IBM's New and Greener Battery

IBMz New and Greener Battery

“The problems with the design of current battery technologies like lithium-ion are well known, we just tend to turn a blind eye when it means our smartphones can run for a full day without a charge. In addition to lithium, they require heavy metals like cobalt, manganese, and nickel which come from giant mines that present hazards to the environment, and often to those doing the actual mining. These metals are also a finite resource, and as more and more devices and vehicles switch to battery power, their availability is going to decrease at a staggering pace.”

So an entirely new battery design is needed.  IBM has come up with one.  See:

https://gizmodo.com/ibm-research-created-a-new-battery-that-outperforms-lit-1840535845

Rice that Decreases Incidence of Blindness

Rice has been modified to include DNA for producing vitamin A.  This altered rice is called "golden rice," and it sharply reduces blindness in infants and small children.  No nation has authorized the planting of golden rice until this month, December of 2019, when the Philippines decided to allow it.  See:

Philippines is first! Long-delayed Vitamin A-enhanced Golden Rice greenlighted, bucking activist opposition | Genetic Literacy Project

NASA and a new, quiet SST

NASA has plans to create a different supersonic transport (SST) airplane with special winglets that will greatly reduce the sonic "boom" created by high speed travel through the atmosphere.  See

https://www.universetoday.com/144403/nasa-will-be-building-a-quiet-supersonic-aircraft-the-x-59/

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels

Alex Epstein has given an hour long lecture advocating for the use of fossil fuels as a morally superior alternative to today's alternative energy sources.  His position seems to be on solid ground with respect to humane decisions on behalf of the world's developing nations.

The lecture is available on line at:

The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels with Alex Epstein

The Republicans Against Trump

The Lincoln Project

By George T. Conway III, Steve Schmidt, John Weaver and Rick Wilson: We Are Republicans, and We Want Trump Defeated-

[This article was originally published in The New York Times.  The authors have worked for or supported numerous Republican campaigns and administrations.]

Dec. 17, 2019 – Patriotism and the survival of our nation in the face of the crimes, corruption and corrosive nature of Donald Trump are a higher calling than mere politics. As Americans, we must stem the damage he and his followers are doing to the rule of law, the Constitution and the American character.

That’s why we are announcing the Lincoln Project, an effort to highlight our country’s story and values, and its people’s sacrifices and obligations. This effort transcends partisanship and is dedicated to nothing less than preservation of the principles that so many have fought for, on battlefields far from home and within their own communities.

This effort asks all Americans of all places, creeds and ways of life to join in the seminal task of our generation: restoring to this nation leadership and governance that respects the rule of law, recognizes the dignity of all people and defends the Constitution and American values at home and abroad.

Over these next 11 months, our efforts will be dedicated to defeating President Trump and Trumpism at the ballot box and to elect those patriots who will hold the line. We do not undertake this task lightly, nor from ideological preference. We have been, and remain, broadly conservative (or classically liberal) in our politics and outlooks. Our many policy differences with national Democrats remain, but our shared fidelity to the Constitution dictates a common effort.

The 2020 general election, by every indication, will be about persuasion, with turnout expected to be at record highs. Our efforts are aimed at persuading enough disaffected conservatives, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents in swing states and districts to help ensure a victory in the Electoral College and majorities that don’t enable and abet trumps violations of the constitution; even if that means Democrat control of the Senate and expansion of the Democratic majority in the House.

The American presidency transcends the individuals who occupy the Oval Office. Their personality becomes part of our national character. Their actions become our actions, for which we all share responsibility. Their willingness to act in accordance with the law and our tradition dictate how current and future leaders will act. Their commitment to order, civility and decency are reflected in American society.

Mr. Trump fails to meet the bar for this commitment. He has neither the moral compass nor the temperament to serve. His vision is limited to what immediately faces him — the problems and risks he chronically brings upon himself and for which others, from countless contractors and companies to the American people, ultimately bear the heaviest burden.

But this president’s actions are possible only with the craven acquiescence of congressional Republicans. They have done no less than abdicate their Article I responsibilities.

Indeed, national Republicans have done far worse than simply march along to Mr. Trump’s beat. Their defense of him is imbued with an ugliness, a meanness and a willingness to attack and slander those who have shed blood for our country, who have dedicated their lives and careers to its defense and its security, and whose job is to preserve the nation’s status as a beacon of hope.

Congressional Republicans have embraced and copied Mr. Trump’s cruelty and defended and even adopted his corruption. Mr. Trump and his enablers have abandoned conservatism and longstanding Republican principles and replaced it with Trumpism, an empty faith led by a bogus prophet. In a recent survey, a majority of Republican voters reported that they consider Mr. Trump a better president than Lincoln.

Mr. Trump and his fellow travelers daily undermine the proposition we as a people have a responsibility and an obligation to continually bend the arc of history toward justice. They mock our belief in America as something more meaningful than lines on a map.

Our peril far outstrips any past differences: It has arrived at our collective doorstep, and we believe there is no other choice. We sincerely hope, but are not optimistic, that some of those Republicans charged with sitting as jurors in a likely Senate impeachment trial will do likewise.

American men and women stand ready around the globe to defend us and our way of life. We must do right by them and ensure that the country for which they daily don their uniform deserves their protection and their sacrifice.

We are reminded of Dan Sickles, an incompetent 19th-century New York politician. On July 2, 1863, his blundering nearly ended the United States.

(Sickles’s greatest previous achievement had been fatally shooting his wife’s lover across the street from the White House and getting himself elected to Congress. Even his most fervent admirers could not have imagined that one day, far in the future, another incompetent New York politician, a president, would lay claim to that legacy by saying he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and get away with it.)

On that day in Pennsylvania, Sickles was a major general commanding the Union Army’s III Corps at the Battle of Gettysburg, and his incompetence wrought chaos and danger. The Confederate Army took advantage, and turned the Union line. Had the rebel soldiers broken through, the continent would have been divided: Free and slave, democratic and authoritarian.

Another Union general, Winfield Scott Hancock, had only minutes to reinforce the line. America, the nation, the ideal, hung in the balance. Amid the fury of battle, he found the First Minnesota Volunteers. They were immigrants. Many didn’t speak English. They were the very people the Know Nothings tried to keep out of the country.

They charged, and many of them fell, suffering a staggeringly high casualty rate. They held the line. They saved the Union. Four months later, Lincoln stood on that field of slaughter and said, “It is left to us, the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced.”

We look to Lincoln as our guide and inspiration. He understood the necessity of not just saving the Union, but also of knitting the nation back together spiritually as well as politically. But those wounds can be bound up only once the threat has been defeated. So, too, will our country have to knit itself back together after the scourge of Trumpism has been overcome.

George T. Conway III is an attorney in New York. Steve Schmidt is a Republican political strategist who worked for President George W. Bush, Senator John McCain and Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. John Weaver is a Republican strategist who worked for President George H.W. Bush, Senator John McCain and Gov. John Kasich. Rick Wilson is a Republican media consultant and author of “Everything Trump Touches Dies” and the forthcoming “Running Against the Devil: A Plot to Save America From Trump and Democrats From Themselves.”

This article was originally published in The New York Times: 

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/17/opinion/lincoln-project.html

Follow The Lincoln Project on Twitter @ProjectLincoln

www.lincolnproject.us

Unwise U.S. Policy in Afghanistan

“The Afghanistan Papers” are important, but they are only alarming to the extent that they demonstrate how often American leaders deceive themselves. Fall observed Vietnam War decision-makers’ inability to understand the Viet-Minh’s way of warfare in Vietnam: “To lie to others (and be found out) may simply be embarrassing. To lie to oneself about the terrifying possibilities of Revolutionary Warfare may well be fatal." The consequences of self-delusion in Afghanistan have been deadly for too many Americans and far too many Afghans. The “Afghanistan Papers” purpose will only have value if Americans demand greater wisdom from their leaders, and decision-makers generate greater wisdom within themselves. 

-- Paul Behringer and Nathaniel L. Moir writing in Real Clear Defense at https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2019/12/17/self-delusion_and_forgetting_history_in_afghanistan_114926.html

Hong Kong Protests at Christmastide

Excellent story about Hong Kong protesters at Christmas:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-hongkong-protests-christmas/we-can-celebrate-later-hong-kongers-pen-christmas-cards-to-protesters-idUSKBN1YL0L1

Evangelical Publication Condemns Trump

Direct link to Christianity Today condemnation of Trump

Trump Should Be Removed from Office

Trump Impeachment at Dec 15, 2019

An impeachment inquiry against President Donald Trump was initiated in the United States by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on September 24, 2019, after a whistleblower alleged that Trump may have abused the power of the presidency by withholding military aid as a means of pressuring newly elected president of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelensky to perform two favors: to pursue investigations of Joe Biden and his son Hunter, and to support a conspiracy theory that Ukraine, not Russia, was behind interference in the 2016 presidential election. More than a week after Trump had put a hold on the previously approved military aid, he made the aforementioned requests in a July 25 phone call with the Ukrainian president, which the whistleblower alleged was intended to help Trump's reelection bid.


Believing that critical military aid would be revoked, Zelensky made plans to announce investigations of the Bidens on the September 13 episode of CNN's Fareed Zakaria GPS. After Trump was told of the whistleblower complaint in late August, and elements of the events had begun to leak, the aid was released on September 11 and the planned interview was cancelled. Trump declassified a non-verbatim transcript of the call on September 24, the day the impeachment inquiry began. The whistleblower's complaint was given to Congress the following day and subsequently released to the public. The White House corroborated several of the allegations, including that a record of the call between Trump and Zelensky had been stored in a highly restricted system in the 

White House normally reserved for classified information.

