DayVectors

* 22 entries including: America's Constitution (series), SETI revival (series), green energy & business (series), COVID-19 vaccine boosters may not be needed, MABS against COVID-19, lithium extraction from seawater, reopening the world after COVID-19, and work on COVID-19 vaccine boosters

[WED 30 JUN 21] NO BOOSTER SHOTS?

* NO BOOSTER SHOTS? As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Top Scientists Question The Need For COVID-19 Booster Shots" by Julie Steenhuysen & Kate Kelland, 13 May 2021), medical authorities have been suggesting that, as the SARS-CoV-2 virus mutates, those who have been vaccinated against COVID-19 will need a follow-on booster shot.

They may be overly cautious in saying that, since more than a dozen influential infectious disease and vaccine development experts told REUTERS that all evidence to date shows the current vaccines are highly effective against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants. Some of the researchers suggested that pharmaceutical companies may be pushing the need for boosters to keep up business, although many agreed that preparing for such a need as a precaution was prudent. Nonetheless, there is still a fear that pushing for booster shots will widen the divide with poor countries that are struggling to get their citizens vaccinated in the first place.

Kate O'Brien -- director of the Department of Immunization, Vaccines, & Biologicals at the World Health Organization (WHO) -- said: "We don't see the data yet that would inform a decision about whether or not booster doses are needed." O'Brien says the WHO is setting up a panel to assess the effectiveness of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, and recommend changes to vaccine programs as needed.

Albert Bourla, CEO of Pfizer INC, said that people will "likely" need a yearly booster shot to fend off SARS-CoV-2 in the future. Dr. Tom Frieden -- former director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, now head of the global public health initiative Resolve to Save Lives -- shot back: "There is zero, and I mean zero, evidence to suggest that that is the case. It's completely inappropriate to say that we're likely to need an annual booster, because we have no idea what the likelihood of that is."

Pfizer officials insist that boosters will be needed as long as the virus isn't contained, though that could change once it is. Moderna INC is also working on boosters. The USA is preparing to have booster doses on hand for Americans, while the European Union, Britain, and Israel have ordered new supplies of existing COVID-19 vaccines to deploy as protective boosters. Some health officials call such actions sensible, as long as uncertainty over the long-term evolution of the pandemic remains uncertain.

Nonetheless, Pfizer and German partner BioNTech SE have so far found that their vaccine remains more than 91% effective for six months after people received their second dose, and they are continuing to track how well the protection endures. Dr. William Gruber -- Pfizer's senior vice president of vaccine clinical research and development -- says the prediction for yearly boosters was based on "a little evidence" of a decline in immunity over those six months. Of course, Pfizer makes a lot of money off their COVID-19 vaccine, forecasting sales of $26 billion USD from the shot in 2021.

In late 2020, researchers were optimistic that the new COVID-19 vaccines could quickly suppress the global pandemic that has killed more than 3.4 million people. Those hopes faded in early 2021, with the emergence of SARS-CoV-2 variants, with evidence that the vaccines weren't as effective against some of those variants. However, Dr. Anthony Fauci -- head of the National Institutes of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the highly-respected public face of America's battle against the COVID-19 pandemic -- said that more recent research suggests that the Moderna and Pfizer/BioNTech vaccines remain highly effective against known variants. Of course, health authorities in the USA, UK, and Europe are assuring their people that a new round of shots will be available if needed.

Concerns remain that a push towards booster shots will undermine vaccination in poor countries. Dr. Monica Gandhi -- an infectious disease expert at the University of California, San Francisco -- said that decisions on whether boosters will be needed "will best be made by public health experts, rather than CEOs of a company who may benefit financially."

[ED: As of late, the US CDC -- phrasing things cautiously, as is their way -- says there is no evidence booster shots will be needed. The big problem right now is getting vaccine scoffers immunized.]

[TUE 29 JUN 21] SETI PERSISTS (2)

* SETI PERSISTS (2): SETI started out in a small way. In 1960, under Project OZMA, astronomer Frank Drake pointed a 26-meter (95-foot) radio telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia, at two nearby Sun-like stars. He scanned frequencies around 1.42 gigahertz (GHz), which correspond to wavelengths of about 21 centimeters, the part of the spectrum where clouds of interstellar hydrogen emit photons. This 21-centimeter glow is ubiquitous, and Drake supposed it might be a universal channel for cosmic communications. However, his targets -- Tau Ceti and Epsilon Eridani -- were silent.

With funding from NASA and the National Science Foundation (NSF), further searches were performed, using telescopes to listen for fainter signals and hardware that could scan thousands and eventually millions of narrow frequency channels at once. Drake devised his now famous "Drake equation" that estimates how many communicative extraterrestrial civilizations may exist in the Milky Way. It depends on seven variables, from the rate of star formation to the average lifetime of a civilization. The only one of the variables defined at the time was the rate of star formation.

In 1992, NASA began the "Microwave Observing Project" -- a ten-year, $100 million USD SETI search using several large telescopes. In 1993, however, lawmakers ridiculed the program and cut its funds. NASA interest in SETI fell accordingly. However, during that decade, the first exoplanets were discovered; eventually, it became clear that planetless stars were rare, and that about one in five Sun-like stars has potentially habitable Earth-size planets -- these being two more factors in the Drake equation.

The turn-of-the-century tech boom also led to funding from billionaires interested in exploring the skies. A high point came in 2007 with the inauguration of the Allen Telescope Array (ATA), a SETI observatory in California, kick-started with $11.5 million USD from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen. However, funding dried up with the 2008 financial crisis; the ATA was put in hibernation for a time, and a plan to expand it from 42 to 350 dishes never materialized. Andrew Siemion says: "SETI was entirely decimated. I was one of maybe two or three in the whole world working on SETI."

So things remained until Yuri Milner came onto the scene. He had been born and educated in Moscow, working in the Lebedev Physical Institute. He emigrated to the USA in 1990, to study business at the University of Pennsylvania. He founded an internet investment fund in 1999, and became fabulously wealthy. Milner says: "I made some lucky investments."

Milner had always been interested in space; indeed, he was named after Yuri Gagarin, the first person to go into space. Having made a fortune, he wanted to invest in science, in particular in SETI. Siemion's UC Berkeley center, across the San Francisco Bay from Milner's home in Silicon Valley, became the beneficiary.

The resulting Breakthrough Listen project established ambitious goals. It would survey a million of the closest stars to Earth and 100 nearby galaxies using two of the world's most sensitive steerable telescopes, the 100-meter (330-foot) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia and the 64-meter (210-foot) Parkes radio telescope in Australia. Buying up about 20% and 25% of the time on those telescopes, Breakthrough Listen promised to cover 10 times more sky than previous surveys and five times more of the radio spectrum, and gather data 100 times faster.

Achieving these goals demanded new hardware. The key electronic component is a high-powered digital backend, which chops telescope data into ultrathin frequency slices and records it. The backends are available for 100 hours every year to other astronomers interested in such fine frequency resolution. Siemion says that allocation is often oversubscribed at Green Bank, ever since the backend helped characterize the first repeating fast radio burst.

The project is adding a major new telescope: MeerKAT, a South African array of 64 dishes each 13.5 meters (45 feet) across. Instead of buying time on the array, Breakthrough Listen is listening in on the data stream while the telescope observes its regular targets—a procedure known as commensal observing. Commensal observing will also be added to the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array in New Mexico, a crown jewel of US radio astronomy, in a project led by the privately funded SETI Institute. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[MON 28 JUN 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 25

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: I mentioned here last week that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had decided to pursue the investigation of the 6 January Capitol riot with existing committees. It seems I misunderstood her, because this last week, she committed to a select committee.

The only question is whether the Republicans will be able to place Trump loyalists on the select committee to sabotage it. Not knowing the mechanics of setting up the committee, how much influence House Speaker Kevin McCarthy has over it is not clear. What is clear is that the spineless and dim-witted McCarthy is no match for Pelosi, so that's encouraging.

The dramatics continued for the Democrat efforts to pass President Biden's infrastructure plan, and voter rights legislation. They're not going anywhere in a hurry, but it seems the Democrats are patient, pursuing every option and seeing if they work. In the face of pig-headed GOP obstruction, things aren't working out well. However, there seems no cause for despair. It is likely that the Democrats will finally proceed on shackling -- not killing -- the filibuster, if maybe not right away, and clear the path for getting things done. Legislatures work by discussion and consensus, and so they are inevitably slow; what happens in a day outside of Congress takes a week inside.

* The wheels of justice are turning for the 500+ arrested for the 6 January Capitol riot, with some of them already having their day in court. US District Judge Royce C. Lambeth -- a Reagan appointee -- judged in the case of Anna Morgan-Lloyd, a 49-year-old Indiana woman, that she should be under three years of probation and perform community service. She was not implicated in violence in the Capitol invasion, she was a first offender, and she was cooperative and contrite, telling the court:

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With so many arrested, the courts are likely to be charitable to most of the offenders, preferring to reprimand them and release them to focus on the hard-core troublemakers, who remain behind bars. Judge Lambeth also made clear his contempt for those who have been downplaying the 6 January riot:

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Referring to Members of Congress who described the rioters as merely on a "normal tourist visit", Lambeth said that video introduced in court "will show the attempts of some congressmen to rewrite history ... is utter nonsense."

The judge also to dismissed "conspiracy theories" about FBI informants, and address claims that the Capitol defendants are being treated more harshly than Black Lives Matter protesters. He said he couldn't speak to what happens in state courts, but that Attorney General Merrick Garland has "promised the law will be applied equally ... whatever the complexion of the demonstrator is."

* There were a few surprises in the news this week, the first being news of the death of has-been software magnate John McAffee in a Spanish prison. McAffee was a pioneer of antivirus software, with a package that bore his name becoming an effective standard. He sold out in 1994, to lead a life of dissipation -- sex, drugs, booze, "send lawyers guns & money". He was accused of rape, implicated in a murder of a neighbor in Belize, and generally led a high-profile shiftless life. He decided to become a cryptocurrency guru, engaging in promotional tactics that were questionable even by the low standards of cryptocurrencies, and was indicted for tax evasion in the USA.

He was arrested in Spain in 2020, with a Spanish court judging to allow his extradition; he was dead hours later. McAffee was 75 years old. Twitter wits chimed in, with a notable lack of sympathy:

Harry / @DocEgonSpengler: WARNING -- Your Antivirus Protection guy has expired.

Sometimes, if we didn't have grim humor, we wouldn't have any humor. I had to add:

Greg Goebel / @Wile_Coyote_ESQ: "They have rules about this sort of thing! They have laws about this sort of thing! They make low-budget movies about this sort of thing!"

* A second surprise was unleashed from the ultra-Right One America News Network (OANN), which has heavily promoted Trump's "Big Lie" about "massive election fraud". OANN talking head Pearson Sharp decided this week to dial it up to 11 with:

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It is hard to believe this wasn't a fabrication, but it certainly seems it wasn't. Exactly what the fallout will be is not clear yet, but there will be fallout. The current lunacy is not sustainable, but how long will it take to get it to go away?

* Oh, another thing ... the Pentagon finally released its report on UFOs, with some expressing dismay that it didn't say much very that was specific. Like that's a surprise? If we ever got anything specific about UFOs, it would be around the world immediately. Of course, not everyone buys that idea, one Twitter poster saying:

Somebody / @Nowhere: They know what they are and won't tell. Don't want to scare us humans.

I replied:

Greg Goebel / @Wile_Coyote_ESQ: "There are things going on that we don't know anything about, Alice."

"OK Bob, tell me about one thing you don't know anything about. You can't, can you?"

That was actually from one of Terry Pratchett's DISKWORLD novels, involving an exchange between Corporal Nobby Nobbs and Sargent Fred Colon. Since not so many would recognize them, I had to generalize the citation.

[FRI 25 JUN 21] AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (156)

* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (156): In his 1996 re-election campaign, Bill Clinton faced off against Bob Dole, a long-standing Republican senator from Kansas. Clinton won with 49.2% of the popular vote over Dole, who had 40.7% percent of the popular vote; Reform candidate Ross Perot had 8.4 percent of the popular vote. It was an electoral landslide for Clinton, who obtained 379 electoral votes, while Dole got 159. Clinton was the first Democratic president since FDR to win two presidential elections in a row.

