Things That Make You Go Wow!

(Cartoon by Jen Sorensen/3/18/14 and published at the Daily Kos.  Click on image to enlarge and then be kind enough to return.)

I'm always amazed and impressed by scientific discoveries -- especially those that deal with cosmological issues.  An announcement of a HUGE discovery was made yesterday and reported on for us lay folk today.

From the Los Angeles Times:

Scientists staring at the faint afterglow from the universe's birth 13.8 billion years ago have discovered the first direct evidence for the theory of cosmic inflation — the mysterious and violent expansion after the big bang.

The findings, made using radio telescopes at the South Pole, support the idea that our known cosmos make up just a tiny fragment in a much larger, unknown frontier that extends far beyond the reaches of light.

During this period of inflation, which happened just a fraction of a second after the big bang, the universe ballooned from smaller than an atom to 100 trillion trillion times its original size, at a rate faster than the speed of light.

The research, submitted to the journal Nature for publication, also provides direct evidence of ripples in the structure of space-time made by gravitational waves, and it affirms the often tense link between quantum mechanics and Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity. ...

Scientists have long wondered why this faint background light is so uniform across the sky, Carlstrom said. Stars clump into galaxies, and galaxies cluster together unevenly across the heavens.
 But no matter where you look, the cosmic microwave background seems to look essentially the same.
Why was the cosmic microwave background so smooth while all the stuff that came after it looked so lumpy?

In 1980, theoretical physicist Alan Guth of MIT came up with an answer: All that stuff from the early universe had originally been in a single tiny spot when it was ripped outward in a violent expansion.
Because the universe was compressed and experienced a single sudden expansion, the characteristics of the background radiation would be roughly the same.

It would require a massive spurt of inflation that scientists could barely comprehend. In less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second after the universe popped into existence, the newborn cosmos expanded from the size of a tiny subatomic particle to roughly the size of a basketball.

As the universe continued to expand at a slower rate and then cool, it carried with it the signature of this early trauma. ...

The signal from the cosmic background microwave has weakened over time, making it exceedingly difficult to find the signature of this ancient inflation behind all the cosmic "noise."

The only hints could come from distortion in the fabric of space-time, created by the trauma of inflation. That could be detected by looking for a particular pattern of polarized light in the cosmic microwave background, known as B-mode polarization.

The theory was that sudden inflation, based on Einstein's theory of relativity, should cause an onslaught of gravitational waves that ultimately would change the polarity of the background radiation, leaving behind a distinctive swirling pattern.   [Emphasis added]

These discoveries don't "just happen," they are the culmination of years of hard work and a whole lot of creativity to build the technology to help answer the questions and then prove/disprove the hypotheses.  That's what happened here, and this old broad is hopping-foot-to-foot excited, pleased, and very impressed with the people who worked to pull us this far in our knowledge.

And to my co-religionists who pooh-pooh the findings and mouth the same old nonsense of "6,000 years", I say this:  "I'm sorry your god has such a low opinion of humankind that he didn't give it any brains and any work ethic.  My God is bigger than that, and s/he is cheering loudly."


 

Things That Make You Go "Wow!"

(Editorial cartoon by Lee Judge / The Kansas City Star (March 24, 2013)and featured at McClatchy DC.  Click on image to enlarge and then hurry on back.)

Thankfully there are scientists, engineers, and technologists who are more forward thinking than the pro-lifer in the cartoon.  As a result, there is some very exciting news on the medical treatment front for people who have heart problems.

Heart care is in the midst of a transformation. Many problems that once required sawing through the breastbone and opening up the chest for open heart surgery now can be treated with a nip, twist or patch through a tube.

These minimal procedures used to be done just to unclog arteries and correct less common heart rhythm problems. Now some patients are getting such repairs for valves, irregular heartbeats, holes in the heart and other defects _ without major surgery. Doctors even are testing ways to treat high blood pressure with some of these new approaches.

All rely on catheters _ hollow tubes that let doctors burn away and reshape heart tissue or correct defects through small holes into blood vessels.

"This is the replacement for the surgeon's knife. Instead of opening the chest, we're able to put catheters in through the leg, sometimes through the arm," said Dr. Spencer King of St. Joseph's Heart and Vascular Institute in Atlanta. He is former president of the American College of Cardiology. Its conference earlier this month featured research on these novel devices.

"Many patients after having this kind of procedure in a day or two can go home" rather than staying in the hospital while a big wound heals, he said. It may lead to cheaper treatment, although the initial cost of the novel devices often offsets the savings from shorter hospital stays.

