< PREV | NEXT > | INDEX | GOOGLE | UPDATES | CONTACT | $Donate? | HOME

DayVectors

nov 2021 / last mod apr 2022 / greg goebel

* 22 entries including: 5th information revolution (series), improving aquaculture (series), antiviral drugs, US Army augmented reality, pandemic fading out, alien genomes, & predicting viruses.

banner of the month


[TUE 30 NOV 21] REVOLUTIONARY ANTIVIRALS?
[MON 29 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 47
[FRI 26 NOV 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (4)
[THU 25 NOV 21] WINGS & WEAPONS
[WED 24 NOV 21] IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (4)
[TUE 23 NOV 21] US ARMY DOES AUGMENTED REALITY
[MON 22 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 46
[FRI 19 NOV 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (3)
[THU 18 NOV 21] SPACE NEWS
[WED 17 NOV 21] IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (3)
[TUE 16 NOV 21] END OF THE PANDEMIC?
[MON 15 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 45
[FRI 12 NOV 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (2)
[THU 11 NOV 21] GIMMICKS & GADGETS
[WED 10 NOV 21] IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (2)
[TUE 09 NOV 21] ALIEN GENOMES
[MON 08 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 44
[FRI 05 NOV 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (1)
[THU 04 NOV 21] SCIENCE NOTES
[WED 03 NOV 21] IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (1)
[TUE 02 NOV 21] SECOND-GUESSING VIRUSES
[MON 01 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 43

[TUE 30 NOV 21] REVOLUTIONARY ANTIVIRALS?

* REVOLUTIONARY ANTIVIRALS? As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("COVID Antiviral Pills: What Scientists Still Want To Know" by Heidi Ledford, 10 November 2021), the silver lining of the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has led to dramatic advances in medical science. The latest good news along this line is the recent introduction of two antiviral drugs, both capable of being taken as a pill, that have been shown to significantly cut COVID-19 hospitalizations and deaths in clinical trials of people treated soon after their initial infection.

On 4 November, the UK became the first country to approve the drug "molnupiravir" -- which was developed by Merck, out of Kenilworth NJ, Jersey, and Ridgeback Biotherapeutics, of Miami FL. The approval came about a month after the companies announced that the drug, which will be given the trade name of "Lagevrio", cut the risk of hospitalization among those infected with COVID-19 in half. The day after the UK approval Pfizer, based in New York City, announced that its antiviral drug Paxlovid cut hospitalizations by almost 90%. There were no deaths in the trial groups.

Trials are one thing, widespread use is another -- but if the results hold up, the two drugs may be game-changers. Earlier antiviral options were expensive and had to be administered in a hospital. The new drugs are relatively simple molecules, not so hard to synthesize, and can be taken at home. Charles Gore -- executive director of the Medicines Patent Pool, a United Nations-backed organization based in Geneva, Switzerland, that works to increase access to medicines -- says: "They would be relatively cheap to manufacture. For large parts of the world that have not got good vaccine coverage, this is really a godsend."

Full reports of the clinical trials haven't been released yet, leaving a number of questions dangling. John Mellors -- an infectious-disease specialist at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in Pennsylvania, says that researchers will be looking at the ages and ethnicities of those who were enrolled in the trials, and at any other health conditions that they had. They also want more detail about when the drugs were given in the trials, and at how those timings correlated with efficacy, that data giving insights on when the window of treatment closes.

Another thing researchers would like to know is if the drugs affect transmission of the coronavirus, or prevent symptoms in people who have been exposed to it. Jerome Kim -- director general of the International Vaccine Institute in Seoul -- believes that if the drugs can prevent people from getting sick in the first place, then when an outbreak occurs, people could be given an antiviral drug to back up vaccinations. Kim says: "It opens up some new possibilities for the way we think about control."

Both Pfizer and Merck say that their antivirals were well tolerated by study participants, and that potential side effects were trivial. However, the action of the drugs could limit the people who can take them.

Molnupiravir acts by introducing mutations into the viral genome during viral replication. A metabolite of the drug is picked up by a viral enzyme named "RNA-dependent RNA polymerase" and incorporated into the viral genome, gradually causing an "error catastrophe" that prevents replication of the virus. It is possible, though not known yet, that along with interfering with the coronavirus RNA, the drug might also interfere with human DNA.

A full course of treatment with molnupiravir is only five days long, but regulators might be cautious about giving it to pregnant women. Kim says: "There's probably going to be warnings around the use of this antiviral because of the potential risk."

Paxlovid acts by inhibiting an enzyme that's needed to process some viral proteins into their final, functional form. The drug is administered along with another drug named "ritonavir", which helps prevent enzymes in the liver from breaking down the antiviral before it has a chance to disable the coronavirus. Ritonavir has already been used in some HIV treatment cocktails, and it is already known that many other drugs can't be taken along with it, including some that are commonly used to treat heart conditions, suppress the immune system and reduce pain. Mellors says: "There's going to be a learning curve as to when it can be used, and when it can't."

Other concerns include how well the drugs will work against viral variants; how likely it is that they will create new variants; and how quickly the virus will adapt to resist them. It may be best to combine them with each other, or with other antivirals as they emerge, to make it harder for the virus to evolve around them. Still other questions are whether some patients don't respond to the drugs, and how well they work in patients with suppressed immune systems.

Merck has signed an agreement with the Medicines Patent Pool to provide the intellectual-property licenses needed to produce molnupiravir in low- and middle-income countries. A number of generic-medicines companies have already started to manufacture the drug. Pfizer is conducting discussions with the patent pool as well. Both companies are setting up tiered pricing to allow lower- and middle-income countries to pay less for the drugs than wealthier countries.

A secondary issue is that use of the drugs implies access to COVID-19 tests, Kim saying: "There's a huge gap in testing in some countries. We don't want someone to be prescribing this if someone has COVID-like symptoms, but it turns out to be the flu, not COVID-19." Meanwhile, wealthy countries are already placing large orders for the drugs, with the worry that supply will be diverted away from poorer countries that need them more.

COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[MON 29 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 47

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: During November there were two major trials, one in Wisconsin and one in Georgia, both of which had indirect lessons. The first was of Kyle Rittenhouse, a teenager who went armed with an AR-15 assault rifle during a night of demonstrations in Kenosha, Wisconsin. He ended up killing two men and wounding another. After a trial, on 19 November a jury cleared Rittenhouse of homicide charges, saying he had acted in self-defense.

There was great outrage on the Left about the verdict, which was called a "miscarriage of justice". However, the crimes for which Rittenhouse was indicted were narrowly defined, and the only legal issue was if he was under attack from the victims when he fired on them. He was -- one had a pistol and pointed it at him -- and so self-defense was an obvious verdict. The fact that Rittenhouse had demonstrated very bad judgement getting in the way of public trouble while carrying an assault rifle was not a factor in the trial, because that didn't involve breaking any laws.

The real problem is American gun culture, and that issue doesn't seem to be converging towards a solution. Right now, support for gun control is not strong; it will pop back up in the future, but for the ugly reason that we'll have more school massacres. As for myself, Rittenhouse is someone I would prefer to forget. He's being played up as a hero by the Right, but all I can think is: "This will not end well for him." -- then go about my business.

The other trial was in Georgia, concerning the death of one Ahmaud Arbery, who on 23 February 2020 had been on a run through the streets of Satilla Shores. Three white men decided he was up to no good and went after him in their pickup trucks, armed; there was a confrontation, with Arbery shot and killed.

On 24 November, a jury found all three men guilty of homicide. Interestingly, Georgia law doesn't have "degrees" of murder as is more or less the norm in the USA, instead specifying either "malice murder" -- that is, a killing out of malice -- and "felony murder" -- that is, a killing as an incidental consequence of a felony crime. The convictions included both. The interesting thing about the verdict was that only one of the jurors was a person of color, but the other jurors were willing to hand out a guilty verdict. Traditionally in the South, white jurors were inclined to give white folks who killed a black person a PASS ... but things aren't the way they used to be.

* As discussed in an essay from ECONOMIST.com ("Midsized Mayhem", 25 November 2021), geopolitics remains focused on, most prominently, the rivalry between the US and China, tensions with Russia placing well second. However, beyond that, smaller powers are throwing their weight around as well:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

Turkey has occupied a chunk of Syria, sent troops to Libya, helped Azerbaijan vanquish Armenia and dispatched its navy in support of dubious claims to Mediterranean waters. Iran backs militias that prop up Syria's despot, have a chokehold on Lebanon and [have been accused] of trying to murder Iraq's prime minister with an explosives-laden drone. Pakistan helped a group of misogynistic jihadists take over Afghanistan. Belarus hijacked a plane and has been giving migrants bolt-cutters and ordering them to cut through Poland's border fence. Cuba trains Venezuelan spooks. Saudi Arabia bombs Yemen.

END_QUOTE

The leaders pushing these policies don't have a free hand. Belarus's dictator does what the Kremlin tells him to do, while Pakistan is deeply in debt to China, and few want to provoke the Americans. The Americans may be much less enthusiastic about sending in the troops than they were, but nobody wants trouble with them. However, the smaller powers still have plenty of room to pursue their own agendas:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

Some have national-security concerns. Turkey wanted a buffer zone in Syria to stop Kurdish fighters setting up bases near its border. Pakistan was afraid of Indian influence in Afghanistan. Egypt is meddling in Libya because it wants to avoid chaos there. But other less respectable motives are also common.

END_QUOTE

Of course, these countries are typically autocratic, and the leadership is often inclined to pursue adventures elsewhere to distract from problems at home. Economic agendas, such as arms deals, also play a role. In addition:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

A final motive, and perhaps the most important, is that autocrats tend to support other autocrats. Cuba's mambo-dancing Marxist rulers have little in common with Iran's austere mullahs, but they all support Venezuela. Regimes under American sanctions trade with each other to survive. Despots swap tips on how to crush democrats and coup plots. Sometimes, all these motives are combined. An autocrat may send troops to help another autocrat, dress it up as a patriotic war, and win construction deals later that oil his patronage machine.

END_QUOTE

The end results are bad, Venezuela being an economic basket case, and Ethiopia bogged down in civil war. Adventurism often doesn't work out well over the long run:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

Turkey has gained swagger and territory, but alienated nearly all its allies. Saudi Arabia is stuck in a quagmire in Yemen. The UAE's missions failed not only in Yemen but in Libya, too. Pakistani colonels gloated over President Joe Biden's hasty retreat from Afghanistan. The Taliban are friendly with Pakistan and hostile to India. But Kabul's new rulers have no idea how to govern. Afghanistan is in economic meltdown and their ruthless, exclusive approach could provoke another war on Pakistan's doorstep.

END_QUOTE

Adventurism starts out as cheap and easy, but gradually becomes expensive and difficult, ending up as a trap. The autocrats who favor it should remember the saying: He who rides the tiger dare not dismount.

* After getting crashed out of Twitter, I'm continuing to be at loose ends, relative to social media. I posed a question to Reddit, setting up an account to do so; nobody was nasty to me and I actually got an excellent for my question, but I felt repelled by the environment. When I was done, I deleted my postings and closed the account. I have nothing against Reddit, I just don't want to be there.

I had made a quick fix to the links on my websites to Twitter, redirecting them to the donations page, but that was strictly temporary. After thinking it over, I figured out I'd start up a forum again. I've run them in the past, they haven't amounted to much, but I just wanted a place where people could comment if they liked. I had to search my memories for a free forum I had once used, trying to remember the name of the place I got it: "Oh yeah, BraveNet." So I got a free forum again. I may post YouTube videos on it.

I also got to thinking that I had a fair number of documents on my website that didn't get any traffic and were going nowhere -- particularly my software documents. I'm going to delete them from the website and put them on a personal webpage on my PC. No point in trying to maintain them any more. I've got more ideas that I'm working on. I'm not in a personally comfortable space these days, but "regression to the mean" tells me I should bounce back, and I get a lot of rethink out of the stress.

PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[FRI 26 NOV 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (4)

* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (4): Although the Mark 1 electromechanical computer remained in service at Harvard until well after the war, it was obsolete from the start, a dead end, as the drive towards binary electronic computing machines warmed up, with new strides being made in England. The British, in a desperate struggle with the German Reich, placed a high priority on codebreaking to determine enemy intent, with most of the work being done at the Government Code & Cipher School (GC&CS) at the estate of Bletchley Park in Buckinghamshire. The Bletchley Park operation tapped some of the best minds in the country, most notably a brilliant, eccentric Cambridge don named Alan Turing.

Even before the war, Turing had been conducting studies on computing machines, most notably devising an imaginary computer called a "universal machine", which traversed a tape of indefinite length, reading symbols off it and writing back to it. Turing described how the universal machine could perform any bounded calculation -- that is, one that didn't go into an infinite loop. Turing wasn't talking about building a universal machine, he was instead tackling issues of computability; he would become known as the first computer scientist.

At Bletchley Park, Turing and others, confronted with devious German cipher machines, designed elaborate machines to help crack their messages. One of the most devious German cipher machine was the Lorenz SX-40/42, which was an encrypting teletypewriter. Stepping back a bit, binary operation schemes were long-established with teletypewriters; they used a five-bit binary code -- the "Baudot code", devised by a French designer named Emile Baudot in the 1870s -- to encode text characters. Incidentally, five bits only encodes 32 characters, but there were actually two sets of 32 characters, with a "shift" character in each to jump back and forth between them.

Anyway, the Lorenz machine generated a long "pseudorandom" stream of bits using a set of stepped wheels, with a different pseudorandom stream produced by giving the wheels a different initial setup. The pseudorandom stream was then XORed with the stream of text being sent, scrambling the bits. The Lorenz machine at the remote destination, its wheels being set up in the same way, generated the same pseudorandom stream and XORed it with the stream of bits being received, which unscrambled it.

