switching the burden of proving insanity to the defense. It was not a major legal decision, because the insanity defense had been rare before that, and unsuccessful more often than not; it simply became even more rare and unworkable. Another consequence was that James Brady and his wife Sarah became prominent gun-control advocates.
In August 1981, the Professional Air Traffic Controllers (PATCO) union, of Federal air traffic controllers, went on strike -- which was a violation of Federal law. As authorized by the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act, Reagan declared that if the air traffic controllers didn't "report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated."
They didn't and were fired, with supervisors and military personnel performing air traffic control until new personnel could be trained. It was a formidable demonstration of strength by Reagan, and also an instructive act of union-breaking -- ironic, given that Reagan had been president of the Screen Actors' Guild.
Reagan was of course an enthusiastically pro-business president, one of his campaign platforms being "supply-side economics" AKA "trickle-down". The idea was, in effect, that if the rich weren't taxed so much, they'd create more wealth, economic activity, and jobs. The idea was embodied in the "Laffer curve", created by economist Arthur Laffer, who devised a simple graph that showed government revenue would be zero at 0% or 100% taxation, and maximized somewhere in between. As critics pointed out, the curve was much too simple-minded, since there was no unarguable way to calibrate exactly where "somewhere" was on the curve, and it accomplished nothing very useful in the debate over taxation.
In any case, it was not a new idea, comedian Will Rogers having said in 1932 that the Hoover Administration believed in putting money into the hands of the rich "in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy." Rogers explained that money actually trickled up: "Give it to the people on the bottom, and the people at the top will have it before night."
Supply-side was not an entirely bogus idea, since confiscatory taxation tended to stifle economic activity, and led to capital flight as the rich offshored their wealth. However, as presented, it was effectively an argument against progressive taxation, and for cutting public-assistance programs. It was still a popular idea, with criticisms of "Reaganomics" failing to gain much traction -- even though the notion that Reagan could cut taxes while dramatically raising defense spending was hard to swallow, while his determination to cut bureaucracy and get rid of regulations suggested an assault on responsible governance. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from JANES.com ("No 'Human-Out-Of-The-Loop' For Autonomous Weapons, Says New European Parliament Report" by Brooks Tigner, 11 December 2020), with the introduction of artificial intelligence (AI) into miltech, there's been discussion of just how much discretion an AI combat system should be allowed.
A report issued by the European Parliament now has stated that AI should not replace human decision-making in military operations, while any "human out of the loop" arrangement for lethal autonomous weapon systems (LAWS) must be banned globally. The report commented: "Laws should only be used as a last resort and be deemed lawful only if subject to human control, since it must be humans that decide between life and death."
The report urged the EU to take a leading role in promoting a "global framework" on the military use of AI. The report was authored by French Member of the European Parliament (MEP) Gilles Lebreton. In the report, Lebreton stated that AI systems should be designed to enable humans to correct or disable them in case of unforeseen behavior. He wrote:
BEGIN QUOTE:
All military uses of AI must be subject to human control so that a human has the opportunity to correct or halt them at any time, and to disable them in the event of unforeseen behaviour. ... [Decision-making] must be traceable, so that the human decision-maker can be identified and held responsible where necessary.
END QUOTE
* As discussed by an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Virgin Galactic Enlists Rolls-Royce For Mach 3 Passenger Aircraft Concept" by David Szondy, 3 August 2020), Richard Branson's aerospace venture Virgin Galactic has unveiled a concept for a delta-winged Mach 3 supersonic transport (SST). The aircraft has completed an initial review, and Virgin Galactic has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with engine maker Rolls-Royce to develop its powerplants.
The Mach 3 aircraft would carry nine to 19 passengers, operate at altitudes of above 18,000 meters (60,000 feet). It would have trans-oceanic range, and be able to operate at ordinary international airports. It would have a reconfigurable interior, for example to support various business and first class seating arrangements. Of course, it would feature the latest technology, with the design process addressing issues such as thermal management, maintenance, noise, emissions, and the economics of operating supersonic aircraft.
* As discussed by an article from JANES.com ("USMC Seeks New FINN Gateway Pod Prototype" by Carlo Munoz, 14 August 2020), the US Marine Corps is working on development of an airborne "Fused Integrated Naval Network (FINN)" radio data fusion pod to be carried on the MQ-9B Reaper drone. It is intended to link Marines in the field with US Navy data networks.
The USMC's Warfighting Laboratory's "Command, Control, Communications, Computers & Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR)" defines the pod as providing "a persistent [network] gateway that receives, bridges, translates, processes, and distributes information between other FINN nodes and the end-user nodes connected to them." The pod must be capable of cross-banding Internet Protocol (IP) and non-IP based data transfers, transmitted on current and legacy data link technologies.
It will also need to support beyond-line-of-sight (BLOS) communications, and support realtime data translations between users over a bewildering range of communications schemes, including Link-16; Tactical Targeting Network Technology (TTNT); Bandwidth Efficient Common Data Link (BE-CDL); the Intelligence Broadcast System (IBN); National Security Agency Type-1 certified TrellisWare Tactical Scalable MANET-X (TSM-X) waveforms; and the Next Generation Waveform (NGW) developed by the Office of Naval Research (ONR).
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* DIGITAL MEDICINE: As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("The Dawn Of Digital Medicine", 2 December 2020), one of the big effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been to drive the digital virtualization of global society. That was proceeding rapidly before the pandemic, but health care had been a laggard: about 70% of American hospitals still fax and post patient records. The CEO of a big hospital in Madrid said there was effectively no electronic record-sharing across Spain's regions when the first wave of COVID-19 washed over the country this spring.
COVID-19 changed all that. Confronted with lockdowns and chaos, doctors have embraced digital communication and analytics that have been common in other industries for years -- while patients are becoming more comfortable with remote and computer-assisted diagnosis and treatment. It's led to a mad rush of firms -- from health-app startups and hospitals to insurers, pharmacies and tech giants such as Amazon, Apple, and Google -- working to support the digital-medicine revolution.
Global management consulting giant McKinsey estimates that global digital-health revenues -- from telemedicine, online pharmacies, wearable devices and so on -- will grow from $350 billion USD in 2019 to $600 billion USD in 2024. America's $3.6-trillion USD health-care sector is in for a digital make-over, as is the rest of the world. Money, billions of dollars, is pouring in to support the revolution; the rate of investment is currently doubling every year, with startup companies achieving dizzying valuations.
Demand for digital medicine is surging. Doctolib, a French firm, says its video consultations in Europe have shot up in 2020 from 1,000 to 100,000 a day. Ping An Good Doctor, a hot Chinese online health portal run by a major Chinese insurer, is expanding to South-East Asia in a joint venture with Grab, a Singaporean ride-hailing giant.
As with many technology fads, there's some hype involved here. Analysts at Gartner, a research firm, downplay exaggerated claims made by proponents of individualized "precision medicine" and medical artificial intelligence (AI). However, it's clear that there's fire along with the smoke.
Technologies such as sensors, cloud-computing and data analytics are becoming medical-grade, just as the risk of contracting COVID-19 in hospitals and clinics makes their adoption look more appealing than ever. Specialist firms like Livongo and Onduo produce devices to monitor diabetes and other ailments continuously, and surveys show that more than half of US doctors prescribe such devices, with over two-thirds of those doctors happy with them. In June 2020 the Mayo Clinic, teamed with a startup named "Medically Home" to provide "hospital-level care", from infusions and imaging to rehabilitation, in patients' bedrooms. Patient interest is high as well, with a study showing use of telemedicine surging, thanks to the pandemic, by a factor of 30 in the first half of 2020.
One of the enabling factors for digital medicine is access to standardized medical records. Traditionally, healthcare providers have maintained their own electronic records systems; regulators are now pressing them to open up. The EU is promoting an electronic standard for medical records, while the Indian government has released a plan for a digital health identity with interoperability at its core. China is similarly working towards open systems, though there has been resistance from hospitals worried about losing patients to rivals. In the USA, Apple, noted for their determination to protect user privacy, is similarly pushing standards. Aneesh Chopra, a former White House technology chief, believes that the combination of such efforts and regulatory pressure promises "a new era" for digital medicine.
Does that mean Big Tech is going to move and take over? Amazon wants Alexa, its digital assistant, to be able -- with permission -- to medically analyze a user's cough, and late in 2020 established an online pharmacy. Alibaba, China's counterpart to Amazon, has an "AliHealth" branch that's booming, while Apple supports nearly 50,000 iPhone health apps.
However, Big Tech by itself will have trouble getting into digital medicine, earlier such efforts having gone nowhere. Shubham Singhal of McKinsey says that medicine is a regulatory minefield and is not a good fit for Big Tech's business models, notably the ad-supported sort. However, traditional healthcare providers are struggling to get into digital medicine, with many of the new digital medical services not proving very effective. Clearly, team-ups between the two sectors will benefit both. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a rapid acceleration of the virtualization of society, and so now, medicine is undergoing a digital revolution.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE ONE PERCENT (2) Another error identified by Auten and Splinter in inequality estimates was from the tax reforms passed under Ronald Reagan in 1986; in the analysis by Piketty & Saez, changes in top incomes from this reform account for about two-fifths of the total increase between 1962 and 2015 in the pre-tax incomes of the top 1%. Auten & Splinter believe this is an artifact of a change in accounting rules.
Reagan's tax reform created strong incentives for firms to operate as "pass-through" entities, where owners register profits as personal income on their tax returns, instead of sheltering that income inside anonymous corporations. Since those incentives did not exist before then, top-income shares from before 1987 are liable to be understated.
Piketty & Saez did factor in money inside corporations, but not necessarily in the appropriate years. As firms retain earnings instead of paying them out as dividends, their stock value rises. When stockholders sell those stocks, they then report the growth in value on that stock as capital gains on their tax returns. However, returns on capital gains are sensitive to timing and the health of the stock market. Auten & Splinter decided to ignore capital gains, and instead track the retained earnings of corporations from year to year. They allocated those earnings to individuals, both before and after the 1986 tax reform, in proportion to their share holdings. It should be noted that taxable capital gains are concentrated among the rich, but workers do own lots of shares through their tax-free retirement accounts.
New methodology introduced by Piketty, Saez, and their colleague Gabriel Zucman in a 2018 paper does rank by individuals, and replaces capital gains with retained corporate earnings -- but still finds the share of pre-tax income of the top 1% to have surged from about 12% in the early 1980s to 20% in 2014. They came to that conclusion by factoring in a large number of new income sources, attempting to trace and allocate every penny of GDP in order to obtain "distributional national accounts".
