The Knowledge Problem--An Inconvenient Constraint on Would-Be Social Engineers

Given the predominantly leftist tilt of most university faculties--at least in economics and social sciences--it is not surprising that many students and recent graduates have not become acquainted with "the knowledge problem" in economics.

The problem dates to the economists Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek. The problem has been explicated further by Thomas Sowell, in the book Knowledge and Decisions (Sowell's best book in my opinion).

The knowledge problem is stated various ways, but it boils down to describing the immense difficulty in implementing a centrally planned economy when more than one person is involved--much less when millions or hundreds of millions are involved. Think of it as the "two body problem" from physics transferred to the economic realm, except far less tractable.

A lot of students and recent graduates refer to circumstances where socialism or communism are "proven to have worked". Unfortunately, most of them are unacquainted with the knowledge problem. An economic system comprising more than one participant rapidly gains complexity in determining the value of various economic transactions.

Whether a person wants to found their own socialist country, or build a working artificial intelligence, they must come face to face with the knowledge problem (KP), and they must learn to accomodate the constraints the KP presents.

For those who are serious about writing meaningful articles and books on the topic of hyper-complex entities such as economies or intelligences, acquainting themselves with the KP would be a useful side area of study that would reap huge benefits. Anyone who neglects a deep and meaningful investigation of the knowledge problem will pay dearly for the neglect.

I will try to work in more information on this topic in other postings.

Attention Planet Earth: Your Previously Scheduled Global Warming Doomsday Has Been Cancelled--Other Previously Scheduled Doomsdays Remain in Effect

The video above is now available on YouTube. It is the first of a 5 part series. To view the rest, simply click on the screen and go to YouTube for the other 4 segments.

The global warming doomsday message is a lucrative one for dishonest carbon trading schemes and schemers, such as Al Gore.

But the people need a religion, and the Church of CAGW (catastrophic anthropogenic global warming) is as good a religion as any--requiring blind faith in its believers, as it does.

Image hat tip Ice Age Now

Curing Brain Cancer With Electric Fields

Israeli researchers have published results of a study using electric fields to successfully treat patients with the rapidly growing brain cancer glioblastoma multiforme (GBM).

A device that specifically targets rapidly growing cancer cells with intermediate frequency electrical fields -- called Tumor-Treating Fields (TTFields) -- doubled the survival rates of patients with brain cancer, according to a Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) journal article.

Early results of cell culture, animal and early phase human trials showed that compared to historical data, the device more than doubled the median overall survival rates in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), the most common and aggressive type of malignant brain tumor. These survival rates observed in the data were compared to historical data.

Professor Yoram Palti of the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, the leading Israeli biomedical research institution, invented the device and first described it in a journal article in 2004.

It uses electrical fields to disrupt tumor growth by interfering with cell division of cancerous cells, causing them to stop proliferating and die off instead of dividing and growing. Healthy brain cells rarely divide and have different electrical properties than cancerous brain cells. This allows the device to target cancer cells without affecting the healthy cells.

Source

Here is a link to a journal article describing the technique.

This technique appears to offer promise for other types of tumours that can be as easily accessed with external electrical fields, with much less serious side effects than with chemotherapy, radiation, or neurosurgery.

In China There is No Capital Gains Tax for Stocks

China's stock market has become a bubble of frenzied investment.

SHANGHAI -- China's latest attempt to slow its runaway stock market might just work.

The Shanghai Composite Index tumbled 6.5% to 4,053.088 points on Wednesday in its second-biggest fall this decade after the Ministry of Finance tripled taxes on share transactions to 0.3% of trading value.

....ver the past few weeks, many institutional investors had largely stopped buying stocks as individual investors, accounting for up to 80 percent of turnover, began to push prices far above fund managers' expectations.

Stocks fever is gripping the country: Internet chat rooms are full of hot stock tips, people are quitting day jobs to trade, and a folksy investment guru known as "China's Warren Buffett" has won prominence.

The number of stock investment accounts hit the 100 million mark on Monday, and people have been opening about 350,000 new accounts each day. Luminaries from Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing to former U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned the market was heading for a crash.

By acting to halt that trend now - rather than waiting for the index to hit 5,000 points, which had become a short-term target for some - authorities may have avoided serious damage to the market, analysts said.

"We expect the policy change may add pressures on share prices in the near term, which could reduce the risk of a market crash," Citigroup said in a report.

Source

Although the stock market may land softly from this bubble, the long term prognosis for China's economy is less than sanguine, according to Gordon Chang.

Sensing American frustration, Beijing is approaching next week’s trade talks with the Bush administration with a hint of desperation. It is making pugnacious pronouncements, purchasing large quantities of American technology and soybeans, and pleading for more patience. It is, in fact, doing everything but complying with its trade obligations. Chinese leaders know that their economy cannot compete according to the rules. And that is one reason why the Chinese one-party state, which is overly dependent on exports to deliver prosperity, might just yet collapse.

Source

Certainly the recent spate of poisoned Chinese food products has not helped to reassure seasoned observers of the Chinese economy. Even in China the people are concerned about their own home-grown food source.

The quality and safety of China's food products has come under scrutiny around the world since tainted pet food caused deaths of cats and dogs in the United States and toxins in toothpaste exported from China led to recalls in Latin America.

At home, China's citizens are treated to a near-daily diet of stories of mass food poisonings or tainted products, and the government is starting to take action.

In the most dramatic of a series of measures, from announcing a system of food recalls to blacklisting producers who break the rules, a court sentenced to death the former head of the national food and drug agency for taking bribes in exchange for drug approvals.

Source

Many analysts are using straight-line extrapolation methods to predict the future of China's economy, but that does not seem wise. It is the underlying corruption, lack of strict accounting practices in the financial sectors, and lack of accountability by the massive state-owned industry sector that urges caution on anyone wishing to predict the future of China's economy. The underlying infrastructure is not nearly as sound as the official external figures suggest.

Consider: what would the US stock market be doing if there were no capital gains tax on stocks in the US?

Gamma Ray Bursts And Climate--I Hope You Like Cold Weather

Gamma Ray Bursts(GRBs) occur with frightening regularity across the cosmos. Space scientists consider GRBs important enough to warrant an orbiting satellite observatory, SWIFT, to monitor the sources of GRBs.

SWIFT is responsible for several important discoveries about GRB sources, including this recent news item:

GRBs release in seconds the same amount of energy our Sun will emit over its expected 10 billion-year lifetime. The staggering energy of a long-duration GRB (lasting more than a few seconds) comes from the core of a massive star collapsing to form a black hole or neutron star. In current theory, inrushing gas forms a disk around the central object. Magnetic fields channel some of that material into two jets moving at near-light speed. Collisions between shells of ejected material within the jet trigger the actual GRB.

Early in the mission, Swift’s X-ray Telescope (XRT) discovered that the initial pulse of gamma-rays, known as prompt emission, is often followed minutes to hours later by short-lived but powerful X-ray flares. The flares suggested — but did not prove — that GRB central engines remain active long after the prompt emission.After analyzing GRB 060714, named for its detection date of July 14, 2006, Hans Krimm of Universities Space Research Association, Columbia, Md. and NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and eight colleagues, have demonstrated that X-ray flares are indeed a continuation of the prompt emission, showing that GRB central engines are active much longer than previously thought.

Source

Not so long ago, scientists began speculating that GRBs could have had a dramatic effect on Earth's history.

The idea that GRBs could have affected the course of evolution was first suggested two years ago (New Scientist print edition, 15 December 2001, p 10). John Scalo and Craig Wheeler of the University of Texas at Austin estimated that GRBs close enough to affect life in some way might occur once every five million years or so - around a thousand times since life began.

Now Melott believes he has palaeontological evidence that this actually happened at the end of the Ordovician period 443 million years ago, causing one of the five largest extinctions of the past 500 million years. Working with Bruce Lieberman, a specialist in fossil trilobites also at the University of Kansas, and other colleagues, he looked at the pattern of extinctions in the late Ordovician.

Source

Now all of that is no doubt interesting in the context of Earth's biological past, but what might it mean to modern-day humans?

There are two bad things that happen if you get enough gamma rays smacking into you:

"1) They dissociate ozone molecules. Bad. Worse, they also zap nitrogen molecules, which then go out and zap ozone molecules. Either way, a lot of ozone goes away. It depends on how close the supernova or gamma-ray burst is, of course, but some studies have shown that a gamma-ray burst ... could eradicate 30 percent of ozone globally, with some local places dropping by more than 50 percent. In technical terms, that would suck.

"2) Those nitrogen atoms go on and make NO2 molecules, which is a reddish brown toxic substance. Not enough would be made, most likely, to hurt folks, but it's dark and absorbs sunlight, so they can contribute to global cooling. The Ordovician event may have been from a nearby supernova or gamma-ray burst, as there is evidence of increased UVB [ultraviolet light B] hitting phytoplanktons and also cooling at the same time.

"There is a third thing: cosmic rays, atomic nuclei accelerated to relativistic speeds, may also be sent our way by supernovae or gamma-ray bursts. No one is really sure. But there is a lot of evidence (and this shocked me) that the cosmic rays affect our weather by seeding clouds (I am unclear how this works in detail but I'll know better as I read more). More clouds means more cooling, so more cosmic rays could trip an ice age. Seriously.

Source

A worldwide glacial epoch could easily be triggered by one of these events in our galactic neighborhood. There would be no warning to speak of.

We are lucky to have our warm, sunny days--long growing seasons for crops, plenty of time to soak up the gamma rays I mean sun's rays. For those who complain about a marginally warmer earth, may I suggest that you disconnect your air conditioners, and park your automobiles immediately. That would be most kind of you, for all of our sakes, and would partially excuse you for your lack of discrimination in your beliefs about the natural world. Thanks.

More on gamma ray bursts here, here, here and here.
Here are several abstracts of papers dealing with GRBs.

Hat tip Cocktail Party Physics

Your Assignment: Devise a Plan to Save As Many Humans as Possible In the Event This Should Happen

Yes, the narration is in Japanese. You say you cannot understand Japanese? Just turn down the volume, and play your favourite "end of the world music" in the background, instead.

Then come up with a plan using today's technology, for saving at least 100,000 humans from the apocalypse.

As a bonus, go here to find an interesting NOVA clip about Apophis--the asteroid due to strike Earth in the year 2036.

More on Great Global Warming Swindle

Interview with veteran filmmaker of BBC Global Warming special describing much of the witch hunt he has been subjected to since airing his film on Channel 4.

Also, here is the National Center for Policy Analysis report on climate change impacts for the next century. This report was written by a Delaware climatologist in an attempt to correct many popular misconceptions of the state of the art of climatology. Most members of the public lack the background for judging various climate predictions and studies. But a basic understanding of sound science is within the grasp of most intelligent persons. This report helps to ground a person of above average intelligence in what is currently possible within modern day climatology.


Most believers of CAGW--catastrophic anthropogenic global warming--are merely floating in the predominant breeze of media coverage. They are completely convinced of the truth of their beliefs. Unable to distinguish accomplished science from political/journalistic putsch, they float in the mainstream of the popular current, oblivious to their own intellectual helplessness.



Hat tip floppingaces, and Green Watch.

Build Your Own Cosmic Ray Detector for £40 And Be The First On Your Block to Announce the Coming Global Cooling

If cosmic rays do have the effect on climate that several authors claim, then it might be nice to monitor them more closely.

An 18 year old Scottish schoolgirl has built her own cosmic ray detector for £40, and has been named the world's brightest young physicist for her work.

Holly Batchelor, 18, a pupil at the Mary Erskine School in Edinburgh, made her own cosmic ray detector - out of a plastic fish tank, an aluminium sheet and some felt - to win the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair's (ISEF) First Award for physics and astronomy.

Her cloud chamber device, which makes the particle trails of the rays visible, cost less than £40 to make - far cheaper than commercially available machines - and she hopes this will enable schools to build their own versions, inspiring more young scientists.

Holly also studied the energy and angle of cosmic rays, which come from the Sun and supernovae explosions.

This has recently become a hot topic, because it is thought the rays have an effect on cloud formation and climate change.

Source

Of course, all of this is happening at the same time as the important CLOUD experiment at CERN1 is preparing for its first results.