Clinton's first major initiative of his second term was the passage in 1997 of the "State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP)", with Hillary and her staff being the primary architects; Democratic Senator Ted Kennedy and Republican Senator Orrin Hatch were the primary Congressional backers. SCHIP was followed up later in 1997 with the passage of the Adoption & Safe Families Act, with the Foster Care Independence Act following in 1999. 1999, Clinton also signed into law the Financial Services Modernization Act, which liberalized rules for banking services.

In the late 1990s, the US was troubled by an emerging international Islamic terrorist movement, which had grown out of "jihadists (holy warriors)" who had come to Afghanistan to help fight the Soviets. The exercise congealed into a network named "al-Qaeda (The Base)", led by a Saudi named Osama bin Laden and centered on Afghanistan. In 1998, Islamists bombed US embassies in East Africa, killing 224 people, including 18 Americans. In August 1998, Clinton ordered cruise missile attacks on a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan suspected of making chemical weapons, and an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan. The strikes were widely criticized as ineffectual.

Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq continued to be an irritant, with Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein chipping away at sanctions, and pushing the limits of restraints on him at every opportunity. In October 1998, Clinton signed the "Iraq Liberation Act" to promote "regime change" in Iraq. It stopped well short of ordering an invasion of Iraq -- but in mid-December, US strike assets pounded Iraq for four days under Operation DESERT FOX. Clinton announced in the aftermath:

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However, by that time, Clinton's presidency was in big trouble. He had been accused, with full basis in fact, of having an affair with a young White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. There was an extended investigation, followed by an effort from House Republicans to impeach Clinton for perjury -- he had lied under oath about the affair. Although Congressional Democrats were very annoyed with Clinton's misconduct, when the impeachment came to a vote in the Senate in early 1999, he was acquitted on all charges; the Democrats did not feel he should be dismissed, all the more so because his time left in office was so short. He was at least apologetic in the aftermath. His marriage to Hillary survived, though her failure to divorce him would be added to the list of faults held against her.

Problems in the former Yugoslavia continued, with Serbia brutally cracking down on ethnic Albanian separatists in the province of Kosovo. In 1999, Clinton joined NATO in a bombing campaign against Yugoslavia codenamed Operation ALLIED FORCE from March to June -- which led to the deployment of a UN peacekeeping force in Kosovo. Later studies would suggest that claims of "ethnic cleansing" and "genocide" in Kosovo were substantially exaggerated, but in any case, the Wars of the Yugoslav Succession were sputtering out, and would come to a stop in another two years. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 24 JUN 21] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from JANES.com ("Update: Rafael Unveils SPICE 250 ER Development" by Robin Hughes, 03 February 2021), Rafael Advanced Defense Systems of Israel is now working on a new "extended range" member of its SPICE ("Smart / Precise Impact / Cost Effective") guided munition family. The "SPICE 250 ER" features a miniature turbojet engine, to give it a range of at least 150 kilometers (95 miles).

The standard unpowered SPICE 250 is an all-up weapon system, unlike the heavier 1000 and 2000 family variants, which are essentially electro-optical / infrared (EO-IR) guidance and target acquisition add-on kits for 450 and 900-kilogram (1,000 and 2,000-pound) general purpose and penetration bombs. It has a mass of 115 kilograms (250 pounds), a third of that being a blast / fragmentation / penetration warhead, with pop-out wings and cruciform tailfins. Glide range is up to 100 kilometers (60 miles), with 3-meter (10-foot) circular error probability.

SPICE 250 it features an electro-optic / infrared terminal attack seeker, package, midcourse INS/GPS navigation, a two-way datalink, and pre-set or cockpit selectable fuze options. All current production SPICE variants, including the SPICE 250, 1000, and 2000, have an "Automatic Target Acquisition (ATA)" capability, allowing them to recognize specific targets for attack.

* The US Air Force's (USAF) interest in evaluating electric vertical take-off / landing (eVTOL) aircraft was mentioned in 2020. The "Agility Prime" program, as it is known, is particularly interested in use of eVTOL drones, with a particular focus on logistics.

At a symposium in October 2020 General Charles Brown, USAF chief of staff, said that the service has been able to use drone platforms to perform missions including strike and intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) -- but not logistics. The eVTOL machines promise to change that. Brown said that he is often asked why the USAF needs a "flying car", as eVTOLs are often called, and replies: "It is less about the flying car, it is the capability that it might provide in the future to be able to do logistics for us, to move things back and forth."

Brown does believe that Agility Prime platforms will have uses beyond logistics, saying that he has been approached by industry partners about performing personnel recovery in combat zones. Many Agility Prime platforms in development are being designed as optionally manned. Right now, specifics of the program remain vague.

* As discussed in an article from JANES.com ("US Air Force Considering New Prime Programmes" by Pat Host, 11 February 2021, along with Agility Prime, the USAF is conducting a series of other "Prime" small business outreach programs, under the umbrella of the AFWERX innovation effort, focusing on energy, microelectronics, and gaming technologies.

Colonel Nathan Diller, AFWERX director, says that the USAF is having discussions on an "Energy Prime" program, focusing on such technologies as advanced storage opportunities and alternative transport methods. The Air Force is considering Prime efforts in microelectronics for improved performance and secure technologies. Diller pointed to a Digital Prime, or Game Prime, effort that would leverage technologies such as gaming to help the USAF in multiple domains, for example accelerated logistics. The service has already formally committed to a new Space Prime program, though an introduction date hasn't been set yet.

[WED 23 JUN 21] MABS AGAINST COVID-19

* MABS AGAINST COVID-19: As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("COVID Antibody Treatments Show Promise For Preventing Severe Disease" by Heidi Ledford, 12 March 2021), antibody treatments to deal with COVID-19 -- discussed here in 2020 -- have now completed clinical trials. The randomized, placebo-controlled, double-blind trials show they can prevent deaths and hospitalizations among people with mild or moderate COVID-19, particularly among the most vulnerable.

One study found that an antibody against the coronavirus developed by Vir Biotechnology of San Francisco, California, and GSK, headquartered in London, cut the chances of hospitalization or death among participants by 85%. In another trial, a cocktail of two antibodies -- bamlanivimab and etesevimab, both made by Eli Lilly of Indianapolis, Indiana -- cut the risk of hospitalization and death by 87%. Derek Angus -- an intensive-care physician at the University of Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania -- says the antibodies "appear to be incredibly effective. I'm very excited about the results of these trials."

When infected by a virus, the human body naturally generates a variety of antibodies, some of which are able to directly interfere with the virus's ability to replicate. In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, researchers hunted for the antibodies that are most effective against the coronavirus, then set about to manufacture them. The resulting "monoclonal antibodies (MAB)" have since been tested in a variety of settings as treatments for COVID-19.

Vir and GSK's antibody, labeled "VIR-7831", was first isolated in 2003 from someone recovering from severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), which is caused by a similar coronavirus. The antibody was later found to bind to the SARS-CoV-2 "spike" protein as well. The companies say that in lab studies, VIR-7831 bound to SARS-CoV-2 variants -- including the fast-spreading 501Y.V2 AKA B.1.351 variant first identified in South Africa. They attributed the strength of the antibody to its target: a particular region of the spike protein that does not tend to accumulate mutations.

Other MABs concoctions have been tested against COVID-19, with some -- including Lilly's cocktail -- already authorized for use in the United States and elsewhere. However, Angus says, there has been relatively little uptake by US physicians and their patients. He explains that results have been press-released and submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration, companies have been slow to publish data from key clinical trials in peer-reviewed journals. The drugs are also expensive and must be administered by infusion in a specialized facility, such as a hospital or outpatient-treatment center -- which is troublesome when medical resources have already been stretched to the limit by the pandemic.

Another difficulty has been mixed messaging. Earlier in the pandemic, some key clinical trials involving people who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 found no benefit from MABs. That wasn't really surprising: MABs are not a miracle cure, being useful early in the disease and not so useful in the late stages. That subtlety is lost in the big message, Angus commenting: "People would say: 'But I thought it didn't work.' It's totally getting in the way."

Saye Khoo -- a pharmacologist at the University of Liverpool in the UK, in charge of the UK AGILE Coronavirus Drug Testing Initiative -- also points out that small trials don't give enough data to come to definite conclusions. Only a small fraction of people with mild COVID-19 will progress to severe disease, meaning that although the trials have enrolled hundreds of participants, the number of those who were hospitalized or died was low.

In the meantime, however, MABs may prove an important tool in helping keep people alive until vaccination is widespread, and may be useful to help those who cannot be successfully vaccinated. Khoo also appreciates the speed with which the MABs were developed, which could be important in future pandemics: "These compounds are without a doubt exciting. We shouldn't forget this, because there will be other pandemics coming to us. This has been a real lesson in how to be prepared."

* As discussed in a related article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Can A Nose-Full Of Chicken Antibodies Ward Off Coronavirus Infections?" by Jon Cohen, 10 November 2020), the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a mad scramble to find defenses against the threat. Now a clinical trial in Australia has begun to test whether nose drops that contain chicken antibodies to SARS-CoV-2 can offer temporary protection.

The Stanford University team that's sponsoring the phase I study hopes the antibodies can protect people at increased risk of infection for several hours. If the scheme works, people could take the nose drops before getting on a plane, working in a crowded space, entering a college dormitory, or joining a family gathering. Daria Mochly-Rosen, the Stanford protein chemist spearheading the project, says: "There is a huge opportunity."

Other protective nasal sprays are in the works, but the Stanford approach is simple by pharmaceutical standards -- relying on antibodies harvested from egg yolks of chickens immunized with "spike", the surface protein of SARS-CoV-2. The initial trial will assess the safety of the nose drops and how long they persist. The researchers also intend to test whether the nose drops protect hamsters deliberately exposed to the coronavirus, though that's been stalled because the rodents are in short supply.

Michael Diamond -- an infectious disease clinician at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis, who is developing a nasal-administered vaccine for COVID-19 -- says: "The concept, in principle, sort of makes sense, but there are a couple of issues to think about." First is the question of how long the chicken antibodies will last before they degrade, and then whether humans will develop an immune response against them.

Mochly-Rosen is confident the scheme will work, but that can only be proven by trials. The project is part of SPARK, a nonprofit Mochly-Rosen launched in 2006 to help academics conduct proof-of-concept studies that could translate biomedical research ideas into medicines. Lab-made antibodies for human medicines are expensive to develop and then manufacture, usually relying on huge numbers of cells grown in bioreactors. To make the chicken antibodies, in contrast, researchers inject the spike protein into the chests of chickens. The birds mount a strong immune response to it, and lay eggs that contain antibodies against the coronavirus protein. Researchers harvest the antibodies -- a distinctive chicken variety known as "immunoglobulin Y (IgY)" -- from the yolks, and use them to make the nose drops. The team thinks a dose of the nose drops would cost about a dollar.

The idea came from a SPARK director in Australia named Michael Wallach, of the University of Technology Sydney, who has made vaccines to protect chickens from disease and has tested chicken antibodies against influenza in mice. It's not a wild idea; there's also work on using IgY antibodies in mouthwash to deal with a number of different pathogens.

Mochly-Rosen believes that the degradation of the chicken antibodies in the nose is not the limiting factor in the protection they provide: "It's not the half-life of the drug that matters, it's how fast the nose clears material that's introduced to it." Humans ingest about a liter of mucus a day. As far as a human immune reaction to the nose drops goes, she points out that large studies have not revealed anti-IgY antibodies in humans, even in chicken farmers who have antibodies to proteins from pigs and rabbits.

If the Australian trial establishes safety and doesn't find a significant response against the chicken antibody, SPARK hopes to launch an efficacy trial in the United States. Mochly-Rosen says: "The number of COVID-19 patients in Australia is zilch, so we have to come back here." She's already started to discuss such a study with the US Food & Drug Administration.

[ED: It is not clear what the status of these efforts now is. One of the silver linings of the dark COVID-19 cloud is that it threw biomedical research on dealing with viruses into high gear, making it hard to keep up.]