If that sounds tricky, it is; computing GDP is by no means straightforward, One problem is that two-fifths of GDP doesn't show up on individuals' tax returns. It is either deliberately left untaxed by government, or illegally omitted from tax returns by those who file them. Allocating this missing GDP to individuals is as much art as it is science, and to no surprise, there's a lot of dispute over it.
One component of the missing GDP is found in the pension system, as retirement savings grow, often inside tax-free accounts. Both sets of economists more or less agree that this income should be assigned to individuals, in proportion to the size of their pension savings. However, the actual distribution of those funds needs to be factored as well.
Auten & Splinter say that while attempting to do this, Piketty, Saez, & Zucman fumble the data -- identifying some flows as retirement income, when they are really existing savings being shifted, or "rolled over", in the jargon, between pension accounts. Zucman told THE ECONOMIST that he did not believe the work was in error, and added that he didn't accept any of these criticisms by Auten & Splinter.
Of course, there's also tax evasion -- but the two sets of economists disagree about who the evaders really are. Auten & Splinter rely on a prominent study of tax evasion, written by Andrew Johns of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Joel Slemrod of the University of Michigan in 2010. That paper uses the results of audits from the IRS to estimate tax evasion by income group. Piketty, Saez, & Zucman at one time alleged that these figures understate tax evasion by the rich, since the rich are generally smart enough to sneak under the radar of IRS audits. The three have changed their tune, however, saying their work is actually more consistent with that of Johns and Slemrod. Other economists have avoided this dispute, usually just saying that allocating missing income is tricky. Slemrod says he hasn't dug into the matter yet.
Auten and Splinter do agree that the share of the top 1% share pre-tax income has risen since the 1960s, though by less than other estimates. However, it is inequality in incomes after taxes and benefits that really highlights differences in living standards -- with Auten & Splinter finding little change from that angle. Some economists claim such figures are distorted by the inclusion of Medicaid, but it is hard to deny that free health care reduces inequality. The question is whether "non-cash benefits" should rightly count as income. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: It was obvious after the end of impeachment proceedings earlier in this month that the Donald Trump endgame was far from over. I was thinking that the next step might well be a Congressional investigation -- and indeed, in mid-month House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced just that. Apparently, she'd already mentioned the idea, but the announcement made it official.
I was expecting a study by a joint Congressional committee, but Pelosi more wisely settled on an independent commission, like the one that investigated the 9-11 attacks, to be established by an act of Congress. Russel Honore, a retired US Army general, is already leading an investigation of security failures in the 6 January attack on the Capitol Building, with a number of Capitol police in the doghouse as a result. Pelosi says she wants a highly diverse commission of qualified individuals. [ED: This exercise, to no surprise in hindsight, would encounter obstacles.]
Events are steadily rolling towards Trump's indictment. Some in the Republican Party appear to see it coming, with Nikki Haley and Mitch McConnell both distancing themselves from Trump. Haley seems to be trying to finesse the divorce; McConnell appears more realistic, knowing that cutting Trump loose will be painful, but preferable to following him down as he craters into the ground.
In parallel, the GOP is sinking into chaos. As evidence of such, Republicans in Congress are attempting to push through a bill to sideline municipal broadband internet service providers, while a number of Red states are forming a committee to deal with massive voter fraud -- that didn't happen in the 2020 election, meaning the real goal is voter suppression, "Jim Crow Lite".
The push to hobble municipal broadband is both absurd and doomed: it has no substantial support, and zero chance of going anywhere. The voter suppression committee is a greater threat, but just as preposterous. If anyone on the committee gets up in public and talks "voter fraud", the news media will contact the electoral commission in the committee member's state and ask: "Was there any substantial voter fraud in your state in the 2020 election?" With the answer: "No." It is plausible that Congress will consider a new Voting Rights Act to deal with this nonsense.
As a significant relevant note in current events, this last week Rush Limbaugh -- arguably the most prominent of the Rightist talk-show demagogues that emerged from the 1990s -- finally died of lung cancer at age 70. I'm not inclined to speak ill of the dead, but in response to declarations of what a genius Limbaugh was, I replied with the title of one of the "greatest short books": THE ENDURING WISDOM OF RUSH LIMBAUGH.
I do think that the death of Limbaugh is a marker in the decline of the Rightist media and its disinformation. Once it got to the point where it was impossible to tell the stream of lies from Kremlin anti-American propaganda, it was clear it had no future. We've been here before, with the radio propagandists of the 1930s -- most notably Father Charles Coughlin, the "Radio Priest", who peddled anti-Semitic and isolationist trash. After Pearl Harbor, the archbishop of his diocese told Coughlin to shut up, and he did. I commented on Twitter: "Limbaugh will go down in history along with Father Coughlin."
"Who?"
"Exactly."
* One of the big problems confronting the Biden Administration is Russia, which continues to make an international nuisance of itself. As discussed by an essay from ECONOMIST.com ("The European Union Must Face Up To The Real Russia", 13 February 2021), the European Union seems to be slow to wake up to just how big a nuisance Russia is.
The Baltic States and Poland warned Josep Borrell, the EU's foreign-policy chief, against visiting Moscow following the imprisonment of Alexei Navalny, Russia's leading opposition politician. Borrell went anyway, to have Sergey Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, publicly sneer to his face that the EU was an "unreliable partner". Borrell also found out that the Russian government had expelled diplomats from Germany, Poland, and Sweden for attending pro-Navalny rallies.
The EU is not of one mind on Russia, the country being seen as a potential or even essential ally; a business opportunity; or an existential threat, as per the view from Paris, Berlin, or Warsaw. The dove mindset is based on pragmatism, pessimism, and cynicism. France puts its appeasement down to the belief that Russia is too big to push around, and too close to ignore. French President Emmanuel Macron talks in terms of an effort taking decades, and doubts whether tough action would do much good. Whatever happened to legendary French assertiveness?
In Germany, economics is the prevailing factor. Nord Stream 2, a pipeline running from Russia to Germany, undermines the EU's wider strategy of trying to rely less on Russia for energy, but is nonetheless supported by the German government. Angela Merkel pushed through and stuck with sanctions against Russia over its actions in Ukraine -- but Merkel will be out of office soon, and her potential replacements aren't demonstrating as much spine. Even direct attacks, such as Russian hackers breaking into the Bundestag's computers in 2015, failed to disturb complacency. Spain and Italy, the EU's other big countries, are similarly meek when it comes to Russia.
The claim is that the EU can't really do anything about Russia, which is the EU selling itself short. It is a bloc of 450 million people with a GDP nine times larger than that of Russian, which has an economy slightly larger than Spain's, and smaller than Italy's. Collectively, EU countries spend almost three times as much as Russia on defense; France and Germany together spend roughly two-thirds more. The reality is that the EU tolerates Russia's trolling because of a lack of will to stand up to it.
Borrell's awkward trip to Moscow, in the wake of the arrest of Navalny, has made Russia's gangsterism impossible to successfully ignore. The Russian government tries to murder its opponents, promotes proxy wars, and hacks its neighbors; Russia doesn't want partnership with the EU, it wants to give the EU a poke in the eye. EU members in Eastern Europe knew that all along, and if the Americans didn't know it, they do now. Whether the rest of the EU gets the wake-up call remains to be seen.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (138): Having become a political star, in 1966 Ronald Reagan ran for governor of California, with his campaign focusing on two themes: "send the welfare bums back to work" and -- in reference to growing protests at the University of California in Berkeley -- "clean up the mess at Berkeley". Reagan defeated two-term governor Pat Brown, being sworn into office in early 1967. He started out in office by freezing government hiring and, in line with traditional conservatism, raised taxes to balance the budget. Also in that year he signed, after much waffling, an abortion-rights bill; he later said that, had he been more experienced in the office, he wouldn't have signed it. Reagan became a staunch anti-abortionist. Similarly, In 1969 Reagan signed the Family Law Act, the first no-fault divorce legislation in the United States. He would regret that as well.
He was also a believer in capital punishment, but the state legislature didn't give him his way in that, with only one execution while he was governor. On the other hand, he signed the Mulford Act, which limited the rights of California citizens to carry firearms in public. The Mulford Act was in response to the Black Panther activist group marching armed on the state capitol in Sacramento; it appears that, at the time, the Right was not as hypersensitive about limitations on firearms as later.
In 1968, Reagan flirted with the Republican presidential nomination, playing up a "Stop Nixon" movement -- but Nixon handily sped past him in the primary election. Reagan then focused on his work as governor. On 15 May 1969, he backed up his promise to "clean up the mess" at UC Berkeley by sending in the California Highway Patrol and other officers to suppress protests there. The protests escalated instead, with one person killed and many injured; Reagan sent in the National Guard, which remained for over two weeks, until the troubles finally subsided.
Reagan was re-elected as governor in 1970. He could have sought a third term in 1974, but he wanted to focus on his presidential ambitions. In 1976, he was defeated by Gerry Ford, who went on to be defeated by Jimmy Carter. The 1980 election gave Reagan his chance, since Carter's presidency was not popular. Reagan obtained the Republican nomination, with George Herbert Walker Bush, who represented the GOP establishment, as his vice-presidential pick.
In the campaign, Reagan called for lower taxes, less government, states' rights, and a strong defense -- saying that the Federal government had "overspent, overstimulated, and over-regulated." More significantly, Reagan appeared upbeat, positive, and determined, contrasting with Carter's distressed and overwhelmed demeanor. With the Iran hostage crisis ongoing, it was no surprise that Reagan slaughtered Carter at the polls, obtaining 50.7% of the vote to Carter's 41.0%, with independent John B. Anderson winning 6.6%. Reagan won by an electoral avalanche, receiving 489 electoral votes to Carter's 49. Republicans also won a majority of seats in the Senate for the first time since 1952, though Democrats retained control in the House of Representatives.
Reagan was almost 70 years old when he was sworn in, making him the oldest person to be elected president to that time. In his inaugural address, he set the tone of his administration, speaking of the country's economic problems: "In this present crisis, government is not the solution to our problems; government is the problem."
Another aspect of Reagan's policy, evident from early on in his administration, was a push to establish organized prayer in the public schools. In 1981, he even proposed a constitutional amendment that read:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Nothing in this Constitution shall be construed to prohibit individual or group prayer in public schools or other public institutions. No person shall be required by the United States or by any state to participate in prayer.
