artdiamondblog.com – Page 268 – Art Diamond's web log

Under Communism Inventiveness Did Not Yield Economic Benefits

(p. A17) The Soviet Union may have pioneered in space with Sputnik and Yuri Gagarin, but today Russia has less than 1% of the world commercial market in space telecommunications, the most successful commercial product so far stemming from space exploration. Russians may have won Nobel Prizes for developing the laser, but Russia today is insignificant in the production of lasers for the world market. Russians may have developed the first digital computer in continental Europe, but who today buys a Russian computer? By missing out on the multi-billion-dollar markets for lasers, computers and space-based telecommunications, Russia has suffered a grievous economic loss.
Accompanying this technical and economic failure was a human tragedy. Russian achievements in science and technology occurred in an environment of political terror. The father of the Russian hydrogen bomb, Andrei Sakharov, wrote in his memoirs that the research facility in which he worked was built by political prisoners, and each morning he looked out the window of his office to see them marching under armed guard to their construction sites. The “chief designer” of the Soviet space program, Sergei Korolev, was long a prisoner who worked in a special prison laboratory, or sharashka. The dean of Soviet airplane designers, A.N. Tupolev, also labored for years as a prisoner in a special laboratory. Three of the Soviet Union’s Nobel Prize-winning physicists were arrested for alleged political disloyalty. Probably half of the engineers in the Soviet Union in the late 1920s were eventually arrested. In 1928 alone 648 members of the staff of the Soviet Academy of Sciences were purged.
When one looks at these statistics and at the genuine achievements of Soviet science, one is forced to ask basic questions about the relation of freedom to scientific progress.
. . .
Mr. Ings admirable effort to reach nonspecialized readers sometimes leads him to make exaggerated statements. He claims that we have “good agricultural and climate data for Russia going back over a thousand years” when in fact the data is incomplete and unreliable.
. . .
The claim that the Soviet Union was a scientific state brings Mr. Ings close, in his conclusion, to condemning science itself. He sees science and technology as causing a coming global ecological collapse, and he thinks that in some ways the demise of the Soviet Union was a preview of what we will all soon face. In one of his final sentences he says: “We are all little Stalinists now, convinced of the efficacy of science to bail us out of any and every crisis.” “Stalin and the Scientists” deserves attention, but a very critical form of attention. It is based on an impressive amount of study, and most readers will learn a great deal. It is, however, incomplete and overdrawn.

For the full review, see:
LOREN GRAHAM. “BOOKSHELF; No Good Deed Went Unpunished.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Feb. 21, 2017): A17.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the review has the date Feb. 20, 2017, and has the title “BOOKSHELF; Science Under Stalin.”)

The book under review, is:
Ings, Simon. Stalin and the Scientists: A History of Triumph and Tragedy, 1905-1953. New York: Atlantic Monthly Press, 2017.

Chinese Government Stimulus Inflated Egg Futures Bubble

(p. A1) HONG KONG — China is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into its economy in a new effort to support growth. Some of it is going into roads and bridges and other big projects that will keep the economy humming.
And some of it is going into eggs.
China’s latest lending deluge has sent money sloshing into unexpected parts of the economy. That includes a financial market in Dalian where investors can place bets on the future productivity of the country’s hens.
Egg futures have surged by as much as one-third since March, the sort of move that would be justified if investors believed China’s chicken flocks were headed for an unfortunate fate.
But the market’s usual participants say the flocks are fine. In fact, the actual price of eggs in the country’s markets has fallen from a year ago, according to government statistics.
The reason for the unusual jump in egg futures, they say, is China’s tendency to experience investment bubbles when the government steps up spending and lending. China’s previous efforts to bolster growth unexpectedly (p. B2) sent money into real estate and the stock market — markets that had unexplained rises followed by striking drops.
“Many commodities prices have gone up crazily,” said Du Shaoxing, a futures trader in Guangzhou, in southern China. “We surely hope for a more stabilized trend where futures can reflect economic fundamentals. The way in which recent commodity prices went up is worrisome.”
China’s latest bubble illustrates the potential risks of its newest effort to spur growth. The Chinese economy is already burdened with too much debt, economists say. And sometimes, stopgap measures to help the economy create long-term problems.

