DayVectors

* 23 entries including: 5th information revolution (series), Arab muddle (series), Chernobyl smoulders, viral gain of function controversy, measles undermines immunity, plus relativistic stars & rogue planets.

[FRI 31 DEC 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (9)

* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (9): Even as vacuum-tube computers were becoming established, the vacuum tube headed for decline. One of the first "solid-state" devices, the selenium rectifier, had been invented before the war, with the conflict leading to further research along such lines. That led to the invention of the "point-contact transistor" by William Shockley, John Bardeen, and Walter Brattain at Bell Labs in 1947. It was a crude, not very workable device, with Shockley refining it to introduce the first solid-state "bipolar junction transistor (BJT)" in 1951.

The original BJT was made mostly of the semiconductor germanium, though silicon would eventually displace germanium. They are both "valence-4" atoms, forming regular crystals in which each atom has four connections to its neighbors in a nice neat tetrahedral arrangement. As the name implies, these semiconductors don't conduct electricity very well -- but if a trace of a valence-5 atom like phosphorus is distributed or "doped" through the crystal lattice during crystal formation, each phosphorus atom contributes a "spare" electron to the lattice, and its conductivity increased. The more phosphorus, the greater the conductivity. The crystal is now an "N-type" semiconductor.

In an inverse fashion, if a valence-3 atom like boron is introduced into the crystal during formation, each boron atom leaves a deficit of an electron or a "hole" in the lattice. As it turns out, electrons can jump from one hole to another, and so the boron also increases the conductivity, proportional to the boron concentration. The crystal is now a "P-type" semiconductor. It should be noted that current flows faster in N-type semiconductors than P-type semiconductors.

Form a crystal in which one half is P-type and the other half is N-type, then electrons from the N-type half diffuse into the holes of the P-type half. This sets up a "barrier potential" across the "PN junction" that blocks further diffusion of the charge carriers. Set up a voltage across the crystal so that more electrons are driven into the P-type half, the barrier potential just gets bigger, and no current flows -- it's pushing "uphill" against the barrier potential. Reverse the voltage and current flows readily -- it's pushing "downhill" on the barrier potential. This a semiconductor diode, a device through which electricity flows only one way.

Now make a three-section crystal, with N-type semiconductor at both ends and a relatively thin P-type section in the middle. This is an NPN BJT. It has three leads -- one to the N-type "collector", which "collects" current; one to the N-type "emitter" on the other end, which "emits" current; and one to the P-type "base". As with the diode, changing the voltage across the base-emitter junction controls whether current flows through the base or not. If the voltage allows current to flow across that junction, then current from the collector also flows readily through the base.

The voltage across the base-emitter junction controls the current through the transistor. Incidentally, there are also NPN BJT transistors, with the control voltage and current flow reversed -- they are slower than PNP BJT transistors, but can be used along with them to good effect. In any case, BJT transistors can be used in analog amplifier and power circuits, but they can also be used as switches, either being set to full ON or full OFF to generate a digital 1 or 0 signal.

Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain would share the Nobel Prize in 1956 for the invention of the BJT. However, at the time transistors were much more expensive than vacuum tubes, and their impact was limited. Fortunately, the transistor was being rapidly refined, and also leading to device integration -- that is, more than one transistor and other components fabricated together. The first "integrated circuit (IC)" was fabricated by Jack St. Clair Kilby at Texas Instruments, being announced in 1959. It was based on germanium; it only had five components and was something of a lab "kluge", being pieced together, but it pointed the way to something better.

Shockley had left his position at Bell Labs in 1956 to start up his own semiconductor company, and attracted a lot of talent because he was a genius. He was also very unpleasant to work for, and so a group of his people -- he called them the "Traitorous Eight" -- left to start their own company, Fairchild Semiconductor. Following Kilby's integrated circuit, Robert Noyce of Fairchild came up with a much more practical IC design, derived from fabrication concepts devised by his colleague Jean Hoerni and others.

Noyce's IC was built on a silicon "wafer" by a process somewhat like silk-screen patterning. Repeated cycles of masks, along with vapor deposition of dopants and creation of insulating patterns of silicon dioxide glass, built up components, with a final masking cycle laying down metal traces. By 1962, both TI and Fairchild were selling ICs commercially -- both for analog and digital applications. The digital BJT technology was known as "transistor-transistor logic (TTL)", and it would remain the basis of digital design through the 1960s and 1970s. At the outset, the level of integration was very low: a chip a fifth of a centimeter in size would have about a dozen components. Nonetheless, TTL was a huge jump forward in computer design. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 30 DEC 21] CHERNOBYL REVISITED

* CHERNOBYL REVISITED: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Nuclear Reactions Are Smoldering Again At Chernobyl" by Richard Stone, 5 May 2021), on 26 April 1986, Reactor #4 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in Ukraine exploded. The result was a radioactive mess, and -- as discussed here in 2015 -- led to a long-term control and cleanup effort.

As it turns out, the reactor appears to be regaining some life, with fission reactions smoldering again in uranium fuel masses buried deep inside the mangled reactor hall. Neil Hyatt, a nuclear materials chemist at the University of Sheffield in the UK, says: "It's like the embers in a barbecue pit."

Sensors are tracking a growing number of neutrons, indicating fission processes at work. The count is increasing only slowly, so there's no immediate problem, but it hints that there may be one some years down the road. Ukrainian scientists are now trying to determine whether the reactions will fade out on their own, or demand interventions to head off another accident.

There have long been worries about the broken reactor going critical again. When Unit Four reactor's core melted down, uranium fuel rods, their zirconium cladding, graphite control rods, and sand dumped on the core to try to extinguish the fire melted together into a lava -- which flowed into the reactor hall's basement rooms and hardened into slag, known as "fuel-containing materials (FCM)". They contain about 170 tonnes of irradiated uranium, 95% of the original fuel.

The concrete-and-steel sarcophagus known as the Shelter, set up a year after the accident to house Unit Four's remains, allowed rainwater to seep in. Water slows, or "moderates", neutrons, and so enhances their odds of striking and splitting uranium nuclei; as a result, heavy rains would sometimes send neutron counts soaring. After a downpour in June 1990, a "stalker" -- a scientist at Chernobyl who is willing to venture into the "hot zone" -- dashed in and sprayed gadolinium nitrate solution, which absorbs neutrons, on an FCM that seemed to be on the track towards going critical.

Several years later, the plant installed gadolinium nitrate sprinklers in the Shelter's roof -- but the spray won't penetrate some of the basement rooms. Chernobyl officials assumed the risk would fade when the massive "New Safe Confinement (NSC)" was slid over the Shelter in November 2016. The NSC was designed to seal off the Shelter so it could be stabilized, and eventually dismantled. The NSC also keeps out the rain, and since it went into service, neutron counts in most areas in the Shelter have been stable or are declining.

However, they have been edging up in a few spots, almost doubling over four years in room 305/2, which contains tonnes of FCMs buried under debris. Nobody's exactly sure why it's happening; ironically, it may be because the room has been drying out, with the removal of moderation somehow enhancing fission through some indirect process. The lack of understanding does not inspire confidence that the problem is about to go away. Hyatt says, as the room continues to dry, the worry is that "the fission reaction accelerates exponentially, leading to "an uncontrolled release of nuclear energy."

It's not like there could be anything like the 1986 event, but it might fill the NSC up with radioactive dust, making ultimate disposal even trickier. Dealing with the threat is Room 305/2 is problematic, since radiation levels there make installing sensors very difficult -- and spraying gadolinium nitrate on the nuclear debris there wouldn't work, since it's entombed under concrete. One idea is to send in a robot that would drill holes in the concrete and insert boron cylinders, that would absorb neutrons and prevent the FCM from going critical.

Room 305/2 is not the only worry; there are two other areas where the FCMs could go critical and demand enhanced monitoring. In addition, radiation and high humidity are breaking down the FCMs, turning them from concrete into sand -- generating more radioactive dust while doing so. Ukraine has long intended to remove the FCMs and store them in a geological repository. With help from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, officials hope to have a plan later in 2021. It promises to be a challenging job.

[WED 29 DEC 21] ARAB MUDDLE (5)

* ARAB MUDDLE (5): There was a time, a decade ago, that Islamists were often seen as the future of the Arab world, by both friends and foes alike. Friends saw Islamists as a breath of fresh air, interesting in running a government for the people; foes thought they would just become dictators in their own turn.

Islamism had long been repressed. The Muslim Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, was officially "banned but tolerated" -- allowed to perform charitable work while being kept mostly out of politics. Algeria endured a vicious civil war in the 1990s after the government nulled an Islamist victory at the polls. Hafez al-Assad flattened much of the city of Hama in 1982, killing thousands, to crush an Islamist revolt.

The repression honed a dedicated and patient cadre of Islamists, who waited for the opportunity to act. The repression had created movements like the Muslim Brotherhood, with rigid, secretive hierarchies that were fundamentally anti-democratic. Many Islamists had spent much of their lives in exile, with the result that they were out of touch with those they wanted to lead. The Arab Spring gave them the opportunity to act, but they overestimated the extent of their popular support -- though it would take time for them to discover their error.

When Egypt held its first free parliamentary elections in 2011 and 2012, the Muslim Brotherhood surged to victory, with its Freedom & Justice party winning 44% of the seats, a plurality. It then broke a promise not to field a presidential candidate and won that election, too, if only by three points.

Some Brotherhood supporters wish they hadn't won the presidential election. Muhammad Morsi, the only freely elected president in Egypt's history, was never meant to hold the job. He stepped in after the army disqualified the Islamists' preferred candidate, with some jokers calling Morsi a "spare tire". He was incompetent at the job. He alienated liberals by declaring his decisions above judicial review; he infuriated the army by attending a rally where clerics urged Egyptians to join a jihad in Syria; and he lost public confidence by displays of ineptitude. He once reversed a set of controversial tax increases, well after midnight, in a Facebook post.

Of course, not all of his problems were of his own making. The army, security services, and courts conspired to bring him down. Police were largely invisible in early 2013 -- resulting in high levels of crime -- only to make an abrupt return after the coup that deposed Morsi. Nonetheless, many Egyptians were happy to see the back of him.

In Palestinian Gaza Hamas, the Islamist group in charge there, has become corrupt and authoritarian: "Fatah with beards", its detractors call it, referring to the much-detested nationalist faction that runs the West Bank. The Islamist taint of many Syrian rebels helped drive minorities to throw in their lot with the Assad regime. The only Islamist party to emerge with its reputation intact, Tunisia's Ennahda, is best known for ceding power in 2014 after a series of assassinations, saving Tunisia's struggling democracy -- at least for the moment.

Today, the only places under control of Islamists are not states: Hamas in Gaza and Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), a jihadist group that holds a chunk of north-west Syria. Elsewhere they are again on the defensive, with their support eroding away. There is no prospect of an Islamist resurgence, their experiments at governing suggest they are like a dog chasing a car: if the dog catches the car, it can't drive. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 28 DEC 21] GAIN OF FUNCTION?

* GAIN OF FUNCTION? As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("The Shifting Sands Of Gain-Of-Function Research" by Amber Dance, 27 October 2021), there's been controversy over alleged "gain of function (GOF)" research in the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

The GOF story got rolling in 2012, when two research groups announced that they had tweaked an avian influenza virus, using genetic engineering and directed evolution, until it could be transmitted between ferrets. There was considerable alarm over this and similar experiments. But the issue became particularly politicized in the United States. US funding agencies, which also support research abroad, eventually imposed a moratorium on gain-of-function research with pathogens while they devised out new protocols to assess the risks and benefits.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought GOF research back to center stage. Most virologists say that the coronavirus probably emerged from repeated contact between humans and animals, potentially in connection with wet markets in Wuhan, China, where the virus was first reported. However, a faction of scientists and politicians still make a case for a lab origin, demanding an investigation of the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), where related bat coronaviruses have been extensively studied, to determine if SARS-CoV-2 came out of WIV. Officials there say no, it didn't, and the Chinese government says that's the end of the matter, as far as they're concerned.

In the USA, concerns remain active. One of the big problems is that there isn't a precise definition of what "gain of function" really is. Gerald Keusch -- associate director of the National Emerging Infectious Diseases Laboratories at Boston University in Massachusetts -- says: "What we mean by the term depends on who's using the term."

Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has made a great fuss over a 2017 paper from researchers at WIV, describing research that had been supported by the US the National Institute of Allergy & Infectious Diseases (NIAID). The researchers genetically grafted spike proteins from eight different, naturally occurring coronaviruses onto another coronavirus from the wild, known as "WIV1". They found that these chimeras could infect monkey kidney cells or human cells in petri dishes, using the same gateway -- the widely-expressed ACE2 receptor -- that is used by SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2.

Big deal. There was nothing to connect the chimeras to the COVID-19 outbreak, since all they did was shuffle around existing mechanisms from known coronavirus strains as an investigation, and WIV1 was already capable of infecting human cells via ACE2. NIAID supported the research, even though there were restrictions on GOF experiments at the time. No harm was seen in the effort.

A "gain of function" simply means that a microorganism has gained a function, any function -- as compared to a "loss of function", in which a microorganism loses a function. GOF experiments have been done for a long time in bacteria, though viruses weren't subjects of such experiments until 2012. For almost a decade, virologists have been regularly fiddling with viral genes, sometimes enhancing transmissibility or virulence, but typically in animal viruses that pose no threat to humans.

The problem arises when GOF experiments are performed on dangerous human pathogens like the Ebola virus, influenza virus, or coronavirus. In 2016, the US "National Science Advisory Board for Biosecurity (NSABB)", which provides recommendations for safety in bioscience experiments, issued the term "gain-of-function research of concern (GOFROC)" as a label for experiments that were judged risky. The next year, 2017, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) adopted this approach when it devised its framework for reviewing grants on pathogens with pandemic potential.