A Cambridge mathematician named Max Newman was assigned to see how the deciphering process could be automated, and worked with a team of colleagues to come up with a demonstrator machine using electromechanics -- which they called "Heath Robinson", after a British cartoonist who liked to come up with screwball machines. It wasn't really suitable for operational use, and so Newman got in touch with an electronics engineer named Tommy Flowers, who that an electronic system -- based on vacuum tubes or "valves" as they were known in Britain, instead of an electromechanical system -- could do the job.

The "Colossus", as it would be named, would be more complicated than any electronic system built to that time, and there was skepticism that it could be made to work reliably. Flowers was convinced it could, saying that vacuum tubes worked reliably enough if kept running continuously, with the first Colossus Mark I in trials by the end of 1943, going into service in early 1944. By the spring of 1944, it had been followed by a Mark II, with 2,400 valves and 800 relays. It read data on paper tapes -- like punch cards and just about as old an idea, using a strip of paper instead of a stack of cards.

The only function of Colossus was to decrypt teletypewriter traffic, and it didn't do the complete job, with a team of cryptanalysts having to work over its output. It was reprogrammable to a limited extent, using patch cords and switches. Although Turing is often credited as one of the members of the team that built Colossus, he wasn't, though he may have had influence; he was better known for his work on the German Enigma cipher machine, which was much different from the German telecipher machines. Ten "Collosi" were built, with all scrapped after the war -- though a replica was built in the 1990s for the museum at Bletchley Park. [TO BE CONTINUED]

START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[THU 25 NOV 21] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Talyn's Detachable Lift System: A Radically Different eVTOL Aircraft" by Loz Blain, 21 March 2021), there's been much interest in electric / hybrid vertical take-off & landing (eVTOL) aircraft for urban sky shuttle service over the past few years.

The traditional problem with any sort of VTOL aircraft is that the hardware needed to get an aircraft to fly straight up or down tends to be complicated, expensive, plus so much dead weight and drag when the aircraft is flying level. Some eVTOL designs use "tiltprops" or "tiltrotors" that pivot for vertical or horizontal flight, but that means complexity and expense.

Talyn Air -- founded by a duo of ex-SpaceX Falcon 9 engineers -- suggests a new approach: an electric aircraft that is hauled into flight by a separate, detachable vertical lift platform.

Talyn's Lift Vehicle is a two-boom drone, with dual contra-rotating rotors on each boom, and a pusher prop at the top of the tailfin on each boom. The Cruise Vehicle is a pusher-prop electric aircraft, capable of hauling five passengers over 480 kilometers (300 miles) at 320 KPH (200 MPH). The Cruise Vehicle is loaded with passengers and baggage at the skyport, with the Lift Vehicle then picking it up, taking it up into the air and to speed, then detaching and returning to the skyport. At the skyport, the Lift Vehicle will be able to recharge, and then either rendezvous with an incoming flight and take it back to ground, or pick up another Cruise Vehicle.

Talyn Lift Vehicle

Neither machine makes any compromises in its function, making them cheaper and easier to build -- though their flight software is bound to be sophisticated. Since the Cruise Vehicle will not need to get itself off the ground, it will save battery power and obtain extended range. The Lift Vehicle will not stay in the air long, and won't take long to recharge. Obviously, the Cruise Vehicle will need some sort of skid landing system in case of emergencies. It's an interesting and attractive idea, trading smarts for physical complexity -- the biggest hurdle being certification, since the authorities won't quite know what to make of it.

* As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("Special Operations Command Wants Tiny Cruise Missiles With Hundreds Of Miles Range" by Michael Peck, 7 September 2021), the US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) is now after a small cruise missile that fit into the "Common Launch Tube (CLT)", used to store and launch small smart munitions. The SOCOM announcement of the program states: "This system could be used in a broad range of military applications where a long-range weapon must fit in a small space."

Specifically, SOCOM wants a precision-guided "cruise missile" with a range of at least 200 nautical miles (370 kilometers / 230 miles), and preferably a range twice that -- in any case, much farther than current light air-launched munitions fielded by SOCOM. This would give SOCOM platforms, such as AC-130J Ghostrider gunships, the ability to strike targets while staying safely out of reach of hostile air defenses. It should have a warhead with a weight of at least 5.9 kilograms (13 pounds), though SOCOM would like the ability to carry larger payloads.

The SOCOM request also specifies a target seeker with, but not limited to, electro-optical and infrared modes. The missile will have GPS-assisted Inertial Navigation System (INS) guidance system, and a networked capability. The request specifies electric propulsion, presumably meaning propeller drive. The trade-offs between payload, size, and range are severe, with concerns the request is unrealistic. The push for a long-range missile comes after SOCOM has worked to rebuild its missile stockpile, depleted from years of continuous operations that have strained its personnel and resources.

* As discussed in an article from MILITARY.com ("More Marines Will Test Lighter Polymer-Cased Ammunition As Experiments Expand to Fleet" by Gina Harkins, 9 May 2021), the US Marines are now testing a new polymer-cased 12.7-millimeter (0.50 caliber) ammunition. The primary motivation is to cut weight, with the polymer-cased ammunition weighing about 25% less than brass-cased ammunition. Tests have gone well so far, with the rounds performing as well as with brass casings, and doing well in a range of environmental conditions.

Final testing will be in unforgiving field conditions. The US Army similarly would like to replace its brass-cased 7.62-millimeter (0.30-caliber) rounds with polymer-cased rounds. Program officials say the fuel savings in transporting the rounds would be enough to justify their development.

COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[WED 24 NOV 21] IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (4)

* IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (4): Another frontier in aquaculture improvement is minimizing fish bones. Neither cooks nor diners like bones, and about half of the top species in aquaculture are species of carp or their relatives, which are notorious for being packed with little bones. The bones can't be easily removed; Benjamin Reading -- a reproductive physiologist at North Carolina State University -- says that means "you can't just get a nice, clean fillet."

Researchers are investigating whether bony fish can be made less bony through breeding or genetic engineering. A few years ago, Alexandre Hilsdorf -- a fish geneticist at the University of Mogi das Cruzes in Brazil -- heard that a Brazilian hatchery had discovered a mutant brood stock of a giant Amazonian fish, the widely farmed tambaqui, that didn't have the these fillet bones. He tried to breed a boneless strain, but failed. Now he's studying tissue samples from the mutants for clues to their genetics.

Geneticist Gao Ze-Xia Gao of Huazhong Agricultural University is focusing on blunt snout bream, a carp that is farmed in China. Guided by five genetic markers, she and colleagues are breeding the bream to have few fillet bones. She says it might take 8 to 10 years to accomplish. She adds that they have some success with gene editing -- they've identified and knocked out two genes that control the presence of fillet bones -- and they plan to try the approach in other carp species.

* Along with modifying species that are already farmed, aquaculture projects around the world are working hard to domesticate new species -- something that doesn't happen often in terrestrial farming. In New Zealand, researchers are domesticating native species that are already adapted to local conditions. The New Zealand Institute for Plant & Food Research began to breed the Australasian snapper in 2004. Early work concentrated on simply getting the fish to survive and reproduce in a tank; a decade later, researchers started to breed for improved growth, and they've since increased juvenile growth rates by 20% to 40%.

Genomic techniques have proved critical. Snapper are mass spawners, so it was hard for breeders to identify the parents of promising offspring, which is crucial for optimizing selection and avoiding inbreeding. DNA screening solved that problem, the genetic markers making ancestry clear. The institute is also breeding another local fish, the silver trevally, the goal being a strain that will reproduce in captivity without hormone implants.

All these efforts demand money, of course. Despite the growth of aquaculture, the field's research funding lags the amounts invested in livestock, although some governments are boosting investments. Geneticist Dennis Hedgecock of Pacific Hybreed -- a small US company that is developing hybrid oysters -- says that, on a global basis, there is a "huge disparity" between breeding investment in developed countries -- which produce a fraction of total harvests, but have the biggest research budgets -- and the rest of the world.

Hedgecock believes that merely applying classical breeding techniques could rapidly improve production, especially in the developing world, there being so much room for growth. However, improvements are complicated because hundreds of species are being farmed, and that means a dispersal of breeding efforts. "The growth and the production is outstripping the scientific capability of dealing with the diseases," he says, adding that a focus on fewer species would be beneficial.

For genomics to help, costs must keep coming down. One promising development in SNP arrays is a technique called "imputation", in which cheaper arrays that search for fewer genetic changes are combined with a handful of more costly chips that probe the genome in greater detail. John Buchanan -- president of the Center for Aquaculture Technologies, a contract research organization -- is optimistic, saying that genomic technology is "at a pivot point where you're going to see it used broadly in aquaculture."

Whatever the challenges, aquaculture is continuing to boom. Norway's SalMar is looking forward to a successor to Ocean Farm 1, which will operate in the open ocean and would be more than twice the size -- big enough to hold 3 million to 5 million salmon at a time. [END OF SERIES]

START | PREV | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[TUE 23 NOV 21] US ARMY DOES AUGMENTED REALITY

* US ARMY DOES AUGMENTED REALITY: As discussed in an article from THEDRIVE.com ("Army Makes Gargantuan Bet On New Augmented Reality Goggles For Its Soldiers" by Joseph Trevithick, 1 April 2021), in late March 2021, the US Army awarded a contract to Microsoft Corporation for a helmet-mounted "Integrated Visual Augmentation System (IVAS)" -- augmented-reality (AR) goggles for combat troops. The contract may be worth up to $22 billion USD over the long run. The Army announced:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

The IVAS aggregates multiple technologies into an architecture that allows the soldier to fight, rehearse, and train using a single platform. The suite of capabilities leverages existing high-resolution night, thermal, and soldier-borne sensors integrated into a unified heads-up display to provide the improved situational awareness, target engagement, and informed decision-making necessary to achieve overmatch against current and future adversaries.

END_QUOTE

IVAS based on Microsoft's commercial HoloLens AR system, which the company has been selling since 2016. The initial "Capability Set 1 (CS1)" and "CS2" prototypes were stock Hololenses with some modifications to meet military requirements. They were not suited to field use, for example being unable to work in the rain. The properly militarized "CS3" has been in evaluation since 2019.

IVAS has night vision and thermal video cameras, which allow troops to see at night or through smoke, dust, and other obscurants. The system may eventually be able to automatically spot and mark objects of interest; IVAS reportedly already has some level of facial recognition capability, which could help in positively identifying specific individuals during raids. Ultimately, AI subsystems incorporated into IVAS might provide alerts against potential threats, while warning against firing on friends.

IVAS can obtain video from an electronic sight mounted on a rifle or the weapon, giving soldiers the ability to see around corners. Similarly, IVAS can display sensor feeds from off-board platforms, including video cameras mounted on piloted aircraft or drones, such as hand-held drones carried by an individual soldier -- or mounted outside armored vehicles, giving a soldier the ability to "see through" the walls of the vehicle. Army Sergeant Philip Bartel, who took part in IVAS tests, sees that capability as particularly significant: "Now guys aren't hanging out of vehicles in dangerous situations trying to get views on what's going on."

IVAS

IVAS can display other data, such as map information and waypoints, and locations of potential enemy forces or innocent bystanders. Symbology can be displayed overlaid on an object in question, such as a building or other terrain feature, not just as an icon not directly connected to any visual feature.

The Army says that IVAS "also leverages augmented reality and machine learning to enable a life-like mixed reality training environment." IVAS, in development, will support realistic training by allowing simulated opponents and other objects, including vehicles or buildings, to be virtually inserted into actual live training exercises. A company named Red 6 is working on this capability for aerial combat training, with CEO Dan Robinson saying:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

Just let me give you an example, if there's a special forces guy on the ground calling in an attack on, let's say, a tank, or a farmhouse, or something like that, and it's a training scenario -- well, wouldn't it be great if that tank was synthetically generated and the guy on the ground is in our AR system, talking to the individual up in his airplane that's about to drop a smart bomb on that tank or something like that? Wouldn't it be great if they could see the same common picture within the augmented world?

... I think whilst there are massive training applications for this, there are also massive operational applications through this technology. Let me give you an example, guys and girls on the ground fighting for their lives trying to call in close air support. For the individual in the cockpit that's about to press that button, that's a tremendous amount of stress, especially if they're in a sort of danger-close scenario, right where there are troops in contact. You want to make sure that you get that right.

... Well, what if we were connected in an augmented world? And, we could paint targets on the ground, bad guys and good guys clearly delineated through whatever visuals you wish to use. It would take away ambiguity, it would shorten the kill chain massively, and it would absolutely save lives.

END_QUOTE

Nobody is saying when IVAS is going to be fielded, though the financial commitment to the project ensures that it will be. IVAS represents a revolutionary capability, and it's going to take time to integrate it into military procedures and practice.

COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[MON 22 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 46

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The 26th Conference of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, AKA "COP26", took place in Glasgow during the first half of November. The end result of discussions was a "Glasgow Climate Pact", elements including:

At the end of the conference, India demanded and got a change in the verbiage, from: "accelerating efforts towards the phase-out of unabated coal power, and of inefficient subsidies for fossil fuels" -- to: "[escalate] efforts to phase down unabated coal power, and phase out inefficient fossil-fuel subsidies".

There were complaints among the conference about watering down a statement on the critical fossil-fuel issue, but the Indians were adamant. COP26 president Alok Sharma wept when he approved the amended package: "To all delegates, I apologize for the way in which this process has unfolded. I am deeply sorry. But I think that, as you have noted, it is also vital we protect this package."

