DayVectors

* 23 entries including: capitalism & socialism (series); loser Xi Jinping (series); my Ohio & Disney trips (series); temperature-stable vaccines; MS classroom AI; Xi in Moscow | Kishida in Kyiv | Wyoming stumbles over abortion; Stalker drone | Japanese JNAAM missile | Wingcopter drone; clean ammonia synthesis; war criminal Putin | Macron boosts France | dentistry & video games; AI chemical analysis; Ukraine offensive plans | DeSantis snowflake; MoodUp fridge | quantum-dot LEDs for lighting | eVorog chatbot; carbon-capture from seawater; China supporting Russia | Fox News lies; liquid-mirror & ASTHROS balloon telescope | bacteria to ammonia.

[FRI 31 MAR 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (40)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (40): Jimmy Carter became president primarily because of public dissatisfaction with the Nixon presidency, with Carter selling himself as an "outsider" who would take on the system. Unfortunately, the economic malaise that had afflicted the USA from the start of the decade persisted, with inflation hitting high levels. The inflation seemed peculiarly persistent, continuing even as the economy was slow. Traditionally, inflation was associated with a booming economy, not with a stagnant economy -- with the anomalous inflation of the 1970s becoming known as "stagflation".

Carter was not able to put a stop to the economic problems, though he did attempt to minimize the damage, working with Congress to set a higher minimum wage, and raising taxes to keep Social Security solvent. Carter, as a progressive Democrat, was of course no foe of regulation, in particular pushing through an Alaska Lands Conservation Act, protecting wide tracts of that state, and also expanded the national parks. The Carter Administration also regulated strip mining, and set up a "superfund" to clean up toxic-waste sites. Conservatives protested Carter's environmental efforts more than they had Nixon's, but environmental regulation was really a bottom-line issue: if a company polluted the environment, the company might make higher profits, but the society would suffer losses. An accounting that did not ignore such "external diseconomies" could show that environmental regulations made perfect economic sense.

Another significant action was the creation of the "Department of Education", a major expansion of the earlier White House "Office of Education", with the goals of supporting national education, setting standards, and ensuring educational equality. Conservatives blasted Carter for that effort, but he sensibly replied an educated labor force meant a more productive economy.

In 1979, OPEC raised oil prices, aggravating America's economic problems. In response, the Carter Administration took conservation measures, such as mandating automotive mileage standards, while also deregulating energy markets, and setting up the "Department of Energy (DOE)" to map out a path for America's energy future. That was part of a push towards increased use of renewable energy and alternative fuels, though it would prove a false start.

Carter followed the foreign policy leads of predecessor administrations, leading to a notable success when he brokered a substantive peace treaty between Egypt and Israel -- underlining the tilt in the Middle East away from the Soviets towards the USA -- and also finally established full diplomatic relations with China.

However, the USA suffered a defeat as well, when a revolution in Iran installed an anti-American Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) that would bitterly oppose US influence in the region, and remain hostile to America's allies there. Over the short term, the IRI personally humiliated Carter by allowing revolutionary students to take over the American embassy in Tehran and seize its staff as hostages. A military raid later sent in to rescue the hostages was a disastrous flop. To further compound Carter's troubles, the Federal Reserve decided to finally suppress inflation by raising interest rates, with unemployment rising dramatically.

Although the Carter Administration had a number of successes and was far-sighted in considering America's future, the negatives ensured that Carter's presidency was unpopular. He was voted out in 1980, with conservative Republican Ronald Reagan (1911:2004) becoming president. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 30 MAR 23] TEMPERATURE-STABLE VACCINES

* TEMPERATURE-STABLE VACCINES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Here's How Scientists Are Designing Vaccines That Can Ditch The Fridge" by James Dinneen, 21 April 2021), one of the problems in the distribution of vaccines is that they typically require refrigeration. That's a particular issue for the newfangled mRNA vaccines, which have to be kept at dry-ice temperatures, but even those that only need normal refrigeration pose difficulties: in countries like Mali or Bangladesh, where up to 90% of health facilities lack adequate refrigeration.

The trick, then, is to make vaccines that don't need refrigeration. Asel Sartbaeva -- a chemist at the University of Bath in the UK who is working on a molecular "cage" to make vaccines temperature stable -- says: "I think we are at the limit of how many people we can vaccinate using [refrigerated supply chains]. And this is where we come in."

Most vaccines include biomolecules or weakened forms of pathogens that degrade above, or below, certain temperatures. Even when the formulas are freeze-dried or suspended in solutions to improve stability, many still require storage and handling at normal refrigerator temperatures. Vaccines can have much more impact if they don't have to be kept cold: a freeze-dried smallpox vaccine that was stable for months at high temperatures was essential for eradicating the global scourge in the 1970s. Even incremental improvements have value: MenAfriVac, a meningitis vaccine that can now be handled without refrigeration for four days, cut costs in half during a 2011 vaccination campaign in Chad.

Researchers are investigating a range of options for devising temperature-stable vaccines, from modified chemical solutions to improved methods of delivery. Which approaches work best depends on the basis of the vaccine: RNA; DNA; live or inactivated virus or bacteria; or fragments of the pathogen like peptides or proteins.

Protein-based vaccines are relatively stable and not much of a challenge. Other types of vaccines are much more sensitive to variations in temperature. Silica cages have proven useful in making them easier to handle. Sartbaeva used silica cages to stabilize proteins in the common vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis (DTP). The DTP vaccine is made from proteins from each of the three pathogens it deals with, and has to be kept at refrigerator temperatures. Sartbaeva, who had earlier worked on porous silicate materials, thought silica might be able to create a protective molecular cage around the vaccine's proteins, preventing them from unfolding when they got warm.

Over the next few years, Sartbaeva and colleagues developed a process in which reactive silica molecules are mixed with the proteins. The silica molecules, attracted to the positively-charged regions of the proteins, form a cage around the proteins that matches their contours.

Her group's silica cages stabilized diphtheria and tetanus proteins for at least a month at room temperature, and two hours at 80 degrees Celsius?(176 degrees Fahrenheit). That's promising, but more work has to be done to ensure that all the proteins in the DTP vaccine are protected, and to simplify the process by which the silica is dissolved before the vaccine is administered.

Another approach is the "fruit roll-up" method. Maria Croyle, a pharmacist at the University of Texas in Austin, used this approach with live adenovirus -- a harmless virus often used in vaccines, including Johnson & Johnson's COVID-19 vaccine. She encased the virus in a solid film of sugars and salts with a texture similar to the popular fruit roll-up snack. The film can be dissolved under the tongue or inside the cheek to administer the vaccine, or reconstituted and injected. The film kept an adenovirus-based vaccine for Ebola stable at room temperature for 36 months, to still prove able to protect test primates from the virus. The researchers say that by altering the mix of sugars and salts in the film, the method could work for other vaccines and therapeutics, including influenza vaccines.

Messenger RNA vaccines, like the well-known Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, require dry-ice cold and present a major challenge to getting them to work at higher temperatures. One approach is freeze-drying, which has worked effectively in some other vaccines; once freeze-dried, it is stable indefinitely, and doesn't require dry-ice cold storage. However, freeze-drying is slow, expensive, and doesn't work for all vaccines. Pfizer has worked on, but hasn't reported a major breakthrough yet.

Another approach is to modify the lipid nanoparticles that surround the vaccines' RNA molecules -- these nanoparticles are responsible for the vaccines' ultracold storage requirements. Seattle-based HDT Bio has explored this scheme, inventing a nanoparticle that can be shipped in regular refrigerators, then combined with RNA just before injection. It can use normal refrigeration, but so far hasn't proven to yield as good an immune response.

To avoid all refrigeration, another option is to use DNA instead of RNA. DNA is the more stable of the two, but so far research on DNA vaccines has gone nowhere in any hurry. In any case, manufacturers of current vaccines don't really have that much incentive to pursue room-temperature vaccines, if they're making money with their current product. Jason Hallett -- a chemist at the Future Vaccine Manufacturing Research (FVMR) Hub at Imperial College London who works on temperature-stable vaccine formulations -- says that under current regulations: "It is more cost-effective to improve the cold chain than it is to eliminate the cold chain."

However, a lot of money has been poured into COVID-19 vaccines. Benjamin Pierce, operations manager at the FVMR Hub, says that generous funding has changed the landscape for vaccine development. He says that a temperature-stable vaccine may not come in time for the current pandemic, he says, but as the world considers the next one, "eliminating the cold chain will absolutely be a priority."

[WED 29 MAR 23] LOSER XI (4)

* LOSER XI (4): Xi Jinping's strict pandemic controls have added to the problems. Certainly, Xi was successful at limiting COVID-19 at the outset, with the result that the public-health crisis was not as great in China as in other places, such as the USA. However, Xi was unable to transition China to the endemic phase, implementing a burdensome "zero-COVID" mandate. Repeated closures of major cities and industrial zones have choked off travel, output, and commerce. Hardest hit have been the smallest businesses, the restaurants, salons, and corner shops that provide crucial urban employment.

Between quarantines and joblessness, domestic discontent has soared. . The government faced widespread resistance in imposing its two-month COVID shutdown of Shanghai earlier this year. Residents confined to their homes banged pots and pans and screamed out of their windows in protest. In Beijing, where residents were forced to present a recent negative COVID test in order to ride the subway or eat in a restaurant through much of 2022, testing stations became targets for vandalism. Sometimes the graffiti cited Patrick Henry: "Give me liberty or give me death."

Lockdowns have not been the only cause for public dissatisfaction, the heavy-handed government often stepping on citizen's toes. In July 2022, hundreds of protesters from all over the country massed in the central city of Zhengzhou after their bank deposits were frozen thanks to a local financial scandal. The anger has overflowed on Chinese social media, defying attempts to censor it, with one poster saying on Weibo, China's equivalent of Twitter: "People are not happy! Your government positions are secure, but people at the bottom are having a hard time surviving."