That hardly settled matters, however. More recently, there was a fuss over disclosure of 2018 research at WIV that enhanced the virulence of WIV1 in mice. That research also has no visible connection to the pandemic, and also concerns about the failure of HHS to publicly release internal deliberations on GOFROC work. In addition, although the Chinese government has long taken biosecurity seriously, a comprehensive law on the matter was only passed recently.

Researchers still cannot really understand what the big fuss is about. Since the time when poliovirus was first grown in cultured cells, scientists have adapted viruses to live in culture, so they can be studied. A culture in a dish doesn't have an immune system, which means that pathogens altered to grow better in such an environment have not acquired any improved ability to penetrate the human immune system. In addition, there has been GOF research to allow pathogens that infect humans to infect lab subjects, such as mice, again for study. Very significantly, researchers have modified viruses to create vaccines; the COVID-19 shots from both Oxford–AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson are based on adenoviruses harmless to humans that were modified to produce the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.

Even experiments that drift into GOFROC territory have a clear basis. One of the investigations that set off the GOF controversy to begin with was a set of studies on a strain of avian influenza known as "H5N1". People sometimes catch it from poultry, and it can be dangerous, but humans don't typically transmit the virus to each other. Researchers wanted to know what it would take to make that happen. Angela Rasmussen -- a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan Vaccine and Infectious Disease Organization in Saskatoon, Canada -- says: "That's the kind of question you can only answer with a gain-of-function experiment."

Teams in the United States, Japan, and the Netherlands set out to test whether the bird virus could evolve into something that's transmissible between mammals, in this case ferrets -- which are vulnerable to infection by respiratory viruses, and are a common animal model in flu studies. Both specific and random mutations resulted in a strain that could allow the virus to spread from ferret to ferret. The virus strain was weakened and nonlethal, but the experiment raised considerable controversy, some critics saying the research shouldn't have been published.

Advocates of GOFROC research on coronaviruses believe that hunting for mutations that might make SARS-CoV-2 more dangerous could be very important in devising vaccines that stay a step ahead of the virus. However, in the current political climate, few researchers are willing to even propose research that might be judged as GOF -- lest they be attacked by Rand Paul. All they can do is wait for better days.

[MON 27 DEC 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 51

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Russia is currently massing forces on the borders of Ukraine, leading to fears Russian President Vladimir Putin plans an invasion. As discussed in an article from REUTERS.com ("No Walkover", 21 December 2021), the difficulty with that scenario is that it is hard to see what Putin could gain that would be worth the cost.

Western military analysts judge that Ukraine's army is better trained and equipped than in 2014, when Russia captured the Crimean Peninsula without a fight, and highly motivated to defend the country's heartland. Ben Hodges -- a retired US lieutenant general now, with the Center for European Policy Analysis -- says:

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Hodges says that the Russians might push south and west from Ukraine's Donbas region, which is already under the control of pro-Russian forces, to link up to annexed Crimea and the Black Sea. However, even that limited objective would entail high Russian casualties.

Siemon Wezeman -- an arms specialist at the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute -- said the ferocity of resistance to any invasion would dwarf anything Russia had faced in previous military operations in Chechnya in the 1990s or in its short war with Georgia in 2008. Wezeman says:

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Ukrainian intelligence believes that about 92,000 Russian troops have gathered near its borders, while the US says a force as large as 175,000 could come as early as January. The Russians say they are not menacing Ukraine, saying that they are instead being menaced by Ukraine's growing ties with NATO.

The Ukrainians are clearly outgunned. Russia's army of 280,000 is about twice the size of Ukraine's, and its total armed forces of 900,000 are more than four times greater. Ukraine's current defense budget is only a tenth that of Russia's. The Ukrainians would be hard-pressed to defend themselves from Russian air power, and would be very vulnerable to Russian electronic warfare.

However, Ukrainian forces are indeed highly motivated, and even if they are isolated, they are likely to fight stubbornly. In addition, the Ukrainians could distribute arms to citizens to fight a Russian occupation. Hodges says:

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Of course, it is not always clear what Putin is thinking in this matter. The Russians have said they are concerned about Ukraine joining NATO, but they also have misgivings about Ukrainian democratization -- which sets a bad example, so Putin thinks, for his own subjects.

Exactly what the US and Europe will do if Putin really does charge into Ukraine is unclear -- of course, being deliberately kept unclear, to introduce uncertainty into Putin's calculations. The US has supplied light Javelin anti-armor missiles to Ukraine, and it's easy to think given the Ukrainians other, possibly more significant, weapons. It is very likely the Ukrainians are getting immediate access to US satellite intelligence. Stay tuned.

* In a very surprising move, Donald Trump came out emphatically in favor of vaccination against COVID-19, even doing a good job of shutting down notorious Rightbot troll Candace Owens on the matter. Whether that sets up dissonance among the Right remains to be seen. It is an interesting question as to why Trump came out emphatically in favor of vaccination. He does things entirely from calculation of his self-interests -- so it seems he's decided that fighting COVID-19 is in his interests.

It appears that Trump has been thoroughly rattled by the January 6 Committee's probe into the Capitol riot, being particularly disturbed by the fact that nearly all the people who were kissing up to him while he was president are ratting on him. Well duh, of course they are: under legal threat, very few are going to try to protect Donald Trump. He wouldn't protect them, after all -- Trump throws people under the bus without a second thought.

Is Trump beginning to realize how much trouble he's in? That may lead to more surprising turnarounds, with Trump attempting to polish up his bad reputation. I was thinking after he left office that he would be wisest to skip the country, but it doesn't appear he's seriously thought of it. He may be giving it more thought now.

Incidentally, it does appear that the pandemic wars are shifting. The trolls aren't claiming as much as they did that COVID deaths are being overcounted, or trying to blame China for the pandemic. The first is flatly not true, they're likely being undercounted, and the second goes nowhere even if it's true. The COVIDiots are not really in a strong position; they're peddling a fantasy, and it can only get weaker over time.

One Jesse Watters, another Rightbot troll, advocated rhetorical "ambush" tactics to use against Dr. Anthony Fauci, the US government's chief health expert for the pandemic, saying that his listeners needed to score a "kill shot" on Dr. Fauci, adding that if they did them: "Boom, he is dead."

It was completely obvious from the context that Watters was speaking metaphorically, but he chose the most violent metaphor he could find. Dr. Fauci has been repeatedly threatened and has protection; he suggested that Watters be "fired on the spot", though added that FOX News was unlikely to do so. FOX News officials indeed said that Watters wasn't really advocating violence -- making no apologies for the pointedly vicious choice of words. Nonetheless, FOX Rightbots may be a bit more cautious in their wording in the future, at least assuming that FOX has any capability for embarrassment.

* In further Twitter adventures, I'm becoming more cognizant of how to use hashtags. The first impulse is to use popular, particularly trending, hashtags -- which is a good thing, but if I want retweets, it becomes more of a question of finding specialized hashtags that, even if only a small component of Twitter uses them, I have a good chance of getting an automatic retweet. There is clearly something of a magic art in finding out what those specialized hashtags are.

All I really need is the Twitter search box to see who is picking up on a particular hashtags. I haven't found other tools that are of much use -- though I did pick up the website DISPLAYPURPOSES.com, which allows me to enter a search hashtag, and get a prioritized list of related hashtags. It's oriented towards Instagram users, but I figure it works as well for Twitter.

One problem that I ran into posting my ads on Twitter was with TinyURL. Sometimes the link to an ebook is very long-winded, and I need to use a URL compactor to handle it -- but I recently found out, to my unpleasant surprise, that the short URLs I got from TinyURL were sometimes sending me to a clickbait advertising page instead of my ebook. I don't really know what was going on there, but the bottom line was: no more TinyURL.

After some puzzling around, I thought that the solution might be simple. Twitter does URL compacting on the fly, and I got to wondering if I could get my compacted URLs from Twitter. It turned out to be easy. I could just tweet a URL -- say, "https://displaypurposes.com/" -- and then copy the link from the tweet, to get for example, "https://t.co/Ivk4RFyBHl". I don't think I have to worry about my Twitter compacted URLs getting hijacked.

In other trivia, Christmas morning I was checking my email, and noticed an email from the Steam Windows gaming site offering Christmas bargains. One was for a game titled GARFIELD KART, for $1.49 USD. I like racing games; I checked the reviews on Steam, which indicated GARFIELD KART was not any work of genius -- it was obviously a clone of MARIO KART -- but it was fun. Well OK, at $1.49 USD, why not? I bought it, downloaded it, and gave it a shot. Yeah, it was fun.

I've been slowly accumulating games on my Windows TV PC -- it's been opportunistic, I haven't been trying to pile up games, but I see something interesting sometimes and buy it. I recently got a 256GB flash drive for the PC, and moved my games over to it; they're a bit over 50GB right now. Alas, I don't have a lot of time to play, but at least I have a selection now when I do.

[FRI 24 DEC 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (8)

* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (7): Computers were publicly visible in the 1950s, but there weren't many of them, and they were of no great importance in the broader scheme of things. The biggest advance of information technology in the 1950s was the rise of broadcast television.

Broadcast TV technology had actually been ready to go just before World War 2, but was sidelined by the conflict. There was some work during the war to developed TV-guided flying bombs; the technology was too immature to make them practical. After the war, TV broadcast began to build up steam, becoming established during the 1950s. In the USA, the system was almost entirely commercial, being divided up among the "big three" networks: CBS (Columbia Broadcasting System), NBC (National Broadcasting Company), and ABC (American Broadcasting Company).

In many other countries, the state established TV broadcasts. As with movies, there was an element of censorship in government control of broadcast networks, and in authoritarian states they were heavily used for state propaganda. At the outset, as with radio before the war, programming was generally live, along with use of TV cameras scanning film reels. That left something to be desired, but the introduction of TV still did much to take viewers away from the movie theaters. Hollywood didn't want to release major movies for TV broadcast, and only started to do so from 1956.

By the end of the 1950s, TV had become less reliant on live programming, due to the introduction of the studio videotape recorder. Color TV was also introduced, though color TVs were not common at that time, and most programming was broadcast in black and white.

The telephone remained in itself pretty much the same technology as had been around before the war, with the rotary-dial phone connecting through automatic switching systems. However, the telephone's reach was being steadily extended. The first trans-Atlantic phone cable went into operation in 1956; it only had 36 channels at the outset, and making an international call was expensive. More importantly, the 1950s saw the spread of microwave telephone relay systems -- based on transportable relay systems used in World War 2 -- reducing the need for long-distance cables. Along with voice communications, they also carried TV programming, for distribution to local stations. Networks of microwave towers sprung up during the decade.

Broadcast radio advanced in the 1950s through the introduction of frequency modulation (FM). It was much less prone to interference than AM radio -- for one thing, if a stronger FM broadcast signal ran into a weaker one, the stronger signal would predominate; under AM, both could be heard, one louder than the other. It also operated at a shorter wavelength band, with channels having wider bandwidth than AM, and so in principle better sound quality.

FM was really one of the few wireless innovations of the decade, the technology not being any leap ahead of that available in World War 2. Radar systems were not much advanced, either. The military did make advances in guided-missile technology, notably for air-to-air and air-to-surface missiles (AAM / SAM) -- the US developing a "semi-active radar homing (SARH)" target seeker for the Sparrow AAM that homed in on radar reflections off a target, and a heat-seeking seeker for the Sidewinder AAM. The original Sidewinder heat-seeker used a simple heat sensor seeing through a spinning, patterned disk that yielded an average thermal value of a scene, with the analog control system of the missile adjusting the missile's flight path towards the maximum average value.

There was also a push for guidance systems for intercontinental ballistic missiles to allow them to fly halfway around the world and still be able to hit a city. The big advance was gyro systems that floated on a gas layer. However, the control electronics were still primitive -- and going to remain so, as long as vacuum tubes were the bedrock of electronics technology. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 23 DEC 21] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: As reported by JANES.com ("Nammo Readies SFRJ For Initial THOR-ER Test-Firing In 2022" by Robin Hughes, 8 December 2021), Norwegian defense manufacturer Nammo is now working toward a flight test in early 2022 of the company's new solid-fuel ramjet (SFRJ) motor with the US Navy's Tactical High-speed Offensive Ramjet for Extended Range (THOR-ER) missile propulsion technology demonstrator.

A solid-fuel ramjet features a solid-fuel plug that is gradually vaporized, to generate a fuel-air mixture that is then burned. Models of the THOR-ER demonstrator suggest it is based on the US Navy Standard SAM, but with a ramjet front end -- very likely related to Nammo's ramjet-powered artillery rounds.

The effort is being conducted in association with the US Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division (NAWCWD) and the Norwegian Defense Research Establishment (FFI) -- and it is being funded by the US Navy, US Allied Prototyping Initiative (API), the Norwegian Ministry of Defense, and Nammo.

The THOR-ER program was launched in 2019 as a US-Norwegian collaboration "to co-operatively develop and integrate advancements in solid-fuel ramjet technologies into full-size prototypes that are affordable, attain high-speeds, and achieve extended range, culminating in flight demonstrations in operationally relevant conditions". The effort "will also consider potential US and Norwegian co-production opportunities".

* As discussed in an article from THE SAN DIEGO UNION-TRIBUNE ("Navy Commissions $525M Warship in San Diego" by Phillip Molnar, 10 May 2021), the US Navy has now commissioned the USS MIGUEL KEITH, a LEWIS B. PULLER-class Expeditionary Sea Base (ESB).