There was a noisy contingent of protesters in Glasgow, and they were angry, with fair reason, with the weak efforts of the conference. From a distance, it seems less distressing. Lacking any real enforcement mechanism, trying to get a voluntary commitment from effectively all the nations of the world on common action is extremely difficult, and it is much less surprising that not enough was done than anything was done at all. From that point of view, COP26 was encouraging.

There is a saying in politics that once people are in agreement in principle, agreement in practice can follow. Indeed, as a bit of a flourish, at the end of the conference the US and China came to their own agreement on limiting carbon emissions. Even that is not enough, but it's much better than nothing. Incidentally, it also illustrated the Biden Administration's willingness to come to agreements with China when possible, while not shrinking from confrontation over points of contention, such as Taiwan.

* I ended up getting locked out of my Twitter account. It started out when I cited a threat somebody had made to a politician, and was suspended for making threats. I appealed, explaining I hadn't threatened anyone, and got back a form rejection. I kept appealing for a few days, just to see if I could get a response -- to conclude that the supposed appeal mechanism was on autopilot, it just discarded every appeal and automatically spat out a rejection.

I had a second Twitter account that was still operational, but Twitter also got stuffier about that. They didn't used to be, and they're still saying in their rules it's okay. It's not. I tried to get rid of the suspended account, and fumbled it, to get locked out. On considering the situation, I threw up my hands: enough already.

Exasperatingly, Twitter kept sending me emails on how I could beg them to unlock my account. I wasn't going to try; it seemed like Twitter was on a tear for shutting down accounts that blinked wrong, I truly doubted that Twitter had the least attention of doing anything but brusquely blowing me off. I've seen this sort of corporate sham before -- pretending to be nice while being uniformly nasty -- and was wise to it. I tried to unsubscribe from the emails, but ran into the account lock, and so I just blocked their emails.

To be sure, I would judge it a good thing that Twitter is cracking down. It seems evidence that social media is getting more serious about chasing out the trolls. Incidentally, Facebook -- or "Meta" as it has been rebadged -- has got into trouble for stating that they would clamp down on climate-change denial ... to then run ads that said climate change is a hoax. The war on trolls is getting ever hotter. However, for the moment I'm at loose ends and not sure what to do next.

PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[FRI 19 NOV 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (3)

* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (3): Mechanical calculators to that time had been based on decimal arithmetic, for example using wheels with ten positions. A vacuum tube could be switched ON or OFF, which would be equivalent to the values of 1 or 0, what would become known as a "bit". Two tubes, two bits, could then encode four values:

   00:0     01:1     10:2     11:3

-- while three bits could encode eight values:

   000:0    001:1    010:2    011:3    100:4    101:5    110:6   111:7

-- and four bits could encode 16 values, five bits 32 values, and so on.

Claude Shannon's second insight towards the design of an electronic computer was to use "Boolean algebra", devised in the mid-19th century by British mathematician named George Boole. Relevant to computing machines, Boolean algebra postulated three basic operations that could be performed on bits, named NOT, AND, and OR:

   NOT(0) = 1      AND(0,0) = 0      OR(0,0) = 0
   NOT(1) = 0      AND(0,1) = 0      OR(0,1) = 1
                   AND(1,0) = 0      OR(1,0) = 1
                   AND(1,1) = 1      OR(1,1) = 1

Other logical and basic arithmetic operations could be synthesized from NOT, AND, and OR. For example, one simple useful derived operation was the "exclusive OR" or "XOR":

   (AND(NOT(A),B)) OR (AND(A,NOT(B)))

This gave a 1 if either A or B were 1, but not both. Shannon did not actually develop an electronic computer; he was thinking in more theoretical terms, his focus being on investigating abstract principles of communications channels, a field that would emerge as "information theory".

Others were thinking along the same lines. One was John Atanasoff, a physics professor at Iowa State University, who worked on a binary-based vacuum-tube computer to perform matrix calculations. He never quite got it to work, but he came close. Another was George Stibliz, a research mathematician at Bell Labs. Thinking in terms of bits and Boolean algebra, but using relays instead of vacuum tubes, he developed a "Complex Number Calculator" that went into service in early 1940 at the Bell Labs facility in Manhattan. Users could access the calculator via teletype. In Germany, an engineer named Konrad Zuse was also working on a binary-based calculator using relays, though World War II hobbled his work, the Reich not seeing much value in it.

In late 1941, after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Thomas J. Watson SR offered the services of his company, International Business Machines -- which traced its roots in part back to Herman Hollerith -- offered the company's services to the US government. At the outset, IBM provided punchcard sorters for data tabulation, but Watson also funded work by a Harvard mathematician named Howard Aiken to build an electromechanical computer, based on relays, but still a descendant of Babbage's Analytical Engine.

The "Mark 1" went into operation in 1943, being used by the Navy to compute shell ballistics. It filled up a room and featured over 3,300 relays. It used decimal math, able to handle numbers up to 23 digits long, adding or subtracting them in a third of a second, multiplying them in three seconds. That was ridiculously slow by modern standards -- a cheap modern pocket calculator could blow its doors off -- but it cut calculations that had before required months down to a day. [TO BE CONTINUED]

START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[THU 18 NOV 21] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for October included:

-- [05 OCT 21] SOYUZ ISS 65S (ISS) -- A Soyuz booster was launched from Baikonur at 0855 UTC (local time + 6) to put the "Soyuz ISS 65S / MS-19" crewed space capsule into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) mission. It was a commercial flight, with actress Yulia Peresild playing a surgeon responding to a space medical emergency for a movie named "The Challenge". Director / photographer Klim Shipenko accompanied her. The Soyuz capsule was commanded by veteran cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov (4th space flight). Peresild and Shipenko returned to Earth on 17 October, along with Oleg Novitsky, who had spent 191 continuous days in space.

-- [14 OCT 21] ONEWEB 11 -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Vostochny at 0940 UTC (local time - 9) 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). This launch brought the constellation up to 358 satellites, over half-way to the full constellation of 648.

-- [14 OCT 21] CHASE, SMALLSATS (11) -- A Long March 4D booster was launched from Taiyuan at 1051 UTC (local time - 8) to put eleven satellites into low-Earth orbit, the primary payload being the "Chinese Hydrogen-Alpha Solar Explorer (CHASE)"

The 550-kilogram (1,210-pound) CHASE satellite was a precursor to a larger Chinese solar observation satellite, the "Advanced Space-Based Solar Observatory (ASO-S)", to launch in 2022. CHASE was the first satellite to be equipped for full-disk hydrogen-alpha solar spectroscopy. The spacecraft was built on a bus that provided a high degree of pointing accuracy and stability. Ten other satellites flew on the launch:

For the first time, the Long March 2D flew with grid fins on its first stage, similar to those fitted to SpaceX's Falcon 9 booster. The purpose of these was not to help recover the stage for re-use, but to help guide it as it fell back to Earth and ensure that it falls harmlessly into its planned drop zone.

-- [15 OCT 21] SHENZHOU 13 -- A Long March 2F booster was launched from Jiuquan at 1623 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Shenzhou 12" crewed space capsule into orbit, carrying three "taikonauts" to China's space station. It was the second crewed flight to the station, and the first long-endurance mission to the station, intended to last six months. The crew included Ye Guangfu, Zhai Zhigagn and Wang Yaping -- Wang being the first woman to visit the space station. Shenzhou 13 was the eighth crewed flight for China's space program.

-- [16 OCT 21] LUCY -- An Atlas 5 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0934 UTC (local time + 4) to put the "Lucy" asteroid flyby probe into space. It was built by Lockheed Martin and led by the Southwest Research Institute, the mission being to inspect seven Trojan asteroids. The booster was in the "401" vehicle configuration with a 4-meter (13.1-foot) fairing, no solid rocket motors, and a single-engine Centaur upper stage.

Lucy, led by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, was the thirteenth mission under NASA's Discovery Program, which conducts low-cost deep space missions. During its 12-year primary mission, Lucy will visit eight asteroids -- seven of them Trojan asteroids, in Jupiter's L4 and L5 Lagrange points, 60 degrees ahead of and 60 degrees behind Jupiter in its orbit, respectively.

Lucy's launch mass was 1,550 kilograms (3,415 pounds). It had twin circular solar arrays that gave the probe a deployed span of 7.3 meters (24 feet), providing it with over 500 watts of power at maximum distance from the Sun. Lucy's payload featured three primary instruments, mounted on an "Instrument Pointing Platform (IPP)". The instruments included:

Lucy was also to use its high gain antenna to measure the mass of each asteroid it passes using the Doppler shift of the radio signal from the antenna.

LUCY

Lucy is to perform Earth flybys in October 2022 and December 2024, and then fly by asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson (20 April 2025) -- not a Trojan, the flyby being a systems check exercise. It will then fly by four L4 Trojans:

Lucy will then coast back to Earth for another gravity assist on 25 December 25, 2030, slingshotting the spacecraft toward the L5 Trojan swarm. Lucy will arrive at the L5 swarm in 2033 and will perform the final flyby of the primary mission on March 3, 2033, when it flies past Patroclus and Menoetius -- two, equal mass binary Trojans. Lucy may go on to an extended mission if spacecraft condition permits.

The Atlas booster was in the 401 configuration, with a 4-meter (13.1-foot) payload fairing, no solid rocket motors, and a single RL-10 engine on the upper stage.

-- [21 OCT 21] KSLV 2 (FAILURE) -- A South Korean "Korean Space Launch Vehicle (KSLV)" 2 booster was launched from Naro Space Flight Center at 0800 UTC (local time - 9) on its first orbital launch attempt, carrying a dummy satellite payload. The booster did not make orbit.

The KSLV 2, AKA "Nuri (World)", was developed by the Korea Aerospace Research Institute. Nuri is a three-stage liquid-fueled booster, with a height of 47.2 meters (155 feet), powered by LOX and kerosene. The first stage is driven by four KRE-075 engines, developed by the South Korean company Hanwha Aerospace, generating a total of 2,607 kN (266,800 kgp / 586,000 lbf) thrust. The second stage is driven by one single KRE-075 engine with a vacuum expansion nozzle. The booster's third stage is powered by a smaller engine, producing about 67 kN (6,800 kgp 15,000 lbf) of thrust. The Nuri can put 1,500 kilograms (3,300 pounds) into low Earth orbit.

The launch of South Korea's first Nuri booster comes almost nine years after the only successful launch of the Naro 1 booster. South Korea launched three Naro 1 booster from the Naro Space Center, but the first two flights in 2009 and 2010 failed shortly after liftoff. The third Naro 1 mission Jan. 30, 2013, successfully deployed a small South Korean technology demonstration satellite into orbit, making South Korea the 11th country to launch its own satellite into orbit.

Russia's space contractor Khrunichev developed the Naro 1's first stage, and the booster's kerosene-fueled RD-151 main engine was built by NPO Energomash, another Russian company. Korea Aerospace Industries led the South Korean industrial team responsible for developing the Nuri booster.

South Korea's space industry has grown in the last decade with the advancement of the country's domestic satellite manufacturing base. The first two geostationary satellites built in South Korea launched in 2018 and 2020 on weather monitoring and oceanography missions. The Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter is scheduled to launch in 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster. The spacecraft is being manufactured in South Korea, and will carry a payload of Korean and U.S. science instruments to study the moon.

-- [24 OCT 21] SHIJIAN 20 -- A Long March 3B/E booster was launched at 0127 UTC (local time - 8) from the Chinese Xichang launch center, to put the "Shijian 21" geostationary satellite into orbit. The launch was not announced ahead of time. It was said to be a test platform for space-debris mitigation.

-- [24 OCT 21] SES 17 & SYRACUSE 4AM -- An Ariane 5 ECA booster was launched from Kourou in French Guiana at 2010 UTC (local time + 3) to put the "SES 17" and "Syracuse 4A" geostationary comsats into orbit. Built Thales Alenia Space, the SES 17 communications satellite was based on the company's NEO200 platform. It had a launch mass of 6,410 kilograms (14,135 pounds), with a Ka-band payload operating with almost 200 spot beams. It provided internet connectivity to airline passengers over the Americas, the Caribbean, and the Atlantic Ocean for SES of Luxembourg.

The Syracuse 4A spacecraft was also built by Thales Alenia Space for the French armed forces. It was based on the NEO 100 platform had a launch mass of 3,852 kilograms (8,493 pounds), and featured a Ka- and X-band secure, jamming resistant communication payload. SYRACUSE 4A was the first of two SYRACUSE 4 satellites that will replace the SYRACUSE 3 satellites launched in the mid-2000s.

-- [26 OCT 21] QZS 1R -- A JAXA H2A booster was launched from Tanegashima at 0219 UTC (local time - 9) to put the "QZS 1R" satellite into orbit. It was an element in Japan's Quasi-Zenith Satellite System, which provides regional navigation services over the Asia-Pacific Region. QZS 1R, built by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, replaced the aging QZS 1 satellite, launched in 2010.

Designed for a 15-year lifetime, the QZS 1R used its own propulsion system to reach a near-circular geosynchronous orbit, inclined from 40 and 45 degrees to the equator, maintaining a "figure-8" ranging from Japan to Australia. QZS 1R replaced the QZS 1 (Michibiki 1) navigation satellite launched on an H-2A flight in 2010. Three other quasi-zenith navigation satellites launched in 2017. The QZS system complements the US GPS constellation, permitting accurate location in Japan's central cities and mountain valleys.

The Japanese are developing three more quasi-zenith navigation satellites for launch by the end of 2023. The expanded fleet of seven spacecraft will give Japan complete navigation coverage over Japanese territory, independent of any GPS signals.

