Monthly Archives: September 2015

Soon to be available from the good docs at Washington University in St. Louis:

Many thousands of viruses are known to cause illness in people and animals, and making a diagnosis can be an exhaustive exercise, at times requiring a battery of different tests. That’s because current tests aren’t sensitive enough to detect low levels of viral bugs or are limited to detecting only those viruses suspected of being responsible for a patient’s illness.

“With this test, you don’t have to know what you’re looking for,” said the study’s senior author, Gregory Storch, MD, the Ruth L. Siteman Professor of Pediatrics. “It casts a broad net and can efficiently detect viruses that are present at very low levels. We think the test will be especially useful in situations where a diagnosis remains elusive after standard testing or in situations in which the cause of a disease outbreak is unknown.”

Results published online in September in the journal Genome Research demonstrate that in patient samples the new test – called ViroCap – can detect viruses not found by standard testing based on genome sequencing. The test could be used to detect outbreaks of deadly viruses such as Ebola, Marburg and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), as well as more routine viruses, including rotavirus and norovirus, both of which cause severe gastrointestinal infections.

Developed in collaboration with the university’s McDonnell Genome Institute, the test sequences and detects viruses in patient samples and is just as sensitive as the gold-standard polymerase chain reaction (PCR) assays, which are used widely in clinical laboratories. However, even the most expansive PCR assays can only screen for up to about 20 similar viruses at the same time.

How does it do it?

To develop the test, the researchers targeted unique stretches of DNA or RNA from every known group of viruses that infects humans and animals. In all, the research team included 2 million unique stretches of genetic material from viruses in the test. These stretches of material are used as probes to pluck out viruses in patient samples that are a genetic match. The matched viral material then is analyzed using high-throughput genetic sequencing. As completely novel viruses are discovered, their genetic material could easily be added to the test, Storch said.

I had been thinking someone would figure out how to do a differential analysis, by which I mean the signal of a ‘clean’ blood sample would be known, and then the difference between that signal and the signal of the current sample could be analyzed and decoded.  Yes, that’s very much an arm wave.  These folks seem to have taken the standard approach and put it on steroids, so far as I can tell.  Very effective, so far, but it’s rather like detecting computer viruses – looking for known sequences of bits in order to detect a virus.  That new one is the one that may slip by….

(h/t Melissa Breyer @ TreeHugger.com)

Stanford News reports on the dining habits of the mealworm:

Enter the mighty mealworm. The tiny worm, which is the larvae form of the darkling beetle, can subsist on a diet of Styrofoam and other forms of polystyrene, according to two companion studies co-authored by Wei-Min Wu, a senior research engineer in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Stanford. Microorganisms in the worms’ guts biodegrade the plastic in the process – a surprising and hopeful finding. …

In the lab, 100 mealworms ate between 34 and 39 milligrams of Styrofoam – about the weight of a small pill  – per day. The worms converted about half of the Styrofoam into carbon dioxide, as they would with any food source.

An interesting mealworm indeed!  Somehow, I don’t see giant farms devoted to the critters, but I do wonder if it’ll be possible to isolate the unique bacteria responsible for the digestion, and use them in moderate sized facilities devoted to degrading the plastics we produce into something more …. palatable.  Ahem.  Or is the digestive system of the mealworm a required context for the digestion to work?  Of course, 50% converted to CO2 isn’t the best news in the world, but perhaps some careful collection of the greenhouse gas will be possible.

So, if we suppose we were to attempt to use mealworms to reduce polystyrene on a commercial basis, what would be the risks?  Mealworms do feed on grain and can invade storage facilities.  On the other hand, they are also used as pet food, as they have high protein content.  They do not seem to be of especial danger, and are widespread.  Human even eat them … so use them to dispose of the waste polystyrene, and then have a meal ourselves?

(h/t Margaret Badore @ TreeHuggers.com)

Steve Benen @ MaddowBlog , Kevin Drum, and Jen Hayden @ The Daily Kos have expressed astonishment at Rush Limbaugh’s reaction to the announcement of the discovery of flowing water on the surface of Mars.  Jen provides the transcript, from which I borrow:

RUSH LIMBAUGH: There’s so much fraud. Snerdly came in today ‘what’s this NASA news, this NASA news is all exciting.’ I said yeah they found flowing water up there. ‘No kidding! Wow! Wow!’ Snerdly said ‘flowing water!?’ I said ‘why does that excite you? What, are you going there next week? What’s the big deal about flowing water on Mars?’ ‘I don’t know man but it’s just it’s just wow!’ I said ‘you know what, when they start selling iPhones on Mars, that’s when it’ll matter to me.’ I said ‘what do you think they’re gonna do with this news?’ I said ‘look at the temperature data, that has been reported by NASA, has been made up, it’s fraudulent for however many years, there isn’t any warming, there hasn’t been for 18.5 years. And yet, they’re lying about it. They’re just making up the amount of ice in the North and South Poles, they’re making up the temperatures, they’re lying and making up false charts and so forth. So what’s to stop them from making up something that happened on Mars that will help advance their left-wing agenda on this planet?’ And Snerdly paused ‘oh oh yeah you’re right.’ You know, when I play golf with excellent golfers, I ask them ‘does it ever get boring playing well? Does it ever get boring hitting shot after shot where you want to hit it?’ And they all look at me and smile and say ‘never.’ Well folks, it never gets boring being right either. Like I am. But it doesn’t mean it is any less frustrating. Being right and being alone is a challenging existence. OK so there’s flowing water on Mars. Yip yip yip yahoo. You know me, I’m science 101, big time guy, tech advance it, you know it, I’m all in. But, NASA has been corrupted by the current regime. I want to find out what they’re going to tell us. OK, flowing water on Mars. If we’re even to believe that, what are they going to tell us that means? That’s what I’m going to wait for. Because I guarantee, let’s just wait and see, this is September 28, let’s just wait and see. Don’t know how long it’s going to take, but this news that there is flowing water on Mars is somehow going to find its way into a technique to advance the leftist agenda. I don’t know what it is, I would assume it would be something to do with global warming and you can — maybe there was once an advanced civilization. If they say they found flowing water, next they’re going to find a graveyard.