END QUOTE
As stated, it was a nonstarter, since the case of ENGEL V. VITALE had never "prohibited individual or group prayer" in the schools: it simply said the school authorities had to maintain a hands-off attitude towards it, and it was a strawman to claim it meant anything else. The amendment had nowhere to go, and went nowhere. In 1985, when SCOTUS judged against a "moment of silence" in public schools, Reagan admitted he was engaged in a "uphill battle", but he continued in his efforts: in 1987, he called for an end to the alleged "expulsion of God from America's classrooms." It was all, in the end, a performance -- Reagan was always an actor -- to please his fans, though there's little doubt he was sincere. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* Space launches for January included:
-- 08 JAN 21 / TURKSAT 5A -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0215 UTC (next day local time + 4) to put the "Turksat 5A" geostationary comsat into orbit for Turksat of Istanbul. The satellite was built by Airbus Defense & Space, with significant Turkish contributions.
It had a launch mass of about 3,400 kilograms (7,500 pounds), a payload of 42 Ku-band transponders, and a design life of 30 years, the long life being due to its efficient electric thrusters. It was placed in the geostationary slot at 31 degrees east longitude to provide television broadcast services over Turkey, the Middle East, Europe and Africa.
-- 17 JAN 21 / ELANA 20 CUBESATS -- The Virgin Orbit "Cosmic Girl" carrier aircraft, a modified Boeing 747 jetliner, operating out of the Mojave Air & Space Port in California, performed the second launch of the "LauncherOne" air-launched booster over the Pacific Ocean. The launch took place at 1938 UTC (local time + 5).
The flight was conducted under contract to NASA's Venture Class Launch Services Program, carrying 14 CubeSats to orbit for NASA field centers, US educational institutions and laboratories on the "ELaNa 20" rideshare mission -- "ElaNa" standing for "Educational Launch of Nanosatellites". The payloads included:
The first LauncherOne flight attempt in May 2020 failed shortly after drop, due to the rupture of a high-pressure liquid oxygen line in the first stage. This caused the RP-1 kerosene and liquid oxygen fueled NewtonThree engine to shut down just a few seconds into flight.
-- 19 JAN 21 / TIANTONG 1-03 -- A Chinese Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 1625 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Tiantong 1-03" geostationary mobile communications satellite into orbit.
The Tiantong network is designed for S-band mobile communications services. It was developed by the Chinese Academy of Space Technology and operated by China SatCom. It was based on the DFH4 satellite bus and had a launch mass of around 4,600 kilograms, with an expected life-time in orbit of 15 years. The first Tiantong 1 satellite was launched on 5 August 2015, while the second was launched on 12 November 2020. The network provides coverage across the Asia-Pacific region, the Middle East, and parts of Africa.
-- 20 JAN 21 / GMS-T -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 0726 UTC (local time - 13) to put a small communications satellite designated "GMS-T", intended for regulatory validation, built by OHB Group of Germany. The actual owner of the satellite was not announced; apparently it was a Chinese company. The flight was named "Another One Leaves the Crust."
-- 21 JAN 21 / STARLINK 16 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1302 UTC (local time + 5) 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 17th Starlink batch launch. The Falcon 9 first stage performed a soft landing, this being its eighth flight.
-- 14 JAN 17 / TRANSPORTER 1 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1500 UTC (local time + 5), on the "Transporter 1" mission, a rideshare flight to low-Earth orbit with 143 smallsats for commercial and government customers. The mission carried payloads from the United States, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Taiwan, and Turkey. The largest payloads were Starlink comsats, plus synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites from three different organizations:
The rest of the payloads were microsats and CubeSats, with some of them carried by two space tugs:
The smallsats included:
The Falcon 9 first stage soft-landed on the SpaceX drone recovery ship. It was its fifth flight.
-- 29 JAN 21 / YAOGAN 31 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from Xichang at 0447 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "Yaogan 31" payloads into orbit. It was a triplet of satellites and may have been a "flying triangle" naval signals intelligence payload.
Six previous Long March 4C missions in 2010, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2018 put similar naval surveillance satellites into space. All of those missions used a Long March 4C booster launched from Jiuquan to place satellite triplets into the same 1100-kilometer (680-mile) high orbit, inclined 63.4 degrees to the equator.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* ERA OF CHAOS: According to an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Cataclysmic Bashing From Giant Planets Occurred Early In Our Solar System's History" by Paul Voosen, 21 January 2020), it has long been assumed that the early history of our Solar System was chaotic. After the planets took shape from primordial gas and dust, resonant tugs between the giant planets altered their orbits, with the gravitational pull of the giants tossing Pluto and its many icy neighbors into the far-out Kuiper belt. The instability also scattered various moons and asteroids, while sending smaller bodies to pound the inner planets.
Impact scars on the Earth's Moon had convinced many planetary scientists that the peak of the cosmic storm was about 3.95 billion years ago, 650 million years after the formation of the Solar System. However, that timeline has a problem, since Mercury, Venus, Earth, and Mars would probably not have survived that a late assault. In the past few years, a new timeline has begun to emerge -- one that shifts the chaos to a much earlier time, less than 100 million years after the creation of the Solar System, possibly even as short as 10 million years.
Two decades ago, scientists determined that must have migrated to their positions in the modern Solar System. A group including Alessandro Morbidelli, a planetary scientist at the University of Cote d'Azur, assembled in Nice, France, for a year to work out the idea, creating what became known as the "Nice model". In its current form, after the giant planets formed out of the gas disk, Jupiter drew the other giants into a resonant chain of orbits in which -- for example -- Saturn orbited the Sun three times for two orbits of Jupiter. The surrounding gas acted as a damping agent, calming instabilities; but once the gas dissipated, the result was chaos.
Rocks collected from the Moon by Apollo astronauts suggested the chaos came late. The ages of the rocks implied that the Moon had suffered a cataclysmic assault, named the "Late Heavy Bombardment (LHB)", 3.95 billion years ago, sandwiched between hundreds of millions of years of quiet. That story has now evaporated; it turned out that many of the rock samples collected at different sites were debris from a single impact at that time. More precise dating of meteorites ejected from the Moon and found on Earth shows that the impacts responsible took place as long as 4.3 billion years ago.
Planetary dynamicists are undisturbed by the disappearance of the LHB. Their models had suggested a late catastrophe would have either destroyed the rocky planets of the inner solar system or disrupted their tidy, nearly circular orbits, flat with the Solar System's plane. In a recent paper, Morbidelli and his colleagues show that a late instability doesn't work. Their computer modeling indicates that, if a late instability had created the current Solar System, there would be a big gap would between Neptune and the encircling disk of planetary building blocks outside its orbit. That gap rarely shows up in planetary models.
The late constraint having been discarded, researchers are now considering how an earlier cataclysm could explain certain features of the Solar System. Over the past few years, Matthew Clement of the Carnegie Institution for Science and others have shown in computer simulations that an instability less than 10 million years after Solar System formation would allow the inner planets to come together undisturbed. An early instability would also scour away planet-forming material near Mars and the asteroid belt, explaining their puzzling low masses.
In a recent paper, they also show that they show that as Saturn moved away from Jupiter near the end of the instability, a final tug between them might have flung away asteroids in orbits far removed from the orbital plane, giving the asteroid belt its current compact structure. Clement says: "We kind of simplify the whole story. We can have one event explain all these problems."
Despite the fact that the LHB has gone away, there's still argument over the earlier instability -- mostly because there's not a lot of direct evidence for it, just suggestive computer models. There are different models that give the same general results. Clement also has yet to reconcile measurements of noble gases obtained from Comet 67P obtained by the Rosetta comet probe and the features of the Earth's atmosphere that suggest the early instability caused Earth to be bombarded with a hail of comets after it was solid, not before.
Nonetheless, a bombardment within the first 100 million years of the Solar System is plausible. David Nesvorny -- a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado -- believes the key may be found near Jupiter. Following Jupiter in its orbit is a binary asteroid named Patroclus-Menoetius. The icy composition of its two bodies indicates they formed in the far reaches of the Solar System, to end up in Jupiter's wake at the end of the instability. In a 2018 paper, Nesvorny and colleagues show that the binary couldn't have survived for 600 million years in the outer Solar System, since collisions would have ground it up in only 100 million years.
Solving the puzzle will require more observations, from asteroid samples, clusters of primordial asteroid families, or craters on the Moon and Mars. Morbidelli says: "Now, the question is, was it a few million years after, or 80 million years? Honestly, we don't know."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE ONE PERCENT (1) As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Measuring The 1%", 28 November 2019, in 1998 a French economist named Thomas Piketty, working with his long-term co-author Emmanuel Saez, published an innovative paper on income inequality. The paper leveraged off tax data, instead of survey data, as had been generally the tradition; it concluded that the richest "1%" had prospered, at the expense of the "99%".
In pitting the 1% off against the 99%, Piketty gave the modern Left a central meme in war on capitalism. He followed up the paper with the best-selling 2013 book CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, which argued that, under capitalism, growing inequality was the normal state of affairs. Piketty then went on to publish CAPITAL AND IDEOLOGY in 2019, which called for a 90% tax on wealth.
Piketty, respect him or not, has provoked a fundamental discussion in economics. His ideas of a wealth tax have been echoed by American Woke Left politicians like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren; he is taken seriously in an era when social mobility is on a decline, too many companies have excessive market power, and the price of housing is skyrocketing. However, economics is a tricky subject, and economists are prone to challenge each other's ideas -- so it isn't really surprising that some economists have suggested that inequality isn't rising as fast as Piketty claims, or if it's rising at all.
The underlying issue is that it is by no means easy to determine how much people earn in a year, or the value of what they own; and so it is hard to determine wealth inequality. Not everyone fills out government surveys, or does a very scrupulous job on them when they do; and there's a natural tendency for citizens to under-report income on tax returns. That's complicated by the fact that what constitutes "income" isn't necessarily easy to define. It is also not easy to value assets, such as unquoted shares or artwork. Researchers in academia, think-tanks, and government spend their time trying to resolve these questions.
The conventional wisdom that has emerged from this work consists of four ideas:
These assertions have always had their skeptics, but the skeptics have become more assertive as of late. Starting with the idea that the incomes of the top 1% have been climbing steadily, the assertion that they have surged has been long recognized to be dubious outside of the USA. In the UK, the share of after-tax income of the top 1% is about what it was in the mid-1990s. Thomas Blanchet of the Paris School of Economics and his colleagues believe that across Europe, the ratio of the post-tax income of the top 10% to that of the bottom 50% has changed very little since the mid-1990s.