-- [26 OCT 21] JILIN 1 GAOFEN 02F -- A Chinese Kuaizhou 1A booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0619 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Jilin 1 Gaofen (High-Resolution) 02F" satellite into orbit. It was an element of a commercial remote sensing satellite network under development by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology Corporation.

The Jilin 1 constellation, which is expected to consist of up to 138 satellites by the end of the decade, contains different types of satellites to perform different roles. In addition to the Gaofen satellites' high-resolution imaging mission, other satellites in the constellation provide video capture, wider-area, and multi-spectral imaging.

Deployment of Jilin 1 began with a Chang Zheng 2D launch in October 2015 which carried the first four satellites -- including the Jilin 1 Lingqiao Yanzheng technology demonstrator, also known as the Smart Verification Satellite or Jilin 1LQ; an optical imaging satellite, Jilin 1 Guangxe A, and a pair of Jilin 1 Shipin video-recording satellites. In the six years since, over thirty satellites have been deployed.

The Gaofen part of the constellation consists of two series of spacecraft: Gaofen 02 and Gaofen 03. The Gaofen 02 satellites are larger than their Gaofen 03 counterparts, with masses a little under 250 kilograms (550 pounds). Equipped with a push broom imager, Jilin 1 Gaofen 02F can image the Earth at resolutions better than 0.75 meters (30 inches) in panchromatic mode, capturing light at wavelengths between 450 and 700 nanometers. It can also operate in multi-spectral mode across four optical and near-infrared channels, with a resolution of about three meters (10 feet).

This new launch was the sixth flight of a Jilin 1 Gaofen-02 satellite, following the successful deployment of Jilin 1 Gaofen 02D a month earlier. Both the 02C and 02E satellites were lost in launch failures in 2020. Thirteen of the smaller Jilin 1 Gaofen-03 spacecraft are also currently in orbit.

The Jilin 1 satellite constellation was developed on China's Jilin Province and is the country's first self-developed remote sensing satellite for commercial use, providing data for disaster relief and resource exploitation. The satellites were developed by the Chang Guang Satellite Technology CO LTD under the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

-- [28 OCT 21] PROGRESS 79P (MS 18 / ISS) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 0032 UTC (local time - 6) to put a Progress tanker-freighter spacecraft into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) supply mission. It docked with the station two days later. It was the 79th Progress mission to the ISS.

COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[WED 17 NOV 21] IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (3)

* IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (3): Researchers are currently investigating gene transfer or gene editing to improve aquaculture. One US company, AquaBounty, is just beginning to sell the world's first transgenic food animal, an Atlantic salmon, that it claims is 70% more productive than standard farmed salmon. The fish, not surprisingly, has proven controversial, and is facing consumer resistance and regulatory obstacles.

Although yields are important, so is disease resistance, disease often being the biggest worry and expense for aquaculture operations. In shrimp, outbreaks can cut overall yield by up to 40% annually, and can even wipe out entire operations. Vaccines can prevent some diseases in fish, but not invertebrates, since they don't have an adaptive immune system.

To improve disease resistance, researchers need rigorous testing procedures. Thanks to a collaboration with fish pathologists at the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), Benchmark Genetics was able to screen tilapia for susceptibility to two major bacterial diseases by delivering a precise dose of the pathogen, and measuring the response. They identified genetic markers correlated with infection, and then used genomic selection to help develop a more resistant strain. USDA scientists have also worked with Hendrix Genetics to increase the survival of trout exposed to a different bacterial pathogen from 30% to 80% in just three generations.

Arguably the most significant success has been in salmon. After researchers discovered a genetic marker for resistance to infectious pancreatic necrosis, companies quickly bred strains that can survive this deadly disease. Oyster breeders, in the meantime, have had success in developing variants resistant to a strain of herpes that devastated the industry in France, Australia, and New Zealand.

A particular problem for Atlantic salmon growers is the sea louse. The tiny parasite clings to the salmon's skin, inflicting wounds that damage or kill fish, and make their flesh unsalable. Between fish losses and the expense of controlling the parasites, lice cost growers more than $500 million USD a year in Norway alone. Lice are attracted to fish pens, and can jump to wild salmon that pass by.

For years, farmers have relied on pesticides to fight lice, but the parasite has become resistant to many chemicals. Other techniques, such as pumping salmon into heated water, which causes the lice to drop off, can stress the fish. Researchers have found that some Atlantic salmon are better than others at resisting lice, and breeders have been trying to improve this trait. To date, they've had some success. Better understanding why several species of Pacific salmon are immune to certain lice could help make the Atlantic salmon more resistant as well. Researchers are investigating to see if sea lice are attracted to certain chemicals released by Atlantic salmon; if so, it's possible these could be modified with gene editing.

Another aspect of aquaculture improvement is sterile stock: reproduction diverts energy from growth, and fertile fish that escape from aquaculture operations can cause problems for wild relatives -- producing hybrids that are less fit to their wild environment.

Salmon can be sterilized by making them triploid, typically by pressurizing newly fertilized embryos in a steel tank when the chromosomes are replicating. Unfortunately, this can have side effects, such as greater susceptibility to disease. Anna Wargelius, a molecular physiologist at Norway's Institute of Marine Research, and colleagues have instead altered the genes of Atlantic salmon to make them sterile, using the genome editor CRISPR to knock out a gene named deadend. In 2016, they showed that these fish, while healthy, never sexually mature.

Now, the researchers are working on developing fertile broodstock that produce these sterile offspring for hatcheries. Embryos with the knocked-out genes should develop into fertile adults if injected with messenger RNA, When these fish mature, they will try to breed them. Wargelius says: "It looks very promising."

Another approach would not involve genetic modification. Fish reproductive physiologists Yonathan Zohar and Wong Ten-Tsao of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, are using small molecule drugs to disrupt early reproductive development so that fish mature without sperm or eggs. [TO BE CONTINUED]

START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[TUE 16 NOV 21] END OF THE PANDEMIC?

* END OF THE PANDEMIC? As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("Country By Country, Scientists Eye Beginning Of An End To The COVID-19 Pandemic" by Julie Steenhuysen, 3 November 2021), the COVID-19 pandemic has persisted longer than anyone would like, but the medical science and regulatory community envisions that it will come to an end -- becoming an endemic disease that we will live with.

The expectation is that the first countries to emerge from the pandemic will have had some combination of high rates of vaccination and natural immunity among people who were infected with the coronavirus, such countries as the United States, the UK, Portugal and India. All do recognize that SARS-CoV-2 remains an unpredictable virus that is mutating as it spreads through unvaccinated populations -- with the frightening possibility of a new strain that defeats vaccines and immunity from previous infection.

Nonetheless, the general outlook is optimistic. Maria Van Kerkhove -- an epidemiologist leading the World Health Organization's (WHO) COVID-19 response -- says: "We think between now and the end of 2022, this is the point where we get control over this virus ... where we can significantly reduce severe disease and death."

The WHO aims for 70% of the world's population to be vaccinated by the end of 2022. Van Kerkhove says: "If we reach that target, we will be in a very, very different situation epidemiologically." For now, however, she worries about countries lifting COVID-19 precautions too soon: "It's amazing to me to be seeing, you know, people out on the streets, as if everything is over."

According to a WHO report released in late October, COVID-19 cases and deaths have been declining since August in nearly all regions of the world. Europe has been an exception, with the highly-infectious Delta sweeping through countries with low vaccination coverage such as Russia and Romania, as well as places that have lifted mask-wearing requirements. The Delta variant has also contributed to rising infections in countries such as Singapore and China, which have high rates of vaccination but little natural immunity due to much stricter lockdown measures.

Marc Lipsitch -- an epidemiologist at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health -- says: "The transition is going to be different in each place because it's going to be driven by the amount of immunity in the population from natural infection and of course, vaccine distribution, which is variable ... from county by county to country by country."

There's some agreement that the Delta wave will fade out in the USA late in November and be the last major COVID-19 surge. Scott Gottlieb -- former Food & Drug Administration Commissioner, and a prominent commenter on the pandemic -- says: "We're transitioning from the pandemic phase to the more endemic phase of this virus, where this virus just becomes a persistent menace here in the United States."

Chris Murray -- a leading disease forecaster at the University of Washington in Seattle -- is in agreement: "We'll go into a very modest winter increase [in COVID-19 cases]. If there's no major new variants, then COVID starts to really wind down in April."

In the UK, where cases are spiking as pandemic restrictions end, vaccines appear to be keeping people out of the hospital. Epidemiologist Neil Ferguson of Imperial College London said that for Britain, the "bulk of the pandemic as an emergency is behind us."

Nobody thinks that COVID-19 will go away, or cease to be a threat. Van Kerkhove says: "Endemic does not mean benign." Some experts believe the virus will eventually behave more like measles, which still causes outbreaks in populations where vaccination coverage is low. Others see COVID-19 becoming more a seasonal respiratory disease such as influenza -- or the virus could become less dangerous, though that could take decades.

Neil Ferguson expects above-average deaths in the UK from respiratory disease due to COVID-19 for the next two to five years, but believes it is unlikely to overwhelm health systems or demand social distancing measures: "It's going to be a gradual evolution. We're going to be dealing with this as a more persistent virus."

Trevor Bedford -- a computational virologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle, who has been tracking the evolution of SARS-CoV-2 -- forecasts a milder winter wave in the USA followed by a transition to endemic disease. He estimates 50,000 to 100,000 US COVID-19 deaths a year, on top of an estimated 30,000 annual deaths from flu. Bedford says that the virus will continue to mutate, requiring annual booster shots tuned to the latest variants in circulation.

Chris Murray believes that a seasonal surge will pose serious challenges: "It'll be an issue for hospital planners, like how do you deal with the COVID and flu surges in winter. But the era of ... massive public intervention in people's lives through mandates, that part I believe will be done after this winter surge."

Richard Hatchett, chief executive of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, said with some countries well protected by vaccines while others have virtually none, the world remains vulnerable: "What keeps me up at night about COVID is the concern that we could have a variant emerge that evades our vaccines and evades immunity from prior infection. That would be like a new COVID pandemic emerging even while we're still in the old one."

BACK_TO_TOP

[MON 15 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 45

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As reported in an article from CNN.com ("US, Russia, China, & Pakistan Meet To Discuss Afghanistan As Humanitarian Crisis Deepens" by Jennifer Hansler, 11 November 2021), the fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban has effectively led to the breakdown of a country that wasn't in good shape to begin with. This last week, representatives of the USA, China, Russia, and Pakistan met in Islamabad to discuss what could be done about the humanitarian crisis there, with many Afghans facing starvation as winter sets in. There were also discussions with Taliban officials on the sidelines. Millions of Afghans face growing hunger due to soaring food prices, a drought and an economy in freefall, sent into a tailspin by a hard cash shortage, sanctions on Taliban leaders, and the suspension of financial aid.

The deal the US made with the Taliban leading up to the American withdrawal stipulated that the Taliban establish an inclusive government that guaranteed the rights of women and of minorities. Few thought that would happen, and it didn't. The Taliban's interim government -- all male and made up of members of the Taliban and the allied Haqqani network -- has imposed harsh societal restrictions, particularly on women. More than $9 billion USD in Afghan central bank reserves are frozen outside the country, and foreign aid is effectively switched off for the time being.

A joint statement issued by the four-power diplomatic group "called on the Taliban to work with fellow Afghans to take steps to form an inclusive and representative government that respects the rights of all Afghans and provides for the equal rights of women and girls to participate in all aspects of Afghan society."

The group praised the Taliban's commitment "to allow for the safe passage of all who wish to travel to and from Afghanistan and encouraged rapid progress, with the onset of winter, on arrangements to establish airports countrywide that can accept commercial air traffic, which are essential to enable the uninterrupted flow of humanitarian assistance."

In parallel developments, this last week the US and Qatar signed an agreement in which Qatar would represent US interests in Afghanistan. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said: "Qatar will establish a US interest section within its embassy in Afghanistan to provide certain consular services, and monitor the condition and security of US diplomatic facilities in Afghanistan."

Qatar has good relations and influence with the Taliban. In an optimistic view, the Qataris might well be able to help create an "inclusive and representative" Afghan government. That may be expecting far too much, but the Taliban may well have no other choice: with victory, they now have ownership, and are finding out that running a government is much harder than overthrowing one.

* The big business news of the last week was that US giant corporation General Electric (GE), founded 129 years ago, was breaking up, with CEO Lawrence Culp announcing that the firm would split its surviving remaining operations into three public companies:

Those are all big news, but they seem limited compared to GE's history. The company lit streets, filled homes with appliances, made locomotives to haul the appliances, and built a huge financing business to keep it all going. Giant conglomerates once seemed to be the way of the world, with CEO Jack Welch taking GE to the heights in the 1980s and 1990s. He retired in 2004 with a severance package said to be worth over $400 million USD -- and then his empire began to fall apart, with rapid CEOs turnover and businesses being spun off. By 2021, GE was a $121-billion USD operation; that sounds good, but it is only a fifth of the value the company reached under Welch.

The latest discard was the sale of the GE aircraft-financing operation, which provided enough funds to ensure that the three new independent operations get started with high-grade credit ratings. Culp, boss since 2018, isn't looking back, saying that GE is trading the "illusory benefits of synergy" for the certain benefits of focus, adding: "A sharper purpose attracts and motivates people."

Conglomerates remain alive and well, as demonstrated by today's most valuable companies: tech firms that have branched out into driverless cars, cloud computing, and so on. However, while size has its advantages, it also has its drawbacks; it can be an ace card or a joker, and in fact breaking up seems popular these days. 140-year-old Toshiba of Japan is also splitting into three separate companies, including an infrastructure services company, an electronics and storage company, and a flash memory company that will keep the Toshiba name.