Not everyone can have catheter treatment, and some promising devices have hit snags in testing. Others on the market now are so new that it will take several years to see if their results last as long as the benefits from surgery do.

But already, these procedures have allowed many people too old or frail for an operation to get help for problems that otherwise would likely kill them.   [Emphasis added]

Yes, it's too soon to tell if the new devices will be as effective as the old open-heart surgery protocol, and, yes, the devices are very expensive at this point.  Further, some devices which have been approved for use in Europe have not (yet) been approved for use in the US.  

That said, the research opens new doors for such treatments as replacing heart valves,and  fixing irregular heart rhythms (fibrillation), heart defects, clogged arteries, and high blood pressure. 

Like I said ...

Wow!

Things That Make You Go Wow!

Every once in a while, a legislative body comes up with what is actually a good idea, something that will benefit someone other than the wealthy 1%.  The California state legislature did just that, and Michael Hiltzig took a look at it in his column earlier in the week.  The state will be putting in place a special program for low income workers to save money for their retirement.  It's no grandiose program, but it hopefully prove to be a useful supplement to Social Security.

In September, the state launched a plan to enable these workers to put aside about 3% of their wages a year for retirement. As enacted by the Legislature and signed by Gov. Jerry Brown, the program's goals would be modest indeed.

The best thing about the plan is that it would allow workers to build up retirement stakes at low cost and low risk; their contributions would be pooled with other enrollees' for the purpose of making investments, which would cut down on fees. Workers would be signed up automatically, though they could opt out at any time. They'd be protected against the loss of their contributions and guaranteed a modest investment gain — say about 3% over inflation. When they retire, their nest eggs would be turned into annuities designed to last to the end of their lives, presumably at a conversion cost lower than they might incur in the commercial annuity market.

There would be no cost to state taxpayers. Employers with five or more workers would be required to offer the plan to their workforce and to allow contributions to be withheld through their payroll systems, as they do for taxes. They'd be free of any other legal or administrative burdens.

It's a great deal. It's also necessary, given the decades-long assault on employer-sponsored defined-benefit pensions, which were once an important pillar of retirement security for average Americans. "This could be a real model for the nation," Karen Friedman, policy director at the Pension Rights Center in Washington, told me.   [Emphasis added]

Unfortunately, there will be a substantial delay in implementing the program:

 But it's going to take at least two more years to get off the ground, which is ridiculous. That's chiefly because the legislation requires that a feasibility study be done first to determine the demand for such a plan and the best way to avoid sticking taxpayers with the costs of an investment guarantee, and a few other details. The kicker is that the feasibility study has to be financed from privately raised funds, and that takes time.   [Emphasis added]

In other words, to get the proposed bill passed and signed off by the governor the sponsors had to include language of delay.  While a feasibility study isn't a bad idea, having to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars from the private sector to get that done shows that even California Democrats can be foolish.

Still, it's an idea that shows thinking outside the box and might inspire other states to take a look at such an option.  At this point we can't count on the DC folks to be looking out for our interests.

More Like This, Please

Over the weekend, I came across this article and found myself smiling.  Not too much has made me smile so far this year, so I thought I'd share it with you.

Decades ago, the Colorado River was dammed in an attempt to control the flooding along its banks.  The damming was successful, but it had some unintended consequences.  Lake Havasu, which long had been the recipient of tree limbs and brush as a result of the flooding was now crystal clear.  Now that might not sound like a bad thing, but it was:  the fish in the lake nearly all died out because there wasn't a ready source of food (the decaying vegetation) nor a sanctuary for young fish to hide from predator larger fish.

Then, 1992, a plan was implemented to try to resolve the problem.  That plan involves Christmas trees.

Structures were formed by sinking PVC pipe, concrete sewer pipe and cinder blocks in 42 coves. Then, discarded Christmas trees were lashed together, weighted down and dumped around the structures. Piles of brush were added.

As the trees and brush decomposed, the pipe and concrete structure grew a biological skin of mosses and algae that was then colonized by insects. In addition to providing shelter, the Christmas tree structures also became a source of fish food. ...

It takes a Christmas tree five to six years to decompose under water. So each year, volunteers toss in as many as 500 additional trees and a thousand brush piles to replenish the reefs.

Part of the benefit of creating habitat with Christmas trees is that it's cheap — trash haulers are happy to unload onto others what they pick up at the curb.