An ESB is a support ship, a central element of the critical infrastructure that provides logistical support for the deployment of forces and supplies. ESBs can be used for a variety of military operations, such as warfare, counter-piracy and humanitarian support. The ships were originally called "Mobile Landing Platforms (MLP)" and the MLP "Afloat Forward Staging Base (AFSB)". The design of these ships is based on the ALASKA-class crude oil carrier -- built by General Dynamics National Steel and Shipbuilding Company (NASSCO) -- and they look like tankers.

The KEITH was built by GD NASSCO, and took about two years to construct. It has a crew of about 100 sailors and 44 civilian mariners. It features a flight deck capable of handling helicopters of any size, and even USMC F-35B "jumpjets". Its propulsion system consists of twin screw diesel engines -- including a medium-speed diesel main engine, and a 24-megawatt diesel-electric plant. The vessel can travel more than 17,600 kilometers (10,925 miles / 9,500 NMI) at 28 KPH (17 MPH / 15 KT).

General Dynamics NASSCO has contracts to build two more ESBs, with an option for a third. The Navy originally planned that the ships would operate as Merchant Marine vessels manned by civilians, but in 2020 the service said all expeditionary sea bases will be commissioned as warships, allowing them to get more in harm's way. The KEITH was named after Marine Lance Corporal Miguel Keith, who was killed in Vietnam 51 years to the day of the commission. The San Antonio native was killed when he was 18 and awarded the Medal of Honor for heroism. Keith's siblings, along with several other family members and friends, attended the commissioning either virtually or in-person.

* As discussed in an article from JANES.com ("US Navy, CENTCOM Seek Solutions For Stratospheric ISR Operations" by Carlo Munoz, 5 April 2021), the US Navy and the US Central Command (CENTCOM) are now investigating the use of long-endurance stratospheric platforms -- either balloons or solar-electric drones -- for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) operations.

The verbosely-titled "Strategic Command, Control, Communications, Computers & ISR (C4ISR) to Operationalize the Stratosphere (SCOS)" program will be led by CENTCOM and the US Naval Surface Warfare Center at Navy Base Crane in Indiana. The SCOS platform will feature artificial intelligence capabilities for mission management, and filtering the surveillance inputs from its sensors. It will be able to provide a "God's eye view" of a battlespace, as well as serve as a communications relay node. It would be able to substitute for space-based assets if they were taken out.

[WED 22 DEC 21] ARAB MUDDLE (4)

* ARAB MUDDLE (4): Things are bad in Lebanon. The story is similar elsewhere in Iran's sphere of influence. The World Food Program estimates that 12.4 million Syrians don't get enough to eat -- 60% of the population, twice the number in 2018. The price of staple food has similarly doubled; subsidized bread, the baseline foodstock, is of ever-declining quality, and Syrians stand in line for hours to get any of it. In the meantime Iraq, the world's sixth-biggest oil producer, generates barely half the estimated 30 gigawatts of electricity its citizens need during scorching summers. Billions of dollars spent on post-war reconstruction have disappeared into the pockets of corrupt officials.

Hizbullah leader Hassan Nasrallah says that all such problems are mostly the result of a Western "siege" -- a term he has become fond of over the last year. Even his opponents say he is a charismatic and persuasive speaker, but he has little of substance to offer. He originally endorsed anti-government demonstrations in 2019, but then changed direction, to defend the established order. He turned on the protesters, who numbered in the hundreds of thousands, from all parts of Lebanese society, claiming they were being manipulated by foreign embassies. To solve the crises, he tells his listeners to "look East" to Asian powers such as China, which are ready to pour billions into Arab economies, in spite of supposed interference from the USA.

The vision has little connection to reality. Sanctions on Lebanon are limited to companies and individuals, many associated with Hizbullah; there are no broad prohibitions on trade. America has not kept China out of the Middle East, or tried all that hard to do so. It is estimated that since 2005, China has invested $137 billion USD in Egypt, Jordan, and the six Gulf states. China has also signed $13 billion USD worth of deals in neighboring Israel. All of these countries are close American partners -- and though the Americans may not be happy with the situation, telling them not to take Chinese money would be neither appreciated nor effective. The real obstacle to Chinese investment in Lebanon is Lebanon itself: out-of-control corruption, wretched infrastructure.

Iraq struggles to attract non-oil foreign investment for much the same reasons. Sanctions may be a bigger issue in Syria, where America has banned many commercial transactions with the regime. Even there, though, Assad acknowledges that his biggest economic problem is Lebanon's financial crisis, which wiped out tens of billions of dollars of Syrian capital stashed in Lebanese banks. The West has persisted in humanitarian aid to the region. Barack Obama was criticized for not doing more in Syria -- but it appears he correctly understood that the USA could do nothing useful there, and that Russia and Iran, Assad's backers, were welcome to the place.

Hizbullah remains Israel's toughest Arab foe; the Israelis admit that another fight with the group would be painful. However, aside from occasional border clashes, it hasn't fought Israel in 15 years, and it is not in any position to do so now. A bankrupt country still in shock from the self-inflicted ruin of its capital is in no position to support a war.

Similarly, the Iraqi militias that fought America after 2003 claimed to be fighting a foreign occupier -- but now, the US maintains only a modest presence in Iraq, largely devoted to training, that is only there because the Iraqi government wants it there lest Islamic State rise again. The Americans remain there reluctantly, and have no illusions about the Iraqi regime. In Syria, Iran and its partners led a counter-revolution to shield a hereditary dictator whose regime was not particularly keen on resistance: the Assads haven't fought with Israel since 1973, and were discussing a peace treaty with Israel as late as 2020.

Resistance? There is only self-preservation. The countries are impoverished and the leadership has no very useful ideas. They do, however, have weapons, and that has been enough to preserve their grip on power. They are failed regimes, and have long been so, though they are worse off now, doing much to provoke resistance from Islamists. Unfortunately, the Islamists turned out to be just as bad.

* As a footnote, following the Iraqi parliamentary elections, CNN's Fareed Zakaria sounded an optimistic note. Yes, turnout was only 43%, but that's about the same as US midterm elections. There was little vote-fixing, and more significantly, it was the sixth peaceful transfer of power in modern Iraq. Democracy has taken some root in Iraq, with relatively free media and an increasingly independent judiciary.

Zakaria reported a senior Iraqi official telling him the election was "a political earthquake" -- the primary reason being that parties, largely Shiites, that had armed militias lost over half their seats in Parliament, being left with 20 seats out of 359. Sunnis, on the other hand, who had largely failed to vote in earlier elections because of their disaffection, came out in force.

Most significant of all, Moqtada al-Sadr -- the prominent Shiite cleric who once fought the American occupation -- has become a prominent political boss, working to support the government, and apparently willing to scale down his powerful militia force. In addition, although a Shiite, he pushes back on Iranian influence, and in fact Iran-leaning parties did not do well in the election.

The official told Zakaria that the firming of democracy in Iraq was due to two factors. First, after early false steps, the Americans worked to bring Iraqi Sunnis into the political process. Second, Iraq's defeat of the ISIS insurgency reinforced a national identity and gave Iraqis collective pride. Much remains to be done, corruption still being widespread -- but the official said Iraqis had nonetheless learned to talk out their differences in the political process, and to "compromise, compromise, compromise". [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 21 DEC 21] MEASLES AGAINST IMMUNITY

* MEASLES AGAINST IMMUNITY: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("How Measles Causes The Body To 'Forget' Past Infections By Other Microbes" by Eva Frederick, 31 October 2019), the measles virus is dangerous enough in itself. Two studies of blood from unvaccinated Dutch children who contracted measles now show how such infections can also compromise the immune system for months or years afterward, with the body "forgetting" immunity it had developed to other pathogens in the past.

The extent to which this "immune amnesia" increases illness and deaths from other infections isn't clear, but it gives greater urgency to making sure children are immunized against the disease -- all the more so because measles has been making something of a global comeback, thanks to under-vaccination and resistance from anti-vaxxers.

Population biologist Bryan Grenfell of Princeton University and his group had reported in 2015 epidemiological evidence of the immunosuppresive effect of measles, their study sifting through population data that showed mortality from other pathogens increases after a measles outbreak. Animal experiments have also suggested the measles virus impairs immunity.

Two research teams -- one under immunogeneticist Velislava Petrova of the Wellcome Sanger Institute in the UK, the other under Stephen Elledge of Harvard University -- decided to investigate the phenomenon more closely in humans. Both teams focused on a well-known cohort of children from an Orthodox Protestant community in the Netherlands whose parents had opted out of all vaccines for their children for religious reasons.

Michael Mina, a Harvard virologist who had also worked Grenfell's population study, teamed up with Elledge to inspect blood samples from 77 of the children before and after they became infected during a 2013 measles outbreak in the Netherlands. Tomasz Kula, a postdoc in Elledge's lab, had developed a technology named "VirScan" that enabled the team to test antibodies in the infected children's blood, matched with antibody targets representing most known human pathogenic viruses.

Before the children contracted measles, their blood contained antibodies to many common pathogens that they had encountered and defeated; that was a sign of health. After measles, the children lost, on average, about 20% of their antibody repertoire. Some on the outliers did much worse, losing more than 70% of their immunity to viral pathogens. There was no such loss in the controls: five un-immunized children who never contracted measles over the course of the study, as well as more than 100 other children and adults. They also saw no loss of antibodies in children who had been vaccinated against measles.

The loss of antibodies meant children who shouldn't be vulnerable to a disease were vulnerable. For example, a child who had gone through a bout of mumps, then got measles, could come down with mumps again.

To understand why this happened, Petrova's group did a different analysis of blood from the Dutch children. They found that measles infection reduced the diversity of memory B cells, which "remember" past infections and are quick to fight any recurrence. The virus killed off B cells specific to other pathogens, with new, measles-specific memory B's to replace them. Measles also decreased the diversity of another category of B cells: nonspecific "naive" B cells in the bone marrow, which sit in reserve to confront unfamiliar infections.

Mark Slifka, a prominent immunologist at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, was impressed by the studies, but says that their wider significance is unclear -- noting that immunity naturally fades as the body destroys some antibodies to keep their numbers in check: "Hopefully these families will be willing to continue to be involved with the researchers."

[MON 20 DEC 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 50

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The House Committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riot appears to have largely finished their data-gathering phase, and they are now starting to make waves. Last Monday, tough-minded Wyoming Representative Liz Cheney read a set of text messages to and from Mark Meadows that were sent on 6 January, when Meadows was Trump's chief of staff. The most interesting were between Donald Trump JR and Meadows:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

The Capitol riot, it seems, was not such a "nothing burger" as Trumpbots have made it out to be. It was also noted that Junior didn't have direct access to his dad. FOX News talking heads texted Meadows as well:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

These statements contradict what they were saying publicly at the time, for example Ingraham:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Blame it on Antifa! Yeah, sure. Adam Schiff, who is clearly organizing the investigation, said the committee also had text messages from Members of Congress, who were left unnamed for the moment. Meadows, having refused to comply with a subpoena, was cited for contempt of Congress in a House vote. It will be interesting to see how long it takes for him to be indicted -- maybe a week or two? We'll see.

The 1-6 Committee understands that Trump is supported by a human pyramid of enablers, and the only way to bring him down is to tear down the pyramid. They're taking on Trump enablers in and out of government, notably those at Fox News. Attacks on the committee from Republicans in authority have been muted -- partly because many GOP, including Mitch McConnell, want to see Trump go down, but also because those who defend Trump are fearful, knowing they're being targeted. The committee is moving along nicely.

Trump is clearly not happy about what is going on, issuing a statement under the title of "45th President of the United States":

BEGIN_QUOTE;

END_QUOTE

The Twitter commentary on this suggested Trump is feeling nervous. Of course, Trump saw no irony in his long-running persecution of Hillary Clinton, under the slogan of: "LOCK HER UP!" -- preferring instead to talk wild nonsense. In any case, things are going to get much more interesting in the new year.

* In closely parallel news, the House committee monitoring the Federal government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic released a report saying that the Trump Administration deliberately undermined the response to the pandemic with measures including the weakening of testing guidance and championing widespread "herd immunity". From emails and other released documents, the committee found that the previous administration ignored warnings about supply shortages, blocked public health officials from speaking publicly, and neglected the pandemic response to focus on the 2020 election. After the election, the focus shifted to the "Big Lie" that the election was stolen.

In one instance, Trump held a roundtable event at the White House in August 2020 with some of herd immunity's top proponents, the meeting having been organized by Scott Atlas, a radiologist who became a special adviser to Trump. In an email to Marc Short, Vice President Pence's chief of staff, former White House coronavirus response coordinator Deborah Birx described it as "a fringe group", adding:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Jay Butler, the deputy director for infectious diseases, told the committee that he was pressured by the White House to publish guidance for faith communities that "softened some very important public health recommendations", such as removing all references to face coverings, a suggestion to suspend choirs, and language related to virtual services.

The report leads to two questions:

• Will the House committee target those in the media, notably FOX News, who have spread pandemic disinformation?
  
  
• Will the committee in the end release a report recommending legal action against Trump?

It would seem that the Trump Administration will have to answer for a course of action, or maybe more accurately inaction, that helped kill hundreds of thousands of Americans. However, although it was monstrous, it's not easy to see that it was illegal. We'll have to wait and see.

* There's been considerable fuss over the fact that American employers have been having trouble finding workers -- and many employees have been quitting their jobs. According to an article from CNN.com ("How Millions Of Jobless Americans Can Afford To Ditch Work" by Allison Morrow and Anneken Tappe, 15 December 2021), the story went around on the Right that these problems were due to the excessive generosity of government aid during the pandemic. Young people were getting by just fine, so they didn't want to get jobs.