Of course, in an environment without free speech or a free press, it's hard to gauge how widespread the dissatisfaction is. However, the willingness of ordinary citizens to risk reprisals for their displays of defiance -- in Zhengzhou unidentified thugs assaulted protesters with the apparent complicity of local authorities -- is an index of how frustrated people are with the status quo in China. It is certainly true that foreign governments have not been happy with China's reluctance to provide data on the pandemic, with even the World Health Organization, normally reluctant to criticize, voicing concerns over Beijing's lack of transparency.

Xi's domestic problems have led him to shift towards nationalism to legitimize his hold on power -- the result being Beijing's hysterical rhetoric on issues such as Taiwan, and the relentless anti-American propaganda from its foreign ministry and state media. Xi needs enemies abroad to deflect public disaffection with his failures at home.

In Washington DC, the Biden Administration's China policy centers on what Xi plans to do. The USA needs to prevent war, while at the same time exploiting Xi's blunders to enhance America's power. So far, that policy has been successful. In the end, Xi's efforts to take on US power may well end up diminishing China's.

ED: In more recent news, in response to concerns that China might supply Putin with weapons for its war in Ukraine, the Chinese foreign ministry issued a firm denial of any intent to do so. China is certainly bankrolling Putin's war, buying Russian oil at a bargain price, and doing a brisk trade in smartphones and the like as Western vendors pull out of Russia. However, China had been doing brisk trade with Ukraine before the war broke out, and has lost that business for the time being.

It is hard to know exactly what Xi thinks of the war, other than the fact that Putin is losing it, and Russia will emerge from the conflict a much diminished power. Paul Heer, a CIA veteran, says: "Putin has become an embarrassment to Xi, if not yet a net liability." Suggestions that China would like to prolong the war are questionable, there being little in it particularly convenient to Beijing, and much that is not. What if Putin's failure in Ukraine causes the break-up of the Russian Federation? Chaos across the border would not be in Xi's interests. The most likely course of Chinese action is to take the line of least resistance, and wait for it to blow over. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 28 MAR 23] MS CLASSROOM AI

* MS CLASSROOM AI: As discussed in an article from ENGADGET.com ("Microsoft Deploys AI In The Classroom To Improve Public Speaking And Math" by Will Shanklin, 9 February 2023), Microsoft has announced a set of classroom tools, or "Learning Accelerators", driven by artificial intelligence (AI) tech -- some of which have been in use for a while, others that are new, with the tools intended to support individual tutoring of students, allow teachers to monitor their progress and adapt the teaching as needed, and to help teachers organize their classes.

The Learning Accelerators include both "Coach" and "Progress" tools, with the "Coach" providing interactive tutoring, while the "Progress" works at a supervisory level, tracking student and teacher performance, providing recommendations for improvements and guidelines for structuring classwork.

"Reading Coach / Progress" provides reading fluency practice with real-time feedback. They can operate in 116 languages. "Search Coach / Progress" are somewhat more ground-breaking, being intended to foster "information literacy" in students, and providing:

• Interactive coaching to students on forming effective queries, as well as assessing the reliability of sources.
  
  
• Search aids, including tips and filter recommendations.
  
  
• Customizable filters for individual students to help them fine-tune their searchers for independent practice.
  
  
• Optional filters, like a "Fact Check" button that can be enabled by the teacher to encourage students to review sources with some of the top fact checking websites, and an option for teachers to create their own list of sites for students to use.

Students can complete personalized assignments, collect and turn in sources, and show their work and reasoning behind their approach before submitting an assignment for teacher feedback. Teachers can customize a list of sources for assignments and track how students are performing searches. The Search Coach / Progress tools support teachers in personalizing instruction for students of all ages.

Many students say they don't receive enough feedback on their speaking or presentation skills. "Speaker Coach / Progress" focus on student speaking and presentation skills. They provide feedback on student pacing and pitch, inclusiveness, use of filler words, and so on. Students can practice privately and get tips on how to develop a good presentation. Teachers and students can see a summary of key presentation skill areas and areas for improvement. Teachers can also review automatically uploaded student recordings, track progress, and identify student needs.

"Math Coach / Progress", of course, develop student math skills, breaking down problems and personalizing instructions, while helping teachers create assignments and streamline the review process for individual students and classrooms.

[MON 27 MAR 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 12

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: This last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping visited Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, the visit being characterized by long red carpets and great state pomp. The visit apparently didn't go well for Putin, since there was no indication that Xi wanted to ramp up Chinese support for Putin's war in Ukraine. Xi instead pushed a peace proposal that nobody took seriously -- after all, Putin can end the war any time he chooses to stop attacking Ukraine, and doing anything less is just continuing the war.

Ahead of the visit, Sky News Australia conducted an interview with Michael Shoebridge, of Strategic Analysis Australia, who had a number of astute insights:

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Roughly simultaneously with Xi's visit to Moscow, Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio visited Kyiv, pledging nonviolent Japanese support for Ukraine. The timing of Kishida's visit made it clear it was a characteristically Japanese indirect jab at Xi, in part to deflate Xi's "peace plan". It also reinforced the image of a changing Japan, more willing to assert itself in the world, with a photo making the rounds of Kishida being shielded by a burly and alert Ukrainian guard with an M-16 assault rifle. Japan has been pursuing joint weapons development with Britain as of late, that being something of a revival of the military alliance of the two countries of over a century ago.

Back in Japan, Kyoto University conducted its graduation ceremony. The university has a liberal policy for the ceremony, allowing graduates to dress as they please, with some turning to cosplay. One made a splash by coming as Volodymr Zelenskyy, wearing fatigues, a Ukrainian trident, and sporting a beard. It was a remarkably compelling impersonation, the lad honestly did look like a Japanese Zelenskyy. He didn't just do it for laughs, either, since he carried a sign, citing Zelenskyy's address to the US Congress and displaying a Ukrainian flag:

   Your money is NOT charity.
   It is an INVESTMENT in GLOBAL SECURITY and DEMOCRACY
   that we handle IN THE MOST RESPONSIBLE WAY.

The graduate's name was not available at last notice, though it was mentioned that it took him a number of years to pass the university's entrance exams. That's not unusual, since getting into a good university in Japan is very difficult. The aspiring student who's failed his entrance exams is a stock character in Japanese manga / anime, being called a "rounin" -- a masterless and wandering samurai.

* As discussed in an article from VOX.com ("Thanks, Obama! The Hilarious Reason Why A Judge Just Blocked Wyoming's Abortion Ban" by Ian Millhiser, 23 March 2023), we are in a political "silly season" that began in 2016, and isn't showing signs of letting up yet. One aspect is multiple attempts by a number of Red states to ban abortion. Wyoming, for example, is trying to pass a law to make abortion a felony.

This last week, a Wyoming judge put a temporary block on the law -- ironically citing a 2012 amendment to the state constitution that was intended to spite then-President Barack Obama. It all started with the Affordable Care Act (ACA AKA "ObamaCare"), the health-care program set up by the Obama Administration. The Right hated it, calling it a "government takeover of health care", and a number of states passed constitutional amendments to, in principle, block it.

The Wyoming amendment provided that "each competent adult shall have the right to make his or her own health care decisions." Apparently, nobody in the state who voted for the amendment recognized that this was almost the same as saying: "My body, my choice!" However, a group of patients, doctors, and nonprofit groups brought suit against the law -- and last August, Wyoming district court Judge Melissa Owens halted the law, rejecting the state's flimsy argument that the amendment was only focused on the ACA, and should not be construed as protecting reproductive rights.

Owens wrote that the amendment "unambiguously provides competent Wyoming citizens with the right to make their own health care decisions," and she was bound by that unambiguous text, adding: "A court is not at liberty to assume that the Wyoming voters who adopted [the amendment] did not understand the force of language in the provision."

She reasoned that the amendment gave the people of Wyoming a "fundamental right" to make their own health care decisions, including the decision to seek an abortion. That fundamental right could only be abridged when the state seeks to advance a "compelling state interest" and when it uses the "least intrusive" means to do so.

In response to Owens's August decision blocking the state ban, the state legislature enacted a new law decreeing that abortion "is not health care" and so was not protected by the amendment. Owen's decision this last week blocked that law as well, declaring that "the legislature cannot make an end run around" around a constitutional amendment, and that it was the court's job to decide whether abortion meets the state constitution's definition of "health care."

Wyoming is a very conservative state, but so far the state Supreme Court has taken a hands-off attitude toward Owens' decisions, and shows no sign of becoming more active. How things go over the longer run remains to be seen. However, it's hard to believe that anti-abortion sentiment has a future, since it's on weak constitutional grounds and isn't supported by the majority of Americans. How long it takes to play out to the end remains to be seen.

* The ACA, incidentally, just 13, with an essay from MSNBC.com ("As The Affordable Care Act Turns 13, The Law Has Never Been Stronger" by Steve Benen, 23 March 2023) singing its praises:

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This is a highly optimistic read on the ACA, which certainly has had its problems. However, that raises the question: would it have been so troubled if the Republicans hadn't done everything in their power to destroy it? Maybe we've finally turned a corner, with the realization growing among Republicans that the ACA is here to stay, and trying to tear it down does the GOP no good.

[FRI 24 MAR 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (39)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (39): Richard Nixon's preoccupation with Vietnam was mirrored by a preoccupation with the national unrest in large part provoked by the war. He took a hard line against anti-war protesters, and also formally initiated the "War On Drugs" by establishing the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The 1973 oil embargo meant the economy remained troubled, with Nixon attempting to re-impose price controls. They were extremely unpopular and were allowed to lapse in 1974. By that time, Nixon was in big trouble, thanks to illegal actions by his re-election team, and his attempt to direct a cover-up. He was the first American president to resign.

Nixon was replaced by his vice-president, Gerald Ford (1913:2006), previously Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives. Ford was effectively a caretaker president, inheriting from Nixon the troublesome economy, marked by high inflation rates. Ford set up a program named "Whip Inflation Now (WIN)", but it didn't prove a winner.

Ford also inherited a foreign policy based on detente -- leading to the signing in 1975 of the "Helsinki Accords" by 35 countries, including all Western European countries, the USA, and Canada on one side, with the USSR and most Warsaw Pact states on the other side. The Accords were intended to stabilize relations between West and East, with the core being ten principles:

• Sovereign equality, respect for the rights inherent in sovereignty.
  
  
• Refraining from the threat or use of force.
  