The collaboration comprises an interdisciplinary team from 18 institutes and 9 countries in Europe, the United States and Russia. It brings together atmospheric physicists, solar physicists, and cosmic ray and particle physicists to address a key question in the understanding of clouds and climate change. "The experiment has attracted the leading aerosol, cloud and solar-terrestrial physicists from Europe; Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Switzerland and the United Kingdom are especially strong in this area" says the CLOUD spokesperson, Jasper Kirkby of CERN. "CERN is a unique environment for this experiment. As well as our accelerators, we bring the specialist technologies, experimental techniques and experience in the integration of large, complex detectors that are required for CLOUD." An example in the present CLOUD prototype is the gas system, designed by CERN engineers, which produces ultra-pure air from the evaporation of liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen. "It's probably the cleanest air anywhere in the world", says Kirkby.

The first results from the CLOUD prototype are expected by the summer of 2007.

Source

Of course, Al Gore in his docuganda "An Inconvenient Truth", conveniently neglected to mention the cosmic ray hypothesis. But then, that is the whole purpose of docugandas, no?

Anyway, the whole reason for mentioning the inexpensive cosmic ray detector, is that we are inexorably approaching a significant slowdown in the solar conveyor belt. According to the theories explained by these climate books, the slowing of the conveyor belt is a harbinger of drastically reduced solar magnetic activity. This reduction of solar activity leaves the solar system wide open to extra-solar cosmic rays, which could trigger much increased cloud formation in earth's atmosphere. The resulting global cooling could very well make most rational people nostalgic for "global warming."

And of course it is "clouds" that are the glaring weakness in the greenhouse gas theory of CAGW--catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, according to MIT's cloud expert Richard Lindzen. In fact, there are no General Circulation Models (GCMs) that give credible modeling results for the effects of clouds on climate.

Remember When We All Lived Up In the Trees?

For some of us, it hasn't been that long ago.

Carpenter Joel "Bubba" Smith builds tree houses for a living. But these are not the rickety, slapped-together, sticks-nailed-slipshod-to-the- tree-in-the-backyard tree houses of childhood memory. As a carpenter with Seattle-based TreeHouse Workshop Inc., Smith constructs wholly modern and sophisticated tree houses — some with bathrooms and fireplaces and second stories and suspension bridges.

....Ever since he built his first tree house as a kid, carpentry has been a calling. But it was working as a carpenter in the summers with his uncle that provided the compass that would guide Smith's career. An article in Forbes magazine about TreeHouse Workshop ultimately led Smith to Seattle four years ago, portfolio in hand. He was soon on his way to San Diego for his first job as a tree house builder.

The San Diego tree house remains one of his most ambitious and memorable to date. The 1,000-square-foot structure sits on an 80-acre farm just outside the city and is used as a weekend cabin — one with a kitchen and bathroom, bedroom and living spaces, spacious decks, a brick and stone fireplace and central heating and air. The exterior features rich redwood decks with picket railings made from oak branches and fir rail caps, all done by hand.

....On average, Smith and the other carpenters — TreeHouse Workshop employs seven lead builders — build 10 to 15 tree houses a year, about half locally. The tree houses range from 100 square feet to 1,000, and cost from $6,000 on the low end to $330,000-plus for top-of-the-line models.

Most tree houses take a few weeks to several months to complete and are built mostly with reclaimed wood and recycled materials.

Go to the Source for more photos and story.

Living in trees is not just for Ewoks and monkeys. Something in the primate genetic memory makes trees feel like home, for those who are attuned to those particular genes.

Children need to see the world from different perspectives. They like to climb trees, like to look down on their worlds. They also like to crawl through tunnels and look out on the world from small cubby-hole openings. But that is for another posting.

Topsoil: It's the Organisms, Stupid!

There is nothing magical about topsoil. For thousands of years, humans have been able to detect when soil was healthy and capable of growing good crops. Although pre-scientific humans knew nothing about the details of decomposition, they could tell a good crop from a bad crop--and quickly learned the external characteristics of good soil.

Now we are being told that the earth is losing its topsoil, and that such a loss can never be recovered. Regular readers of this blog may recognise such claims as "appeals to the pseudo-apocalypse." Which is precisely what they are.

It is certainly true that mining and other industrial processes destroy topsoil. And while conventional methods of remediating soil from mining and from other industry may be effective, they can also be extremely expensive.

Scientists in Russia have developed complex mixtures of micro-organisms that can be placed in situ, to remediate soil from petro-chemical contamination. Canadian scientists have gone farther, creating symbiotic combinations of plants and microbes, to clean contaminants from soil in situ.

Researchers are always looking for new bacteria in the strangest places. Or perhaps, not so strange, if you are looking for assistance for petroleum cleanup.

Here is a short description of the micro-world of soil:

• Bacteria -- Bacteria are the tiniest and most diverse of all soil organisms. A single teaspoon of topsoil typically contains more than 100 million bacteria that belong to over 1,000 different species. Bacteria help to decompose residue in the soil and increase nutrient availability for plants by dissolving phosphorus and fixing atmospheric nitrogen. Some bacteria that live on plant surfaces can also prevent plant diseases, either by antagonizing pathogens or stimulating the plant’s own immune systems.

• Fungi -- Fungi are important in the break down of plant residue, and they can transport nutrients through the soil profile. Because they are tougher than bacteria, they tend to release nutrients more slowly so that plants can have access to them throughout the growing season. Some fungi, called mycorrhizae, develop beneficial relationships with plants that allow for nutrient and water absorption by plant roots. Fungal cells also help to stabilize soil structure by secreting a sticky gel that glues mineral and organic particles together into aggregates. These aggregates allow for natural breaks to occur in soil, allowing for greater aeration and water infiltration.

• Protozoa -- Protozoa are single-celled animals that act as secondary consumers of organic matter. They feed on bacteria, fungi, other protozoa, and organic molecules. Protozoa are believed to be responsible for mineralizing a small fraction of the nitrogen in soils.

• Nematodes -- Nematodes are simple worms that are less than one-tenth of an inch long. They help breakdown organic residues and feed on bacteria, fungi and protozoa. They also convert some nitrogen into usable forms for plants.

• Free-living mites -- Soil mites are arthropods that graze on decomposing organic matter, fungi, algae and nematodes. Mite populations are slow to develop, so their appearance indicates a highly stable soil environment.

• Springtails -- Springtails are arthropods found in decaying material. They are one of several biological agents responsible for the creation of soil, and are considered to be the most abundant of all macroscopic animals living in the topsoil.

• Earthworms -- Earthworms round out the list as important keepers and restorers of soil fertility. While less numerous than nematodes, they account for up to 10 times the biomass of the other secondary consumers. Earthworms feed on bacteria-laden plant residues and organic matter mixed with mineral particles. The resulting material is given off as worm casts, which are generally higher in available nitrogen, calcium, magnesium and phosphorus than the soil itself. Earthworms also constantly bring soil up to the surface, providing anywhere from one to 100 tons per acre of organic-laden soil for plant use each year.

“There are countless other organisms that contribute to the soil community. The variety of soil organisms is so high that even today we don’t have the tools to say what an average community really looks like from a small scale to a large scale,” said Gardener. “But it can be said that a healthy soil is often marked by multiple trophic levels of diverse microflora, microfauna and mesofauna.”

Source

Up until now, most of the microbe-hunting has been done by pharmacology researchers, looking for magic bullets against human infection, cancer, and other disease. More and more, such hunts are being done to find cures for environmental ills.

Plants can certainly be grown without soil, and in certain environments aeroponic crops will be the only source of fresh vegetables and fruits.

But the Earth itself has needs beyond the needs of humans. That is the concern. That is why humans have to learn to care for the health of the planet. Humans can learn to take care of themselves. They can also learn to care for the planet, even when their own welfare is not directly concerned.

Inconvenient Truths for Climate Modelers

Common wisdom states that it is easier to predict long-range climate than long-range weather. It isn't true, of course. But after 50 to 100 years, who is going to be around to rub it in your face?

A climate model, in contrast, must model more processes than in a weather model (such as biogeochemistry of vegetation on land and plants in the ocean; sea ice dynamics; aerosol processes; ocean circulation; ground freezing and thawing; snow accumulation and melt and sublimation, etc. - see). For some of these climate processes (which involve physics, biology and chemistry) they are modeled, as with a weather model, by a dynamical core and by parameterizations. These include sea ice dynamics and ocean circulation, which both have advection, pressure gradient and gravitational parts, as well as the parameterization of other effects (such as turbulence, phase changes of water). Some of the climate processes, such as biogeochemistry and biogeography have no dynamical core, and are completely parameterized models.

Thus, a climate model involves more parameterizations with their tunable components than for a weather model, as well as additional new state variables (such as salinity, ice, snow, vegetation type and its root depth etc) for which initial conditions are required for all of these variables.

The climate model also has no real world constraint such as supplied by real-world initial conditions (and for a regional model lateral boundary conditions). This real-world data constrains its predictions. Instead, the state variables required for the dynamic core of each component of the climate model (i.e. the state variables for the atmosphere, land, ocean and continental ice) must be generated from the parameterizations!

The claim by the IPCC that an imposed climate forcing (such as added atmospheric concentrations of CO2) can work through the parameterizations involved in the atmospheric, land, ocean and continental ice sheet components of the climate model to create skillful global and regional forecasts decades from now is a remarkable statement. That the IPCC states that this is a “much more easily solved problem than forecasting weather patterns just weeks from now” is clearly a ridiculous scientific claim. As compared with a weather model, with a multi-decadal climate model prediction there are more state variables, more parameterizations, and a lack of constraint from real-world observed values of the state variables.

Source

Climate science is in its infancy. But having been adopted by politicians in the IPCC and EU, and by journalists in the mainstream media, computer modelers who use woefully inadequate GCM's as tools, are as bold as any Grand Inquisition. When you see yourself as part of a holy crusade--a movement of exquisite purity--there is no need to bother with normal standards of rigour. Momentum trumps science--for now.

Saudi Arabia and Iran: Pathetic Loser Nations In the Eye of the Storm

Out of Iran's population of 70m or so, 51 per cent are ethnically Persian, 24 per cent are Turks ("Azeris" is the regime's term), with other minorities comprising the remaining quarter. Many of Iran's 16-17m Turks are in revolt against Persian cultural imperialism; its 5-6m Kurds have started a serious insurgency; the Arab minority detonates bombs in Ahvaz; and Baluch tribesmen attack gendarmes and revolutionary guards. If some 40 per cent of the British population were engaged in separatist struggles of varying intensity, nobody would claim that it was firmly united around the London government. On top of this, many of the Persian majority oppose the theocratic regime, either because they have become post-Islamic in reaction to its many prohibitions, or because they are Sufis, whom the regime now persecutes almost as much as the small Baha'i minority. So let us have no more reports from Tehran stressing the country's national unity. Persian nationalism is a minority position in a country where half the population is not even Persian. In our times, multinational states either decentralise or break up more or less violently; Iran is not decentralising, so its future seems highly predictable, while in the present not much cohesion under attack is to be expected.

....We devote far too much attention to the middle east, a mostly stagnant region where almost nothing is created in science or the arts—excluding Israel, per capita patent production of countries in the middle east is one fifth that of sub-Saharan Africa. The people of the middle east (only about five per cent of the world's population) are remarkably unproductive, with a high proportion not in the labour force at all. Not many of us would care to work if we were citizens of Abu Dhabi, with lots of oil money for very few citizens. But Saudi Arabia's 27m inhabitants also live largely off the oil revenues that trickle down to them, leaving most of the work to foreign technicians and labourers: even with high oil prices, Saudi Arabia's annual per capita income, at $14,000, is only about half that of oil-free Israel.

Saudi Arabia has a good excuse, for it was a land of oasis hand-farmers and Bedouin pastoralists who cannot be expected to become captains of industry in a mere 50 years. Much more striking is the oil parasitism of once much more accomplished Iran. It exports only 2.5m barrels a day as compared to Saudi Arabia's 8m, yet oil still accounts for 80 per cent of Iran's exports because its agriculture and industry have become so unproductive.

The middle east was once the world's most advanced region, but these days its biggest industries are extravagant consumption and the venting of resentment. According to the UN's 2004 Arab human development report, the region boasts the second lowest adult literacy rate in the world (after sub-Saharan Africa) at just 63 per cent. Its dependence on oil means that manufactured goods account for just 17 per cent of exports, compared to a global average of 78 per cent. Moreover, despite its oil wealth, the entire middle east generated under 4 per cent of global GDP in 2006—less than Germany.