For the full story, see:
NEIL GOUGH. “China’s Flood of Cash Roils Egg Futures.” The New York Times (Weds., May 2, 2016): A1 & B2 [sic].
(Note: the online version of the article has the date May 1, 2016, and has the title “China Lending Inflates Real Estate, Stocks, Even Egg Futures.”)

Amateur Tinkerers Keep Steam Power Alive

(p. D4) Most people, when they think of steam power, they think of rusty farm tractors from 150 years ago. But there’s such a thing as modern steam power. Steam is the most direct way to get power out of heat. You can’t build an internal combustion engine in your garage. But you can build a steam engine, and the interesting thing is, it can run on anything that will burn, even sawdust.
At my farm, I have about 100 steam engines, many of them homemade, plus a library of technical papers, patents, and books on steam technology. I have Volkswagen engines converted to steam, outboard boat engines, etc. I collect and preserve this stuff. I get a lot of it from old widows whose deceased husbands were tinkerers; these women are so happy to get rid of it. Some of the engines are well built, others not, but you can learn as much from a bad example as a good one.

For the full story, see:

Kimmel, Tom (as told to A.J. BAIME). “MY RIDE; Never Before Has Steam Been Quite This Cool.” The Wall Street Journal (Weds., Dec. 2, 2015): D4.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Dec. 1, 2015, and has the title “MY RIDE; Never Has Steam Been So Cool.” )

Tinkerers Build Their Own Pancreases, While Waiting for 100,000 Page Submission to FDA

(p. B1) Third-grader Andrew Calabrese carries his backpack everywhere he goes at his San Diego-area school. His backpack isn’t just filled with books, it is carrying his robotic pancreas.
The device, long considered the Holy Grail of Type 1 diabetes technology, wasn’t constructed by a medical-device company. It hasn’t been approved by regulators.
It was put together by his father.
Jason Calabrese, a software engineer, followed instructions that had been shared online to hack an old insulin pump so it could automatically dose the hormone in response to his son’s blood-sugar levels. Mr. Calabrese got the approval of Andrew’s doctor for his son to take the home-built device to school.
The Calabreses aren’t alone. More than 50 people have soldered, tinkered and written software to make such devices for themselves or their children. The systems–known in the industry as artificial pancreases or closed loop systems–have been studied for decades, but improvements to sensor technology for real-time glucose monitoring have made them possible.
The Food and Drug Administration has made approving such devices a priority and several companies are working on them. But the yearslong process of commercial development and regulatory approval is longer than many patients want, and some are technologically savvy enough to do it on their own.
. . .
(p. B2) “Biology isn’t quite as easy as controlling the temperature in a room,” said Francine Kaufman, chief medical officer for Medtronic’s diabetes division. She sees do-it-yourself efforts as a sign of the interest in the technology, but distinct from the process of getting a commercial device to market. Dr. Kaufman estimates Medtronic’s submission to the FDA will exceed 100,000 pages and hopes that the device will be approved in 2017.
The home-built project that the Calabreses followed, known as OpenAPS, was started by Dana Lewis, a 27-year-old with Type 1 diabetes in Seattle. Ms. Lewis began using the system in December 2014 as a sort of self-experiment. After months of tweeting about it, she attracted others who wanted what she had.
. . .
The FDA declined to comment on the project but said the agency is working with manufacturers to approve a device.
Sarah Howard became interested after she met Ms. Lewis last year. “My first question was: Was it legal?” said the 49-year-old, who has Type 1 diabetes, as does one of her two sons. “I didn’t want to do anything illegal.”
After her husband built the system for her and her son, she said the main benefit is starting each day with her blood sugar in range and not having to wake in the night to check her son’s glucose levels.

For the full story, see:
Kate Linebaugh. “Tech-Savvy Families Build Robotic Pancreas; Companies work on developing diabetes device, but approval process is too long for many patients.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., May 9, 2016): B1-B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the Tech-Savvy Families Use Home-Built Diabetes Device; Companies work on artificial pancreas, but approval process is too long for many patients.”)

