DayVectors

* 23 entries including: America's Constitution (series), vaccine persistence (series), the one percent (series), new US biotech rules, COVID-19 and air travel, COVID-19 and plastics, COVID-19 and automation, & planets in the gaps.

[WED 31 MAR 21] NEW BIOTECH RULES

* NEW BIOTECH RULES: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("United States Relaxes Rules For Biotech Crops" by Erik Stokstad, 18 May 2020), a change to US regulation of biotech has relaxed oversight on certain gene-edited plants. Industry groups are happy with the change in rules; critics of genetic modification, not so much.

The changes are actually reasonable. If researchers use gene editing to design a plant that could have been bred conventionally, the new plant will be exempt from regulation. However, anything else -- for example, moving a gene from another species, rewiring metabolism -- will still require a regulatory review. The central idea is that the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA) Animal & Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) will now focus on new traits themselves, not on the technology used to create them. Plant scientists feel encouraged: several reviews by the National Academy of Sciences have concluded that the risk that GM plants will become weeds is usually low, and that molecular tools typically don't pose new risks compared with traditional plant breeding techniques.

The change to the USDA regulations began during the Obama Administration. The Trump Administration issued draft rules in early 2017, then withdrew later in the year in the face of critical feedback. The USDA came out with a new rule in the summer of 2019 for public review, and has now finalized it.

An engineered plant won't be regulated if it contains tweaky changes -- for example, a change to a pair of amino acid bases, or a deletion of a chunk of DNA -- that would create a trait that could have been made through traditional breeding. For example, molecular biologists can snip disease resistance genes from various parts of a plant's genome and bundle them into one stretch of DNA, allowing breeders to easily incorporate all the genes into one variety. The exact same modifications could be made by traditional selective breeding, but it would take vastly more time and work.

Another change will make it easier to create minor variations of GM crops, such as modifying them for different climates -- an important consideration as the world grows warmer. As mentioned above, plants whose metabolism have been heavily modified, and transgenic plants that incorporate DNA from other species, will not be exempt. Even if there's a gene transfer between two closely-related plants, such as peppers and tomatoes, the result won't be exempt.

What if a company isn't sure if a new crop is exempt? The issue can then be discussed with APHIS. Regulators will inspect the proposed trait in comparable plants to see whether there's any risk. The agency estimates that such reviews could be done in 2 to 3 months for familiar plants. APHIS believes that maybe about 1% of plants might not qualify for an exemption, or deregulation, after an initial review.

APHIS says it wants to keep up with evolving science and technology. Research institutes, companies, or other stakeholders can ask APHIS to expand the exemptions, a process that would require public comment. The American Seed Trade Association commented in a statement: "A clear and transparent, science-based process for these future exemptions will be important to support continuing innovation."

Critics are not all that happy with the new rules, one particular problem being that companies won't have to release much data for exempt crops. Gregory Jaffe of the Center for Science in the Public Interest said in a statement: "The result is that government regulators and the public will have no idea what products will enter the market and whether those products appropriately qualified for an exemption from oversight,"

Given the hysteria that has accompanied GM crops, the temptation might be to simply reply: "Too bad -- deal with it." That would be the wrong answer, however, since it would simply create suspicion and antagonism, making things worse. The Biotechnology Innovation Organization (BIO), a major trade group, suggests companies be above-board with the products, saying in a statement: "BIO encourages increased openness about products entering the marketplace."

[TUE 30 MAR 21] VACCINE PERSISTENCE (3)

* VACCINE PERSISTENCE (3): Before the mumps vaccine was introduced in 1967, more than 90% of American children were infected by the viral disease, which swells the salivary glands and causes a puffy face and fever. By the end of the century, the USA had only a few hundred cases per year. However, in 2006, mumps surged on college campuses in the Midwest, with 6,500 cases reported before the end. About 85% of the college-age people who became ill had received the recommended two doses of the mumps vaccine -- but despite widespread use of the vaccine, mumps outbreaks continue in the United States on college campuses and in close-knit religious communities.

Some researchers suspect that the vaccine isn't working well any more because the virus has mutated. However, epidemiologist Joseph Lewnard of the University of California at Berkeley, and immunologist Yonatan Grad of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston recently examined data on the outbreaks, which have also occurred in Europe, Asia, and Canada. They reported in a 2018 study that the disease disproportionately hits people between 18 and 29. That pattern, the two researchers conclude, implies the vaccine itself loses effectiveness, because a new mumps strain that has genetically "escaped" should hit other age groups just as often. In a dozen other studies of mumps outbreaks around the world, researchers have also found signs that the vaccine isn't working well any more.

Lewnard and Grad's modeling indicates that adding a third dose of mumps vaccine around age 18, and then booster shots every 10 years, could dramatically decrease the likelihood of outbreaks. They note that, since 1991, the US military has given all its recruits a mumps vaccine booster and hasn't had any outbreaks, even though troops live in close quarters.

* Sorting out fading immunity from other factors that influence a vaccine's success isn't simple, as a mumps outbreak that began in Arkansas in August 2016 demonstrates. More than half the cases were in school-aged children, 92% of whom had been fully vaccinated. Grad says: "At first, I thought the data had to be wrong because they didn't fit our model."

The outbreak, which ran to September 2017 and afflicted nearly 3,000 people, was concentrated in people from the Marshall Islands. They have a large community in rural Arkansas that attends the same churches and lives in jam-packed houses. According to a recent report, 92% of affected children had received both doses of the mumps vaccine. Intense exposure to mumps in the close-knit community apparently overwhelmed what should have been robust protection. Grad says: "Protection from a vaccine is not all or nothing. The more exposed you are, the likelier you are to get infected."

In 2018, ACIP recommended a third dose of the mumps vaccine, but only for people who are "part of a group or population at increased risk" because of an outbreak.

The growing understanding of just how fast at which vaccine-trained immune systems can go flat has raised concerns about some recent public health decisions. In 2016, the World Health Organization (WHO) in Geneva, Switzerland, changed its legally binding regulations about use of the yellow fever vaccine -- an attenuated form of the virus, which went into wide use in the 1940s, and has proven highly effective. Three years earlier, an expert committee had found only 12 cases of yellow fever among the more than 540 million people worldwide vaccinated against the disease over nearly 70 years.

WHO consequently shifted from requiring booster shots every 10 years to a single, lifetime shot. Mark Slifka of the Oregon Primate Center in Beaverton believes that was a mistake. Along with his work at the center, he is also president of Najít Technologies, a Beaverton-based company making a new yellow fever vaccine. In a 2016 paper, Slifka and his Najít colleague Ian Amanna suggested that what looked like iron-clad protection to the expert committee reflects the fact that many vaccinated people are never exposed to yellow fever.

The authors also point to a Brazilian study that came out after the expert committee's analysis, which reported 459 cases of the disease in vaccinated people in that country alone over 35 years. In 52% of those cases, 10 years or more had passed since the person's vaccination. Slifka says: "The yellow fever vaccine–induced immunity is long-lived, but only in 80% of people."

Antibody data back that argument. Slifka and Amanna point to a Centers for Disease Control & Prevention (CDC) review of nine studies that analyzed blood levels of yellow fever antibodies that can "neutralize" the virus, a test tube measure of potency that is key to a vaccine's effectiveness. Four of the studies were done in people from areas where yellow fever virus circulates, finding that 97.6% of them had detectable neutralizing antibodies 10 years after vaccination. But in the other five studies, from areas with little or no yellow fever, only 83.7% of vaccinated people had those signs of immunity. To Slifka, that finding indicates that without periodic exposure to the pathogen, people gradually lose protection. He says: "We need at least one booster."

A WHO spokesperson for the expert committee that evaluates vaccines says it continues to review new data on breakthrough cases of yellow fever, closely monitoring the duration of immunity in people who received a single dose. For the moment, however, a WHO spokesperson says: "The evidence provided does not support the need for [a] booster dose." [TO BE CONTINUED]

[MON 29 MAR 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 12

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: On Monday, 22 March, one Ahmad Aliwi al-Issa, a Syrian refugee, went to a King Soopers supermarket in Boulder, Colorado, and killed ten people with an AR-15-type assault rifle, one of the dead being a cop. The shooter was wounded in the leg and arrested. A few days later, he was moved out of Boulder County jail because of threats against him.

This followed a shooting rampage in Atlanta, Georgia, on 16 March, that left eight people dead. The shooter, one Robert Aaron Long, targeted massage parlors and spas, saying he was trying to deal with his "sex addiction". Six of the dead were Asian women, suggesting a link to the upsurge of attacks on Asians in the US, in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Boulder shootings hit closer to home: Boulder is not that far south down the road from here in Loveland, Colorado, and I shop at a King Soopers. It could have just as well have been here. Of course, it's led to a push for tougher gun-control laws -- and the prospects are better than before of something being done.

In somewhat related news, police in North Carolina conducted a drug raid, and found the target had a Glock 19 9-millimeter pistol with a 50-round drum magazine -- convincingly disguised as a Nerf toy gun, that fires foam darts. This would be black humor, but it raises the possibility of other criminals using similar disguises, and of nervous police shooting someone carrying a super-soaker water gun. Things are out of control.

* Donald Trump took a belligerent attitude in his foreign policy while he was in the White House -- often towards America's allies, not always to America's adversaries. Joe Biden has chosen to also take a belligerent approach, but much more consistently towards America's adversaries, not to America's allies. Biden called Russian President Vladimir Putin a "killer", much to Russian anger, and in a press conference added that Chinese President Xi Jinping "doesn't have a democratic ... bone in his body." Biden says the two authoritarian leaders think "autocracy is the wave of the future", and that democracies are obsolete.

One Elbridge Colby -- a Pentagon staffer during the Trump Administration -- writing in THE WASHINGTON POST, described the Biden approach as "global, muscular liberalism", or GML for short. Colby judged GLM as naive, saying that the USA no longer had the power to throw its weight around in such a way, that Biden would be better to focus on the China threat, and not worry much about the Russians or North Korea or the Taliban.

It is not clear if Colby was a Trump man when he was at the Pentagon, but he certainly sounds like he was one. Trump was an advocate of cynical and self-serving politics, packaged as "realpolitik", but it was hard to see much serious purpose in it. If it's only about practicalities, the question is then: "To what end?" It is less a question of what we can expect to accomplish, than what we want to accomplish. We have to have the right direction before we can do anything at all.

Why should taking on Chinese authoritarianism mean ignoring Russian authoritarianism? Does it really buy us anything to meekly accept Russian provocations, or provocations from anybody else? Or just the sensible way of doing business with the world? If lines have been crossed, why not protest? It's not like that implies any specific responses; those can be considered as circumstances dictate. REUTERS.com cited a former US official, speaking anonymously, saying that Biden's challenges to Russia were limited, just what could be done:

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Dan Fried, a former US diplomat on the Europe beat, added that Putin is:

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In other words, it is in America's interests to be prudently assertive. GML is by no means going to work perfectly, but it stands to work better than the spineless alternatives. Besides, Joe Biden knows perfectly well that looking tough goes over well with the voters. It often may not amount to much more than theater, but theater is an important component of international relations, not to mention electoral politics.

* Donald Trump, having been booted off social media, announced that he would start his own social-media service. That announcement was met with loud hoots of derision on Twitter: Trump is a bungler, he's unlikely to go much of anywhere with the exercise. He's in irreversible decline.

He has also been peddling the story, popular among his fans, that the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress was, in so many words, a "nothing burger". Good luck with that. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been trying to put together a commission to investigate 1-06, but Congressional Republicans are not being cooperative -- demanding an "impartial" commission that would, for instance, investigate Leftist "Antifa" agitators. It's clear the Republicans just want to derail the commission.

Pelosi is not stupid and absolutely not weak-willed; she's got the good cards, and she knows it. If the Republicans won't call out Trump's attack on Congress, she plans to put together a group of Democrat Members of Congress who will come up with a report on 1-06, release it to the public, and pass it on to the Department of Justice for action. That shouldn't take too long. [ED: Unsurprisingly in hindsight, it did take a long time.] Once the DoJ takes action against Trump, things are going to get very noisy.