  
• Inviolability of frontiers.
  
  
• Territorial integrity of states.
  
  
• Peaceful settlement of disputes.
  
  
• Non-intervention in internal affairs.
  
  
• Respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms, including the freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief.
  
  
• Equal rights and self-determination of peoples.
  
  
• Cooperation among States.
  
  
• Fulfillment in good faith of obligations under international law.

The Accords went not much farther than the statement of these principles. Nothing in them committed the signatories to any specific actions, though a non-governmental organization named "Helsinki Watch" was set up to monitor compliance. Leonid Brezhnev believed the Accords were little more than symbolic, with the Soviet government having no intention of changing their normal ways of doing things. Even Stalin had no problem signing on to statements of principles devised by Franklin Roosevelt, since Stalin regarded them as meaningless verbiage.

Brezhnev thought that signing on would enhance his prestige. That turned out to be a blunder, since Helsinki Watch made sure the world knew about every violation of human rights that took place in the USSR -- and with Soviet dissidents exploiting that publicity. Ironically, the Helsinki Accords didn't do Ford much good either, with conservatives regarding them as accommodating Moscow. That helped defeat Ford in the 1976 election, which was won by Jimmy Carter (1924:2023), previously the governor of the state of Georgia. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 23 MAR 23] WINGS & WEAPONS

* WINGS & WEAPONS: As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Lockheed Martin Stalker XVE Drone Claims World Endurance Record" by David Szondy, 12 April 2022), Lockheed Martin set a flight endurance record for their lightweight Stalker VXE drone, with one remaining aloft for 39 hours, 17 minutes, and seven seconds.

The Stalker is an evolved series of drones, originally introduced in 2006. It of conventional prop aircraft configuration, with forward wings and rear tail assembly. The Stalker XVE has an open architecture, being configurable as per mission requirements. Weighing only about 20 kilograms (44 pounds), it uses electric propulsion powered by either a propane-fueled solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC), providing an endurance of eight hours, or by a battery providing a flight time of about four hours.

Maximum speed is 93 KPH (58 MPH) and ceiliing is 3,660 meters (12,000 feet). The Stalker is launched by bungee or rail; there is an option for a vertical take-off configuration with "quadcopter" underwing rails, though the machine that set the record did not have the VTOL option. The Stalker's hybrid option gives it options for long-range surveillance, limited only by radio line of sight. Its small size and quiet propulsion makes it hard for an adversary to spot.

* As discussed in an article from JANES.com ("Japan Approves JNAAM Co-Development" by Takahashi Kosuke, 22 February 2022), Japan and Britain have now signed a collaborative agreement to co-develop the "Joint New Air-to-Air Missile (JNAAM)". It will be a hybrid, using the airframe of the European MBDA Meteor Beyond Visual Range AAM (BVRAAM), fitted with the seeker of the Japanese AAM-4B missile, which is a multimode subsystem using AESA / active-array radar technology.

The AAM-4B is in service, but it is too big to be carried internally on Japan's F-35 Lightning fighters. Britain has F-35s as well, but they can carry the standard Meteor BVRAAM, so it is not clear what the UK gets out of the codevelopment arrangement. JNAAM will have a range in excess of 100 kilometers (60 miles). Prototypes have been built, with trial production to take place in 2022. Commitment to production will follow, presuming no snags.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Wingcopter Prepares 12,000 Cargo Drones For World's Largest Deployment" by Loz Blain, 21 June 2022) German drone-maker Wingcopter -- mentioned here in 2021 -- has now signed a deal to deploy 12,000 of its long-range, triple-drop delivery drones across Africa over the next five years, bringing drone delivery into the big-time.

The Wingcopter 198 drone has a wingspan of 1.98 meters (6 feet) and can carry up to 6 kilograms (13.2 lb) of cargo. The drone is of fixed-wing configuration, with a vee tall, and tall landing skids to provide clearance for three payloads on drop lines. There are four arms extending front and back of the wings, with an electrically-driven prop at the ends of each arm. The four props on the outer arms are for hover only, being locked in a forward position in horizontal flight. The four props on the inner arms tilt up or down, with the front two props providing propulsion, the back two props simply folding to reduce drag.

Cruise speed is about 145 KPH (90 MPH) over ranges of up to 110 kilometers (68 miles). It can be given a preprogrammed flight plan, but can also be monitored via a control station that can handle ten drones at a time. The fleet of drones will transport goods, medicines, lab samples and vaccines to remote locations quickly and with zero emissions.

[WED 22 MAR 23] LOSER XI (3)

* LOSER XI (3): Xi Jinping's insistence on strong CCP control of China has imposed an extensive new regulatory burden on private companies. Some of it appears sensible -- for example, ensuring that food-delivery workers get better treatment, for instance -- but the implementation has been, again, heavy-handed. The once-flourishing private-education industry, which offered after-school classes for kids wanting to get into college, has suffered layoffs and heavy financial losses after an edict forbidding these businesses from making money out of teaching core-curriculum subjects to most students.

One prominent technology firm, the ride-hailing app Didi Chuxing, has been so harassed by a cybersecurity investigation and restrictions on its operations that its share price went to 20% of what it had been in its original public offering in 2021. The tech sector has been downsizing and laying off employees, with college graduates having trouble getting jobs and youth unemployment at a high level.

Xi's motivations appear to be partly ideological, partly political. It seems he fears that big business, particularly the tech sector, is becoming powerful enough to challenge Chinese Communist Party rule, with CCP officials saying the Party should have greater control over the management of private enterprises.

Xi prefers state-led endeavors that he can more easily control. The government has provided lavish investments, subsidies, and tax breaks to support industries that Xi's bureaucrats favor in sectors they want China to dominate, such as electric vehicles, semiconductors, and artificial intelligence. While such programs necessarily take time, there's not much sign of progress. One observer, Scott Kennedy -- a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic & International Studies -- commented in an essay that in spite of major government support, "there is almost no sector where China is the dominant technology leader."

One of the most prominent of these efforts, a drive towards self-reliance in semiconductor technology, has been bogged down in corruption, and is nowhere near reducing the Chinese economy's dependence on foreign-made chips. US President Joe Biden's CHIPS act targeted this dependence to help boost the American semiconductor industry, while starving China's high-tech industries. It is a particular irony that, while Beijing bullies Taiwan, the island is the global semiconductor powerhouse on which China is dependent.

Xi's apparent distrust of free-market reforms has also aggravated the economy's biggest weakness: its defective growth model. Chinese policy makers and economists worldwide have long warned that China's growth is too dependent on investment, building up debt and squandering resources on unneeded apartments, factories, and infrastructure. Xi has continued the practice of pumping credit into the economy whenever it slowed below Party targets -- with the result that debt has risen steeply, from less than double national output in 2012 to almost triple today.

The consequences are becoming clear in the bloated but vital property sector. A government attempt to rein in highly indebted developers led to a crisis in 2021 at one of the industry's giants, Evergrande, and things have continued to get worse. With developers defaulting, property sales falling, real-estate prices sinking, and new construction slumping, the instability of the sector threatens the nation's banks, which are heavily involved in property-related lending, as well as the wealth of the country's middle class. In an indication of diminished public confidence, families across the country have engaged in a "mortgage strike" -- suspending payments on unfinished apartments out of concern that cash-strapped builders will never complete them. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 21 MAR 23] PRODUCING AMMONIA

* PRODUCING AMMONIA: The Haber-Bosch process was invented in Germany before World War I. It performed synthesis of ammonia from the nitrogen in air and hydrogen, typically obtained from natural gas, the major use of the ammonia now being for fertilizer. Today, about 230 million tonnes of ammonia is produced annually.

As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Green Ammonia Electrolysis Breakthrough Could Finally Kill Haber-Bosch" by Loz Blain, 29 November 2021), the Haber-Bosch process was a miracle in its time, but it was invented over a century ago, and today it leaves much to be desired. It is energy-intensive, and its reliance on natural gas means it is a significant contributor to greenhouse-gas emissions. Researchers at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, say they have found a way to remove natural gas from the process, to produce ammonia "at room temperature, at high, practical rates and efficiency."

Dr. Bryan Suryanto was working with Professor Doug MacFarlane to make bleach out of salt water, focusing on phosphonium ions -- defined as "P*4+", a tetrahedral ion with a central phosphorus holding together four subunits, most often organics. They decided to investigate if they could be used to synthesize ammonia through electroloysis -- and found out it could. They were very surprised, it appears because they had thought somebody would have tried the same trick before. MacFarlane says:

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Dr. Alexandr Simonov, another member of the research group, says that the process is ...

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When the hydrogen ions arrive at the cathode, they displace the lithium atoms in each lithium nitride molecule, the result being NH3, ammonia. The ammonia is released from the cathode and captured. Simonov says:

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The process is as clean as the electricity used to power it, and more efficient than earlier schemes along such lines. The research team believes the process is highly scalable, capable of being implemented at industrial scale or in a hand-held unit. Industries requiring ammonia could produce it themselves, and not pay to have it transported in. The researchers have patented the technology and spun off a business, Jupiter Ionics, to commercialize it. Something that looks good in the lab may not work out so well in practice, but the prospect is encouraging.

[MON 20 MAR 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 11

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: In something of a surprise move, this last week the International Criminal Court (ICC) issued a warrant for the arrest of Russian President Vladimir Putin on charges of war crimes -- specifically, the abduction of over 10,000 Ukrainian children who were placed with Russian families, with the intent to assimilate them as Russians. A similar warrant was placed for Russian official Maria Lvova-Belova, who is responsible for the relocation program.

The Russian government, which is not a member nation of the ICC, immediately denounced the warrants as "outrageous and unacceptable". It is unlikely that the ICC will ever try Putin, since the court cannot try anyone in absentia, and the Russians won't hand him over. Nonetheless, the action is significant. The Ukrainians had been pushing the ICC to take action, seeing it as increasing the squeeze on Putin. Ukrainian General Prosecutor Andry Yermak commented:

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Human Rights Watch called the ICC decision a "wakeup call to others committing abuses or covering them up." There's also talk of a new warrant being issued for Putin for attacks on civilian targets.