The result is that the fish are back and the lake is healthy and diverse.  Fewer Christmas trees are going to landfillls, which is an added bonus.  The project has been sufficiently successful that other jurisdictions (including Riverside County in California) are planning similar ones.

I think that is pretty cool.  And, like I said, it made me smile.

Things That Make You Go Wow!

(Computer rendering by raad studio of future Lowline park in the unused trolley terminal beneath Delancey Street in New York's Lower East Side. Click on image to enlarge.)

OK, time to take a few deep breaths and look at humans making the impossible possible, rather than the other way around.

One of the downsides to dense urban living is the lack of "green space" such as parks, even trees and grass. Some visionaries have found a way around that problem in a very creative way and then invented and developed a way to make it happen.

Delancey Underground visionaries Dan Barasch and James Ramsey are working with the MTA and local communities in Manhattan’s Lower East Side to transform the former Williamsburg trolley terminal (out of commission since 1948) into the world’s first underground park.

To build the park, the team has invented a new technology called a “remote skylight.”

The remote skylight uses “a system of optics to gather sunlight, concentrate it, and reflect it below ground, where it is dispersed by a solar distributor dish embedded in the ceiling. The light irrigated underground will carry the necessary wavelengths to support photosynthesis — meaning we can grow plants, trees, and grasses underground. The cables block harmful UV rays that cause sunburn, so you can leave the SPF-45 at home.”

As the computer-generated graphic heading this post shows, the results will be lovely. The new park will provide a nice respite for locals and will use an existing structure long out of use to do so. It's thrilling to see innovation and creative thinking at work here. The post also contains information on how people can help bring this plan to fruition. Check it out.

Note: Thanks to Brooklyn Girl for the tip on this story and for the link to a really interesting web site.

A Little Slice of Good News

The other day at Eschaton, Atrios posted on a move by the city of Philadelphia to stop charitable groups from feeding the homeless out on the street. The city fathers wanted to move such laudatory efforts indoors and the primary reason given was "food safety." The fact that such activities were taking place in a part of the city which was being upgraded to attract more tourists had nothing to do with it. Nope not at all.

The discussion by the Atriots was pretty lively (as usual) and we all pretty much agreed that the city fathers wanted to "hide" the homeless because they were poor, because they were crazies, druggies, and drunks, because they were "other." We also agreed that most, if not all, cities tended to treat the homeless in the same way. Governments just don't want to be bothered by the existence of a class of "losers." That certainly doesn't say much for us as a nation.

Sacramento, California's state capital, is just like those cities. It too has what appears to be an intractable homeless problem, one that has gotten worse as the economy has gotten worse. Local groups have had to step in and provide "stop-gap" measures. Usually that involves feeding and sheltering away from the city center to places where "decent people" wouldn't have to be confronted with the underclass. And that's why this article in the Sacramento Bee is such a stunner.

It involves a man named Mark Bell who became homeless when his roommate died and he couldn't afford any place to live. He eventually wound up at the tent city located along side the American River Parkway. He also became one of the drunks. But with a little bit of help he crawled out of the bottle and began writing poetry and essays about his experiences. When people began noticing him writing, things began to take off. The Bee published a story about him and the real decent people stepped forward to help.

Bee readers responded to his poetry and his interest in publishing with the Sacramento Public Library's Espresso Book Machine.

Sande Parker, a Lincoln photographer, gave him a used laptop computer so he could type his poems when he wasn't working at Loaves & Fishes. ...

Another person offered to pay for printing. The library put up an upgrade in his printing package.

A group of local writers and artists volunteered to help him prepare his manuscript for printing.

He met with Larry Fox and Maryellen Burns-Dabaghian Friday to discuss formatting – size of the book, borders, order of material and size of type. ...

Burns-Dabaghian and Fox loaded Bell's files onto a flash drive.

Alison Givens, who runs the Espresso book machine for the library, loaded the text and cover design from the drive into the machine.

In minutes, Bell was holding a bound proof copy of "The Hobo Speaks." ...

Bell's backers are funding an ISBN number and Library of Congress catalog number, which will make it more available.

Burns-Dabaghian also plans to help him connect with bookstores, online sales and possible funders for two additional books he has planned.

I know, I know.

It's just one guy who got lucky. There's still lots of people living on the streets and in tent cities and one guy getting a break isn't even going to dent those numbers. But it's at least something, a little ray of life, a tiny green shoot.

And sometimes that's enough to get things moving in the right direction.

And I'll tell you what: as soon as the Bee updates the story with information on where Bell's book is available, I intend to buy a copy.