[TUE 22 JUN 21] SETI PERSISTS (1)

* SETI PERSISTS (1): The "search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI)" has been going on for decades, with researchers scanning the skies for signals from other civilizations in our Galaxy. No such thing has been found yet, but as discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("How Big Money Is Powering A Massive Hunt For Alien Intelligence" by Daniel Clery, 10 September 2020), nobody's giving up.

In 2015, Sofia Sheikh was a student at the University of California in Berkeley, and came across a comment online about a lavishly-funded SETI effort -- to notice that the project was led by astrophysicist Andrew Siemion, also at UC Berkeley. She got in touch with him, and became the team's first undergraduate student.

Sheikh is now a doctoral student at Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) in University Park. She has led a radio survey of 20 nearby star systems aligned with Earth's orbital plane. If a technological civilization inhabited one of these systems and pointed a powerful telescope our way, they would see Earth passing in front of the Sun, and they might detect signs of life in our atmosphere. They might even decide to send us a message. Her team has published their results. She says: "Spoiler alert: no aliens."

That's the story of SETI to date in a nutshell, but SETI advocates are not giving up; indeed, they're picking up steam. Breakthrough Listen -- the $100 million USD, ten-year, privately funded SETI effort Siemion leads -- is supercharging a field that has for decades relied on sporadic philanthropic handouts. Before Breakthrough Listen, SETI was "creeping along" with a few dozen hours of telescope time a year, Siemion says; now it gets thousands. He says that he feels like he's "sitting in a Formula 1 racing car."

The surge of funds has also been "a huge catalyst" for training scientists in SETI, according to Jason Wright, director of the Penn State Extraterrestrial Intelligence Center, which opened in 2020. "They really are nurturing a community."

Breakthrough Listen is focused on radio surveys, as per SETI tradition -- but the money is also seeding other searches, for example for laser communications links, or for "technosignatures" of technological civilizations that aren't trying to communicate with anyone else. SETI. But the money is also spurring other searches, in case aliens opt for other kinds of messages -- laser flashes, for example -- or none at all, revealing themselves only through passive "technosignatures." In addition, since the data obtained by Breakthrough Listen are available in a public archive, astronomers are sifting through it for phenomena that have nothing to do with SETI, such as the mysterious "fast radio bursts", or clues to the unseen "dark matter" that pervades the Universe.

One particularly significant result of Breakthrough Listen is that it has helped legitimize SETI, which some have long considered to be fringe science. Astrobiologist Jacob Haqq-Misra -- of the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, an international association of researchers -- says: "Journals are relaxing and letting good technosignature papers be published. The giggle factor is reducing." NASA organized a technosignature workshop in 2018, and has awarded a grant to model the detectability of possible technosignatures in the atmospheres of exoplanets.

Some astronomers are not happy with the boom in SETI research, some suggesting that it means a poor use of telescope time, others complaining that it's not well-thought-out. SETI advocates understand the criticisms, and reaching out to related disciplines, including researchers investigating exoplanets and astrobiology. Astronomer David Kipping of Columbia University in New York City says: "Looking for intelligence is the logical conclusion of this search for life." [TO BE CONTINUED]

[MON 21 JUN 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 24

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The only major issue this last week was a summit meeting in Geneva between US President Joe Biden and Russian President Vladimir Putin. It was a little hard to know what to make of it; Biden laid down a set of red lines to Putin, Putin denied everything and gibed at the USA. The red lines did notably include suggestions that Russia take action against Russian cyber-criminal gangs behind recent "ransomware" attacks, with veiled hints that the USA might retaliate.

In any case, it was on a predictable script, and had little particular consequence. It's clear that one of Biden's objectives was to show Americans that he wasn't Donald Trump -- Trump having had secret meetings with Putin, with Trump even going so far as to badmouth US intelligence services in public alongside Putin. Rumors have it that the Biden Administration knows what was said in the secret meetings, having obtained Russian government memos on them. That leads to the next speculation, that the Russian government leaked them. Who knows?

* In the meantime, back in the USA, Congress has been wrangling over Biden's infrastructure bill, and voter rights legislation. The primary sticking point, or so it might seem, has been West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, a Democrat, who has raised objections to parts of the legislation, and encouraged attempts to reach out to the Republicans in search of compromises. For that, he has been denounced as a traitor, secretly working for the Republicans.

A closer inspection of Manchin suggests that is grossly overwrought. There is a fundamental reality to consider when it comes to Manchin: he is a Democratic senator from an otherwise overwhelmingly Republican state, and had he not been elected, the Democrats would not have had a Senate majority. In addition, none of the changes to the legislation he has proposed are fatal. The highly regarded Stacey Abrams, who delivered Georgia for the Democrats in 2020, endorsed Manchin's voter rights legislation changes.

The bottom line is that the Democrats will get their legislation, with only modest changes. It is not easy to follow Manchin's game; while he has been mocked for thinking that Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell has any interest in compromise, it is hard to believe that a shrewd and experienced politician like Manchin thought he did. There's much to speculate about there, but it is better to just see how it works out. All will become clear in time.

What is hard to doubt is that Joe Manchin has Joe Biden's ear, and their conversations are not particularly antagonistic. It is flatly impossible to believe that Manchin told Biden that he was going to derail Biden's agenda, and nothing in Manchin's behavior really suggests he is trying to do so. It is also hard to believe that Manchin hasn't been talking to his Senate colleague Bernie Sanders, one of the principal leaders of the Woke Left. If Manchin were honestly up to no good, Sanders would have had something to say about it -- but Sanders has hardly mentioned him. Indeed, there is no evidence of a war between Manchin and any of his Democratic colleagues in the Senate.

Manchin has been particularly criticized for saying he would not, under any circumstances, kill the filibuster. He has made more ambiguous comments about modifying it, clearly carving out wiggle room. Another reality is that the Republicans are very touchy about the filibuster, and so carefully tugging at it gets their attention. In the end, the filibuster won't be a problem any more, while Manchin will be able to declare to the voters that he saved it. It will also be interesting to see what happens there.

Oh yes, there was another significant development this last week, in which House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that House committees are proceeding on an investigation of the 6 January Capitol riot, and presumably the election irregularities surrounding it. The announcement was understated; hopefully, the Speaker will raise the public visibility of the effort, lest she be accused, however implausibly, of trying to sweep the issue under the rug.

* An article from ECONOMIST.com ("Broadbandits", 19 June 2021), zeroed in on the spate of recent cyber attacks, the article starting with:

BEGIN QUOTE:

END QUOTE

Such cyber attacks are no longer at all unusual, and they are having a growing impact -- the pipeline shutdown led to a jump in fuel prices and shortages at the fuel pumps. More generally, the attacks are disrupting the vital operation of the data networks that increasingly run the world. International tensions have helped promote the attacks, with autocratic states giving sanctuary to cyber-bandits, or directly encouraging them:

BEGIN QUOTE:

END QUOTE

Targets include critical infrastructure such as oil pipelines, power plants, and ports. The financial industry is also a major target, with the healthcare industry being hit as well. The rise of the universal "internet of things" suggests that, ultimately, almost everything can and will be attacked.

One of the big difficulties is that companies often cover up cyber attacks, lest they lose credibility. Their computer security is often dreadful; Colonial was wide-open to attack. The computer-security industry is infested with flim-flam operators, who sell ineffective security tech to gullible customers. What to do to fight back?

BEGIN QUOTE:

END QUOTE

Better disclosure will provide better intelligence for the battle. Losing insurance coverage would force companies to up their game. Governments can help set security standards, and also keep closer track of cryptocurrencies, which are often used to pay ransoms. Finally, governments around the world need to collaborate against the threat:

BEGIN QUOTE:

END QUOTE

[FRI 18 JUN 21] AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (155)

* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (155): In December 1993, Larry Patterson and Roger Perry, two Arkansas state troopers, claimed they had set up sexual liaisons for Clinton when he was governor of Arkansas, in particular citing the example of one Paula Jones. The accusations went nowhere, but they were a sign of things to come.

At the beginning of 1994, Clinton signed into law the "North American Free Trade Agreement", which established a trade zone between Canada, the USA, and Mexico. It had been brewing from the previous administrations, and it was actually more solidly supported by Republicans than by Democrats. It would do much to promote trade across North America, but it would also have drawbacks that would promote criticism.

In April 1994, a campaign of genocide broke out in Rwanda, with members of the Hutu tribe slaughtering members of the Tutsi tribe. The US government, still smarting from the Somalia debacle, decided not to intervene, with Clinton later calling that a mistake: "I don't think we could have ended the violence, but I think we could have cut it down. And I regret it."

In September 1994, Clinton signed the "Omnibus Crime Bill", which reflected the "get tough on crime" mindset of the era. It covered a lot of ground, one major element being a considerable expansion of the list of crimes that could get the death penalty. Such measures had bipartisan support, but they would later be widely seen as counterproductive -- while the death penalty would go on the fade. More constructively, the act included a limited ten-year ban on assault weapons.

Clinton, with considerable influence from Al Gore, was also enthusiastic about the rapidly expanding internet, the administration establishing the first White House website in October 1994. He would later issue executive orders to his government to expand use of the internet.

* In the mid-term elections of 1994, the Democrats lost control of the House of Representatives for the first time in 40 years -- reinforcing Clinton's perception of a strong Right shift among the voters. However, Clinton still granted the AIDS pandemic high priority:

• Pushing work towards a cure, or at least prevention, setting up a special working group to coordinate US government efforts. Such efforts would eventually lead to the development of drugs that could ensure the survival of those afflicted with AIDs.
  
  
• Setting up a public-health team to devise an action plan for HIV prevention, coupled with substance-abuse prevention -- HIV could be transmitted via dirty needles, and addicts were often infected.
  
  
• Working against homophobia and discrimination against AIDS patients, with the Department of Justice making sure HIV sufferers had equal access to medical facilities.

During Clinton's time in office, Federal funding for HIV-AIDS research, prevention, and treatment more than doubled.

As his HIV-AIDS efforts demonstrated, Clinton was an advocate for gay rights, and was the first US president to select openly gay individuals for his government administration. Significantly, he issued two executive orders protecting gay rights:

• One lifting the ban on security clearances for LGBT Federal employees.
  
  
• Another outlawing discrimination based on sexual orientation in the Federal non-military workforce.

Clinton also pushed for passing hate crimes laws for gays and for the private sector "Employment Non-Discrimination Act". Nonetheless, gay marriage was a bridge Clinton didn't really want to cross, signing the "Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA)" into law in September 1996. It defined marriage, for Federal purposes, as the legal union of one man and one woman; states had the right to disregard gay marriages that had been performed in other states. It was waffling, not so different from "don't ask don't tell" -- but Clinton defended it, claiming that Congress might well otherwise pass a law banning gay marriage in the entire USA. DOMA was clearly a trap set by Republicans to derail Clinton's re-election. Gay marriage was an issue for a later administration.

Similarly, in 1996, Clinton signed the Illegal Immigration Reform & Immigrant Responsibility Act (IIRIRA)", which was set up to scale back immigration. Clinton appointed a US Commission on Immigration Reform, which recommended reducing legal immigration from about 800,000 people a year to about 550,000. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 17 JUN 21] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for May included:

[04 MAY 21] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 26 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1901 UTC (local time + 4) to put 60 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). This was the 26th Starlink batch launch. The booster first stage successfully landed on the SpaceX recovery barge.

[06 MAY 21] CN XC / LONG MARCH 2C / YAOGAN 30-08 -- A Long March 4C booster was launched from Xichang at 1811 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put three secret "Yaogan 30-08" payloads into orbit. They were possibly a "flying triangle" signals intelligence satellite constellation. The launch also included the "Tianqi 12" internet of things satellite.

[09 MAY 21] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 27 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0642 UTC (local time + 4) to put 60 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). This was the 27th Starlink batch launch. The booster first stage successfully landed on the SpaceX recovery barge.

[15 MAY 21] NZ / ELECTRON / BLACKSKY GLOBAL x 2 (FAILURE) -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 1111 UTC (next day local time - 13) to put the two "BlackSky Global" remote sensing satellite into orbit. The booster did not make orbit.