The decay of Trump is reflected in the disarray of his stooges. One Sidney Powell, a lawyer, had been spreading wild stories about the gaming of voting machines used in the 2020 elections -- and incidentally, had tried to persuade Trump to invoke martial law to deal with the "election fraud". Voting-machine maker Dominion Voting Systems, in response to Powell's baseless accusations against their products, sued her for $1.3 billion USD. Her lawyers replied to the court:

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In other words, Powell was spreading ridiculous falsehoods -- but that was okay, because nobody with any sense would believe them. They said that with a straight face?

The Right continues to cling to Trump, even as he is evidently sinking. Trump issued a list of prominent Republicans with his seal of approval, including Senators Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and Ron Paul; Governors Ron DeSantis, and Kristy Noem; as well as general pest Sarah Huckabee Sanders. In response, the snarky Rick Wilson of the Lincoln Project labeled the list: AMERICA'S LEAST WANTED.

The disarray was further demonstrated by laws passed by the state of Georgia to discourage voting. They were absurd, capable of accomplishing little but helping to push a new Voting Rights Act through Congress, being described as a "solution in search of a problem". The satirical website THE ONION often misses the mark, but hit the target with a jab at Senator Cruz: "Ted Cruz Decries Voting Rights Bill As Shameless Power Grab By American People To Control Country!"

Things are not looking well for the Right, and they are not going to get better: Trump has not yet begun to sink. The fundamental problem is that only about half of Trump voters were all that enthusiastic about him; the other half voted for him because they were lazy and careless. Once Trump goes away, they won't be inclined to vote. One Chris Swasey tweeted, with reference to Ted Cruz:

Chris Swasey / @NorThumbToTweet: I'm willing to wager that the # of people who revel in being just the biggest asshole possible that Teddy boy insists on playing to is far, far less than he thinks. There's not that fine a line between loudly complaining that the beer tastes like piss and pissing in the beer.

* THE DAILY SHOW sometimes sadistically assigns comedienne Desi Lydic to binge-watch Fox News, with DesiL now dishing out the truth about Joe Biden, as this edited-down transcript shows:

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One Twitter commenter suggested that DesiL, being pretty and blonde, might end up being hired by Fox News for a prime time slot. I replied: "No, because she's not a Braindead Barbie."

[FRI 26 MAR 21] AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (143)

* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (143): Of course, the Reagan Administration favored a crackdown on immigration, with Reagan signing the "Immigration Reform and Control Act" into law in 1986. The act made it illegal to knowingly hire or recruit illegal immigrants and required employers to confirm to their employees' immigration status -- but also granted amnesty to roughly three million illegal immigrants who entered the United States before 1982, and had lived in the USA continuously.

1986 also saw the defining scandal of the Reagan presidency, the "Iran-Contra affair". In 1980, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein ordered an invasion of Iran, believing that the Islamic Republic would be easily crushed, and that Iraq would be supported by the Americans. Saddam Hussein was wrong on both counts; the conflict settled down into a war of attrition, something like the First World War, and the Americans were not enthusiastic about supporting either side. There were contacts with the Iraqis, but they amounted to little.

There were also contacts with the Islamic Republic, but they were kept very secret. One of the issues in dealing with Iran was the fact that Hizbollah militants in Lebanon, allied with Iran, were keeping American hostages, and Reagan wanted them back. Discussions with the Iranians were hobbled by the fact that Reagan had made it clear there would be "no negotiations with terrorists." However, the Reagan Administration decided to sell parts for Iran's F-4 Phantom fighter jets, originally obtained by the Shah, to get leverage on the hostages.

That was possibly justifiable but certainly problematic -- and then, to make matters worse, the team implementing the deal decided to use the funds obtained from Iran to support "Contra" rebels, fighting the Red Sandinista regime in Nicaragua -- when funding to support the Contras had been zeroed out by Congress. The scheme came to light, with Reagan appointing a commission to investigate. A number of officials were convicted of crimes in the affair.

Reagan said he wasn't aware of the plot. That was probably true, in the sense that presidents usually don't want to get involved with messy details, particularly when they edge into the unlawful. Nonetheless, it definitely suggested he wasn't in control, and his high public approval rating dropped precipitously.

In any case, the Iran-Iraq War gradually dragged in the Americans. The two combatants engaged in a "tanker war", attacking each other's oil tanker vessels; in 1987, under Operation EARNEST WILL, the US Navy escorted Kuwaiti tankers to protect them from attack. Even before the operation began, on 17 May 1987, an Iraqi fighter launched two French-made Exocet anti-ship missiles at the US Navy frigate USS STARK, killing 37 sailors and injuring 21.

Near the end of EARNEST WILL, the US Navy guided-missile cruiser USS VINCENNES shot down Iran Air Flight 655, in a case of mistaken identity; all 290 on the jetliner were killed. Relations between the US and Iran, not good in the first place, got worse. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 25 MAR 21] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed by an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Reaction Engines Testing Ammonia As Carbon-Free Aviation Fuel" by David Szondy, 23 August 2020), Reaction Engines of the UK -- which has been working on the "Skylon" spaceplane -- has collaborated with Reaction Engines and Britain's Science & Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to generate a study on the use of ammonia as an aviation fuel.

The idea of using ammonia as aviation fuel is not new. Though it only has a third of the energy density of diesel, it's not hard to liquefy and store. It was used on the X-15 rocket-plane, which flew suborbital near-space flights in the 1950s and '60s. In addition, it's carbon-free. Reaction Engines has devised a plan for a new propulsion system using ammonia, based on the heat exchanger technology it developed for its SABRE hypersonic engine, which was then evaluated by STFC's Rutherford Appleton Laboratory near Didcot in Oxfordshire.

In the Reaction Engines system, the ammonia is stored as a chilled, pressurized liquid in the wings of the airplane, just as kerosene-based fuel is today. Heat harvested from the engine by the heat exchanger -- designed by Reaction Engines -- would warm the ammonia as it is pumped out and fed into a chemical reactor where a catalyst -- designed by the STFC -- breaks down some of the ammonia into nitrogen and hydrogen:

   2NH3 --> N2 + 3H2

The mixture is then fed into the jet engine where it burns like conventional fuel, except that the emissions consist mainly of nitrogen and water vapor. Ammonia in itself isn't really a fuel; it's more a way of storing hydrogen.

Dr. James Barth, engineering lead at Reaction Engines, says: "Our study showed that an ammonia-fueled jet engine could be adapted from currently available engines, and ammonia as a fuel doesn't require a complete re-think of the design of civil aircraft as we know them today. This means a fast transition to a sustainable aviation future is possible at low cost; ammonia-powered aircraft could be serving the world's short-haul routes well in advance of 2050."

* As discussed by an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("How Can Sustainable Aviation Fuel Be Kept Sustainable?" by Thierry Dubois, 4 June 2020), aircraft are a major contributor to CO2 emissions. The main focus of addressing this problem is to use biofuels.

The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) estimates that about 600 million tonnes of jet fuel will be necessary to cover all aviation needs in 2050. That could demand up to 45 exa-joules (EJ) of biomass input to biofuel production, given the relatively low efficiency of the transformation process.

A sustainable biomass supply of 70 EJ could be produced each year, "possibly going up to 100 EJ, thanks to tightly regulated reforestation efforts," as suggested in a 2018 report from the Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), a London-based international think tank representing energy producers, energy users, and economists -- notably Britain's Nicholas Stern. The ETC believes that biofuel production be focused on aviation; aircraft demand energy-dense fuels and don't work well with batteries, as do cars.

Biofuel production for ground vehicles is in something of an uncertain state, and so the aviation industry needs to push for it independently. One key factor is to ensure that plant mass grown for biofuels not compete with food production, instead being based on plant waste streams. That leads to the challenge of collecting municipal, agricultural, or forestry waste. There's also the issue of ensuring that biomass production is carbon-neutral. There's interest in sunlight-to-fuel conversion, though that's not at all practical at present.

* As discussed by an article from JANES.com ("Northrop Grumman Charges On With XM913 50 MM Cannon Deliveries To US Army" by Ashley Roque, 4 September 2020), the US Army is now obtaining the new "XM913 Bushmaster III" 50-millimeter automatic cannon for ground vehicles. It is a scaled-up derivative of earlier Bushmaster weapons, capable of engaging ground or air targets with armor-piercing or high-explosive rounds, using a dual-feed system.

The Bushmasters are "chain guns", A chain gun is a powered automatic weapon, the gun mechanism being in a box with a chain drive looping around it. Chain guns are simple and reliable; indeed, they could have been produced alongside the Gatling gun, had anyone thought of them in the 19th century. A guided 50-millimeter round for the weapon is under consideration. The army wants the cannon, in part, to support its "Next-Generation Combat Vehicle (NGCV) portfolio and allow soldiers to fire quicker and reach farther distances.

* In related news, according to an article to JANES.com ("USMC Set To Buy 300 XM914E1 Cannons For MADIS Inc 1" by Ashley Roque, 09 September 2020) is now moving forward on acquisition of a "Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV)", to be fielded in a number of configurations. The configuration includes a "Heavy Guns Carrier", built around the Northrop Grumman XM914E1 30 x 113 millimeter chain gun, as the core of the Protector XM914 Remote Weapon System (RWS), from Kongsberg of Norway.

The RWS is modular and can be fitted with a range of different weapons and sensors -- but for the Heavy Guns Carrier, the Marines want to add a co-axial 7.62-millimeter (0.30-caliber) MAG machine gun, two Stinger short-range surface-to-air missiles, an electro-optic / infrared imaging system, and a laser rangefinder. The cannon has dual feeds to allow switching between alternate types of ammunition. The JLTV Heavy Guns Carrier is focused on defense against aerial threats, but of course can engage ground targets.

[WED 24 MAR 21] FLYING WITHOUT FEAR

* FLYING WITHOUT FEAR: As discussed by an article from AVIATIONWEEK.com ("New Cabin Technologies May Help Restore Passenger Confidence" by Thierry Dubois, 17 June 2020), airlines have taken a brutal hit in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. They are now trying to restore their fortunes by ensuring passengers that air travel is safe.

Action taken by civil aviation authorities -- such as the European Union Aviation Safety Agency's (EASA) passenger management guidelines -- has in fact set high prevention standards, including the use of thermal screening at the airport and the use of face masks. Aircraft air-supply systems are also effective at dealing with pathogens.

According to Jean-Brice Dumont -- Airbus executive vice president for engineering -- the air a passenger breathes is evenly made up of fresh air from outside the aircraft and recirculated air. Recirculated air flows through "high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA)" filters, which are otherwise used in medical environments. Dumont says: "They block at least 99.9% of viruses and other microbes."

There's a strong airflow from top vents, down to intake vents at floor level. Every row has its own vents. That the air flows vertically, not horizontally, limits the probability of virus dissemination. Dumont says: "If you sneeze, droplets will be sucked away and in 1 minute, there will be nothing left around you." A computational fluid dynamics model developed by Ansys analyzed the example of a passenger wearing a mask and sneezing; it showed that few droplets make it through the mask, and barely come close to any other passenger.

Such measures are still not enough to make passengers feel completely safe, and so cabin equipment suppliers are promoting new products to provide more reassurance. Safran Seats proposes that seats be fitted with transparent partition walls, or removeable partitions that could be installed by passengers at head level. They could be made of single-use, flexible textile. Removable seat covers could also be single-use. To avoid multiple hand contacts with a single item, pedals could control seat recline and tray table position. Where antimicrobial materials would be used, such as armrests and tray tables, they would be marked with QR codes to allow passengers to obtain information on the surface's hygienic properties.