[Emphasis Jen’s.]

Now, we could go with Rush’s admission that he simply says anything that will make him money.  He knows his audience, he knows that to stir them up he has to connect the Obama Administration’s salient achievement of the day with climate change.

But he is really going further.  He’s suggested that because some scientists have, in climate change deniers’ mythology, collectively lied through their teeth on a variety of matters, he spreads the blame to all scientists with any connection to the government.  Given that science has recently stepped on the toes of the hard line conservatives, this is to be expected – never mind how they benefit from science (where would Rush be without radio?).  Cherished myths as well as economic positions have been trampled by science, and this cannot be abided.

And, in the sense that logic compels activity, the false narrative propagated by Rush and others also compels them into odder and odder statements – as in the above.  If a large and easily visible sunspot were to appear on the Sun’s surface and were reported by NASA, would that also be blamed on the Obama Administration and the liberal media?  There’s a good chance.  They HAVE to make sure to find something wrong with the achievements of science – because science is becoming the enemy.

Think about that – the study of reality is the enemy.  Hard to believe the party that used to promote itself as the hard-nosed, reality-based party now rejects science in favor of conspiracy theories about group lies by the essence of truth seekers, poor logical thinking, and letting itself be led around by anyone with a comforting manner or a loud, silly voice.  They should be heartily ashamed.

But they won’t be.  The group has been captured by the fringe; the moderates who’d supply the ruddy blush have been expelled or have left.  Those who are left are too busy assuring themselves of their omniscience.

A reader continues his remarks on our general treatment of our food supply:

I wish I could find the time to write down (on the web) the litany of mankind’s offenses against itself that leads me to believe that at foreseeable technology levels, 3 or 4 or 7 billion people is just too much. Maybe if we had clean, compact, portable fusion devices or something, we’d be ok.

Just to give you an idea of the kinds of things I mean to write about is this recent research. Virtually every manufactured food item (e.g. most bakery goods) that needs to have liquid or powder ingredients mix well and stay mixed use an emulsifier like polysorbate 80. Turns out, it’s likely very bad for you in the long run. http://www.nih.gov/resear…/march2015/03162015additives.htm

And http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3667473/.

The vast majority of the corn, soybeans and sugar beats grown in the US are GMO in order to allow the use of glyphosate (RoundUp) as an herbicide directly on the crops. It kills everything except the GMO crop which is modified to withstand it. The mechanism involved uses a metabolic pathway that does not exist in mammals, so the residue left on food produced from those kinds of crops is considered safe for humans. Except that the gut microbiota, being bacteria, not mammals, do have that metabolic pathway. There’s evidence that glyphosate residues on foods are damaging, killing and/or unbalancing the gut microbiota. The more we learn about those microbiota, the more we are learning they have an even larger and larger part in our health. You’ve perhaps heard of fecal transplants?

Oh, yes, I have.  I had not heard of the glyphosate connection, however.

This is all rather far afield of drought problems, of course. But what we’re doing to our food supplies is just one avenue in which we’re shooting ourselves in our collective feet.

I was rather morbidly ruminating on the demise of the vast herds of American Bison at the hands of European settlers, and wondering how, in the long run, the human species will compare in terms of sheer numbers at the height, and the following population crash I anticipate in my darker moments.  The Wikipedia article has a lovely, unembeddable chart illustrating the bison population crash; and while it’s easy to argue that it’s an artificial crash, I like to remember that the “Balance of Nature” is a false notion; non-zero populations are constantly changing as predators and prey populations rise and fall, to cite the two most coarse variables.  I suspect the Bison was a local dominant life form that was gradually wrecking its own habitat, and given a few more hundred years, they, too, might have found a way to extinction, or marginalization, much like any number of other creatures we now find only rock-bound.

Of course, the notion that we stand apart from Nature is also arguable.  Every year another distinguishing feature of humanity is found in another creature (perhaps it’s just how we aggregate all these features … oh, wait: we have religion).  So perhaps the near extinction event for the bison is not artificial, just the clearance of one species from its habitat in order for it to be replaced by hairless critters with hats on their heads.  Perhaps 150 years ago the planet was mostly empty, but today it does seem awfully darn full.

Must be in a gloomy mood today.

Tall wood buildings are not just dreams, but reality: the USDA, conjunction with the Softwood Lumber Board and the Binational Softwood Lumber Council, announced winners in the 2015 Tall Wood Building competition.  From the USDA website:

At a press conference hosted in New York this morning, Secretary Vilsack congratulated the competition winners. “The U.S. wood products industry is vitally important as it employs more than 547,000 people in manufacturing and forestry, with another 2.4 million jobs supported by U.S. private-forest owners,” said Vilsack. “By embracing the benefits of wood as a sustainable building material, these demonstration projects have the ability to help change the face of our communities, mitigate climate change and support jobs in rural America. I look forward to seeing how these two buildings help lead the way in furthering the industry.” …

The two winning proposals – Framework and 475 West 18th – were selected by a panel of distinguished jurors in the architecture and engineering fields who are familiar with innovative wood building systems. While each took a unique approach, both projects met the Competition’s criteria to showcase the safe application, practicality and sustainability of a minimum 80-foot structure that uses mass timber, composite wood technologies and innovative building techniques.

Note that these are proposals, without a tree cut down as yet.  TreeHugger.com‘s Lloyd Alter reports on the prize:

Although a hundred years ago building taller buildings in wood was relatively common, particularly on the west coast, It fell out of favor as the big trees became scarce, and as building codes changed to promote noncombustible steel and concrete. The prize money is being used to catch up, for “the exploratory phase of their projects, including the research and development necessary to utilize engineered wood products in high-rise construction in the U.S”. And while the steel, concrete and masonry people are apoplectic about this and keep running ads screaming about burning buildings, the heavy timber buildings like these are have been shown to be pretty safe.