Data doesn't bear that out. The critical factor, it turns out, is early retirement. People have quit since the pandemic started for a number of reasons -- layoffs, health worries, child care issues, and various personal issues -- but most of those who don't want to go back to work have simply accelerated their retirements. Recently Nela Richardson -- chief economist of Automatic Data Processing, a US business services organization -- said the strong stock market along with soaring home prices "has given some higher income people options. We already saw a large portion of the Boomer workforce retiring. And they're in a better position now."

The jobs recovery picture is confusing because the unemployment rate is going down, but labor force participation isn't going back up at the same rate. Jared Bernstein -- a member of President Joe Biden's Council of Economic Advisers -- suggested that once "non-prime age" workers, meaning those over 55, are dropped from the metrics, a much clearer picture of how the labor recovery is doing emerges, having stripped out the retirement narrative. About 70% of the people who left the workforce during the pandemic were over 55.

The low unemployment then implies that younger workers are not having problems finding jobs, and are looking for them. Yes, a large of younger workers are quitting jobs, but they are doing so because they feel they have better opportunities, they can be choosy. They're not deadbeats. Aaron Sojourner -- a labor economist and professor at the University of Minnesota's Carlson School of Management -- commented:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

Yes, some companies have been raising wages, and some have been offering sign-up bonuses. Those that have taken such measures are better off in hiring than those that haven't, but hiring is still troublesome. Some retired people are starting to return to the workforce, and that's likely to improve as the pandemic gets under control, whenever that will be. However, they may find trying to compete with younger workers for jobs a challenge.

* I've pretty much stabilized my revived existence on Twitter, using hashtags to target ads for my ebooks. I haven't been getting a lot of sales, but I am getting impressions on the ads, which is more than what I was getting before. I also got a grand review on my ebook CLASSICAL CRYPTOLOGY, so that is something.

It turns out I don't really need any tools besides the Twitter search box to find hashtags -- if I enter one and it says "Trending", then I know I've got a good one. It's a little like googling, trying to come up with the best search terms. It's not getting much action, but I'm not expecting much, either.

[FRI 17 DEC 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (7)

* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (7): Another need that arose in early computers was for an "operating system (OS)" -- that is, a program to run the computer. At the outset, a computer was loaded with a program, typically written onto punchcards or paper tape, that was copied straight into memory, and then executed. Some "libraries" of routines were developed to give programs hardware-related functions, for example the ability to send output to a printer, with the routines loaded along with the program.

It soon became obvious that it might be better for the computer to be given a program, then store and execute it -- this being the origin of the modern OS. There was absolutely no standardization at the time, with everyone trying different things -- under the painful constraint that the memory capacities of the vacuum-tube computers of the era were, by modern standards, incredibly small.

One of the first operating systems to be recognized as such was developed by General Motors Research Laboratories. It helped lead to the first-generation "batch processing" operating systems -- "batch" meaning that such operating systems were given a queue of programs to run, for example written on stacks of punch cards, and then automatically ran them in sequence. Batch systems would be refined, and be normal for about two decades.

* Of course, with all the hype about the "giant electronic brains" of the era, the early computer scientists began to think about the prospects of giving computers more humanlike intelligence. One of the first efforts along this line was by Claude Shannon, who did work on the first chess-playing programs, publishing a paper on the idea in 1950.

More significantly, in that same year Alan Turing published a paper titled "Computing Machinery & Intelligence", in which he proposed a test to see if a computer could actually think. He called the test the "imitation game", but it became known, of course, as the "Turing test". Turing suggested that if we had a conversation with a computer and couldn't tell it from a human, then we could say that it was indeed a "machine who thinks".

The Turing test has been endlessly criticized since the publication of the paper, but Turing merely threw it out as a suggestion. He pointed out that there was really no agreed-upon definition of the term "think". His test was a safe bet -- after all, if we have a conversation with another human who is talking sense, then we believe that human thinks. Of course, not all humans talk sense, which only further muddies the water. Other tests could be suggested.

Turing's real goal in the paper was to leverage off his definition of "universal machines" -- in principle capable of carrying out any bounded procedure -- to show that it was impossible to show there was anything the human brain could do that a sufficiently powerful computer could not. The paper would generate a massive amount of discussion that is ongoing, which is apparently what Turing intended.

In 1952, the pioneering American computer scientist Arthur Samuel developed a checkers-playing program, though it would take him about two decades to come up with one that played well. In his work, he explored ways by which a computer could learn to play a better game, to coin the term "machine learning".

In 1955, the American researchers Allen Newell, Cliff Shaw, and Herbert Simon -- a computer scientist, a programmer, and political scientist respectively -- developed a program named "Logic Theorist" that performed problem-solving. In 1956, a groundbreaking workshop was conducted at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire by computer scientists John McCarthy and Marvin Minsky, in which the term "artificial intelligence (AI)" was publicly promoted for the first time.

In 1958, McCarthy introduced a computer language for AI research, named "Lisp" for "list processor". It was very different from FORTRAN, in particular featuring a lot of nesting using parentheses -- which led to its name being re-interpreted as "Lots Of Irritating Senseless Parentheses". It would, however, prove highly influential.

Roughly in parallel with the emergence of AI research, neurophysical research was determining how the brain's neurons worked, the pioneering research being by neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch and mathematician Walter Pitts during War II, with their work amplified after the war by neurophysiologist Donald Hebb. From the outset, there was work on electronic analogs to biological neural systems. In 1958, Cornell psychologist Frank Rosenblatt described a general scheme for a neural system, called a "Perceptron", that would also prove influential -- though it would take a long time for it to pay off. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 16 DEC 21] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for November included:

[03 NOV 21] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 2C / YAOGAN 32 x 2 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched from Jiuquan at 0743 UTC (local time - 8) to put two secret "Yaogan 32" payloads into orbit. They were apparently military surveillance satellites. The first pair of Yaogan 32 payloads were launched in 2018.

[05 NOV 21] CN TY / LONG MARCH 6 / SDGSAT 1 -- A Chinese Chang Zheng (Long March) 6 booster was launched from Taiyuan at 0219 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "SDGSAT 1" satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit. According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the SDGSAT 1 mission was "customized" for the UN's 2030 Agenda of Sustainable Development, which set 17 sustainable development goals and 169 targets when UN member states adopted the program in 2015.

SDGSAT 1 carried three Earth-observation instruments: one operating in thermal infrared, a low-light level sensor, and a color multispectral camera. The spacecraft's instruments obtained images with swaths as wide as 300 kilometers (180 miles), with global coverage every 11 days.

[10 NOV 21] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 2C / YAOGAN 35 x 3 -- A Long March 2D booster was launched from Xichang at 0300 UTC (local time - 8) to put the secret "Yaogan 35A/B/C" payloads into orbit. The three were apparently military surveillance satellites.

[09 NOV 21] JP UC / EPSILON / RAISE 2, SMALLSATS x 8 -- A JAXA Epsilon booster was launched from Uchinoura at 0055 UTC (next day local time - 9) to put the "Rapid Innovative Payload Demonstration Satellite (RAISE 2) demonstrator satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit.

RAISE 2 was the second in a series of small satellite missions that JAXA is sponsoring to research and develop systems and technologies for future missions. It followed the RAPIS 1 satellite, which launched aboard Epsilon in early 2019, with additional RAISE satellites planned for the future. RAISE 2 had a cubical shape and a launch mass of 110 kilograms (240 pounds). It carried six technology-validation experiments that were selected from proposals by educational and commercial organizations. The satellite was built by Mitsubishi Electric Corporation and had a design life of a year. Eight rideshare payloads were also on the flight, including four microsatellites and four CubeSats. The microsatellites included:

• Debris Removal Unprecedented Micro Satellite (DRUMS): a 62-kilogram (137-pound) spacecraft to test techniques for capturing pieces of space debris to remove them from the space environment. DRUMS deployed a small target subsatellite, with DRUMS maneuvering to catch it using a deployable boom.
  
  
• TeikyoSat 4 (Oururi): A 52-kilogram (114-pound) technology demonstrator for future small science satellites.
  
  
• HIBARI: A 55-kilogram (121-pound) to demonstrate an attitude-control system. It also collaborated with gravitational-wave observatories on Earth to observe candidate gravity-wave sources with an ultraviolet camera.
  
  
• Z-SAT: A demonstrator satellite from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries with a launch mass of 46 kilograms (101 pounds). It carried near- and far-infrared cameras to perform global temperature observations. It was a precursor to a monitoring constellation.

The CubeSats included:

• ASTERISC: A 3-unit (3U) CubeSat built by the Planetary Exploration Research Center at the Chiba Institute of Technology. It featured a piezoelectric sensor scheme to study debris and cosmic dust particles in the low Earth orbit environment.
  
  
• KOSEN 1: A 2U CubeSat from the Kochi National College of Technology, which deployed a long radio aerial to perform observations of the planet Jupiter.
  
  
• ARICA: A 1U CubeSat from Aoyama Gakuin University that carried a communications relay payload, linking it into the Globalstar and Iridium networks. It also carried a gamma-ray sensor.
  
  
• NanoDragon: A 3U demonstrator CubeSat from the Vietnam National Space Center (VNSC), flown in collaboration with Meisei Electric Company of Japan. Its payloads included an AIS receiver for ship tracking.

This was the fifth flight of the Epsilon booster, from first launch in 2013. It is a three-stage solid-fueled rocket designed for launching light payloads.

[11 NOV 21] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / SPACEX CREW DRAGON ISS 3 -- A SpaceX Falcon booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0203 UTC (previous day local time - 5), carrying a "Crew Dragon" space capsule on its third flight with a crew to the International Space Station. The crew included NASA astronauts Raja Chari and Thomas Marshburn, plus European Space Agency astronaut Matthias Maurer. It docked with the ISS Harmony module a day later.

[13 NOV 21] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK BATCH -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 1219 UTC (local time + 4) to put 53 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds).

[16 NOV 21] EU KR / VEGA / CERES -- A Vega booster was launched from Kourou in French Guiana at 0927 UTC (local time + 3) to put three CERES signals intelligence satellites for the French military. The three satellites each had a launch mass of 446 kilograms (983 pounds) and were built by Airbus Defense and Space and Thales Alenia Space.

The CERES program follows the "Essaim (Swarm)" and "ELectronic Intelligence by SAtellite (ELISA)" programs. Essaim was a set of four technology demonstrators for a signals intelligence constellation launched by an Ariane 5G+ in 2004. The satellites were based on the Myriade satellite bus and weighed 120 kilograms (264 pounds) each. They were deactivated in 2010. The four ELISA satellites were improved demonstrators, also based on the Myriade bus, launched on a Soyuz ST-A in 2011; they are still in operation.

[18 NOV 21] NZ / ELECTRON / BLACKSKY GLOBAL 10 & 11 -- A Rocket Labs Electron light booster was launched from New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 0138 UTC (next day local time - 13) to put the two "BlackSky Global" remote sensing satellite into orbit. The flight was nicknamed "Love At First Insight". The booster stage performed a safe splashdown in the ocean.

[20 NOV 21] CN TY / LONG MARCH 4B / GAOFEN 3-11 -- A Long March 4B booster was launched from Taiyuan at 2342 0151 (local time - 8) to put the "Gaofen (High Resolution) 3-11" civil optical remote sensing satellite into Sun-synchronous low Earth orbit.

Gaofen 11-03 was the third in a series of high-resolution optical imaging Gaofen 11 satellites, with the first launched in 2016 and the second in 2020. They were part of the Gaofen series, which aims to provide China with a global high-definition Earth-imaging capability for civil applications -- Gaofen means "high resolution"; the Gaofen constellation is unrelated to the smaller commercial Jilin 1 Gaofen satellites.

China launched the first member of the Gaofen constellation, Gaofen 1, in April 2013. Subsequent launches have added further capabilities, including high-resolution optical, multispectral and hyperspectral and radar imaging. Gaofen is operated by the state-owned China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC).

[20 NOV 23] US KIA / ROCKET 3.1 / STP 27AD2: A commercial small satellite launch vehicle developed by Astra made its second orbital launch attempt at 0616 UTC (local time - 5) from the Pacific Spaceport Complex on Kodiak Island, Alaska. It carried a non-deployable test payload for the US Space Force and the Space Test Program.

[22 NOV 21] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 4C / GAOFEN 3-02 -- A Long March 4C booster was launched from Jiuquan at 2345 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Gaofen (High Resolution) 3-02" civil radar remote sensing satellite into Sun-synchronous low Earth orbit.

The Gaofen 3 satellites are based on the CS-L3000B bus, built for a lifetime of up to eight years. They carry a synthetic aperture radar (SAR) payload. They are built and developed by the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), which is part of the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC). The Gaofen satellites are part of the China High-Resolution Earth Observation System (CHEOS). 23 have been launched to date.

[24 NOV 21] US-C VB / FALCON 9 / DART -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Vandenberg AFB at 0621 UTC (next day local time + 8) to put the NASA "Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, intend to see if an asteroid's path could be altered by collision.

It will encounter the asteroid Dimorphos and its moonlet Didymos, to collide with Didymos. Dimorphos is about 780 meters (2,560 feet), while is about 170 meters (560 feet) in diameter. Ten days before the kinetic impact, DART will release an Italian-built CubeSat named "LICIACube", which will image the impact and the far side of Dimorphos. Sixty minutes before impact, DART's single instrument, a camera named "Didymos Reconnaissance & Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO)" up to impact with the asteroid.

DART was to test new technologies during its cruise to the asteroid and its moon. This included the "NEXT-C" ion engine, based on the engine the Dawn probe used to fly to the asteroids Vesta and Ceres. DART also trialed a new compact high-gain antenna called the "Radial Line Slot Array" to send and receive data. In addition, a portion of the probe's solar array was equipped with reflectors and higher-efficiency solar cells to increase power generation.