* As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("Emmanuel Macron's Vision Of A More Muscular Europe Is Coming True", 8 March 2023), in early February 2022, as Russian forces built up in what seemed to be preparations to invade Ukraine, French President Emmanuel Macron traveled to Moscow to speak with Vladimir Putin, the two men talking across a very long table to ensure social distancing. The conversation was tense, but Putin did say that Russia would "not be the cause of escalation". On 24 February, Russian tanks rolled into Ukraine.

Macron's trip to Moscow had not achieved its goals -- but since that time, he's had reasons to feel encouraged. He has made no secret of wanting a more powerful and assertive Europe, and that has come to pass. Trying to place France in a leadership position of a renewed Europe has not been so easy.

Macron couldn't be faulted for failing to try, hosting a stream of foreign leaders in Paris, and often traveling to foreign capitals to meet with them as well. He texts them all continuously. France itself is hardly weak, being nuclear-armed and having a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council; France maintains a big army with the ability to project power globally. Its military bases and overseas territories stretch from the Caribbean to the Pacific. With 264 embassies and missions, France runs the world's third-biggest diplomatic network after China (275) and America (267).

Macron has an underlying theory to guide his efforts, speaking of a "grand bouleversement (great upheaval)" -- meaning the decline of the unipolar, American-dominated global system that emerged after the Cold War, and its replacement with a more fragmented world and a new round of great-power rivalry. He believes that the European and French response should be more "sovereignty", meaning "reinforcing the capacity to decide for ourselves, and continuing to be able to do so".

When Macron outlined his ideas in 2017, in a speech at the Sorbonne, his calls for "European sovereignty" sounded like high-minded abstractions. The war in Ukraine has made them more concrete. Europe no longer talks only of rules, trade and peace, but also of guns, autonomy, and power. Military spending is surging across Europe, while European countries ship all the arms they can scrape up to Ukraine, and reduce dependence on Russian energy. Europe is also displaying a new-found liking for industrial policy.

There are limits to how far talk of "sovereignty" goes. European countries near to the war have concluded that their security can only be guaranteed by NATO -- the biggest factor being the American support of the alliance, the USA being well the most powerful component. Germany has been reluctant to take big decisions without American cover, and is keen to buy American weaponry. Macron himself has never been honestly anti-American, instead wanting France to be a peer to the USA, and is currently treading softly on NATO. Even as France is increasing its military spending by a third, he now speaks more about a "European component of NATO" than full-blown "strategic autonomy".

However, nobody has forgotten that France withdrew its forces from NATO's integrated command structure in 1966, returning to it only in 2009. France is still perceived as keeping a certain distance from the alliance, one French former NATO official saying: "We still talk about NATO as if it is 'them' and not 'us'."

Macron has also made the primacy of French national interests clear, speaking of France being a "puissance d'equilibres (balancing power)", that is independent and open to speaking to all. That creates tension -- particularly in Poland and the Baltic States, since it hints at being open to an accommodation with Putin. To be sure, Macron has made it clear that Russia must get out of Ukraine, but he's also been careful to leave the door open for talks. One French parliamentarian says: "It's very difficult both to have a special dialogue with countries like Russia or China, and to act as the pivot in Europe, building consensus and leveraging Europe to project power."

Finally, there is something of a disconnect between French ambitions and capabilities. Paris hums with big ideas, such as preserving biodiversity, improving food security, ensuring "effective" multilateralism, and curbing extremism online. Getting them all done is another question. French bungling led to the formation of AUKUS, a defense pact between America, Australia and Britain unveiled in 2021 -- which meant cancellation of a deal to build French submarines for Australia, threw French Indo-Pacific strategy into disarray, and led to a mini-crisis between France and the AUKUS governments.

Some of these difficulties are nothing new, France again having long had doubts about NATO, and always being willing to differ with the English-speaking countries. However, Macron's personal style aggravates the problems, He is aggressive, independent-minded, willing to try new things and take risks. His critics believe that his personal style saps his influence. A European diplomat says: "He has too many ideas, all the time. It is hard to make any of them stick." However, Macron will stay Macron, an aide saying: "The president will never accept that France is a middling power."

* I went in for a dental checkup this last week. On recommendation from my last checkup, I started using a waterpic, and decided I really liked it. Now I use it to clean my teeth every time I eat. I was worried that it wasn't really effective, but I didn't have any cavities, and the dentist told me my teeth were clean.

More interestingly, while I was killing time in the dental chair, I was playing a puzzle game on my smartphone. The dentist asked me about it, and we got to talking about video games -- me talking about how us old geezers are often fond of them: "Hey, some of us were playing video games from the start, and they're what's happening when we don't get around much any more."

The interesting part was that the dental assistant was a MINECRAFT addict, and the dentist played SKYRIM / ELDER SCROLLS himself. It was something of a revelation, in that video games have become almost as pervasive as TV.

MINECRAFT, incidentally, has pretty and pensive theme music, completely unlike typical game music. I download the themes from Youtube, where there's a large collection of game themes. Some Youtube channels specialize in them, such as OVERCLOCKED REMIX, which is all remixes of game themes. As of late, OC REMIX has turned to jazz-oriented remixes of game themes. A light jazz version of the TETRIS theme? That's imaginative.

[FRI 17 MAR 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (38)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (38): While Richard Nixon tends to be remembered as an arch-conservative, that is a simplistic view of a complicated person. Although Nixon had little interest in environmental policy, he knew the public was concerned with it, and so he helped drive through a series of major environmental acts:

• In 1970, he signed the National Environmental Policy Act and established the Environmental Protection Agency to enforce environmental policy.
  
  
• Also in 1970, he signed the landmark Clean Air Act, as well as the Clean Water Act -- though he vetoed the follow-on Clean Water Act of 1972, claiming it was too costly, and refused to implement it when Congress overrode the veto.
  
  
• In 1973, after his re-election, Nixon signed the Endangered Species Act, which permitted the government to intervene to save species at risk of extinction.

In terms of education, Nixon's efforts were clearly mixed. The Nixon Administration saw the first large-scale efforts to desegregate American public schools through school busing. Nixon actually denounced "forced integration" by busing, but he let the Department of Justice enforce court orders, with the courts taking the blame. As far as diversity and economic policy went, Nixon set up the Office of Minority Business Enterprise to support minority-owned businesses, and encouraged hiring of women and minorities.

Nixon was agreeable on these issues because they weren't so important to him, his primary interest being foreign policy, most notably winding down the war in Vietnam. He was also greatly concerned over domestic public unrest over the war, taking a hard line against protests and protesters. Leftist sympathies in the USA were at an all-time high, being pumped-up by the war -- though in hindsight they were superficial, more a symptom of the dramatic social changes of the times than a cause of them. The last US troops were out of the country in 1973, with South Vietnam overrun by North Vietnam two years later. The American Left quickly faded.

Nixon regarded Vietnam as a strategic distraction, his primary goal being "detente" with the Soviet Union, in particular negotiating a set of arms limitation treaties to restrain the nuclear arms race. In the meantime, he also pursued engagement with Red China, taking a groundbreaking visit to Beijing in 1972. The hostility between the USSR and Red China had become apparent, and Nixon wish to play the two sides off against each other. The visit gradually led to normalization of relations between the US and China. However, at the time China remained mired in Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Outside of Vietnam, the most significant international event of the Nixon Administration was the 1973 October War between the Israelis and its Arab neighbors. The Arabs had, with Soviet support, armed and trained themselves to a much better specification since the 1967 war, and they pressed the Israelis very hard -- until the Israeli military rallied and, with American support, threw the Arabs back. The Israelis couldn't score a knockout blow, however, and so the US mediated a cease-fire, with the Israelis making concessions. The end result was that Egypt became an American client instead of a Soviet client.

In reaction to US involvement in the war, the Organization of Oil-Producing Countries (OPEC) -- a producer cartel established in 1960 -- announced an oil embargo against the USA and other Western countries, sending prices at the pump skyrocketing. The embargo only lasted a year, primarily because the embargo hurt the economies of the OPEC as well, and OPEC would not be so enthusiastic about the "oil weapon" again. However, the embargo made the USA and other Western countries painfully aware of their dependence on foreign oil. The USA would from that time on intermittently fuss about "energy independence", against the background of the slowly growing question about an economy that was dependent on oil in the first place. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 16 MAR 23] SPACE NEWS

* Space launches for February included:

[02 FEB 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 5-3 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0758 UTC (local time + 5) to put 53 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX recovery barge.

[05 FEB 23] RU BK / PROTON M BLOCK DM / ELEKTRO-L 4 -- A Russian Proton M Block DM booster was launched from Baikonur at 0912 UTC (local time - 6) to put the Russian "Elektro-L 4" geostationary weather satellite into space. Launch of the first was in 2011, the second following in 2013, the third in 2019.

The Electro-L satellites are comparable to the US Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES) satellites, Europe's EUMETSAT series, and China's Fengyun II. The Elektro-L satellites are capable of taking images of a full hemisphere of the Earth in both visible and infrared spectra, providing data on climate change and ocean monitoring, in addition to providing weather forecasting data. The satellites are built by NPO Lavochkin, being based on the company's "Navigator" satellite bus. They have a launch mass of 1,620 kilograms (3,570 pounds), and a design lifetime of ten years.

[06 FEB 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / GLOBALSTAR FM15 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0832 UTC (local time + 5) to put "Amazonas Nexus" geostationary comsat into orbit for Hispasat of Spain. The satellite was built by Thales Alenia Space, based on the company's Spacebus NEO platform, with electric propulsion. It had a launch mass of 4,500 kilograms (9,920 pounds), carried a high-bandwidth Ku / Ka-band payload, and had a design life of 15 years. It was placed in the geostationary slot at 61 degrees west to cover all the Americas. It replaced Amazonas 2, which launched aboard an Ariane 5 in 2009. The booster was recovered.

[09 FEB 23] RU BK / SOYUZ 2-1A / PROGRESS 83P (MS 22 / ISS) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 0615 UTC (local time - 6) to put a Progress tanker-freighter spacecraft into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) supply mission. It docked with the station two days later. It was the 83rd Progress mission to the ISS.