[15 MAY 21] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 28 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2256 UTC (local time + 4) to put 54 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 28th Starlink batch launch. It also included two smallsats:

• Tyvak 0130: A 6U CubeSat from Tyvak International, with color and grayscale imagers to spot space debris.
  
  
• Capella 4: The fourth radar remote-sensing satellite from Capella Space. It had a launch mass of 100 kilograms (220 pounds).

The booster first stage successfully landed on the SpaceX recovery barge. The payload fairings were also recovered.

[18 MAY 21] USA CC / ATLAS 5 / SBIRS GEO FLIGHT 5 -- An Atlas 5 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1737 UTC (local time + 4) to put the US military's fifth "Space Based Infrared System Geosynchronous satellite (SBIRS GEO 5)" missile launch warning satellite into orbit. The flight also included the "TDO 3" and "TDO 4" smallsats from the USAF Space & Missile Systems center, both being 12-unit demonstrator CubeSats. The booster was in the "421" configuration with a four-meter (13.1-foot) fairing, two solid rocket boosters, and a single-engine Centaur upper stage.

The United States Space Force's (USSF's) Space Based Infrared System arose during the 1991 Gulf War, when the US Military realized its missile warning capabilities were unsatisfactory, that a new system would be needed to allow the country to quickly and accurately track short- and long-range missile launches from around the world.

Before SBIRS, the US military's missile warning system was based on the Defense Support Program (DSP), a constellation of 23 satellites launched between 1970 and 2007. SBIRS was intended to replace and improve on DSP, with two classes of satellites to be flown:

• SBIRS Low AKA SBIRS HEO, which was initially to consist of two satellites in a highly eccentric "Molniya" orbits.
  
  
• SBIRS High AKA SBIRS GEO, which was initially to consist of two satellites located in geostationary orbit.

They both carried a set of sensitive infrared detectors. After the SBIRS system first online in 2013, the US Air Force awarded Lockheed Martin contracts to expand the constellation, ordering a third HEO spacecraft in 2009, followed by a third and fourth GEO satellite that same year.

In 2014, the USAF awarded Lockheed Martin a contract for a fifth and sixth GEO satellite. Contracts for GEO 7 and GEO 8 were also awarded -- but those satellites were canceled in 2019. GEO 6, scheduled for launch in 2022, is now set to be the final satellite in the SBIRS High constellation.

When GEO 5 was ordered along with GEO 6, the two spacecraft were initially supposed to be identical to the four SBIRS High satellites that preceded them, which used Lockheed Martin's A2100 satellite bus. During the development of GEO 5 and 6, it was decided to instead use the modernized LM2100M (Modernized Military) bus, which was developed specifically for military operations. The LM2100M was designed to be more resilient to cyber attacks, and featured an upgraded suite of power and propulsion equipment. The modular design of the spacecraft also allowed for a much more streamlined manufacturing process.

GEO 5 was the first satellite in the LM2100M series to be launched. However, the US Space Force has already awarded contracts to Lockheed Martin for at least 26 satellites based on the LM2100M design -- one for GEO 6, three for the service's "Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR)" missile warning constellation, which is set to start replacing SBIRS from 2025, and 22 for the next generation of Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites.

[19 MAY 21] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 4B / HAIYANG 2D -- A Long March 4B booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0403 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Haiyang (Ocean) 2D" ocean-observation satellite into orbit, for the China National Satellite Ocean Application Service (NSOAS), a branch of the China's State Oceanic Administration. This launch brought the constellation up to four Haiyang 1 satellites and four Haiyang 2s, with the first Haiyang 3 to be launched later in 2021.

The Haiyang 1 series of satellites included ocean color scanners and CCD cameras and were used to monitor chlorophyll concentration, surface temperature, and pollution, among others. The Haiyang 1A and 1B satellites had a launch mass of about 360 kilograms (795 pounds), while the Haiyang 1C and 1D successors increased to about 442 kilograms (795 kilograms). These satellites operated in near-polar orbits at an altitude of from 760 and 800 kilometers (470 to 500 miles).

The Haiyang 2A and 2B satellites were placed into higher orbits, between 880 and 950 kilometers (545 to 590 miles). They added a microwave payload to measure surface winds, sea surface height, and temperatures. The Haiyang 2C and 2D satellites had a launch mass of about 1,575 kilograms (3,470 pounds). They were the only two Haiyang satellites to launch from Jiuquan, the rest having been launched from Taiyuan. The Haiyang 3 will carry a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payload.

[26 MAY 21] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 29 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1859 UTC (local time + 4) to put 60 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds).

This was the 29th Starlink batch launch. The booster first stage landed on the SpaceX recovery barge, and the payload fairings were recovered as well. This was the second flight of the first stage.

This launch delivered the final satellites for the first "shell" of the constellation to orbit. Prior to launch, there were 1,677 Starlink satellites in orbit, including demo satellites, with 1,578 satellites active at time of launch. The new launch brought the first shell to 1,584 satellites orbiting at an altitude of 550 kilometers (340 miles), inclined 53 degrees to the equator. In operation, it will be able to provide service to 80% of the world. There will be five shells in all:

• Shell 2 will include 1,584 satellites orbiting at 540 kilometers (335 miles) altitude, inclined 53.2 degrees to the equator.
  
  
• Shell 3 will include 720 satellites orbiting at 570 kilometers (355 miles) altitude, inclined 70 degrees to the equator.
  
  
• Shell 4 will include 348 satellites orbiting at 560 kilometers (345 miles) altitude inclined 97.6 degrees to the equator, a polar retrograde orbit.
  
  
• Shell 5 will include 172 satellites orbiting at 560 kilometers altitude, inclined 97.6 degrees to the equator. Shells 4 & 5 will have laser crosslinks.

In completion, the Phase 1 network will have 4,408 satellites. It must be completed in 2027, or else SpaceX risks losing its dedicated frequency band for this constellation.

Phase 2 will feature up to 7,518 satellites orbiting at altitudes from 335 to 345 kilometers (210 to 215 miles), at orbital inclinations of 42 degrees, 48 degrees, or 53 degrees, in addition to Phase 1's satellites. Phase 2 also will feature satellites communicating in more bands, while Phase 1 satellites are currently only communicating in the Ku band. After Phase 2 is complete, the Starlink constellation will have 11,926 active satellites in orbit.

That implies a headache for astronomers. To address their concerns, SpaceX initially experimented with a "darksat", one satellite painted black to lower its brightness. However, this resulted in heating issues, so eventually a sunshade was placed on the satellite that is now on all Starlink satellites launched since August 2020. This sunshade has noticeably lowered the satellites' brightness from an average of magnitude 4.63 pre-visor (visible under moderate light pollution) to magnitude 5.92 with the visor (only visible in darker skies).

[28 MAY 21] RU-C VT / SOYUZ 2.1B / ONEWEB 7 -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Vostochny at 1738 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put 36 "OneWeb" low-orbit comsats into space. OneWeb plans to put a constellation of hundreds of comsats into near-polar low Earth orbit, at an altitude of about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles).

[29 MAY 21 ] CN WC / LONG MARCH 7 / TIANZHOU 2 -- A Long March 7 booster was launched at 1255 UTC (local time - 8) from the Chinese Wenchang launch center on Hainan Island to put the "Tianzhou 2" freighter capsule into orbit, on the first supply mission to the Tianhe 1 space station module. It docked with the station 8 hours later.

[WED 16 JUN 21] LITHIUM EXTRACTION FROM SEAWATER

* LITHIUM EXTRACTION FROM SEAWATER: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Seawater Could Provide Nearly Unlimited Amounts Of Critical Battery Material" by Robert F. Service, 13 July 2020, lithium batteries have become an essential component of the modern technological landscape, particularly for powering electric vehicles. There's a problem: it's not a common element, and only economically extracted from a few places. Now researchers have determined it may be economically possible to extract it from seawater.

Lithium is in demand for batteries because it stores more energy by weight than other battery materials. Manufacturers use more than 160,000 tonnes of the material every year, a number expected to grow by an order of magnitude. That has led to worries about lithium shortages in the future. The oceans, however, contain an estimated 160 billion tonnes of lithium -- but it's dilute, at about 0.2 parts per million. Attempts to extract it from seawater has, to date, involved evaporating away water to get at it, which requires a lot of land and time; it hasn't proven economically workable.

Researchers have tried to use electrodes to draw lithium directly from seawater and brines without the need for first evaporating the water. Those electrodes consist of sandwichlike layered materials designed to trap and store lithium ions. In seawater, a negative electrical voltage applied to a lithium-grabbing electrode pulls lithium ions into the electrode. But it also pulls in sodium, a chemically similar element that is about 100,000 times more abundant in seawater than lithium. As a result, sodium crowds out the lithium.

To get around this problem, a research team led by Cui Yi, a materials scientist at Stanford University, investigated electrode materials that were more selective. First, they coated an electrode with a thin layer of titanium dioxide as a barrier; since lithium ions are smaller than sodium ions, it is easier for them to make their way into the electrode sandwich.

The researchers also changed the way they controlled the electric voltage. Instead of applying a constant negative voltage to the electrode, as others had done, they cycled it: first negative, then off, then positive, then off, and over again. Cui says that the reversing voltage causes lithium and sodium ions to move into the electrode, stop, and then start to move back out when the current reverses. However, because the electrode material has a slightly higher affinity for lithium than sodium, lithium ions are the first to move into the electrode and the last to leave. Repeating this cycle concentrates lithium in the electrode.

After 10 such cycles, taking just minutes, Cui and colleagues ended up with a one-to-one ratio of lithium to sodium. This is still not cheap enough to compete with mining lithium on land, but it's a step in the right direction. It may also help with recycling lithium from old batteries.

* A more general article from MININGWEEKLY.com ("Over 40 Minerals And Metals Contained In Seawater, Their Extraction Likely To Increase In The Future" by Keith Campbell, 1 April 2016), extracting minerals from seawater is not a new idea.

According to Stanford University, seawater contains 47 minerals and metals. The most common, of course, are sodium and chlorine, the constituents of sea salt. At well lower concentrations, there are magnesium, sulphur, calcium, potassium, bromine, inorganic carbon, and strontium. All others are at a lower level than that.

Salt is the most commonly extracted, being not only used in food, but also in manufacturing processes. Every cubic kilometer of seawater contains 26 million tonnes of salt. The salt is obtained by admitting sea, or inland briny, water into shallow pools and letting the sun evaporate the water, leaving the crystallized salt behind.

Extraction of other minerals is of lesser importance, but it happens. Although magnesium can be obtained from the minerals dolomite and carnalite, outside China, its main source is seawater and briny lakes. Each cubic kilometer of seawater contains more than a million tonnes of magnesium compounds. In the US, 63% of magnesium production came from seawater and brines during 2015. Extraction uses an electrolysis scheme. There is some other extraction of potash and potassium-containing compounds, but for the most part, extraction of minerals from seawater is not economically competitive with other sources. Research on making seawater extraction of a wider range of minerals economically feasible is ongoing, particularly in Japan.

[TUE 15 JUN 21] NEW AGE OF ENERGY (10)

* NEW AGE OF ENERGY (10): The last of the four measures to deal with climate change, carbon removal, is arguably the toughest. Between 100 billion and 1 trillion tonnes of CO2 will have to be taken out of the atmosphere by 2100 if the 2C goal is to be reached, according to a range of scenarios examined by the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. The median value was 730 billion tonnes. If carbon removal costs around $100 USD per tonne of CO2, an optimistic estimate for the foreseeable future, then annual global spending on carbon removals could easily reach $900 billion USD in decades to come.

Startups are working on sequestration technologies. One is Indigo Ag, which in 2020 introduced a platform to pay farmers for absorbing more CO2 in their land. Soil is a natural store of carbon: the organic carbon into which plants transform the atmospheric CO2 is stored there in abundance. Changes in agricultural techniques, such as reduced deep-plowing, help keep carbon in the soil. Indigo Ag's first step is to measure the carbon content of soil. The company uses an algorithm to crunch reams of data, from satellite imagery to information from tractor-based sensors, and generate estimates with 85% accuracy. Farmers who successfully use carbon-absorbing approaches will be paid for each additional tonne of CO2 sequestered. The firm sells the offset, at around $15 to $20 per tonne, with a mark-up for its trouble.