Source


Sometimes it seems as if the world revolves around Iran and Saudi Arabia--the two headquarter nations for dysfunctional Shia and Sunni Islam. It is clear that both arabs and persians aim to control the Ummah, the body of world Islamic belief. That is why both Saudi Arabia and Iran strive for nuclear weapons--the ultimate mark of power in an international community of third world failing nations.

The State vs. the People

In Western Europe, it is difficult to imagine that we would have accepted the massively bureaucratic European Union if we hadn’t already been conditioned to accept state intrusion on all levels of our lives in our nation states. The EU became just another layer of bureaucracy. We now have a situation where a massive, inflated national and transnational bureaucracy runs our lives, and even writes our laws. We have become serfs, just as Hayek warned against.

...if individual liberty diminishes with high taxation and intrusive bureaucracy, and if democracies have a built-in tendency to gradually increase taxes and create more state jobs, does that mean that democracy will, over time, diminish individual liberty? Is democracy bound to go through cycles of bureaucratic inflation and collapse?

....Parallel with an explosion in street crime, the state turns on its law-abiding citizens with a proliferation of regulations and an inflation of laws. The less control the state has over the the most important tasks of society, the stronger its desire to assert its power over the tiniest details becomes. Or is it a subtle show of force, a constant reminder to the average citizen of who’s boss, a sign that resistance to state policies is feared?

...“Parliaments all over the world are churning out laws by the bucketful. Yet, they fail to protect citizens so spectacularly that one is tempted to think that this is not their real purpose. […] Governments are no longer there to protect society and the individuals within it. [...] For that reason a crime committed by one individual against another is of little consequence to them.”

...The state interferes in all aspects of life, and contributes to breaking down the nuclear family. Later, it creates expensive social programs to try and remedy the problems it has itself partly created. Whether this dynamic is part of an intentional policy or the result of a dysfunctional ideology is debatable, but the result is disastrous either way.

....When does the rule of law break down? It breaks down when laws are no longer passed with the consent of free people, when citizens no longer feel that the law is just, when regulations become so numerous that it is virtually impossible even for decent individuals not to break the law on a regular basis and when the authorities are incapable of protecting their country’s borders while criminals rule the streets. It breaks down when the law appears increasingly arbitrary, when it invades the most intimate details of the life of law-abiding citizens while it allows great freedom to criminals. In short, it breaks down when it no longer corresponds to reality and to the sense of justice experienced by ordinary people.

Source

Once the people lose the will and the power to limit the size and control of government, the end of liberty and the beginning of serfdom is not far off.

A Warming World: Back to Normal? Heresy from the Grand Old Man of Climatology

The modern Earth is warming--recovering from the Little Ice Age of the mid-2nd millenium, CE.

“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd,” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we’re coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

... Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?

A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?

Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor…

A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.

Read it all at the Source

Reid Bryson received the 30th degree in meteorology granted in the US. At 86 years old he is not worried about his reputation or career. He can speak the plain and obvious truth without concern for the climate police who roam the media of the world, looking for heretics to stone and burn.

For an interesting look into rampant scientific bias that is likely distorting climatology research, see here.

More interesting information here.

The Man Who Sold the Moon, Part II

The title of this post comes from a book by SF author Robert Heinlein. It details the quest of a private businessman to conquer cis-lunar space, for profit and the spirit of mankind.

Something similar is happening with internet tycoon Elon Musk, and his private company SpaceX. Musk is betting the farm that he can build a better launch vehicle--one that can compete with the tax-supported dinosaurs from the US, Europe, Russia, and other large governments.

Five years ago, Musk was just another lucky young Internet lion starting a commercial space company. But he was more audacious than his peers — he wouldn't be satisfied with a quick, touristy trip to the edge of Earth's atmosphere, like the X-Prize-winning SpaceShipOne. That rocket, and the passenger version that will make up Richard Branson's Virgin Galactic fleet, goes just over 60 miles high. And still it took the aeronautical genius of Burt Rutan and $20 million from Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen to get SpaceShipOne up and down. Musk wants to fly resupply missions — with astronauts! — to the International Space Station, at 250 miles up in low Earth orbit.

...But first he's got to get the thing off the ground. At the dawn of the space age, between 1957 and 1966, the US sent 429 rockets into orbit; a quarter of them failed. Musk is 36 years old and has spent a fortune to build the world's first privately funded, orbit-capable vehicle to take passengers into space. And now it's sitting on its launchpad, going nowhere. Worse, it's already failed once.

....Before he founded SpaceX in 2002, Musk created two Internet companies: Zip2, which he sold to Compaq in 1999 for $307 million in cash, and PayPal, which went public shortly before being sold to eBay. Musk, the largest shareholder, was 30 years old, crazy rich, and "tired of the Internet."

Sitting in traffic on the Long Island Expressway in 2001, mulling the problems of the world, Musk started wondering about NASA's plans to send people to Mars. Which, he discovered when he finally reached a computer, didn't exist. Musk was horrified. A native of South Africa, he had earned physics and business degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and dropped out of a graduate program in physics at Stanford. He had always been interested in space, convinced that humans were destined to be a multiplanet species. But where were the Columbuses and da Gamas of the 21st century?

...The list of companies that have tried and failed to go orbital is long enough to have spawned a hackneyed joke: What's the fastest way to become a commercial space millionaire? Start as a commercial space billionaire. "Moore's law does not apply to rockets," says John Pike, a space analyst at GlobalSecurity.org. "Humanity has spent hundreds of billions of dollars on space exploration in the past half century, and the numbers have not changed: about $10,000 per pound to put something in low Earth orbit. Elon Musk is asserting that his future is going to be remarkably different, and that's a tall claim."

So how will Musk charge half that? "I thought it would be hard, and it's harder than I thought," he admits. "But I want to make rockets 100 times, if not 1,000 times, better. The ultimate objective is to make humanity a multiplanet species. Thirty years from now, there'll be a base on the moon and on Mars, and people will be going back and forth on SpaceX rockets."

Source

Musk has the right attitude to make it work. In many ways, he seems like one of the heroes from a Heinlein or Ayn Rand novel. And he is spending his own money to try to reach his goal, unlike most of the space evangelists on the stump.

The internet, telecom, computer hardware/software, and consumer electronics have all launched billionaires and mega-millionaires into the financial stratosphere. Clearly, for many of these free spirits, the next big springboard to even greater things is outer space--and the potential to become the world's first trillionaire, even after adjusting for inflation.

New York City Plans Underground Superconducting Power Grid

A lot of infrastructure that takes up space above ground could be better placed underground. In this earlier Al Fin posting, Columbus, Ohio's project for placing superconducting electrical cable underground was discussed--and this link that contains an amazing flash video displaying the revolutionary possibilities of superconducting electrical cable was provided.

Now, New York City is planning to install a large electrical backbone of superconducting cable beneath the city, in 2010. They are calling it an "attack-proof power line", but of course that is just hype. What it is, is a revolution in urban planning.

The cable will link two substations in Manhattan. The department said the project could lead to further deployment of the technology, which also suppresses power surges.

"We have asked AMSC and Consolidated Edison to demonstrate superconductor solutions in New York City that will serve to keep our centers of commerce on line under all conditions--including grid events related to severe weather, accidents or terrorist attacks," Jay Cohen, the Department of Homeland Security's undersecretary for technology, said in a statement on Monday.

High-temperature superconducting cables made with ceramic materials can carry 10 times more power than traditional cables, but are costly and face technological challenges.

Superconducting cable must be cooled with liquid nitrogen to -382 degrees Fahrenheit (-230 Celsius). At that point, conductivity resistance falls, allowing the cables to carry the extra power.

The New York project will be carried out in two stages, with deployment of the cable by 2010, a spokesman for American Superconductor said.

Source


Modern superconductors do not have to be cooled to near absolute zero with expensive liquid helium, or potentially dangerous liquid hydrogen. Liquid nitrogen is relatively inexpensive, and safe. Superconducting electrical cables are within reach of most large cities, and are better buried underground. Superconducting levitating trains should not be far off. Superconducting magnetic space launch should significantly lower the launch cost for non-biological payloads.

The payoff from 20 year old advances in advanced superconductors is only just beginning to show. In 20 years from now, expect a lot more of the electrical power transmission and distribution infrastructure to be underground. Also expect several technological spinoffs from superconducting technology that as of now, not many people are talking about.

Society for Creative Apocalyptology--Apply Here to Register Your Chapter

The editorial board here at Al Fin has come to a momentous decision: we have decided to organise the founding of the worldwide Society for Creative Apocalytpology (SCA). It will be modeled after another SCA, the Society for Creative Anachronism.

While the Society for Creative Anachronism is organised for recreation and historical re-enactment, the Society for Creative Apocalyptology will be organised for recreation and education. Education with the aim of creating a core of competence within each participating community--competence for meeting the various challenges of the apocalypse.

Apocalyptology is the study of the end of the world, better known as doomsday or the apocalypse. Many people are amateur apocalyptologists without being aware of it. Apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction happens to be very popular with the reading and movie-going public. It is a short step from watching The Matrix, Aeon Flux, Jericho, or Terminator, and actually taking a serious interest in developing useful skills that could save your life, or the lives of your loved ones.

The Society for Creative Apocalyptology would not be your typical "community organising" political scam. Besides being fun and entertaining education, the SCA might actually save the lives of large numbers of people living in communities lucky enough to possess an active chapter.

We are currently in the process of collecting ideas for how the SCA will be structured. Soon, we will announce the launching of a new web headquarters of the SCA where future plans will be announced. Stay tuned.


It is the intention of the SCA to remain nonpolitical and nonreligious. By focusing upon the core competencies and skills needed by communities who lose their lifelines to the larger economic and emergency systems of their regions and nations, the SCA attempts to assure that a kernel of competency will exist within all participating communities. In a true major disaster that severs the ties of a community from its regional and national lifelines, several problems have to be addressed simultaneously.

It was clear from observing New Orleans and Louisiana in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, that the local city and state governments were caught completely unprepared. If not for the US military assets who responded almost immediately, the people of New Orleans and southern Louisiana would have suffered far worse than they did.

There are many conceivable disasters and catastrophes that would not allow free-loading and corrupt local governments to abdicate their responsibilities in that way, without suffering far worse penalties than the government crooks of Louisiana suffered.

Do not completely trust your governments at any level, with the safety and well-being of yourself and your loved ones in a disaster, catastrophe, or worse. Be prepared.

Ideology and Politics are Secondary. The Important Question Is: Are You Competent?

Because, personally, I seriously doubt that you are--if you are a typical psychologically neotenised, academically lobotomised, child of the western world.

You might try the "Jericho Test." If you have not seen the episodes of the doomed television show Jericho, go here and watch at least the first few episodes. Imagine yourself in such a circumstance. Would you be useful. How?

I recall sitting in an insurance office in a new town, transferring my policy to my new location. My young, attractive female agent was processing my paperwork and chatting with two co-workers who had gathered around the desk out of boredom. Somehow they were discussing a collapse of civilisation and what they could do to survive. My agent made the offhand comment, "at least I could work as a whore."

But there is only so much need for whores, and some of the male survivors of a holocaust would not treat their whores very kindly. So the rest of you might start thinking about other possibilities, while you have a little time. Particularly the college professors among you, who--if you pardon me for saying so--are almost certainly particularly useless in an emergency (unless your training is in applied engineering, technology, or biomedical sciences).

Your politics, religion, and ideology will probably be irrelevant, as long as you are not a psychopath. It is your useful skills that will count.

People always assume that things will continue as they are, in a straight line extrapolation of current trends. People are always wrong about that. Most people need shock therapy to acknowledge things that might go wrong, and to be motivated to prepare.

No matter how busy you are, you still have time to take steps to make you and your family more survivable.


Everyone needs a stockpile of clean water, food, and basic hygienic and first aid supplies. If you depend on a medicine such as insulin, you should have extra medication on hand, and rotate it to maintain the expiration date. If your vital medicines require refrigeration, you should have a way to power a small refrigerator off the electrical grid. (generator with fuel, solar panels with batteries, etc.)

There are many important things to think about, in connection with surviving a massive natural or man-made disaster. The Al Fin blog sidebar has an entire section of links dealing with these issues, about three fourths of the way down. As an added one-time-only bonus, here is an online book on surviving a nuclear war.

Watch the first few episodes of Jericho. Think about it.
Related

Alpha Lipoic Acid--An Old Friend Receives New Attention

Alpha lipoic acid has been shown to be a useful health supplement for over ten years. I have personally followed Lester Packer's research on ALA for a dozen years. Now, scientists at the Linus Pauling Institute are belatedly acknowledging what most of us have known all along--alpha lipoic acid shows a lot of promise.