[10 FEB 23] IN SR / SSLV / TEST FLIGHT -- An ISRO Small Satellite Launch Vehicle (SSLV) was launched from Sriharikota at 0348 UTC (local time - 5:30) on its second orbital flight. The booster carried three payloads:

• EOS 07: Another mission in ISRO's Earth Observing Satellite (EOS) series. EOS includes satellites originally built for multiple programs -- including Cartosat, Oceansat, and RISAT -- as technology demonstrators like EOS 07. The older satellites were not given an EOS designation. EOS 07 carried two instruments: the "Millimeter-wave Humidity Sounder (MHS)" and "Spectrum Monitoring Payload (SMP)".
  
  
• AzaadiSAT 2: An 8-unit (8U) student CubeSat, the second satellite ISRO has launched for Space Kidz India -- the first being lost in SSLV's unsuccessful maiden flight. It carried an AMSAT relay and student experiments.
  
  
• Janus 1: A 6U CubeSat from the US company Antaris, carrying a set of experiments: including radio and optical communication, internet of things (IoT) data relay, and on-orbit machine learning. Antaris built a virtual clone of the CubeSat as a simulation experiment.

SSLV is a four-stage vehicle, consisting of three solid-propellant stages designated "SS1", "SS2", and "SS3", topped with a liquid-propellant fourth The VTM monomethylhydrazine (MMH) and mixed oxides of nitrogen (MON3) -- a mixture of 97% dinitrogen tetroxide and 3% nitric oxide.

[12 FEB 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 5-4 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0510 UTC (local time + 5) to put 55 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship. The payload fairings were also recovered.

[18 FEB 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / INMARSAT I-6 F2 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 0359 UTC (previous day local time + 5) to put the "Inmarsat I-6 F2" geostationary comsat into orbit.

Inmarsat I-6 F2 was the second I-6 satellite. It was built by Airbus using the "Eurostar 3000EOR" satellite bus. The satellite had a launch mass of 5,500 kilograms (12,125 pounds) and carried a dual L-band / Ka-band payload. Inmarsat I-6 F2 was intended to be a key component of Inmarsat's ORCHESTRA network, which will integrate geostationary, low Earth orbit, and terrestrial 5G technologies into a single solution. The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship. The payload fairings were also recovered.

[23 FEB 23] CN XC / LONG MARCH 3B / CHINASAT 6E -- A Long March 3B booster was launched from Xichang at 1149 UTC (local time - 8) to put the "Chinasat 6E" AKA "Zhongxing 6E" geostationary comsat into space. The satellite was built by the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC) and based on the DFH 4 bus. The satellite had an overall bandwidth of more than 100 gigabits per second. It had a footprint extending from the Horn of Africa to Japan, the Kamchatka Peninsula, and northern Queensland in Australia.

[24 FEB 23] RU BK / SOYUZ 2-1A / PROGRESS 84P (MS 23 / ISS) -- A Soyuz 2-1a booster was launched from Baikonur at 0024 UTC (local time - 6) to put a Progress tanker-freighter spacecraft into orbit on an International Space Station (ISS) supply mission. It docked with the station two days later. It replaced Soyuz MS 23, which was damaged to a micrometeorite strike. It was the 84th Progress mission to the ISS.

[24 FEB 23] CN JQ / LONG MARCH 2C / HORUS 1 -- A Long March 2C booster was launched at 0401 UTC (local time - 8) from the Chinese Jiuquan space center to put the "Horus 1" remote sensing satellite into orbit for the Egyptian Space Agency.

[27 FEB 23] USA CC / FALCON 9 / STARLINK 6-1 -- A SpaceX Falcon 9 booster was launched from Cape Canaveral at 2310 UTC (local time + 5) to put 21 SpaceX "Starlink" low-Earth-orbit broadband comsats into orbit. These were "v2 Mini" satellites, heftier than the earlier "v1.5" but with four times the bandwidth. They also featured new Hall-effect electric thrusters, using argon instead of xenon. The Falcon 9 first stage landed on the SpaceX drone ship. The payload fairings were also recovered.

[WED 15 MAR 23] LOSER XI (2)

* LOSER XI (2): Even before the Ukraine war, Xi Jinping's willingness to make trouble was pushing the world's democracies towards the USA, with the process accelerating as the war has dragged on. In June 2022, the leaders of Washington's four main partners in the Pacific -- Japan, South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand -- attended a NATO summit for the first time to discuss the Chinese threat, hinting at closer defense ties between the West Pacific nations and Europe. Britain has in fact been working with Japan on mutual defense deals, Poland has been acquiring South Korean tanks and other weapons in large numbers, while Taiwan has taken a strong (if discreet) interest in the Ukraine War.

In addition, India -- traditionally standoffish with the US and its allies -- has become more active in the "Quad", a security partnership also including Australia, Japan, and the USA. India and China have never got along perfectly well, with a long-standing border dispute between the two countries, and Xi's more assertive policies haven't gone down well in New Delhi.

Xi seems indifferent to the pushback. In September 2022, he visited Vladimir Putin, effectively endorsing the Russian invasion of Ukraine -- with continued Chinese belligerence towards Taiwan suggesting that Xi doesn't see the disastrous failure of Russian arms in the invasion as being a concern. Chinese diplomacy with the West has tended towards the undiplomatic. In a July 2022 meeting with his Australian counterpart, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi complained about Canberra's "irresponsible words and deeds", and suggested that Australia should not be "controlled by any third party" -- meaning the USA.

Not long after that, when US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taiwan, the Chinese foreign ministry threw a fit, saying that the USA would "pay the price" for such an affront -- and a few days after that, a senior Chinese official warned the Israeli ambassador to Beijing not to be influenced by the USA in dealings with China. Such heavy-handedness has won China few friends, with a survey of 19 countries by the Pew Research Center ranking China's image as low. Xi didn't fare well either, with many respondents expressing little or no confidence that the Chinese leader will "do the right thing" in world affairs.

China is seen somewhat more favorably in parts of the developing world, and Beijing's foreign policy has become increasingly focused on winning support in what's called the "Global South." However, even there, Xi has stumbled. China, for example, failed to draw the small nations of the South Pacific into a security and economic pact, partly because of Beijing's high-handedness; the Chinese had presented local leaders with a detailed pact without discussing it with them first.

Xi hasn't been doing well at home either, China's economy being a particular problem. Growth has slowed significantly under his leadership. In 2012, at the start of his tenure, the economy grew 7.8%, but in 2022 it was about 3%. It is unlikely that China's growth rate would continue to grow rapidly as the economy got bigger, but Xi's policies have done little to sustain growth.

The key to China's decades-long economic boom was the withdrawal of state intervention in the economy and its opening to overseas trade and investment, which allowed private enterprise to thrive. To some extent, Xi has reversed that -- enough to drain national resources and energy from some of the most energetic sectors of the economy into ineffective endeavors, such as a series of state-led industrial programs. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 14 MAR 23] AI CHEMICAL ANALYSIS

* AI CHEMICAL ANALYSIS: As discussed in an article from NATURE.com ("DeepMind AI Tackles One Of Chemistry's Most Valuable Techniques" by Davide Castelvecchi, 10 December 2021), chemists have long wished they could, using computer power, predict the properties of materials from their molecular structures. Unfortunately, that has proven difficult to achieve because there's so much computing overhead.

Machine learning (ML) offers a way around the computation burden, using highly educated guessing instead of brute force. Now a team of researchers at London-based artificial intelligence company DeepMind has come up with an ML-based system that that suggests a molecule's characteristics by predicting the distribution of electrons within it.

In principle, the structure of materials and molecules is completely determined by quantum mechanics, and specifically by the Schroedinger equation, which governs the behavior of electron wavefunctions -- which give the probabilities of finding particular electrons at a particular position in space. Unfortunately, all the electrons in a molecule interact with each other, with the computational burden growing by leaps and bounds as molecules get bigger.

In practice, from the 1960s researchers have relied on a set of simplified methods called "density functional theory (DFT)" to predict the physical properties of molecules. DFT works to calculate the overall distribution of the electrons' negative electric charge across the molecule, instead of tracking individual electrons. Most properties of matter can then be directly calculated from that density. Modern databases of the properties of materials, such as the Materials Project, consist to a large extent of DFT calculations.

DFT has limitations, one being that it can give wrong results for some types of molecule, even some as simple as sodium chloride. In addition, although DFT calculations are far more efficient than those working from fundamental quantum theory, they are still cumbersome and often demand supercomputer time. Over the past decade, theoretical chemists have increasingly been experimenting with ML -- in particular to study specific properties of materials such as chemical reactivity or heat conductivity.

The DeepMind team used ML instead of calculations to determine the electron distribution. The team trained an artificial neural network on data from 1,161 accurate solutions of derived from the Schroedinger equations. They also hard-wired relevant laws of physics into the system to constrain the results. They then tested the trained system on a set of molecules that are often used as a benchmark for DFT, with impressive results.

Training the ML system is still computation-intensive, but once trained, the ML system can be run on an ordinary laptop. Deepmind has released their trained system for anyone to use. It can only handle molecules and not higher-order crystal structures, but it continues to be refined, and will improve over time.

ED: What we are likely to see in the future are AI systems for specific applications, in which there are only a handful of learning systems for each application, providing runtime systems to many end-users. The learning systems will be supported by governments, academic alliances, or by subscriptions. The end-users will also be obligated to provide data back to the learning systems.

[MON 13 MAR 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 10

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.COM ("Ukraine Is Building Up Its Forces For An Offensive", 11 March 2023), over the winter, the war in Ukraine has degenerated into a battle of attrition, with Russian troops suicidally throwing themselves at Armed Forces Ukraine (AFU) positions in the Donbas region, centered on the town of Bakhmut. The AFU has remained passive in the face of the pressure, simply trying to stand their ground and inflict as many casualties on the Russians as possible.

The reason for the passivity is obvious: the AFU cannot win the fight with a defensive war of attrition, and so is building up resources for a mobile offensive when spring weather comes. The first German Leopard tank, donated by the Poles, arrived in Ukraine in February -- following extended dithering by Olaf Scholz, Germany's chancellor, who decided to Leopards to be sent to Ukraine in January. They have been slow to arrive, with possibly about 60 modern Leopard IIs in the pipeline, along with about a hundred older, updated Leopard Is.