These are concepts, not products, the result of a company challenge for new ideas to deal with COVID-19. The company is promoting a "Create With Safran Seats" program, working with customers to develop solutions, which will be run through accelerated development. In the meantime, the company is making its "Interspace" padded semipartition available for premium-economy seats. It was designed for passenger comfort, giving a conventional seat a cocooning factor, but may provide a degree of protection against pathogens.

Acro Aircraft Seating is talking with Addmaster, a supplier of additives for materials. Addmaster offers the "Biomaster" antimicrobial technology, which has been in service with London's public transportation system for five years, into aircraft seat parts such as armrests. Biomaster incorporates silver ions, which interfere with microbes, causing them to die. It can be sprayed onto a surface; if sprayed onto a textile, the textile can be cold-washed up to 80 times without losing its antimicrobial power.

Biomaster could be used in in-service aircraft, being sprayed on components such as tray tables and armrests. So far, Biomaster hasn't been thoroughly tested for its effectiveness against SARS-CoV-19 -- it's an anti-microbial treatment, not designed with viruses in mind -- though early results are promising. A second issue is that it could affect a substrate material's properties, such as flammability.

There is also the issue of aircraft lavatories, which are obviously places where pathogens can spread. All Nippon Airways has worked with aircraft interior designer NAMCO to design a lavatory door that has a hook for entry that can hooked by a passenger's elbow, and similarly lock the door once inside. Tabs are added to the toilet seat to reduce physical contact.

Aircraft lighting is another front in the fight. Aveo Engineering, a specialist in LED lighting, is promoting the use of visible violet and ultraviolet (UV) light for disinfection purposes. A company official says: "The 405-nanometer light is the disinfecting component of sunlight. A violet light can run all the time and be masked by normal white light. We use these lights to keep galleys and lavatories clean."

Shorter-wavelength "UV-C" light, with a wavelength of 275 nanometers, can be used for intense disinfection of exposed surfaces, and is known to destroy the COVID-19 virus -- but it's a threat to humans, only useful for disinfection between flights. Honeywell is working with Dimer, which has developed the "GermFalcon" UV-C disinfection system. The size of an aircraft beverage cart, the GermFalcon robot has UV-C-light arms that extend over the top of the seats and sweep the cabin. Honeywell will market and produce the system, renamed the "UV Cabin System'. It is said to be able to treat an aircraft cabin in less than 10 minutes at an operating cost of less than $10 USD. [ED: The airlines didn't end up making much investment in these schemes. The ideas haven't gone away, however.]

[TUE 23 MAR 21] VACCINE PERSISTENCE (2)

* VACCINE PERSISTENCE (2): Immune memory sometimes lasts a lifetime. In 1781, measles tore through the population of the Faroe Islands in the North Sea. It didn't re-appear for another 65 years; after the second infection, a careful study showed that nobody who had survived the first got sick again.

The goal of vaccine makers is to establish solid, life-long immunity. They develop harmless mimics of disease-causing viruses or bacteria, or their toxins, with the intent of stimulating the immune system against them, with the hope that the immune system won't forget later. Immunologists believe that for many infectious diseases, long-lived "memory B cells" are key to that response. When confronted by known pathogens, those cells quickly rally and generate antibodies that latch onto the invaders, preventing infections. Vaccines also can train "killer T cells", which mop up when antibodies fail, eliminating infected cells.

Mark Slifka -- an immunologist who specializes in vaccine studies at the Oregon National Primate Research Center in Beaverton -- says: "For a lot of the things we have vaccines against, antibodies are probably the protective mechanism. For the hard ones to vaccinate against -- TB [tuberculosis], malaria, HIV -- antibodies play some role, but you need T cells."

Vaccine developers are debating the best way to trigger some responses. Some designers like the idea that a live but weakened pathogen -- or genes from it stitched into a harmless virus that acts as a Trojan horse -- induces the longest-lasting, most robust responses. Just such a weakened virus is the basis of the measles vaccine, for example, which protects for life. But Stanford's Bali Pulendran disagrees, with him and others claiming that a killed (AKA "inactivated") pathogen, or a genetically engineered variant of it, can work just as well.

A problem in that debate is that for the flu, both killed and live virus vaccines are produced, and neither offers robust protection. Partly that's because of the notorious mutability of the flu virus, but even when a vaccine closely targets a circulating strain of influenza virus, both types protect only about 60% of vaccinated people -- with that immune response quickly fading away. In a 2018 review of eleven studies on the durability of influenza vaccines, researchers concluded that effectiveness can vanish as soon as 90 days after vaccination.

The study also observed that 20% of Americans received their flu vaccines for a given season by the end of September -- which means the vaccine may do little come peak flu spread in January and February. Study co-author Kunal Rambhia -- a drug delivery specialist working on a PhD at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor -- says: "The further away you get from your vaccine, the higher the risk that you'll contract influenza. This has huge implications."

Rambhia says ACIP is not ignorant of this problem, having good reason to urge people to get vaccinated early, given the challenge of immunizing more than 100 million Americans each year: "They're making the best decision they can. They acknowledge that the vaccine might be less effective toward the end of the flu season."

He and others also note that a vaccine can offer a benefit even if its effectiveness has faded. In people who receive the flu vaccine but get ill, the disease often is noticeably less severe. Such partial protection was first recognized more than a century ago with the smallpox vaccine -- which fully prevents disease for only a few decades, but powerfully shields people from severe illness and death for life. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[MON 22 MAR 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 11

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: One Adam Server, writing in THEATLANTIC.com ("Biden Chooses Prosperity Over Vengeance", 15 March 2021), considered US President Joe Biden's declared commitment to "bipartisanship", and suggested that it doesn't exactly mean what it is commonly thought to mean.

As a starting point, take Donald Trump's erratic rule over the USA. It is a truism that the Right elected Trump to "own the Libs". The Right denies that, but they were only too quick to proclaim, in response to any real or perceived excess on the Left: "This is why Trump won." Trump's virtue, his sole virtue to those who voted for him, was his willingness to step on the Liberals, and the Liberals were only getting what was coming to them. Trump, as Trump himself continually pointed out, was the only protection they had against the despicable Libs.

Contrast that with Joe Biden's first months as president: reversing many of Trump's edicts, of course, but also raising to first priority a vaccination push, along with a generous stimulus / aid bill, the American Rescue Program (ARP). Biden wants to get along with Republicans in Congress, but he can rest no great hopes on that. His real agenda is to show that he wants the government to work for all Americans.

Of course, even ARP is not enough, and doing more will be difficult. Efforts to institute programs to help low-income Americans, bolster the labor movement, and in particular guarantee voting rights will encounter resistance. Ironically, trying to guarantee voting rights to all Americans is, in the fading era of Trump, denounced as a partisan exercise.

Nonetheless, Biden's effort to make America prosperous again is on the right track. To be sure, the US economy was doing well under Trump, but the Trump economy was merely following the same trajectory as it had during the second Obama Administration. To the extent Trump was in control of the process, it was mainly in ensuring the ongoing concentration of economic power in the hands of the wealthy.

All economic booms come to an end sooner or later, and when it did in 2020, Trump was found lacking. Trump's political machine was dependent on religious Rightists who wanted to turn back the clock; xenophobes who wanted to Make America Whiter Again; and extremists who simply wanted to destroy government. They all failed, because the Trump Administration had no substantial agenda other than to punish the Left, and tax cuts for the rich. As Serwer writes:

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Trumpism was based on a view of the world as a zero-sum game: between Right and Left Americans, between the US and other nations, between whites and nonwhites. Trump told his fans that if Biden won, they would lose. It is Biden's task to show them that isn't true. The ARP is a big step in that direction -- and it's popular, with a Pew poll indicating that 70% of Americans support the bill, including 63% of "lower-income Republicans and Republican leaners."

Unfortunately, no Republican members of Congress voted for it, and instead raised a fuss about the withdrawal from publication of a few old tactless Dr. Seuss books. Just as significantly, ARP originally had a provision for raising the minimum wage -- but it had to be deleted, with the Republicans decidedly against it. In the meantime, across the USA, GOP-run states are attempting to raise obstacles to voting. One state representative told CNN: "Quantity is important, but we have to look at the quality of votes as well." -- "quality" in this context obviously meaning "white".

This does not amount to a winning formula, and does not suggest there is any sympathy for bipartisanship among GOP politicians. Joe Biden is making a great leap of faith, believing that Americans will reward a party that is trying to make all their lives better, and not just set one side against the other while enriching the privileged. This is expressing far more confidence in the decency and sensibility of the Republican base than Trump and his stooges ever contemplated.

Will it work? Among the hard-core Trump defenders, who spread a confused mix of malicious lies about Biden on social media, it won't. The reality is that they represent only about half of Trump voters; the other half voted for Trump just for the fun of it, finding his malign-clown act amusing. Should they simply stop voting, it will serve Biden's interests well enough.

* As reported by Associated Press on 19 March, a Michigan restaurant owner was arrested for contempt of court after months of defying pandemic-control measures. Marlena Pavlos-Hackney had to remain in jail until she paid $7,500 USD and authorities confirmed that Marlena's Bistro & Pizzeria in Holland, Michigan, was really closed. Ingham County Judge Rosemarie Aquilina said: "She has put the community at risk. We are in the middle of a pandemic,"

Poland-born Pavlos-Hackney, 55, was ignoring caps on restaurant capacity and wasn't enforcing mask rules. Her food license was yanked on 20 January; she stayed open. The court finally decided they'd had enough, and ordered her arrest. Aquilina said: "You have selfishly not followed the orders. ... This is the wrong way to get publicity. It's the wrong way to be a good citizen."

It is understandable that people don't like the government interfering in their making a living, but almost 17,000 Michiganders have died of COVID-19. In court, when Judge Aquilina asked Pavlos-Hackney if she would pledge to tell the truth, there was no reply. Aquilina did not take kindly to that: "I know you want to control this room, but this isn't Burger King. When the sign changes to Burger King, you can have it your way. Right now this is my courtroom, and you will answer my questions."

* It took a couple of days for Colorado to dig out of last week's snowstorm. One Kreg Lyles, of Aurora -- an eastern suburb of Denver -- got enthusiastic about the job, and put together a 3.5-meter (12-foot) tall snow owl, with three days of work.

In the town of Berthoud, directly south of us here in Loveland, a group put together a snow chapel that was not as imaginative, but similarly impressive. We're supposed to get some more precipitation, but I don't believe we'll be buried in snow here again this season.

[FRI 19 MAR 21] AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (142)

* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (142): The faults of the Grenada operation -- and the earlier, disastrous EAGLE CLAW hostage-rescue operation -- would lead, in 1986, to the Goldwater-Nichols Defense Reorganization Act, introduced by Barry Goldwater and Representative William Flynt Nichols, an Alabama Democrat. The Goldwater-Nichols Act strengthened the authority of the secretary of defense in the Pentagon, with the aim of reducing interservice rivalries and enhancing joint-force operations. It greatly enhanced the authority of the president, with the Joint Chiefs reduced to more of an advisory role, the chairperson being the president's primary military advisor.

On the other hand, it also ensured that a theatre commander was clearly in charge, with all service elements involved under the commander's control. When a Navy admiral said he would not take orders from a Marine general who was the theatre commander, the admiral was promptly cashiered.

Reagan was up for election in 1984, his opponent being former vice president Walter Mondale. Reagan campaigned on a slogan of "morning again in America"; given his popularity, he had little to worry about in the contest, and he brutally crushed Mondale, the electoral vote being 525 to 13. It was the second-most lopsided victory in all US presidential history, exceeded only by FDR's victory over Alf Landon in 1936. Following his second inauguration, Reagan modified his cabinet, making White House Chief of Staff James Baker to Secretary of the Treasury, and making Treasury Secretary Donald Regan Chief of Staff.

In 1982, Reagan kicked off a "War On Drugs" campaign, a follow-up to the effort begun by Nixon. Reagan scaled up the effort, and would budget substantial funds to it, with his wife Nancy making it a personal program, under the slogan of "Just Say No". The effort got mixed reviews, with marijuana use declining in high schools, but critics complaining that the program singled out minorities.