In the USA, there does appear to be a stronger basis for the claim of the 1% getting richer faster, thanks to analyses of tax data by Piketty, Saez, and others. However, a recent paper by Gerald Auten and David Splinter -- economists at the Treasury and Congress's Joint Committee on Taxation, respectively -- came to a different conclusion, finding that, after adjusting for taxes and transfers, the income share of America's top 1% has hardly budged since the 1960s.
That said, the US Congressional Budget Office (CBO) also did an analysis that factored in taxes and transfers, with the result of showing that top incomes rose considerably in the 1980s and 1990s. Such figures are strongly affected by the growing provision of means-tested health insurance. In 1997, the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) expanded Federal funding for health insurance for many youngsters, while in 2014 Barack Obama's "ObamaCare" program expanded eligibility for Medicaid, America's health-insurance program for the poor, in most states. According to CBO data, CHIP and Medicaid and CHIP account for over 80% of the growth in real-terms transfers to poor households between 1979 and 2016.
Auten & Splinter were aware of the CBO's work, and say they have identified and corrected a series of errors in the best-known inequality estimates. For example, they adjust how people are ranked. Piketty and Saez's most influential paper, from 2003, focused on the top 1% of "tax units" -- typically meaning households that file their taxes on a single return. Auten & Splinter believe that introduces a bias. Marriage rates have fallen disproportionately among poorer Americans, which means the incomes of poorer workers end up being spread over a larger number of households, while the incomes of the top 1% of households remain pooled. Auten & Splinter ranked individuals instead. [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Joe Biden has got off to a running start in his presidency, signing executive orders (XO) at a record clip. That high level of activity is not mere eyewash, but it has to be taken with a grain of salt. XOs are a poor vehicle for substantive initiatives, since they may not have much political support, and can be countermanded easily by the next administration.
However, that's the key here, since Biden's XOs are heavily focused on cleaning up after the whimsical, erratic, and sometimes perverse decisions of the Trump Administration -- for example, with Biden taking straightforward actions like rejoining the World Health Organization and the Paris Agreement on climate change. More substantial efforts will, of course, demand more work.
In the meantime, the Biden Administration is doing their best to ignore the Trump dumpster fire. The impeachment trial went on in the Senate through the week, featuring a devastating presentation by the prosecution, and a laughable presentation by the defense. Of course, the Senate GOP voted to acquit Trump anyway. Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell declared, in the aftermath, that Trump was obviously guilty, but it would be unconstitutional to impeach him after he left office. Nonsense of course, since the Constitution gives Congress the "sole power of impeachment", and so Congress can devise the rules without fear of contradiction.
There was a silver lining in McConnell's declaration, since it seemed to give a green light to pursuing other actions against Trump. It appears the GOP will be happy with seeing Trump go down -- as long as they don't have anything to do with taking him down themselves. There was still much protest over the acquittal. In reality, it didn't make much difference -- merely increasing the pressure towards a split in the GOP, and certainly doing nothing to get Trump out of trouble, with investigations against him piling up.
Trump and the GOP are now in a slow-motion train wreck. They have no credibility, and they have nowhere to go but down. As one Stuart Stevens, a Republican campaign operator, said on Twitter:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Whenever Republicans want to stop Democrats from doing something they can legally do but Republicans don't like, they plead precedent. Whenever they are breaking precedent to do whatever they want, Republicans say: "You can't stop me. Elections have consequences."
END QUOTE
And then, the GOP has been overrun by the crazies. Moviemaker Rob Reiner, who has a popular Twitter feed, commented: "First McCarthy Era: A Communist under every bed. Second McCarthy Era: Jews with space lasers who drink baby's blood around every corner." This will not end well for the GOP.
* As discussed by an essay from ECONOMIST.com ("Relief Tinged With Scepticism", 30 January 2021), the removal of Donald Trump from the White House was generally welcomed among America's allies in Asia, with one South-East Asian diplomat saying: "We are all heaving a sigh of relief." The diplomat adds that, unfortunately: "The damage has been done."
President Trump took a wrecking ball to the multilateral trading regimes that have driven Asia's economic success. He demonized the World Trade Organization and took America out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a 12-country free-trade deal. As for security assistance, Trump threatened to tear down military alliances with South Korea and Japan if their governments did not give the US more money. The alliances have survived, but the implication was that America had no commitment to support its Asian allies.
They were also not happy with America's angry denunciations of China, heavily driven by Trump's secretary of state, Mike Pompeo. True, most Asian countries are suspicious of China, particularly over Chinese assertiveness against Taiwan and in the South China Sea. However, China is too large, close and, in economic terms, generally beneficial for demonization to be a practical option.
Joe Biden's administration is a breath of fresh air, with foreign policies being crafted by experienced professionals, including some who are regarded highly in the region -- notably Kurt Campbell, who helped engineer Barack Obama's "pivot" to Asia in 2012, and who is to be the primary architect of the new administration's "Indo-Pacific" strategy. Miyake Kunihiko, a foreign-policy adviser to the Japanese cabinet, says: "Washington is back."
There is skepticism. Barack Obama is widely seen as having been too reluctant to use American muscle, particularly during his second term; and the Trump Administration's "get tough with China" mindset was, while seen as heavy-handed, not entirely unwelcome -- particularly in Japan, whose leadership sees China as almost an avowed enemy.
However, although Joe Biden has already overturned many Trump Administration policies, he seems more or less happy with the status quo when it comes to China. The new White House spokesperson, Jen Psaki, said that competition with China is "a defining feature of the 21st century" -- adding that China "is engaged in conduct that hurts American workers, blunts our technological edge and threatens our alliances and our influence in international organizations."
The new defense secretary, retired Army General Lloyd Austin, went even farther, defining China as the biggest threat to the United States, and by implication our friends in Asia. Such comments cannot have gone unnoticed in Beijing. Austin has also made it clear to our Asian allies that the USA takes its security guarantees to them seriously. In addition, the Trump Administration's overt tilt towards Taiwan has proven convenient and is being maintained. Taiwan's de facto ambassador in Washington, Hsiao Bi-khim, was conspicuously invited to Biden's inauguration. Arms sales to the island will continue.
Of course, Trump Administration policy had many rough edges, with the Biden Administration's China policy smoothing them off. Jen Psaki and others keep talking about working with coalitions, partners, and allies -- a position entirely foreign to Trump. Biden and his people plan to consult with others in Asia before speaking to China. They want to engage much more with ASEAN, a ten-country South-East Asian club that Trump ignored. To counter Chinese assertiveness, America will look not only to the "Quad" of America, Australia, India, and Japan, but also try to strengthen the military capabilities of allies in South-East Asia.
Still, America's Asian allies remain uncertain of what to expect from the Biden Administration, recognizing that Biden is confronted with turmoil at home, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic. They are also not happy with Biden's protectionist rhetoric and skeptical attitude towards trade deals -- though it may well be the case that Biden simply wants to make sure trade deals can be sold to Congress and the American public, Trump having thoroughly weaponized them against the Democrats. America's intent to do better with friends in the region is clear; but of course, the question of capability remains.
* I've taken to promoting my ebooks on Twitter, posting ads in REPLIES to postings relevant to the ebooks. An article from SCIENCEMAG.org suggested, in the context of scientific papers, that it isn't wise to think that there will be much response to such postings:
BEGIN QUOTE:
A review of 1.1 million Twitter links to scholarly articles found that half drew no clicks, and an additional 22% attracted just one or two. Only about 10% of the links received more than 10 clicks, according to the 23 January study in the Journal of the Association for Information Science and Technology.
END QUOTE
Although the article presented that as discouraging, I found it encouraging instead. I can get clicks on half my ads? And over ten for a tenth of them? What's not to like? Since it's either post ads to Twitter or get no attention at all, posting ads is all for the good. Although I don't think I've sold any ebooks so far, it's not unusual to get LIKEs. I haven't seen any complaints that I'm spamming, either -- Twitter is an open environment, posting an ad in a REPLY is not usually seen as stepping on someone's turf. In addition, people tend to like ads, if they're for things they would like to buy, which does give me an incentive to be precise in my targeting.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (137): Ronald Reagan mustered out of the Army in late 1945 with the rank of captain, to return to starring in movies. From early on in Hollywood, he had been active in the Screen Actor's Guild (SAG). He was voted SAG president in 1947, to be re-elected five times, the last in 1959. He led the SAG in labor / management negotiations, and was influential in obtaining "residuals" -- payments to actors for re-runs of TV episodes and for movies played on TV. More controversially, he and his wife Jane Wyman informed the FBI of actors suspected to be Communist sympathizers, and testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Reagan was not entirely comfortable with the inquisition, however, asking the FBI: "Do they [HUAC] expect us to constitute ourselves as a little FBI of our own and determine just who is a Commie and who isn't?" When HUAC asked him if he were aware of Communist agitation in the SAG, he replied: "Sir ... I must say that that is hearsay."
Ronald Reagan and Jane Wyman got divorced in 1949, it seems due to political differences: Wyman was a Republican, Reagan was at the time a New Deal Democrat, who idolized FDR. Wyman showed no lingering animosity over the divorce, voting for Reagan later. He married actress Nancy Davis in 1952. They had two children, including Patti -- born only eight months later -- and Ron JR -- born in 1958.
During the 1950s, Ron SR starred in fewer movies, migrating towards TV roles instead. He became host of GENERAL ELECTRIC THEATER, a popular series of weekly dramas -- few if any connections between stories from week to week -- which ran from 1953 to 1962. The show raised Reagan's public profile, and also wired him into General Electric's corporate culture, with Reagan often visiting GE plants and giving speeches. He became close to Lemuel Boulware, a senior GE executive, who was a staunch traditional conservative, standing for free markets, anti-Communism, limited government, and low taxes. He converted Reagan to Republicanism. That led to Reagan finally quitting the GE THEATER job, since it stipulated he not engage in political activities.
Reagan's last acting role was on the TV series DEATH VALLEY DAYS in 1964:1965. During the 1964 presidential campaign, Reagan came on the political scene by becoming a leading spokesman for Barry Goldwater. He was particularly noted for a speech titled "A Time for Choosing", delivered on 27 October 1964:
BEGIN QUOTE:
The Founding Fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing ... You and I are told we must choose between a Left or Right, but I suggest there is no such thing as a Left or Right. There is only an up or down. Up to man's age-old dream -- the maximum of individual freedom consistent with order -- or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism.