Other tanks are trickling in. Britain is sending a company of 14 Challenger 2s. America has pledged 31 M1A2 Abrams, arguably the most imposing main battle tank in the world -- though it's not clear when they will get to Ukraine, with the pledge made at German urging. Poland, which has promised 14 Leopards and has already sent around 250 Soviet-designed T-72 tanks to Ukraine, will send 60 modernized T-72s. A variety of infantry fighting vehicles, from the ageing Soviet-era BMP-1 to America's Stryker and Bradley vehicles, will fill out the armored brigades.

In parallel and driving the fuss over armor has gone on, there's been a shift in strategy. Late in 2022, the US and Britain realized that a protracted war was not desireable, and that Russia was even weaker than had been perceived. That led to a decision to ramp up support on 20 January 2023, at the January 20th at the eighth meeting of the Ukraine Defense Contact Group, an American-led meeting of defense ministers held roughly monthly at the American air base at Ramstein in Germany.

One European defense official says that the infusion of arms agreed on in Germany in January alone amounts to two-thirds of the total sent to Ukraine in all of 2022. Advanced weapons are clearly included in the mix, though security means details remain hidden. One important addition that is known is the Ground-Launched Small Diameter Bomb (GL-SDB), an improvisation using air-launched SDB glide bombs mated to recycled US Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) boosters, with twice as much range as current US-MLRS rockets. Russian ammunition dumps and headquarters will no longer be safe in the rear. To be sure, not all the gear is in the form of imposing weapons; one significant American contribution is in the form of armored bridge-laying vehicles, essential for offensive operations.

Ukraine's army is now being transformed. Most of its hardware is still of Soviet origin -- but while the ratio of Soviet-standard to Western kit stood at five to one at the end of 2022, that is expected to fall to five to two as the aid flows in. Almost a third of Ukraine's army will soon have NATO-standard equipment. General Valery Zaluzhny, Ukraine's top officer, hopes that he will eventually have three new army corps at his disposal, each with six brigades, and each comprising more than 20,000 men.

The Russians are perfectly aware of the buildup. Although the Russian offensive seems poorly thought-out, it appears that it is partly intended as a "spoiling attack", attempting to throw the Ukrainians on the defensive and disrupt their offensive plans. Zaluzhny didn't snap at the bait, fighting a defensive battle, allocating no more resources to it than necessary, inflicting disproportionate damage on the Russians. Instead, AFU troops have been sent abroad to be trained for the coming offensive.

Since January, America's 7th Army Training Command has been running a five-week course for Ukrainian units at its Grafenwoehr training area in eastern Bavaria, in Germany. During its 2022 offensives, the AFU generally attacked in company-sized units. The training at "The Graf", as it is known, is intended to teach Ukrainian troops to fight in bigger formations and become adept at "combined-arms" warfare -- in which infantry, armor, artillery and other combat arms work in a coordinated fashion.

There's necessarily a cloak of disinformation over what happens in Ukraine. Anything that the public knows, Putin does too, so the message is tailored to Putin. It's obvious an offensive is being prepared, but we don't know its specifics, and we have reasons for caution. It's not possible to train more than a battalion of troops at The Graf at a time, meaning that most of the AFU still suffers from limited training. The huge materiel requirements of a major offensive are very hard to support, and there cannot be enough of everything. Finally, although Russian forces are badly-led, badly-trained, badly-equipped, badly-supported, and thoroughly demoralized, they have still been able to come up with nasty surprises on a regular basis. Nonetheless, there's good cause for optimism come the spring, and hopes that the war can be concluded this year.

* Regarding Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, discussed in this column in the past ... in a recent visit to Iowa, he was presented with a decorative plaque of a big snowflake -- and did not notice that the arms of the snowflake read, in elegant script: FASCIST.

While Governor DeSantis hogs the limelight, his wife Casey does get a bit of attention -- mostly because of her sense of style, since she's inclined to dress like a Disney princess, with capes, long gloves, and so on, even on relatively informal occasions. I kind of like it myself, but as one Twitterer put, she looks like she's promoting a sofa in a 1960s magazine ad.

[FRI 10 MAR 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (37)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (37): Relations between the USSR and China broke down almost completely during Khrushchev's rule, and did not recover in the Brezhnev era. Mao Zedong wanted to embody Red principles, beginning a "Cultural Revolution" in 1966, in which China was kept in a state of continuous revolutionary upheaval -- with the effect of ensuring Mao's control, with no real concern for getting anything constructive done.

The USSR and China competed for influence in the developing world, which was painfully emerging from the colonial order. Communist influence in Latin America was limited, primarily to Cuba; the greater inclination there was towards Rightist governments, notably military dictatorships. Communist penetration in Africa was greater, but governments there had a similar inclination towards authoritarianism -- most visibly in the rule of "Big Men", who were inclined to make themselves "presidents for life", or sometimes even "emperors", who ran "kleptocracies", meaning "governments of thieves".

In the Middle East, tensions between Israel and Arab governments boiled over in 1967, with Israel launching a lightning pre-emptive attack on its neighbors, and the "Six-Day War" being a triumph for Israel -- though the Palestinian territories occupied by the Israelis would prove indigestible. The war ended up making the USA Israel's biggest backer, with the USSR backing the Arab states.

The most significant confrontation between the capitalist and communist orders in the era, however, was in Asia, the focal point being Vietnam. From 1964, Lyndon Johnson ramped up American involvement in the conflict, committing ground forces in large numbers. American troops found themselves mired in a guerrilla conflict, attempting to prop up the weak South Vietnamese government. LBJ wanted to keep the war limited, and so restricted attacks on North Vietnam to aerial bombing campaigns, in hopes of pressuring the North Vietnamese government to stop supporting the insurgency in South Vietnam. The bombings only seemed to make the North Vietnamese more resolute. The USSR and China competed to funnel weapons to them.

The war took a strong turn to the worse for the USA in 1968, when an uprising timed with the Vietnamese New Year swept South Vietnam. The "Tet Offensive" was crushed, but it greatly undermined US public support for the conflict. LBJ's presidency had been running out of steam, with his Great Society running into turbulence from urban riots that often marked summers, and the economy faltering. The fiasco in Vietnam greatly compounded his troubles; sinking in the polls, LBJ announced that he would not run for re-election. Richard Nixon won the 1968 election.

* Nixon was elected on promises to restore civil order and to find "peace with honor" in Vietnam. The economy he inherited from LBJ was struggling, with inflation running high, in large part because of spending to support the war. Nixon's response was pragmatic. He attempted to restrain government spending, with limited success, and even imposed, against his instincts, wage and price controls for a limited time. More fundamentally, he took the USA off the gold standard and abandoned the Bretton Woods exchange system, in an attempt to redress a balance of trade that was tilting against America -- indeed, in 1971, the USA had its first negative balance of trade of the 20th century. Foreign competition was finally beginning to bite into American economic predominance.

Nixon was also pragmatic in his approach to social programs and regulation. One of his campaign promises has been to end the "welfare mess" -- which was tricky, since some of LBJ's social programs had proven successful. He adopted as alternative a "negative income tax", which guaranteed a minimum income to those under the poverty line. In 1969, he presented his "Family Assistance Plan (FAP)" on national TV, which would set a national income floor of $1600 USD per year for a family of four. FAP went over well with the public, but not so well in Congress -- it appears because Republicans thought it was too much, Democrats thought it was a not-very-sneaky way to cut social programs. Congress shot it down, though it passed more limited programs.

Nixon's thinking on social programs was decidedly mixed. He killed off a number of LBJ's Great Society programs -- which, admittedly, were a mixed bag -- but was unable to restrain government spending on Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. Nixon also pushed for a reform of the healthcare system, with a focus on private efforts, particularly "health maintenance organizations (HMO)". Democrats wanted more government involvement in healthcare and Nixon's efforts along those lines were ineffectual. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 09 MAR 23] GIMMICKS & GADGETS

* GIMMICKS & GADGETS: As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("LG's Moody New Fridge Lights Up In Custom Colors & Plays Music" by Michael Irving, 2 September 2022), LG of South Korea -- the company once endearingly known as "Lucky Goldstar" -- has designed the "MoodUP", the refrigerator for those who have everything.

The MoodUP comes in a double-door model, or a single-door with two freezer drawers. The MoodUP not only keeps food cold, but also has a bluetooth sound system, and LED doors that can change color on command. The upper door panels can handle 22 colors, the lower panels 19. Users can customize their own color schemes or pick from standard themes like Season, Place, Mood and Pop.

The panels can pulse with the music; flash if the door is left open; blink gently when the fridge senses someone approaching; and glows brighter in the dark. Apparently, there's also a "transparency" mode that allows a user to see what's inside the refrigerator section. Exactly how many people will buy off on the MoodUP is unclear, but it's certainly a cute idea.

* As discussed in a press release from the University of Cambridge ("LED Smart Lighting System Based on Quantum Dots More Accurately Reproduces Daylight", 3 August 2022) researchers at the University of Cambridge in the UK have designed smart, color-controllable white light devices from "quantum dots" -- nanotech semiconductor devices -- that are more efficient and have better color saturation than standard LEDs, and can dynamically reproduce daylight conditions in a single light.

Quantum dots have been used as the basis for full-color flat-panel displays, but using them for lighting is a new idea. Natural-light LED bulbs currently used red, green, and blue LEDs to get the right mix of colors; the Cambridge researchers found that using a range of quantum-dot colors got better results, and was more energy-efficient. It seems, however, that the QD-LED bulb's colors cannot be tweaked; the article was not clear on this point.

* As discussed in an article from ECONOMIST.com ("How A Chatbot Has Turned Ukrainian Civilians Into Digital Resistance Fighters", 22 February 2023), Ukrainian civilians in Russian-occupied territory have proven adept at using smartphones to provide intelligence to Ukrainian forces. They've been helped by a chatbot named "eVorog (eEnemy)", developed by the Ukrainian government and introduced shortly after the invasion began.