The 1980s also saw the emergence of the AIDS pandemic, with AIDS activists accusing the Reagan Administration of indifference, or at least being slow to react. Administration officials countered by pointing out that funding to deal with the crisis grew from a few hundred thousand dollars a year in 1982 to over $2 billion USD at the end of Reagan's term in office.

The issue of South Africa's white-supremacist apartheid regime also put stress on the Reagan Administration, with the anti-apartheid movement pushing for disinvestment in and sanctions against South Africa. Reagan was opposed to direct pressure tactics, preferring what he called "constructive engagement" with the regime, as part of a greater initiative designed to support peaceful economic development and political change throughout southern Africa.

Under pressure, however, Reagan implemented a number of sanctions against South Africa, including an arms embargo. His critics were not happy with such measures -- South Africa bought few weapons from the US -- and Congress took matters into its own hands, passing the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which included tougher sanctions, in August 1986. Reagan vetoed the act; Congress overrode the veto. A number of European countries and Japan followed with their own tougher sanctions.

Reagan was much less willing to be pleasant to Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi -- a troublemaker who had been labeled "international public enemy #1" by a CIA official, which summed up Reagan's attitude towards him. On declaring the Gulf of Sidra, north off the coast of Libya, a "zone of death" in 1981, Reagan sent in a powerful US Navy task force as a gesture of defiance; two Libyan fighter jets were shot down during the exercise.

In April 1986, a Berlin discotheque frequented by American soldiers was bombed, with one killed and 63 injured. The US had compromised Libyan cryptosystems, and so Reagan ordered a set of airstrikes on Libya, under Operation EL DORADO CANYON, on the night of 15:15 April 1986, with both US Navy and US Air Force aircraft participating. The USAF component flew out of Britain, with the blessing of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, Reagan's ideological soulmate.

Reagan announced to the US public: "When our citizens are attacked or abused anywhere in the world on the direct orders of hostile regimes, we will respond so long as I'm in this office." The strike went over very well with the American public, though it was condemned in the UN General Assembly. In any case, following the attack, which came close to killing Qaddafi, Libyan support for international terrorism went on the decline. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 18 MAR 21] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for February included:

-- [01 FEB 21] CN JQ / HYPERBOLA 1 / SMALLSATS (FAILURE) -- A commercial Hyperbola 1 light booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0815 UTC (local time - 8) on its first flight, to put a set of small payloads into orbit. The booster was built by Beijing Interstellar Glory Space Technology LTD, better known as "iSpace". This was the second orbital launch attempt of the Hyperbola 1, following a successful flight in 2019. The Hyperbola 1 is about 24 meters (78 feet) tall, and has a liftoff thrust of about 412 kN (43,000 kgp / 92,500 lbf). It can place a 300-kilogram (660-pound) payload into low polar orbit.

-- [02 FEB 21] RU PL / SOYUZ 2-1B / LOTOS S1 (COSMOS 2549) -- A Soyuz 2-1b booster was launched from Plesetsk at 2045 UTC (local time - 3) to put the "Cosmos 2549" satellite into orbit. It was believed to be the fifth "Lotos S1" electronic intelligence satellite. The Lotos S1 satellites are built by KB Arsenal, a Russian military contractor in Saint Petersburg, in partnership with TsSKB Progress. According to the manufacturer, the Lotos S1 satellites have a launch mass of about 6,000 kilograms (13,000 pounds).

-- [04 FEB 21] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 17 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0619 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 18th Starlink batch launch.

-- [04 FEB 20] CN XC / LONG MARCH 3B / TJSW 6 -- A Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 1536 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "TJSW 6" satellite into geostationary orbit. China has launched six satellites in the TJS series since 2015, and all are widely speculated to have military missions. The TJSW 2, TJSW 5, and TJSW 6 satellites appear to be of the same type, likely with missile warning sensors. The TJSW 1 and TJSW 4 satellites are suspected to have an electronic or signals intelligence-gathering mission. The TJSW satellites were manufactured by the Shanghai Academy of Spaceflight Technology.

-- [15 FEB 21] RU BK / SOYUZ 2-1A / PROGRESS 77P (ISS) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 0445 UTC (local time - 5) to put the "Progress MS-16 / 77P" tanker-freighter spacecraft into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) supply mission. It docked with the ISS Pirs module two days later. It was the 77th Progress mission to the ISS. The Progress spacecraft took the Pirs module along with it when it re-entered Earth's atmosphere.

-- [16 FEB 21] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 18 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0359 UTC (previous day 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 19th Starlink batch launch. It was the sixth flight of the Falcon 9 first stage -- and its last, since it missed its landing on the SpaceX recovery barge due to an engine failure.

-- [20 FEB 21] USA WP / ANTARES / CYGNUS 15 (NG 15) -- An Orbital Sciences Antares booster was launched from Wallops Island off the coast of Virginia at 1736 UTC (local time + 5) to put the 14th operational "Cygnus" supply capsule, designated "NG 15", into space on an International Space Station support mission, carrying 3,810 kilograms (8,400 pounds) of cargo. It docked with the ISS two days later.

The Cygnus delivered a brine processor assembly for the ISS water recycling system, which converts urine into fresh drinking water. The capsule also carried a new sleeping quarters for the space station's seven-person crew. There were, at the time, five crew members on the space station's US segment, but only four sleep stations there, with one of the crew sleeping in a Dragon capsule.

The Antares upper stage carried 30 "ThinSats", which are studentsats about the size of a slice of bread, flown by a number of schools. They were released at low altitude, to re-enter and burn up a few days later. The ThinSat program is a partnership between the Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority, which runs the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport, Northrop Grumman, Twiggs Space Lab, NASA's Wallops Flight Facility, and NearSpace Labs. The first 63 ThinSats were launched on an Antares booster in 2019.

A number of smallsats were carried on the Cygnus capsule for later release from the ISS:

• Gunsmoke-J 2: A 3-unit (3U) Cubesat technology demonstration satellite from the US Army Space & Missile Defense Command. It was intended to evaluate the usefulness of an Earth-imaging payload for tactical use by military field forces.
  
  
• Two other CubeSats for US government customers that were not described.
  
  
• IT-SPINS: A 3U CubeSat from Montana State University, intended to obtain images of the ionosphere over the night side of the Earth during a six-month research mission.
  
  
• DhabiSat (MySat 2): A 1U CubeSat studentsat from Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi. Students developed the CubeSat with help from Yahsat, a communications satellite company in Abu Dhabi, and Northrop Grumman.
  
  
• GuaraniSat 1: A CubeSat from Paraguay's space agency, and Paraguay's first satellite. It was developed in collaboration with engineers in Japan and universities and research centers in Paraguay.

The booster was in the Antares 230 configuration, with two RD-181 first stage engines and a Castor 30XL second stage.

-- [24 FEB 21] CN XC / LONG MARCH 2C / YAOGAN 31 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from Xichang at 0222 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.

-- [28 FEB 20] IN SR / PSLV / AMAZONIA 1 -- An ISRO Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV) was launched from Sriharikota at 0454 UTC (next day local time - 5:30) to put the "Amazonia 1" Earth-observation satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit for Brazil's National Institute of Space Research (INPE). Amazonia 1 carried an optical wide-imaging system, featuring of a camera with three bands in the visible spectrum and one band in the near-infrared. It had a field of view of 850 kilometers (525 miles) and a resolution of 60 meters (195 feet); it had a launch mass of 700 kilograms (1545 pounds), and a design life of four years.

The PSLV also launched 18 smallsats:

• SpaceBEE x 12: The SpaceBEE satellites, about the size of a slice of bread, were developed by Swarm Technologies, for satellite communications and data relay.
  
  
• SAL 1 / Nanoconnect 2: A 2U CubeSat developed and funded by the Space Instrumentation Laboratory of the National University of Mexico. It evaluated the use of the GlobalStar satellite phone network as a secondary communication network for nano-satellites.
  
  
• Sindhu Netra (Eye Of The Sea): An India-developed AIS-based (Automatic Identification System) marine traffic-monitoring microsat built by students at the People's Education Society University's Crucible for Research and Innovation wing. Funding was provided by the Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO) of India.
  
  
• UNITYsat (JITsat, GHRCESat, SriShakthiSat): A triplet of U/4 CubeSats providing amateur radio and IoT (Internet of Things) services. The mission was developed by the Jeppiaar Institute of Technology, GH Raisoni College of Engineering, and the Sri Shakthi Institute of Engineering and Technology.
  
  
• Satish Dhawan Satellite (SDSat): A 3U Cubesat developed by SpaceKidz India to measure magnetic fields and space radiation. The satellite also carried 25,000 names designed to create awareness and educate the general public about space sciences. It was named after the chairman and founding father of the Indian Space Program,

This was the 53rd mission for the PSLV rocket and marks the first dedicated PSLV commercial mission for New Space India Limited, an Indian government company under the Department of Space and the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organization. The fight , also known as PSLV-C51, used the DL variant of the rocket, which consists of the main solid propellant first stage augmented with two side mounted solid rocket boosters with 12 tonnes of propellant each.

-- [28 FEB 21] RU BK / SOYUZ 2-1B / ARTIKA-M 1 -- A Soyuz 2-1b booster was launched from Baikonur at 0655 UTC (local time - 3) to put the "Artika-M 1" weather / emergency communications satellite into highly inclined elliptical orbit. The satellite was built by NPO Lavochkin, and had a launch mass of 2,200 kilograms (4,850 pounds); it was based on the Russian geostationary Elektro-L weather satellite. Its primary mission was weather observation of the Arctic, with two such satellites stationed 180 degrees apart to provide continuous coverage. The Arktika-M satellites also track solar flare activity, measure radiation through the Van Allen belts, and collect data on Earth's magnetosphere and ionosphere.

[WED 17 MAR 21] PLASTICS REVIVAL?

* PLASTICS REVIVAL? As discussed by an article from MSN.com ("Plastic Is the Hero of Coronavirus, Says the Plastics Industry" by Leslie Kaufman, 8 June 2020), single-use plastic products have acquired a very bad reputation, with bans on plastic bags and such proliferating around the world.

Then came COVID-19. It's an ill wind that blows no good; in mid-March 2020, after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, Tony Radoszewski -- boss of the Plastic Industry Association, the sector's main US lobbying group -- sent Alex Azar, the secretary of the Department of Health & Human Services, arguing that single-use plastics had become essential:

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Plastics lobbyists have been very active, pointing to the role their products play in keeping food, health-care workers, and families safe. Plastics sales appear to be taking off: In April, both Germany's Ineos Styrolution Group GMBH and US-based Trinseo SA reported double-digit percentage increases in sales at their food packaging and health-care divisions. According to Steven Feit, a staff attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law:

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In 2019, the plastics industry was in the doghouse. Under pressure from investors and consumers, companies were setting targets to reduce their reliance on plastic packaging -- notably Coca-Cola Company, labeled the world's biggest polluter two years in a row by the advocacy group Break Free From Plastic. More than 125 countries have some kind of plastic ban, according to a 2018 report from the United Nations Environment Program and the World Resources Institute.

The core problem is that plastics degrade very slowly, when they degrade at all, and they are not easily recycled. For a time, that problem was easy to ignore, since China was eager to buy it. From 1992 to 2017, the country received roughly 45% of the world's recyclable plastic. However, China finally reached its limit: a lot of the used plastic imported to China was too contaminated to be recycled, and more significantly, the Chinese people were generating more plastic waste than the recycling industry could handle.

With the COVID-19 pandemic, many US cities trimmed back on recycling, worrying that the potential for used cups and cutlery to transmit the virus to workers posed too big a risk. At the same time, restaurant chains such as Starbucks and Dunkin' announced a temporary ban on customers bringing in reusable coffee mugs.