END QUOTE
Reagan liked to say that he didn't leave the Democratic Party, it "left me". However, comparing the struggle between Goldwater and LBJ to that between freedom and totalitarianism suggested that, somewhere along the line, Reagan had taken a sharp Right turn, with an enhanced appreciation of his interests as one of the rich and famous. Earlier, he had publicly warned that Medicare would mean the end of freedom in America. These were not comments that seemed consistent with anyone who had ever been a sincere Democrat. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed by an article from ABCNEWS.com ("UC San Diego Introduces Vending Machines For COVID-19 Tests, 6 January 2021), the COVID-19 pandemic, troublesome as it is, has also generated a lot of ingenuity -- one piece of evidence being vending machines introduced at the University of California at San Diego (UCSD) to provide COVID-19 test kits.
The school administration has been energetic in dealing with the virus, establishing norms on the basis of proven methods, such as enforcing mask-wearing, social distancing, and frequent testing -- with the infection rate of the roughly 10,000 students who live on campus kept under 10%. When the Thanksgiving / Christmas holidays approached, school officials got to brainstorming as to what they could do to safeguard their students. One big result were vending machines to distribute test kits.
Instead of having to make an appointment with a nurse for a test, students can get a kit from a vending machine, perform the test, then return the kit to a dropbox. The results are emailed to the students. Sophomore Citlaly Magana told reporters her last test was "like my 20th time since I've been here. I'm not lying. We get tested every week."
Tests are required for students as they return to campus for the spring semester -- the first within 24 hours of arrival, then five and 10 days later, Scioscia explained. Students who live on campus are then required to get tested weekly or face disciplinary action. Along with sticks, carrots: if a student gets tested 10 straight weeks, the student receives a $50 USD gift card to the basic needs hub on campus.
* A review of the new Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra camera phone from GIZMODO.com (22 January 2021) started off on a highly positive note with the title: "The Most Maxed Out Phone for the Money". That contrasted with the Galaxy S20 Ultra introduced last year, which was widely regarded as leaving something to be desired -- particularly relative to its $1,400 USD price tag. OK, the S21 Ultra is not cheap at $1,200 USD, but that price point is moving in the right direction -- and Samsung has got things much more right this time around.
Cosmetically, the S21 Ultra is slick, with a redesigned metal rear camera housing, and Gorilla Glass on both sides. The 17.25-centimeter (6.8-inch) display has an impressive resolution of 3200 x 1440 with technicolor AMOLED pixels, plus a hole-punch for the 40-megapixel (!) selfie camera. It has a dynamically variable refresh rate that can get up to 120 Hz, for the best gaming experience -- but that can be cut down to 10 Hz to save battery power. The display will automatically sync to the frame rate of videos. The screen also features an enlarged fingerprint sensor.
US models of the S21 Ultra feature a Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 chip -- with multicores and AI processing capability, 5G control being built into the chip -- along with 12GB of RAM and 128GB of base storage. Sadly, there's no microSD flash memory expansion slot. However, the rear camera array is no disappointment, featuring:
The array also includes a laser autofocus sensor that provides crisp focus. With an improved Night Mode, the S21 Ultra's night shots are leading-edge. Other new photo modes have been added as well. Finally, the S21 Ultra has an oversized 5 ampere-hour batter that can keep it running for over 16 hours.
ED: Some reviews have placed the S21 line as superior to the iPhone 12. Yeah, this is the phone I want to buy. It sounds like everything I want -- and 128GB of flash memory is all I could use, so the lack of a microSD slot isn't an issue. I'm not going to buy it right away, however, even though I have the pocket money. Since I'm not traveling these days, there's no urgency to get it, and I'll pick up an unlocked renewed phone in late summer for less money. I can tinker with my new Xiamoi Redmi 9 Pro camera phone in the meantime.
* As discussed by an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Smart Bricks Store Energy In The Walls Themselves" by Michael Irving, 11 August 2020), researchers have now developed bricks that can not only be used to build walls, but also work as supercapacitors to store electrical energy.
A team of scientists at Washington University in Saint Louis MO took ordinary red bricks, then coated them with a conductive polymer named PEDOT -- which is made up of nanofibers that infiltrate into the porous bricks. With the coating, a brick became a supercapacitor. In tests, the team showed that a brick could charge to 3 volts in 10 seconds, and then light up a green LED for 10 minutes. It even worked underwater. The scheme is cheap and simple.
The energy bricks could of course be used to build walls, sealed off by a coat of epoxy. Supercapacitors charge up quickly and can be charged / discharged a large number of times, with little to no degradation in performance. The bricks could be used as storage for home solar or other renewable energy sources.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* PROBING THE PAST BY SUPERCOMPUTER: As discussed by an article from NATURE.com ("Supercomputer Scours Fossil Record For Earth's Hidden Extinctions" by Ewen Callaway, 16 January 2020), paleontologists have traditionally sought to unravel the past history of the Earth from the fossil record and dating techniques. That yields a fuzzy view of the past, in that the fossil record is incomplete, and dating techniques become less exact the farther back in time they probe.
Now they're getting help from supercomputers. Using China's Tianhe II, the fourth most powerful supercomputer on Earth, a team of mostly Chinese researchers mined a database of more than 11,000 fossil species that lived from around 250 million to 540 million years ago. The analysis yielded a history of life during this period, the early Palaeozoic era, that narrowed down the rise and fall of species during diversifications and mass extinctions to within about 26,000 years. Such a detailed view will help researchers identify the causes of mass extinctions -- such as the event at the end of the Permian period, some 252 million years ago, that wiped out more than 95% of marine species -- as well as understand less dramatic species die-offs and rebounds that have been obscured because of gaps in the fossil record.
Most organisms in Earth's history didn't leave fossils, and scientists have only uncovered a tiny fraction of those that did. That makes it hard to tell whether changes in the fossil record mark real shifts, such as mass extinctions, or are simply caused by a lack of fossil finds. In the 1960s, paleontologists began analyzing the fossil record systematically, revealing multiple mass extinctions and periods during which life flourished.
However, these and later efforts could usually only pinpoint biodiversity changes to within about ten million years. Increasing the number of fossils in a study would help, but as the number of fossils in a study increased, so did the burden of data analysis. To break the impasse, a team led by paleontologist Fan Junxuan at Nanjing University in China created and analyzed a database of fossil marine invertebrate species that had been found in more than 3,000 layers of rock, -- mostly from China, but representing geology across the planet during the early Palaeozoic.
The analysis determined when individual species had emerged and gone extinct. The program exploited the fact that species were usually found in multiple rock formations -- each spanning hundreds of thousands to millions of years -- and used this data to place upper and lower limits on the period in which the species actually existed. That showed for how long, and in what order, all 11,000 species had existed. The analysis took the supercomputer about seven million processor hours.
Using this approach, the team was able to learn extra details about well-documented events, such as the end-Permian extinction, and the Cambrian explosion in animal diversity around 540 million years ago. For example, the analysis showed that species diversity declined in the 80,000 years leading up to the end-Permian mass extinction, which itself occurred over around 60,000 years.
The findings also cast doubt on the existence of a smaller-scale die-off, known as the "end-Guadalupian extinction", which is thought to have wiped out many marine species around 260 million years ago. Paleontologists would like to see the supercomputer analysis extended to later periods, particularly the past 100 million years. There appears to have been an increase in animal diversity in that time, but it is argued that's an artifact; further analysis may help resolve the argument.
Peter Wagner -- a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, who was not involved in the research -- believes the work will be most valuable in uncovering and explaining, smaller-scale extinctions, similar to that occurring today. He says that such extinctions could turn out to be "a bad 100,000 years, or a bad week" for some groups of organisms but not others: "When you get this resolution, it starts opening the doors to actually testing what the smaller-turnover events might be like."
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE PENTAGON & GREEN ENERGY (2): During the transition period, the Biden team did not outline the administration's projected climate plans in detail, but some of the options are clear.
Biden will likely revitalize an Obama-era program in which military bases in Nevada and Hawaii built microgrids, allowing them to keep their lights on and continue operations even if the civilian power supply fails. The maturity of solar and wind technology has also driven down prices, and US bases in many places may be able to install their own generation systems at a lower cost than fossil power. Distributed power generation is certainly in the interests of the military.
Biden will also get the advantage of the cultural shift toward efficiency and renewables primed by Obama and his defense officials. Clean energy is a growth market, and veterans have entered the clean energy workforce in higher numbers than other parts of the workforce in states like Ohio, where 11% of the clean energy workforce were veterans -- double their representation in other industries, according to a report from Clean Energy Trust, a Midwestern clean energy investment fund. Junior officers who were still learning how to implement energy efficiency measures during the Obama years have now been promoted to higher ranks and positions of greater responsibility in the military.
The threat of climate change to military bases, particularly naval bases on shorelines, is regarded as one of the top military climate challenges. Bases in Florida have suffered billions of dollars in damages from storms in recent years, and the Norfolk Naval Shipyard in Virginia has flooded nearly a dozen times in recent years because of rising seas -- aggravated by the subsidence of the local geology.
In addition, during the Iraq War, fuel truckers had among the highest casualty rates in the war. Between 2003 and 2007, nearly 3,000 contractors died or were injured transporting oil to forward operating bases, according to an American Security Project report. The distribution of fuel to forward bases and troops in the field was, inevitably, also preposterously expensive. Dependence on fuel oil for tanks and Humvees prompted the commander of forces in Iraq -- later Secretary of Defense -- Marine General Jim Mattis to ask military technologists to "unleash us from the tether of fuel." The Biden Administration is very interested in electric vehicles (EV), and it is likely the military will increasingly go electric. The Pentagon could play a similar role as it did with solar power over a decade ago.
There are organizational roadblocks to a greener military. Ben Steinberg, now a consultant with Venn Strategies, was the key Energy Department liaison to the Defense Department during part of the Obama administration; in that role, helped link DOE energy efficiency and technology programs to the appropriate offices in the Pentagon. He warns that while DoD has a lot of money to invest in research and in scaling up solar, spending decisions are made by thousands of different people across bases, ships and other installations. Steinberg says:
BEGIN QUOTE:
DoD is not a monolithic entity. It's hard to consolidate all of that and have the buying power all working together. My advice is to drive it at the highest level possible, and have the [White House Office of Management and Budget] extremely involved in purchasing things, and have the OMB drive it with tools. That's with things like electric vehicles, clustering how you purchase renewable energy, so multiple bases can go into a deal together and costs can come down.