The DART mission will be followed up by the European Space Agency's HERA mission in 2027, which will study the changed Didymos system and the altered Dimorphos moonlet.

[24 NOV 21] RU BK / SOYUZ 2-1B / PRICHAL -- A Soyuz 2-1b booster was launched from Baikonur at 1306 UTC (local time - 3) to loft the "Prichal / Uzlovoy" module to the International Space Station. It docked with the Nauka Multi-purpose Laboratory Module to be used as a docking port for visiting Russian vehicles.

The original design for the Russian Segment of the ISS called for a "Universal Docking Module (UDM)" to expand the Russian Segment's available docking ports for the addition of future modules. This module was canceled early in the ISS program due to budget issues. However, out of the UDM concept grew a new proposal for a "Nodal Module (NM)", which would provide the Russian Segment with expansion options since all of its docking ports were either in use or reserved for visiting spacecraft.

The node, named Prichal ("pier"), departed from earlier Russian notions of station design, which typically included a core module (which, in the case of ISS, is Zvezda) with an attached spherical docking compartment to which all other modules are docked. The problem with this design was that it makes the core module an irreplaceable part of the station, as all the other modules would have to be undocked from the core module for the core to be replaced. That made modularly updating the complex difficult.

The Node Module concept essentially separated the spherical docking compartment from the core module and made it into a standalone element. All station modules would then dock to the Node Module, the idea being that each module is then replaceable without having to undock them all.

It was originally planned that two Science & Power Modules (NEMs) would be docked to Prichal as part of an expansion of the Russian Segment, with a view to then one day separate from the ISS into a free-flying station. However, in April 2021, Roscosmos announced that the NEMs are no longer planned for the ISS and will instead form part of a new independent Russian space station for which a new Node Module would be built. Prichal adds little capability to the ISS.

Prichal was a spherical module featuring six docking ports, two axial and four radial. Prichal also included sockets for Lyappa arms. These are mini robotic arms used to relocate modules from one docking port to another, as future modules arriving at Prichal would dock to the nadir port as docking to any of the axial ports would present issues for approach corridors and rotational loads. It was mounted on a modified Progress freighter capsule for launch.

[24 NOV 21] CN JQ / KUAIZHOU 1A / SHIYAN 11 -- A Chinese Kuaizhou 1A (KZ1A) booster was launched from Jiuquan at 2341 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Shiyan 11" demonstrator satellite into Sun-synchronous orbit.

[25 NOV 21] RU PL / SOYUZ 2-1B / EKS 5 -- A Soyuz 2.1b booster was launched from Plesetsk at 0809 UTC (local time - 4) to put the "EKS 5" missile-launch early warning satellite into orbit. It was designated "Cosmos 2552".

[26 NOV 21] CN XC / LONG MARCH 3B / CHINASAT 1D -- A Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 1630 UTC (next day local time - 8) to put the "Chinasat 2E" AKA "Zhongxing 2E" geostationary comsat into space. The satellite was built by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and based on the DFH 4 bus, with a design life of at least 10 years.

The ChinaSat (Zhongxing) series of satellites, are specifically designed for military communications, with the first of this type launched in 2011. The ChinaSat 1 AKA Feng Huo 2 and ChinaSat 2 AKA Shentong series of military comsats have different function, with ChinaSat 1 used for tactical communications providing Chinese forces with secure data and voice transmission via C-band and UHF, while ChinaSat 2 uses the Ku band instead.

[03 DEC 21] USA-C CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 4-3, BLACKSKY -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2312 UTC (local time + 4) to put 48 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The satellites were built by SpaceX, each having a launch mass of about 225 kilograms (500 pounds). The launch also included two BlackSky optical remote-sensing satellites from Global. The booster first stage soft-landed on the SpaceX recovery barge; it was its ninth flight. The payload fairing was also recovered.

[5 DEC 21] EU KR / SOYUZ 2-1B / GALILEO 27 & 28 -- A Soyuz 2-1b booster was launched from Kourou at 0019 UTC (previous day local time + 3) to put the "Galileo 27" and 28 navigation satellites into orbit. Each had a launch mass of 715 kilograms (1,576 pounds) and had a 12-year design life. They joined 26 Galileo satellites already in orbit. The full constellation needs 30 satellites, including 24 active platforms and six spares, at an orbital altitude of 23,200 kilometers (14,400 miles).

[WED 15 DEC 21] ARAB MUDDLE (3)

* ARAB MUDDLE (3): Nowhere in the Arab world are the region's tensions and failings more evident than Lebanon. In 2020, visitors to Beirut driving from the airport along Imam Khoeini Avenue could see billboards dedicated to Qassem Suleimani, an Iranian general assassinated by America in January 2020. Drive a kilometer farther, a billboard displayed an image of Benjamin Franklin, one of America's Founding Fathers.

General Suleimani often visited Beirut. He helped build Hizbullah, a Shia militia / political party, into the strongest faction in Lebanon, with a sizeable base of popular support and the muscle to silence critics. However, it is the biggest fish in a polluted pond, the World Bank saying that Lebanon's financial crisis is one of the worst in modern history. The Lebanese pound, once pegged to the dollar, has lost more than 90% of its value in two years, while greenbacks have become scarce. Hence the images of Ben Franklin: a local money-transfer firm wanting to reassure customers it had $100 notes left. The billboards are an illustration of the success and failure of Hizbullah, a story repeated elsewhere in the region. Groups backed by Iran wield great power from Baghdad to Beirut -- but the "axis of resistance" supports hollow regimes, that can control but cannot govern.

For decades, the Middle East was dominated by a Saudi-Iranian Cold War, dating back to Iran's Islamic Revolution in 1979. The ayatollahs of Tehran envisioned their revolutionary wave sweeping over the Gulf States, and of course the monarchs of the Arabian Peninsula saw Iran as a mortal threat. Saddam Hussein sold his eight-year war against Iran in the 1980s as an effort to shield Arabs from Iranian hegemony. The Gulf states, particularly Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, lent more than $37 billion USD to his war effort.

Today, the Saudis have nothing to show for their efforts. They failed to build any depth of support in other Arab countries, settling for ineffective checkbook diplomacy with fickle politicians and warlords. Iran is clearly the strongest foreign actor in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq -- with Iraq having fallen into the Iranian orbit thanks to the American invasion of 2003, which swept away Saddam Hussein and shifted power to Iraqi Shiites. The Saudis still fight a rearguard action in Yemen, but their six-year war against the Houthis, a Shia group, has largely benefited Iran.

However, Iran's victories were strictly on the battlefield, with the resulting axis of resistance only characterized by misery -- fuel queues, blackouts, growing hunger, soaring summer temperatures. Yemen is a land of famine and cholera. Iran and its allies are not wholly to blame for these problems. Lebanon's bankruptcy is rooted in decades of misrule by the political class. The Iranians, unfortunately, do not even pretend to offer solutions. In Syria, Iran helped Bashar al-Assad crush his opposition and maintain his grip on power. More recently Hizbullah helped put down a protest movement in Lebanon, and Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have murdered protesters.

When Hizbullah was founded in the 1980s, it was focused on the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon, and many Lebanese approved of the struggle against the invaders. The group's popularity soared after the Israeli withdrawal in 2000, and stayed high even after the war with Israel in 2006, which began with the capture of two Israeli soldiers. Though devastating for Lebanon -- even leaders of Hizbullah later admitted it was a mistake -- it ended in a draw, and for Hizbullah survival was victory. Arabs cheered it for fighting Israel to a standstill, which no Arab state had managed in decades.

However, Hizbullah then generally turned to fighting other Arabs. In 2008 its militants briefly took over west Beirut, while the Syrian Civil War proved a quagmire. To support its allies, Assad and Iran, Hizbullah had to fight Syrian rebels -- claiming to be resisting the "takfiris", or Sunni extremists, and protecting Shia shrines in Damascus. Some Lebanese Christians, fearful of the more radical elements of the Syrian opposition, applauded, but Hizbullah's popularity in the Arab world collapsed.

Hizbullah and its allies now speak of a "resistance economy" in Lebanon. In areas the group controls, shops offer Syrian and Iranian goods at prices below those elsewhere. In April 2021, Hizbullah trumpeted the Sajjad card, a ration-card scheme named after a Shia imam, that offers discounts to participants based on their incomes. Nonetheless, life in Lebanon remains miserable, with medicines hard to come by, and filling stations often out of fuel. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 14 DEC 21] RELATIVISTIC STARS & ROGUE PLANETS

* RELATIVISTIC STARS & ROGUE PLANETS: As discussed in Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb in an article from SCIENTIFICAMERICAN.com ("Stars That Race through Space at Nearly the Speed of Light", 1 May 2021), it is not news that there are stars drifting through our Galaxy, not associated with systems of stars. What is surprising is that some of these stars are racing through the cosmos at high velocities, appreciable fractions of the speed of light.

Where did these "relativistic stars" come from? It turns out that they ejected by gravitational "slingshots" during the mergers of galaxies, resulting in the coalescence of the supermassive black holes at the centers of those galaxies. As the two black holes spin in towards each other, their orbital speed increases, with the spin tossing nearby stars off at high velocities.

In addition, even without a galaxy merger, stars slung around by the intense gravity near a black hole at the center of a galaxy could also reach the speed of light. A supermassive black hole can also produce a relativistic star from a pair of bound stars, by breaking the pair apart -- pulling one star in, while ejecting the other at high speed.

If relativistic stars in a galactic nucleus run into each other, the resulting head-on collision can generate a blast much more energetic than a typical supernova, visible from the far reaches of the cosmos. In order for the two-star collision to occur at nearly the speed of light, the central black hole must weigh more than 100 million Suns. At lower masses -- as is the case with black holes like Sagittarius A* at the center of our Galaxy, which weighs "only" four million suns -- the strong tidal force of the black hole tears apart stars when they come close to it. The disrupted stars are then spread into a stream of gas long before they can get close enough to the black hole's event horizon to approach the speed of light.

Supermassive black holes don't have such a strong tidal gradient, and so stars remain intact as they are accelerated to relativistic velocities near the event horizon. Stellar collisions are rare, of course, and unlikely to happen outside of dense galactic cores. However, one passing by a star system might well disrupt the orbits of its planets. The likelihood of that happening is also low, so it isn't something we need to worry about.

* As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("Astronomers Find Smallest 'Rogue Planet' In The Milky Way" by Ashley Strickland, 30 October 2020), obviously there must be a lot of "rogue planets" in our Milky Way Galaxy -- that is, planets not associated with stars, instead floating through space alone. They're also obviously hard to spot, the first discovery being reported in 2012, and harder to spot as they get smaller.

Now astronomers have discovered a rogue planet between the size of Mars and Earth. It was discovered by the Warsaw Telescope at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile. The Warsaw Telescope is a 1.3-meter (51-inch) telescope, operated by the University of Warsaw under the Optical Gravitational Lensing (OGLE) project. OGLE, which has been in progress for going on three decades, observes the distortion of light from distant stars, caused by a massive object passing through their line of sight to Earth. Przemek Mroz -- a postdoctoral scholar at the California Institute of Technology who led the study -- commented:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

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Fortunately, surveys like OGLE can monitor hundreds of millions of stars near the center of the Milky Way, and so they can be spotted a few times a year. The duration of the microlensing event helps researchers determine the mass of the object: the shorter the event, the smaller the object. Typically, planets have microlensing events that last a few hours, but the one for this new planet only lasted 42 minutes -- the shortest recorded to date.

Rogue planets may have formed independently, or may have been ejected from a star system by a nearby pass of another star. Scientists have only found a few rogue planets so far -- but NASA is planning to launch the Nancy Grace Roman infrared space observatory in 2025, and it will be able to pick up many more of them with its 2.5-meter telescope.

[MON 13 DEC 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 49

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: Things seem politically and socially in an inconclusive muddle for the time being. There's plenty going on, it's just that nothing seems close to resolution -- with one result that people in general are in a sullen mood.

There are promising signs for those who care to look for them. One place to look is Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a centrist Democrat who is inclined to challenge his party, indeed seems to almost take glee in it. He makes a lot of people on the Left very angry, such folk often accusing him of being a closet Republican, but that story doesn't hold up well under close inspection.

One cause for the resentment is that Manchin has made it absolutely clear he will never kill the filibuster, the Senate requirement to have a 60-vote majority to pass bills. With the filibuster as it is, the Democrats are dead in the water, Manchin coming across as either clueless or treacherous in ignoring that fact. In reality, Manchin has been for filibuster reform all along. He has said that he won't "weaken" the filibuster, but what does that mean? If the filibuster is made harder to use, is that weakening it or strengthening it? Manchin has his own way of saying things.

The current problems with the filibuster go back a half-century. Before that time, senators could delay the passage of legislation by getting up and talking in relays, with debate cut off only by a vote of 60 or more. As long as the filibuster was in progress, nothing could get done. A "two-track" scheme was devised in 1970 to allow normal Senate business to continue during a filibuster. The end result was that it was easy to simply declare a filibuster, with no need to do anything else. The results were predictable, with use of the filibuster gradually ramping up and creating gridlock.

Manchin is now part of a group of Democrat senators talking filibuster reform with prominent Republicans. They're getting a hearing, one Republican saying: "Most Republicans are willing to entertain ideas from Manchin as long as those ideas don't involve getting rid of the filibuster."

The group also includes Senator Angus Kind (I/ME), Jon Tester (D/MT), and Tim Kaine (D/VA). Kaine said that the members are trying to consider the perspective of the minority party while discussing potential proposals. "If we're in the minority, how would we feel about this? Can we live under this? Would this make the Senate work better for either party under a president of either party?"