Anti-plastic activists were not happy. Judith Enck -- a former administrator for the US Environmental Protection Agency -- acknowledges that public safety comes first. But as the founder of the grassroots Beyond Plastics project, she questions whether disposable cups make people safer. Currency, for instance, is a notorious germ-carrier. She asks: "Will Starbucks now stop accepting cash?"

In reality, the pandemic has been a huge boost to cashless transactions, so that was arguably not the best question to ask. In any case, the anti-plastics movement is on the back foot for now. In the face of widespread lockdowns, plastic manufacturers claimed they were "essential businesses" and shouldn't be locked down, with outbreaks following at some facilities. Presumably the industry has implemented better safeguards.

It is true that plastic performs many essential functions in our society, particularly in health care. Single-use surgical gloves, syringes, insulin pens, IV tubes, and catheters, for example, have reduced the risk of infection and streamlined operations at hospitals by reducing the burden of sterilization. On the other hand, the virus remains potent longer on plastic than on most other surfaces, notably easier-to-recycle cardboard.

To make matters worse for anti-plastic activists, the arrival of the pandemic coincided with a global oil price war, with the great reduction in travel then driving the price of oil down into the floor. That means plastic products are now cheaper and more attractive, while they are less profitable to recycle. The problem of single-use plastics is certainly going to remain unsolved well after the pandemic is over.

[TUE 16 MAR 21] VACCINE PERSISTENCE (1)

* VACCINE PERSISTENCE (1): As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("How Long Do Vaccines Last?" by Jon Cohen, 18 April 2019), vaccines are a wonderful invention -- but they have limitations, one being that their effectiveness can fade quickly.

In 2018, Stanley Plotkin and his wife got vaccinated against influenza A at the start of the Northern Hemisphere's flu season, in early October. Plotkin, a physician and emeritus professor at the University of Pennsylvania, is a believer in vaccines -- being one of the world's best-known vaccinologists, having a hand in the development of a number of vaccines on the market, and being the co-author of the standard text in the field, VACCINES.

In January 2019, only 3 months later, the couple got a second flu shot. That was an unusual choice, one not recommended by the US Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP), which guides the country's vaccine usage. The couple was motivated by the fact that there is growing evidence that the effectiveness of flu vaccines can fade in a matter of weeks. He says: "The time and cost was trivial compared to the importance of influenza at my age. With flu, we're not talking about getting a case of the sniffles." They got through the flu season okay.

It's not just flu. Studies are now showing that vaccines for mumps, pertussis, meningococcal disease, and yellow fever also lose their effectiveness faster than official immunization recommendations suggest. It is puzzling that this phenomenon hasn't been recognized before, but there are good reasons for the oversight:

• When a new vaccine is introduced, there's not much way of knowing how long its effectiveness will persist. That requires long-term monitoring.
  
  
• Once a widespread immunization campaign takes place, the pathogen it targets goes out of circulation, so new infections are unusual.
  
  
• Even if the pathogen is still in circulation, the vaccine may have boosted the overall immune response, and the infection won't be as severe.

Why do some vaccines work for a few weeks, while others last for life? Plotkin, who has been researching vaccines since 1957, says:

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Bali Pulendran, an immunologist at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California, similarly acknowledges the mystery of lasting immunity, admitting he keeps telling people: "It's not well understood, it's not well understood." -- and adds: "This is one of the major issues in vaccines." To make matters even more confusing, two critical vaccines, against diphtheria and tetanus, seem to have better durability than been presumed.

Fortunately, researchers are starting to find clues in the matter. One comes from the vaccine against the cancer-causing, sexually transmitted human papillomavirus (HPV), this vaccine being remarkably durable. New insights into durability are also leading researchers to dig into the vaccine booster recommendations by ACIP and similar oversight bodies. Still, Wayne Koff, an immunologist who heads the nonprofit Human Vaccines Project in New York City, says that more attention needs to be paid to the issue of vaccine durability: "If you could understand this, you could make all vaccines better." [TO BE CONTINUED]

[MON 15 MAR 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 10

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Joe Biden finally signed the $1.9 trillion USD American Rescue Plan (ARP) into law, taking on COVID-19 with a tsunami of debt. There has been much sniping from the Right about it, with claims that only 9% of the funds had anything to do with COVID-19. Of course, that's lying; it's more like 85%, much depending on assumptions in the estimation, and there's little in it that seems unreasonable.

As discussed in an essay from ECONOMIST.com ("The $3 Trillion Question", 9 March 2021), the Biden Administration is banking on the ARP to drive an economic boom. The idea of a massive stimulus bill grew from the aftermath of the 2007:2008 economic downturn: the recovery was slow and anemic, the conclusion being that the government's response was stingy and short-sighted.

The pandemic has been an economic boost to many, an economic disaster to many others. ARP is intended not only to reduce the pain to those thrown out of work or suffering business losses, but also to make sure that, when pandemic measures are ended, people have cash to burn, then go out and spend it. Nobody's expecting the wealthy to change their spending habits much, but those lower on the economic pyramid will feel like spreading their money around.

Thanks to stimulus, household incomes have actually risen in the past year, even as pandemic measures and public insecurity have limited spending. What will actually happen when the gates are opened? Nobody knows for sure, but all major economic forecasts point to a rapid economic recovery. Of course, as is always true of economics, there's a psychological component to such forecasts, in that sunny economic expectations will damp insecurity, and promote economic activity.

What about the downsides to big-time deficit spending? The USA can't keep piling up debt indefinitely without pain, and there's no consensus in sight for funding the government. Whether the Biden Administration will be praised or condemned by history remains to be seen.

* With ARP out of the way, Congress is considering what to work on next. One big priority is, of course, setting up a commission to investigate the 6 January 2021 attack on Congress. There's been a lot of grumbling on Twitter that nothing seems to be happening on that score, but it seems more likely that a handful of Democrat Members of Congress were putting together a plan for the commission, while the rest worked on ARP.

Another priority is to deal with the filibuster -- a rule peculiar to the Senate, not found in the House of Representatives, where it takes a vote of a "supermajority" of senators, 60 out of 100, to end debate on a measure. The Senate is divided 50:50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Vice President Harris adding a Democrat vote, and so the filibuster means the Republicans can block Democrat initiatives. The Democrats accordingly need to do something about the filibuster before they do much else, but there's some dispute over exactly what.

The filibuster came about by accident. Alexander Hamilton, writing at the foundation of the US government, commented that supermajorities were not a "remedy", they were a "poison" -- not protecting the rights of minorities, so much as allowing minorities to hold the government hostage. Hamilton and the other Framers did agree there were important issues where supermajorities made sense: for convicting impeached officials, overriding presidential vetoes, ratifying treaties, and enacting constitutional amendments. However, the Framers did not see fit to establish supermajorities for the normal passage of laws.

In 1805, Vice President Aaron Burr, in his role as President of the Senate, suggested that the Senate rules be modified to eliminate a mechanism for ending debate; it was seen as unnecessary. Three decades later John C. Calhoun, the prominent senator from South Carolina, realized there was nothing to stop senators from continuing debate indefinitely. After the Civil War, filibusters -- the term is derived from the Dutch "vrijbuiter", meaning "freebooter", pirate or privateer -- became a recognized, if not common tactic.

In 1917, the Senate belatedly passed a rule on "cloture", which would terminate debate: it required a two-thirds vote of the Senate, reduced in 1975 to three-fifths. That didn't help matters much, with segregationists making use of the filibuster to derail civil-rights legislation. In 1970, another change to the Senate rules meant that there was no reason to get up and talk indefinitely any more: the mere threat of a filibuster was enough to block legislation.

Both Democrats and Republicans made ever-increasing use of the filibuster. What else could happen? If one side used the weapon, the other side would as well. With the growth of partisanship, the filibuster is no longer a lever for deal-making, but a means of hurting the other side. Given its inconvenience, to no surprise the filibuster is gradually being whittled down. In 2013, the Democrats eliminated the filibuster on presidential nominations other than those for the Supreme Court. The Republicans objected, but in 2017, they got rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court confirmations.

Why did they not go further? One reason is that in the 1970s the Senate created an early exception to the filibuster: reconciliation, which allows a bill to pass the Senate if its provisions are aimed at changing spending and taxes. That means tax cuts, like the appointment of conservative judges, are rendered filibuster-proof. Since the Republicans are not interested in ambitious government programs, that was good enough for them.

Reconciliation could be used to pass ARP, but it's not enough for the Biden Administration's ambitions -- much less the ambitions of Members of Congress to the Left of the Biden Administration. What is particularly frustrating to Democrats is that Republican filibusters are doubly minoritarian, since Republican states tend to be less populated. The 41 Republican senators needed to defeat a cloture motion could, in principle, represent just 23% of the population.

There has been a loud outcry among Democrats to kill off the filibuster once and for all, which they could do with 51 Senate votes. They can't get them, since two moderate Democrats, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, have made it clear they will not kill the filibuster. Pressed on the possibility by a reporter, Manchin shot back: "Jesus Christ, what don't you understand about NEVER?"

Manchin, however, has made it equally clear that he is for whittling down the filibuster again. One proposal from Norm Ornstein -- a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a relatively moderate conservative think tank -- suggests requiring the minority to provide 41 votes to continue debate, instead of requiring the majority to find 60, and insisting that the debate-seekers actually hold the floor of the Senate and debate the measure they object to.

Which raises questions: will the revised filibuster still be effective in holding up the majority? If it does, then the case for killing it completely is stronger. If not effective, retaining the filibuster would be merely cosmetic, and there would be no great reason to keep it. In either case, the filibuster is on the way out; it's just a question of how long it will take, and how much trouble it will be to put it down.

* As I write on Sunday, the snow is still coming down. Not an unusual sort of thing here in March: dampish snow up to the knees, then sunny the next day. It's brought everything to a halt, but for the moment I've still got electrical power. I was trying to keep up with the shoveling, but I had to quit out of sheer exhaustion. I'll shovel it off in stages tomorrow.

[FRI 12 MAR 21] AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (141)

* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (141): Reagan took a very hard line against the Soviet Union. Detente had already been fading, in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan; now it was completely dead. He drove a massive arms buildup -- reviving the B-1 bomber, which had been shelved by the Carter Administration, and driving development of the MX ICBM. When the Soviets deployed the SS-20 IRBM to Eastern Europe, Reagan countered by deploying the Pershing II IRBM and the Ground-Launched Cruise Missile (GLCM) to Western Europe. However, when Reagan attempted to block the construction of a Soviet gas pipeline to Western Europe, complaints from NATO allies forced him to backtrack.

In 1984, journalist Nicholas Lemann interviewed Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger, who neatly summarized the Reagan Administration's strategy against the USSR:

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That would prove perfectly correct, though such a strategy was fiscally inconsistent with deep tax cuts -- which did not escape the notice of the administration's critics. In any case, in 1982, Reagan told the British Parliament that "the march of freedom and democracy will leave Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history." The next year, 1983, in an address to the US National Association of Evangelicals, he famously called the Soviet Union "an evil empire."

On 1 September 1983, Korean Air Lines Flight 007 strayed into Siberian airspace; Soviet interceptor jets, apparently mistaking it for a US RC-135 surveillance aircraft, blew it out of the sky, killing all 269 on board. Reagan called it a "massacre" and responded by suspending Soviet airliner flights to the USA, as well as cutting off negotiations for a number of agreements. More positively, Reagan announced in mid-September that the US Global Position System navigation satellite constellation, then under construction, would be made available to all in the future, to prevent other deadly confusions.

Reagan also took covert actions, under the "Reagan Doctrine", to undermine the Soviets in Afghanistan, using the CIA to supply and train Mujahedin insurgents. That had begun, as noted, under the Carter Administration, but it ramped up considerably under Reagan. The CIA even more quietly handed intelligence to the Iranians to counter Soviet influence in Iran. In addition, Reagan worked to roll back Soviet client states in Africa, Asia, and Latin America.