The home of the U. S. Tall Wood Building Prize Competition is here.  From the East Coast winner:

130-134 Holdings LLC, in partnership with Spiritos Properties, SHoP Architects, Arup, Icor Associates, and environmental consultancy Atelier Ten, proposed 475 West 18^th, a residential condominium building, as a transformative and sustainable prototype for the design and construction industry, demonstrating an innovative approach to going beyond a limited palette of materials and systems for high-rise construction. Expanding the palette with wood, a locally sourced and renewable material, provides a low-carbon, more economically sound building solution.

475 West 18th’s extensive use of wood structural elements and other wood products allows the team to set ambitious sustainability targets in the building’s design, construction, and operation. By combining aggressive load reduction with energy efficient systems, the project team anticipates reducing overall energy consumption by at least 50 percent relative to current energy codes. It will also target LEED Platinum certification, as well as pursue higher levels of sustainability not captured in the LEED system.

And the West Coast winner:

Framework: An Urban + Rural Ecology

Given its prominent location and public visibility, a key element of the building design led by Thomas Robinson, principal of LEVER Architecture, is to communicate at street level the project’s innovative use of wood and engineering technology in the development of a high rise structure, along with its relationship to the rural economy. Integrating lessons learned from tall timber structures in Canada and Europe, Robinson and his team are expected to incorporate new structural and architectural technologies that include an engineered wood core and lateral system for seismic integrity and CLT floor panels fabricated up to 50’ in length.

Should we start expecting gargoyles carved of wood next?  This does sound fascinating.  CLT, cross laminated timber, has several manufacturers.  This one, APA, I picked at random, neither endorsing nor impugning:

Cross-laminated timber (CLT) is a large-scale, prefabricated, solid engineered wood panel. Lightweight yet very strong, with superior acoustic, fire, seismic, and thermal performance, CLT is also fast and easy to install, generating almost no waste onsite. CLT also offers design flexibility and low environmental impacts. For these reasons, cross-laminated timber is proving to be a highly advantageous alternative to conventional materials like concrete, masonry, or steel, especially in multi-family and commercial construction.

And this great picture:

As the energy markets swoon, the imminent impact of Iranian increased production doesn’t guarantee them instant riches.  But Iran has other sources of trade, albeit not as well developed, as reported by Maysam Bizær at AL Monitor:

In a meeting with Rouhani and Cabinet members late last month, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei suggested that the country’s significant potential in the mining sector should be realized as an alternative to oil. “The oil market, which falls from $100 to $40 following a sign from world powers and then actions by wicked elements in the region, is by no means reliable and we have to find an appropriate alternative. The mining sector is the best alternative,” Khamenei said.

While mostly known for its hydrocarbons, Iran is also among the world’s top 10 countries in terms of mineral resources. It has estimated mineral reserves of 60 billion metric tons, or 7% of that available on Earth. Of note, these minerals are diverse; more than 68 different types of minerals have been identified in Iran so far. These resources are reportedly worth up to $1 trillion.

This is a problem, as many mining commodities are in a state of oversupply.  An example is copper.  According to Wikipedia, Iran has the ninth largest reserves of copper.  So how are copper prices?  In a state of collapse.

(Image: NASDAQ.com)

A BBC report on copper prices is here.  This is just a salient feature of an industry currently in a slowdown, as the report from AL Monitor notes:

First of all, the timing of the upcoming sanctions relief and expected inflow of foreign capital could not be worse. The global mining industry is in trouble, and a majority of mining firms are stuck in a bearish trend in the stock markets. In particular, the economic slowdown in China, a key mineral consumer, is impacting the industry around the world. The Chinese slowdown is directly hitting Iran, as China is the main importer of Iranian iron ore. Falling oil prices are also adding to the dilemma, with increasing pressure on the coal industry.

You can look at this in two ways.  Iran is putting an emphasis on the wrong part of their economy.  Or, they see a current weakness but believe in the long-term promise of their raw materials and are beginning development when the cost of doing so may be low.  In this case, look for them to work to extract discounts and technology from mining firms interested in developing their resources.  In combination with their water woes, their future does not look golden, despite the lifting of sanctions.

Another monkey has now taken on the burden of achieving personhood: Naruto the macaque.  Reuters reports on the PETA-led lawsuit:

A rare crested macaque monkey who snapped a well-known, grinning “selfie” should be declared the photo’s owner and receive damages for copyright infringement after it was used in a wildlife book, animal rights activists argued in a federal lawsuit filed on Tuesday.

Naruto, a six-year-old macaque who lives free in the Tangkoko Reserve on the Indonesian island of Sulawesi, took the image and several others about four years ago using a camera left unattended by British photographer David Slater, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) said in the suit.

The so-called Monkey Selfies that resulted came from “a series of purposeful and voluntary actions by Naruto, unaided by Slater,” said the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court in San Francisco.

From the PETA blog:

Why is this so important, and what does it all mean? If this lawsuit succeeds, it will be the first time that a nonhuman animal is declared the owner of property (the copyright of the “monkey selfie”), rather than being declared a piece of property himself or herself. It will also be the first time that a right is extended to a nonhuman animal beyond just the mere basic necessities of food, shelter, water, and veterinary care. In our view, it is high time.

We are also asking the court to allow PETA to administer the proceeds of “monkey selfie” sales for the benefit of Naruto and his community, without compensation to PETA.

This case exemplifies what PETA has championed for 35 years: Animals deserve recognition of appropriate rights for their own sake, and not in relation to their exploitation by humans.

I’m curious how ‘appropriate’ is defined in this context.