A range of options is being discussed, but the most likely choice will be the "talking option", that filibusterers will have to "hold the floor". That in itself would not be a good thing, because then a handful of filibusterers could bring the Senate to a screeching halt for as long as they wanted -- so the other needed change will be that, instead of requiring 60 votes to close debate, it will require 41 to continue. That in effect would require that 41 Republican senators be available for a vote 24:7, which couldn't be maintained for very long. With that change, the filibuster becomes a tactic to extract concessions, instead of stonewalling the opposition party.

The discussions in progress are a bit funny, because Manchin is effectively holding all the ace cards, and the result will be what he chooses it to be. He's already floated this option, and said nothing about any other. I was wondering why he was taking so long to deal with the filibuster, but now it looks like it will happen soon enough. I suspect Manchin wanted to get GOP buy-in for whatever changes are made. Might some Republicans vote for the changes? We'll see. In any case, once the filibuster is under control, we may well hope for more progress in Congress.

[ED: Manchin then came out insisting on the sanctity of the filibuster again. On examination, it appears he wanted to see if he could get a faction of GOP willing to vote in favor of moderate Democrat initiatives; failing that, he would get filibuster reform, with GOP votes.]

* Incidentally, the talk of Manchin being a "closet Republican" has been complemented by talk of Republicans trying to recruit him. In response, Manchin said:

BEGIN_QUOTE:

END_QUOTE

One James Antle, writing in THEWEEK.com, almost laughed at this, pointing out that Manchin knows exactly where he belongs. He wields more power than he's ever had before by controlling the swing vote, he knows that, and he likes it. Becoming an independent would buy him nothing, and as a Republican, he would have diminished influence. Certainly, no Democrats with any sense think that driving him out, and losing their majority, is a good idea.

Indeed, pushing the Democrats towards the center is not a bad idea. FOX News keeps playing up the idea that the Woke Left is really running the Democratic Party; with Manchin calling the shots, that pretense is harder to maintain. Maybe in the 2022 mid-terms, we'll be seeing a lot of "Joe Manchin Democrats" running for office on a center-Left basis.

* I wanted to get into my Internal Revenue Service account, to find out that the IRS is now relying on a secure service named "Id.Me" for access. I was pleased with this; the USA is finally starting to get serious about secure online transactions and the required strong ID to get them going. It did pose a problem, however, in that I don't have a phone service contract for any of my smartphones, instead relying on Google Voice and wi-fi to chat. That's the best solution for me, given that I spend most of my time in the house -- but Id.Me could not use a smartphone without its own number as an ID device.

I was stymied for a little bit, then I notice I could use a FIDO key instead -- a secure ID trinket I could plug into a USB port on a PC. I'd seen FIDO keys before, but never took much notice of them. Now the idea seemed interesting, so I bought one from Amazon.com for $26 USD a few weeks back.

Getting validated by Id.Me is tricky, and I'm still working on that issue. [ED: Id.Me would go into effective lockup a few months later.] In the meantime, I got to wondering if Twitter would use a FIDO key for ID. As mentioned previously, I got booted out of Twitter; I had used my Google Voice number for ID, and Twitter would step on me if I tried to use it again. I poked around a bit, and I found out that Twitter will indeed let me use a FIDO key for ID.

After the FIDO key arrived, I tried it, and got a new Twitter account with no problems: follow the Twitter instructions, plug the key into USB, then press the button on the key when told to do so. Ironically, while I was cleaning up the new account, I found a link in my web browser that got me back into my old account, which seemed to be open and accessible. I thought: Maybe I should blow it away? -- and immediately came back with: DON'T TOUCH IT! I might well jeopardize the new account. If I ignore the old account, Twitter should discard it by next summer. Twitter seems to be in such turmoil trying to create a less permissive environment that my new account is likely to be ignored if I do nothing to attract attention to it.

Incidentally, I was wondering if there were FIDO keys with near-field interfaces for use with a smartphone -- to then find out that the key I had bought also had NF. Duh, the little wireless symbol on the key should have tipped me off. I also decided to buy a second key, so I wouldn't get into trouble if I lost the key I already had.

Anyway, I'd said I had enough of Twitter, but I'd been struggling with trying to figure out a way to promote my ebooks -- and Twitter, in the end, was the only option I had. The key was hashtags -- that is, keywords that could be put on tweets preceded by a "#" that Twitter users could screen for. I could send out ads on tweets with the appropriate hashtags, and target people who were screening for those hashtags. Hashtags could give me free precision marketing.

I'd known about hashtags for a long time, but never really appreciated them. It turns out Twitter, to a degree, runs on hashtags. I then had to figure out how to find the best hashtags, so I could reach people who might buy my ebooks, and not waste everyone's time spamming people who won't. I started out looking around for online hashtag advisory services, to find there's plenty of them -- but they ask like $50 USD a month for a subscription.

I felt stymied again for a bit, until I realized that these services have nothing to do with me, they're for companies performing serious Twitter marketing. I was out to sell a few ebooks for a low price, and for what I was doing, they had no value. I did find a free web page named TAGSFINDER where I could enter a hashtag and get back related hashtags, which was handy -- but it turned out the Tweeter Search box did me the most good. I could enter a hashtag, and find out how often it's used. TAGSFINDER and the Search box gave me everything I needed.

So now, every morning I tweet out one ad. I was deleting the one from the previous day when I did at first, but then I realized I might as well leave them, so people might find them. I have 73 ebooks right now, so every 73 days I start a new cycle, sending out an ad again. Every time I post an ad, I check to see how many impressions, views, the ad had got in 24 hours. In the meantime, I'm learning more about the system -- for example, how many hashtags should I have per tweet? Studies show that more than three turn people off.

In a parallel effort, as mentioned previously, I had wanted to get into Medium to find readers by posting short documents -- to conclude that was a dead end. What I really wanted to do, on thinking things out, is post short documents and promote them on Twitter. My first thought was to get a free blog like Weebly to post the articles, but on inspection that turned out to be too much like work. At that point, I remembered that, also as mentioned previously, I had obtained a free BraveNet BBS. I could set up a sub-forum on the BBS and post articles to it. A free BBS is useful as a cheap-&-dirty website.

It won't look that dirty, either. Cosmetics shouldn't be a problem, since BBCode -- a simplified version of HTML -- is easy to use. I can't directly post images on the BBS, but I can link to them, so I set up a subdomain -- "bbs.airvectors.net" -- on my website to store such materials. In short, I've got a lot of work on my hands, but I'm enjoying it, and I don't think I'm out of ideas just yet.

* The philosopher / cognitive researcher Dan Dennett has what he calls the "multiple-drafts" model of the operation of the mind, suggesting that the brain cobbles together scripts and plans on the fly, and they are always variable. For example, if we see an accident, we assemble a script for what happened, with that script tending to change considerably until it stabilizes, and then still change more slowly after that as we forget things or get new information.

I could easily see the multiple-drafts model at work with my new Twitter plan. All I started out with was a general dissatisfaction with sales of my ebooks, and then cobbled together what I needed to do, one step at a time, taking a step back sometimes. I had no idea of where I was going to end up when I started. What else could happen? To get a plan, we start out with no plan. I have a plan now, but I'm still learning: I'm likely to find out some parts of the plan don't work, and learn about new things I can try.

Humans are mechanistic in their behavior, following rules, but they are not very machine-like. We want machines to work in a predictable, reliable fashion, but humans have to do a lot of "educated winging it". We have to: in the face of the open-ended complexities of the real world, we are always having to adapt to changing circumstances.

[FRI 10 DEC 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (6)

* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (6): One of the next major advances in computing was the development by Jay Forrester of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Jan Aleksander Rajchman of the Radio Corporation of America of "core memory". It consisted of a grid of tiny ferrite donuts with address and read-write wires linking them in a grid, with data and commands stored in rows of the "cores". Any row could be selected at will. Core was the first really practical electronic computer memory scheme, and would become a standard in the decade. In any case, they developed the first core-memory computer, the "Whirlwind", which was called a "real-time computer" -- which meant that it didn't need operator supervision to stay running.

In the meantime Eckert and Mauchly, having left the Moore School, were trying to achieve commercial success. In 1949, they had developed the first US stored-program computer, the "Binary Automatic Computer (BINAC)", but they were focused on a more sophisticated design, the "Universal Automatic Computer (UNIVAC)". They delivered their first UNIVAC to the US Census Bureau in 1951, though their operation had been acquired by Remington Rand the year before.

The UNIVAC I was, as its delivery to the Census Bureau showed, intended to replace punch-card data-sorters. It used a typewriter for input and magnetic tape for output; data was dumped to tape, and then printed from the tape on a separate printer. The computer had about 5,000 vacuum tubes and used mercury delay-line memory elements. UNIVAC I effectively introduced the era of the first practical computers.

They were still primarily for government or academic use, with businesses not having much use for them; it wasn't until the mid-1950s that businesses began to buy computers -- the leader of the pack being the IBM 650, a magnetic-drum computer with 2,000 tubes that sold for about $200,000 USD in contemporary dollars. That was a fifth of the price of the IBM 701, which was the company's science-engineering computer, and IBM also offered generous academic discounts for universities working up their new computer science courses -- which meant that the first generation of programmers that left those schools "spoke IBM". IBM sold about 1,800 Model 650s, far more than the number of Model 701s the company produced.

In terms of utility, however, this first generation of practical computers weren't really that much more advanced than the big mechanical calculators of the 1940s. They were inflexible, only able to handle narrow classes of problems, hardly the protean machines that computers would become, and they had to be scheduled to do jobs in consecutive time slots. They had to be tended by highly-trained experts, and nobody else could handle them. That enhanced the public mystique of computers, these clumsy and feeble machines -- not remotely in a league with a modern cheap smartphone in any respect -- being held in something like awe, and a little bit of fear.

* One of the keys to moving forward was the development of programming languages that didn't require so much knowledge to use. From early on, there was a push to write programs with "mnemonic" commands matching the binary codes that the computer hardware read. "Assembly language" was a big help, but such a "low-level language" wasn't at all "user-friendly", as would be said in a later day.

Work on "high-level languages" had paralleled the development of computers; Konrad Zuse had worked on HLLs late in World War II, while Eckert and Mauchley had collaborated with a mathematician named Grace Murray Hopper. In 1952 Alick Glennie, a student at the University of Manchester, England, wrote the first of several programs called Autocode for the Manchester Mark I -- Autocode being regarded as a pioneering HLL.

Hopper was an "evangelist" for HLLs, doing all she could to spread the word. Following up on Hopper's ideas, John Backus of IBM managed to convince the management to develop a math-oriented programming language. The result was FORTRAN, short for "Formula Translator", which can be judged the true grandparent of modern programming languages -- and indeed, is still in fair use today. It was a "compiled" language, meaning that the HLL program is converted into a binary-code program that was then run on the machine. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 09 DEC 21] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("US Air Force To Install Nuclear Micro-Reactor At Alaskan Base" by David Szondy, 23 October 2021), the US Air Force is installing a nuclear micro-reactor at Eielson Air Force Base (AFB) in Alaska, not far south of Fairbanks. Eielson has a problem in that it's literally powered with coal, with a coal-fired plant providing it with 33.5 megawatts (MW) of electricity. Coal is of course dirty, but it's also logistically complicated to maintain the supply, and the plant is maintenance-intensive.

Micro-reactors that produce less than 20 MW are similar to the small reactors developed for nuclear submarines. There are differences, in that micro-reactors are factory-built, modular, and do not necessarily require water for cooling. Their small size means that heat dissipates more readily -- there's a higher ratio of surface area to volume -- and so thermal control is not such a problem. The heat can also be distributed to other installations through hot water or steam pipes.

Renewables are less of an option for Eielson, in its near-Arctic environment. The reactor will not require a large staff to operate, and will go into operation in 2027. The military is using the Eielson installation as a test case for using micro-reactors elsewhere.

* As discussed in an article from CNN.com ("Giant Inflatable Sails Could Make Shipping Greener" by Nell Lewis, 4th October 2021), shipping is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, with considerable interest in reducing its carbon footprint. Tire manufacturer Michelin has designed giant inflatable sails that could be fitted to existing cargo ships, and inflate or deflate at the push of a button, allowing a ship to enter a harbor or pass under a bridge. Once deployed, they require little tending, using sensors and a control system to automatically pivot appropriately to the wind.

As envisioned, the sails will have an area of about 280 square meters (3,000 square feet) or more. They are designed more like wings than traditional sails. Michelin has tested a 1/3rd-scale sail on a yacht in Switzerland's Lake Neuchatel. UK-based BAR Technologies is similarly promoting its "WindWings" to add wind power to conventional cargo ships, and has landed a contract with shipping giant Cargill. The WindWings are 46 meters (150 feet) tall, and actually look like aircraft wings. They fold flat to allow access to a harbor or pass under bridges.

Tristan Smith -- associate professor and head of the Shipping Group at University College London -- says that the shipping industry may not find wind power attractive without incentives. Auxiliary wind propulsion is by no means a new idea; Flettner rotors, a technology that dates back to the 1920s, consisting of vertical cylinders that spin with the wind to provide forward motion, have been implemented on a few ships. However, it's hard to get the economics right, with it being unclear that the cost of installation is really offset by reduced fuel costs. In addition charterers, not the shipowners, typically pay for fuel, and so shipowners have no big incentive to economize. Smith believes that regulations need to be changed to encourage the use of wind power: "We're basically missing an opportunity to reduce thousands and millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions because the regulatory bodies aren't making the right decisions at this point in time."

* As reported in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Combo 3D Bioprinting Patches Up Skin And Bone Injuries In One Procedure" by Michael Irving, 26 April 2021), "bioprinting" -- 3D printing in medical treatment -- is a growth market. Researchers at Pennsylvania State University have developed a refined method to patch up injuries by 3D printing both hard and soft tissues at the same time, using two different "bioinks." In tests on rats, the team was able to quickly repair holes in the skulls and skin of the rodents.