Reagan's push against Red regimes was, of course, accompanied by turning a generally blind eye to excesses by Rightist regimes, notably in Chad and Guatemala. On the other hand, Reagan continued the process of rapprochement with China begun under Richard Nixon, agreeing to limit arms sales to Taiwan.

In his most high-profile challenge to the USSR, in 1983 Reagan introduced the "Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI)" to provide a defensive shield against nuclear attack. That was in large part due to Reagan's distaste for the doctrine of "mutual assured destruction", which he saw as immoral. Technically speaking, SDI was a fantasy, promising to be vastly expensive but ineffective, and the effort would fade after Reagan left office. Nonetheless, Soviet leadership was intimidated.

One of Reagan's least successful foreign interventions was sending US forces to Lebanon in 1983 to help control the Lebanese Civil War. On 23 October 1983, a suicide truck bomber from the Hizbollah Islamist faction attacked the barracks in which US Marines lived in Beirut, with 241 killed and more than 60 injured. Reagan ordered airstrikes and naval bombardments of Hizbollah positions -- but that action didn't go well either, a number of aircraft being lost to Syrian air defenses. The Marines were withdrawn from Lebanon, the end result being a humiliation for the USA.

On 25 October 1983, Reagan ordered the invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada, then under a Marxist government, and suffering a degree of unrest -- a threat to American students on the island being a particular concern. The operation, codenamed URGENT FURY, was flawed, but ultimately successful. It was the first major US military operation since the end of the Vietnam War, and did much to enhance Reagan's public image. He was greatly helped when one of the rescued students got down and kissed the ground, in front of TV cameras, after being returned to the USA. US forces remained to mid-December 1983. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 11 MAR 21] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed by an article from NEWATLAS.com ("NZ To Trial World-First Commercial Long Range, Wireless Power Transmission" by Loz Blain, 03 August 2020), there's long been tinkering with long-range transmission of electric power. Emrod, a New Zealand startup company, is now testing a wireless power transmission link, and working with Powerco, the second-biggest power distributor in the country, to field it.

The scheme is based on a microwave link with a transmitter and relays, feeding into a "rectenna" -- a "rectifying antenna" that converts microwave energy into electrical power. All the elements look like big squares on poles. The microwave transmission is in the Industrial, Scientific, & Medical band of the radio spectrum, where wi-fi and bluetooth signals reside as well. The beam is guarded by a "low power laser safety curtain" that interrupts the beam if a bird, drone, or helicopter strays into the beam. The power densities are comparable to the bright Sun at noon; it's not like anyone would be fried wandering into the beam, but it wouldn't be wise to stay in it, either.

The prototype system will be capable of delivering "only a few kilowatts" of power, but can easily be scaled up. Emrod founder and serial entrepreneur Greg Kushnir says: "We can use the exact same technology to transmit 100 times more power over much longer distances. Wireless systems using Emrod technology can transmit any amount of power current wired solutions transmit."

Emrod says the system works in any atmospheric conditions, including rain, fog and dust, and the distance of transmission is limited only by line of sight between each relay, giving it the potential to transmit power up to hundreds of kilometers, at a fraction of the infrastructure costs, maintenance costs, and environmental impact a wired solution imposes. Efficiency of the transmission system itself is very good; the limiting factor on efficiency is the transmitter conversion, which is no better than 70%. The company sees their technology as useful for reaching small off-grid establishments. A truck-mounted system would be useful in emergencies.

* As reported by an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Testing Of Fuel Cell Bus As Mobile Power Source For Disaster Relief Begins" by Paul Ridden, 07 September 2020), Toyota and Honda of Japan are now testing the "Moving e" system -- which is a bus loaded up with fuel cells to provide emergency power in disaster areas.

The Moving e carries two fuel cell generator units, a set of batteries, and power-handling tech. The bus can generate a maximum of 18 kilowatts of power, with a total power capacity of 454 kilowatt-hours. In testing, the Charging Station bus will be driven out to real-world locations within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of a hydrogen refueling station. Toyota and Honda will then evaluate the mobile power source in various use scenarios. There is no commitment to production yet.

* While electric vehicles (EVs) are a coming thing in the developed world, a video from REUTERS.com showed they are having an impact in the undeveloped world as well. In Zimbabwe, startup company Mobility For Africa has introduced electric-powered tricycles with flatbeds that rural women drive to carry cargo and people. The trikes are made in China, and assembled from kits in Harare; they have a going price of $1,500 USD. They have the name of "Hamba (Go)", and are charged up at a solar station. The trikes are leased to groups of five women.

Mary Mhuka, a 58-year-old mother-of-six who is leasing the Hamba with her daughter-in-law and a neighbor, says the motorcycle had eased the strain of domestic work. She could now sell her vegetables at a business center 15 kilometers away for more money than she would get locally. "We used to carry firewood on our heads for very long distances ... but now it's much easier as this motorcycle has taken away that burden." They also transport patients and pregnant women to local clinics.

Fadzai Mavhuna, the Hamba pilot coordinator, says women pay an equivalent of $15 USD a month as a group to lease the Hamba, which has a maximum range of 100 kilometers (60 miles). It costs between $0.50 and $1 USD to change the motorcycle batteries. He says: "Some of the women have increased their income because they have embarked on ... projects like baking, tailoring and horticulture."

[WED 10 MAR 21] PANDEMIC AUTOMATION BOOM

* PANDEMIC AUTOMATION BOOM: The global COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated automation, as mentioned here in 2020. An article from ECONOMIST.com ("Bearing Fruit", 16 January 2021), amplified on that theme.

In mid-January Mary Barra, the CEO of General Motors, went onto the virtual stage to launch the company's new "BrightDrop" line of electric vehicles. It's nothing particularly sexy, the initial products being a delivery van and autonomous electric pallets for use in warehouses -- but it is a sign of the times. Blake Moret -- chief executive of Rockwell Automation, a giant in industrial automation -- sees a revolution in progress: "The convergence of software and hardware seen in the carpeted parts of enterprises is now seen on factory floors in every industry we serve."

Rockwell Automation practices what it preaches -- running a full-scale manufacturing facility at its Milwaukee headquarters, showing that its technology allows it to make competitive products, in spite of America's high labor costs. Its share price has risen well faster than the market in general; competitors have done as well or better.

Many companies have long proclaimed their determination to automate; COVID-19 has driven to be serious about it. Hernan Saenz of Bain, a consultancy, estimates that between now and 2030, US firms will invest $10 trillion USD in automation. Nigel Vaz -- chief executive of Publicis Sapient, a digital consultancy -- says that the downturn gives bosses the cover: "The unrelenting pressure for short-term financial results from investors has temporarily been suspended." Susan Lund, a McKinsey researcher, adds: "Firms are not just going back pre-pandemic, but completely re-imagining how they work."

Robots are the biggest winner. Robo Global, a research firm, predicts that by the end of 2021 the worldwide installed base of factory robots will exceed 3.2 million units, twice the level in 2015. The global market for industrial robotics is forecast to rise from $45 billion USD in 2020 to $73 billion USD in 2025. Michael Cicco -- the boss of American operations of Fanuc, a Japanese robot-maker -- says: "We have had a catbird seat during the pandemic." He says that with supply chains up-ended, manufacturers were forced to find ways to build flexibility. Companies reshoring production have sought to offset the high cost of human labor with machines. It helps that robots are becoming much more capable; the most dexterous can now pick delicate objects, such as individual strawberries.

Fanuc has seen a surge in demand for material-handling equipment and "collaborative robots", designed to interact with people. Such "cobots" are particularly useful in e-commerce, which has surged, thanks to COVID-19. Firms are buying up robots for use in warehouses, made by companies like GreyOrange and Kiva -- which Amazon acquired in 2012 to assist in e-commerce fulfillment.

One of the main reasons at present to obtain cobots is to help with social distancing. However, according to Dwight Klappich of Gartner, a research firm, robots that move goods to humans will mean improved productivity over the longer run -- and will be appreciated by the staff of fulfillment centers, since they won't have to spend much of their day running around a warehouse.

Luke Jensen of Britain's Ocado -- an online grocer and robotics pioneer -- believes that his low-margin industry must find ways of fulfilling the recent surge in online orders with less labor. His firm already serves the bulk of its British customers from just three highly automated sites. Kroger, a major American grocer, is now expanding its roll-out of Ocado equipment both in warehouses and at its retail outlets. Fully-automated fulfillment centers are quickly becoming a norm. In parallel with that transformation, companies are embracing the floods of data their operations generate, and adopting predictive algorithms to help guide real-time decisions.

Automation is growing rapidly outside of retail as well. Stuart Harris of America's Emerson, a big automation firm, says that "pervasive sensing" -- which combines AI and smart sensors -- helped his company's revenues from remote monitoring grow by 25% in 2020. Emerson's clients range from a Singaporean chemicals factory to a Latin American mine. ABB, a big Swiss-Swedish industrial-technology firm, also reports a boom in remote-operations systems, from marine vessels to paper mills, with product sales having doubled from pre-pandemic levels.

Manufacturing, no stranger to automation, is enhancing its capabilities. Drishti, an American startup, has come up with a way to apply artificial intelligence (AI) and computer vision to analyze busy video streams of workers on assembly lines. Marco Marinucci of Hella, a big German car-parts supplier, says his firm used Drishti's gear to analyze and fix problems at a high-volume assembly line, substantially improving throughput. Publicis Sapient automated the inventory forecasting of a division of a big European retailer which found itself often out of stock amid the change in consumption patterns during the pandemic; the consultancy's software allowed its client to prevent shortages of its top 100 items 98% of the time.

Even back offices are becoming more automated. By one estimate, America's notoriously stodgy health-care system could save $150 billion USD a year thanks to automation of paper-pushing. In 2020 Alibaba, China's answer to Amazon, unveiled a particularly ambitious project codenamed "Xunxi (Fast Rhino)", which involves digitizing and integrating whole value chains -- from product design, parts procurement and manufacturing, to logistics and after-sales service. Xunxi allowed merchants on Alibaba's e-commerce platforms to fulfill customized orders within days while trimming excess inventory; time from production to delivery was reduced from several months to two weeks.

Skeptics wonder if there isn't a lot of hype behind the rush to automate, and if the enthusiasm will fade away as does the pandemic. Possibly so, but probably not; after all, COVID-19 led to a boom in video conferencing, and that is clearly not going away. The pandemic has changed the rules of doing business, and those businesses that don't keep up with the changes are likely to fall behind.

[TUE 09 MAR 21] THE ONE PERCENT (4)

* THE ONE PERCENT (4): The fourth and last part of the conventional wisdom to come under scrutiny concerns wealth inequality. Wealth inequality is particularly troublesome to assess, since it involves statistical analysis of slices of the population that are made up of different people at different times, which can lead to confusing conclusions.

People accumulate wealth as they save for retirement, and so wealth tends to increase with age. That means that people who aren't so well-off when they're younger can be wealthy when they are older. In addition, those who haven't been able to accumulate wealth may not suffer so much for it, thanks to pension schemes and public services. Such padding helps explain the puzzle of why socially democratic Sweden appears to have extremely high wealth inequality, and why few there seems bothered by it. The Swedes don't have much problem with their billionaires.

A 2016 paper by Saez and Zucman published in 2016 concluded that the wealth share of the top 0.1% of American households rose from 7% in 1978 to 22% in 2012, which is almost as high as it was in 1929. These estimates have been used to determine how much revenue the annual wealth taxes proposed by Ms Warren and Mr Sanders would generate. Warren's wealth tax originally kicked in on fortunes in excess of $50 million USD, and reached 3% on the wealthiest households, generating annual revenue worth 1% of GDP. Warren has since doubled the top rate to 6%.

That estimate, and the paper by Saez and Zucman, has drawn fire. Their wealth estimates were reached in part by studying investment income on tax returns. Given "fixed income" investments like bonds, they assumed an average rate of return, and then factored how much wealth was needed to get that return. For example, given an assumed return of 5%, income would be multiplied by 20 to get the wealth that produced that income.