Heavy weighs in with a number of points, such as this:

Wikimedia Commons then added the photo as part of its public domain repository. Slater sent Wikimedia a DMCA takedown notice, Motherboard reported, and Wikimedia declined because the money took the photo. If anyone owned the photo, Wikimedia explained, it was the monkey. However, monkeys can’t own copyrights so the photo was public domain. Slater threatened to sue, but the photo ended up staying in public domain. Slater, meanwhile, felt that is British copyright on the photo should be honored worldwide.

Did Naruto have an expectation of the result of pushing the button?

Suppose someone (human) stole a camera and took a picture – would they own the copyright on the picture?  Or the owner of the camera?  PetaPixel claims it’s the operator:

“The act grants copyright to authors of original works, with no limit on species,” PETA lawyer Jeffrey Kerr tells the Associated Press. “Copyright law is clear: It’s not the person who owns the camera, it’s the being who took the photograph.”

So the ownership of the mechanism of capturing the picture is unimportant.  Not sure I’d be happy with that thought if I were the owner of the camera.

The Passive Voice blog has an interview with PETA‘s lawyer.  Barbara King @ 13.7 cosmos & culture, the NPR blog, also talked to the PETA general counsel:

PETA General Counsel Jeff Kerr told me in an email Tuesday that when we are dealing with intelligent and intentional animals, like these macaques, species membership should not be the deciding factor in copyright law.

That the photographs Naruto took resulted from a thoughtful, intentional series of actions fits perfectly well with what we anthropologists know of monkey intelligence. Macaques — all species of macaques, including Naruto’s — sort out complex kin and dominance-rank relationships in their groups and take part in what primate scientists call political maneuvering. They learn from each other and pay close attention to what goes on in both their social and their physical environments. Our knowledge about monkeys leaves no question that they act with purpose and intention every single day.

So do we suppose that the macaques understand that clicking that button would end up with a picture contained in electronics?  On the other end of the spectrum, which animals do not show intentionality?  Or, to quote Heinlein in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress,

“Soul?” Does a dog have a soul? How about cockroach? [Chapter 1 para 7]

I’m actually more or less concerned that my understanding of the jargon at this juncture is inadequate to the task.

FixThisNation.com does not appreciate PETA’s sentiments:

You can’t find fifteen liberals to take a stand against Planned Parenthood, but when it comes to the rights of photography-inclined monkeys, watch out. The domestic terrorism organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals filed a lawsuit this week in federal court on behalf of Naruto the monkey, claiming he owns the copyright on “selfies” he took in 2011.

Do you ever wonder if you slipped into a comedic tragedy at some point? Like, surely this isn’t the real world, is it? Back on Original Earth, they’re facing serious issues, promoting common sense, and living in harmony with logic. Here on Bizzaro Earth, they’re arguing that boys can be girls, unborn humans aren’t humans, and monkeys are basically just people with alternative lifestyles.

There is a certain unintentional irony in FixThisNation‘s remarks in their citing Planned Parenthood, an organization apparently under continual slander by Fiorina, et al, while claiming they’re from Original Earth …

I’ve noticed that no one has addressed the question of whether Naruto is subject to protection, seeing as it (there’s some controversy over the macaque’s gender) lives in Indonesia, not the USA.  I personally have a gut reaction that, since the macaque probably does not understand that pushing that button will take a picture, the suit will be lost.  I remember the phenomenon of elephants painting, but Snopes.com is on the case and notes scientists do not believe the elephants comprehend their actions in any classic sense:

So are these endearing mammals truly artistic? The answer, as politicians are fond of saying, is yes and no.

Let me describe exactly what happens. A painting session begins with three heavy easels being wheeled into position. On each easel a large piece of white card (30in x 20in) has been fixed underneath a strong wooden frame.

Each elephant is positioned in front of her easel and is given a brush loaded with paint by her mahout. He pushes the brush gently into the end of her trunk.

The man then stands to one side of his animal’s neck and watches intently as the brush starts to make lines on the card. Then the empty brush is replaced by another loaded one, and the painting continues until the picture is complete.

The elephant then turns towards its audience, bows deeply and is rewarded with bananas.

The paintings are then removed from their frames and offered for sale. They are quickly snapped up by people who have been astonished by what they have just witnessed.

To most of the members of the audience, what they have seen appears to be almost miraculous. Elephants must surely be almost human in intelligence if they can paint pictures of flowers and trees in this way. What the audience overlooks are the actions of the mahouts as their animals are at work.

This oversight is understandable because it is difficult to drag your eyes away from the brushes that are making the lines and spots. However, if you do so, you will notice that, with each mark, the mahout tugs at his elephant’s ear.

He nudges it up and down to get the animal to make a vertical line, or pulls it sideways to get a horizontal one. To encourage spots and blobs he tugs the ear forward, towards the canvas. So, very sadly, the design the elephant is making is not hers but his. There is no elephantine invention, no creativity, just slavish copying.

(h/t William Cloose)

A legacy for Obama (or necessary progress, if you prefer) of the thaw in Cuban-American relations may come in the area of cancer research, according to NewScientist‘s Will Grant (19 September 2015, paywall?):

Cancer is the second biggest cause of death in Cuba, after cardiovascular disease, and lung cancer rates are among the highest in the region, according to the World Heath Organization.

But Cuban researchers are helping lead the fight against the disease. They recently added a new weapon to the arsenal against lung cancer: Cimavax. This vaccine – designed to be given to people with cancer – encourages the immune system to attack a protein that fuels tumour growth, slowing the disease’s spread.

Along with this specific treatment comes news of how they approach research:

There is one key reason why Cuba punches above its weight in the medical research arena: research and treatment are tightly connected in the Cuban healthcare system. Writing in the journal PNAS earlier this year, a group of US neuroscientists including Mark Cohen of the University of California, Los Angeles, noted the benefits of this “two-way communication between the lay public and research scientists in the cause of public health” (doi.org/7qc). They cited large-scale population studies which “routinely achieve more than 95 per cent enrol[l]ment success”.