That's cheap, but it is not regarded as an entirely secure approach: a heavy storm could release the carbon. A more technological approach is building machines to perform "direct-air capture (DAC)". Climeworks, a company based in Zurich, makes smart-car sized DAC machines which contain a fan drawing air through a filter; once saturated, the filter is heated and carbon is captured. As it stands now, Climeworks technology costs $600 to $800 USD per tonne of CO2 removed. Two other firms pioneering DAC technology, Carbon Engineering and Global Thermostat, also have price points firms judged too high to be commercially viable. One of the problems is economy of scale, or lack thereof, the demonstrations performed so far being too small to be efficient. However, a new facility that Climeworks is planning will draw 4,000 tonnes of CO2 out of the air each year, equivalent to the annual footprint of 600 Europeans.

That plant will be built with Carbfix, an Icelandic startup. Its researchers are trying to accelerate mineralization, a natural process in which CO2 is transformed into rock, over hundreds of years. Captured from a geothermal power plant or through DAC, CO2 is dissolved in water and injected into rock formations 500 meters (1,640 feet) underground. After two years, the carbon becomes rock and is stored in a stable form. Storage costs about $25 USD per tonne. The next step is to take the process offshore, storing carbon under the ocean. Seabeds are often made of deposits of basalt, the type of rock required. A pilot project will start in the next few years. If successful, it will create almost "limitless storage", says Edda Sif Aradottir, Carbfix's boss. One hopes so.

* In sum, business urgently need to take climate change seriously. It's already damaging companies, while governments are implementing ever-tougher regulations. Lawsuits are a looming threat. Simply acquiring greener technologies won't, in itself, fix the problem.

One of the first things to do is to obtain better carbon-emissions data. Today, few companies know how much greenhouse gases suppliers produce, making it difficult to determine the environmental impact of their products. Such data as is currently available is often self-reported, inconsistent, or too out of date to be useful.

Work is under way to fix that problem. Along with other firms, Microsoft has launched an emissions reporting standard for suppliers, backed up by sustainability audits. The Rocky Mountain Institute and other research groups have started to standardize greenhouse-gas metrics for mining and industrial supply chains. With help from Google, WattTime and CarbonTracker, two lobby groups, are estimating emissions from coal-fired power plants in real time using satellite imagery and sophisticated algorithms. It's all about transparency, the idea being that better numbers could unleash market forces and consumer choice. Carbon labels, along the lines of food labels, could guide consumers towards greener products, giving firms yet another incentive to decarbonize.

However, there are also reasons to be skeptical of such direct action. Many previous carbon-labeling schemes have failed to gain traction, and persuading firms to adopt them is hard. Worse, there's no standardization at present: Ecolabel Index, a green-label directory, counts 457 such labels. Consumer action can only do so much, anyway. One study, led by Daniel Moran of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, examined the effect on Europe's carbon footprint of 90 behavioral changes, such as buying low-carbon products and eating less meat. The maximum reduction, according to the study, was 24% -- good, but not close to good enough.

That means more regulation, pushed by green voters. Activism will push companies, either directly or through financial firms, to be more aggressive in fighting climate change. Companies are faced with a huge task, and they need to get moving on it immediately. For those business sectors in which mitigation is hardest, such as steel or shipping, coming up with a viable, low-carbon alternative could take many years. In addition, some carbon-producing assets last a long time. A steel mill built today will probably be pumping out CO2 in 20 years' time. If companies are to decarbonize by midcentury, many newly built assets will need to be carbon-free by the end of the present decade.

The clock is ticking. Along with the threat, comes the opportunity: companies can develop new technology, become more carbon efficient than competitors, or sell genuinely green products to consumers. The firms that do the best will outclass their competitors. "Save the world" may be an awkward slogan -- but if it comes along with business success, who will sensibly complain? [END OF SERIES]

[MON 14 JUN 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 23

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus behind the COVID-19 epidemic is unclear. Early on, the assumption was that it started in a wild meat "wet" market in Wuhan, China -- but there was speculation that it might have been from a containment failure at a bioresearch lab known to be in Wuhan. That was plausible, though further speculation that the virus had been "weaponized" was not. However, the Chinese denied it, and in the absence of supporting evidence, the "lab leak" theory was forgotten by everyone but the trolls.

Some weeks back, stories began circulating of US government intelligence report that indicated three people from the Wuhan lab had been hospitalized just before the outbreak in the city. There were suggestions from prominent health officials like Dr. Anthony Fauci that the "lab leak" theory needed to be re-examined; President Joe Biden requested that his intelligence services investigate, and come up with a report in 90 days.

The trolls got very noisy about the matter, claiming the "lab leak" theory was proven true after all. Well, no, not proven. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, at a Senate committee hearing over State Department funding, said: "I saw the report. I think it's on a number of levels, incorrect."

The report was classified, having been prepared in May 2020 by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), to then be passed on to by State when it conducted an inquiry into the pandemic's origins during the last months of the Trump Administration.

Blinken elaborated that, as far as he knew, the report originated after the Trump administration asked a contractor to look into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, with a particular concern about the "lab leak" theory. He added:

BEGIN QUOTE:

END QUOTE

While it might be assumed that Trump Administration officials would jump at any report that told them what Trump would want to hear, not all of his staff were Trump loyalists, and it seems some of them smelled rats. Blinken said the report was the work of one officer and a few individuals. LLNL has a reputation for going over-the-top, and tilting to the Right; it would not be surprising that some of the staff are Trump loyalists. It is also a science organization, with no particular brief for intelligence analysis.

OK, we're back to square one. The intelligence report now in preparation is almost certain to conclude: "Definitely MAYBE!" Only the Chinese know for a fact if there was a lab leak or not, and they have repeated their denials. Blinken's public statement on the matter was a message to the Chinese: "We have things we will fight you over, but this is not one of them."

The difficulty with all such conspiracy theories is not that they are demonstrably false; the "lab leak" theory is perfectly plausible. The difficulty with it is that it demands shifting the burden of proof, making grand claims on the basis of thin evidence. It's skewed logic to think that, simply because the obvious is not always true, that the obvious is probably false.

Incidentally, this month will also see the release of a Pentagon report on unidentified flying objects (UFO). By all accounts, the report is a collection of interesting but ambiguous information on UFOs that goes nowhere in particular. The Pentagon made it clear there was "no evidence" the UFOs were alien spacecraft. This sensible response got a hail of flak, some being outraged the Pentagon would even acknowledge the possibility, others that they had ruled the possibility out -- which they had not. What to be said? "Can't cure stupid." It seems we get a UFO flap every 20 years or so. People get excited, nothing comes of it, then it goes quiet for another 20 years.

* As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("White House Grapples With Spike In Ransomware Attacks As Cyber Vulnerabilities Are Laid Bare" by Kevin Liptak, 4 June 2021), the USA has been hit with a wave of "ransomware" attacks, in which the Black Hats seize control of computer systems and demand payoffs to release control again.

An attack last month on the Colonial Pipeline company resulted in a run on gasoline, prompting fuel shortages along the East Coast. More recently, a major meat packer was hit by a ransomware attack. They have helped promote a spike in inflation, though the inflation has been primarily driven by the resurgence in economic activity as the COVID-19 pandemic winds down. The pandemic badly disrupted international supply chains, and they are only slowly recovering.

Such attacks have been traced to Russian cybercrime gangs. The Russian government does not appear to have been directly involved, but the government appears tolerant of such gangs, as long as they target Russia's enemies. Options for response are limited; this is a long-range problem, and it's going to take a long time to fix.

Colonial Pipelines had to pay bitcoins worth about $4.3 million USD to get operational again; the FBI has managed to get half of its back. It's encouraging to see the authorities are learning. The FBI also announced a coup under its Operation TROJAN SHIELD effort, which was part of an international collaboration to take down an international cybercrime ring, operating on a secure "dark" smartphone network named ANOM.

The investigation involved 9,000 law enforcement officers from 17 countries saw authorities monitor 27 million messages from 12,000 devices in 100 countries. They tracked the activities of more than 300 organized crime groups; to date, there have been over 800 arrests, seizures of tonnes of drugs, hundreds of guns, and dozens of luxury vehicles, plus over $48 million USD in cash and cryptocurrencies.

The trick was that ANOM had been run by law enforcement all along. For at least a decade, organized crime groups have used dark phone networks like Phantom Secure to set up drug deals, to arrange hits on rivals, and for money-laundering. The FBI had got tired of trying to keep up with the dark networks, and decided to set up their own. The authorities were listening in on everything.

That's the problem with bootleg software: nobody has any real idea of where it comes from. ANOM's cover has been blown, and it has served its purpose -- but it still must haunt gangsters to wonder if the marvelous cryptotech on which they rely might be booby-trapped. There's a certain wonderful irony in seeing scammers get scammed.

* In other news, Joe Biden was at a meeting of G7 leaders in Cornwall this last week, and stood for a group photo:

This got the comment on Twitter:

Kevin Guilfoile / @kevinguilfoile: They've just beamed down and I gotta say, I don't like Merkel's chances.

For those who don't get it, search on STAR TREK REDSHIRTS.

* I got my municipal fiber-optic link this last week. They ran the cable in a shallow trench through my lawn to the house from the junction box they'd installed last year, and then a guy named Dave came out and ran the fiber to my bedroom-office. Actually, I had to partly run in myself; my crawlspace is more than slightly damp right now, so I had to snake it through there myself.

I didn't mind, I didn't want to send him down in that muck anyway, while it's nothing new to me. I was actually somewhat relieved, since I've had installers throw up their hands when they run into a snag, then tell me to call them when I've fixed it. Dave left me some clips to tie up the cable, which I will do when the crawlspace dries out in a few continued warm weeks.

I'm in a duplex house, and he couldn't run the fiber-optic cable up through the dividing wall, it appears because the foundation gets in the way; instead, he ran it to a side wall near my bed. That left the problem of getting an ethernet hookup from the fiber-optic modem / wireless router to my PC on the other side of the room -- but I recalled I had a long ethernet cable in a box of cables. I found the cable, ran it across the room along the dividing wall, and it worked nicely.

I then called up my existing provider, Centurylink, and canceled my service. It was no bother, I talked with a fellow named Miguel, who was very smooth and professional. That done, I got my devices on wi-fi hooked up to the new router without much problem.

The new service costs the same as the old, $45 USD a month, but it gives me about 30 megabits per second instead of 12 MBPS. That's plenty, an HD movie only needs like 10 MBPS, and I never watch HD -- I watch videos on a large smartphone, don't have viewing gear to make HD worthwhile. I didn't notice much change, except that updating apps on my smartphones is well faster now.

The only problem I had was uploading files to my websites using FTP. I long used the old FTP.EXE utility; with the new hookup I would log in, but the remote service would cut me off every time I tried to do anything. Say what? Poking around online suggested that the old utility did some things that modern FTP servers don't like. I decided to download the free Filezilla FTP app. It had no problems.

I'd used Filezilla before, but had preferred using the old FTP.EXE utility from the command line, it being the solution I was used to. On returning to Filezilla and doping it out properly, I found it an excellent solution. It looks like, in fact is, a file manager, with directory windowpanes for my PC and for the remote server. It had a quick logon feature -- it remembered my password by default, which I didn't like, but it was easy to change it so it asked me for the password each time. It also had bookmarks to allow me to switch to different PC directories and their matching directories on the FTP server. During an FTP session, I didn't have to worry about timeouts; if the server timed out, Filezilla transparently logged back in again.

So I am set. The only problem left is fixing the scar in my lawn where they laid the fiber-optic line. I give it a good watering every day. I have hopes that it will look okay by the fall, but if not, then next year.

[FRI 11 JUN 21] AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (154)

* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (154): Bill Clinton's transition into the White House was not smooth:

• His first two picks for attorney general were embarrassed by tax irregularities, and had to withdraw.
  
  
• Although he had promised to end discrimination against gays in the military, the Pentagon was opposed to the idea, and he ended with a weak compromise position: "Don't ask, don't tell!" -- meaning that the services would not go after gays if they stayed in the closet.
  