"The evidence suggests that lipoic acid is actually a low-level stressor that turns on the basic cellular defenses of the body, including some of those that naturally decline with age," said Tory Hagen, an LPI researcher and associate professor of biochemistry and biophysics at OSU. "In particular, it tends to restore levels of glutathione, a protective antioxidant and detoxification compound, to those of a young animal. It also acts as a strong anti-inflammatory agent, which is relevant to many degenerative diseases."

Researchers at LPI are studying vitamins, dietary approaches and micronutrients that may be implicated in the aging or degenerative disease process, and say that lipoic acid appears to be one of those with the most compelling promise. It's normally found at low levels in green leafy vegetables, but can also be taken as a supplement.

...."Our studies have shown that mice supplemented with lipoic acid have a cognitive ability, behavior, and genetic expression of almost 100 detoxification and antioxidant genes that are comparable to that of young animals," Hagen said. "They aren't just living longer, they are living better – and that's the goal we're after."

What the OSU researchers now believe is that the role of lipoic acid is not so much a direct one to benefit cells, but rather an indirect aid that "kick starts" declining function in cells and helps them recover the functions that came more easily and naturally in young animals.

In various effects, lipoic acid appears to help restore a cellular "signaling" process that tends to break down in older blood vessels. It reduces mitochondrial decay in cells, which is closely linked to the symptoms of aging. With age, glutathione levels naturally decline, making older animals more susceptible to both free radicals and other environmental toxins – but lipoic acid can restore glutathione function to near normal. And the expression and function of other genes seems to come back to life.

"We never really expected such a surprising range of benefits from one compound," Hagen said. "This is really unprecedented, and we're pretty excited about it."

Source

They may be slow, but at least they are finally going public on ALA, at Linus Pauling.

The combination of alpha lipoic acid with acetyl L-Carnitine appears to help restore youthful function to aging mitochondria. This may eventually be useful in Alzheimer's Disease and other neurodegenerative conditions.

I was particularly disappointed in the Linus Pauling Institute for some of the statements they issued recently discouraging people from taking OTC flavonoids from plants. Based upon some rather pedestrian research dealing with the detectable anti-oxidant activity of several plant flavonoids, the LPI went fairly overboard in discouraging the public from taking these supplements.

Although the LPI admitted that bioflavonoids appeared to be beneficial in reducing M/M in heart disease and cancer, the overall message appeared to be: "They're not as good antioxidants as they're supposed to be, so don't take them."

One expects journalists and social science professors to exhibit such lack of clear thinking, but not world-class bioscientists.

Peak Oil: Meet Biofuels

The entire transportation infrastructure is based on combustion engines. Combustion engines feature very high energy density combined with very high power density. Such a combination is difficult to achieve with electric storage and fuel cell technologies. So it is natural that a lot of venture capital is being invested in the development of liquid biofuels, to substitute for fossil fuels currently used in the transportation industry.

Biodiesel, cellulosic butanol, and now pyrolytic liquid biofuels offer a renewable way to ease the transition from a fossil fuel based infrastructure to an eventual combustion-free transportation and energy infrastructure.

A team of University of Georgia researchers has developed a new biofuel derived from wood chips. Unlike previous fuels derived from wood, the new and still unnamed fuel can be blended with biodiesel and petroleum diesel to power conventional engines.

“The exciting thing about our method is that it is very easy to do,” said Tom Adams, director of the UGA Faculty of Engineering outreach service. “We expect to reduce the price of producing fuels from biomass dramatically with this technique.”

Adams, whose findings are detailed in the early online edition of the American Chemical Society journal Energy and Fuels, explained that scientists have long been able to derive oils from wood, but they had been unable to process it effectively or inexpensively so that it can be used in conventional engines. The researchers have developed a new chemical process, which they are working to patent, that inexpensively treats the oil so that it can be used in unmodified diesel engines or blended with biodiesel and petroleum diesel.

Here’s how the process works: Wood chips and pellets – roughly a quarter inch in diameter and six-tenths of an inch long – are heated in the absence of oxygen at a high temperature, a process known as pyrolysis. Up to a third of the dry weight of the wood becomes charcoal, while the rest becomes a gas. Most of this gas is condensed into a liquid bio-oil and chemically treated. When the process is complete, about 34 percent of the bio-oil (or 15 to 17 percent of the dry weight of the wood) can be used to power engines. The researchers are currently working to improve the process to derive even more oil from the wood.

Source

Many scientists have opposed biofuels as being inefficient and potentially harmful to the public health. The facts of transportation and energy/heating suggest that petroleum based fuels will trend progressively higher over time, as long as there is no significant recession or depression in the world economy. Given these rising costs, one would expect the smart money to invest in ways to produce useful fuels less expensive than future fossil fuels will be.


Many science bloggers have suggested that biofuels are a dead-end for the future. They say that the costs of producing the fuel are as great as the value of the fuel itself. They suggest that there is not enough land to grow both biofuels and food crops.

These are interesting claims, but they are unlikely to hold up in the face of the economic importance of viable alternatives to fossil fuels that can be used with existing combustion equipment, and such equipment as is likely to be introduced in the near term.

Food crops can be grown economically using aeroponic techniques, in the driest deserts, in outer space, or on sea-floating arcologies. Human ingenuity in the growing of both food crops and biofuel crops has just barely been tapped. The importance of liquid fuels in the trillion dollar infrastructures suggest that liquid biofuels will be very important quite soon, and for at least several decades.

An Enchanted Life: The Various Uses of Danger for Raising Boys

Something about a boy that requires danger, and adventure. Boys cannot truly grow to manhood without it. Author Conn Igulden exposes this dangerous gap in western child-raising practices in The Dangerous Book for Boys.

Amazon.com: It's difficult to describe what a phenomenon The Dangerous Book for Boys was in the UK last year. When I would check the bestseller list on our sister site, Amazon.co.uk, there would be, along with your book, which spent much of the year at the top of the list, a half-dozen apparent knockoff books of similar boy knowledge. Clearly, you tapped into something big. What do you think it was?

Iggulden: In a word, fathers. I am one myself and I think we've become aware that the whole "health and safety" overprotective culture isn't doing our sons any favors. Boys need to learn about risk. They need to fall off things occasionally, or--and this is the important bit--they'll take worse risks on their own. If we do away with challenging playgrounds and cancel school trips for fear of being sued, we don't end up with safer boys--we end up with them walking on train tracks. In the long run, it's not safe at all to keep our boys in the house with a Playstation. It's not good for their health or their safety.

You only have to push a boy on a swing to see how much enjoys the thrill of danger. It's hard-wired. Remove any opportunity to test his courage and they'll find ways to test themselves that will be seriously dangerous for everyone around them. I think of it like playing the lottery--someone has to say "Look, you won't win--and your children won't be hurt. Relax. It won't be you."

I think that's the core of the book's success. It isn't just a collection of things to do. The heroic stories alone are something we haven't had for too long. It isn't about climbing Everest, but it is an attitude, a philosophy for fathers and sons. Our institutions are too wrapped up in terror over being sued--so we have to do things with them ourselves. This book isn't a bad place to start.

As for knockoff books--great. They'll give my son something to read that doesn't involve him learning a dull moral lesson of some kind--just enjoying an adventure or learning skills and crafts so that he has a feeling of competence and confidence--just as we have. ....Amazon.com: Do you think The Dangerous Book for Boys is being read by actual boys, or only by nostalgic adults? Have you seen boys getting up from their Xboxes to go outside and perform first aid or tan animal skins or build go-carts?

Iggulden: I've had a lot of emails and letters from boys who loved the book--as well as fathers. I've had responses from kids as young as ten and an old man of 87, who pointed out a problem with the shadow stick that we've since changed. The thing to remember is that we may be older and more cynical every year, but boys simply aren't. If they are given the chance to make a go-cart with their dad, they jump at it. Mine did. Nothing gives me more pleasure than to know the book is being used with fathers and sons together, trying things out. Nothing is more valuable to a boy than time with his dad, learning something fun--or something difficult. That's part of the attitude too. If it's hard, you don't make it easy, you grab it by the throat and hang on for as long as it takes.

The book is often bought by fathers, of course. Their sons don't know Scott of the Antarctic is a great adventure story. How could they if it isn't taught any more? Good, heroic stories don't appear much in modern school curriculums--and then we wonder why boys don't seem interested.

Source

Listen to an interview with Conn Iggulden on the Glenn and Helen podcast show.

You may also want to contemplate Cristina Hoff Sommers' message in War Against Boys, when thinking about the much-neglected topic of "what boys need."


Boys are not exposed to adult male role models for much of their lives. Most schoolteachers are women. The curriculum throughout K-12 and into university is slanted toward a feminist, anti-male outlook. With so many single mother households, many boys may not learn the special enchantment that boys must learn, if they are to grow to be responsible, independent, and courageous men.

Western feminism has grown from a liberation movement to a power grubbing movement of cowardly and insecure third rate minds. Feminism has been hijacked by the perpetual revolutionaries--the inferiors who have the need to oppress all other points of view besides their own.

It is the boys who suffer the most, the boys who remain dangerously psychologically neotenous throught their lives. Why does the prevailing ideology in education and western intelligentsia wish to handicap boys for their entire lives? Clearly independent and courageous persons represent a serious threat to an ideological group that wishes to grab and retain its hold on power. If not shackled and confined in monotonous walls of indoctrination early, there is always the danger that boys may eventually grow into men. Men uncontrollable by the ruling ideology.

Rather like what is done to bulls to make them more tractable as steers.

Miscellaneous Curiosities, and the Announcement of the 3rd Carnival of Space

The image above shows an amazing new nano-glue discovered by researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic.

Researchers at Purdue have developed and patented an Aluminum alloy containing Gallium, that has the ability to pull the Oxygen from water, leaving the Hydrogen gas for other things--like combustion or making electricity in fuel cells. This would allow the production of hydrogen gas "on demand", when and where it is needed, from water.

Physicists at U Penn have developed a carbon nanotube aerogel that can support 8,000 times its weight.

One can imagine combining the three discoveries to produce an ultra-light automobile made of aerogel sandwiched between thin layers of nano-glued materials, powered by on-demand hydrogen fuel cells.

Or perhaps an ultralight rocket ship? Which brings me to the Third Carnival of Space, hosted by Universe Today. This week's carnival has a strong emphasis on recent astronomical discoveries.

A "Knoxville Horror" to Go With the "Wichita Massacre?"

I have commented about this story on two of my other blogs, but this video presentation presents most of the facts of the case clearly and calmly, for those who prefer video.

It seems to me that when an entire society closes its eyes to so many serious internal problems, that there is not only a failure of the media and the intelligentsia, there is also a failure of leadership.

Blacks commit more violent crime against whites than against blacks. Forty-five percent of their victims are white, 43 percent are black, and 10 percent are Hispanic. When whites commit violent crime, only three percent of their victims are black.

See full story linked above for sources.

A society needs to face its problems and deal with them, not studiously ignore them out of irrational ideological reasoning (PC).

Nerve Cells Escape from Flatland--Bask in 3-D Luxury!

When scientists finally got around to culturing nerve cells in 3-D, like natural neural networks, they discovered that the cells behaved much differently, genetically, than nerve cells grown on flat 2-D cultures.

For more than 100 years, scientists have grown human cells in flat dishes. In these 2-D glass incubators, better known as petri dishes, cells stick to the bottom and spread out as they multiply. But in the body, cells don’t grow that way. They are suspended in fluids and gels and surrounded by other cells. And these cells aren’t stuck; they move.

As a result, some scientists suspect that hothouse cells do not behave like in vivo varieties. This means that the critical functions scientists are trying to understand by studying these cells – from the proliferation of cancer to the bacterial assault by antibiotics – may play out differently. Studies indeed show differences in behavior between cells cultured in 2-D and in 3-D. Cells cultured in 3-D, for example, grow faster.

....Hoffman-Kim and researchers in her lab took a line of cancerous nerve cells and cultured them in different environments. They placed one batch of cells in standard petri dishes coated with collagen. They suspended the other batch in a thicker collagen gel. The bioengineers took great pains to be sure that this one-dimension difference was the only difference in the culture conditions. Team members even counted individuals cells as they went into the dishes to be sure that each dish contained precisely the same amount.