Partly because of this connection, the team at CIM has made significant progress with clinical trials of Cimavax. Pooled results from phase I and II clinical trials showed that those vaccinated survived for 11 months on average, while the survival rate in a control group was four to five months (Human Vaccines, doi.org/dbgtw9).

There’s more to the island than just cigars – the cause of the lung cancer motivating the vaccine – and socialism.

A reader comments on California’s ongoing woes:

I would say for the next 5 to 10 decades, this will be the new normal. I’ll also say the really unpopular idea: there are too many people in California, in the USA and in the world for anything resembling our current way of life to be sustainable.

Someday I must dig up the libertarian retort to charges of overpopulation.  As I recall, they applied some fairly sophomoric math in their attempt to prove the assertion wrong, and lately it’s occurred to me that it might be fun to tear their freehand equation apart and point out why it’s an embarrassment.

Although the subject is moderately morbid in itself.

Media outlets are reporting Iranian President Rouhani’s remarks concerning the GOP.  The reports are more or less the same,  here’s the Jerusalem Post’s coverage:

The Iranian leader mocked the GOP presidential hopefuls, saying that some of them wouldn’t be able to find Iran on a map while Iranians consider their rhetoric “a form of entertainment.” …

“Can a government become a signatory to an international agreement and then the subsequent government tear it to shreds? This is something that only the likes of Saddam Hussein would do,” he said.

“Saddam Hussein, previous to attacking Iran in 1980, did sign an agreement with Iran and then tore it to shreds himself and then attacked Iran.”

“So any government that replaces the current government must keep itself committed to the commitments given by the previous administration; otherwise, that government, that entire country, will lose trust internationally and no longer have the type of needed trust to operate in the international arena.”

It’s an interesting interference in the upcoming American elections.  The deal is undoubtedly his signature accomplishment, so we can figure this is a defense of it.  The last couple of paragraphs are clearly a message to the GOP: The costs to the United States of tearing up an international agreement will be unbearable. The more adventurous might care to read between the lines and see this: Such an action would make the USA a pariah and prove to the world what we, the Iranians, have been saying all along: the Americans are untrustworthy.

These are valid points concerning international processes, and explain the working understandings the major American political parties have used for decades: politics stops at the border.  Foreign policy is the bailiwick of the Administration.   An agreement is binding on successor administrations and legislatures.  The radicalized GOP of recent years has begun encroaching on these understandings, however, as ideological and, possibly, the economic issues of their corporate patrons, have come under pressure.

But what’s interesting about Jeremy Corbyn, and may defuse my concerns, is his positions on science, as delineated by NewScientist (19 September 2015, paywall), which frowns at his positive stance on homeopathy, but continues:

HE WANTS Charles Darwin’s birthday to be a public holiday. And he accepts that human activity is warming the planet – he has pressed the current UK government to double its 2030 targets for cutting emissions of carbon dioxide from 40 to 80 per cent. …

… Corbyn has created a shadow minister for mental health – a position with no opposite number in the government. In February, he spoke in parliament on why he thought mental health was such an important issue.

Corbyn also says that Trident, the UK’s nuclear weapons programme, should be scrapped.

Last month, he affirmed his backing for scientific and technological research.

In another article, NewScientist notes:

Corbyn also backed a “Science is Vital” motion in 2010 calling for the reversal of cuts to the science budget.

But some commentators believe that other policies Corbyn has could work against this, such as his pledge to reduce tuition fees for students, currently around £9000 per year for each student. Kieron Flanagan, a lecturer in science and technology policy at Manchester Business School, says that the fees have brought valuable income to universities that they can spend on research, but that this would disappear if the fees were scrapped. “Would it be replaced by an equivalent amount from central government funds?” asks Flanagan.

Jeremy Corbyn has won the election to be the leader of UK’s Labor Party, currently in opposition in UK’s Parliament.  Vox‘s Zack Beauchamp has a piece on him.  The summary?

The BBC has an excellent rundown of Corbyn’s actual policy platform. It includes, among other things, renationalizing Britain’s railroad system and energy companies, abolishing tuition for British universities, and imposing rent controls to deal with Britain’s affordable housing problem. He’s even open to reopening the coal mines that used to be a big part of Britain’s economy. It’s essentially a throwback to the unreconstructed socialism — the real thing, way beyond Bernie Sanders — of the old-school British Labour Party, which used to be way more into the idea of the government controlling huge sectors of the economy.

Some of Corbyn’s ideas are more appealing than others. Most importantly, he wants to end Britain’s austerity spending cuts, which damaged the UK’s recovery from the Great Recession. He also proposes something called “people’s quantitative easing,” in which the Bank of England would print money to invest in infrastructure projects. This won him praise from the Financial Times‘s Matthew Klein, who described it as a good way to get money into the hands of ordinary Brits and thus stimulate the economy.

Which, without wishing to be offensive, rings a bell over here in the colonies United States of, well, the standard characterization of the GOP base.  Wait, wait, hear me out.  The central inclination of the GOP these days appears, at least to me, to view past decades as those golden times, when the world was bright and chipper and all went well.  Consider this from Zack’s article:

Corbyn’s socialism, particularly his support for nationalizing chunks of the British economy, is a direct threat to Labour’s current centrism. His critics accuse him of wanting to take the party back to the 1980s, or even the 1970s. A spokesperson for Yvette Cooper, a Labour MP and one of three leadership candidates who lost to Corbyn, warned during the campaign of “returning to the dismal days of the 1980s, with internal party warfare and almost two decades of [being in the] opposition.”

Renationalization?  Really?  He also speaks of reopening the coal mines and other ideas that, again, seem to come right out of an idealized past that he wishes existed now.  While GOP and Corbyn do not share policy positions, they do share a mindset, and that worries me more than some of his positions might.  Trying to run a country with a mindset from 50 years ago, disregarding the inclinations and habits of today’s citizens, could lead into a disastrous situation – if his leadership does result in winning Parliament.