  
• He came up with a big stimulus package, primarily to help inner cities -- but even though the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress at the time, the Republicans filibustered and shot it down.

Clinton did sign into law the "Family & Medical Leave Act of 1993", which required large employers to allow employees to take unpaid leave for pregnancy or a serious medical condition. It was a popular and had bipartisan support. In another high-profile move, only two days after arriving at the White House, Clinton reversed restrictive domestic and international family-planning regulations that had been imposed by the Reagan-Bush Administration. He had campaigned on a slogan that abortion should be "safe, legal, and rare" -- which had been devised by political scientist Samuel L. Popkin. In his first address to the nation -- on 15 February 1993 -- Clinton proposed to raise taxes to close the budget deficit.

From early on in the Clinton Administration, there had been a standoff at the compound run by the heavily-armed extremist Branch Davidian religious sect near Waco, Texas. After 51 days, Attorney General Janet Reno ordered that the FBI agents on the scene use armored cars to send tear gas into the buildings. It was a disaster: the buildings caught fire and 75 of the residents died, including 24 children.

Following up his promise to close the budget deficit, in August Clinton signed into law the "Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1993". It cut taxes for 15 million low-income families, made tax cuts available to 90% of small businesses, and raised taxes on the wealthiest 1.2% of taxpayers. It also specified spending limits.

In September 1993, Clinton began to push for a national health care plan -- which had been devised by a task force under Hillary. Lobbying from conservatives, the American Medical Association, and the health insurance industry ensured the plan wouldn't go anywhere. The involvement of Hillary in the plan also focused hostility on her, the war cry being: "We didn't vote for her!"

Another setback followed in early October. American forces in Somalia got into a pitched battle, with two US helicopters shot down, and 18 US troops killed. In response, American forces were pulled out of Somalia, and subsequent interventions were much more cautious.

More trouble was in store. In 1992, THE NEW YORK TIMES revealed that had been involved with a development project focused on the White River in Arkansas, conducted by the Whitewater Development Corporation (WDC), and had lost money on the deal. There was no particular cause to see malfeasance in the deal, but in November 1993, one David Hale, an Arkansas municipal judge and banker said that when Clinton was governor, he pressured Hale to provide an illegal $300,000 loan to Susan McDougal, the Clinton's associate in the WDC. Susan McDougal and her husband Jim ended up being convicted in the course of an investigation by the SEC, lending some weight to the accusation, but the authorities had spoken to Hale in 1989, and he had said nothing much about Clinton. Nothing much happened to the Clintons over the matter at the time, but the issue wouldn't go away.

At the end of November 1993, Clinton signed into law the "Brady Bill", a gun-control act named after James Brady, the Reagan aide who had suffered brain damage in the 1981 assassination attempt on Reagan. The law mandated background checks on people who purchased firearms, and imposed a five-day waiting period on purchases. Clinton also expanded the Earned Income Tax Credit, a subsidy for low-income workers. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 10 JUN 21] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: According to an article from NEWATLAS.com, a groundbreaking "commercial scale" wind-power project is now proceeding, with a wind turbine farm placed in the Atlantic about 24 kilometers (15 miles) south of the Massachusetts island Martha's Vineyard. The "Vineyard Wind 1" array will come online in 2023, and ultimately provided about 800 megawatts (MW) of electrical power.

Vineyard Wind 1 will be based on monster General Electric "Haliade-X" wind turbines. Each is 260 meters (850 feet) tall, with rotor diameter being 220 meters (720 feet). One Haliade-X can generate about 12 MW of power; it is well more efficient than smaller wind turbines, and can produce power in light winds. Reducing the number of turbines to generate a given amount of power, in principle, reduces installation and maintenance costs.

Vineyard Wind 1 is well smaller than the world's largest offshore wind project: the 3.6-gigawatt (GW) Dogger Bank project in the UK, which will use the Haliade-X as well. That in turn is much smaller than the world's biggest onshore facility, China's Gansu wind farm, with a planned capacity of about 20 GW -- although, at present, THE NEW YORK TIMES reports that political factors have rendered it "mostly idle."

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Study Reveals Potential Of Hydropower Dams Topped With Floating Solar" by Nick Lavars, 01 October 2020), hydropower is a well-established renewable energy source -- so much so that it has not so much room for growth. A study from the US Department of Energy's National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) suggests that more power can be usefully extracted from a dam, by floating solar panels on the reservoir behind it.

NREL researchers surveyed the freshwater hydropower reservoirs currently installed across the world and their potential to accommodate floating solar photovoltaic panels on the water's surface. The study estimates that there are almost 380,000 hydropower reservoirs around the world that could be augmented with floating photovoltaic panels. If fully used, the panels could generate up to 7.6 terawatts (TW) peak power, or up to 10,600 terawatt-hours (TWh) in a year. In comparison, global electricity demand in 2018 was about 22,300 TWh.

The virtues of floating the panels near dams is that waters tend to be calm near dams, there's not much boat traffic near them either -- and in particular, there's already a power substation near a hydropower facility. The solar panels could, at least in some installations, pump water up into the reservoir to provide energy storage.

Right now, only one such hybrid solar-hydropower system is in operation, as a pilot project in the dam of Portugal's River Rabagao. The reservoir floats 840 solar panels covering 2,500 square meters (27,000 square feet), and can produce 300 megawatt-hours per year. Energy provider EDP is planning to expand on this pilot project with an 11,000-panel floating photovoltaic system at the Alqueva hydropower plant, also in sunny Portugal.

The NREL researchers caution that not all dams may be well-suited to the scheme, for example if they run dry part of the year, Nathan Lee, who led the study, says: "This is really optimistic. This does not represent what could be economically feasible or what the markets could actually support. Rather, it is an upper-bound estimate of feasible resources that considers waterbody constraints and generation system performance."

* A video from REUTERS.com focused on "Wikihouse", an open-source effort to design low-cost houses, using sustainable practices. The exercise began in 2011 through the work of Alastair Parvin and Nick Ierodiaconou of "00", a London-based strategy and design practice, in collaboration with other designers. It has since grown into a global collaboration.

WikiHouse provides an online library of design files, which can be downloaded and modified by anyone, with a set of jigsaw puzzle-like pieces cut out of plywood with a CNC router. The pieces snap together with wedge and peg connections, inspired by classical Korean construction methods; assembly can be performed quickly by people with no special training. However, the result is only a frame of a house, which then has to be completed with plumbing, wiring, cladding, roofing, flooring, and so on.

The Wikihouse designs emphasize energy efficiency and digital technology. The Wikihouse v4.0 design is a two-storey smart home, featuring smart device-controlled lighting and ventilation, plus a safer and more efficient low-voltage DC electrical system. All systems are integrated together via OpenHAB smart home software, an open source alternative to products like Nest.

At present, Wikihouse remains largely an experimental effort. There have been comparisons with IKEA furniture; it certainly does look like fun the way the houses snap together.

[WED 09 JUN 21] REOPENING THE WORLD?

* REOPENING THE WORLD? The light is clearly at the end of the tunnel for the COVID-19 pandemic, but as discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("How Many COVID Deaths Are Acceptable In A Post-Pandemic World?" by Smriti Mallapaty, 6 May 2021), the transition period back to normalcy presents challenges. COVID-19 appears to be here to stay, and the question is then: how many deaths are acceptable?

A number of countries, including Australia, Bhutan, China, and New Zealand, took a "zero-tolerance" approach to COVID-19, confronting outbreaks with mass testing, sudden lockdowns, and closed borders. That approach worked very well, but it isn't sustainable. James McCaw -- an infectious-diseases epidemiologist at the University of Melbourne, who advises the Australian government -- says: "We have to accept that people will get infected, will go to hospital, and will die from COVID-19 in the future."

There is no global consensus on the number of hospitalizations and deaths that societies will find acceptable. However, there are some scenarios that most countries will try to avoid, such as swamping the hospitals with more cases than they can cope with.

Annual deaths from diseases such as influenza, which before the pandemic killed between a quarter and half a million people each year globally, provide hints on how to think about the issue. And in Israel, where vaccination rates are high and life is returning to normal, Eran Segal -- a computational biologist at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, who has modeled the pandemic and advises the government -- says that people seem to have settled on a few deaths a day as the acceptable number.

Scientists and public-health officials are beginning discussions about the acceptable level of risk, but their decisions involve cultural, ethical, and political factors, and differ greatly between regions. Sylvie Briand -- head of infectious-hazards management at the World Health Organization in Geneva, Switzerland -- says: "Each country will set its own threshold."

In places like the US and UK, thousands of people die each year from seasonal flu, and the consensus is, given vaccination campaigns, that's acceptable. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has made some societies more risk-averse. In New Zealand, for example, the tough response to COVID-19 had the incidental effect of almost eliminating deaths from of influenza and respiratory syncytial virus, a common cause of colds. Researchers there are now asking if deaths from these diseases that were acceptable before the COVID-19 pandemic are acceptable now -- possibly more effort should be made to control them?

In addition, COVID-19 isn't the flu: it's more contagious and deadlier. Segal says that means its uncontrolled spread could quickly overwhelm hospitals. There's also the issue of "long COVID": about 10% to 20% of those who get sick from COVID-19 stay that way indefinitely, suffering a long-term disability.

One factor governing the consideration of an acceptable level of hospitalizations, of course, is hospital capacity, particularly the capacity of intensive-care units (ICU). Segal estimates that Israel will be overwhelmed after 500 ICU beds are filled nationwide. Beyond that limit, overall health care declines, and death rates climb. He says it is best to implement a lockdown before that point.

The UK has taken this approach through the pandemic. There have been three nationwide lockdowns, with each beginning when it was becoming obvious the hospitals couldn't cope any longer. Israel has among the highest vaccination rates in the world, and offers a suggestion of what the post-pandemic world will look like.

The country began opening up in February 2021, when about a third of its population had been fully vaccinated, and numbers of hospitalizations and deaths have been on a steady decline. Segal says that, at current rates, COVID-19's death toll in Israel could stabilize at 1,000 to 2,000 a year. He adds: "Even if those numbers were to rise, nobody would close down the economy now. They would only consider closing if we saw, again, the danger of losing control."

[TUE 08 JUN 21] NEW AGE OF ENERGY (9)

* NEW AGE OF ENERGY (9): Adaptation is the first line of response to climate change; the second is energy efficiency. The IEA estimates that improvements in efficiency could cut emissions by seven gigatonnes by 2040, about as much as renewables. Energy efficiency is particularly attractive since it tends to pay for itself in terms of reduced costs.

There are companies with expertise in cutting energy use, for example Schneider Electric of France. Jean-Pascal Tricoire, its boss, says 70% of its revenue comes from green projects or energy-efficiency ones. Recently it ramped up a distribution center for Lidl, a supermarket chain, in Finland, featuring rooftop solar panels, a microgrid, and a smart energy-monitoring system. Sensors cut wasted energy by switching off idle lights and machines, while excess heating from air-conditioning is stored for use when the weather cools. The system is so efficient that the surplus heat provides hot water for the roughly 500 homes nearby. Energy costs fell by 70%, carbon emissions by 40%.

Since decarbonizing transport is so pricey, the potential efficiency gains are big. The Energy Transitions Commission (ETC), a global body, estimates that 35% to 40% of energy use in transport could be profitably saved. Digitization is one way forward. Scania says the average truck is only 60% full. One study found that 45 trucks visited a single department store in Copenhagen every day, when four fully laden ones could have delivered the same load. The firm is now planning to use GPS-trackers to cut unnecessary journeys. Similar gains can be made at sea. Ships often sail full-steam to get to port, then queue for hours or days before they can moor. PortXchange, a data company, cuts fuel use by alerting boats to port queues in real time.

After adaptation and energy efficiency, the third line of response is renewables. In much of the world, they are now cheaper than natural gas thanks to plummeting prices. More progress can be expected. Heliatek, a German firm, makes ultra-thin panels that can be printed onto flexible plastic. GE Renewable Energy, an engineering firm, is testing wind turbines as big as the Eiffel Tower. More renewable energy is needed.