Johnson & Johnson is splitting up into two companies, one for its consumer products and another for its drugs and medical devices. Other Big Pharma companies, including Pfizer, Merck, and GlaxoSmithKline, have either already spun off large divisions in the past few years or have plans to do so. Liz Young, head of investment strategy at SoFi, a US personal finance company, says: "For survival and keeping up with market trends, companies do have to look at what their most profitable lines of business are and where they should spend most of their time and focus. Competition is fierce. Sometimes you have to break it down to build it back up."

Tech giant Dell recently spun off its cloud business VMWare into a separate company. IBM has spun out its information technology services unit into a new company named Kyndryl -- giving Kyndryl now has more freedom to do joint ventures with IBM cloud rivals. Other companies may find that spinning off divisions will give them greater autonomy to forge business relationships that may have not made as much strategic sense as part of a giant conglomerate.

Spinoffs and asset sales are also a way for companies to backtrack from decisions that investors weren't happy with in the first place. Take telecom giants Verizon and AT&T, the owner of CNN Business parent WarnerMedia, for example. Both stocks have been sluggish in the last few years, it seems in part because of a perception that the two companies strayed too far from their core wireless businesses by jumping into high-profile media deals. Verizon bought AOL and Yahoo to combine them into a unit that it first branded as Oath, and then relabeled Verizon Media. Verizon has sold off the media division, having retained only a 10% stake in it, while AT&T is planning to spin off WarnerMedia. Size matters, but whether the best size is BIG or SMALL: "It depends."

* In business topics more off the mainstream, a video by Jon Sarlin of CNN BUSINESS gave a once-over on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies. It covered the usual ground, pointing out that the cryptocurrency market is worth more than the GDP of Italy -- but that it's difficult to impossible to buy a cup of coffee with it.

After providing a survey of cryptocurrencies, Sarlin then pointed out how unwieldy they are, with a Bitcoin transaction taking like 20 minutes to clear -- and the transactions, it seems, tend to be high-priced in the literal sense. Of course, everyone knows cryptocurrencies are ghastly energy hogs.

Underlying the cryptocurrency craze is an internet-driven techno-libertarianism, with advocates talking about "empowering the individual" with a "people's currency" not controlled by the authorities -- or in other words, existing in the shadow zone outside of the law. An economist named Nouriel Roubini -- of Iranian-Italian origins, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business -- commented:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

There are no practical users of cryptocurrencies -- 99% of transactions are just using one "crypto" to buy another one. Not buy goods, not buy services, it's just a self-fulfilling / referential bubble with no link to anything in the real world.

END_QUOTE

The "1%" usage that Roubini implies is overwhelmingly on the "darknet", the outlaw internet, where transactions are often conducted in cryptocurrencies -- that "outside of the law" thing again. However, for all practical purposes, cryptocurrencies don't exist for mainstream business transactions of everything else.

Can people make money with cryptocurrencies? Sure; people can make money gambling in Vegas, too. Sarlin ended by suggesting the possibility that governments might regulate cryptocurrencies. It increasingly seems like more than a mere possibility.

* This last week, Federal Judge Tanya Chutkan ruled against Donald Trump's claim that documents relating to his presidency could not be released by the Biden Administration, with the National Archives to provide the documents to the House 1/6 Committee on Friday.

That high note went flat when Trump appealed the decision; a Federal court of appeals agreed to hear his case, blocking the release of the documents. The appeals court will have the hearing on 30 November. The decision is almost certain to go against Trump, but then he is even more certain to appeal to the Supreme Court. If SCOTUS accepts the case, it's likely to delay the release of the documents until after the end of the year. Will SCOTUS agree? Who knows? On one hand, the court may want to properly establish a legal precedent; on the other hand, the judiciary is only too familiar with Trump's habits of legal obstruction, and may not want to be played for chumps any more.

On Friday afternoon, however, the news went bright again with an announcement that Steve Bannon -- one of the most prominent and disreputable of Trump's associates -- had been indicted for contempt of Congress. He had been subpoenaed and didn't show, claiming Trump executive privilege as a pretext. The House passed a motion of contempt of Congress against Bannon -- a crime that can get up to a year in the slammer -- but the Department of Justice did nothing. With no action against Bannon, other Trump stooges under subpoena were blowing off the 1/6 Committee as well.

The DOJ is necessarily opaque in its operations, but it is very possible the DOJ was waiting on the decision by Judge Chutkan. It would have made no sense to have busted Steve Bannon, to then force the court to order his release until the judgement was made. That scenario also suggests that the DOJ would wait on the appeals, but the indictment shows they didn't. Maybe they talked it over with the judge: "Do we need to wait on the appeals, too?" With the reply: "Don't worry about it." Alas, it is very hard to know what was actually going on.

* There are suggestions that Bannon is looking forward to being arrested, so he can exploit it for self-promotion. That may be so, but it may also be so that he has a ridiculous view of his own importance, and few really care what happens to him. Indeed, to the extent that people do care, most of them want bad things to happen to him. Incidentally, Andy Borowitz, a humorist who writes for THE NEW YORKER, wrote a fake headline relative to the notoriously unwashed and seedy Bannon:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

Steve Bannon Caught Fleeing US Disguised as Man Who Recently Took Shower

"He showered, shaved, and even combed his hair," a TSA agent said. "He was totally unrecognizable."

END_QUOTE

In other absurdities, it is reported that anti-vaxxers who have been compelled to be vaccinated by mandates are now resorting to "detox the vax" schemes to neutralize the supposed health threat of the vaccines. In a TikTok video, one Dr. Carrie Madej gave a recipe for a bath with baking soda and epsom salts that will "radiation detox" the subject -- clearing the astral radiations from the vaccine, or whatever. Adding bentonite will "pull out the poisons", and borax -- a potential skin irritant, not to be ingested -- will "take the nanotechnology out of you."

OK, anyone who doesn't recognize this as pure nonsense is beyond help. It does suggest that it might be helpful for Dr. Fauci to recommend harmless "detox the vax" schemes -- take a vitamin C pill every day, that should do it. At least, it won't do any harm.

* Anyway, the world is in an unusually uncertain state these days. It doesn't feel constructive to pay too much attention to the muddle; I'm just keeping an eye on things, and otherwise going about my business. Everything will work itself out as it will, like it or not, regardless of how much I fuss about it. I'm just a spectator -- and I don't mind, that's the reality.

I woke up a few mornings ago with unsettled digestion, my head feeling wooden, my body slightly aching, and very thirsty. It took me a while to think: "Maybe this has something to do with the flu shot I got yesterday?"

Well -- yeah. Funny, I don't recall ever having had much reaction to vaccinations when I was younger. Incidentally, I always get apprehensive and flinch when I get the jab -- so this time, I was playing a game on my smartphone, and I barely felt the jab. Something to remember for later.

PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[FRI 12 NOV 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (2)

* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (2): The most significant element of the Fourth Information Revolution was radio technology, which permitted information to be transmitted without requiring a physical link between transmitter and receiver. Ships at sea, for example, could stay in communications with land bases. Radio was greatly boosted by the introduction of the vacuum triode, in effect the first truly electronic device.

Wireless technology also led to audio broadcast, and then later to television broadcast, with news and entertainment supported by advertising. The radio became the first widespread electronic device, by the 1930s being found in almost every American house. Wireless broadcasting led to state regulation of the "airwaves" to ensure standards and non-interference, and to an extent exert censorship.

Manufacturing technology advanced rapidly with the introduction of the assembly line, though there was little automation involved. The electrification of industry led to the development of electromechanical control systems, which involved electrical networks with switches, relays, electromechanical timers, and lamps to control industrial processes, wired according to what became known as "relay-ladder logic", embodied as a kind of circuit diagram. That technology showed up in the home in the form of modern washing machines, which could step through wash and rinse cycles, or the simple electromechanical thermostat, and in entertainment with the pinball machine, which was the first widespread electrical game. Pinball machines, as we know them now, emerged in the 1930s, though flippers weren't introduced until after World War II. They eventually reached a baroque level of complexity.

The war also saw the critical introduction of radio for air and ground combat operations, allowing an unprecedented level of control over forces in operation. Radar was also developed, allowing the detection and targeting of aircraft and ships at long range, in the dark and in bad weather. Radio navigation systems were refined as well, to allow aircraft and ships to find their way, as were "identification friend or foe (IFF)" transponders -- transmitter-responders -- to allow friendlies to be told from hostile. IFF was the first form of electronic identification system.

These systems were integrated -- for example in the "combat information center" on board aircraft carriers, in which officers tracked friendly and hostile aircraft on glass maps, tracking them with radar and communicating with friendlies over radio. Friendly aircraft could find their way back to the carrier using its radio homing systems. There was also integration of radar with analog computers in fire control systems that could, say, allow an anti-aircraft gun to track and engage a target with high accuracy -- firing shells with radio proximity fuzes that went off if the shell passed near the target. Aircraft autopilots were introduced, as were drone aircraft, though at the time they were radio-controlled by operators on the ground or crewed aircraft. There was work on guided missiles and other munitions, using radio control or primitive infrared "heat-seeking" sensors, but they saw little use in the conflict.

* From the mid-20th century, and greatly accelerating in the 21st century, the world underwent a "Fifth Information Revolution". It had its remote roots in the work of Charles Babbage, who worked on an elaborate mechanical computer named the "Difference Engine" in the 1820s and 1830s. He never made a go of it, though others would later get it to work. He also considered the development of an even more elaborate mechanical computer, the "Analytical Engine", that would have been programmable using punch cards, but he never came close to building it.

Before World War II, elaborate mechanical computers -- not different in kind from Babbage's Difference Engine -- became available, if not widespread, to be used for tough analytical problems. They were expensive, far too complicated, and inflexible; something better was needed.

One of the pioneers towards a new era of computing was Claude Shannon, in 1936 a student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He had been working with mechanical computers, and found them frustrating. He got to thinking that electronics -- in those days, effectively meaning vacuum tubes -- might do a better job. He felt that an electronic computer would be more practical if it used "binary", base-2, numbers instead of conventional decimal numbers. [TO BE CONTINUED]

START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[THU 11 NOV 21] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("New Undersea Energy Storage System Harnesses The Power Of Buoyancy" by Loz Blain, 24 June 2021), there's a lot of work in progress on systems for renewable energy storage. The go-to solution these days is banks of lithium batteries, but current costs for that technology are running at about $150 USD per megawatt-hour (MWh). Battery costs are still declining, but are bound to run into diminishing returns, so there's a hunt for alternatives. Researchers at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) have proposed a scheme that that could cut the cost to $50 to $100 per MWh.

They call the concept "Buoyancy Energy Storage Technology (BEST)". The idea is to winch a floating object down into the water using renewable power, and then allowing the object to float back up, generating power as it does so. The design is based on a platform secured deep into the sea floor with weighted anchors. The platform is connected via cables to an enormous square array, 100 meters (328 feet) on a side –- of high-density polyethylene pipes, each filled with a compressed gas, like air or hydrogen.

Electricity sent to the platform from the surface via power cables drives powerful electric motors, which pull the buoyant tubes down to store the energy. When it's time to release energy, the tubes are released, with their buoyancy making them float up, and drives the electric motors in reverse as generators.

The research team suggests that the BEST scheme would be optimum for shallow-water offshore wind. It is potentially well cheaper than batteries, but can't release energy as fast. BEST does have the advantage that it could be used to compress hydrogen for distribution, with the hydrogen obtained by electrolysis from renewable energy.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("1,000-Foot Multi-Rotor Floating Windcatchers To Power 80,000 Homes Each" by Loz Blain, 7 June 2021), a Norwegian company named Wind Catching Systems (WCS) is proposing a new floating wind turbine design that, according to WCS officials, will generate five times as much energy as the biggest conventional wind turbine, and will do so at competitive prices.

The WCS Windcatcher is not a single turbine, but an array of over a hundred small turbines, mounted in a staggered arrangement in a rectangular framework that is about 325 meters (1,000 feet). The floating platform is moored to the ocean floor using established practices from the oil and gas industry. The array has double the swept area of the biggest existing wind turbines, and the smaller rotors will do better in high wind speeds -- when the forces on long blades get to the point where the turbine has to feather its blades or be torn apart. The lower forces also mean less wear and tear, increasing operational life. The overall effect, according to WCS, is a 500% boost in annual energy output, with each array generating enough power to run 80,000 European homes.

There is of course a great multiplication of the number of parts, but the parts are much simpler and easier to produce than one big wind turbine. They are also easier to install and maintain, the grid design permitting much easier access via walkways and stairways. WCS claims the array will generate power at grid parity from the outset. However, there's no schedule yet for when the first array will be set up.

* As discussed in an article from CBSNEWS.com ("Turning Kenya's Plastic Waste Problem Into A Building Solution", 5 May 2021), as with almost everywhere else on the planet, Kenya has a plastics problem, with an ever-growing accumulation of plastic waste. Materials scientist Nzambi Matee of Nairobi saw the threat in it, but also the promise: why not make building materials out of it? She says: "I get excited when I see waste, because I know that's life for us."

It took nine months of work to fabricate her first plastic brick. That done, she designed a machine to mass-produce them. First, waste is obtained, sorted to remove rubble and metal, and then baked -- Matee says it's just like "making cookies" -- before the bubbling liquid is moulded into building blocks. Now she's producing 2,000 a day. They're a third cheaper than clay bricks, and seven times stronger. Right now, they're only being sold as pathway stones, but Matee sees opportunities in building construction.