After a day of growth, the researchers extracted RNA from the cells and conducted a microarray analysis to determine differences in gene activity. The results: A whopping 1,766 genes responded differently, either switching on or switching off. To check their work, researchers repeated the experiments but this time produced multiple copies of eight genes specifically linked to cell growth. Those experiments confirmed the differences in gene activity.

Source

Each generation of scientists inherits a legacy of obsolete beliefs and practices, which it will either propagate to the next generation intact, or test and discard as needed. In this case, Hoffman-Kim and her colleagues decided to test the traditional methods--so they discovered something new and exciting.

Knowing that nerve cells naturally grow in 3-D, one has to wonder what took neuroscientists so long to perform such tests on 3-D cultures. One of the many problems in science and medicine is that a talent for book work and traditional lab technique, is no guarantee of the ability to innovate and think outside the box.

Many important scientific discoveries have occurred by accident--lucky discoveries from failed or accidental experiments.

With the huge numbers of scientists currently employed in biomedical research, we expect breakthroughs to occur. But the really important breakthroughs may not come about as frequently as we expect, simply because out of all working scientists, only a relative few may be willing to question traditional theories and techniques.

That is why it is so important that debate in science not be squashed, as it currently is in climate studies.

Silica Nano-spheres Proving Useful in Plant Genetic Research

Iowa State researchers have developed yet another use for their porous silicon nanospheres. They are using the nanoparticles to introduce both new genes and the chemicals that trigger the gene's expression, at the same time, into plant cells.

A team of Iowa State University plant scientists and materials chemists have successfully used nanotechnology to penetrate plant cell walls and simultaneously deliver a gene and a chemical that triggers its expression with controlled precision. Their breakthrough brings nanotechnology to plant biology and agricultural biotechnology, creating a powerful new tool for targeted delivery into plant cells.

The research, "Mesoporous Silica Nanoparticles Deliver DNA and Chemicals into Plants," is a highlighted article in the May issue of Nature Nanotechnology.

...."With the mesoporous nanoparticles, we can deliver two biogenic species at the same time," Wang said. "We can bring in a gene and induce it in a controlled manner at the same time and at the same location. That's never been done before."

The controlled release will improve the ability to study gene function in plants. And in the future, scientists could use the new technology to deliver imaging agents or chemicals inside cell walls. This would provide plant biologists with a window into intracellular events.

...."The team found a chemical we could use that made the nanoparticle look yummy to the plant cells so they would swallow the particles," Torney said.

It worked. The nanoparticles were swallowed by the plant protoplasts, which are a type of spherical plant cells without cell walls.

Most plant transformation, however, occurs with the use of a gene gun, not through endocytosis. In order to use the gene gun to introduce the nanoparticles to walled plant cells, the chemists made another clever modification on the particle surface. They synthesized even smaller gold particles to cap the nanoparticles. These "golden gates" not only prevented chemical leakage, but also added weight to the nanoparticles, enabling their delivery into the plant cell with the standard gene gun.

The biologists successfully used the technology to introduce DNA and chemicals to Arabidopsis, tobacco and corn plants.

Source

The Iowa State researchers are becoming quite clever in the use of their silicon nano-spheres. This is research worth following.

Peak Oil: Meet Nuclear Oil Sands

Nuclear Oil Sands, the next big thing? Another provocative posting from advanced nanotechnology blog.

As long as the price of oil stays above $50 per barrel, oil sands will be profitable for investors. One of the problems with the ultra-thick bitumen mined from the oil sands, is that it requires a lot of heat to process. By combining a nuclear reactor--with its copious waste heat--to oil sands processing, the process of refining useable oil from gunk is expedited.

If the Canadians are able to navigate the regulatory minefields to make this plan work--against the protests of all of the pseudo-environmentalist activists--the same thing may be used for oil shales.

Alberta and Saskatchewan are experiencing significant booms from oil sands construction and production projects. A lot of jobs are available for skilled workers.

More Signs of Maturing in the Infant Science of Climatology

Global climate models are missing a good chunk of plant information that could significantly alter long-term climate change predictions. A new technique for modeling phytoplankton -- microscopic plants in the upper layers of the Earth's waters -- could reveal a much more accurate picture.

"(Other) modelers have populated their oceans with three or four kinds of plants, said Mick Follows, a researcher in MIT's Program in Atmospheres, Oceans and Climate. "We’ve represented a much more diverse community, and allowed it to have interactions that regulate it more naturally."

Phytoplankton populations are constantly changing, which makes them difficult to predict. So the MIT researchers developed an algorithm using evolutionary principles to more accurately represent the microscopic plants. A more precise count is important because phytoplankton process carbon dioxide -- a significant contributor to global warming.

....Phytoplankton perform two-thirds of all the Earth's photosynthesis -- the process by which plants turn light, nutrients and carbon dioxide into food. The amount of CO2 processed by phytoplankton during photosynthesis affects concentrations of CO2 in the water, which determines how much of the greenhouse gas the oceans can absorb.

Follows and his colleagues created a model ocean seeded with dozens of randomly generated types of phytoplankton. Like the real ocean, the model accounted for variations in light, temperature and food.

Having set the parameters, Follows' team turned the model on. Over 10 simulated years, the digital creatures competed to survive. Some died out, others flourished, and they gradually settled into their respective niches.

Current marine-modeling systems don't factor in the phytoplankton's ever-evolving nature.

Source

See also:

Climatology: Finally Becoming a Science?

Is Climate Science Finally Growing Up?

And other postings with the labels "climate" and "CAGW".

How the US Can Compete With China

China's economic juggernaut appears unstoppable, to the average eye. The US must work under far more stringent rules and regulations in doing business, than the Chinese. Perhaps the answer for the US is to export some of its ideological idiocracy to China, to even the scale.

There was good news in the April 1 New York Times Magazine, in an article by Ann Hulbert entitled “Re-education.” Hulbert describes the enthusiasm among Chinese for American-style education. She opens with the story of Harvard freshman Tang Meijie, an exceptional young woman from Shanghai who earned her way into Harvard by bucking the usual academic grind in China and focusing instead on extracurrriculars. Meijie is on our side: “There is something in the American educational system that helps America hold its position in the world.” Meijie’s goal is to bring American-style liberal education to China.

....Our master plan for dumbing-down Chinese education, however, is not just about atmospherics or theatrics. Let’s not forget: this is American educationism. And that means theory.

...Assured that the Long March of the Revolution will inexorably reach the Great Frivolity of American-style educationism, I can worry a little less about the coming Chinese hegemony.

Source

Along with US-style government education, the US should export its system of tort law along with a generous supply of trial lawyers to China. That would help even the score. Exporting a huge portion of feminist style affirmative action and political correctness would likewise cut the Chinese down to size. They would not know what had hit them! Sexual harassment lawsuits alone would destroy 90% of China's economic growth.

Clearly, the US has some secret weapons that would be very deadly to virtually any other economy in the world. If only the CIA could learn how to implant some of these "memes" into other economies and cultures, the US would have no competition at all for the next century or two!

On Mothers Day: To Mother, or not to Mother--That is the Question

Like most of the western world, Canada is facing a serious decline of motherhood. There are many reasons for this problem

How did it come to this? In Canada, one answer is infertility. This affects one in every 15 Canadian couples (in Britain one in six are affected), who spend some $30 million a year on in-vitro fertilization alone. Defined as failure to conceive after one year of trying, infertility can result from many factors affecting both males and females, but according to the government of Canada's Biobasics website, the two biggest factors are delayed childbearing and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs).

Today, mothers giving birth average 29.5 years of age. Since women are born with a given number of eggs that decline in quality and quantity from the age of 30, it is no surprise that for the growing proportion of 30-plus women attempting pregnancy, it is much more difficult to conceive and carry a child.

Compounding the problem, earlier and increased sexual activity means a greater likelihood for contracting gonorrhea or chlamydia. In women, pelvic inflammatory disease and, in turn, blocked fallopian tubes or ectopic pregnancy may result. In men, sterility is possible. According to healthyontario.com, rates of STD infection are up 60 per cent since 1997, with girls between the ages of 15 and 19 incurring the highest rates. In 2003, 20,000 new cases of chlamydia were reported in Canada.

Source

The decline of motherhood suggests a future decline in working taxpayers to support Canada's massive system of social programs. Because Canada has a reasonably healthy economy, compared to most of the world, immigrants will arrive to try to take advantage of the opportunities Canada offers. Canada will receive both economic opportunity immigrants and welfare-seeking immigrants.

Unfortunately, of the nations with the highest birthrates providing the most potential immigrants, the average population IQ is significantly below the Canadian average.


If the IQ of the immigrants is low, they may start as economic opportunity immigrants, and regrettably transform into welfare-seeking immigrants. Dysgenic immigration is the last thing a welfare state like Canada needs--just as it is the last thing the European welfare states need.

France is in a similar downward spiral. Although France has elected a hard-working and intelligent new President, it is still in doubt whether France has the will to do what must be done to reverse its decline.

Delayed childbirth combined with early sexuality, leads to infertility. The only long-term solution--given the dominant culture of western countries--is the artificial womb.

The Solar Conveyor Belt, Sunspots, and Climate

NASA has found that the "solar conveyor belt", which is intimately connected with future sunspot cycles, has slowed significantly. This slowing points to a long and weak sunspot cycle, peaking in the early 2020s.

The Sun's Great Conveyor Belt has slowed to a record-low crawl, according to research by NASA solar physicist David Hathaway. "It's off the bottom of the charts," he says. "This has important repercussions for future solar activity."

see captionThe Great Conveyor Belt is a massive circulating current of fire (hot plasma) within the Sun. It has two branches, north and south, each taking about 40 years to perform one complete circuit. Researchers believe the turning of the belt controls the sunspot cycle, and that's why the slowdown is important.

...."Normally, the conveyor belt moves about 1 meter per second—walking pace," says Hathaway. "That's how it has been since the late 19th century." In recent years, however, the belt has decelerated to 0.75 m/s in the north and 0.35 m/s in the south. "We've never seen speeds so low."

According to theory and observation, the speed of the belt foretells the intensity of sunspot activity ~20 years in the future. A slow belt means lower solar activity; a fast belt means stronger activity. The reasons for this are explained in the Science@NASA story Solar Storm Warning.

"The slowdown we see now means that Solar Cycle 25, peaking around the year 2022, could be one of the weakest in centuries," says Hathaway.

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The relationship between cycle length and Earth temperatures is not well understood. Lower-than normal temperatures tend to occur in years when the sunspot cycle is longest, as confirmed by records of the annual duration of sea-ice around Iceland. The cycle will be longest again in the early 2020's.

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We know that the IPCC approach to climate is ludicrously myopic and inadequate. We know this because the metric most commonly referenced by IPCC reports--surface temperatures--is logically the wrong metric to use for measuring Terran heat content.

The IPCC SPM conclusion that “warming of the climate system is unequivocal” is wrong as it ignores the lack of such warming in recent years by these other metrics of climate system heat changes. Their focus on the global average near surface temperature trends neglects to report that there are major issues with the robustness of this climate metric of global warming as reported in the papers cited in

Pielke Sr., R.A., C. Davey, D. Niyogi, S. Fall, J. Steinweg-Woods, K. Hubbard, X. Lin, M. Cai, Y.-K. Lim, H. Li, J. Nielsen-Gammon, K. Gallo, R. Hale, R. Mahmood, R.T. McNider, and P. Blanken, 2007: Unresolved issues with the assessment of multi-decadal global land surface temperature trends. J. Geophys. Res. in press,

many of which were available to the writers of the IPCC SPM but conveniently ignored. At the very least, the lack of recent tropospheric warming and stratospheric cooling in the RSS data and the warming claimed for the near surface air temperatures conflicts with the multi-decadal global climate models in terms of how these temperatures are predicted to change.

Source

Hat tip Cuanas and M. Simon


One of my favorite bloggers recently asked for me to prove that human released CO2 is not responsible for "global warming." Such a demand is prima facie evidence of lack of training in causation and epistemology. Yet the blogger in question is undeniably talented, intelligent, and broad in outlook.

Of course, youth and inexperience may account for much of the inability of the public to sort through evidence and reasoning that deals with such issues as CAGW. But what about the masses of older people who are easily swayed by the media, and by special-interest science? What excuse do they have? Public school education? Post modernist scrambled brains?