And the progress on the mysterious white spots on Ceres?

NIL!

But we do have this great new pic, from NASA (Image: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA) (and NewScientist):

A reader comments on a similar situation in Minnesota:

This is not new, nor just confined to South Carolina. Dakota County — for one I am sure of — has been doing this for years, right here in Minnesota. The amount one pays for the electronic monitoring is exorbitant, and the monitoring service actually does a piss-poor job. So do the other parole monitoring people you have to meet with, so bad a job that you run the risk of being reincarcerated simply because of their incompetence (e.g. missing court ordered appointments, etc.). And if you’re in the Dakota county jail, they charge you for your room and board. Another scam perpetrated on the taxpayers and the accused is the bail bond system. In theory, you pay some percentage of your bond to a bail bond company, sort of like buying an insurance policy that they will pay the state if you don’t show. In theory, anyway. In reality, the bail bond companies don’t ever actually pay the court system anything (or rarely). They just pocket your money. The whole “criminal” justice system in this country is company corrupt, dishonest, and nothing at all like “justice”.

I was not aware that Minnesota did this – and I grew up in Dakota County.

The picture remains grim for California.  The Sierra Nevada snow pack is now at a 500 year low, according to a study reported by NewScientist (19 September 2015, paywall):

This year’s April level was at just 5 per cent of the historical average recorded for the month between 1951 and 2000.

It’s bad news for drought-ridden California because melting snow from the Sierra Nevada range fills 30 per cent of the state’s reservoirs (Nature Climate Change, doi.org/7p7). California suffered devastating wildfires this week that were fuelled by the region’s worst drought on record.

LiveScience adds,

And the researchers don’t expect normal snowpack levels to be replenished anytime soon. “We should be prepared for this type of snow drought to occur much more frequently because of rising temperatures,” study researcher Valerie Trouet, a dendrochronologist (a scientist who studies tree rings) at the University of Arizona’s Laboratory of Tree-Ring Research, said in a statement. “Anthropogenic [human-caused] warming is making the drought more severe.”

The following map courtesy OpenEI and is of the Sierra Nevada Thermal Region.

NASA“s Earth Observatory also contributes:

The Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Aqua satellite captured two natural-color images of the snow cover in the Sierra Nevada in California and Nevada. The top image was acquired on March 27, 2010, the last year with average winter snowfall in the region. The second image was acquired on March 29, 2015. In addition to the significantly depleted snow cover, note the change of color in the Central Valley of California and the lack of snow in the interior of Nevada. (Most of the white in 2015 is cloud cover.)

Looking closely at the Tuolumne River Basin in the Sierra Nevada, scientists working with NASA’s Airborne Snow Observatory (ASO) found the snowpack there contained just 40 percent as much water in 2015 as it did at its highest level in 2014—which was already one of the two driest years in California’s recorded history. In its first springtime acquisition of 2015, the ASO team quantified the total volume of water contained in the basin: On March 25, the mountain snowpack was 74,000 acre-feet, or 24 billion gallons. In the same week of 2014, the snow total was 179,000 acre-feet.

The wildfires, so well covered by the media, were certainly exacerbated by the ongoing drought, and it provides opportunities for prison inmates to mitigate sentences and learn new skills, as reported by the BBC:

When painter Henry Cruz was sent to San Quentin prison three years ago, for a crime he doesn’t want to talk about, he never thought he would spend part of his sentence fighting fires. But that’s what he has been doing for the past 18 months.

“It gets scary sometimes, but at the same time, it makes me feel good. Being a firefighter is a privilege – it makes you feel like you are in civilisation.

“I like saving nature, and sometimes people,” he says. “It makes me feel like a hero.”

While I would certainly like to understand the eventual recidivism rate for this subgroup of prisoners, it doesn’t really compensate for the damages and stresses on the state caused by the wildfires and drought.

We rewatched Pixar’s UP (2009) tonight.  Even on the small screen the honest depiction of the consequences of being a time-limited creature serves as the clarifying salt to the sugar of the lovely story that’s all about family and the lengths to which preserving family, and being bold, should be all about.

It surprised me by making me giddy.  Those stories are the ones I treasure.  My wife and I then found cat barf on the bedroom cover, and I cackled with glee.  She tried to put it down the clothes chute, where it stuck, and gales of uproar descended upon her; then the broom was brought to the effort, which promptly became stuck due to its excess length; I then became victim of the finger as I was a trifle indiscreet at the flounderings of Fate.

Now that’s giddy.

A reader thinks the Sex Robots are just over the next hill:

The objections seem all too PC to me. Absent a huge change in humanity, sex robots will push the envelope on robotics, just like porn sites pushed the envelope on web sites. And it’ll be big business, too. Here, the SF writers are way ahead of the game, too. Example reading: “Saturn’s Children” by Charles Stross (2008), “Blue Champagne” by John Varley (1986), and “Hammer’s Slammers” by David Drake (1979, ref. “flirts”).

A profit in everything, including prisons, as we’ve discussed before.  The International Business Times reports on another move to extract cash from even the merely accused:

It all started with a traffic violation. Green, a 49-year-old father of five from Lugoff, South Carolina, about 30 miles northeast of Columbia, acknowledged that he shouldn’t have been driving at all. He didn’t have a license. But last October, his mother’s car, a 1994 Chrysler, had broken down at a nearby Taco Bell. So he hitched a ride to go retrieve it for her.

On his way home while driving his mother’s car, he failed to use his turn signal at an intersection, and a local police officer pulled him over.

Green was arrested, placed in handcuffs and taken down to the local county jail, where he waited overnight until his elderly mother was able to post the $2,100 to bail him out. A condition of Green’s bail, ordered by the judge, was that Green wear — and pay for — an electronic monitoring device.