Simply asking for reports from citizens would not have worked well, since the reports would be all over the map, and not necessarily coherent. The chatbot leads users through a list of questions to determine what they saw, where and when. It is leverage off Telegram, an encrypted messaging platform, and uses another government app, Diia, to check the identity of those submitting information. The phone's satellite navigation function confirms the location. By December 2022, eVorog had received more than 450,000 reports.

The intelligence collected is collated and validated to ensure that it is accurate and timely. In unoccupied Ukraine, civilians use eVorog to report the location of unexploded munitions. Another app, ePPO, allows users to record the flight of aircraft, missiles and drones.

The most controversial aspect of eVorog is that it allows Ukrainians to report collaborators. Its developers used as an example of collaboration a Ukrainian woman who was made pregnant by a Russian soldier, implying that victims of rape might be deemed traitors. They backtracked, saying the purpose of the app was "identifying the enemy, not condemning the actions of Ukrainians."

[WED 08 MAR 23] LOSER XI (1)

* LOSER XI (1): As discussed in an article from THEATLANTIC.com ("China's Mistakes Can Be America's Gain", by Michael Schuman, 26 September 2022), there was a time not so long ago when China seemed on unstoppable growth, and there was the global question of whether that was a bad thing or not. After Xi Jinping took power almost a decade ago, the consensus became that it was a bad thing, and arguably a bad thing for China.

The 20th Party Congress took place in Beijing in mid-October 2022. Traditionally, after ten years, Xi would be expected to step down, but as expected he broke precedent and was reaffirmed for another five years. That was not a welcome prospect in Washington DC. Xi appears to be willing to exert Chinese power to challenge America's economic primacy, technological edge, and military dominance -- and the rules-based world order established by the USA after World War 2.

Should the USA then expect more confrontation in a renewed Xi regime? Yes, but current indications are that Xi is losing ground in his pushback against the USA -- and the longer Xi remains China's boss, the more China will fall behind. A close look at Xi's track record shows that China has not done well since he took power: the economy has slowed dramatically, while China's aggressive foreign policy has frightened it neighbors and won him few friends elsewhere.

Of course, policy makers in Washington DC felt obligated to respond to the challenges, contesting China on every front: diplomatic, economic, technological, military, and ideological. That was the thinking behind the American CHIPS bill, which was designed to prevent the semiconductor industry from being dominated by China's high-tech ambitions. The same strategy guided President Joe Biden's 2021 Build Back Better World, an infrastructure-building program intended to compete with China's Belt & Road Initiative and compete for influence in the developing world.

While Xi appears to be losing his grip, US President Joe Biden seems to be slowly going from strength to strength. The Trump era meant confusion and paralysis in Washington DC, but Xi was unable to exploit the chaos. Indeed, Trump took a hard line on China, and Biden has continued it. China's high-handed, aggressive, and authoritarian actions actually reinforced America's global network of alliances, which had been badly strained under Trump.

American leadership distrusts China because it is the only country with both the intent and the capability to undermine the US-led global order. However, so far Xi's stumbling shows that the popular assumption that China's rise is as unstoppable as American decline is not credible. Xi wants to go down in history as the man who overturned Pax Americana, but so far he seems to be strengthening it.

When Xi Jinping took power in 2012, the general belief was that he would follow the highly immensely successful path laid by the "paramount leader" Deng Xiaoping in the 1980s -- based on liberalizing economic reforms, integration with the global economy, and a partnership with the United States. Xi had earlier served as an official in some of China's economically liveliest regions, so he could be expected to understand with Deng's central principle of "reform and opening up." Not long before Xi became the country's new leader, he had had extensive interactions with then Vice President Joe Biden, suggesting a good future relationship.

That was not to be. Xi proved highly ideological, fiercely nationalist, and obsessed with political control. He believes that it is time that China challenged the USA for global pre-eminence; as an alternative to the US-led global order, he is promoting a Sinocentric alternative, one that is friendlier to authoritarian regimes. In particular, Xi pushed a relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin -- which would prove a major blunder as Putin's brutal but inept war against Ukraine shook the foundations of the decrepit Russian state. [TO BE CONTINUED]

[TUE 07 MAR 23] CARBON CAPTURE FROM SEAWATER

* CARBON CAPTURE FROM SEAWATER: As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("MIT Team Makes A Case For Direct Carbon Capture From Seawater, Not Air" by Loz Blain, 17 February 2023), there has been much discussion, but not so much progress, on drawing carbon dioxide out of the air and sequestering it to slow down climate change. A research team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suggests that it might make more sense to capture carbon out of the sea instead of the air.

Direct air carbon capture (DACC) is costly and inefficient. The International Energy Agency has estimated that even the most efficient air capture technologies require about 1.83 megawatt-hours of energy per tonne of carbon dioxide captured. Most of that energy isn't used to directly separate the CO2 from the air -- it's in heat energy to keep the absorbers at operating temperatures, or electrical energy used to compress large amounts of air to the point where the capture operation can be done efficiently. No nation on Earth is considering a carbon tax that comes close to meeting the cost of DACC.

The MIT researchers thought seawater could be a better alternative. As atmospheric carbon concentrations rise, carbon dioxide dissolves into seawater. The ocean currently soaks up about a third of all human annual carbon emissions, maintaining a constant free exchange with the air; pulling CO2 out of seawater means pulling it out of air. What makes the alternative approach attractive is that the concentration of carbon dioxide in seawater is more than 100 times greater than in air. There has already been research on capturing CO2 from seawater, but to date technology has depended on expensive membranes and a constant supply of chemicals to keep the reactions going.

The MIT researchers came up with a much simpler scheme that demand far less energy than DACC. In their system, seawater is passed through two chambers:

• The first chamber uses an electrode reaction to release protons into the seawater. The cell uses bismuth and silver-chloride electrodes, with the bismuth electrode given a positive charge, to generate protons and take up chlorine ions -- while the negatively-charged silver-chloride electrode loses chlorine ions. This acidifies the water, turning dissolved inorganic bicarbonates into carbon dioxide gas, which bubbles out and is sucked up.
  
  
• The acidified water is driven through the second chamber, which has bismuth-chloride and silver electrodes, with the voltage reversed. This reverses the reaction of the first chamber, de-acidifying the water before dumping it back into the sea.

The reactions in the chamber eventually run down, but no worries: the flow of seawater through the system can be reversed, with the two chambers trading places in the reaction. The MIT researchers say their scheme requires about 2.35 times less energy than DACC, and they believe they can cut the energy consumption in half or more. They haven't come up with an estimated cost for a seawater-based carbon-capture system yet, but believe that it could be efficiently integrated into seawater desalinization plants.

Capturing CO2 from seawater would have the additional benefit of reducing ocean acidification due to emissions, which has threatened coral reefs and shellfish. However, they don't have a practical system yet; issues to be addressed include a more effective way of sucking up the outgassed CO2, and dealing with mineralization of electrodes. It's an interesting idea, but it remains to be seen if it's realistic.

[MON 06 MAR 23] THE WEEK THAT WAS 09

* THE WEEK THAT WAS: As discussed in an article from MSNBC.com ("China Used To Be Russia's Junior Partner -- Ukraine Changed That" by Hayes Brown, 24 February 2023), one of the big unknowns concerning the war in Ukraine is the relationship between Russia and China.

Traditionally, Russia has seen China as either a rival or a junior power. Even before the war in Ukraine, China had been outpacing Russia in economic development; thanks to the war and its disastrous impact on Russia, China is now the senior partner. The war's strain on Russian business ties to Europe has left China as a much-needed market, both as a supplier of manufactured goods and importer of natural resources like oil. The Chinese are exploiting their advantage, with Alexander Gabuev -- a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace -- commenting that China will:

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Will Beijing do any more than that? So far, the Chinese have demonstrated no interest in providing munitions to Putin; the Americans pressed them on the matter, citing intelligence claiming there were discussions to that end, with the Chinese denying them. The Americans said their intelligence was partly derived from sources within the Russian government, which clearly did not make the Chinese happy at all -- even if they suspected it was a lie. What happens in the future is hard to say: China will not be happy with a Russian defeat in Ukraine, but won't be happy supporting a lost cause either. All that can be said is that the Chinese will do what serves their perceived interests.

Incidentally, this last week Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov spoke at an international meeting in Delhi, in which Lavrov said: "The war, which we are trying to stop, which was launched against us using Ukrainian people." The audience laughed at him, with Lavrov stumbling over his words for a moment.

* The fallout from the 6 January 2021 Capitol riot continues, one of the aspects being the defamation lawsuit being pressed against Fox News by Dominion voting machines, which Dominion filed in protest against Fox claims that their voting machines were rigged. Testimony so far in the case has not helped Fox, establishing that Fox News talking heads knew they were lying when they said the 2020 election was stolen -- and worse, with Fox boss Rupert Murdoch confirming that in his own testimony. It was obvious all along they were lying, but legally establishing that was something new.

Donald Trump was not at all happy with being thrown under the bus, calling on Murdoch to "apologize to his viewers and readers" for not endorsing the Republican's conspiracy hoax. That was expected; more surprising was that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries sent a letter to Murdoch and other Fox News executives asking for the network's hosts to stop spreading misinformation about the 2020 election.

A joint letter from the two Democratic leaders in Congress is unusual. The letter was direct:

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Fox News reached a peak of power in 2016, doing much to get Donald Trump elected. Now it is clearly in decline, faced with the inevitable extinction of cable TV, and its irresponsible behavior making it a target. It seems unlikely that Schumer and Jeffries believe that Fox will change its errant ways; it is more likely that Fox is being given a warning, that patience with their efforts to subvert the US government -- for no better reason than to make money -- is running out.

Along similar lines, the once-powerful Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) had a rally this week, with Donald Trump the star of the show. What he said there was uninteresting, Trump's usual incoherent ramblings; what was more interesting that pans of the audience showed plenty of empty seats. Another interesting fact was that Nikki Haley, who is after the GOP presidential nomination in 2024, showed up, and was all but ignored. There was little mention of Ron DeSantis, who is also after the nomination, but there was no reason to think there was any interest in him, either. There's only one Trump -- and he's a lost cause.