ED: This is such a simple idea that it seems there must a snag, as to why it's not in wider use. The bricks degrade over the long run? It might be nice to use a solar oven to bake them.

COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[WED 10 NOV 21] IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (2)

* IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (2): Aquaculture is nothing new. By about 3500 years ago, Egyptians were raising gilt-head sea bream in a large lagoon; later, the Romans cultivated oysters. Carp have been grown and selectively bred in China for thousands of years. Few aquaculture species, however, saw systematic, scientific improvement until the 20th century.

One species that has received considerable attention from breeders is Atlantic salmon, which commands relatively high prices. Farming began in the late 1960s, in Norway. Within 10 years, breeding had helped boost growth rates and harvest weight. Each new generation of fish -- it takes salmon 3 to 4 years to mature -- grows 10% to 15% faster than its forebears. Robbert Blonk -- director of aquaculture R&D at Hendrix Genetics, an international animal breeding firm out of the Netherlands -- comments: "My colleagues in poultry can only dream of these kinds of percentages." During the 1990s, breeders also began to select for improved disease resistance; fillet quality; delayed sexual maturation, which boosts yields; and other traits.

Tilapia is another success story. It's a big group of freshwater fish that generally doesn't fetch high prices, but is particularly significant in the developing world. An international research center in Malaysia, now known as WorldFish, began a breeding program in the 1980s that quickly doubled the growth rate of one commonly raised species, Nile tilapia. Breeders also improved its disease resistance -- an ongoing effort because of the emergence of new pathogens, such as tilapia lake virus. China, a global leader in aquaculture production, has capitalized on the strain, building the world's largest tilapia hatchery. It raises billions of young fish annually.

At present, aquaculture supplies nearly half of the fish and shellfish eaten worldwide, and production has been growing by nearly 4.5% annually over the past decade, faster than most sectors of the farmed food sector. The growth of the industry has inflicted some collateral damage, including pollution from farm waste; heavy catches of wild fish to feed to penned salmon and other species; and the destruction of coastal wetlands to build shrimp ponds. These problems are being addressed, if slowly, while aquaculture is continuing to boom -- thanks in good part to genomics.

Breeders are particularly excited about a technique known as "genomic selection". Traditionally, to improve aquaculture species, breeders start by crossing two parents and then, out of hundreds or thousands of their offspring, select individuals to test for traits they want to improve. The most ambitious such programs would hundreds of crosses in each generation and choose from the best performing families for breeding.

However, testing may be incompatible with breeding: measuring fillet quality requires killing fish, for example, while screening for disease resistance means the infected individual must remain quarantined. As a result, when researchers identify a promising animal, they must pick a sibling to use for breeding, and hope that it performs just as well. Dean Jerry -- an aquaculture geneticist at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia, who works with breeders of shrimp, oysters, and fish -- says: "You don't know whether they're the best of the family or the worst."

With genomic selection, researchers can identify siblings with high-performance traits based on genetic markers, and all they need to do to examine them is a small tissue sample, such a clipping from a fin, that can be pureed and analyzed. DNA arrays, which detect base-pair changes known as "single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs)", allow breeders to thoroughly evaluate many siblings for multiple traits. If the pattern of SNPs suggests that an individual carries optimal alleles, it can be selected for further breeding, even if it hasn't been tested. Genomic analyses also allow breeders to minimize inbreeding.

Cattle breeders pioneered genomic selection; salmon breeders only adopted it a few years ago, followed by those working with shrimp and tilapia. Roslin's Ross Houston says that as a rough average, the technique increases selection accuracy and the amount of genetic improvement by about 25%. It and other tools are helping researchers pursue goals such as faster growth, which means faster production rates. Growth is highly heritable and easy to measure, so traditional breeding works well -- but breeders have other tricks for boosting growth, including providing farmers with fish of a single sex. Male tilapia, for example, can grow significantly faster than females. Another approach is to hybridize species: the dominant farmed catfish in the United States, a hybrid of a female channel catfish and a male blue catfish, grows faster and is hardier.

Inducing sterility stimulates growth as well, and has helped raise yields in shellfish, particularly oysters. In the 1990s, Rutger's Guo Ximing and Standish Allen, now at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, figured out a new way to create triploid oysters, which are infertile because they have an extra copy of each chromosome. These oysters don't devote much energy to reproduction, so they reach harvest size sooner, reducing exposure to disease. In addition, when oysters reproduce, more than half their body consists of sperm or eggs, which no one wants to eat. [TO BE CONTINUED]

START | PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[TUE 09 NOV 21] ALIEN GENOMES

* ALIEN GENOMES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("By Rewriting The Genome Of Escherichia coli, Researchers Incorporated Several Unnatural Amino Acids Into Bacterial Proteins" by Robert F. Service, 3 June 2021), effectively all natural organisms construct their proteins from combinations of 20 different amino acids. Researchers have, as of late, re-engineered genes and other pieces of protein-building machinery to add amino acids not in the natural toolkit, resulting in proteins with unique chemical properties useful in making drugs. However, the process is laborious, and can typically only add one new amino acid at a time.

Now researchers have figured out how to perform a broad rewrite of the bacterium's genome allows them to add numerous novel amino acids to one protein. The work could open up new ways to synthesize improved pharmaceuticals.

This is the latest step in a process that's been going on for decades. Early on, researchers decided to create designer proteins by altering protein-making cellular components to have them insert unnatural amino acids. DNA specifies amino acids using triplets or "codons" of the four DNA bases, A-C-G-T. To synthesize proteins, the DNA is copied into RNA, with U replacing T. The codons in natural DNA specify one of 20 amino acids, with some duplication: six different codons, for example, code for the amino acid serine. Three codons don't encode an amino acid, instead specifying the end of the amino-acid sequence.

Initially, researchers inserted unnatural amino acids by having the cellular machinery add one whenever it saw a certain stop codon. As pointed out by Jason Chin -- a synthetic biologist at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology -- this approach was limited in that it could generally only insert one amino acid per protein.

Attempting to add more, Chin and his colleagues decided to repurpose two of the six codons that normally code for serine. In a 2019 study, they used the CRISPR-Cas9 gene-editing tool to generate an Escherichia coli strain they named "Syn61", featuring a set of changes:

The resulting proteins featured cyclic structures like those found in existing antibiotics and antitumor drugs, and also opened the door to an open-ended range of other configurations. Another advantage of Syn61 was that viruses couldn't infect it, because the bacteria's unnatural genome disrupted their replication process. That could have implications for biotech companies out to develop bioengineered microorganisms to turn out medicine or other useful products. Not only would the microorganisms be bullet-proof against viruses, but they would not be able to survive in hosts where they couldn't get their unnatural amino acids.

* As discussed in a related article from NATURE.com ("Weird Viral DNA Spills Secrets To Biologists" by Ewen Calloway, 29 April 2021), "unnatural" genomes have actually been found in nature, having been discovered in bacteriopages -- viruses that infect bacteria.

Again, DNA typically uses four nucleotide bases: adenine, thymine, cytosine, and guanine (ATCG). Research by a team led by Zhao Suwen -- a computational biologist at Shanghai Tech University in China -- has demonstrated how some phages don't use adenine, instead substituting a base named "2-aminoadenine" or "Z".

It was not a completely new discovery, Soviet researchers having discovered ZDNA in the 1970s in a phage designated "S-2LV" that infects photosynthetic bacteria. The DNA genome of the phage split at a higher temperature than would have been expected, which was a hint that led to the discovery of the Z nucleotide. The Z:T bond was stronger than the A:T bond it replaced, and so needed more heat to split apart. Further work showed that S-2L's unusual genome was resistant to DNA-destroying enzymes and other anti-phage defenses employed by bacteria.

The discovery led to other questions, such as how ZDNA worked, and if it was found in other viruses. To investigate further, a team under Philippe Marliere -- an inventor and geneticist at the University of Evry, France -- and Pierre-Alexandre Kaminski -- a biochemist at the Pasteur Institute in Paris -- sequenced the phage's genome in the early 2000s. They found at least one gene that seemed to be involved in generating ZDNA, but couldn't find any matches to it in genomic databases, and so could get no more insights on it.

The research team patented the S-2L genome, but also made it public, and he continued to hunt through genomic databases. Finally, in 2015, the team s scored a hit: a phage that infects aquatic bacteria of the genus Vibrio featured a gene that matched a stretch of S-2L's genome. The gene encoded an enzyme that resembled one that bacteria use to make adenine.

In 2019, Zhao's team found more database matches. The matching phages, it turned out, all had a gene named Purz, which codes for an enzyme that, early in the synthesis process, converts a precursor molecule present in bacterial cells into the Z nucleotide. The researchers then identified additional enzymes -- not encoded by the phages, but by the bacteria that the phages infect -- that are repurposed to complete the pathway.

Of course, that led to another question, in that the enzymes involved in the process were known to produce the raw ingredient for ZDNA -- a molecule named "dZTP", along the lines of the "dATP" that is the raw ingredient for adenine -- but it still wasn't clear how the phages integrated the Z nucleotides into DNA chains, while excluding the A nucleotides.

On investigation, Marliere and Kaminski noticed that alongside PurZ in the Vibrio phage's genome sits a gene that makes a "polymerase" enzyme, which copies DNA strands. They found out that this enzyme inserts dZTP into DNA, while cutting out any A bases that were introduced. Zhao believes there's more to the story, that another phage-derived enzyme is needed -- one that breaks up dATP, but preserves dZTP inside cells. Her team found out that once dZTP predominates over sATP in a cell, the cell's own polymerases start making ZDNA.

There's more to be known. How do host cells keep ZDNA out of their genomes? How does cellular protein synthesis deal with DNA? How is ZDNA copied? There's also the prospect of applications down the road, with ZDNA possibly having advantages in fabricating DNA nanostructures. The search continues for more phages with ZDNA, and possibly other alternative DNAs, while the research teams try to determine just how it works.

COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[MON 08 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 44

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: There were off-year elections on 2 November. Much fuss was made over defeats for the Democrats, but they won some, too -- and things did not go badly here in Colorado. There were three major initiatives; one, Proposition 119, would have raised marijuana sales taxes to pay for out-of-school learning. It got shot down, it seems because it came across as too contrived and gimmicky.

The other two initiatives had a conservative bent. Amendment 78 was an attempt to have the legislature take control of some state government discretionary spending, while Proposition 120 would have cut property taxes. Both were rejected by solid margins. The failure of Proposition 120 was a surprise, since the inflation of housing prices has made property taxes increasingly painful. It appears the majority of Coloradans realized it would put local governments in a painful crunch.

Exactly what lessons this election gave for the 2022 mid-term elections is unclear, things still being so unstable as to make prediction impossible. A lot can, and will, happen in another year.

* Clearly one of the factors in the 2022 elections will be the status of investigations into Donald Trump and his stooges. There's considerable complaint among the Woke Left on Twitter about the current progress of the House 1/6 Committee: "They're too slow! They're not going to do anything! Why isn't Trump being indicted?! Why aren't people being arrested?!"

One Teri Kanefield, a lawyer and contributor to THE WASHINGTON POST and such, made a plea for sanity in an essay titled: "Criminal Consequences & The Threat Of Right-Wing Extremism", presented in a heavily edited form here:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

There is a school of thought on social media that says that Republicans keep breaking laws because there have not been enough "consequences" or "accountability." I've pushed for definitions of these words, and I've learned that they tend to mean criminal punishment -- in particular, demanding more indictments of wrongdoers.

The problem is that indictments lead to trials, which may not work out the way people want them to. Indicting a prominent person and then getting a "not guilty" verdict will leave us all even more frustrated and cynical. Juries can be unpredictable, and it will be particularly hard to get an unbiased jury for the trial of a prominent, political person. The chances of getting a "not guilty" verdict are higher if the prosecution rushes to trial before it has made a solid case.

But why should that be such a concern, if the crimes have been so blatant? Visible for all to see in videos? Discussed in the daily news? Much of what we see on the news as evidence wouldn't be admissible in court. Journalists often don't name their sources, which is acceptable for journalism provided the reporters verify their sources, but it wouldn't work in court -- it's called "hearsay".

Yes, we've seen videos of the 1/6 Capitol riot, but a video can't prove the criminal intent of the organizers of the riot. The video is only the tip of the iceberg; there is a lot of evidence that prosecutors haven't gotten their hands on yet. They're working on it: many Trump Administration staff are talking to the House 1/6 committee.

Even more significantly, a huge tranche of White House documents is the subject of litigation -- and very soon, by the standards of the justice system, these documents will almost certainly be in the hands of the 1/6 Committee and the DOJ. These documents relate to the planning of certain "events" on 6 January, including the way Trump cultivated the disinformation ecosystem that led to the riot.

It would be foolish to rush to trial without having all the evidence available. An indictment normally means there is probable cause a crime occurred. Conviction, on the other hand, requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt -- a much higher standard. Federal prosecutors have about a 96% conviction rate because they don't waste court time and resources if they don't think they'll get a conviction. They don't bring charges on probable cause; they bring charges when they think they have enough evidence to convict.

But then there's the question: "Shouldn't there be meaningful consequences?" In fact, there have been a lot of them:

There's more, and the investigations are not winding down. There appears to be an assumption that, if the public isn't continually fed news on the progress of investigations, then nothing is happening. However, investigations are never conducted in public view, at least not with any hope of getting a conviction. Certainly those being investigated must be kept in the dark, because they will use everything they find out to fight back.

I suggest that it seems to people like there are "never any meaningful consequences" because consequences don't do what people think they will do. Trump and his stooges get into trouble, but never seem to get into enough trouble. That is unavoidably the case when political leaders committing crimes are being shielded by a major political party and supported by a significant portion of the population.

The next question is: "If we don't take action quickly, what's to stop people from continuing to tear down the USA?" The problem is that Trump is a symptom of this treasonous mindset, not the cause of it. Republicans break laws, and support lawbreaking, because they believe Liberal government, as well as its laws, are illegitimate and should be disobeyed. This mindset has roots going back to the New Deal and to desegregation, and it created Trump. He is largely symbolic; he exercises little actual leadership, having no competence to do so, merely being an inspiration to wrongdoing, a figurehead to rally around.

Imprisoned, Trump will remain a symbolic figurehead, and may well gain political strength if imprisoned. That's not saying he shouldn't be prosecuted -- only saying that doing so will not discourage, may actually encourage, his followers. They will be more inspired to fight the "illegitimate" government, not less, and will not be deterred by the threat of punishment; paradoxically, deterrence only works on law-abiding people. To take Trump down will require slowly and methodically turning his human pyramid of enablers against him, and discrediting him in full public view. That will take time.

Yet another question: "How can we wait? Don't we need to act as fast as we can, given the threat?" The reality is that a trial of Donald Trump, as things stand now, is very likely to be agonizingly protracted, convoluted, and not likely to lead to a conviction. How could we get an unbiased jury? Any claim of bias would lead to appeals. What, instead, if the case against Trump were so thorough and overwhelming that he was compelled to plea bargain? In addition, the simple plod of a thorough investigation will wear down his resistance.

Again, I'm by no means saying Trump and his stooges should not be charged and convicted. I'm saying that it probably won't be the magic bullet people think it will be -- and that rushing to trial before prosecutors have all the evidence may not be the smartest strategy. The 1/6 Committee is working hard to assemble a case; we have to trust the process, because nothing better can be proposed.

END_QUOTE

I'm getting annoyed with all the whining on Twitter about the slow progress of the investigations. Yeah, it's exasperating, but if that's the way it works, that's the way it works. The alternative, it would seem, is another OJ Simpson trial, with Trump winning in the end. He doesn't deserve that win. Now when I see crumbs about investigations of the Trumps, I feel entertained: "Things are moving along, and we'll get there in the end."

* I keep backups on three 1-terabyte USB hard disk drives, along with some ongoing work uploaded to OneDrive. One of the USB drives went south, so I got a replacement from Amazon.com. As long as I was loading it up, I decided to make some changes in my archiving strategy, since I so rarely got into the older archives. Now I only keep archives for the last 12 months and for the three years before that, and for every fifth year -- 2000, 2005, 2010, 2015 -- before that, with those five-year archives zipfiled.

I had some problems with creating the zipfile archives, but got it done. However, when I got everything copied over, I was puzzled that one of the disks was about 3/4ths full, while the other two were less than half. What gives?

After much fumbling, I found a Windows app named FOLDERSIZE.EXE that listed the contents of a drive in detail, and found a hidden file named $RECYCLE.BIN that was much bigger on the one drive than the others. I puzzled about that, to remember that it was the Windows Recycling Bin -- which I didn't want on the archival disks.

OK, what to do about it? After more fumbling, I realized that the Recycling Bin app on my PC has a "Properties" icon, which allows selecting an external drive, setting its bin size, and turning backing up to the bin on or off. I set the bin size to 1 megabyte, saved the setting, and then turned off backup, saving the setting again -- do them at the same time, it seems to give uncertain results. Also, I had to turn off backup before I could delete the old oversized $RECYCLE.BIN folders using FOLDERSIZE.EXE. Incidentally, I left a 1-megabyte $RECYCLE.BIN on the USB drives to make sure that Windows wasn't inclined to re-install a recycling bin unprompted.

After that, with a series of doublechecks, I finally got all three drives with the same contents and usage. It was simple in the end, but it took hours, in particular because of hanging up the PC -- I wasn't sure if it was due to bugs in FOLDERSIZE.EXE, or because the PC was too sluggish to handle one or two 1-terabyte USB drives, being plugged in and unplugged repeatedly. I did get rid of FOLDERSIZE.EXE, since my PC reported finding malware after I used it. I also had some problems with DriveBox attempting to back up the USB drives, but I told it not to do that, and it seems to be working okay now. Really, though, is it necessary that this picky stuff take so much time? I'd rather it didn't.

PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[FRI 05 NOV 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (1)

* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (1): The emergence of human civilization on Earth led to a series of "information revolutions" that altered society, and in modern times have reached a breakneck acceleration.

The process started out slow. The rise of cities in antiquity led to the "First Information Revolution", initiated by the development of writing. Large societies could not maintain organizational continuity without writing. Writing also implied the emergence of mail systems of one sort or another to transfer information between persons and organizations. In time, paper emerged, to provide a cheap medium for writing -- before paper, the most common medium for writing was parchment, treated animal skins, which was expensive -- and woodblock printing arose to enable a degree of mass production of documents.

Simple calculators, like the abacus, were devised as well, with such "data processing" gear implicitly connected to writing. After all, "keeping the books" means just that: calculations are performed, with the results entered in a book. While most of the simple technologies of this era were put together more or less informally, large-scale projects -- buildings, bridges, and such -- emerged that demanded blueprints and other formal specifications.

The 15th century saw the introduction of the Gutenberg "moveable type" press, which, along with the expanded production of paper, permitted for the first time the mass production of books and other documents. The Gutenberg press set off the "Second Information Revolution": books became much cheaper and more widespread, with civilized societies then beginning to converge on universal literacy. Literacy wasn't that big of a deal when most people didn't have much to read, but now societies were becoming more technical, and literacy became more significant to their operation. The technologies available were limited, however, clocks and clockwork devices being the most elaborate devices to be developed -- with the first mechanical adding machines in the 17th century. Refined instruments, such as the telescope and microscope, were developed as well. Refined engineering and science required improved documentation to be useful.

The 19th century brought in the "Third Information Revolution". Printing advanced during the period with the introduction of the high-speed rotary press -- which allowed the rapid mass production of documents, particularly newspapers and other periodicals -- and the typewriter -- which can be thought of as the first "personal printer". Mechanical calculators became widespread, as did the slide rule. The slide rule had actually been around since the 17th century, but it didn't come into wide use until industrial development led to the normalization of formal engineering practices.

Photography also represented a new frontier, providing a medium for recording images, which previously had only been done through drawings or paintings. There was a parallel rise in industrial technology, with machinery being used to build machines of ever greater precision -- though at the time, there was little in the way of automation. One significant exception was a programmable loom designed by a Frenchman named Joseph Marie Jacquard, which allowed the weaving of elaborate designs, using a large stack of punched cards. Introduced early in the century, it quickly became widespread. Documentation of technologies and processes became fundamental to the operations of science, industry, and society in general.

Most significantly, however, the 19th century introduced the telegraph, preceded by flag and other optical semaphore systems, which were of more limited use. The telegraph permitted, for the first time, instantaneous long-distance communications; it was intimately associated with the rise of the locomotive and the steamship, which permitted rapid and bulk transport over long distances. Telegraphs were required to arrange shipments of goods and keep trains running on schedule, with telegraph lines often paralleling railroad tracks. By the end of the century, oceanic telegraph cables allowed news to propagate around the world in a few hours. Financial transactions could be handled using the telegraph.

The first half of the 20th century brought in the "Fourth Information Revolution", with the establishment of audio recording -- first the phonograph, and then the tape recorder -- and video recording -- in the form of movies. At the start of the century, the telegraph had also led to the telephone, teletypewriter, and telefax. The telephone in particular brought instant communications to the masses, if through the clumsy intervention of switchboard operators. Eventually, automated switching systems put switchboard operators out of work. The rise of the telephone also saw the use of "wiretaps" by the state for criminal investigation, along with a system of laws to regulate wiretaps.

As far as data processing went, the period saw the spread of more elaborate mechanical and electromechanical calculators and the Hollerith punch-card tabulating reader -- invented by Herman Hollerith, in which moving pins could sort cards with selective holes in them. It was the one of the first successful "data processing" machines. Mechanical analog computers were introduced, leading to electronic analog computers. However, during this era, the term "computer" generally meant a member of a calculating team, in which groups of semi-skilled workers, usually women, performed sets of calculations with mechanical calculators as elements of a group calculation. [TO BE CONTINUED]

NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[THU 04 NOV 21] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("The Rise And Fall Of The World's Largest Lake" by Sid Perkins, 4 June 2021), about 12 million years ago, the movements of continental plates created, in Central Europe, the biggest lake known in the history of the world. The "Paratethys Sea" eventually hosted species found nowhere else, including the smallest whales ever.

Paleo-oceanographer Dan Palcu of the University of Sao Paulo and his colleagues decided to explore the long-gone sea from geological and fossil records. At its greatest extent, the Paratethys stretched from the eastern Alps into what is now Kazakhstan, covering more than 2.8 million square kilometers (1.08 million square miles). The researchers estimate that it once contained more than 1.77 million cubic kilometers (425,000 cubic miles) of water -- more than ten times the volume found in all of today's freshwater and saltwater lakes combined.

However, changing climate caused the lake to shrink dramatically at least four times in its 5-million-year lifetime, with water levels falling by as much as 250 meters (820 feet) between 7.65 million and 7.9 million years ago. During that biggest episode of contraction, the lake lost as much as one-third of its water and more than two-thirds of its surface area. That sent water salinity in the lake's central basin, which was more or less co-located with the modern Black Sea, soaring, from about a third as salty as today's oceans to a level similar to seawater.

Palcu says those shifts wiped out many aquatic species, including species of single-celled algae and other small free-floating organisms. Organisms that could survive the brackish water, including some mollusks, survived to repopulate the lake when it expanded during wetter times.

The Paratethys was home to a wide variety of mollusks, crustaceans, and marine mammals found nowhere else on Earth. Many of the whales, dolphins, and seals living there were miniature versions of those found in open seas. Dwarfism apparently helped them to survive in the shrinking sea. Grasslands that emerged along the sea accelerated the evolution of land animals, with populations of ancestors of modern sheep, goats, giraffes, and elephants arising. During dry periods, they migrated south into Africa, to lead to modern animals of the savanna.

The Paratethys effectively disappeared between 6.7 million and 6.9 million years ago, when erosion created an outlet at the lake's southwestern edge, the outlet being into what is now the Aegean Sea. Palcu says its end was dramatic, being marked by "an impressive waterfall" as it drained away.

* As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("The Most Detailed 3D Map Of The Universe Ever Made" by Davide Castelvecchi, 28 May 2021), a survey of the southern sky has helped reveal the overall structure of the Universe, most specifically the workings of the mysterious "dark matter" and "dark energy" that control the evolution of the cosmos. The "Dark Energy Survey (DES)" collaboration mapped the sky between 2013 and 2019 using a 570-megapixel camera at the Víctor M. Blanco telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The survey covered a quarter of the southern sky, covering 300 million galaxies.

Such a 3D cosmic map of course probes back through time, the light of more distant galaxies taking proportionally more time to reach Earth. This historical record helps astronomers nail down the forces that govern the evolution of the Universe -- including the dark matter that slows down cosmic expansion, and the dark energy that speeds it up.

The DES team inspected the shapes of 100 million of the more distant galaxies, to see if the shapes were distorted by "gravitational lensing" from intervening mass, including dark matter. The Universe, it appears, is not as "lumpy" as expected. DES member Alexandra Amon says: "We observe our images of background galaxies to be slightly distorted." DES also showed that dark energy has remained uniformly distributed and constant through time.

DES is not over with: the latest results were based on its first three years of data-taking, out of a total of six years. Other observatories are either performing or preparing to perform similar studies.

* One of the silver linings of the COVID-19 pandemic was the rapid development of effective vaccines against the virus. As discussed in an editorial from NATURE.com ("The COVID Pandemic Must Lead To Tuberculosis Vaccines", 27 October 2021), that leads to the question of why progress on vaccines for long-established infections has been slow.

Case in point is tuberculosis. It kills roughly 1.5 million people a year, and it seems to be gaining, the central problem being that work on a TB vaccine is underfunded. There are treatments for TB, but not all TB patients can get to them, and TB is acquiring resistance to treatments. A vaccine is better than treatments in any case. There is a TB vaccine, the Bacillus Calmette / Guerin (BCG) vaccine, but it was introduced in 1921, a century ago, and isn't very effective.

The dwindling of funding for TB treatment has had the odd effect of reducing the number of people diagnosed with the disease -- for the simple reason that fewer diagnoses are being performed. Total funding for fighting TB is maybe about half that needed. In 2019, funding for TB research ran to only $901 million USD. In contrast, the US National Institutes of Health alone has set aside $4.9 billion USD for research on COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has demonstrated what can be done when there's a will to do it, showing that excellent research can be conducted rapidly and safely. Lessons from the pandemic can be applied to the fight against TB and other infectious diseases -- including wide-scale resource mobilization to the use of emerging technologies, such as messenger RNA and other platforms, to create vaccines. Advances in rapid and reliable diagnostics, advanced computation, sequencing and clinical-trial capacity for new vaccines and treatments can all be put to use for TB and other infectious diseases. There's no reason to wait another century to get a better TB vaccine.

COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[WED 03 NOV 21] IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (1)

* IMPROVING AQUACULTURE (1): As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("New Genetic Tools Will Deliver Improved Farmed Fish, Oysters, And Shrimp" by Erik Stokstad, 19 November 2020), aquaculture -- "seafood ranching", to put it simply -- is a growth business in the 21st century, and is benefiting from 21st-century genetic modification.

In 2018, off the coast of Norway, the blue-hulled vessel Ro Fjell pulled alongside "Ocean Farm 1" -- a steel-netted pen the size of a city block. The crew attached a vacuum hose to the pen, and began to pump adult salmon out of the water and into a tank below deck. They took the "catch" back to a shore-based processing facility owned by SalMar, a major salmon aquaculture company.