The dual approach requires inks with very different consistencies, and accordingly two different methods of bioprinting. The hard tissue was printed using an extrusion-based technique, while the soft tissue was droplet-based. The team's hard tissue ink was made up of collagen, chitosan, nano-hydroxyapatite and a few other compounds, but most importantly "mesenchymal" stem cells -- which differentiate into bone, cartilage and bone marrow fat. The ink is extruded at room temperature, but then warms up to body temperature. The soft tissue ink is printed in layers, alternating between collagen and fibrinogen, interlaced with compounds that encourage crosslinking and growth.

The researchers evaluated both techniques separately, then combined them, conducting dozens of trials to determine effectiveness. They found that the soft tissue repair was highly effective, with wounds closing up 100% within four weeks. However, while bone tissue regrew to cover around 80% of the defect area within six weeks when used on its own -- but when paired with the soft tissue printing, it only managed 50% coverage in six weeks. The researchers believe that adding compounds to encourage blood vessel growth will improve the bone healing rate.

If the scheme can be made to work properly, it will have particular application in post-operative treatment for brain surgery, since the hole in the skull needs to be patched -- traditionally from a bit of bone taken elsewhere from the patient, or from a deceased donor -- and then covered with skin.

[WED 08 DEC 21] ARAB MUDDLE (2)

* ARAB MUDDLE (2): What emerged from the ruin of the Arab Spring is a regional order with three characteristics:

• Weak states: The most powerful countries in the Middle East are all non-Arab.
  
  
• Internal brittleness: Bulging young populations and unproductive economies lead to public dissatisfaction, often met with harsh repression. Apart from the Gulf countries, the Arab world is a set of failed or failing states.
  
  
• A crisis of identity: Arab nationalism no longer has much meaning. Two centuries after Arab intellectuals dreamed of a prosperous, sovereign and united region, the theme that connects people from Marrakech to Muscat is often a shared sense of misery.

Today, the Arab world is divided into three camps, each led by a powerful non-Arab state:

• The Iranian group fancies itself as the "axis of resistance". It counts the Syrian regime as an ally, along with Shia militias in Iraq, Lebanon, and Yemen.
  
  
• A Turkish-backed group rooted in Sunni Islamism. Qatar is its closest Arab partner; it also exercises influence in Libya, northern Syria and among the diaspora.
  
  
• Opposed to both are the Gulf monarchies. Yes, they are Arab states, but nervous for their own security, they have thrown in their lot with a third non-Arab state: Israel, the region's most powerful country and, for all its disagreeable odor, the only clearly functional state there.

Years of civil war have wrecked Libya, Syria, and Yemen. The Iraqi government that came out of the American-led invasion in 2003 has allowed Iranian-backed militias to loot the treasury and murder their critics. Lebanon has all but fallen apart. The Arab world accounts for 5% of the world's population, but almost 50% of its refugees and 25% of its internally displaced people.

Arab countries are typically afflicted with poverty, unemployment, and inadequate basic services. Egyptians overthrew a dictator, only to get another one. Tunisians built the Arab world's only true democracy, and even that is shaky. Both countries had higher unemployment in 2020 than in 2010, higher poverty rates, and higher debt-to-GDP ratios. Even the Gulf states, relative oases of stability, worry about the end of the oil age. Only the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has come up with a plan to map out how to prosper in the new era.

Arabic has two words for nationalism:

• Qawmiyya, from the word qawm, which means a group of people unbound by borders.
  
  
• Wataniyya, from watan, a word often translated into English as "homeland".

The Arab nationalism of the 20th century aspired to be qawymiyya, even if reality fell short. "The Arab world" is a vast region of up to 22 countries and more than 400 million people, with more scattered in a far-flung diaspora. However, the region's factionalism was not inevitable. Foreign powers deserve some blame: America and the Soviet Union both propped up incompetent Arab regimes during the Cold War, and American policy since 2003 has had only limited success to date.

Among Arab rulers, aspirational talk of unity was often a pretext for the bigger states to push around the smaller ones. Corruption and incompetence left even energy-rich countries in a state of decay. Autocrats failed to invest in education, repressed civil society, and pumped up internal division; democracy failed, because it had no basis for success. What exists today is wataniyya, concern for one's own homeland. The Arab League persists, but it amounts to little; it never did -- and the current gang of autocratic rulers who survived or emerged from the Arab Spring are struggling to keep their own countries together, with little thought of Arab unity beyond that. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 07 DEC 21] REMNANTS OF A CATACLYSM

* REMNANTS OF A CATACLYSM: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Remains Of Impact That Created The Moon May Lie Deep Within Earth" by Paul Voosen, 23 March 2021), the Earth and Moon pose a puzzle, in that that only Earth in the Solar System has such a relatively large Moon. Analysis of mineral samples from the Moon also show that the two bodies have both clear similarities and differences.

The general consensus among researchers now is that the Earth-Moon system arose when a protoplanet, named "Theia", struck an off-center blow on the Earth about 4.5 billion years ago. Now a group of researchers suggests that Theia's remnants can be found in two continent-size layers of rock buried deep in Earth's mantle.

Seismologists have puzzled over these two blobs, which sit below West Africa and the Pacific Ocean, straddling the core like a pair of headphones. Up to 1000 kilometers (620 miles) tall and several times that wide, "they are the largest thing in the Earth's mantle," according to Yuan Qian, a grad student in seismology at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe. Seismic waves from earthquakes abruptly slow down when they pass through the layers, which suggests they are denser and chemically different from the surrounding mantle rock.

The "large low-shear velocity provinces (LLSVPs)", as seismologists call them, may simply have crystallized out of the depths of Earth's primordial magma ocean, or they might be dense puddles of primitive mantle rock that survived the Moon-forming impact. However, based on new isotopic evidence and modeling, Yuan suspects the LLSVPs are the guts of the alien impactor itself. It's not a new idea, but Yuan is the first to make a serious case for it.

Sujoy Mukhopadhyay -- a geochemist at the University of California (UC), Davis -- says that evidence from Iceland and Samoa suggests the LLSVPs have existed since the time of the Moon-forming impact. Seismic imaging has traced plumes of magma that feed volcanoes on both islands all the way down to the LLSVPs. Over the past decade, Mukhopadhyay and others have found that lavas on the islands contain an isotopic record of radioactive elements that formed only during the first 100 million years of Earth history. He finds Yuan's ideas interesting, but doesn't feel Yuan has clinched his case.

However, a new picture of the Moon-forming impactor suggests it could have in fact delivered a load of dense rock deep inside Earth. The impact theory was developed in the 1970s to explain why the Moon is dry and doesn't have much of an iron core: in a cataclysmic impact, volatiles like water would have vaporized and escaped, while a ring of less dense rocks thrown up in the collision would have eventually formed into the Moon. Originally, the theory invoked an impactor the size of Mars or, in recent variants, much smaller. However, research by ASU Tempe astrophysicist Steven Desch, one of Yuan's collaborators, suggests Theia was almost as big as Earth.

In studies of Apollo Moon rocks, Desch and his team measured the ratios of hydrogen to deuterium, the "heavy hydrogen" isotope. Light hydrogen was far more abundant in some of the Moon samples than in Earth rocks, they found. To hold onto that level of light hydrogen, Theia must have been massive. It also must have been very dry, since any water -- which is naturally enriched in heavy hydrogen during its formation in interstellar space -- would have raised the level of deuterium. Desch says that such a big, dry protoplanet would be layered, with an iron-depleted core and an iron-rich mantle about 2% to 3.5% denser than the modern Earth.

Even before Yuan knew about Desch's density estimates, he was modeling the collision between Theia and the Earth. In Yuan's model, Theia's core would have quickly merged with Earth's. He also investigated what happened to Theia's mantle, varying Theia's size and density to see what conditions would have allowed the material to persist, instead of mixing in, and sink to the mantle's base. The simulations consistently showed that mantle rocks 1.5% to 3.5% denser than Earth's would survive and end up as piles near the core. The result was consistent with Desch's deuterium evidence.

A massive Theia would also explain the scale of the LLSVPs, which together contain six times more mass than the Moon. Yuan says that, assuming they came from a separate world, only an impactor as large as Theia could have delivered them.

There are many cautions, one being that the evidence for the LLSVPs is fuzzy. The seismic data that indicates their presence could be interpreted in different ways, giving LLSVPs of different sizes or structures. Of course, that means obtaining more data, in the form of samples of island lavas, and rocks from the Moon's mantle. Particularly interesting lunar samples should be found in the Moon's biggest impact crater, at its south pole, with robot probes in planning to land there.

If Theia's remnants do lie deep in Earth's mantle, they may not be alone. Seismologists are spotting more and more ultradense pockets of material in the deep mantle, only a few hundred kilometers across, often near the edges of the LLSVPs. Could they be remnants of other little planets that hit the early Earth? A more detailed knowledge of the interior of the Earth may help visualize its deep history.

[MON 06 DEC 21] THE WEEK THAT WAS 48

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: The most troubling thing about the COVID-19 pandemic is that it has put the crazy of the Right on full display -- as demonstrated last week in an exchange between Dr. Anthony Fauci, the White House's chief medical advisor, and two Republican Senators, Ted Cruz of Texas and Rand Paul of Kentucky. It started out with Dr. Fauci telling an interviewer:

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Paul shot back in a misinformed tweet:

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The "natural immunity" meme translates to: The best way to not get the disease is to get the disease. Rand, of course, would deny that was what he meant, but that's how bafflegab works; it can never be pinned down to anything specific.

Cruz, adding his own misinformation, said that Dr. Fauci had lied to Congress about funding "gain of function (GOF)" research at a research lab in Wuhan, and that he should be prosecuted. The reality is that the US funded research into making pathogens that were easier to handle in the lab and so easier to research. It was a question of breeding more docile lab rats, not meaner ones.

In a follow-on interview, Dr. Fauci laughed at Cruz: "I should be prosecuted? What happened on January 6, Senator?" When asked if the cheap shots were a GOP attempt to deflect attention from Trump's crimes, he replied: "Of course. You have to be asleep not to figure that one out." The bottom line was: "I'm going to be saving lives, and they're going to be lying."

Later, Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin accused Dr. Fauci of "fear-mongering" saying he was "overhyping" COVID-19, adding that he had similarly "overhyped" AIDS decades ago. The good doctor was outraged, telling CNN's Jake Tapper:

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Tapper replied: "I don't think he does, either."

The Right has done everything they can to obstruct the Biden Administration's efforts to control the pandemic -- to then blame Biden for failing to control it. It's hard to believe that such a preposterous trick is going to work for them over the longer run, since nobody with a clue believes it. Unfortunately, it's hard to say when the bubble will finally pop.

* Right now, there's considerable fuss about the new "Omicron" variant of COVID-19 out of South Africa. It is considerably mutated from earlier strains, suggesting it may be nastier. Authorities are asking people not to panic, since we can only know the characteristics of the Omicron variant through experience. Epidemiology is statistical: we can only know how infective it is from the number of people it infects, only know if it defeats vaccination against COVID-19 if they prove vulnerable, and only know how lethal it is from the number of people it kills.

A South African doctor called the global panic over Omicron excessive, saying the cases she saw were mild. Okay, it's hard to read too much into that, since she had a small sample size -- but it does suggest the possibility that Omicron is less dangerous than earlier strains. Over time, pathogens may evolve to become tamer, and such mild strains may ultimately predominate. We can't bank on that, unfortunately, since pathogens can also evolve to become more vicious.

At present, nobody knows if existing vaccines have been compromised by Omicron -- though the COVIDiots of the world are certain to play up the possibility to discredit vaccines in general. Some Big Pharma executives have played up the need to come up with an Omicron-specific booster, but it's not clear if it's necessary. THE DAILY SHOW'S Trevor Noah got into trouble when he suggested that what Big Pharma executives say about the need for a modified booster shot might be taken with a grain of salt, since they have a vested interest in exaggeration. The outrage is a bit absurd, since some reputable medical authorities have said the same thing.

* In other news of the new normal, according to an essay from WASHINGTONPOST.com ("Trump's Lawyers Are Pleading The Fifth -- Congress Can Still Make Them Talk" by Norman Eisen, E. Danya Perry, & Joshua Perry, 4 December 2021), the House committee investigating the 6 January Capitol riot is moving right along. While most of the people from the Trump White House have been cooperating, a number of the high-profile players are refusing to.

Steve Bannon, one of the most prominent Trump stooges, has already been indicted on contempt of Congress charges. That's stepped up the pressure on the others, but some are still holding out. Jeffrey Clark, the former Justice Department lawyer who allegedly tried to help Trump overturn the 2020 presidential election, is now claiming the 5th Amendment privilege against self-incrimination to avoid testifying before the 1-6 Committee, and has now been joined by one of Trump's main outside legal advisers, John Eastman.

Previously, Trump stooges had been relying on a dubious "executive privilege" argument, but the indictment of Bannon shows that argument is crumbling, and so they're "pleading the 5th" now. That poses an interesting legal question: do 5th Amendment protections apply to congressional investigations? They're not criminal trials, after all. The answer is that they could lead straight to criminal trials, and so the 5th Amendment still holds.

However, the 5th Amendment is commonly misunderstood, the popular belief that it is a "get out of jail free" card. It is not. Pleading the 5th is a back-to-the-wall tactic, since those who make the plea are giving up the right to speak in their own defense, and have made an effective admission of guilt. There are also some technical problems with Clark pleading the 5th -- but more importantly, the committee could grant him immunity from prosecution for his involvement with the Capitol riot, and then he couldn't plead the 5th any more. If he still refused to talk, then he would be indicted for contempt in his turn.