Green, who lives on a monthly $900 disability check, couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Pay for it?” Green said. “I never heard of that.”

But he was indeed hearing correctly. In Richland County, South Carolina, any person ordered to wear the ankle monitor as a condition of their bail must lease the bracelet from a private, for-profit company called Offender Management Services (OMS), which charges the offender $9.25 per day, or about $300 per month, plus a $179.50 set-up fee, according to county documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request made by International Business Times.

Amazing – they’ve effectively fined a man convicted of nothing AND redirected the fine to a private company.  I’d have to say the responsible parties in Lugoff, SC, have screwed up at least two different ways, since the bail money will be returned to the family so long as the accused makes it to the trial, while the money for the GPS is long gone, so it’s a fine with no legal backing.  And then giving the money to a private company under the guise of a lease?  Strike two.  And the whole scheme … well, anyone who likens corruption to a pig rooting out truffles should be salivating on this one.

And, of course, my current hobby horse applies.

(h/t Josie Duffy @ The Daily Kos)

Akin to the Campaign to Stop Killer Robots (here and here) comes a Campaign Against Sex Robots:

Over the last decades, an increasing effort from both academia and industry has gone into the development of sex robots – that is, machines in the form of women or children for use as sex objects, substitutes for human partners or prostitutes. …

• We believe the development of sex robots further objectifies women and children.
• The vision for sex robots is underscored by reference to prostitute-john exchange which relies on recognizing only the needs and wants of the buyers of sex, the sellers of sex are not attributed subjectivity and reduced to a thing (just like the robot).
• The development of sex robots and the ideas to support their production show the immense horrors still present in the world of prostitution which is built on the “perceived” inferiority of women and children and therefore justifies their uses as sex objects.
• We propose that the development of sex robots will further reduce human empathy that can only be developed by an experience of mutual relationship.

Jeremy Hsu on Lovesick Cyborg blog at Discover.com comments:

But the call for a blanket ban on the development of sex robots raises several questions. First, it’s unclear why robotic technology should be singled out for a ban when many other existing technologies already contribute to the reinforcement of gender inequality in society. The same argument about technology leading to objectification and reinforcement of gender inequality could be made for pornography, dating apps or online services, and sex or romance simulation games.

I suspect the answer is that this particular technological application is still in its infancy, at best; the campaign should like to strangle it in its crib, if I may say it.  The others are out and about and thus difficult to stifle.

Elizabeth Nolan Brown @ Reason.com has worked this territory before.  Since Reason is libertarian, it’s no surprise she’s cheering the industry onwards:

You have to give robotics researcher Kathleen Richardson credit for one thing: she’s forward-thinking when it comes to moral panics. In a half-baked new paper, the De Montfort University research fellow is full of dire warnings about technology that doesn’t even exist yet in the marketplace: sex robots.

“I started thinking, ‘Oh, no, something needs to be said about this,'” Richardson told The Washington Post about her early forays into sex robot research. “This is not right.” Her misgivings culminated in a paper titled “The Asymmetrical ‘Relationship’: Parallels Between Prostitution and the Development of Sex Robots,” presented at a computer ethics forum in Leicester, England, earlier this month. In it, Richardson argues that the development of sex robots would “further reduce human empathy” and “reinforce power relations of inequality and violence.”

She also notes this may all be a tempest in a teapot:

Research on why men pay for sex has found, more than any other common denominator (variety, convenience, etc.), a desire for mutuality. Clients want to feel, at minimum, like a sex worker somewhat enjoys her time with them. In a 1997 study of male prostitution clients ages 27 to 52—nearly half of whom were married—a desire for sex was frequently met with “social, courting behaviors that were often flavored with varying degrees of romance.” Interviewing clients at a New Zealand massage parlor, researcher Elizabeth Plumridge found they “all wanted a responsive embodied woman to have sex with. This they secured by ascribing desires, response and sexuality to prostitute women. They did not know the true ‘selves’ of these women, but constructed them strategically in a way that forwarded their own pleasures.”

I’d want to talk to an expert before accepting this viewpoint – the context is too obscure.  Is this a world-wide study?  What percentage of johns fit this quasi-idealistic scenario – and how many guys are there just to get their rocks off?  And how many are looking to slap the prostitute around?  This certainly doesn’t fit into the stories published about enslaved sex workers.

To my mind, there are three groups to consider here: the johns, the prostitutes, and the robots.  From what I’m reading, there’s little consideration given to the last group.  The problem is characterization: is the hypothetical robot just something that rocks back and forth and moans a lot?  Or, at the other end of a spectrum, is it a fully cognizant AI?

The latter assertion is not only more interesting, but more compelling for a couple of reasons.  First, the technological urge to forever improve your invention (or, as engineers put it, fixing what ain’t broke) will result in smarter and smarter sex robots; second, as the johns realize the smarter robots deliver a better experience (which I’ll assert without supporting argument), they’ll demand better robots.

The subject appears to be quite complex.  A fully cognizant AI … well, does it care about sex & relationships?  If it cares about relationships, sex – if that can mean anything to a computational intelligence – may or may not be of interest.  The reproductive strategies of an AI may be as trivial as duplicating the current state of the AI into hardware capable of executing the underlying computation; or it may be a complex game of crossbreeding the survival strategies of multiple AIs in a process conceptually reminiscent of biological sex.  While human takeaways from sex range from pleasure to children, would an AI take pleasure – or anything – from sex with a human?  Even if programmed to be capable, that is a different subject from programmed to actually gain anything useful from the activity. And that, in turn, presumes that an AI is actually programmed in the classical sense.  While, if computationally based, a certain amount of programming will be necessary, the vast majority of the material will be data and derived algorithms – and, with respect to this discussion, that means it’s rather impossible to answer the question of the moment.