This was the debut of the world's biggest offshore fish pen, 110 meters (360 feet) wide, dwarfing the typical pens found in calmer coastal waters, Salmar's fish pen can handle 1.5 million fish -- with 22,000 sensors monitoring their environment and behavior -- with the end product shipped all over the world. The fish from Ocean Farm 1 are 10% larger than average, thanks to stable, favorable temperatures, while the deep water and strong currents meant they are free of sea lice, which are parasitic copepods, small crustaceans.

Only a half-century ago, the trade in Atlantic salmon was primarily regional affair that relied on fish caught in the wild. Today, salmon farming has become a global business that generates $18 billion USD in annual sales. Breeding has been key to the aquaculture boom. Ocean Farm 1's fish grow roughly twice as fast as their wild ancestors, and have been bred for disease resistance, along with other traits to optimize them for farm life. That process of improvement will reshape aquaculture by helping boost many species and their traits.

Genetic engineering has been slow to take hold in aquaculture; only one genetically modified (GM) species, a transgenic salmon, has been commercialized so far. However, companies and research institutions are boosting traditional breeding with genomic insights and tools such as gene chips, which speed the identification of fish and shellfish carrying desired traits. High-priority targets include increasing growth rates, plus resistance to disease and parasites. Breeders are also improving the hardiness of some species, which could help farmers adapt to a changing climate. Of course, there's work to enhance traits that please consumers, by breeding fish for higher quality fillets, vivid colors, or increased levels of nutrients. Morten Rye -- director of genetics at Benchmark Genetics, an aquaculture breeding company -- says: "There is a paradigm shift in taking up new technologies that can more effectively improve complex traits."

The fact that selective breeding of fish and shellfish is basically a new thing means there's a lot of room for improvement. In contrast, chickens, cattle, and other domestic animals have been selectively bred for a long time, meaning they're already highly optimized. Geneticist Ross Houston of the Roslin Institute -- an animal research organization, under control of the University of Edinburgh -- says: "There's a huge amount of genetic potential out there in aquaculture species that's yet to be realized," says

Along with the enthusiasm, however, there are cautions. Selective breeding, even boosted by genetic analysis, is not a problem with consumers; consumers are much more suspicious of any sort of GM, no matter how selective and restrained. There are also concerns that the focus in aquaculture research is on species with the most economic value, not on species important to feeding people in the developing world. Still, the mindset is full speed ahead. Guo Ximing -- a geneticist at Rutgers University, New Brunswick -- says: "The technology is amazing, it's advancing very quickly, the costs are coming down. Everybody in the field is excited." [TO BE CONTINUED]

NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[TUE 02 NOV 21] SECOND-GUESSING VIRUSES

* SECOND-GUESSING VIRUSES: As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Combating Future Viruses", 5 August 2021), the human immune system is a marvel of evolutionary engineering: when confronted by a new pathogen, it will adapt to it and fight back. However, it takes time to adapt, and the pathogen may overwhelm the host before it can organize a successful counterattack. That's why we have vaccines to safely prime the immune system before the attack -- by presenting it with harmless or lookalike versions of dangerous pathogens so that it may create antibodies and killer cells that will target the real thing.

The obvious problem with vaccines is that they can't necessarily protect against new strains the vaccines were not built to recognize, with new strains requiring modification of the vaccines. That costs time and so lives. As a result, techniques are being developed to identify and compensate for pathogen strains that haven't evolved yet. Using high-throughput DNA-sequencing technology and machine-learning systems, researchers can not only spot the variants of a virus in circulation, but get a forecast of how they are likely to change.

As a baseline for this effort, consider the work going on in the laboratory of Jesse Bloom, a virologist at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, in Seattle WA. Bloom and his team generate variants of coronavirus spike protein -- the molecule which such viruses use to attach themselves to cells they are about to infect -- in Petri dishes; they then scan through these to discern which mutations have what effects.

They call this scheme "deep mutational" scanning. It uses an array of yeast cells that have been genetically modified to express a part of the spike protein called the "receptor-binding domain (RBD)". As the yeast cells churn out their RBDs, there are inevitably slight deviations in their structures from that of the original wild-type virus. The researchers then test the RBDs from each yeast cell to see how tightly they bind to "ACE2" -- a receptor protein found on the surfaces of some human cells, to which the coronavirus attaches itself before entering those cells. If an RBD binds well, its underlying sequence is obtained, to see what mutations have occurred.

In the summer of 2020, the researchers spotted a mutation designated "N501Y" that appeared to provide a binding advantage. Only months later, it appeared in the "Alpha" SARS-CoV-2 variant. Bloom thinks it would be exaggerating to say that his lab "predicted" the Alpha variant, since they found a range of mutations of interest. Nonetheless, having a limited set of such mutations to focus on is useful for narrowing the field of research.

A Boston-based firm named Flagship Labs 77, or just "FL77", is taking advantage of that narrowing. FL77 is a spinout from Flagship Pioneering, a biotechnology incubator run by Noubar Afeyan, a venture capitalist. Moderna, a trailblazer of the mRNA-based technology that helped speed up the production of coronavirus vaccines, was also a Flagship Pioneering company, and Afeyan is its chairman.

FL77's want to use experimental data like that generated by Bloom's lab and feed it to a machine-learning system named "Octavia" to map out possible future mutations of pathogens -- which could be used to get a jump up on the development of vaccines and therapeutic antibodies before threats emerge. The company calls its system "Global Pathogen Shield". The firm isn't saying much about the details, but it's clear that machine learning is key -- since the possible numbers and variations of mutations lead to a "combinatorial explosion" that would defy a brute-force approach to forecasting.

Octavia's job is to spot patterns in the Petri-dish data -- for example, which of the millions of mutations tend to lead to tighter binding, and also which lead to poorer neutralization by antibodies -- and then to extrapolate those across all possible variants of spike. This leads to predictions about which mutations will defeat antibodies, and which will spread more easily.

Bloom, who is advising FL77, and who holds patents on deep mutational scanning, says the value of these kinds of predictions has become clear with the development of mRNA vaccines. They're not just quick to make, but quick to update. Their manufacturing process starts with the gene for the viral protein that the immune system is desired to attack, and ends with a strand of RNA that encodes that specific protein.

In COVID-19 vaccines, the target protein in question is spike. Given some anticipation of likely future mutations, a library of genetic codes could be established. At minimum, that would allow manufacturing to quickly adjust to a new variant; at best, people could get vaccines that would protect against variants that haven't emerged yet, but are likely to.

Gabriel Victoria -- an immunologist at Rockefeller University in New York -- thinks that deep mutational scanning can be taken farther. Along with designing antibodies and vaccines, it may also be useful for determining which parts of the virus which change only rarely, giving relatively constant targets for attack. That's tricky, however, since the function of proteins depends on their folded 3D configuration, which can change if other parts of the virus change, even if that protein hasn't itself changed.

However, one of the things about mRNA vaccines is that they can encode multiple variants of the same protein, and so it might be possible for one vaccine to cover all the threats. The problem with that approach is that it would be difficult to test that the immune system actually generates antibodies against all the variants. Immune systems don't work in a neatly predictable fashion; one of the problems with flu vaccines is that, even if they are designed to target a new flu variant, a subject's immune system may be stimulated to turn out antibodies remembered for an older variant.

The problem is a bit like weather forecasting: it's not perfectly reliable and is less reliable as the length of time envisioned by the forecast increases. However, it works well enough to generally predict what will happen tomorrow. Bloom says: "We don't have to be able to predict arbitrarily. We don't need to predict mutation in a decade. Just a radius of five to six mutations from where we are now. That's good enough."

COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP

[MON 01 NOV 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 43

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As reported by an article from REUTERS.com ("Southeast Asian States Announce New Strategic Pact With Australia" by Ain Bandial & Tom Allard, 27 October 2021), Australia seems determined to take an expanded role in the Asia-Pacific region -- as demonstrated this last week by an agreement with the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN)" to form a "comprehensive strategic partnership". Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued a statement:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

This milestone underscores Australia's commitment to ASEAN's central role in the Indo-Pacific and positions our partnership for the future. Australia supports a peaceful, stable, resilient, and prosperous region, with ASEAN at its heart.

END_QUOTE

The Australians announced in the wake of the agreement that the country would $154 million USD in projects in Southeast Asia on health and energy security, counter-terrorism, fighting transnational crime, plus hundreds of scholarships. Australia already has bilateral strategic partnerships of various levels with Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines, and Vietnam.

Morrison also reassured ASEAN that the trilateral AUKUS security pact recently signed by Australia, Britain, and the USA was not a threat to ASEAN. Morrison said: "AUKUS adds to our network of partnerships that support regional stability and security."

It's a bit puzzling that ASEAN would see AUKUS as a threat, although Asian countries could have reservations about collaborations among the English-speaking club. Obviously, Australia's real concern is China, and that also the major concern of ASEAN nations -- but then again, they also have concerns about provoking China. The Chinese have been working to obtain an agreement with ASEAN, with a virtual summit currently planned.

* There's not much to say about domestic politics for this last week. There's a lot going on, to be sure, but for the moment it's all inconclusive. One amusement did show up on Twitter, in response to a comment from Brigitte Gabriel, an RWNJ with a strong distaste for Muslims:


Brigitte Gabriel / @ACT Brigitte: I'll take conservative freedom-loving Hollywood any day! -- James Woods, Jon Voight, Kevin Sorbo, Tim Allen, Tom Selleck, the Quaid brothers, Ted Nugent, Dean Cain.

Steve / @Fire_In_Babylon: Better buy a VHS player then.


"Steve" is, like myself, nobody in particular on Twitter. I'm reminded of Andy Warhol's remark that, in the future, everybody will be famous for 15 minutes. This is sort of true on Twitter, but it's more like going viral for 15 minutes.

* As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Remote-First Work Is Taking Over The Rich World", 30 October 2021), the COVID-19 pandemic was a huge boost to working at home, using Zoom to stay in touch with the workplace. Just before the pandemic hit, Americans spent an average of 5% of their worktime at home; by May 2020, it had jumped to 60%.

As vaccination becomes more widespread, there's been some push to get people coming back to the office -- but it's becoming obvious that's not really going to happen. Wall Street banks, which had been boosting a return to the physical workplace, are now backtracking. People like working from home, with most of those that do saying they would like to spend at least half their work hours there.

It's not hard to figure out why. One is the lingering pandemic; although vaccination substantially reduces the chance of being infected with COVID-19 and greatly reduces the severity of the disease, there is still some vulnerability; having a bullet-proof vest doesn't mean anyone wants to get shot at. Commuting can also be a time-consuming and tiring pain -- workers feel that being forced to commute every day is equivalent to a 5% pay cut. In a time of labor shortages, workers have more clout over bosses.

A very interesting possible factor is that remote work is simply more efficient. Economists have been as inconvenienced by the pandemic as everyone else, but it's amounted to a fascinating real-world, macroscale economic experiment. Some studies show remote work is less efficient, but others take a more positive view. A study from Statistics Canada found that more than half of workers who shifted to working at home with the pandemic said they were as productive as before, while a third said they were more so.

One wonders if those who said they got less done simply found that they were too easily distracted at home. Those who say they were more productive found they were actually less distracted, not so inclined to gossip with colleagues or be sidetracked by the buzz of the office. It turns out that remote-work technology doesn't necessarily make communications and coordination more burdensome; well-designed remote-work systems can make it easier. Patent applications for and investment in work-from-home technologies are booming.

If remote work is a good deal, then why not get rid of the office? Only a few companies have gone that route. The number of people moving to cities such as Tulsa, in Oklahoma, which trying to become the global capital of remote work, remains small. A behavioral study says that one problem with remote work is that workers communicating on Zoom don't interact much with people outside their work teams, and so tend to not be tuned to the operation of the greater organization.

It may be good enough to have people come into the office part of the time so they can interact -- though some suggest managers need to be more pro-active than that, bringing people physically together to brainstorm new ideas. Companies will have to experiment, with different organizations coming up with different schemes. However, the office doesn't seem likely to go away any time soon.

* I'm a student of scams -- I don't pull off scams myself, but they intrigue me. I've known about coupon counterfeiting, but tended to think it was a marginal scam. As reported by an article from USATODAY.com ("Virginia Criminal Couponer Who Robbed $31.8 Million Used Funds For High-End Vacations" by Scott Gleeson, 26 October 2021), it turns out that there's big money in it.

A woman named Lori Ann Talens, of Virginia Beach VA, peddled $31.8 million USD worth of bogus coupons, using the money to fund high-end home renovations and vacations. When the authorities raided her home, they found stacks of bogus coupons, rolls of coupon paper, and coupon designs for more than 13,000 products on her computer. Talens used Facebook and Telegram to find coupon buyers, using encrypted communication services to deal with her customers and being paid in cryptocurrencies. Her coupons were very convincing, other than they often had ridiculously steep discounts, allowing products to be obtained almost for free.

The scheme came undone when one of the customers reported it to the Coupon Information Center (CIC) -- a group that deals with coupon fraud. The CIC then bought coupons from Talens, verified that they were counterfeit, and alerted the Postal Inspection Service. She ended up pleading guilty to mail, wire, and health care fraud, and was sentenced to 12 years in prison. Her husband, Pacifico Talens, got 7 years. "Boo-hoo!"

PREV | NEXT | COMMENT ON ARTICLE
BACK_TO_TOP
< PREV | NEXT > | INDEX | GOOGLE | UPDATES | CONTACT | $Donate? | HOME