A paper by Smith, Zidar, and Zwick took a similar approach, but assumed more variation in rates of return. In particular, they cited survey data showing that the returns earned on fixed-income investments differ considerably. For example, the bottom 99% say they keep nearly 70% of their fixed-income wealth in bank deposits, which tend to pay little interest. The figure for the top 0.1% is no more than one-fifth.

Those with the most fixed-income wealth are more likely to hold corporate bonds, which, since they are riskier, bring higher returns. That means a smaller multiplier is needed. In addition, when interest rates are low, variation in the rates has a major effect on the estimate of wealth. Changing interest rates from 1% to 0.5% means doubling the multiplier; changing from 5% to 4.5% doesn't have the same effect.

Factoring in such variables -- and making other adjustments, for example to properly account for pass-through businesses -- Smith, Zidar, Zwick constructed a new ranking of households by wealth in which the share of the top 0.1% is only 15%. More significantly, they found that the rise in top wealth shares is cut in half. Saez and Zucman disagree, but at the very least, the debate shows that trying to calculate wealth is very tricky. Nonetheless, there's not much dispute that the wealth shares at the top have risen in the USA, the only argument being "how much".

The facts are even murkier internationally. According to Daniel Waldenstroem -- of the Research Institute of Industrial Economics, in Stockholm -- reliable data on the distribution of wealth is only available for three countries beside America: Britain, Denmark and France. In these places, it's not at all easy to see any clear trends in inequality over the past few decades. One study from Katrine Jakobsen of the University of Copenhagen and co-authors, including Zucman, finds that the wealth share of the top 1% in Denmark rose in the 1980s, but has stayed fairly constant since then. In France, according to Waldenstroem, whether or not wealth inequality appears to be rising depends on whether you track capital income or inheritances.

In sum, concerns over inequality are more ambiguous than it seems at first sight. Inequality may well be a problem; it may not be such a problem. All that can be said, in the face of a bun-fight between economists, is that policy-makers should proceed cautiously. Proposals for, say, taxing net wealth, are responses to a problem that is not that well understood. [END OF SERIES]

[MON 08 MAR 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 9

* This last week was dominated by the passage of $1.9 billion USD stimulus bill to deal with the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was a clean sweep in Congress: all the Democrats voted for it, all the Republicans voted against it. I keep wondering how much of a future the GOP has, given the completely useless Republican response to the pandemic.

As a further case in point, the week was otherwise characterized by the Troglodyte Right denouncing "cancel culture", proclaiming that there was an orgy of banning in progress against The Muppet Show, the books of Dr. Seuss (Ted Geisel), and the Mr. Potato Head toy. OK, the reality:

• Disney has released The Muppet Show episodes on video. There were no deletions, just a number of obligatory content warnings.
  
  
• Ted Geisel's estate decided that six of his titles would no longer be printed, being judged awkwardly out of date and tactless. All his popular titles remain in print.
  
  
• Hasbro simply changed the product labeling of "Mr. Potato Head" to just "Potato Head". The names of the toy characters themselves remained unchanged.

This is all the better these people have to worry about? For perspective, in 1968, Warner Brothers decided to stop peddling 11 of its older cartoons with rude ethnic stereotypes. There was no outcry, the world did not come to an end, and it is easy to find the "Censored 11" online. Viewing them suggests that it was best were sidelined.

Actually, Bob Clampett's COAL BLACK AND DE SEBBEN DWARFS was seen as progressive in its time, being a sendup of black jitterbugging culture of the era -- along with a bit of satire on Disney -- but it won't fly now.

* Donald Trump spent a considerable amount of time denouncing free trade, saying it was a bad deal for the USA. As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("US Manufacturers Grapple With Steel Shortages, Soaring Prices" by Rajesh Kumar Singh, 23 February 2021), of course the reality isn't so simple.

At present, steel is in short supply in the USA. Backlog on orders is high and inventory is low, with prices higher than they have been for over a decade. The soaring prices are driving up costs and squeezing profits at steel-consuming manufacturers, generating calls to halt former President Trump's steel tariffs -- including from the Coalition of American Metal Manufacturers & Users, which represents more than 30,000 companies. Paul Nathanson, the group's executive director, says: "Our members have been reporting that they have never seen such chaos in the steel market."

Chaos was certainly a trademark of Trump's leadership style, but the COVID-19 pandemic played a part as well, having led domestic steel mills to scale back production. Now that demand is picking up again, they're not ramping up production fast enough. Those businesses that have been doing well in the pandemic can't get enough steel to support their operations.

Domestic steel prices have risen more than 160% since last August, leaving steel consumers faced with the ugly choice of raising prices, or eating the cost increase. US steel prices are 68% higher than the global market price and almost double China's, even with prices in both China and Europe up over 80% from their pandemic-induced lows. The price gap is so wide that even with a 25% tariff, it would be cheaper to import than buy from domestic mills -- but logistical problems, such as container shortages, have restrained imports.

Domestic steel producers are of course raking in profits, and have called on the Biden Administration to keep the tariffs. The administration, confronted with vast numbers of challenges on every front, is under pressure to clarify policy on steel, since nobody knows which way to jump right now. Angela Reed, an executive at Atlanta-based steel distributor Reibus International, says that people "are trying to make sure that they don't get hung with any of the higher-priced stuff."

[FRI 05 MAR 21] AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (140)

* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (140): In support of his supply-side concepts, Reagan pushed through the 1981 "Economic Recovery Tax Act", which lowered the top marginal tax bracket from 70% to 50% over three years, while the lowest tax bracket was dropped from 14% to 11%. However, the tax act also required that exemptions and brackets be indexed for inflation from 1985. Reagan followed up with the "Tax Reform Act of 1986", which simplified the tax code by reducing the number of tax brackets to four and cutting several tax breaks. The top rate was further cut to 28%; in some compensation, capital gains taxes were increased on top earners from 20% to 28%. The lowest tax bracket was raised from 11% to 15%, but the personal exemption, standard deduction, and earned income tax credit. The end result was that 6 million poor Americans stopped paying income taxes, with the tax burden on all other tax brackets reduced as well.

Despite that, income-tax receipts grew substantially during the Reagan Administration, thanks to the booming economy. Whatever the criticisms of Reaganomics, it appeared to be working to a degree: the high inflation rates of the 1970s faded out under Reagan, while the unemployment rate dropped and GDP grew. Reagan ended price controls on domestic oil that had contributed to the energy crises of the 1970s, with the price of oil dropping, and supply stabilizing, further boosting the economy -- though increasing American imports of oil.

In addition, in the face of deficits, Reagan had no great problems more stealthily implementing tax increases through his presidency, with taxes raised in 1982, 1983, 1984, and 1987, making up about half of the 1981 tax cut. Reagan was more flexible than he wanted to let on, but the deficits still grew. Reagan described the growing national debt as the "greatest disappointment" of his presidency. Reagan was even open to ideas for economic planning, with the US intelligence community devising Project SOCRATES, in which the US government would foster advanced technology development, in particular industrial automation, to enhance American commercial dominance. He contemplated setting up a new Federal agency to implement it, but it didn't happen, and SOCRATES did not long outlive Reagan's administration.

People on the bottom didn't benefit so much from Reaganomics, since he froze the mandated minimum wage at $3.35 per hour, and cut back on social programs -- including Medicaid, food stamps, and Federal education programs. He protected Social Security and Medicare, but his administration attempted to trim back Social Security rolls. The gap between rich and poor began to widen.

Reagan was ambivalent in supporting civil rights. In 1982, he signed a bill that extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years; he had wanted to relax the provisions of the VRA, but found the resistance too much to cope with. He also signed into law a Federal Martin Luther King holiday, though he expressed reservations. In 1988, he vetoed the "Civil Rights Restoration Act", which stipulated that recipients of Federal funds must comply with civil rights laws in all areas, not just in the particular program or activity that obtained the funding. Reagan argued that the bill infringed on states' rights, as well on the rights of churches and business owners. The veto was overridden. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 04 MAR 21] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: It is now commonly accepted that humans are hosts to large numbers of different microorganisms, most of them benign or even beneficial. As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("These Bacteria Have Adapted To Life In Your Nose" by Amanda Heidt, 27 May 2020), these "commensals" tend to specialize: the microbes in our gut help us digest food, for example, while those on our tongue and skin can guard against invading pathogens. Now researchers have found beneficial bacteria in our nose as well. This "nasal microbiome" may protect against chronic sinus inflammation or allergies.

To conduct the study, researchers co-led by Sarah Lebeer, a microbiologist at the University of Antwerp in Belgium -- took samples from the noses of 100 healthy people. The researchers then compared the microbes they found with those from hundreds of patients with chronic nasal and sinus inflammation. Of the 30 most common types of microbes the team discovered, one group stood out: antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory bacteria called Lactobacillus. These were up to 10 times more abundant in the noses of healthy people.

Lactobacilli are anaerobic -- they don't need oxygen, and don't get along with it well -- and typically live in oxygen-poor areas, so Lebeer was surprised to see them in an organ that gets plenty of fresh air. However, a closer look revealed that the particular strain her team found in human noses has genes called "catalases" that safely neutralize oxygen, making them unusual among lactobacilli. Under a microscope, the researchers could also see tiny, hairlike appendages called "fimbriae" that anchor the bacteria to the nose's inner surface. Lebeer thinks the microbes may also use the hairs to bind to receptors on skin cells inside the nose, with the cells sealing up in response. With fewer cells open, allergens and pathogens have a harder time getting inside them.

Lebeer is still not certain that Lactobacillus really does protect against disease. Further testing is troublesome, because the human nose is very different from the noses of lab animals such as mice. In addition, some experts are doubtful that the lactobacilli the team found are particularly adapted to the human nose. Jens Walter, a microbiologist at University College Cork in Ireland, points out that the mouth is also home to millions of lactobacilli, and they could have ended up in the nose via sneezing. Walter finds the research interesting, but wants to see more.

Over the longer run, Lebeer hopes to develop therapeutics using nasal probiotics. Sinus conditions have few treatments, and chronic conditions that must be continually treated raise the risk of generating antibiotic-resistant bacteria. She believes that it might be better to introduce benign strains of bacteria that are not antibiotic-resistant. As a first step, Lebeer has developed a nasal spray containing the Lactobacillus microbes her team isolated. The lactobacilli safely colonized the patients with no ill effects.

* As reported by an article from NATURE.com ("Africa Declared Free From Wild Polio, But Vaccine-Derived Strains Remain" by Giorgia Guglielmi, 28 August 2020), on 25 August 2020, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that there have been no cases of "wild" polio in all 47 African countries since 2016.

A region is certified as free of wild polio after three years have passed without the virus being found there. Africa's last case of wild polio was recorded four years ago in northeast Nigeria. As recently as 2012, the country accounted for more than half of all the world's polio cases.

Chima Ohuabunwo -- an epidemiologist at Morehouse School of Medicine in Atlanta GA, who coordinated a project to support polio eradication in Nigeria -- says that the challenges faced by those working to free Nigeria from wild polio included widespread misinformation about the vaccine, conflict, and the difficulty of tracking nomadic populations that risked spreading the disease during their migrations. Ohuabunwo says that engaging with traditional and religious leaders was critical in the effort to persuade parents to vaccinate their children.

Polio still lingers in Africa, however. In many countries, vaccination is done with oral drops containing a weakened form of the poliovirus, which sometimes mutates into a dangerous strain that can spread in under-immunized communities. Since August 2019, more than 20 countries worldwide have reported cases of vaccine-derived polio. Ohuabunwo says that continued vaccination efforts should end these outbreaks.

Wild polio cases have decreased globally by more than 99% since 1988, but the virus is still endemic in Afghanistan and Pakistan, which report dozens of cases every year. Social unrest in those two countries has interfered with vaccination efforts. Ohuabunwo hopes the African experience drawn from Africa will help eradication efforts there -- since wild polio needs to be wiped out: "Polio anywhere is polio everywhere."