[FRI 03 MAR 23] CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (36)

* CAPITALISM & SOCIALISM (36): James M. Buchanan was never known to the public, and apparently did not want to be. The public face of libertarianism in his era belonged to Ayn Rand (1905:1982), who was born in Russia and came to the USA in 1926, to become a screenwriter and novelist. Her most popular work was the 1957 novel ATLAS SHRUGGED. Her novels generally followed a pattern, with a self-actualized capitalist hero struggling against social mores against his puny adversaries.

Her work was unmistakeably libertarian in tone, proclaiming the superiority of the empowered capitalist leader against government officials and a list of other "parasites". There was an irony in her idolization of heroic capitalists, since she never ran a business. In another irony, despite the tone of her work, she had no respect for libertarianism, since it didn't neatly fit her own idiosyncratic architecture of prejudices. She preferred to think of herself as a philosopher, promoting a doctrine called "objectivism" that embodied, as she saw it, the principles of pure reasoning, from which she claimed those prejudices were derived.

Her humorless novels were generally based on long-winded expositions of her principles, with self-interest being the highest of them, and altruism the lowest. In practice, her mindset was a mirror image of Bolshevism, rejecting its doctrines but maintaining its iron-clad self-superiority and absolutism.

To the extent the scholarly community took notice of Rand, they found her thinking naive, superficial, even juvenile. She had no influence on economic thought -- though to her credit, she never really thought she was an economist or wanted to be one. Her significant influence was that her books were often best-sellers, helping to promote an ideal of unrestrained capitalism, coupled to a contempt for government -- with all the niceties and fine print in that view simply ignored.

* Economically, the USA remained the dominant world power in the 1960s, leading the world in advanced technology, particularly computers -- all solid-state by that time, with increasing use of integrated circuits (IC) towards the end of the decade. Computers became more widespread, particularly as relatively low-cost and compact "microcomputers" became available, becoming common in schools and factory floors -- as well as in military applications. IBM remained the globally dominant computing power.

However, there were signs that the economic dominance of America was starting to soften -- one major symptom being the rise of Japanese imports, particularly of consumer electronics, into the USA. Up to the mid-1960s, the label "MADE IN JAPAN" meant "junk" -- but beginning with cheap transistor radios, the Japanese gradually improved their products until they had a reputation for quality with low cost. The USA had been spared the destruction of World War II, and so was ahead of international competition until competitor nations recovered. The economies of European countries were reviving as well, though foreign-made vehicles did not threaten the dominance of American auto-makers.

The USA was less concerned about economic competition at the time than the competition with the Soviet Union. There was a basis for fear of the Soviets, but it was also apparent to those who knew the facts that the USSR was well weaker than the USA. Nikita Khrushchev was deposed as premier and Party secretary in 1964, the main reason being poor performance of Soviet agriculture. After a competition for power, Leonid Brezhnev (1906:1982) became the Party general secretary. Brezhnev, unlike Khrushchev, had no interest in rocking the boat, with the USSR remaining on autopilot under communist bureaucracy -- of which Brezhnev was a creature, being no domineering leader like Stalin, instead always preferring the line of least political resistance. That meant he was still committed to Marxist-Leninism: when Czechoslovakia attempted to deviate from the Kremlin line, the Red Army occupied the country in 1968 and crushed the "Prague Spring". [TO BE CONTINUED]

[THU 02 MAR 23] SCIENCE NOTES

* SCIENCE NOTES: As discussed in an article from SCIENCEMAG.org ("Liquid Mirror Telescope Opens In India" by Daniel Clery, 10 Jun 2022), a new large telescope with a spinning liquid-mercury mirror has begun operations in India.

Smaller liquid-mirror telescopes have been built before, the 4-meter (13.1-foot) "International Liquid Mirror Telescope (ILMT)" is the biggest to date. It is sited at the 2,450-meter (8,035-foot) altitude Devasthal Observatory in the Himalayas, and was built by a consortium from Belgium, Canada, and India. It's strictly a transit instrument since it can only see straight up, but it only cost $2 million USD to make. In comparison, the nearby 3.6-meter (11.8-foot), steerable "Devasthal Optical Telescope (DOT)" -- built in parallel with the ILMT -- cost $18 million USD.

When a bowl of reflective liquid mercury is rotated, its top surface assumes a perfect parabolic shape, which is exactly what is needed for a reflecting telescope. Getting the ILMT into service wasn't easy. ILMT was originally conceived in the late 1990s. The dish-shaped vessel that holds the mercury was delivered to India in 2012, but construction of the telescope enclosure was delayed -- and then obtaining enough mercury became a problem. Everything got worse when the COVID-19 pandemic hit. It wasn't until April 2022 that the team set 50 liters of mercury spinning, creating a parabolic layer 3.5 millimeters thick.

The fact that ILMT is a transit instrument is not such a problem, since it can observe a swath of sky almost as big as the full Moon. It features an electro-optic computing system whose output can be digitally filtered, for example to compare images on consecutive nights to see what's changed.

There has been thought of setting up liquid-mirror telescopes on the Moon. If placed on the lunar farside, it would have no interference from satellites and such. In addition, a lunar liquid-mirror telescope could be much larger than an Earth-based one. On Earth, they can't be much bigger than 8 meters (26 feet), because of the Coriolis effect, the "twist" due to the Earth's rotation, which would disturb the mirror surface. The Moon's rotation is much slower than that of the Earth, and so Coriolis forces are much smaller.

A lunar liquid-mirror telescope could not use mercury, since it would freeze in the extreme lunar cold. However, studies have shown that molten salts, covered with a thin layer of reflecting silver, could do the job. In 2020, a team at the University of Texas, Austin, proposed the Ultimately Large Telescope, a 100-meter (330-foot) liquid mirror that would stare constantly at the same patch of sky for years on end from one of the Moon's poles. The giant telescope could gather the faint haze of photons from the very first stars that lit up the Universe, before galaxies even existed.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Stratospheric Balloon To Lift Telescope With Giant Mirror Over Antarctica" by David Szondy, 30 June 2022), balloons have used to fly telescopes for astronomy since the 1950s. The US National Aeronautics & Space Administration (NASA) is now preparing to conduct a particularly ambitious balloon astronomy mission.

Late in 2023, NASA plan to launch a balloon from Antarctica on a four-week flight, carrying the "Astrophysics Stratospheric Telescope for High Spectral Resolution Observations at Submillimeter-wavelengths (ASTHROS)" to obtain visible and infrared images of the cosmos. The telescope will have a mirror 2.5 meters (8.2 feet) in diameter.

The mirror was made by the Italian optics company Media Lario. It was fabricated out of panels of lightweight aluminum with a honeycomb structure, featuring surfaces made of gold-plated nickel that are highly reflective in the far-infrared spectrum. The mirror was mounted in a strong but lightweight carbon-composite cradle. The telescope will inspect the star-forming regions of our own Galaxy and build up high-resolution 3D maps of the distribution and motions of gases, with comparison observations of distant galaxies to gain a better understanding of how stars are born and die.

* As discussed in an article from NEWATLAS.com ("Engineered Ammonia-Producing Bacteria Could Replace Crop Fertilizers" by Ben Coxworth, 18 February 2022), modern high-yield farming is very reliant on fertilizers, which means added cost and environmental problems from fertilizer run-off.

A research team led by Assistant Professor Florence Mus at Washington State University in Pullman has genetically modified a soil bacterium known as Azotobacter vinelandii to produce and excrete ammonia at a high rate, with the ammonia then used by plants as fertilizer. A. vinelandii could already produce ammonia, but at a much lower rate. The researchers are now investigating different strains of A. vinelandii to tailor the bacteria for different crops and environments.

Fertilizer production is dependent on the energy-intensive Haber-Bosch process, which obtains nitrogen from air and hydrogen from water to make ammonia. It is a tempting, if maybe simplistic, idea to imagine a future in which farmers apply bacteria instead of fertilizer, with the bacteria then synthesizing the ammonia directly.

[WED 01 MAR 23] THERE & BACK (11)

* THERE & BACK (11): On the morning of Saturday, 5 November, I cleaned up, packed up, ate breakfast at the hotel, took a walk to settle my still plugged-up digestion, and then caught a cab to John Wayne Airport. I went through security and killed more time there, then endured a dull flight back to Denver. I arrived in late afternoon and took the shuttle bus to the remote parking lot. It had indeed rained while I was gone, with the car dusted up; I wiped it off before I left -- going to Fazoli's in North Denver for dinner.

The Disney trip cost me $1250 USD; I was figuring on $1200, but the cab fares pushed me over the edge. The trip was forgettable, but I'd just done to check the thing off my list. I had low expectations, and it met them. I'm planning to take an air trip to Washington DC in early April, already have it roughed out. Although it's just another thing to check off the list, I'm more looking forward to it, planning to get shots of the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum with my S21 Ultra, as well as the Smithsonian garden complex. The cherry trees should be in bloom at the time.

I'm not looking forward to the air trip, but it is likely it will be the last air trip I'll take. I do have some road trips in mind, but they'll be checking off the list as well. In a few years, I won't think of taking more than day trips.

The Ohio and Disney trips were interesting from a cultural view at least. I recall, vaguely, being to Disney in the early 1960s, and had to contrast such memories as I had of it with the 2022 trip. The USA is far more racially diverse than it was a half-century ago, and I don't mind that at all. Maybe it's just because I live a private and privileged existence, and nobody really causes me trouble these days. If I did mind it, it would make no difference, I'm not going to be around that much longer anyway. I cannot and do not make any claims on the future.

There was also a contrast with the 2016 road trip to Washington DC, which was just before the 2016 election. That election was the start of a wild ride for the USA; we're not quite at the end of it, but I'm optimistic that we're getting out of the woods. The 1960s ended with a rebellion against the old America, with the election of Trump being the last desperate, doomed to failure, throw of that old America. They're going down.

I'm not worried about it. One of the other personal considerations of America's current era, as contrasted to being a kid in the 1960s, is being totally digitally wired, the world at my fingertips. I'm looking forward to enhancing my gaming library on Windows Steam -- and I just discovered HTML5 games for Android on my phone. I may not travel much any more, but there's still much to explore. [END OF SERIES]