END QUOTE
Biden may also face less resistance to establishing a greener military from conservatives in Congress. Many conservatives have come around to appreciate renewable energy -- particularly those from farm states, where wind turbines have saved the fortunes of many struggling farmers. In addition, renewable energy has been coming down steadily in price, meaning that it is ever more competitive on the bottom line. How this will all play out in the era after Trump remains to be seen. [END OF SERIES]
START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The big news of last week focused on Marjorie Taylor Greene, a new Member of the House of Representatives from Georgia, who is a gun-toting lunatic -- having gone so far as to suggest execution of prominent Democrats, and that the widespread forest fires of last summer were caused by orbital lasers funded by wealthy Jews. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell did not name names, but referred to the "loony lies and conspiracy theories" in circulation as a "cancer for the Republican Party". McConnell said: "Somebody who's suggested that perhaps no airplane hit the Pentagon on 9-11, that horrifying school shootings were pre-staged, and that the Clintons crashed JFK JR's airplane is not living in reality."
In the face of criticisms, Greene offered a public "apology" that consisted of highly constrained remorse, along with generous denunciations of the long list of people she dislikes. The Democrats in the House pushed through a vote to deny Greene a seat in any House committees; only ten Republicans voted for it. There is a sense that the Right is in a vicious cycle, where ever more preposterous ideas are put into circulation -- with the system becoming ever more unstable until it collapses like a house of cards. When will that happen? Nobody knows, but it's hard to believe that it will be in the very distant future.
It's wired up in the chaotic Trump endgame. This week, Trump's second impeachment trial is going to take place. Trump's preparations for the impeachment trial have been thoroughly "on brand": at one point, all of Trump's lawyers bailed out. One Steve Cavanagh, a lawyer turned mystery writer, offered on Twitter that there are three big reasons lawyers quit cases:
Cavanagh suggested a "holy trinity" in play. The rumor mill added that Trump apparently wanted them to use as a defense that Biden had stolen the election. To add a twist, THE NEW YORK TIMES reports that Trump entered 2021 with $175 million USD, raised in November and December as part of his campaign to steal the 2020 election. The Federal Election Commission reports that, of that money, Trump only spent about $10 million USD on legal costs; about five times that on advertising.
It is a simple statement of fact that Trump is criminal and dysfunctional. To further demonstrate the dysfunction, it appears that Trump does not realize how much trouble he is in. It is impossible to say how the impeachment trial will turn out -- but it is easy to say that, after it's over, Congress will quickly generate a report covering the 1-06 attack on the Capitol Building, name names, and send it over to the Department of Justice for prosecution.
Joe Biden has made it clear that Trump is in the hands of Congress. Biden can't go after Trump himself; it would smell of banana-republic politics for a president to go after a presidential rival. White House spokesperson Jen Psaki -- refreshingly direct and articulate, after the series of dubious characters the Trump Administration put in the job -- has similarly made it clear to reporters that Trump is not a subject that will be discussed in press briefings.
However, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is perfectly happy to go after Trump -- by all indications, she's enraged at 1-06, as much as if Trump had incited a mob to trash her own house and attack her family; she may have even insisted that Biden leave the matter for Congress. That does lead to the little puzzle as to why Congress hasn't pushed the case against Trump to the DOJ yet, but it's easy to see reasons why:
There is no real doubt that, after 1-06, Federal legal action will be taken against Trump -- the crime is just too massive, the guilt much too obvious. One wonders how aware Republican Members of Congress are of the looming legal threat to Trump, and how it will affect their decisions. No matter how they vote, they're in trouble. As justification for voting NO to impeachment, as of late, they've taken to saying: "Yes, what Trump did was wrong, but impeachment after he's left office is unconstitutional."
It's not -- but whatever, since the response will then be: "OK, having admitted that Trump committed a crime, then you won't have any objections when he's arrested, will you?" [ED: They backtracked very quickly on admitting a crime.] The GOP will not be able to save Trump, and the Trump voters will turn on them in the end, making any attempt to appease them futile.
* One of Joe Biden's proposals is to raise the US minimum wage to $15 USD an hour, from the current $7.25 USD an hour. That has led to a pushback from the Right, on the claim that it would be economically counterproductive, leading to inflation and costing jobs. As discussed by an article from ECONOMIST.com ("What Would A $15 Minimum Wage Mean For America's Economy?" 28 January 2021), a $15 USD minimum wage does pose risks, but it also may have overall benefits.
In 2019, 30% of American workers made less than $15 USD an hour. Americans are largely enthusiastic about raising the minimum wage, a Pew poll indicating that two-thirds of them -- including two-fifths of Republicans -- favor doing so. Economists are more divided; a panel of them was asked in 2015 if they favored it, with 40% undecided, the rest split between PRO and CON. The uncertainty is simply because there's little practical experience in large increases to the minimum wage.
The uncertainty is a change from the past, however -- since at one time, economists were largely against raising the minimum wage. However, studies over the past three decades show that modest increases in the minimum wage have, at worst, small negative effects on employment. In a metastudy conducted for the British government in 2019, Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst concluded that minimum wages of up to 60% of the median wage, or 80% of the median in low-wage regions, have negligible employment effects. It turns out that firms have more flexibility to soak up a minimum-wage hike than once assumed; if a company is profitable, there's room to adjust, with minimum-wage employees getting more of the profit. Of course, firms with tight profit margins will have trouble.
The Democrat proposal for the minimum-wage hike to $15 USD would phase it in over four years. What happens when it's fully phased in? Again, there's not a lot of experience with large minimum-wage jumps, so nobody's exactly sure. Gavin Wright, an economic historian at Stanford University, suggests that something of the sort occurred in the American South as a result of the New Deal in the 1930s. Before the 1930s, the economy of the South was not like that of the North, which was then at the top of global standards of productivity and income per person. Factories and farms in the South, however, were based on low-productivity, labor-intensive production, unlike the more capital-intensive approach in the North.
The Southern way of doing things trapped the South's economy in a low-wage rut. Southern governments invested little in education, knowing that there most of the jobs were for the uneducated, and anyone who got an education would have to go elsewhere to leverage off of it. While the rest of the USA enjoyed a "virtuous cycle" of growth in accumulation of human and physical capital, with rapid increases in productivity and incomes, the South economically and socially stagnated.
Franklin Roosevelt's imposition of national wage and labor standards broke the cycle, forcing Southern producers to reduce their reliance on cheap labor and adopt labor-saving technologies; low-wage workers, short of employment opportunities, migrated out of the South in large numbers. Fearing mass unemployment and depopulation, Southern governments worked hard to attract outside investment. Between 1930 and 1980, incomes per head in the South as a percentage of the national average rose by roughly 30 percentage points, and Southern cities built around knowledge industries became magnets for migrants from elsewhere -- one prominent example being Huntsville, Alabama, with aerospace industries thriving because of the NASA center there.
Convergence in incomes between poor states and rich ones, rapid before 1980, has slowed dramatically since, while the productivity gap between superstar cities and others has widened at the same time. It may not be a complete coincidence that the Federal minimum wage, adjusted for inflation, rose steadily between the 1930s and the 1960s, but has alternately stagnated and declined after that. A low minimum wage allows firms to once again rely on low-skilled labor, instead of capital investment on new technology and processes. Once backwards firms give up their low-wage model, they can become more productive.
It is unwise for politicians to force macro-economic changes, however desireable they are for the long term, then ignore the pain they impose on businesses and workers over the short run. It may be wiser to stretch out the period for implementing the minimum wage, allowing low-wage states to invest in education and infrastructure, and to give time for businesses to make capital investments for a new era. In short, raising the minimum wage may inflict short-term pain -- but proper management can reduce the pain, with greater productivity and prosperity in the end.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (136): Ronald Wilson Reagan was born on 6 February 1911 in Tampico, Illinois, the son of Nelle Clyde and Jack Reagan, Jack being a salesman. Ron had an older brother, Neil, who would become an advertising executive. Jack liked to call Ron "Dutch", because he had a Dutch-boy haircut; the nickname stuck. As a salesman, Jack tended to move around a lot, but finally settled in Dixon, Illinois.
Nelle Reagan was a member of the Disciples of Christ Church -- a Protestant congregation; while Jack Reagan was nominally an Irish Catholic, he wasn't as devout in it as his wife, with Nelle being active and influential in the church. She raised her two sons in the church, with Ron acquiring a religious conviction that remained with him through life. Biographer Stephen Vaughn wrote:
BEGIN QUOTE:
At many points the positions taken by the First Christian Church of Reagan's youth coincided with the words, if not the beliefs of the latter-day Reagan. These positions included faith in Providence, association of America's mission with God's will, belief in progress, trust in the work ethic and admiration for those who achieved wealth, an uncomfortableness with literature and art that questioned the family or challenged notions of proper sexual behavior, presumption that poverty is an individual problem best left to charity rather than the state, sensitivity to problems involving alcohol and drugs, and reticence to use government to protect civil rights for minorities.
END QUOTE
Reagan acquired from his faith a strong belief in the inherent goodness of people; on the other side of that coin, he saw the world in dualistic terms, as a struggle between good versus evil.
Reagan went to Dixon High School, where he became interested in acting, sports, and story-telling. He went on to Eureka College in Eureka, Illinois; he majored in economics and sociology, being an indifferent student, with middling grades. He was more focused on college life outside of his classes, being very active in campus politics, sports, and theater. He was elected student body president, became a member of the football team, and captain of the swim team.
Reagan graduated in 1932, to take jobs as a radio announcer; he eventually got a job with WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa, announcing for Chicago Cubs baseball games. While visiting California with the Cubs in 1937, he took a screen test with Warner Brothers, and landed a seven-year contract. His first screen credit was in the 1937 movie LOVE IS ON THE AIR, and within a few years had appeared in dozens of films -- including DARK VICTORY, with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart. Reagan played football player George Gipp in the 1940 KNUTE ROCKNE, ALL AMERICAN; in the real world, Gipp died young, telling coach Rockne: "Win one for the Gipper." Reagan acquired the nickname of "Gipper" from the movie.