Anyway, recent research suggests a link between solar magnetic activity and cosmic ray penetration into earth's atmosphere. Further, this research suggests that increased cosmic ray penetration leads to increased cloud cover, and decreasing solar heating effect.

A curious phenomenon, which I have been rather slow to take seriously--yet it certainly bears watching. Certainly if cosmic ray penetration can affect speciation and extinction of life forms on earth, it is not a great stretch to think they could also affect cloud formation and climate. We shall see.

The Odds of Asteroid 2004 QQ47 Hitting Earth in 2014 Are One in 909,000

If an asteroid 460 feet in diameter hit Earth, it would produce problems on a regional level, according to NASA. An asteroid 1,000 feet in diameter could harm countries, and one 3,280 feet in diameter -- or one kilometer -- could produce global problems.

If an asteroid that is 32,808 feet in diameter -- or 10 kilometers -- hit Earth, it could cause life forms to become extinct, similar to the asteroid that many scientists believe caused dinosaurs to become extinct.

Source

Asteroid 2004 MN4 has a higher likelihood of striking the Earth in 2029--greater than 1%. Asteroid MN4 has achieved a threat level of 2 out of 10 on the Torino scale.

An asteroid strike is a real problem, not an ideological hobgoblin like CAGW. The consequences of an asteroid strike would not be subject to revisionist history, post-modernist deconstructualism, or simple human denial.

At the present time, there are no good or available means to divert a large, civilisation-ending asteroid or comet from its course. And to be honest, we will probably have insufficient time to prepare for it, if we wait until we have solid warning.

NASA maintains a list of near-earth objects, for those who enjoy keeping track of such things. And amateur and professional astronomers around the world are watching the night sky carefully for new and previously undiscovered space objects heading our way.

Throughout the world, asteroids have caused about 330 known craters on Earth, but there are probably many more that people haven't discovered yet or are hidden under the oceans, Ryan said.

"It's truly a problem," she said. "We have to worry about these things because we don't know. We have to prepare for any outcome."

....Possibilities for deflecting an asteroid include using a large mirror to focus solar energy on an asteroid and boiling off material, or positioning a spacecraft near an asteroid and using a laser to boil off material, according to the report.

The government could also use a spacecraft to attach mining material to an asteroid and eject material from the asteroid at a high velocity, the report says, or use a spacecraft to literally push it out of the Earth's path.

To dismantle an asteroid, NASA says using a nuclear-armed missile would be more effective than a conventional explosive. The study team looked at conventional explosives but found they would be ineffective in most situations.

The best way to minimise the threat of an asteroid impact is to already have a permanent large-scale space infrastructure in place, before any large asteroids or comets enter final approach to earth impact. If we wait until we are certain a large object will hit us, it will probably be too late.

Odds for QQ47 impact are from Daily Astronomy.

Graphic image is from Saturation.org

Nano-Membrane Mass Spectrometry?

Biological materials are capable of performing many tricks that nanotechnologists have yet to master. Brazilian and American scientists have collaborated in research that shows that lipid bi-layers are capable of serving as nano-scale mass detectors.

In a paper appearing next week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,* the team proves for the first time that a single nanometer-scale pore in a thin membrane can be used to accurately detect and sort different-sized polymer chains (a model for biomolecules) that pass through or block the channel.

Traditionally, unknown molecules are measured and identified using mass spectrometry, a process that involves ionizing and disintegrating large numbers of a target molecule, then analyzing the masses of the resulting molecules to produce a "molecular fingerprint" for the original sample. This equipment can cover a good-sized desk. By contrast, the "single-molecule mass spectrometry" system described in the PNAS paper is a non-destructive technique that in principle can measure one molecule at a time in a space small enough to fit on a single microchip device.

The technique involves creating a lipid bilayer membrane similar to those in living cells, and "drilling" a pore in it with a protein (alpha-hemolysin) produced by the Staphyloccoccus aureus bacteria specifically to penetrate cell membranes. Charged molecules (such as single-stranded DNA) are forced one-at-a-time into the nanopore, which is only 1.5 nanometers (the diameter of a human hair is about 10,000 nanometers) at its smallest point, by an applied electric current. As the molecules pass through the channel, the current flow is reduced in proportion to the size of each individual chain, allowing its mass to be easily derived.

In this experiment, various-sized chains in solution of the uncharged polymer polyethylene glycol (PEG) were substituted for biomolecules. Each type of PEG molecule reduced the nanopore's electrical conductance differently as it moved through, allowing the researchers to distinguish one size of PEG chain from another.

As a control, a solution of a highly purified PEG of a specific size was characterized with the nanopore. The resulting "fingerprint" closely matched the one identifying samples of the same size polymer in the mixed chain solution.

Further enhancement of the data from both the experimental and control tests yielded mass measurements and identifications of the different PEG chains that correlate with those made by traditional mass spectrometry.

Source

Nanotechnologists have yet to solve many problems relating to molecular assembly. One of the problems is how to collect information about molecules, on a nano-scale. Identifying molecules by size and function is absolutely necessary for molecular assembly.

Molecular machines must have their own ways of processing information and performing energetic actions appropriate to their location within the larger assembly process. By mimicking biology, and utilising biological materials in creative ways, nanotechnologist will begin to bridge the huge gap that currently exists between biological molecular assembly, and the dreams of diamondoid assembly and other molecular assembly processes and systems.

Sperm Donor No More

Some men gain a certain satisfaction beyond the minimal monetary reward, for donating sperm to a couple who desire children. But some lesbian parents want to make the sperm donor pay for his generosity--and pay--and pay--and pay . . . .

In what legal experts are calling a precedent, a three-judge panel of the state Superior Court has ruled that a York County man must pay child support for two children of a lesbian couple for whom he acted as a sperm donor.

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No, the photo above is not of the proud parents. The actual proud and self-satisfied parents are pictured below.

The US and the Global Commons

Here is a thoughtful post from Belmont Club about the underpinnings of the modern world--the Global Commons--and what the US does behind the scenes to keep the whole ball of wax spinning along.

The U.S. military currently possesses command of the global commons. Command of the commons is analogous to command of the sea, or in Paul Kennedy’s words, it is analogous to “naval mastery.” The “commons,” in the case of the sea and space, are areas that belong to no one state and that provide access to much of the globe. Airspace does technically belong to the countries below it, but there are few countries that can deny their airspace above 15,000 feet to U.S. warplanes. Command does not mean that other states cannot use the commons in peacetime. Nor does it mean that others cannot acquire military assets that can move through or even exploit them when unhindered by the United States. Command means that the United States gets vastly more military use out of the sea, space, and air than do others; that it can credibly threaten to deny their use to others; and that others would lose a military contest for the commons if they attempted to deny them to the United States. Having lost such a contest, they could not mount another effort for a very long time, and the United States would preserve, restore, and consolidate its hold after such a fight. ...

The United States enjoys the same command of the sea that Britain once did, and it can also move large and heavy forces around the globe. But command of space allows the United States to see across the surface of the world’s landmasses and to gather vast amounts of information. At least on the matter of medium-to-large-scale military developments, the United States can locate and identify military targets with considerable fidelity and communicate this information to offensive forces in a timely fashion. Air power, ashore and afloat, can reach targets deep inland; and with modern precision-guided weaponry, it can often hit and destroy those targets.

Much more, including links, at the source.

Most people who comment on the state of the world lack even a basic understanding of the firmer layers of reality beneath the media facade.

Peacetime Army vs. Wartime Army

When you look beneath the media view of what has happened to the coalition militaries, you find something far different than the broken and breaking institutions the analysts want you to see.

In distinct contrast to what happened to the the US military in Vietnam, the US military in Afghanistan, Iraq, and the other battlefields against imperialist Islamist jihadist world conquest is the sharpest and best disciplined military force the world currently knows. Many commenters clearly want to relive Vietnam for reasons of their own. But that fantasy will not come true unless the know-nothings in the US Congress bring it about themselves.


There is a feature film called "American Soldiers" on cable television, dealing with the conflict between US troops and fedayeen in Iraq sometime in the past few years. Watching the film is stupefying to anyone with any knowledge of modern infantry tactics. How could the film have gotten the action so wrong? It is as if the producers hired writers with no military knowledge and experience, and with a general knowledge of the way the world works compatible with a very sheltered three year-old.

Yet even such an incompetent film portrayal is more informed than the image the mainstream media portrays of the coalition militaries. It is no wonder that people who have not served in the military, have not studied the military, and know no one close to them with accurate knowledge of the military, spout such uninformed nonsense in the media and blogs when they attempt to focus on military issues.

Second Carnival of Space!

The second Carnival of Space is now up!

More great links to recent outer space postings from the best space and futurist blogs. Check it out.

Mining Space--A Gold Rush that Never Ends

Cheaper space launch opens the door to the mining of space objects for useful materials.

In 2004, the world production of iron ore exceeded 1,000 million metric tons[1]. In comparison, a comparatively small M-type asteroid with a mean diameter of 1 km could contain more than 2,000 million metric tons of iron-nickel ore[2], or two to three times the annual production for 2004. The asteroid 16 Psyche is believed to contain 1.7×1019 kg of iron-nickel, which could supply the 2004 world production requirement for several million years. A small portion of the extracted material would also contain precious metals....

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Most people think in a small and limited scope. This leaves them completely unprepared for the changes that are coming.

Who will benefit from the exploitation of space? Information on this area has made plain that the costs of initial start-up and initial maintenance are beyond the capability of the non industrialized nations and can only be undertaken by nations with large developed economic infrastructures, specifically the European Union, The U.S., possibly Russia and Japan. Each of these has positive and negative factors which will determine how large a share of space industry and mining they will control. The U.S. has several advantages. First of all the previously mentioned public and private commitment to space research. Secondly a great deal of governmental research has gone into space "Space ventures require investments beyond the capacity of the private sector. Already the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has spent more then $200 billion (in current dollars), much of it to create the infrastructure needed to exploit space." (Osborne 45) Like any momentous undertaking a planning stage is required, thanks to some far-sighted policy makers a fair amount of planning has already been accomplished.

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Because of the huge potential payoff from any invention that makes the riches of space more accessible to human developers, there is no shortage of people who make extraordinary claims for their inventions. But even if such inventions do not pan out, a more sober analysis suggests that no more than a few decades will pass before the space revolution will be fully in play.

Modern news media is far too short-sighted and unintelligent/uninspired to alert their clients to these immensely important possibilities. Media controllers are far too interested in trying to swing the next political elections to take the time to understand the huge and powerful forces that are likely to throw them and their antiquated industry on the junkheap of history.

There is no need for the rest of us to be so myopic.

Making Space Launch More Affordable

Brian Wang at Advanced Nanotechnology Blog has posted a thoughtful entry on the prospects for cheap space launch within 10 years--via laser and magnetic launch technologies.

The $10,000/kg cost of getting things into space has been crippling what is possible in space. Any low cost system will also need to have a high volume purpose. I discuss the best system that would still involve chemical propulsion and laser and magnetic launch systems. The focus is on laser launch array systems (and mirror reflecting enhancement). I believe there is no technical roadblock for the laser array launch system being developed within 10 years. As with any significant project it would take a coordinated effort and funding.

....Laser photonic mirror system could launch things into orbit and could enhance the laser array launch system with mirrors to multiply efficiency by 1000 up to 100,000 times.

High volume magnetic launch (4000g) acceleration with ion propulsion at the top could bring launch costs down to $10/kg. High volume systems which have operational costs which are only the cost of electricity tend to converge to the $10/kg price. The laser launch and laser launch mirror systems also converge to those prices at high volume.

Go here for the original article, with excellent links and graphics.

Brian is talking about revolutionary changes in the cost of space launch--a reduction from $10,000 per kg to $10 per kg. There is no earthly way of describing to the uninitiated what this would mean for the future of humans on and near earth.

But throwing caution aside, I shall go cautiously insane for a moment in looking at the market value of near earth asteroid 3554 Amun. This asteroid is 2 km in diameter, and assuming typical nickel-iron meteorite composition, Amun is worth $8,000 billion in iron and nickel, $6,000 billion in Cobalt, with a total worth on the Earth metals market in the late '90s of $20,000 billion. Its worth to spacegoing enterprise, given it would already be in orbit and not need to be launched, would be in the vicinity of $300,000,000 billion, at current launch rates. At Brian's reduced rates it would be worth only $300,000 billion--a significant discount indeed.

Consider how much wealth $300,000 billion would be: roughly equivalent to the gross global product of Earth for the next thirty years or more. Source: Mining the Sky by John S. Lewis, Addison Wesley Press.