Things That Make You Go Wow!

I know this is the day of the New Hampshire primary and it is very important because it is the first vote for actual delegates. Of course, in a couple of weeks it will be time for the South Carolina primary. That will be very important because it will be the first vote for actual delegates in the South. And then there will be other primaries and caucuses and they will be very important for other reasons. I've decided to take a break from the process, as important as it is, at least for a day or two, primarily because I came across a story that I think is also very important.

Here's the background to Jeannie Mac Donald's remarkable story in her own words:

I was baptized at Our Lady of Hypochondria Church.

When I get a headache, my mind speeds past simple causes, like "sinus pressure," and goes straight to "inoperable brain tumor." If my leg tingles, it's multiple sclerosis; if my heart hiccups, it's cardiac arrest.

Ah, the pointless trysts with Dr. Google, self-diagnosing ailments I didn't have.

That should sound familiar to all of us, either because we suffer from the same condition ourselves or because we know folks just like Ms. MacDonald. But in this story there is, unfortunately, more to it. A shoe fell rather heavily: Ms. MacDonald was diagnosed with breast cancer. Fortunately the disease was caught early, so the prognosis is good. Still, she required surgery and then a course of radiation therapy.

Let's see — 61/2 weeks of radiation. That's roughly 1,092 hours of worry time. And if worrying was an Olympic sport, I'd be on the Wheaties box.

I had to do something to distract myself.

She decided to take up baking after a casual conversation with one of the people at the hospital giving her the radiation treatment.

Suddenly it hit me: These people eat hospital food every day. While they saved my breast, I could rescue their taste buds from the horrors of lime Jell-O with non-dairy topping that packed more chemicals than antifreeze.

That Monday, I arrived at radiation hauling a three-layer red velvet cake, gussied up with fresh berries. Or, as my family calls it, "crystal meth with cream cheese frosting."

A few days later, I brought a warm-from-the-oven strawberry-rhubarb pie with crumble topping. It was empowering to morph from Frightened Cancer Victim into Aunt Bee delivering a picnic basket to Andy down at the Mayberry sheriff's station. [Emphasis added]

Empowering, and not just to her:

I got lots of double-takes, sitting in my hospital gown in the waiting room with a cake perched on my lap. Yet I quickly discovered that baking wasn't an escape for me alone. Because they're associated with happy occasions, seeing cakes in such an incongruous setting seemed to transport my fellow oncology patients back in time to childhood kitchens and carefree days before cancer hijacked their lives.

She found a way to get through the horrors of a cancer diagnosis and the horrors of radiation therapy and to assist others through that same horror. A small act? Perhaps, but also an example of something that we too often overlook in humans, all humans: the capacity to not just endure, but to endure and to prevail over seemingly impossible odds and to do so with grace and dignity and just the right amount of humor.

Now, whenever I get to the point of absolute disgust with humanity and its crooked politicians and insane power mongers, I will remember Jeannie MacDonald and her cakes. I will also remember that this fighting spirit is available to us all. That it is just as much a part of us as greed is, as meanspiritedness is, as hatefulness is.

And that should take the edge off.

Just Plain Good News

I had planned to comment on this news earlier in the week, but things got a little complicated. It still is good news, however, and not just for Californians. The rest of the nation can learn from our mandate just how to wean ourselves from carbon based fuels, especially those fuels we have to import.

Gov. Jerry Brown signed into law Tuesday a mandate that 33% of electricity in California must come from renewable sources by 2020. ...

California had previously required investor-owned utilities such as Southern California Edison, Pacific Gas & Electric and San Diego Gas & Electric to generate 20% of their electricity from clean sources by 2010, with a three-year grace period.

The law signed Tuesday will also apply to municipal utilities such as the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the Sacramento Municipal Utility District, which manage about a quarter of the state’s electricity load.

Energy activists hope the mandate will lead to even more ambitious requirements.
“California can power itself entirely on clean energy resources,” said Bernadette Del Chiaro, clean energy advocate with Environment California. “Mandating that the state generate a third of its electricity from renewable energy is a big down payment toward that ultimate goal.”

In many respects California is unique in its ability to take advantage of solar, wind, and wave energy because of its geography and weather. Still, the strong commitment to bringing renewable energy into major play is significant. The voters expect no less, as evidenced by the defeat of the Koch brothers proposition to roll back clean air legislation in the last election.

The really exciting part, however, is that the new law also contains provisions for local initiatives:

The new mandate also requires utilities to draw some of their power from small local projects based near customers –- known as distributed generation. Often situated on rooftops and parking lots, such installations don’t require the long transmission lines necessary for sprawling wind and solar plants in the deserts and mountains.