* As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("Dwarf Planet Ceres Is 'Ocean World' With Salty Water Deep Underground", by Will Dunham, 10 August 2020) Ceres, the largest body in the asteroid belt, appears to have a big reservoir of salty water under its frigid surface. Researchers working with data from NASA's Dawn space probe, which came to within 35 kilometers of the surface of Ceres in 2018, has helped give a more detailed understanding of the asteroid.

Ceres has a diameter of about 950 kilometers (590 miles). Researchers focused on the 92-kilometer (57-mile) wide Occator Crater, formed by an impact in Ceres' northern hemisphere about 22 million years ago. The crater has two bright areas, being salt crusts left by liquid that percolated up to the surface and evaporated. The liquid, they concluded, originated in a brine reservoir hundreds of kilometers wide buried about 40 kilometers (25 miles) below the surface; the impact created fractures, allowing the salty water to escape as "cryovolcanism", meaning volcanoes oozing icy material.

Planetary scientist and Dawn principal investigator Carol Raymond says: "This elevates Ceres to 'ocean world' status, noting that this category does not require the ocean to be global. In the case of Ceres, we know the liquid reservoir is regional scale, but we cannot tell for sure that it is global. However, what matters most is that there is liquid on a large scale."

[WED 03 MAR 21] PLANETS IN THE GAPS?

* PLANETS IN THE GAPS? As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Planets Probably Lurk In The Gaps Of These Stellar Disks" by Daniel Clery, 18 December 2018), the star HL Tauri is very young, as stars go, not more than a million years old. It has proven an interesting field laboratory for examination of young stars.

In 2014, the Atacama Large Millimeter-Submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile revealed gaps in a bright disk of dust around HL Tauri, the gaps having apparently been swept clean by unseen planets that had formed millions of years earlier than astronomers thought possible. Now, a survey by ALMA of 20 disks around nearby young stars suggests the unexpected planets are not anomalies.

It is generally believed that planets form by core accretion, which begins as dust particles collide and clump together. The clumps grow into pebbles, rocks, and, finally, large "cores" the size of small planets that can sweep up remaining dust and gas through the pull of their gravity. That process has been assumed to be slow, playing out over millions of years. The new survey suggests that's too conservative.

ALMA, an array of 64 movable dishes high in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile, observes the glow of dust particles at millimeter wavelengths, between the infrared and microwave bands. Once a year, the array is expanded to its widest extent, 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) across, to get the finest resolution. The survey team was able to obtain 65 hours of high-resolution observing time, enough to find and study disks around 20 young stars.

They observed clear views of gaps, even around stars as young as 300,000 years old. Equally puzzling, many gaps lay far from their stars -- much farther than Neptune's orbit around our Sun -- where a planet's slow orbital motion would make it even more difficult to sweep up dust and gas and form planets by core accretion.

An alternative model that relies on unstable ripples or clumps in the disk that collapse under their own gravity can generate planets faster, particularly large ones in distant orbits. However, Marco Tazzari -- of the Institute of Astronomy at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom -- comments that the survey found few spiral arms, signs of disk instabilities, in the disks. He says: "There are many structures we cannot account for."

The new observations did reveal dense bands of material in the disks, which could help address one challenge for the core accretion model. Centimeter-size grains should experience drag from the surrounding gas and quickly fall in toward the star, depleting the disk of planet-forming material -- but Tazzari suggests the dense bands could be acting as traps, stopping grains from migrating inward and preserving them for planet growth.

These interpretations assume unseen planets are really responsible for the gaps. However, Roman Rafikov of Cambridge suggests they could have been created by pressure changes at "snow lines" -- analogous to the snow lines on mountains, where gases such as water vapor freeze onto grains -- or by magnetic fields in the disk, which can collect up charged particles in bands. Rafikov says: "What we see at work could be several mechanisms working simultaneously."

Further observations by ALMA and other radio telescopes, and ultimately planet-hunting optical telescopes, are needed to resolve the questions. Rafikov says: "The smoking gun would be finding the planets."

[TUE 02 MAR 21] THE ONE PERCENT (3)

* THE ONE PERCENT (3): Arguments over inequality measurements can spill over into criticism of the second part of the conventional wisdom on inequality: that middle incomes have stagnated. Piketty, Saez, & Zucman argue that the rising share of the top 1% of earners has come at the expense of the bottom 50%. However, to no surprise, just as there is a wide range of estimates of inequality, there is broad variation in estimates of the long-term growth of middle incomes.

A review of the relevant literature by Stephen Rose of the Urban Institute, a think-tank, listed six possible figures for American real median income growth between 1979 and 2014 -- ranging from a fall of 8% using Piketty & Saez's methodology from 2003, to an increase of 51% using the CBO's. The CBO has a very good reputation, but nobody in the field of economics has bullet-proof credibility.

* Of course, the third part of the conventional thinking on inequality -- that incomes have lagged productivity growth -- is central to Piketty's work. In CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, he argued that at the top of the income distribution, a new rentier class was emerging that made most of its money from investing or inheriting, instead of labor of any sort. That seemed consistent with data across the rich world showing a rising share of GDP going to capital, and not than to workers.

Once again, that conventional thinking is being argued. Not long after the publication of CAPITAL IN THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY, Matthew Rognlie, now of Northwestern University, argued that the rise in America's capital share was accounted for by growing returns to housing -- not by the shares and bonds, which are held disproportionately by the top 1% of American households. That made a good deal of sense because of the lunatic inflation in house prices.

In a recent paper, another group of economists examined sources of income among the top 1% of American earners. Much of their income comes from pass-through businesses, whose profits are easily mistaken for passive income from investments. However, the authors -- Matthew Smith of the US Treasury, Danny Yagan of the University of California at Berkeley, Owen Zidar of Princeton University, and Eric Zwick of the University of Chicago -- found that the profits of pass-through firms fall by three-quarters after their owners retire or die, suggesting that most of the earnings depend on their labor. Many doctors, lawyers, and consultants run pass-through firms; these people might better be thought of as self-employed. Including their income in the capital share overstates its rise.

Critics are appearing outside the USA as well. In a recent paper, Gilbert Cette of the Bank of France, Thomas Philippon of New York University, and Lorraine Koehl of INSEE in France adjusted for distortions in the data caused by self-employment and property income. They found that the share of revenue based on labor has indeed declined in America since 2000, but that there has been no generalized decline among advanced economies. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[MON 01 MAR 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 8

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The big news -- at least, here in the USA -- of last week was that the Supreme Court curtly dismissed Donald Trump's last attempt to keep his tax forms out of the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance. It seems likely a grand jury indictment will quickly follow, all the more because Vance's office may well have got their hands on leaked Trump tax documents. Information as is already available suggests Trump played such games as giving big payouts to his kids as "consultants", and then writing them off his taxes. Once the DA's office gets the official documents, they can move quickly.

Trump is on the defensive, seeking to leverage his control over the Republican Party to make money and build up defenses. This was on clear display at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Florida, which was entirely devoted to adulation of Trump -- one notable example being a preposterous gilded statue of him on prominent display. It looked like mockery, but it was supposed to be serious.

The Biden Administration pointedly ignored Trump, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki saying: "Our focus is certainly not on what President Trump is saying [at CPAC]." Bob Shrum -- former Democratic strategist and director of the Center for Political Future at University of Southern California -- commented:

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The Republicans are busy denouncing their own who have dared criticize Trump, while prominent GOP politicians are trying to pretend the Capitol riot never happened. Democratic strategist Steve Elmendorf says: "The Republicans are having a fight with themselves about Donald Trump. We should let them have it and stay out of it."

David Gergen, a prominent advisor to both Democratic and Republican presidential administrations, says there are limits to casualness:

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The Trump circus is obviously spiraling out of control; it's alarming, but seems to suggest an imminent crash, not strength. One Larry Tye, who wrote a book on Joe McCarthy, suggested in CNN that Trump's political career seems to be paralleling that of McCarthy -- who was on a tear for four years, until he was censured by Congress.

What Tye pointed out is that McCarthy, even after censure, still had 34% public approval, the same as Trump has now. McCarthy called the congressional tribunal a "circus," pledged to "get back to the real work of digging out communism", and even talked about running for president.

McCarthy didn't. He was ailing, in large part because he was an alcoholic, and possibly more significantly, his public support was in decline -- still substantial, but headed downward. He was old news, he no longer had any momentum. Although Trump doesn't drink, he's obviously unhealthy; his mental functioning, never very good, seems to be getting worse as his troubles pile up. Only his hard-core fans care about him any longer.

Trump has got nowhere to go but down. It is, however, hard to think that he will go down quietly, and indeed may call for an uprising against his enemies. It would be doomed, but it might mean a lot of trouble before it's put down.

* The Biden Administration is pushing a pandemic stimulus, with worries that it means profligate government spending, leading to inflation and other ills. As discussed by an article from REUTERS.com ("Powell's Econ 101: Jobs Not Inflation. And Forget About The Money Supply" by Harold Schneider, 23 February 2021), in a congressional hearing, the highly-regarded Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell told Members of Congress, in so many words: Toss out the college textbooks, the world has changed.

Unemployment rate? Don't worry about it. The Fed only cares about the number of people working and how to get it higher, not a dusty old statistic that overlooks a key group -- namely those who stopped looking for work during the pandemic and need to be brought back.

Inflation? Don't worry about that, either. Queried by Democratic Senator Mark Warner about the need to make "a sizeable investment" in America's infrastructure, Powell shrugged off classic concerns of too much government borrowing driving up prices, and replied "this is not a problem for this time as near as I can figure."

The money supply? No longer relevant, Powell told Republican Senator John Kennedy, about the once-important measures of cash and easily spent assets that was a central focus for the Fed in the past, saying they don't "really have important implications. It is something we have to unlearn I guess."

The Fed, as discussed here in 2020, was already rethinking things before the pandemic came in like a thunderclap, having concluded that the Fed's response to the 2007:2008 Great Recession was flawed, and led to a slow recovery. In particular, the Fed was reconsidering one of its core ideas: that when the unemployment rate is low, inflation is high, and vice versa.

Traditionally, central bankers were inclined to raise interest rates whenever the jobless rate went below a certain level, on the assumption that would head off inflation. However, slowing down the economy put people out of work. Now, the Fed has concluded that whatever it is that drives inflation -- and there is much disagreement over what -- a low unemployment rate is no longer seen as part of it.

That concept was pretty much thrown overboard as of August: Whatever drives inflation, the Fed concluded -- and there is plenty of disagreement about what that is -- a low unemployment rate is no longer considered part of it. The Fed is now concerned with the employment rate, seeking to promote "high levels of participation". The underlying issue in this discussion is taxation: the Biden Administration is not happy about running up deficits, but bringing taxes into line with expenditures demands a truly bipartisan solution. The Democrats are constrained in what they can do with taxes, as long as the Republicans use their tax hikes as a weapon to defeat them in the vote.

This demonstrates that economics is nothing that resembles a hard science. That's not a criticism, it can't be a hard science -- and we'd be a lot worse off without it, the alternative being voodoo economics. We may not always be sure of what's right, but it's not so hard to see what's wildly wrong.

* On 20 February, United Airlines Flight 328, a Boeing 777, took off from Denver International Airport, en route to Honolulu -- only to suffer an engine failure that forced it to return to the airport minutes later. The engine shed parts over the suburb of Broomfield; there was some property damage, but nobody was hurt, though the passengers were of course very frightened.

All 777s with Pratt & Whitney 4000 turbofan engines were grounded. It seems there were fan-blade failures, with engine inspections to be mandated. Broomfield residents energetically hunted down pieces of the engine. The authorities told them not to worry about the smaller parts, they were more bother than they were worth, but they were in demand as curios.