Reagan married actress Jane Wyman in 1940. The couple would have three children in the 1940s: Maureen, Michael, and Christine, with Christine born prematurely and dying. In 1942, Reagan played a double-amputee in KING'S ROW, memorably saying: "Where's the rest of me?" It made him a star, with his salary tripling, and getting him high-profile film roles.
He had become an Army Reserve officer in 1937, and was called to duty in the spring of 1942. His eyesight was poor, precluding him from combat service. He eventually became a public-relations and personnel officer with the US Army Air Forces -- working mostly in the 1st Motion Picture Unit in Culver City, California, which put together training and indoctrination films. He also participated in bond drives. [TO BE CONTINUED]
START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* SCIENCE NOTES: As reported by an article from NATURE.com ("Scientists Make Precise Edits To Mitochondrial DNA For First Time", 8 July 2020), it is known that mitochondria -- cellular organelles that produce energy for a eukaryotic cell -- have their own tiny genome, distinct from the genome in the nucleus of the cell. It's a relic of the mitochondrion's distant past as an independent single-celled organism that became a component of the cell.
Although there have been huge advances in the genetic modification of the cell's core genome, the mitochondrial genome has been relatively neglected. Now a new technique, based on a highly-precise scheme of gene editing known as "base editing", allows researchers to tweak the mitochrondrial genome -- in hopes of helping understand, and possibly treat, diseases caused by mutations in the mitochondrial genome. Such disorders are most often passed down maternally, and impair the cell's ability to generate energy. These mutations can harm the nervous system and muscles, including the heart, and can be fatal to people who inherit them.
The well-known CRISPR–Cas9 genetic modification technique works well for modifying a cell's nuclear genome, but it doesn't work for mitochondria. The editing is done by the Cas9 enzyme, which is guided by a linked strand of RNA, and the RNA can't get through the membranes around mitochondria.
In 2018, a team led by chemical biologist David Liu -- of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with an interest in mitochondrial modification -- got a tip-off from a research team under microbiologist Joseph Mougous -- of the University of Washington in Seattle -- found an unusual enzyme. It was a toxin produced by the bacterium Burkholderia cenocepacia that had an interesting behavior: when it encountered the DNA base C, it changed it to a U. Because U, which is not commonly found in DNA, behaves like a T, the enzymes that replicate the cell's DNA copy it as a T, in effect converting a C in the genome sequence to a T.
Liu had made use of similar enzymes in base editing, which allows researchers to use components of CRISPR–Cas9 to change one DNA base to another. However, those enzymes -- known as "cytidine deaminases" -- usually act only on single-stranded DNA. DNA in human cells, in contrast, consists of two strands wound together; in the past, Liu had to rely on the Cas9 enzyme to break the DNA and create a region of unwound, single-stranded DNA for his enzymes to work on.
Fortunately, the enzyme that Mougous's team had found, called "DddA", could act directly on double-stranded DNA without needing on the Cas9 enzyme to break it. Liu and Mougous thought DddA might be able to modify the mitochondrial genome. The problem was that DddA is indiscriminate: set loose on a mitochondrial genome, it would modify every C it found. To solve that problem, the researchers split the enzyme into two pieces that would change Cs only when hooked up in the right orientation; to control which DNA sequence the enzyme modified, the team then ingeniously linked each half of DddA to proteins that were engineered to bind to specific sites in the genome.
Liu says the work is a long way from practical application. In refinement, the technique could be used to deal with rare diseases traced to defective mitochondrial genomes. Some countries already allow a procedure called "mitochondrial replacement", in which the nucleus of an egg or embryo is transplanted into a donor egg or embryo that contains healthy mitochondria. The new technique may prove easier to use.
* The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020:2021 was accompanied by a global undercurrent of resistance against pandemic-control measures. One manifestation of the resistance was the claim that such measures were wrongheaded and ineffective, that it would be wiser and more effective to simply let the disease run wild, with the world acquiring "herd immunity" in the end.
The title of an article from SCIENCEMAG.org -- "Herd Immunity By Infection Is Not An Option" by Devi Sridhar and Deepti Gurdasani, 15 January 2021 -- condemned the idea, citing a study by Lewis F. Buss of the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, in collaboration with an international team of researchers. The study focused on a COVID-19 outbreak in Manaus, the capital of Brazil's Amazonas state, in which an estimated three-quarters of the population was infected, but which did not lead to herd immunity. Transmission of the disease has continued on pace.
Manaus reported 2,642 deaths confirmed to be from COVID-19 (1,193 per million inhabitants), and 3,789 (1710/mil) deaths from respiratory disease likely to have been caused SARS-CoV-2 infection. These figures are worse than the fatality rates during the same period (up to 1 October 2020) in the United Kingdom (620/mil), France (490/mil), and the USA (625/mil) -- and much worse than in Australia (36/mil), Taiwan (0.3/mil), and New Zealand (5/mil). The infection fatality rate in Manaus was estimated to be from 0.17% to 0.28%, consistent with the population being predominantly young and at reduced risk of death from COVID-19.
Even if it were possible to achieve herd immunity through "natural" infection, the deaths that would result would be catastrophic, millions in total worldwide. With uncontrolled transmission, infection will spread to vulnerable populations and decimate them. Even in a younger population, SARS-CoV-2 is harmful and deadly. The growing evidence of long COVID and its long-lasting multisystem effects indicates that there may be substantial morbidity long after infection.
ED: The "herd immunity" concept is ignorant and vicious. Its advocates like to proclaim that, instead of restraining the spread of the disease through the general population, the focus should only be on protecting the vulnerable. How the vulnerable would be protected in an ocean of infection is not detailed, and amounts to: "Let them fend for themselves, it's not our problem." It's Libertarianism in action: the best solution is no solution, with the consequences of inaction shrugged off.
In the wake of the effective collapse of the Trump Administration on 6 January 2021, Dr. Scott Atlas -- a radiologist linked to the Trump Administration and an advocate of "herd immunity" -- reported on Twitter that he had lost 12,000 followers on Facebook. Trevor Noah of THE DAILY SHOW commented: "Ah, you're finally flattening the curve!"
Atlas' Twitter account then disappeared. One suspects the much-despised Dr. Atlas will have a difficult life for the foreseeable future.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* MRNA VACCINES: As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("MRNA Is A $120 Billion Bet On Platform, Not Vaccines" by Robert Cyran, 21 December 2021), the global COVID-19 pandemic has been thoroughly dismal -- but it has been marked by a number of positive actions, most particularly an accelerated, and by all evidence to date, successful effort to develop a vaccine against the SARS-CoV-2 virus.
The leading edge of this effort has been a variant of the DNA molecule, the "code of life", called "messenger RNA (mRNA)". In humans, DNA is used as a template to create mRNA, which then is used by the cell as instructions to assemble proteins. Biotech firms Moderna and BioNTech used mRNA to create vaccines effective against COVID-19 with great speed, pushing the combined worth of companies working with mRNA to more than $120 billion USD.
An mRNA vaccine is an injection of a genetic code that causes the recipient's own cells to generate proteins associated with the virus, which then stimulate an immune response. The idea is not new, having been originally devised by French researchers in the 1990s, but it was not much more than a lab toy, until 2012 -- when the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Pentagon's "blue sky" research office, started funding mRNA research. Even then, mRNA vaccines weren't seen as a high priority; it wasn't until the COVID-19 pandemic hit that work shifted into high gear. COVID-19 is the first disease to get mRNA vaccines.
Vaccines traditionally tend to take time to develop; vaccines based on attenuated pathogens, for example, mean working through cycles to detune the wild pathogens. With mRNA vaccines, it's a relatively straightforward process of finding appropriate sequences in a pathogen, and plugging them into mRNA. Vaccines typically take a decade to turn out. Moderna and BioNTech's vaccines took less than a year; indeed, it only took Moderna two months to get to human trials.
The ease of modifying an mRNA vaccine also means that it isn't difficult to create and evaluate modified vaccines -- or create mRNA vaccines that produce multiple antigens to deal with different strains of a pathogen. That gives mRNA advantages in dealing with pathogens, like influenza A, that mutate rapidly. [ED: It may also make it easier to deal with emerging variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.]
The mRNA "platform" seems poised for expanded use. Along with the potential of finding vaccines for diseases -- such as tuberculosis, HIV, and malaria -- that have defied vaccines, instructing cells to produce desired proteins could lead to other advances. For example, mRNA might be able to instruct the body to more vigorously attack cancerous cells or repair damaged tissue. Producing missing proteins might fight inherited diseases.
There are obstacles, one being the expense of manufacturing mRNA vaccines, another being that mRNA vaccines, such as those from Biontech and Moderna, have to be stored in deep-cold conditions, at dry-ice temperatures. Costs are likely to come down with experience, and some companies are already introducing mRNA vaccines that can be stored in ordinary freezers.
Another problem is that the vaccines shipped so far require two shots. There is work on improved delivery systems, such as skin patches, that slow-release vaccine into the body. That approach tends to reduce harsh reactions to the COVID-19 vaccines, which are somewhat harsher than for other vaccines. Another approach is to develop mRNA vaccines that amplify themselves after injection.
There is also the fact that the body breaks mRNA down quickly, while larger doses trigger immune reactions. Breaking down mRNA does mean it won't linger, while the immune reaction is of course good in a vaccine, but these might be issues for other uses. Researchers have figured out some improvements -- a layer of fat around mRNA vaccines keeps them circulating longer –- but more needs to be learned.
COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE PENTAGON & GREEN ENERGY (1): The US military's interest in green power has been discussed here in the past, most significantly in 2009. After a period of eclipse during the era of Trump, an article from POLITICO.com ("How The Pentagon Can Help Biden Make America Greener" by Eric Wolff, 4 January 2020) suggests that the US military will play a high-profile role in America's efforts to confront climate change.
US President Joe Biden accepts the challenge of climate change as one of his administration's top priorities, calling it an "existential threat", and promising a $2 trillion USD effort to deal with it. Climate change has a military aspect, in that it will aggravate unrest in unstable regions, and threaten military facilities with rising seas and supercharged storms. The Pentagon is necessarily concerned with climate change, and regards addressing it as part of the mission. Sherri Goodman -- a deputy undersecretary of defense for environmental security under Obama and now a senior fellow at the Wilson Center's Environmental Change and Security Program, a think tank -- comments:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Start with the fact the Department of Defense is the single largest energy user -- what it does and how it uses its energy, how it reduces its emissions, makes its bases more resilient to climate threats. That helps all America learn by example.