Think of it as a minor motivation for the few humans who value wealth--particularly in a rapidly expanding human universe.

A space rush would be similar to the many gold and silver rushes of previous centuries, and the oil rushes that continue even in an environment of so-called peak oil. The huge influx of wealth to the countries able to capitalise on this explosion of pioneering exploitation of space resources would sponsor accelerated research into biotechnology, nanotechnology, cognitive science--not to mention any number of new and decadent amusements.

This would not be the next level, but it would certainly be a good bypass around the economic implosion in the west being brought about by demographic aging and shrinkage combined with a worrying dysgenic population trend. With a new and rapidly expanding frontier full of near-instant billionaires and trillionaires, a lot of very interesting possibilities will inevitably come about.

Elevator? No Thanks. I'm Dizzy for Slides

Who needs stairs? They're so last century. If I had my druthers, going up a floor in a building would be done via escalator, and going down would be done via slide. Giant tube slides, to be exact.

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More Adventures in Memory: CamKII

Calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CamKII), is necessary for induction of long-term potentiation (LTP), or synaptic learning. Brandeis researchers have demonstrated how CamKII can form memories, and how removing CamKII can "erase" memories, making room for formation of new memories with new CamKII.

In an important study published this week in the Journal of Neuroscience, Brandeis University researchers report for the first time that memory storage can be induced and then biochemically erased in slices of rat hippocampus by manipulating a so-called "memory molecule," a protein kinase known as CaMKII.

"The core problem in memory research has been understanding what the storage molecule actually is. Identifying this molecule is essential to understanding memory itself as well as any disease of memory, " explained lead author John Lisman. "With this study, we have confirmed CaMKII as a memory molecule."

The research involved electrically stimulating neuronal synapses to strengthen them, a process known as long-term potentiation (LTP). This process has served as a model system for studying memory. CaMKII has been a leading candidate as a memory molecule because it is persistently activated after LTP induction and can enhance synaptic transmission, properties that are necessary for a memory molecule.

Like a computer whose electronics change with the addition of new information, molecular activity in the hippocampus, where memory is stored in the brain, changes as memory is being stored. In this study, Lisman and his colleagues showed that they could saturate the memory stores. However, when CaMKII was chemically attacked and previous memory erased, it then became possible to insert new memories in the synapses.

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By influencing the process of memory formation, scientists hope to devise new approaches to treating Alzheimer's Disease, Epilepsy, and many other disorders that involve the LTP/learning process.

The ability to selectively "erase" memories may bring in a "Brave New World" of treatment for PTSD, phobias, OCD, and other mental disorders involving sterotyped memories.

More on CamKII
Memories are made of this

Is The Third Splice the Charm?

Neuropsin is a serine protease that plays an important role in memory formation in the mammalian hippocampus. Scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences have discovered that type II Neuropsin, a longer form of the enzyme, exists in human brains but not in the brains of great apes, lesser apes, or monkeys.

The human and chimpanzee genomes vary by just 1.2 percent, yet there is a considerable difference in the mental and linguistic capabilities between the two species. A new study showed that a certain form of neuropsin, a protein that plays a role in learning and memory, is expressed only in the central nervous systems of humans and that it originated less than 5 million years ago. The study, which also demonstrated the molecular mechanism that creates this novel protein, will be published online in Human Mutation, the official journal of the Human Genome Variation Society. The journal is available online via Wiley InterScience at http://www.interscience.wiley.com/journal/humanmutation.

....Gene sequencing revealed a mutation specific to humans that triggers a change in the splicing pattern of the neuropsin gene, creating a new splicing site and a longer protein. Introducing this mutation into chimpanzee DNA resulted in the creation of type II neuropsin. "Hence, the human-specific mutation is not only necessary but also sufficient in creating the novel splice form," the authors state.

The results also showed a weakening effect of a different, type I-specific splicing site and a significant reduction in type I neuropsin expression in human and chimpanzee when compared with the rhesus macaque, an Old World monkey. This pattern suggests that before the emergence of the type II splice form in human, the weakening of the type I splicing site already existed in the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees, implying a multi-step process that led to the dramatic change of splicing pattern in humans, the authors note.

...They note that further studies should probe the biological function of type II neuropsin in humans, as the extra 45 amino acids in this form may cause protein structural and functional changes. They note that in order to understand the genetic basis that underlies the traits that set humans apart from nonhuman primates, recent studies have focused on identifying genes that have been positively selected during human evolution. They conclude, "The present results underscore the potential importance of the creation of novel splicing forms in the central nervous system in the emergence of human cognition."

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Neuropsin protease modifies the extracellular matrix in its interaction with synaptic membranes, in LTP and learning. The interaction is complex, and relies upon the activation and de-activation of Neuropsin at the proper times in proper concentrations. Read this study by Tamura et al for more information.

The progressive changes in Neuropsin splicing from monkeys to chimpanzees to humans, suggests that relatively simple epigenetic changes leading to the longer Neuropsin II protease in humans may be partially responsible for the much greater ability of human brains to learn complex systems of knowledge, including language.

You may be wondering the same thing that I am wondering. If the first change in splicing to Neuropsin I led to the CNS of Chimp/Human precursors, and the second change in splicing that created Neuropsin II led to uniquely human brain changes, what will the next splicing change in the Neuropsin gene lead to? Will the third splice be the charm?

Saving France

The recent French election suggests that the French themselves suspect that something has gone wrong in France. Sarkozy's "tough love" approach to saving France was not expected to win out--given the lack of "fighting spirit" that the French have displayed for so long. But can even tough-minded Sarkozy save France, with all her problems?

Agriculture, industrialized and now EU-sponsored, still plays a sizable role in the French economy, but farmers have virtually vanished as a class (constituting only 3 percent of the working population), and whole sections of the countryside have reverted to fallow land and untended forests. The industrial working class is shrinking as well: from 38.5 percent of all jobs in 1974 to about 20 percent in 2005. Workers are deserting both the unions and the left-wing political parties. Thanks to the depredations of urban-renewal projects, historic Paris has been emptied of its traditional working- and middle-class population and turned into a yuppie theme park: much of its unique vibrancy is gone, and other French cities have so far not been able to replace it or to compete with the so-called Eurocities of London, Brussels, Amsterdam, Munich, Berlin, Zurich, Milan, Barcelona.

The French middle class, Chauvel sums up, is haunted by “a sense of impending doom.” Salaries have not kept pace since the 1980’s; meritocracy no longer seems to work as a vehicle of social promotion; unemployment is climbing, devastating the lives of people already deprived of a functioning family; property has become unaffordable unless one inherits; prospects of a secure retirement grow dimmer every year. The parents of today’s middle class, Chauvel writes, “dramatically improved their own standards of living,” but the children “know they will not enjoy a similar fate. In fact they fear they will be downgraded to an impoverished condition.”

Finally, as if all this were not bad enough, there is crime. Until the 1960’s, France was largely a safe country: people like my parents would slip their keys under the doormat or just leave the door unlocked. It is now an extremely unsafe country, rife with violent assault, arson, armed robbery, and murder, often savage. According to the Institute of National Statistics, the overall crime rate—the ratio of reported criminal activity to population—grew from 12 percent in 1960, to over 60 percent in 1980, to about 70 percent in 2000. The rise may be related to all sorts of circumstances, including economic ones. But it is incontrovertibly related to immigration. According to police sources, over 60 percent of the criminals and over 90 percent of the crime bosses operating on French soil are either foreigners, immigrants, or the children of immigrants.

...Whereas most big French companies have been profitable for years, the French GDP has been growing very slowly or not at all. What this means is that French industry and services derive the bulk of their revenue from activities overseas rather than from the domestic economy. In fact, some companies have already drawn the logical conclusion and moved out: a flagship French company like Renault is now registered in the Netherlands.

As for those remaining at home, they are not able to provide enough jobs for the present working population of approximately 30 million. And so about 9 percent of French residents are unemployed—roughly twice the rate in Britain, Ireland, the Scandinavian countries, Japan, or the United States. Among able-bodied persons under the age of twenty-four, the unemployment rate jumps to 22 percent. To top it off, over 50 percent of today’s jobs are thought to be more “virtual” than “actual,” i.e., they fail the test of rational business management. According to an index compiled by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the average number of hours “effectively” devoted to work is only 617 yearly for France, as against 801 in Britain and 865 in the United States.

How do the French cope with this? Simple: they rely on an ever-expanding welfare state that takes care of the unemployed, the poor who are beyond any prospect of a viable job, the uneconomical state-run companies, and the supernumerary petty civil servants or “public-convenience” workers. And this does not count the various handouts and incentives, usually in the form of tax rebates, bestowed by the government on companies that agree not to shut down and move elsewhere.

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And eventually, everyone who works will work for the welfare state, and everyone who does not work will be paid by the welfare state and cared for by the welfare state. It makes for a nice tautological closed loop, nice and tidy. And if you believe that, may I offer some lovely lunar real estate at a bargain basement price?

The logic of socialism eventually leads to collapse, regardless of the lofty starting point of the wishful populace. France will be no different, and will perhaps crash more quickly due to its absolute need for more immigrants to support all the indigent indigenes on welfare.

Sarkozy cannot save France, because France lacks the will to be saved. If you are an investor, consider the reasons for Renault pulling out.

Do you dare deny China’s success story, her social stability, economic growth, cultural renaissance, and international restraint?

China has shown remarkable economic growth over the past decades, and promises much the same for the near future. Still, a thoughtful person cannot help but wonder: what is being left out of this success story?

200 million of her subjects, fortunate to be working for an expanding global market, increasingly enjoy a middle-class standard of living. The remaining 1 billion, however, remain among the poorest and most exploited people in the world, lacking even minimal rights and public services. Popular discontent simmers, especially in the countryside, where it often flares into violent confrontation with Communist Party authorities. China’s economic “miracle” is rotting from within.

The Party’s primary concern is not improving the lives of the downtrodden; it seeks power more than it seeks social development. It expends extraordinary energy in suppressing Chinese freedoms—the media operate under suffocating censorship, and political opposition can result in expulsion or prison—even as it tries to seduce the West, which has conferred greater legitimacy on it than do the Chinese themselves.

....Since 1967, I have visited the country regularly, and I spent all of 2005 and part of 2006 traveling through her teeming cities as well as her innermost recesses, where few Westerners go. I make no claim to know China fully, an impossibly ambitious task. I merely want to record the words and impressions of some exceptional Chinese men and women, who mostly suffer in silence, raising when they can the demand for a free nation—a “normal” nation.

....The village had a dilapidated school, without heating, chalk, or teacher. In principle, schooling is compulsory and free, but the Party secretary, the village kingpin, made parents pay for the heating and chalk. Then a teacher came from the city. He held that his government wages weren’t commensurate with his status and demanded extra money from the parents. Half of the parents, members of the most prosperous clan, agreed to pay; the other half, belonging to the poorer clan, refused. A skirmish erupted between the two clans, and the teacher fled. The Party secretary tried to intervene and was lynched, the Party office plundered. Then the police roared in with batons and guns. The school has reopened, the teacher replaced with a villager who knows how to read and write but “nothing more than that,” he admits.

The government puts the number of what it calls these “illegal” or “mass” incidents—and they’re occurring in the industrial suburbs, too—at 60,000 a year, doubtless underreporting them. Some experts think that the true figure is upward of 150,000 a year, and increasing.

...The lack of medical facilities is another common cause of peasant complaint. The district hospital is five hours away by bus, and admission requires a payment of 600 yuans, a small fortune for a farmer—and that’s before the doctor’s fees and medicine costs. “When we are sick, we don’t bother about treatment,” my hostess says. “Yet we would like to relieve the suffering of our elders.”

Villagers often told me that it wasn’t the local Party secretary whom they most hated but rather the family-planning agents. To ensure the proper implementation of China’s single-child policy (in some provinces, the limit is two children, if the first is a girl), the agents keep close watch on childbearing women, often subjecting them to horrific violence. In 2005, a family-planning squad targeted the city of Linyi and its surrounding rural area, in the Shandong Province, because the population had far exceeded the Party’s child quota. The agents kidnapped 17,000 women, forcing abortions on those who were pregnant—in some cases, immersing seven- to eight-month-old fetuses in boiling water—and sterilizing those who weren’t. The agents tortured the Linyi men until they revealed the hiding places of their daughters and wives.