Giving Clark immunity would not trouble the committee, since he's small fry. Besides, if he implicates himself in crimes he won't go to jail, but he'd still have consequences, for example being disbarred from law practice. In any case, the committee's target is Trump, and they will get to him by turning the human pyramid of enablers propping him up against him. Granting immunity is a powerful lever to that end, giving any Trump stooge a choice between cooperating and getting a PASS, or being indicted and certainly convicted. With each one of them that turns, the pressure on the hold-outs increases.

There's been a lot of complaint about the 1-6 Committee, the claim being that it is slow and ineffective. Slow, yes, but legal due process is like that, and there's no way around it. The case against Trump is the size of a mountain, and it takes time to move a mountain. Ineffective? No. The committee is holding all the good cards, and playing them methodically -- while the Black Hats are only holding jokers.

* My writing efforts suddenly run out of steam about a month ago. I'm not selling many ebooks, there's not much growth, and sales have been particularly slow as of late. I can't give up on it, I've got nothing better to do, but I couldn't see the way forward.

After concentrating on the matter, I started to come up with ideas for what I could do. One thing I considered was Amazon pay-per-click (PPC) ads, but when I doped it out, I realized that I couldn't sell ebooks at $2.99 USD a pop and not lose money with each sale. On further thought, however, I realized that I might be able to buy ads for very cheap with ebooks that don't have any competition. I would use very precise targeting and get a few sales, enough to keep me happy. I thought this over for about two weeks, and with apprehension jumped in to set up an ad campaign.

I immediately found out that this "guerilla" approach to advertising wasn't workable, and that I really would lose money on every ebook I sold. Further thought revealed that it was absurd thinking: if I didn't have competition on keyboards for ebook searches, my ebooks would come up high on searches anyway. It was a useful lesson for tailoring the keywords associated with my ebooks.

Oddly, that misadventure snapped me out of my funk, since I didn't have to worry about ads any more. I had another idea, posting to the Medium website, which is a place where people can publish articles and do low-key personal promotion as they do so. Alas, inspection of Medium showed that it is heavily populated by people writing articles on how to use Medium to achieve success as an author. There's something not for real about this. Judging Medium as largely a clickbait forum, I decided against it.

Although I had been disgusted with Twitter, I'm thinking of getting back on, having literally found a key for doing it. It would give me some small ability to promote my work. I have misgivings about the idea, but having thought of it, it will continue to bug me -- so I will try it and be done with it. If it works, fine, if not, fine also.

[FRI 03 DEC 21] 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (5)

* 5TH INFORMATION REVOLUTION (5): While the British worked on Colossus, the Americans were also working on an electronic computer -- the effort being driven by John Maunchley and Presper Eckert of the University of Pennsylvania's Moore School of Engineering. Maunchley was a physicist with an interest in meteorology, and wanted to perform mathematical analysis of weather systems. He had visited with John Atanasoff in 1941, which gave him some ideas about building an electronic computer; under encouragement by Eckert, in 1942 Maunchley wrote a memorandum for Moore State, proposing the construction of such an electronic computer.

The memorandum was misplaced, but word of it got to the US Army, which wanted to obtain a computing machine to compute artillery firing trajectories. In the spring of 1943, the Army awarded a contract of $400,000 USD to the Moore School to build the "Electronic Numerical Integrator And Computer (ENIAC)" Mark I. The design team grew to 50 people, with ENIAC ending up with over 17,000 vacuum tubes. It grew to be a monster, twice as big as Aiken's Mark I, with continuous vacuum-tube failures being a particular problem; they were got under control by reducing the voltage for the tubes.

ENIAC wasn't fully operational until late 1945, after the war was over, but it was seen as a marvel, a thousand times faster than the Aiken Mark I. It proved its worth number-crunching a range of problems, notably helping research on development of the hydrogen bomb -- but, like Colossus, it could only be reprogrammed by switching around wires. It only had enough memory to store the data it needed for calculations. Eckert and Maunchley then went on to work on a computer that would store instructions in memory as well, to be named the "Electronic Discrete Variable Computer (EDVAC)".

It was to use an ingenious memory element, featuring a mercury-based signal delay line and ten vacuum tubes; a pulse train was fed into the tube and cycled around indefinitely, with a particular bit of information associated with a particular time slot. As bizarre as it sounds, the mercury delay line was effective, though in hindsight obviously a dead end.

As a consultant to the EDVAC project, the team obtained as a consultant the brilliant John von Neumann -- one of the set of bright Hungarian Jews who had come to the USA to flee Hitler. In 1945, he was the lead author on a report on EDVAC outlining the design of a stored-program computer -- featuring a central processor, a memory store for instructions and data, plus devices for input and output. This was the basic configuration for the modern digital computer. The report was widely circulated, and that stored-program computer became known as the "Von Neumann architecture". That was not fair, since the report was based on Eckert and Maunchley's ideas, and would do much to undermine their patent claims.

In any case, the race was on to develop a stored-program computer. Maurice Wilkes and others at the University of Cambridge in the UK developed the "Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator (EDSAC)", which also became operational in 1949, to go down in history as the first fully-functional stored-program computer. Wilkes was particular interested in figuring out how to program a computer, making him a pioneer in the craft.

In parallel, in 1948 Frederic Williams and Tom Kilburn, two researchers at the University of Manchester in the UK, developed a demonstrator stored-program machine, the "Baby" -- which used a cathode-ray tube (CRT) as a memory storage device, the Baby being intended as a demonstrator for the device. They followed it up with the operational "Manchester Mark I" in 1949, which introduced the magnetic-drum memory -- in which data was stored magnetically on a rotating drum. The Ferranti electronics firm produced nine examples of a commercial version of the Mark I, this being the first computer to be sold as a product. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 02 DEC 21] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed by an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Mutant Enzyme Could Vastly Improve Recycling Of Plastic Bottles" by Robert F. Service, 8 April 2020), plastics are troublesome to recycle. Only about a third of discarded plastic bottles are recycled, and the recycled product is low-grade. Researchers have now engineered an enzyme that can convert 90% of that same plastic back to its pristine starting materials.

Polyethylene terephthalate (PET) is one of the world's most commonly used plastics, with tens of millions of tonnes produced annually. PET bottles are already recycled in many places, but the recycling is troublesome. One big problem that the plastic is in many different colors, with the resulting melt of a batch being gray or black, limiting the material's usefulness.

The trick is to turn plastics back into feedstocks comparable to the feedstocks from which they were originally derived. To do so, researchers have searched through microbes to find enzymes that break down PET and other plastics. In 2012, researchers at Osaka University found one such enzyme in a compost heap, the enzyme being appropriately named "leaf-branch compost cutinase (LLC)". LLC chops up the PET chain by breaking the bonds between its two building blocks: terephthalate and ethylene glycol. Unfortunately, LLC works slowly, and also degrades in a few days of working at the high temperatures needed to soften plastic for breaking it down.

Two French researchers -- Alain Marty, the chief scientific officer at Carbios, a sustainable plastics company, teamed up with Isabelle Andre, an enzyme engineering expert at the University of Toulouse -- decided to re-engineer LLC to make it more effective and heat-resistant. They began by analyzing the crystal structure of the enzyme, identifying key amino acids at the site where the enzyme binds to the chemical linkers between PET's terephthalate and ethylene glycol groups.

The researchers then defined hundreds of mutant enzymes, changing amino acids at the binding site and adding in heat-stabilizing ones. They mass-produced the mutants in bacteria, and screened them to see which were the best at breaking up PET. After repeating this cycle several times, they came up with an enzyme that was 10,000 times more effective at breaking the PET bond than the original LLC. The improved enzyme was also able to work without breaking down at 72 degrees Celsius (160 degrees Fahrenheit), which is about the temperature at which PET melts.

The researcher tested the enzyme in a small reactor, finding they could break down 90% of 200 grams of PET in 10 hours. They were able to use the resulting terephthalate and ethylene glycol building blocks to synthesize "fresh" PET. The question remains of whether the process is economically practical, and it doesn't work on other types of plastic, such as polyethylene and polystyrene -- though it does have a big benefit of being indifferent to dyes and other additives in PET products. Carbios is now building a demonstration plant that is expected to recycle hundreds of tons of PET per year.

* As reported by SPACE.com ("China Wants To Launch Its Own Hubble-Class Telescope As Part Of Space Station", by Andrew Jones, 21 April 2021), China is interested in orbiting a large space telescope as part of its space station program.

The "Chinese Space Station Telescope (CSST)", or "Xuntian", is scheduled to launch in 2024. It will have an aperture of 2 meters (6.6 feet), same as the NASA Hubble Space Telescope (HST) -- but it will be a survey telescope, with a field of view 300 times greater than that of the HST, plus a 2.5-gigapixel imaging element, giving it resolution comparable to that of the HST. It will perform observations in the visible and near-ultraviolet regions of the spectrum.

The CSST, as its name implies, will co-orbit the Earth, along with the Chinese space station, and will be able to dock with the station when needed for maintenance and update. Four astronomy research centers are being built across China to handle the data from the space telescope. Objectives for the effort include investigating the properties of dark matter and dark energy; the large-scale structure of the cosmos; galaxy formation and evolution; as well as spotting and tracking asteroids and comets.

* As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("Common Antidepressant Slashes Risk Of COVID Death", 29 October 2021), the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a frantic search for existing drugs that can help deal with the disease. Most of the candidates don't work, but a few of them do. A drug used to treat depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder named "fluvoxamine", which has the side effects of damping immune responses and reduce tissue damage from inflammation, has turned out to be surprisingly effective in improving survival rates from COVID-19 infections.

Angela Reiersen -- a psychiatrist at Washington University School of Medicine in Saint Louis MO, and one of the study leads -- had been investigating fluvoxamine as a treatment for a rare genetic condition. While scanning through medical literature before the pandemic, she had found a 2019 study that showed fluvoxamine reduced inflammation in mice with sepsis. When the pandemic hit, she remembered the paper.

Reiersen and her colleagues partnered with the organizers of the TOGETHER Trial, which was set up to identify approved drugs that could be repurposed to treat COVID-19. The team's study included 1,497 people in Brazil who had COVID-19, and were at high risk of severe disease. About half received fluvoxamine, while the rest got a placebo. Among study participants who took the drug as directed and did so in the early stages of the disease, COVID-19-related deaths fell by roughly 90%, and the need for intensive COVID-19-related medical care fell by roughly 65%.

The trial was large and well-conducted, but it was still only one trial in one locale, so further trials are needed to validate the finding. However, the results were promising. Edward Mills -- a health researcher at McMaster University in Hamilton, Canada, and another study lead -- says that fluvoxamine is cheap and accessible; its patent has expired, so it's a generic drug. It may well offer an effective one-two punch coupled with the new antiviral drugs being introduced, such as Pfizer's Paxlovid.

[WED 01 DEC 21] ARAB MUDDLE (1)

* ARAB MUDDLE (1): As discussed in a survey from ECONOMIST.com ("A Misshapen Square", 24 August 2021), a decade ago, during the Arab Spring, there was a wild ferment among Arabs for change. In 2011, Egyptians overthrew the military dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak, to outpourings of public exuberance. In 2013, the military took charge again, and the exuberance went away.

Before Islam came, the Arabs were generally Arabic-speaking nomads of the Arabian Peninsula and Mesopotamian desert. The conquests of Islamic caliphates then spread their tongue and faith as far away as modern Spain and Pakistan -- but the last caliphate fell to the Ottomans in the 16th century, bringing in a 400-year period when most Arabs were ruled by outsiders.

By the 19th century, Ottoman rule had become harder to tolerate. Arab intellectuals saw the technological and political power of Europe, while the Ottoman Empire felt stagnant and ever more heavy-handed. Out of this frustration arose Arab nationalism -- a concept that called back to a historic Arab nation, connected by ties of language and culture, that could rise again if Turkish control were overthrown.

It would take another century for that to happen, and it wasn't Arabs who brought down the Ottomans -- instead the British and French, victorious in the First World War. They carved up Arab territories between them, drawing arbitrary borders that still persist, blandly breaking repeated promises to withdraw and grant the Arabs independence. The Second World War then shattered colonialism, with Arabs finally gaining control of their nation-states. To be sure, the maplines of the new Arab states were sometimes haphazard, but they were still Arab states. Their citizens were eager for growth, development, and representative government.

Out of these desires grew the drive towards a transnational Arab identity. Arab nationalism would become the region's dominant ideology. Its main competitor, Islamism, found its own pan-Arab manifestation in the Muslim Brotherhood. A formal "Arab League" was established to integrate the region and protect the sovereignty of states. The conflict with Israel became a core theme: some involved in the military struggle, all committed ideologically to the cause.

A pan-Arabic culture emerged. Egyptian cinema grew universally popular. The voice of Fairouz, Lebanon's most celebrated diva, echoed from cafes and car radios from Tunis to Baghdad. There were pan-Arab newspapers, and in particular Sawt al-Arab ("Voice of the Arabs"), a Cairo radio station that could be heard across the Arabic-speaking world. And yet, there was little progress. Arab nationalism became associated with heavy-handed dictators and incompetent socialist policies. The Arab League amounted to nothing.

The Arab spring that began in 2010 was a revival of the pan-Arab dream. The self-immolation of a street peddler in Tunisia set off protests in much of the region -- their spread energized by al-Jazeera, a Qatari-funded satellite news channel that saw its popularity peak along with the unrest. Demonstrators in one country chanted in solidarity with their kin in another, sharing their tactics.

The Arab Spring proved hollow. Islamists moved into the political rule, but they proved divisive and incompetent. Instead of renewal, Arabs got out-of-control warfare among themselves, with so much internal friction that the fight against Israel no longer seemed relevant. [TO BE CONTINUED]