END QUOTE
Although its energy consumption has been declining for years, the Defense Department is still by far the largest energy user in the Federal government -- accounting for more than three-quarters of total government energy usage and 15 times the energy consumption of the Post Office, the #2 consumer -- The military emits about 1% of total US carbon emissions.
The Pentagon helped jumpstart the US solar industry in 2007, when the Air Force contracted to build a 14-megawatt (MW) solar farm at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, at the time the largest plant of its kind in the country. Since then, the industry has built solar projects more than 40 times that size; the military has been one of its biggest customers, adding more than 130 MW to bases in nearly three dozen states.
Former President Barack Obama also pushed the Pentagon to experiment with biofuels to reduce its ships' dependence on oil. The "Great Green Fleet" powered by biofuels from home-grown crops failed to live up to its promise, but the current Navy Secretary, Ray Mabus became enthusiastic about green technology: He ordered ships in refit to replace all their bulbs with high efficiency technology, saving power and allowing the ships to stay at sea longer. In addition, the aviation biofuels developed during the period are now being used by airlines to acquire carbon offsets required by European aviation authorities. US troops also saw other benefits from the Obama years. Batteries carried by soldiers to power radios and other equipment had their weight cut by a third, easing their load while in the field.
Of course, the Trump Administration dismissed climate change and reversed Obama policies, notably through a 2018 executive order revoking specific carbon reduction targets for Federal agencies. There were also some military brass who had no enthusiasm for renewable energy, and were glad the Obama policies were dropped.
As with so much Trump attempted to wreck, it will be back. Given Biden's emphasis on fighting climate change, it is effectively certain that his Defense Secretary, retired 4-star Army General Lloyd Austin, will increase use of renewable energy, as well as harden military facilities against storms and rising seas. [TO BE CONTINUED]
NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Congress is now headed towards an impeachment trial of Donald Trump in the Senate in February. Absolutely nobody knows if the Senate will convict Donald Trump, the question devolving to what Mitch McConnell -- now the Republican minority leader -- will do. There is much skepticism that he will push for impeaching Trump, since he is well-known for cynicism and expedience.
The question is of what McConnell sees as expedient. Trump having lost the 2020 election, McConnell knows Trump is a loser -- McConnell has publicly rejected Trump's transparently bogus claims of "election fraud". Trump's trash talk of running again for president in 2024 is just another one of his scams, since he's not going to be in a better position in 2024 than he is now, indeed it is likely he will be worse off.
McConnell is not remotely stupid, and there is no way he can see that Trump's continued domination of the GOP is anything but suicidal for the party. Dumping Trump may be like the GOP chewing off a leg to get out of a trap, but the GOP can't survive in the trap. Besides, the 2020 election suggested that Trump's influence is superficial and transient: he lost in Maine, Senator Sue Collins won, and the overall vote for Republicans in the House was bigger than his.
Yes, most of the chatter from the GOP right now says they'll give Trump a PASS, but what happens at crunch time is unclear. One thing that can be suggested is that, no matter what the judgement is, Congress will then release a report on the 6 January Capitol invasion, which will name names, and pass it off to the Justice Department for prosecution. Joe Biden has made it very clear that he is taking a hands-off attitude toward Trump; it appears that he has come to a mutually-satisfactory agreement with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in which Congress is in the driver's seat.
That's conjecture, of course, but it is obvious there are Democrats in Congress who want to go after Trump with maximum prejudice. The leadership will not stand in their way; Pelosi's angry public denunciations of Members of Congress who seem to have aided the rioters does suggest she's all for it, and those Members of Congress will likely be included in the investigation. The GOP cannot stop the machinery of the law once put into motion -- and they will be able to do nothing to save Trump. Even if they vote to acquit Trump, they will lose the Trump voters anyway.
There's been much talk in the media of a "deeply divided America", but it seems overblown. According to polls, roughly a third of Americans believe nonsense such as Joe Biden won the election by fraud, Trump's attack on Congress wasn't a big deal, vaccines are much more dangerous than COVID-19, and so on. What to say, they're nincompoops -- and they've been here all along. It was just that Trump managed to mobilize them and get them moving in the same direction. Once Trump deflates, that voter base evaporates, as they either stop voting, or vote for fringe candidates.
* One of Trump's particularly annoying habits was his inclination to abuse American allies and kiss up to America's enemies -- most notably Russian President Vladimir Putin. It is somewhat puzzling as to why Trump was so favorably inclined to Putin; one apparent reason is that Putin helped Trump get elected in 2016, and Trump felt he should encourage Putin to do it again in 2020. However, another apparent motive was that Trump honestly admires dictators. He abuses those he feels superior to, and toadies up to those who seem superior to him.
Of course, that's changed in the new order. According to a White House press release dated 20 January 2020:
BEGIN QUOTE:
President Joseph R. Biden JR spoke today with President Vladimir Putin of Russia. They discussed both countries' willingness to extend New START for five years, agreeing to have their teams work urgently to complete the extension by February 5. They also agreed to explore strategic stability discussions on a range of arms control and emerging security issues.
President Biden reaffirmed the United States' firm support for Ukraine's sovereignty. He also raised other matters of concern, including the SolarWinds hack, reports of Russia placing bounties on United States soldiers in Afghanistan, interference in the 2020 United States election, and the poisoning of Aleksey Navalny. President Biden made clear that the United States will act firmly in defense of its national interests in response to actions by Russia that harm us or our allies. The two presidents agreed to maintain transparent and consistent communication going forward.
END QUOTE
Putin blandly told the Russian people that the Americans had accepted New START on Russian terms -- a self-serving way of saying that the two sides were in agreement. As far as subversive Russian exploitation of US social media goes, there will be a growing push to leash in social media that promises to be interesting.
* As reported by an article from CNN.com ("Rotting Fish, Lost Business And Piles Of Red Tape. The Reality Of Brexit Hits Britain" by Luke McGee, 23 January 2021), there was something of a collective sigh of relief when British Prime Minister Boris Johnson struck a trade deal with the European Union on Christmas Eve. Simply allowing all agreements with the EU to collapse into a heap thanks to Brexit would have been disastrous, and would have reduced Britain to a rogue state.
At least on the British side, the relief was short-lived, since disruption to countless businesses that relied on seamless supply chains was inevitable. Despite Johnson's repeated claims that Brexit would be a great opportunity for British exporters and would lead to some kind of revival for free trade, the reality was that British fishermen were seeing their catch left to rot, since it couldn't be delivered to markets in the EU. Logistics firms found that import and export had suddenly become much more difficult. In between Brexit and COVID-19, Britain is faced with a severe economic contraction.
A government spokesperson put a bland gloss on the problems, telling CNN: "From the outset we were clear that we would be leaving the customs union and single market which meant that there would be new processes after the end of the Transition Period. These were widely communicated through our public information campaign."
James Withers, chief executive of Scotland Food and Drink, suggested the reality was much more uncomfortable:
BEGIN QUOTE:
We had an entirely new system for exporters to get their heads around that hadn't been tested prior to use. The result, somewhat inevitably, was that it started going wrong straight away. This isn't as simple as an IT glitch that needs fixing. In a matter of days, we went from being able to send fresh food to Madrid with a single cover sheet of paperwork. Now there are roughly 26 steps for each transaction.
END QUOTE
When pressed on the matter, Johnson has said that he believes these are merely teething issues, not anything really wrong with the deal. The government is providing 23 million GBP to help get things straight.
There is real concern among trucking companies and logistics firms that things are going to get much worse in the coming months. January is typically a quiet month at ports, and there was some stockpiling in advance of Brexit -- but as trade ramps up and stockpiled are depleted, there is the prospect of a crunch. Northern Ireland, which still remains in the EU single market, is faced with shortages, since it is much harder to obtain food from the rest of Britain.
It is a mark of the confused nature of Brexit that, even with over four years of advance warning, very little useful preparation was made for the day when the doors slammed shut. Many of Johnson's Tory lawmakers are struggling with how to reply to their constituents, one saying off the record, without the gloss: "The party gave us lines to read out when the deal came through presenting it as a huge success, but as time goes on, it's clear there's quite a lot of nasty surprises in Pandora's box."
The same Conservative lawmaker worries about the City of London: "Once the fog of Covid lifts, financial and professional services firms looking to expand globally will see London and realize that we have given up quite a lot of our competitive advantage."
Nothing in this should be very surprising; although Leavers made much of making Britain free from EU red tape, Britons who have to deal with Europe have now found the red tape much harder to penetrate. Leavers, of course, never concerned themselves with realities and details, and are not concerned with them now. They live in the universe of "dreampolitik", which has nothing to do with "realpolitik".
As far as the EU goes, they have cause for satisfaction. To be sure, the EU didn't want Brexit, but they did play their cards right, getting a deal largely on their terms -- which were, of course, clearly inferior to the terms enjoyed by EU members. Most importantly, the UK's botch job on Brexit has done much to discourage Leave sentiment in EU member states: "On examination, Leave doesn't seem like such a good idea after all."
* As seen on Twitter, late-night TV host Seth Meyers took a sharp view of Republicans in Congress twisting and turning to dodge ownership of Trump's assault on the Capitol Building:
BEGIN QUOTE:
Man, they're throwing everything at the wall:
[MARCO RUBIO:] "Impeachment will stir up the country!"
[RAND PAUL:] "The election was stolen!" [Paul didn't actually say that, he just refused to deny it.]
[KEVIN MCCARTHY:] "We all bear some responsibility!"
It's like getting pulled over with a giant plume of marijuana smoke in the car, and telling the cop: "I think it's the exhaust pipe -- and it is legal in several states -- and I ONLY started smoking when you pulled me over, because that gave me severe anxiety."
Also Marco, honestly, do you have any shame at all? You called Trump an embarrassment, and a con man, and implied in public that he had a tiny dick -- but now, you're calling impeachment stupid? Also, you famously doinked a kid on the head with a football. [Video of Rubio beaning a kid and taking him down.] You don't get to call anything stupid after that, ever.
END QUOTE
As per McCarthy's comment about: "We all bear some responsibility!" -- a reply made the rounds: "There are very bad people on both sides!"
As appalling as this nightmare is, I get a certain satisfaction out of watching the self-defeat of clowns like Rand Paul and the rest of the Trump-enslaved GOP. They've got nowhere to go but down. It's just a question of how long it takes, and how painful it will be.
PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE