Month: December 2014

45,000 Year Old Human Genome Sequenced

(p. A14) Scientists have reconstructed the genome of a man who lived 45,000 years ago, by far the oldest genetic record ever obtained from modern humans. The research, published on Wednesday [October 22, 2014] in the journal Nature, provided new clues to the expansion of modern humans from Africa about 60,000 years ago, when they moved into Europe and Asia.
And the genome, extracted from a fossil thighbone found in Siberia, added strong support to a provocative hypothesis: Early humans interbred with Neanderthals.
“It’s irreplaceable evidence of what once existed that we can’t reconstruct from what people are now,” said John Hawks, a paleoanthropologist at the University of Wisconsin who was not involved in the study. “It speaks to us with information about a time that’s lost to us.”
. . .
By comparing the Ust’-Ishim man’s long stretches of Neanderthal DNA with shorter stretches in living humans, Dr. Paabo and his colleagues estimated the rate at which they had fragmented. They used that information to determine how long ago Neanderthals and humans interbred.
Previous studies, based only on living humans, had yielded an estimate of 37,000 to 86,000 years. Dr. Paabo and his colleagues have now narrowed down that estimate drastically: Humans and Neanderthals interbred 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, according to the new data.

For the full story, see:
Carl Zimmer. “Man’s Genome From 45,000 Years Ago Is Reconstructed.” The New York Times (Thurs., OCT. 23, 2014): A14.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date OCT. 22, 2014.)

Billionaire Risks All for Hong Kong Freedom

(p. A11) Hong Kong If Chinese soldiers crush Hong Kong’s pro-democracy protests, there’s little doubt media tycoon Jimmy Lai will be high on their wanted list. His Apple Daily newspaper and Next magazine cheer on the movement for universal suffrage. He bankrolls the city’s pro-democracy political parties, as financial records stolen by hackers show. The government-owned media accuse him of fomenting a “color revolution” at the behest of the American government. . . .
But Mr. Lai’s activities this week are not hard to track. From about 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., he sits in the protesters’ encampment outside the main government offices. Most of the time he can be found at one of the makeshift supply pavilions labeled “materials stand,” chatting with students or listening to speeches.
On Friday morning, I find Mr. Lai at the encampment reading essays by Japanese film director Yasujiro Ozu, and we walk to a nearby food court to chat. Two photographers from a pro-Beijing newspaper conspicuously record our meeting.

For the full interview, see:
HUGO RESTALL. “Hong Kong’s Billionaire Democrat; Despite threats and smears from Beijing, Jimmy Lai talks about his support for student protesters in Hong Kong and why they might succeed.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Oct. 4, 2014): A11.
(Note: italics in original; ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the interview has the date Oct. 3, 2014.)

Forssmann’s Courage Rewarded with “Professional Criticism and Scorn”

(p. 197) Forssmann’s report in the leading German medical journal garnered him not hosannas but instead fierce professional criticism and scorn. In response to a senior physician who claimed undocumented priority for the procedure, the twenty-five-year-old Forssmann was forced to provide an addendum to his publication one month later. Rigid dogmatism and an authoritarian hierarchy characterized the German medicine of that day. The human heart, as the center of life, was considered inviolable by instrumentation and surgery.

Source:
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.

Edison Claimed an Inventor Needs “a Logical Mind that Sees Analogies”

(p. C3) Thomas Edison famously said that genius requires “1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.” Edison’s third criterion for would-be innovators is less well-known but perhaps even more vital: “a logical mind that sees analogies.”
. . .
The art of analogy flows from creative re-categorization and the information that we extract from surprising sources. Take the invention of the moving assembly line. Credit for this breakthrough typically goes to Henry Ford, but it was actually the brainchild of a young Ford mechanic named Bill Klann. After watching butchers at a meatpacking plant disassemble carcasses moving past them along an overhead trolley, Klann thought that auto workers could assemble cars through a similar process by adding pieces to a chassis moving along rails.
Overcoming significant management skepticism, Klann and his cohorts built a moving assembly line. Within four months, Ford’s line had cut the time it took to build a Model T from 12 hours per vehicle to just 90 minutes. In short order, the moving assembly line revolutionized manufacturing and unlocked trillions of dollars in economic potential. And while in retrospect this innovation may seem like a simple, obvious step forward, it wasn’t; the underlying analogy between moving disassembly and moving assembly had eluded everyone until Klann grasped its potential.

For the full essay, see:
JOHN POLLACK. “Four Ways to Innovate through Analogies; Many of history’s most important breakthroughs were made by seeing analogies–for example, how a plane is like a bike.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., Nov. 8, 2014): C3.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the essay has the date Nov. 7, 2014, and has the title “Four Ways to Innovate through Analogies; Many of history’s most important breakthroughs were made by seeing analogies–for example, how a plane is like a bike.”)

The passages quoted above are related to Pollack’s book:
Pollack, John. Shortcut: How Analogies Reveal Connections, Spark Innovation, and Sell Our Greatest Ideas. New York, NY: Gotham Books, 2014.

Simplot’s Company Keeps Innovating with Potatoes

(p. B1) A potato genetically engineered to reduce the amounts of a potentially harmful ingredient in French fries and potato chips has been approved for commercial planting, the Department of Agriculture announced on Friday [November 7, 2014].
The potato’s DNA has been altered so that less of a chemical called acrylamide, which is suspected of causing cancer in people, is produced when the potato is fried.
The new potato also resists bruising, a characteristic long sought by potato growers and processors for financial reasons. Potatoes bruised during harvesting, shipping or storage can lose value or become unusable.
The biotech tubers were developed by the J. R. Simplot Company, a privately held company based in Boise, Idaho, which was the initial supplier of frozen French fries to McDonald’s in the 1960s and is still a major supplier. The company’s founder, Mr. Simplot, who died in 2008, became a billionaire.
The potato is one of a new wave of genetically modified crops that aim to provide benefits to consumers, not just to farmers as the widely grown biotech crops like herbicide-tolerant soybeans and corn do. The nonbruising aspect of the potato is similar to that of genetically engineered nonbrowning apples, developed by Okanagan Specialty Fruits, which are awaiting regulatory approval.
. . .
The question now is whether the potatoes — which come in the Russet Burbank, Ranger Russet and Atlantic varieties — will be adopted by food companies and restaurant chains. At least one group opposed to such crops has already pressed McDonald’s to reject them.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW POLLACK. “New Potato, Hot Potato: U.S. Approves Modified Crop. Next Up: French-Fry Fans.” The New York Times (Sat., NOV. 8, 2014): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date NOV. 7, 2014, and has the title “U.S.D.A. Approves Modified Potato. Next Up: French Fry Fans.”)

Consumers Cannot Count on Regulators for Safety

(p. A1) WASHINGTON — The nation’s top auto regulator faced withering criticism across Capitol Hill on Tuesday over its failure to identify a deadly defect in General Motors cars — even as its top official tried again and again to shift the blame back to the automaker.
Hours after a House committee released a scathing report about the agency’s yearslong failure to spot the ignition-stalling defect that has now been linked to 19 deaths, a Senate subcommittee hearing turned angry and tense. Lawmakers from both parties accused the agency, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, of overlooking evidence that could have saved lives and of deferring to the auto industry rather than standing up to it.
The agency was “more interested in singing ‘Kumbaya’ with the manufacturers than being a cop on the beat,” said Senator Claire McCaskill, the subcommittee’s chairwoman, in sharp questioning reminiscent of her interrogation of G.M.’s chief executive, Mary T. Barra, in a hearing before the same panel in the spring.
. . .
(p. B2) “You want to obfuscate responsibility, rather than take responsibility,” Ms. McCaskill, a Missouri Democrat, said, her voice rising. “We’ve all said shame on G.M.” She added, “You’ve got to take some responsibility that this isn’t being handled correctly.”
. . .
Watching from a seat just behind Mr. Friedman [deputy administrator of the N.H.T.S.A.] was Laura Christian, the birth mother of Amber Rose, a teenager who was killed in 2005 when her Cobalt ran off the road, into a tree, and the air bags did not deploy.
As Mr. Friedman continued to speak, Ms. Christian said she could feel herself getting flushed and increasingly upset over the agency’s lack of remorse.
“It was extremely frustrating to hear David Friedman go on about how his agency was this wonderful thing,” she said. “All along they missed the glaringly obviously defects.”

For the full story, see:
HILARY STOUT and AARON M. KESSLER. “Congress Castigates Auto Regulator Over a Deadly G.M. Defect.” The New York Times (Weds., SEPT. 17, 2014): A1 & B2.
(Note: ellipses, and bracketed words, added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date SEPT. 16, 2014, and has the title “Senators Take Auto Agency to Task Over G.M. Recall.” In the Midwest edition that I receive, this article started on p. A1; according to the indexes, and the online edition, in the New York edition, the article started on p. B1.)