Since sunlight and wind are intermittent, better ways of storing energy are needed. Hydrogen and batteries are the frontrunners. Both have drawbacks. For a given volume, they store less energy than fossil fuels, and building the infrastructure to support them will be a huge task. Although costs are falling, they are still expensive.

Growing enthusiasm for electric vehicles (EV) may help with the energy-storage task. Since cars are parked 95% of the time, at any one time a substantial amount of battery power is sitting idle. Enel X, the Italian utility's innovation arm, is experimenting at its headquarters in Rome. EVs belonging to a dozen or so employees are hooked up to the grid using special two-way charging points. They provide about one megawatt of electricity, which is enough to power hundreds of homes. Eliano Russo of Enel X says: "Electric cars for us are batteries with wheels."

As for hydrogen, a recent report by BloombergNEF, a consultancy, finds that renewable hydrogen could cut up to 34% of global greenhouse-gas emissions from fossil fuels and industry. To do this would require $150 billion in subsidies by 2030, which would bring prices down to a level competitive with natural gas in most of the world.

Today, most of the commercially-produced hydrogen creates CO2 as a by-product; the goal is to produce it by splitting water into hydrogen and oxygen with clean power. It could then be pumped into existing pipelines, and power natural-gas boilers; it could be used to cut emissions from many industrial processes, such as making ammonia; or it could feed fuel cells to power vehicles. China is interested in fuel cells, having spent a reported $12 billion on fuel-cell subsidies in 2018. The share price of PowerCell, a Swedish outfit that makes hydrogen fuel cells, has doubled in the past year. In the same period, Canada's Ballard Power has seen its share price triple, while that of America's Plug Power has risen fivefold. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[MON 07 JUN 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 22

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The most amusing news of the last week was that Trump shut down his blog after only a month in operation. Of course, it had been introduced as a big winner, but it never got more than a few hundred thousand readers -- which would be big for most bloggers, but Trump was getting tens of millions of readers on Twitter -- and, to the extent it was cited, it was largely to mock him.

This was more significant news than it might seem, since it was a clear indication of Trump's decline in importance. More subtly, it demonstrated the reality that most Trump voters weren't really crazy about him, and only followed him on a whim. Once it took any effort to find him online, they didn't bother. Now out of sight, for most he is largely out of mind.

Reports suggest that Trump is "out of mind" in other ways, insisting that, come August, the recounts of state ballots in progress or being advocated will result in him being reinstated as president. There were suggestions that Trump had a canny agenda in this, but it seems more plausible that he's delusional.

His worries are piling up. After the predictable refusal of the Senate GOP to authorize a joint commission to investigate the 6 January Capitol Riot, I was expecting on Tuesday, when Congress came back from Memorial Day weekend, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi would announce the formation of a House committee to do so. I was half right; she said the House needed to choose between a number of options, the most prominent being a select committee. I thought to myself: "Oh yeah, they'd have to take a vote to establish the committee." Good enough.

However, there was a lot of anger among the Woke Left on Twitter, who were outraged that a vote needed to be taken, that everything should have been nailed down before the Senate vote. I replied to one: "They were going to vote on what to do following the Senate vote, on the assumption the Senate bill would fail? That would be signaling that they didn't take the Senate bill seriously and weren't acting in good faith."

I was reading about George Washington, as commander of the Continental Army, telling his officers to be patient with the Continental Congress: "Legislatures never do anything quickly." They are not executive organizations, they pass laws by obtaining majority consensus, and they are by design not efficient. I am unconcerned; I would expect the select committee to be a going operation in a week or two.

* The Biden Administration did score a coup this week, getting the leadership of the G7 nations to agree to a uniform corporate tax of 15%. This was a just an agreement in principle, and will need to be taken up by the G20 forum, but the rest is really just paperwork. The ball is in motion and things are moving rapidly.

As discussed in an essay from ECONOMIST.com ("Twilight Of The Tax Haven", 3 June 2021), the Biden Administration's proposal focuses not only on a minimum 15% tax rate, but also on pinning taxing rights in countries where economic activity takes place, not in tax havens where firms can book profits. The big winners will be large economies where multinationals do lots of business but don't make much profit on the books, the profit being siphoned off to tax havens. Poorer countries where global companies have factories and other operations stand to benefit as well, if not as generously. The tax havens, of course, are not happy at all.

The tax havens include Bermuda, the British Virgin Islands (BVI) and the Cayman Islands. They don't really make money off of corporate profits obtained elsewhere, but they rake in money from fees, plus networks of accountants, lawyers, and other corporate-service providers. That's not a lot of money on a global scale, but it's a lot for a little country. Corporate and financial services accounted for over 60% of the BVI's government revenue in 2018.

Global corporate tax normalization will torpedo the business models of the tax havens. They are very angry, but they're not getting much sympathy, since other countries are inclined to see them as parasites. A diplomat says the havens are being "neutralized", and are "irrelevant" to the normalization talks: "No one wants to hear from them." Some of the havens do have backups: Cayman is a big home for hedge funds, Bermuda for insurers.

There are also economies that are not truly tax havens, but have created lightly-taxed environments. Ireland and Cyprus, for example, have low corporate income tax rates of 12.5%, while Luxembourg and the Netherlands have set up rules to turn them into conduits that allow companies to avoid taxes for doing business elsewhere. Hong Kong and Singapore have similarly prospered in the tax dodge game.

The Irish are nervous about tax normalization, and have been lobbying the USA -- the source of much of its foreign investment -- to show mercy. Ireland's finance minister, Paschal Donohoe, has argued that smaller countries should be allowed to use tax policy to make up for the advantages of scale, location and resources that big ones enjoy. Ireland does have friends in the EU, including Hungary -- with a rate of 9% -- plus Cyprus and Malta. Outside the EU, Singapore and Switzerland have indicated they consider 15% too high. Singapore would be happier with 10%.

However, Luxembourg and the Netherlands have been converted to the tax normalization religion. Both countries have been plagued by public exposures of their cozy deals with foreign investors, and have since been implementing reforms. The Irish and other EU malcontents could veto the EU's tax decisions, since the vote has to be unanimous, but they would then suffer the wrath of angry partner governments -- as well as from a public fed up with corporate gaming of taxes. The revolution is coming, and it's not going to be stopped; it's either ride the steamroller, or be part of the road.

This reminds me somewhat of how, when the US Constitution was being put together, the little state of Rhode Island persistently refused to play fair with the rest of the states, becoming known as "Rogue Island". Rhode Island was the last state to ratify the Constitution -- and they had to be threatened with blockade to do it.

* I bought a at the beginning of 2020, just before the COVID-19 pandemic hit. Not surprisingly, I haven't driven it much since, and it still looks pretty much new. I really like it, but it does have one significant problem: its pretty black matte finish is a dirt magnet, and keeping it clean is troublesome.

I got to the point of regularly waxing it, which does eliminate the magnetism, but it was too much like work. Then I got to thinking I should try spray wax, which is easy to apply, but doesn't last so long. I got into carnauba spray wax, derived from a type of Brazilian palm tree, and found it works very well. It has a strong but not unpleasant odor; it only lasts about a month -- but I need to wax monthly anyway, so no big deal. I wet down the car and then apply the spray with a soft cloth. I have to do it before the Sun comes up, since it seems to evaporate the wax to a degree; once done, I put the car in the garage and let it dry, then buff it later.

This weekend I did my monthly waxing before sunrise, and was very surprised to see a young elk walking along my street. At least, I think it was an elk; the coloration did not look deerlike, and it seemed more robust than a deer. I chased it off, since human habitation and wild animals don't get along. We get elk passing through Loveland, Colorado, twice a year -- going east from the mountains in the fall, back up west in the spring -- but they typically follow the watercourse of the Big Thompson River running through town.

Anyway, come fall I'll likely take the car on its first real road trip, to Seattle and back. It will be effectively a trial run for later, more ambitious trips, part of a readjustment to post-pandemic life. Now that I'm vaccinated, as far as I'm concerned, the pandemic is behind me. There's a lot of vaccination holdouts, but there's nothing I can do about them. I cannot and don't concern myself with them.

The US government, of course, can't be so casual about the matter, and has been taking measures to up vaccination. One aspect of that has been collaborations with businesses to offer "freebies", such as free beer or phone banking accounts. Why not? Businesses are always doing promotions anyway. There's also been outreach, the government joining hands with non-governmental groups to help push vaccination, and administration officials even publicly campaigning for vaccination. Alas, these measures have had limited effect. If we lose some of the holdouts, there's no more to be said.

[FRI 04 JUN 21] AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (153)

* AMERICA'S CONSTITUTION (153): Bill Clinton's prominence in the Democratic Party was underlined when he delivered the Democratic response to Reagan's 1985 State of the Union Address. The next year, 1986, he became chair of the National Governors Association, remaining in the position until 1987. In the meantime, Bill and Hillary had a number of business dealings, some of which would attract scrutiny later.

Clinton was considered a possible contender for the 1988 Democratic presidential nomination -- but he begged off, instead endorsing Michael Dukakis, and giving the opening address at the 1988 Democratic National Convention. Dukakis, of course, was beaten by George H.W. Bush, which had the incidental effect of cementing Clinton's commitment to the Third Way.

Clinton stayed on as governor of Arkansas, but he did have his eye on the presidency, throwing his hat into the ring in 1992. His campaign got off to a rocky start, with Clinton doing poorly in the Iowa primary election; to compound the problem, a woman named Gennifer Flowers claimed Clinton had conducted a long-term affair with her. Bill and Hillary Clinton went onto the 60 MINUTES news show to refute the charge, and it blew over for the moment -- though Bill Clinton would later admit he had slept with Flowers. He came in second in the New Hampshire primary, which was enough to keep the wind in his campaign. He continued to make gains, finally triumphing over California ex-governor Jerry Brown to clinch the nomination. He chose Tennessee Senator Al Gore as his running mate.

Nonetheless, as is often the case in political campaigns, other concerns came to light -- notably accusations of conflict of interest between Arkansas state business and the influential Rose Law Firm, where Hillary was a partner. He shrugged off the accusation. However, there were also concerns after he said that, with Hillary, voters would be getting two presidents "for the price of one". That was overestimating Hillary's appeal with the voters, and one of the beginnings of a very long-term campaign of Hillary-bashing.

Although George Bush's approval ratings had been sky-high during the Gulf War, economic problems sent his approval plummeting. In addition, Bush tried to find a middle path between Republican Conservatives and Moderates. He antagonized Conservatives by raising taxes, and antagonized Moderates by hooking up with evangelicals, even accusing Democrats of being against God. In addition, the end of the Cold War had set the Republicans somewhat adrift, their anti-Communist / anti-Soviet plank having fallen, and the GOP no longer had a straightforward theme to rally around.

Clinton, in contrast, was able to stand on his moderate record, attracting voters who had elected Reagan and Bush. He pointedly repudiated a black activist named Sister Souljah, who had said in an interview, concerning recent riots in Los Angeles: "If black people kill black people every day, why not have a week and kill white people?" Clinton accused her of an inverted racism, with the resulting furor all to his advantage. His deliberate marginalization of the Radical Left -- as well as his "Third Way" mindset, which would be sneered at as "neo-liberalism" -- antagonized them. That didn't make much difference at the time since the Radical Left was so weak, but they would never forgive him.

More positively, Clinton was able to use the AIDS pandemic to promote his campaign, famously saying: "I feel your pain." He met with AIDS activists, included AIDS in his speeches, and had people with HIV speak at the Democratic Convention. There's no reason to doubt Clinton's sincerity in confronting AIDS, but it certainly was politically shrewd as well -- since both the Reagan and Bush Administrations were persistently behind the curve on the issue.

Clinton, of course, won the election handily. Although Clinton benefited from a number of factors beyond his control -- confusion among the GOP over directions, a perception among voters that the economy was in worse shape than it was, and another perception that the GOP seemed stale after 12 years in power -- nonetheless, Clinton demonstrated considerable energy in winning the election, and was able to assemble a powerful coalition that put him in the White House. Indeed, the Democrats won back full control of Congress, for the first time since 1980 -- though the Republicans gained seats in the House. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 03 JUN 21] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("The 'Beating Hearts' Of These Pulsating Stars Create Music To Astronomers' Ears" by Ashley Strickland, 15 May 2020), astronomers have long known that stars can pulsate, and that their pulsations can give hints on what's going on inside them -- a science known as "asteroseismology". A team of astronomers has now conducted a careful analysis of an enigmatic set of pulsating stars, using data from the NASA Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) -- TESS having been described in 2020.