Starzl Persisted in Trying “Impossible” Liver Transplants

(p. D8) In 1967, Dr. Starzl led a surgical team at the University of Colorado in a procedure that many in the medical community had dismissed as impractical, if not impossible. Although kidneys had been transplanted successfully since the 1950s, all previous attempts to replace a liver had resulted in the death of the patient.
Indeed, Dr. Starzl’s first four attempts at liver transplantation, in 1963, had failed when the patients experienced complications from the use of blood-clotting agents, which in some cases caused lethal clots to form in the lungs.
After a self-imposed moratorium that lasted three years, Dr. Starzl and his colleagues tried again. They first considered inserting a second liver, to function beneath the impaired one, as a possible route to avoiding the heavy bleeding caused by organ removal. But promising results obtained from liver surgeries on dogs could not be replicated in human patients, and that avenue was abandoned.
The team then operated on a 19-month-old girl and replaced her cancerous liver. The transplanted liver functioned without ill effects for more than a year, before the infant died of other causes. In the next year, as surgical techniques were improved, this pathbreaking success was repeated in six children and, ultimately, in adults.
Dr. Starzl later described those early liver transplants as both a “test of endurance” and “a curious exercise in brutality.” It involved, he explained, “brutality as you’re taking the liver out, then sophistication as you put it back in and hook up all of these little bile ducts and other structures.”
“Each one,” he said, “is a thread on which the whole enterprise hangs.”
. . .
With Dr. John Fung, a surgeon and immunologist, and others, Dr. Starzl evaluated FK-506, also known as tacrolimus. They published their findings in the British medical journal The Lancet in 1989.
Their investigation was not without risk; other scientists showed that tacrolimus had proved toxic when tested in dogs, and they doubted that it could be safe for humans. But the unexpected result was a medical breakthrough for patients and lavish headlines for the University of Pittsburgh, which Dr. Starzl helped fashion into an international center for training transplant specialists.
. . .
A former colleague from Pittsburgh, Dr. Byers Shaw Jr., praised Dr. Starzl’s “indomitable spirit” and said that FK-506, eventually approved in 1994 by the F.D.A., was a shining example of tenacity in a career spent “challenging the conventional thinking.”
Dr. Shaw, who is now the chairman of the department of surgery at the University of Nebraska, observed Dr. Starzl in the operating room in the 1980s, when a patient appeared to be dying during surgery. Dr. Starzl, he recalled, showed “persistence when everything else looked hopeless.”
“It affected everybody in the room,” Dr. Shaw said, “as if a fear of failure was driving all of those around him.”

For the full obituary, see:
JEREMY PEARCE. “Thomas E. Starzl, Pioneering Liver Surgeon, Dies at 90.” The New York Times (Mon., MARCH 6, 2017): D8.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the obituary has the date MARCH 5, 2017, and has the title “Dr. Thomas E. Starzl, Pioneering Liver Surgeon, Dies at 90.”)

Bud Shaw paints a vivid picture of Starzl in parts of:
Shaw, Bud. Last Night in the OR: A Transplant Surgeon’s Odyssey. New York: Plume, 2015.

Resveratrol Slows Alzheimer’s

(p. D1) A recent human study that suggested resveratrol could slow the progression of Alzheimer’s used a daily dose equivalent to the amount in about 1,000 bottles of red wine, says Scott Turner, director of the Memory Disorders Program at Georgetown University Medical Center, who led the study. Such high doses can lead to side effects such as nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.
Such side effects have caused past efforts to tap the health benefits of resveratrol to founder. GlaxoSmithKline PLC shelved a project to develop a resveratrol-based pill in 2010 after some clinical-trial patients developed kidney problems. The company, which had hoped to develop the drug as a treatment for a type of blood cancer, concluded that while resveratrol didn’t directly cause those problems, its side effects led to dehydration, which could exacerbate underlying kidney issues.
Now, scientists hope to overcome that problem by increasing the potency of resveratrol at more moderate doses. Researchers at the University of New South Wales, near Sydney, suspect the substance is more effective when accompanied by other ingredients found in red wine, which somehow promote its activity. They are developing a pill that combines puri-(p. D4)fied resveratrol with other compounds in wine in an effort to mimic the drink’s naturally-occurring synergies.
. . .
At the University of New South Wales, researchers have combined resveratrol with two other components of red wine: antioxidants and chelating agents, which have separately been shown also to have health benefits.
. . .
The researchers recently tried the combination in a small trial involving 50 people and found it increased the activity of a substance called NAD+ that plays a key role in maintaining healthy cells.

For the full story, see:
DENISE ROLAND. “Scientists Try to Put Red Wine in a Pill.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., Aug. 2, 2016): D1 & D4.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Aug. 1, 2016, and has the title “Scientists Get Closer to Harnessing the Health Benefits of Red Wine.”)

A recent article co-authored by Turner, related to the research summarized above, is:
Moussa, Charbel, Michaeline Hebron, Huang Xu, Jaeil Ahn, Robert A. Rissman, Paul S. Aisen, R. Scott Turner, Xu Huang, and R. Scott Turner. “Resveratrol Regulates Neuro-Inflammation and Induces Adaptive Immunity in Alzheimer’s Disease.” Journal of Neuroinflammation 14 (Jan. 3, 2017): 1-10.

Nano-Enhanced Fabrics Can Clean Themselves

(p. D3) Scientists in Australia, one of the sunniest places on the planet, have discovered a way to rid clothes of stubborn stains by exposing them to sunlight, potentially replacing doing the laundry.
Working in a laboratory, the researchers embedded minute flecks of silver and copper–invisible to the naked eye–within cotton fabric. When exposed to light, the tiny metal particles, or nanostructures, released bursts of energy that degraded any organic matter on the fabric in as little as six minutes, said Rajesh Ramanathan, a postdoctoral fellow at RMIT University, in Melbourne.
The development, reported recently in the journal Advanced Materials Interfaces, represents an early stage of research into nano-enhanced fabrics that have the ability to clean themselves, Dr. Ramanathan said. The tiny metal particles don’t change the look or feel of the fabric. They also stay on the surface of the garment even when it is rinsed in water, meaning they can be used over and over on new grime, he said.

For the full story, see:
RACHEL PANNETT. “An End to Laundry? The Promise of Self-Cleaning Fabric.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., April 26, 2016): D3.
(Note: the online version of the story has the date April 25, 2016.)

The academic article describing the self-cleaning fabric, is:
Anderson, Samuel R., Mahsa Mohammadtaheri, Dipesh Kumar, Anthony P. O’Mullane, Matthew R. Field, Rajesh Ramanathan, and Vipul Bansal. “Robust Nanostructured Silver and Copper Fabrics with Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance Property for Effective Visible Light Induced Reductive Catalysis.” Advanced Materials Interfaces 3, no. 6 (2016): 1-8.

“The Powers of a Man’s Mind Are Directly Proportioned to the Quantity of Coffee He Drinks”

(p. C9) . . . certain aspects of 18th-century Parisian life diluted the importance of sight. This was, after all, a time before widespread street lighting, and, as such, activities in markets (notably Les Halles) were guided as much by sound and touch as by eyes that struggled in the near dark conditions. Natural light governed the lives of working people, principally because candles were expensive. Night workers–such as baker boys known as “bats,” who worked in cheerless basements–learned to rely on their other senses, most notably touch.
. . .
“For Enlightenment consumers, a delicious food or beverage had more than just the power of giving a person pleasure,” writes Ms. Purnell; taste, it was held, could influence personality, emotions and intelligence. Take coffee, “the triumphant beverage of the Age of Enlightenm ent.” Considered a “sober liquor,” it stimulated creativity without courting the prospect of drunkenness. Sir James Mackintosh, the Scottish philosopher, believed that “the powers of a man’s mind are directly proportioned to the quantity of coffee he drinks.” Voltaire agreed and supposedly quaffed 40 cups of it every day. Taste was also gendered: Coffee was deemed too strong for women; drinking chocolate was thought more suitable.

For the full review, see:
MARK SMITH. “The Stench of Progress.” The Wall Street Journal (Sat., MARCH 11, 2017): C9.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date MARCH 10, 2017.)

The book under review, is:
Purnell, Carolyn. The Sensational Past: How the Enlightenment Changed the Way We Use Our Senses. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2017.

Workers in Open Offices Are Less Able to Focus and Take More Sick Days

(p. R7) Noisy, open-floor plans have become a staple of office life. But after years of employee complaints, companies are trying to quiet the backlash.
Many studies show how open-plan office spaces can have negative effects on employees and productivity. As a result, companies are adding soundproof rooms, creating quiet zones and rearranging floor plans to appeal to employees eager to escape disruptions at their desk.
Companies are “not providing sufficient variety in spaces,” says David Lehrer, a researcher at the Center for the Built Environment at the University of California, Berkeley. Mr. Lehrer studies the impact of office designs on employees, and lack of “speech privacy” is currently a significant problem, he says. Employees in open-plan offices are less likely to be satisfied with their offices than employees in a traditional office layout, Mr. Lehrer adds.
. . .
Companies with open offices, . . . , soon encountered the downsides. For one thing, workers took increased sick days–a 2014 Swedish study of more than 1,800 workers found open-plan workers were twice as likely to take sick days as workers in traditional offices. The reason, the researchers hypothesized: the spread of germs and increased environmental stress of working in an open space. Workers also complained of an inability to focus and were generally less content with their work environment, the study said.
Now, companies are again “realizing people actually have to be productive,” says Ned Fennie, partner at San Francisco-based architecture firm Fennie + Mehl.

For the full story, see:
ALINA DIZIK. “Open Offices Lose Some of Their Openness; Companies look for ways to add privacy and quiet areas without reverting to the traditional design.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., Oct. 3, 2016): R7.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date Oct. 2, 2016, and has the title “Open Offices Are Losing Some of Their Openness; Companies look for ways to add privacy and quiet areas without reverting to the traditional office design.”)

The 2014 Swedish study mentioned above, is:
Bodin Danielsson, Christina, Holendro Singh Chungkham, Cornelia Wulff, and Hugo Westerlund. “Office Design’s Impact on Sick Leave Rates.” Ergonomics 57, no. 2 (Feb. 2014): 139-47.

“Slow Is Smooth and Smooth Is Fast”

(p. B2) WASHINGTON — Jeff Bezos, the billionaire chief executive of Amazon, founded a rocket company as a hobby 16 years ago. Now that company, Blue Origin, finally has its first paying customer as it ramps up to become a full-fledged business.
Mr. Bezos announced that customer, the satellite television provider Eutelsat, on Tuesday. In about five years, Eutelsat, which is based in Paris, will strap one of its satellites to a new Blue Origin rocket to be delivered to space, a process it has done dozens of times with other space partners.
. . .
Blue Origin’s deal with Eutelsat is a “definite statement to the industry that Blue Origin will be a viable commercial launch vehicle,” said Carissa Bryce Christensen, the chief executive of Bryce Space and Technology, a consulting firm.
. . .
Mr. Bezos “is investing because he wants to transform people’s lives with space capabilities, but the expectation has always been that this will be a successful business,” Ms. Christensen said.
. . .
Mr. Bezos said he was approaching his space project with an abundance of patience.
“I like to do things incrementally,” he said, noting that Blue Origin’s mascot is a tortoise. With such high costs and risks with each rocket launch, it is important not to skip steps, he said.
“Slow is smooth and smooth is fast,” said Mr. Bezos, who also owns The Washington Post and a clock that will keep time for 10,000 years. “I’ve seen this in every endeavor I’ve been in.”

For the full story, see:
CECILIA KANG. “Blue Origin, Bezos’s Moon Shot, Gets First Paying Customer.” The New York Times (Weds., March 8, 2017): B2.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version of the story has the date March 7, 2017, and has the title “Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos’s Moon Shot, Gets First Paying Customer.”)