....The current growth rate isn’t sustainable, he believes: natural bottlenecks—scarcity of energy, raw materials, water—will get in the way. China can import energy and raw materials, true, but water, which isn’t readily importable, could soon become a massive problem. The Chinese government doesn’t view purification plants as useful investments; already, hundreds of millions of Chinese lack access to drinking water, with many dying as a result.

Many goods that China produces are worthless, Mao Yushi reminds me—especially those made by public companies. About 100,000 such Chinese enterprises continue to run in the old Maoist style, churning out substandard products because they’ve got to hit the targets that the Party sets and provide employment to those the Party cannot dismiss, not because they’re responding to any market demand. Most public-sector firms don’t even have real accounting procedures, so there’s no way of ascertaining profitability. “China is not a market economy,” Mao says bluntly.

The Party gives the banks lists of people to whom loans should go, and the rationale is frequently political or personal, not economic. Indeed, in many cases, banks are not to ask for repayment. That investment decisions obey political considerations and not the law of the market is the Chinese economy’s central flaw, responsible at least in part, Mao Yushi believes, for the large number of empty office buildings and infrequently used new airports and an unemployment rate likely closer to 20 percent than to the officially acknowledged 3.5 percent.

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Much More at the Source

People who harbour wide-eyed fantasies of a futuristic China, poised to lead the world into the 22nd century, may find themselves badly disabused of such notions, should they ever take the trouble to look behind the facade.

Reading Between the Lines: Beer Maker to Create Renewable Energy

Beer maker Foster's plans to begin creating renewable energy at its breweries, using a microbial fuel cell.

The fuel cell is essentially a battery in which bacteria consume water-soluble brewing waste such as sugar, starch and alcohol.

The battery produces electricity plus clean water, said Prof. Jurg Keller, the university's wastewater expert.

The complex technology harnesses the chemical energy that the bacteria releases from the organic material, converting it into electrical energy.

The 660-gallon fuel cell will be 250 times bigger than a prototype that has been operating at the university laboratory for three months, Keller said.

"Brewery waste water is a particularly good source because it is very biodegradable ... and is highly concentrated, which does help in improving the performance of the cell," Keller said.

He expected the brewery cell would produce 2 kilowatts of power - enough to power a household - and the technology would eventually be applied in other breweries and wineries owned by Foster's. The cell should be operating at the brewery by September.

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But what does this actually mean? Obviously, since the brewery cell produces only 2 kw of power--enough to power a household--every household will need its own brewery! The video above will provide an introduction to the topic of beer-making, but each household will need to scale up the technology in order to take full advantage of the microbial fuel cell technology. Beer making is a skill that every household should possess, and pass down through the generations.

Readers of this blog are familiar with Al Fin's emphasis on personal competence in practical skills--something that government schools do not typically teach to their students. The folly of that approach is made plain every time a natural or man-made disaster occurs, and the general incompetence of the masses is revealed time and again.

Beer-making is one of those indispensable skills that has the potential of bringing humanity out of a new dark age, should such an inconvenient fate befall the world. This is what we should take from news items such as this--we need to add beer making to the curriculum of our high schools, so that this important skill does not die out. We may run out of oil, but we should never run out of beer.

Hat tip Energy Blog.

Passionate Environmentalism---Sign Up, If You Care

It's pretty easy to use emotional cues to convince someone to take a stand on an issue. That is what propaganda like "An Inconvenient Truth" is all about. Sucking you into the "feel" of doing good.

Humans are irrational. They do not understand most of the things they do, or believe. If this is true among highly intelligent, university trained people, how about people who are drowned in superstitions their whole lives, starting life with less than average intelligence and going downward from there?

The world is not what you think it is.

Once, Even Islam Had A Golden Age . . . . .

This Saudi author is attempting to revive the golden age of Islam, in her own brave and unique way. Under more liberal leadership, even Islam experienced a time of remarkable productivity in science, mathematics, literature, art, philosophy, medicine, and engineering. Located between East and West, Islamic countries inherited much of the knowledge from ancient Greece and Rome to the west, as well as knowledge from China and India to the east. Scholars in Islamic countries took that knowledge and applied it, furthered it, and preserved it.

Modern Islam is better known for its violence, its backwardness, its utter lack of intellectual output, its commitment to destroying other cultures with which it comes into contact. Is it even possible to envision a moderate Islam today? Very difficult, which is why it is important to acknowledge it when it appears.

There are brave muslim intellectuals such as the woman in the video above, who risk a great deal to swing Islam's momentum back to a more moderate course. This woman is remarkable for her extraordinary courage. She appears to be a devout muslim who does not want to hurt Islam in any way. She would merely like to see an Islam that is more enlightened, kinder to its people, less misogynistic. At this time she lives in the UK, so that she can life a freer life than back home in KSA.

One can only hope that the UK will remain a country in which she may feel free, for a long time. There are signs that the UK is taking the cowardly path of appeasement to Islamic religious tyranny. That would be unfortunate not only for the indigenous people of the UK, but for the many immigrants who fled environments of tyranny in their home countries.

Partial Genetic Basis of Depression and Schizophrenia?

It is not enough to link a gene with a disease, statistically. One must also demonstrate how alterations in the gene can affect disease symptoms.

Steven Clapcote, David Porteous, John Roder, and colleagues reported their findings in the May 3, 2007 issue of the journal Neuron, published by Cell Press.

In their experiments, the researchers sought to explore the consequences of mutating a gene called "Disrupted in schizophrenia 1" (DISC1), which had been found in one family to be associated with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and major depression.

The researchers' theory was that different mutant variations of DISC1 might have different pathological effects. To test this theory, the researchers screened a large population of mouse mutants to isolate two with different mutations in DISC1.

They found that, indeed, one of the mutant mouse strains exhibited behavioral abnormalities and memory deficiencies resembling the symptoms of schizophrenia in humans. Additionally, these symptoms could be alleviated in the mice by antipsychotic drugs.

Similarly, the other mutant mouse strain showed behaviors that reflected depressive symptoms. These symptoms could be alleviated by an antidepressant, found the researchers.

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The DISC-1 gene has been studied by schizophrenia researchers for years. Many other genes have likewise been looked at due to associations with schizophrenia.

The task of explaining the developmental and physiological effects of the altered gene products in humans, and why these changes lead to schizophrenic symptoms, remains to be done.

It goes without saying that pharmacologic agents are often developed and marketed for a disease, long before a complete understanding of that disease is arrived at. Humans are impatient creatures, and "solve" many problems without understanding them. If you were bold, you might even call humans irrational.

How Much Longer Will Muslim Women Keep Popping Them Out Like Cluster Bombs

The population of muslim countries has tripled in the past 50 years. But there are signs that even in the backwater muslim countries like Pakistan and Bangladesh, muslim women are beginning to rebel.

Consider that for the last fifty years, the population of all Moslem countries has tripled. That's population growth that is more than double the rate of the world as a whole, and about ten times the rate of Europe. It's about five times the rate in the United States.

Many of those unemployed young men are angry, and making war is a typical activity of angry young men.

....While Islamic countries tend to have very low levels of education, especially for women, the introduction of satellite television and DVDs has enabled even illiterate women to learn that there are other options. Ignorance is an excellent form of control, but when the ignorance is lost, so is the control.

....Losing control of the women is something that makes Islamic conservatives very angry. Murderously angry. This is a vicious, lethal battle taking place largely out of the media spotlight. But, long term, it is destroying the source of Islamic terrorism.

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Of course, by the time Islamic violence and terrorism have been trimmed by more civilised birthrates, very few non-muslims may still be alive. But then, that may be what Allah intended, and it is certainly what most muslim clerics intend. Keep killing the infidel to the last drop of muslim blood, or so it goes.

Palestinian muslims and Lebanese Shias seem particularly vicious and bloodthirsty--willing to make babies for the sole purpose of training them to be suicide bombers. That cultivated perverse hatred will only get them into trouble. It is not clear how much blame should be placed on the backward culture, and how much blame to place on the religious clerics who keep the hatred constantly inflamed.

One way or another, things will change. The level of violent hatred and violence coming from Islam cannot be sustained indefinitely.

"Calm Down, Dear"...."I Will Not Calm Down Dammit!"

French political debates are much freer affairs than what is seen west of the Atlantic. The recent debate between French centrist Sarkozy and Socialist Royal was no exception.

The most dramatic exchange came when Sarkozy, of the ruling Union for a Popular Movement party, ordered Royal, a Socialist, to "calm down" after she accused him of "political immorality" during an exchange about services for disabled schoolchildren.

"No, I will not calm down," Royal shot back, her voice strained. "I'm very angry. Even when I'm president I will get angry."

Sarkozy pounced: "You're getting upset very easily and you lose your cool very easily. As president of the republic, the president has to assume very heavy responsibilities."

"I didn't lose my cool," Royal snapped.

....Royal said she wanted to reduce France's national debt, increase employment, accelerate economic growth and boost the standard of living. But she offered few specifics on how she would accomplish those goals, saying she would rely on improving efficiency and eliminating waste and duplication of effort among local, regional and national governments.

No doubt Ms. Royal would discover the miracle of nationalisation of private enterprise, should she be elected. As long as you do not live too far downwind of such a nationalisation, the stink is not too bad, and it makes the people believe you are actually doing something for them.

A Whole Night's Sleep in Only An Hour--And Much More

Normal brain function creates electromagnetic fields, in various waveforms--depending upon the type and location of the brain activity. For a several decades, scientists have known that feeding electric currents and magnetic fields to the brain affected brain function--sometimes dramatically.

Rising star neuro-researcher Giulio Tononi has recently discovered how to use magnetic fields to stimulate slow wave brain activity typical of deep sleep.

During slow wave activity, which occupies about 80 percent of sleeping hours, waves of electrical activity wash across the brain, roughly once a second, 1,000 times a night. In a new paper being published in the scientific journal PNAS, Tononi and colleagues, including Marcello Massimini, also of the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health, described the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to initiate slow waves in sleeping volunteers. The researchers recorded brain electrical activity with an electroencephalograph (EEG).

A TMS instrument sends a harmless magnetic signal through the scalp and skull and into the brain, where it activates electrical impulses. In response to each burst of magnetism, the subjects' brains immediately produced slow waves typical of deep sleep, Tononi says. "With a single pulse, we were able to induce a wave that looks identical to the waves the brain makes normally during sleep."

The researchers have learned to locate the TMS device above a specific part of the brain, where it causes slow waves that travel throughout the brain. "We don't know why, but this is a very good place to evoke big waves that clearly travel through every part of the brain," Tononi says.

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Some clinicians hope to be able to use similar devices to create "power naps", perhaps generating the restfulness typical of a full night's sleep from only a one hour nap.

Melbourne scientists are using similar magnetic pulses to the brain to palliate symptoms of depression.

The researchers tested their combination technique on a group of 60 hard-to-treat patients, giving half of them 10 minutes of weak pulses before their standard 15-minute session on a daily basis for four weeks.

An electrical current was passed through a coil above the skull, creating a magnetic pulse which fires into the brain, changing the activity of nerve cells.

"A lot of people in this trial achieved clinical remission, and this is what matters," Prof Fitzgerald said.

"They were able to resume their normal lives, and often return to work."

Magnetic stimulation therapy has been around for about a decade and is used widely in Canada, but it is still regarded as experimental in Australia.

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Deep brain electrical stimulation is also being used to treat depression as well as memory loss from brain degeneration including Alzheimer's, and perhaps eventually to create a type of seeing, for the blind, among other conditions.

Researchers in Canada have been studying effects of magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe of the brain, using something they call a "God Helmet", because it sometimes triggers transcendent visions and epiphanies.

Because electromagnetic therapies do not use long acting pharmaceuticals, that often cause unwanted side effects, they may be useful for treating a wide array of "lifestyle" problems, such as insomnia, borderline depressions and anhedonia, conditions of sexual dysfunction, mild phobias, and many more behavioural problems.

USB Microscope

Here's a convenient tool for lab or classroom: a USB microscope:

The USB microscope is a pretty cool gadget and it can take pictures of the smallest things and beings like microbes, cells etc. Remember those microscopes in the Biology Labs that can magnify up to 100 times. This one can switch from 20X to 50X to 200X.

It can take pictures of the objects that you are viewing and the resolution of the pictures can be 1024 x 768 pixels. Besides, it can take videos at 30 frames per second however I don't think that the resolution would be that high. All the pictures and videos are sent directly to your computer via a USB cord.

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