These particular stars are in the class of "Delta Scuti" stars, Delta Scuti being found in the Scutum constellation. They are in the range of about 1.5 to 2.5 times the mass of our Sun, and are all variable stars. The pulsations of Delta Scuti stars have long defied analysis -- one reason being that they rotate once or twice a day, which is about a dozen times faster than our Sun. That tends to disrupt the pulsation patterns, making them hard to sort out. Daniel Huber -- an assistant professor at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy, and one of the study leaders -- says: "The signals from these stars have been a mystery for over a hundred years. We knew that brightness variations in these stars are caused by sound waves traveling in their interior, but we just couldn't make any sense of them."

TESS obtain data on 60 Delta Scuti stars, ranging from 60 to 1,400 light-years away. The data was analyzed by software designed by Daniel Hey -- a doctoral student at the University of Sydney -- who says: "We needed to process all 92,000 light curves, which measure a star's brightness over time. From here we had to cut through the noise, leaving us with the clear patterns of the 60 stars identified in the study. Using the open-source Python library, Lightkurve, we managed to process all of the light curve data on my university desktop computer in a just few days."

More data was obtained from the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and other ground-based telescopes, helped provide further clues. Tim Bedding -- professor at the University of Sydney and another lead in the study -- says that while "many stars pulsate along simple chords," the melody of the Delta Scuti stars is much more complex. He adds:

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Young stars allow astronomers the chance to see how stars evolve, as well as the formation and evolution of planets around them. George Ricker -- TESS Principal Investigator at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research in Cambridge, and another study lead -- says: "We are thrilled that TESS data is being used by astronomers throughout the world to deepen our knowledge of stellar processes. The findings have opened up entirely new horizons for better understanding a whole class of stars."

* It is well known that whales sing elaborate songs that can travel long distances under the ocean. As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Whale Songs Allow Researchers To Take 'Ultrasound' Of Sea Floor" by Sofia Moutinho, 11 February 2020), one ingenious researcher has figure out how to use whale songs to map the ocean floor.

Seismologists have long placed seismometers on the ocean floor to spot earthquakes. Traditionally, seismologists have found whale songs to be annoying noise that had to be screened out for analysis. However, Vaclav Kuna -- a grad student at Oregon State University in Corvallis -- got to wondering if whale songs might augment seismic observations.

Kuna found that, besides the sound waves directly produced by the whales, the seismometers also capture their echoes: waves that passed through the surface and bounce back off rock layers underneath. Scientists use similar echoes, produced by air guns or such, to map the sea floor and look for oil and gas deposits. Kuna says: "We can use whales in the same way, and for free."

Kuna focused on fin whale vocalizations in his research, fin whales being unusually loud. Their songs can travel up to 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles) and reach 189 decibels, as loud as the noises produced by large ships. He examined six fin whale songs, 22 hours of recordings in all, captured by seismometers located 3,000 meters (9.850 feet) deep in an area close to the Blanco fault off of Oregon's coast. The echoes allowed him to spot compact and thick different layers of Earth's crust deep as three kilometers (1.85 miles) underneath the ocean floor.

Kuna's findings are like those obtained by previous studies using air guns to probe the Earth's crust -- but the whale songs don't have as much penetration, air guns being able to probe 8 kilometers (5 miles) deep into the oceanic crust. That means whale songs can't substitute for air guns; however, Kuna believes whale songs could be a useful geological tool in, say, oceanic conservation areas, where air guns are banned because they disturb marine life.

Kuna believes the whale songs could also help in the observation of earthquakes. Before deploying seismometers, researchers need to measure the thickness of the sediments underneath to know how fast the waves travel there, and more precisely locate the origin of the temblors. Air guns are expensive overkill for this purpose, with researchers instead working from estimates. Kuna thinks they can do better using whale songs.

Ana Sirovic -- a marine biologist at Texas A&M University in Galveston -- finds Kuna's work "fascinating". She points out that the technique is limited to the fin whale's distribution, which is mostly in colder offshore waters: "In the Gulf of Mexico, for example, an area with a lot of seismic activity, there are no fin whales."

Kuna knows about that limitation, but he also believes his scheme has broader potential: "This study was a proof of a concept. I'm putting it out there for other people to find more uses for this."

[WED 02 JUN 21] VACCINE BOOSTER?

* VACCINE BOOSTER? As discussed in an article from CBSN.com ("Your COVID Vaccine Booster Might Be A Patch Or A Pill" by Alexander Tin, 4 May 2021), governments around the world are driving towards getting everyone immunized against COVID-19, even as new variants of the SARS-CoV-2 virus emerge. So far, vaccines seem to be keeping up with the evolution of the virus, but few doubt that boosters will be needed in coming years.

Research is underway to devise those boosters. They may come in a range of forms -- administered in combination with seasonal flu vaccine, or as pills or patches, instead of shots. There's also work to come up boosters that could provide protection against future SARS-CoV-2 variants, even those we haven't encountered yet. For now, since nobody's sure just how long current vaccines provide protection, there's consideration of providing boosters using existing vaccines late in 2021.

The three major vaccine manufacturers with shots authorized in the USA -- Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson -- are planning or testing boosters. The booster shots will be similar to current vaccines, but could come in a smaller dose. Dr. David Kessler, chief science officer for the Biden Administration's COVID-19 response, told Congress: "With many vaccines, we understand that at a certain point in time we need to boost, whether that's 9 months, 12 months. And we are preparing for that,"

Moderna is planning trials of a combine COVID / flu vaccine. However, administration officials say no decision has yet been reached on how booster shots would be used. It's not even certain they're needed.

The inevitable rise of SARS-CoV-2 variants poses a challenge to vaccines, in that we may encounter variants that existing vaccines can't stop. So far, that hasn't proven to be the case, but it can't be ruled out. Dr. John Mascola, head of the Vaccine Research Center at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, says understanding SARS-CoV-2's mutations is "a major focus" for Federal scientists.

Some NIH researchers are focused on testing the impact mutations could have on vaccine efficacy. Others are working to better understand and map its "epitopes" -- spots where antibodies can target SARS-CoV-2's signature spike protein. Mascola says: "That's sort of a basic scientific body of knowledge that, in the long run, can guide antibody therapies but also guide vaccine design. Basically saying: Can I understand how the virus is going to escape, and can I account for that?"

Moderna and Pfizer are both investigating modified versions of their doses adjusted for the B.1.351 variant first spotted in South Africa, though research so far suggests their current vaccines may remain mostly effective against the mutant. The AstraZeneca-Oxford vaccine, which isn't authorized for use in the USA, has been found to provide only "minimal" protection against the South African variant. Mascola says: "The reason they are choosing that strain is it's one of the ones we know about now, with the variants of concern that are out there, that's the most antigenically different."

Mascola suggests that developing a booster with the South Africa variant could provide more protection: "For example, if we boost with the B.1.351 strain and we see that the serum antibodies are broader, not only do they neutralize the original strain but also B.1.351 and other variants, then that may be a preferred approach."

There is also considerable effort on developing vaccines that are easier to handle and to administer. The Moderna and Pfizer vaccines have to be stored at dry-ice temperatures, which has complicated their distribution. Of course, shots are a troublesome way to administer vaccines, and so there's work on alternatives.

The US Biomedical Advanced Research & Development Authority (BARDA) last year also announced millions of dollars in contracts to develop a handful of other alternatives delivered by wearable patches or pills, or even inhaled. BARDA Director Gary Disbrow says: "We're working with the companies, with the different technologies, to potentially partner them with the six vaccine candidates that are currently being supported by the US government."

Disbrow added: "The technologies have been shown for other viral pathogens, but we are trying to support them for the clinical trials. And again, the timing is really dependent upon whether we can identify those correlates for protection."

Researchers at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research have conducted preliminary trials of a vaccine relying on a "spike ferritin nanoparticle", which has demonstrated promising results against variants of SARS-CoV-2, as well as the earlier, related virus known as SARS-CoV-1. M. Gordon Joyce, a top scientist at WRAIR's Emerging Infectious Diseases branch, says: "Over the last four years, we've been working on trying to move away from one virus, one vaccine. And try to really have vaccines for the future."

The researchers say they are in talks with commercial partners for possible next steps for their shots. The current batch of doses being tested could be developed into a "variant-proof" vaccine, booster shots, or serve just as a "proof of principle" for future vaccines aimed at broader groups of coronaviruses.

[TUE 01 JUN 21] NEW AGE OF ENERGY (8)

* NEW AGE OF ENERGY (8): Decarbonization will be heavily dependent on new technology, and of course high-tech firms are excited about it. Kathy Hannun -- who used to work at Google X, the tech giant's blue-sky division -- says: "We looked for big industries that exist on inertia."

Hannun uses as a case in point the use of heating with fossil fuels, an industry ready for disruption. She notes that the distribution system is convoluted: natural gas or fuel oil is taken from the ground, shipped across the world and piped into houses. Why should that be so? A huge amount of untapped energy exists around us. In 2017, she founded Dandelion Energy, which sells heat pumps -- like air conditioners running in reverse, using electricity but no fuels to heat structures. Orders grew by a factor of four in 2018 and 2019, and Hannun expects the boom to continue. In 2019, 20 million households purchased heat pumps.

To meet decarbonization targets, the IEA estimates that number has to triple by 2030. However, that's not likely to happen without a push from regulators. Heat pumps have high up-front costs, some costing over $15,000 to buy, and installation is not trivial. Nonetheless, heat pumps are a growth market, if not yet a gold rush.

Around the world, entrepreneurs are busily inventing new technologies and tinkering with old ones, in hopes of cashing in on a decarbonization gold rush. The money is not quite there yet, but spending is very likely to grow considerably. The $1.2 trillion USD that the IEA says is needed for energy-system investment represents a 60% increase on current spending.

The difficulty for those chasing after decarbonization gold is that, as is always the case with innovative technologies, there are many competitors, and not all of them can succeed. Since governments are in the driver's seat, success is heavily depended on the right arrangement of regulation, subsidy and pricing.

There are four different aspects to the technical challenges of climate change:

• First, adaptation -- an industry that will thrive, because of the physical problems created by climate change.
  
  
• Second, greater energy efficiency -- which will need some nudging from regulators.
  
  
• Third, renewables -- which may need even more help, although prices have been tumbling.
  
  
• Fourth, carbon removal -- which is in no way a thing yet. It is still too expensive to remove a tonne of CO2 from the air and store it safely; the industry must have a high carbon price if it is to be competitive.

Adaptation will be forced by necessity. Even with a sharp, sustained fall in emissions, the weather is certain to keep getting worse -- meaning governments and companies alike will have to spend more on adaptive measures, such as seawalls. The Global Commission on Adaptation, an intergovernmental body, reckons that to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, $180 billion USD of annual investment is needed for a decade.

It is true that infrastructure firms have seen climate-related work pick up since the Paris Agreement in 2015. AECOM, an engineering firm, is designing measures to stop floods engulfing Route 37, a coastal road in California, including raising it 150 centimeters (five feet) off the ground. This is not a waste of money; David Viner -- of Mott MacDonald, another engineering firm -- says that a dollar invested in adaptation can yield ten dollars in avoided damage.

Farming is adapting as well. Bayer and Syngenta, two agricultural firms, are developing more resilient crops. A strain of shorter, sturdier corn is being tested by Bayer in Mexico; it needs less water and is less likely to be flattened by a storm. Worse weather will call for more varieties of new seeds. Bayer has spent $100 million on a high-tech greenhouse in Arizona. In an automated process, a laser slices off a tiny fragment from an individual seed, with the slice's DNA analyzed, while the rest is planted and grows normally. That allows researchers to track the genetic make-up of plants and find out which genes improve the likelihood of storm survival. Along with other innovations, the process cuts the time it takes to test new seed varieties from two or three years to one. [TO BE CONTINUED]