Los Angeles City Councilwoman Jan Perry said she will introduce legislation this week to launch a pilot program that would put 75 megawatts of solar on rooftops around the city.

What's not to love about that?

Good news, indeed.

Things That Make You Go Wow!

How about a little good news for a change.

In the midst of the tragedy playing out on the Gulf Coast, a small California college announced the roll out of an energy saving plan based on some new solar technology.

From the Los Angeles Times:

The sprawling solar installations gobbling up California's deserts have a new competitor, one that claims to generate more energy at lower costs while using less open space.

Known as concentrator photovoltaics, or CPV, the technology is featured in an installation that will be revealed Tuesday at Victor Valley College.

The school's new 1-megawatt plant, on a six-acre dirt plot in Victorville, will provide around 30% of the campus' power.

The $4.5-million facility will be the largest of its kind in North America. The system is expected to pay for itself within five years through energy savings and government incentives, school officials said. ...

Concentrator photovoltaics convert sunlight into electrical energy using the same process as conventional crystalline silicon or thin-film panels. But CPV uses mirrors to concentrate the sun onto tiny high-efficiency solar cells.

The project is being built by SolFocus, Inc., located in Mountain View, California. One of the company's marketing executives explained why their technology is even better than "conventional" photovoltaic systems:

SolFocus is pitching its technology as less disruptive to the environment. The Victorville facility took just two months to build compared with years for other large solar installations. The system also requires relatively little water to keep the panels clean, and 97% of the materials can be recycled, said Nancy Hartsoch, the company's vice president of marketing and sales.

And that's not the end of the story. Victor Valley College intends to use the new facility not only to provide energy to the campus but also to train interested students in photovoltaic technology. The school hopes to expand that mission with a center which includes other forms of renewable energy, including wind energy.

We can overcome our ridiculous dependence of the fossil fuels that are choking us and the planet, and moves like the one taken at Victor Valley College in support of firms like SolFocus are wonderful ways to get us headed in the right direction.

It's been a while since I've been able to smile reading the news. This article hit the spot.

Things That Make You Go Wow

Connecting home computers via the internet to collect or analyse massive amounts of data on the cheap is not a particularly new idea. More than a decade ago, SETI ("Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence") set up such a system to assist the research program at the University of California Berkely analyse the data received from the Arecibo radio telescope. Thousands of people with home computers signed up and downloaded the software which enabled those computers to crunch the numbers of packets sent to the participating user. The program operated in the background with no appreciable loss of speed while the user surfed the net or hung out in chat rooms. What would have cost the researchers hundreds of thousands of dollars was done virtually for free. This program is still operating.

The concept is a workable one, and there are all sorts of research programs which have such projects. The latest one to catch my eye involves earthquake detection, certainly a timely topic, especially for those of us who live in seismically active areas.

From the Los Angeles Times:

If Elizabeth Cochran allowed herself to dream, the future would look something like this:

Every personal computer would double as a seismic monitor. That MacBook at the coffee house, the one used by the guy pounding out a screenplay? Working to detect ground tremors while its user sips a latte. The aging PC gathering dust in the guest room? Ready to catch the next quake.

If Cochran, an earth scientist at UC Riverside, has her way, every time the ground beneath us shakes, those machines would capture its movement and feed the information to a central computer system, creating a rich -- and inexpensive -- portrait of how and where an earthquake is felt.

Such a network could dramatically boost our understanding of earthquakes -- and bring researchers a step closer to an earthquake early-warning system that could give emergency officials vital seconds of preparation as a catastrophic temblor moved through the region. ...

In the event of a huge quake, the network could potentially give areas miles away from the epicenter a few seconds of warning. Shock waves from a quake move quickly through the ground, but electronic signals are far faster, allowing warnings to outrun temblors.

Such notification might allow emergency officials in Ventura to shut off gas and water lines, stop trains and raise fire station doors immediately after a quake hits in the Salton Sea.

Ms. Cochran, apparently indefatigable, has been traveling all over the state plumping the program with success here in California. The program has reached all parts of the world, including some areas that might be inaccessible for various geographic and/or political reasons.

If you're interested in joining the program, go over to the Quake-Catcher Network to download the software and purchase the hardware (which may be needed if your computer doesn't have an accelerometer) for $50. You can also donate some money to cover the cost of installing the program at schools.

Now this is cool. Way cool.