So, banning sex robots may mean depriving a general robot from a key part of the human experience: a supposition of worth that cannot be estimated – because it may range from 0 to infinity, in computational terms.  One could accuse the Campaign of a quaint provincialism, if one was so minded; however, the subject is serious enough that the charge might come across as flippant.

Finally, TechInsider references David Levy:

But David Levy, author of “Love and Sex with Robots” told the BBC that humans and robots in intimate relationships will be a common sight by 2050.

“There is an increasing number of people who find it difficult to form relationships,” Levy told the BBC. Sex robots, he said, “will fill a void.”

This assumes a basic compatability.  I have not read his book, so perhaps he’s already treated the subject, but that little quote, as out of context as it might be, strikes me as filled with dubious assumptions.

… and then this pops up.

Walter Einenkel @ The Daily Kos goes ballistic.

Once you have a microscope, everything goes under that lens.  Two stories caught my eye over the last two weeks that bring breaching sector categorization into sharp relief.  The first has been well-noised about: hedge-fund manager Martin Shkreli bought the rights to Daraprim.  The Atlantic hasn’t much good to say:

As CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, he acquired an anti-parasite medication called Daraprim and immediately increased the price from roughly $13.50 to $750. In the last 72 hours since that made national news, Shkreli’s attitude and confidence have been duly noticed, reminding Americans that we live in the only country where drug companies set their own prices for life-saving medications. His confidence is the kind of confidence that manifests as Burberry polo shirts and semi-ironic emulation of Flo Rida; conspicuous consumption that does not play well to those suffering toxoplasmosis-induced seizures, preventable with Daraprim.

He’s hedging his bets now – apparently he was in full-fledged private sector mode, where the rule is make as much money as you can.  Not a health sector rule.

The other story has not made so many headlines.  Treehugger.com‘s Melissa Breyer reports on an impending loss of snake venom antidote:

But as it turns out, the world will have run out of Fav-Afrique [an anti-venom effective against 10 lethal African snakes] by June of 2016 and no more is being made. …

The anti-venom is made by French company Sanofi Pasteur – they are the only manufacturers, but they ceased production last year because they were priced out of the market and are now making a rabies treatment instead. Alain Bernal, a Sanofi Pasteur spokesman, told BBC that the company had offered to transfer the anti-venom technology to others, adding, “Nothing has materialized yet.”

Newsweek adds to the picture:

The pharmaceutical company which manufactured the drug stopped production in 2014 and there will now be a two-year gap before a replacement product becomes available in 2018. …

[Rob Harrison, head of the Venom Research Unit at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine] adds that the problem is exacerbated by the proliferation of cheap but ineffective antivenom treatments which are not bite-specific. Sub-Saharan Africa, in particular, is “awash” with antivenoms that come from other continents “that are marketed aggressively and very cheaply but are ineffective,” says Harrison.

The Health sector doesn’t offer choices to curry favor with consumer’s fashion sense, but to increase efficacy.  Once again, in both of these cases, we see the operationality of the private sector intruding into another sector, leaving it damaged and incapable of accomplishing important goals.  At one time, at least in the USA, marketing of drugs was banned and we could at least hope that the most effective drugs were available – rather than worrying about marketing of drugs to people who know nothing about proper evaluation of the drugs.

Some questions about interactions between sectors are very difficult, but this one seems easy enough – ban medical advertising.

Thinking of buying a seal fur coat?  Think again.  NewScientist (12 September 2015, paywall) reports that it contains mercury:

SEAL fur may be toxic. Mercury is building up even in pristine areas, and it’s coming from an unexpected source – moulting elephant seals.

Industrial pollution can release mercury into the environment, where it may end up as an organic compound called methylmercury. This is taken up by bacteria, and it builds up in organisms much higher up the food chain, including top predators such as elephant seals.

But it doesn’t end there. “Elephant seals undergo a catastrophic moult,” says Jennifer Cossaboon of San Diego State University in California. “It comes off in big sheets of fur and the top few layers of skin.”

A reader comments on the thread:

I think we’ll face a Bladerunner like problem if we aren’t ethical towards AI, but I also don’t worry that sentient, feeling AI will actually be created in my lifetime.

I think if it’s achievable, someone will find a way to that goal within the next 50 years.  I’m just not sure a computer-based solution is possible.

Anders Sandberg gets it.  That is, that there are ethical questions arising from the attempt to create an artificial intelligence.  He writes in NewScientist (12 September 2015, paywall):

It is the third problem that really interests me. Would emulations feel pain? Do we have to care for them like we do for animals or humans involved in medical research?

Exactly.  If you achieve your goal – creating an artificial intelligence – then is it ethical to deactivate the program, turn off the hardware at the end of the day?  Does the fact that we created that intelligence – depending on how you define create, as it’s very much a team enterprise – also give us the right to inflict pain upon and end the existence of the artificial intelligence?

The answer may technically be YES, but it would be a measurement of our maturity and intelligence to realize causing anguish to a living, thinking being – one that may feel and think on our level – is a moral hazard.  Anders agrees:

My suggestion is that it is better to be safe than sorry: assume that any emulated system could have the same mental properties as the organism or biological system it is based on, and treat it accordingly. If your simulation just produces neural noise, you have a good reason to assume there is nothing in there to care about. But if you make an emulated mouse that behaves like a real one, you should treat it like you would treat a lab mouse.

And then he continues onward to even more interesting questions, which may be unique:

What about euthanasia? Living organisms die permanently, and death means the loss of their only chance at being alive. But an emulated brain could be restored from a backup: Lab Rat 1.0 would awake in the same way no matter how many copies had been tested in the past. The only thing lost when restoring it would be the memories of the previous experiment. There may still be pleasures and pains that count. In some ethical views, running a million supremely happy rat simulations in the background might be a “moral offset” for doing something painful to one.

Maybe.   But the awareness of the imminence of extinction of this copy of the AI, if it causes anguish, is this a problem?