Denied Approval to Catheterize Hearts, Forssmann Catheterized His Own

(p. 195) Forssmann received his medical degree from the University of Berlin in 1929. That year, he interned at a small hospital northwest of Berlin, the Auguste-Viktoria-Heim in Eberswalde. He pleaded with his superiors for approval to try a new procedure–to inject drugs directly into the heart–but was unable to persuade them of his new concept’s validity. Undaunted, Forssmann proceeded on his own. His goal was to improve upon the administration of drugs into the central circulation during emergency operations.
The circumstances of the incident on November 5, 1929, revealed by Forssmann in his autobiography, could hardly have been (p. 196) more dramatic. The account reflects Forssmann’s dogged determination, willpower, and extraordinary courage. He gained the trust of the surgical nurse who provided access to the necessary instruments. So carried away by Forssmann’s vision, she volunteered herself to undergo the experiment. Pretending to go along with her, Forssmann strapped her down to the table in a small operating room while his colleagues took their afternoon naps. When she wasn’t looking, he anesthetized his own left elbow crease. Once the local anesthetic took effect, Forssmann quickly performed a surgical cutdown to expose his vein and boldly manipulated a flexible ureteral catheter 30 cm toward his heart. This thin sterile rubber tubing used by urologists to drain urine from the kidney was 65 cm long (about 26 inches). He then released the angry nurse.
They walked down two flights of stairs to the X-ray department, where he fearlessly advanced the catheter into the upper chamber (atrium) on the right side of his heart, following its course on a fluoroscopic screen with the aid of a mirror held by the nurse. (Fluoroscopy is an X-ray technique whereby movement of a body organ, an introduced dye, or a catheter within the body can be followed in real time.) He documented his experiment with an X-ray film. Forssmann was oblivious to the danger of abnormal, potentially fatal heart rhythms that can be provoked when anything touches the sensitive endocardium, the inside lining of the heart chambers.

Source:
Meyers, Morton A. Happy Accidents: Serendipity in Modern Medical Breakthroughs. New York: Arcade Publishing, 2007.

Lippmann Attacked FDR’s Socialist National Industrial Recovery Act

(p. A13) . . . Duke economic historian Craufurd D. Goodwin employs the writings of the once-famous newspaper columnist Walter Lippmann to describe the fervid U.S. debates that began with the 1929 stock-market crash.
. . .
Lippmann established his intellectual credentials in the 1920s, writing several well-received books. They included “Public Opinion,” which excoriated the press for sloppy coverage of government policies and actions. The book is often seen as a call for top-down rule by experts, but Mr. Goodwin argues that Lippmann had something else in mind–that he was eager for expert opinion and “reasoned study” to be widely disseminated so that self-government would be more fully informed and the citizenry less easily manipulated.
. . .
At first, Lippmann embraced the Keynesian argument that government could ameliorate downswings in business cycles through deficit spending, but he later had second thoughts about economic engineering and became more attuned to the free-market ideas of Friedrich Hayek, whom he knew and consulted.   . . .    Lippmann attacked as ill-conceived the most ambitious New Deal brainstorm, the 1933 National Industrial Recovery Act, which attempted to organize all business and industry into cartels to boost prices.

For the full review, see:
GEORGE MELLOAN. “BOOKSHELF; The Umpire of American Public Debate; Certain that a return of investment confidence would restore prosperity, Lippmann criticized those that blamed Wall Street for the malaise.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Oct. 14, 2014): A13.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Oct. 13, 2014, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Walter Lippmann: Umpire of American Public Debate; Certain that a return of investment confidence would restore prosperity, Lippmann criticized those that blamed Wall Street for the malaise.”)

The book under review, is:
Goodwin, Craufurd D. Walter Lippmann: Public Economist. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2014.

Serendipitous Discovery of CorningWare

(p. A15) S. Donald Stookey, a scientist with Corning Glass Works who in the 1950s accidentally discovered a remarkably strong material that could be used not just to make the nose cone of a missile but also to contain a casserole in both a refrigerator and hot oven — its durable culinary incarnation was called CorningWare — died on Tuesday [November 4, 2014] in Rochester.
. . .
Dr. Stookey had not planned to invent it. Experimenting at Corning one day in 1953, he put photosensitive glass into a furnace, intending to heat it to 600 degrees.
“When I came back, the temperature gauge was stuck on 900 degrees, and I thought I had ruined the furnace,” he said in an interview several years ago. “When I opened the door to the furnace, I saw the glass was intact and had turned a milky white. I grabbed some tongs to get it out as fast as I could, but the glass slipped out of the tongs and fell to the floor. The thing bounced and didn’t break. It sounded like steel hitting the floor.”

For the full obituary, see:
WILLIAM YARDLEY. “S. Donald Stookey, Scientist, Dies at 99; Among His Inventions Was CorningWare.” The New York Times (Sat., NOV. 8, 2014): A15.
(Note: ellipsis, and bracketed date, added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date NOV. 6, 2014.)