In October, three full Congressional committees (Intelligence, Oversight, and Foreign Affairs) deposed witnesses including Ukraine ambassador Bill Taylor, Laura Cooper (the top Pentagon official overseeing Ukraine-related U.S. policy), and former White House official Fiona Hill. 

Witnesses testified that Trump wanted Zelensky to publicly announce investigations into the Bidens and Burisma (a Ukrainian natural gas company on whose board Hunter Biden had served) and 2016 election interference. On October 8, in a letter from White House Counsel Pat Cipollone to House Speaker Pelosi, the White House officially responded that it would not cooperate with the investigation due to concerns including that there had not yet been a vote of the full House and that interviews of witnesses were being conducted behind closed doors. On October 17, White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said, in response to a reporter's allegation of quid pro quo: "We do that all the time with foreign policy. Get over it." He walked back his comments later in the day, asserting that there had been "absolutely no quid pro quo" and that Trump had withheld military aid to Ukraine over concerns of the country's corruption.


On October 31, the House of Representatives voted 232–196 to establish procedures for public hearings, which started on November 13. As hearings began, House Intelligence Committee 

Chairman Adam Schiff said President Trump may have committed bribery, which is specifically listed as an impeachable offense in the Constitution. Private and public congressional testimony by twelve government witnesses in November 2019 presented a significant body of evidence indicating that Trump demanded a quid pro quo of political favors in exchange for official action. On December 3, the House Intelligence Committee published a report stating that "the impeachment inquiry has found that President Trump, personally and acting through agents within and outside of the U.S. government, solicited the interference of a foreign government, Ukraine, to benefit his reelection."^: 

On December 10, the House Judiciary Committee unveiled their articles of impeachment: one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of Congress. Three days later, the Judiciary Committee voted  along party lines (23–17) to approve both articles; the full House is expected to vote on them on December 18.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_inquiry_against_Donald_Trump

Bridge Genius Ely Culbertson

Elie Almon Culbertson (July 22, 1891 – December 27, 1955), known as Ely Culbertson, was an American contract bridge entrepreneur and personality dominant during the 1930s. He played a major role in the popularization of the new game and was widely regarded as "the man who made contract bridge". He was a great showman who became rich, was highly extravagant, and lost and gained fortunes several times over.


Culbertson was born in Poiana Vărbilău in Romania to an American mining engineer, Almon Culbertson, and his Russian wife, Xenya Rogoznaya. He attended the École des sciences économiques et politiques at the Sorbonne in Paris, and the University of Geneva. His facility for languages was extraordinary: he spoke Russian, English, French, German, Czech and Spanish fluently, with a reading knowledge of five others, and a knowledge of Latin and classical Greek. In spite of his education, his erudition was largely self-acquired: he was a born autodidact.


After the Russian Revolution (1917), Culbertson lived for four years in Paris and other European cities by exploiting his skill as a card player. In 1921 he moved to the United States, earning his living from winnings at auction bridge and poker. In 1923 he married Mrs. Josephine Murphy Dillon, a successful teacher of auction bridge and a leading woman player, in Manhattan. They were successful as both players and teachers, and later as publishers. Josephine Culbertson retained the surname after their divorce in 1938; indeed, a revised edition of Culbertson's Contract Bridge in Ten Minutes was published under her name in 1951.


Gradually the new game of contract bridge began to replace auction bridge, and Culbertson saw his opportunity to overtake the leaders of auction bridge. Culbertson planned a far-reaching and successful campaign to promote himself as the leader of the new game. As player, organizer, bidding theorist, magazine editor, and team leader, he was a key figure in the growth of contract bridge in its great boom years of the 1930s.


Culbertson was a brilliant publicist; he played several famous challenge matches and won them all. Two were played in the U.S., against pairs led by Sidney Lenz in 1931–32 (the so-called "Bridge Battle of the Century") and by P. Hal Sims in 1935, the latter between the married couples Culbertson and Sims. Four teams-of-four matches were played in England, against Walter Buller's team in 1930, against "Pops" Beasley's team in 1930 and 1933, and against Col. George Walshe's team in 1934. These matches were typically accompanied by noteworthy publicity in newspapers, on radio and on cinema newsreels, and the hands became the subject of intense discussion on bidding methods.

Later, a match did not materialize against the leading American team of the mid-1930s, the "Four Aces". Culbertson was finally beaten in Budapest, June 1937, in the final match of the first world championship teams tournament, by the 6-man Austria team led by Dr. Paul Stern. It was his last appearance in a tournament or match.


Culbertson founded and edited The Bridge World magazine, which is still published today, and wrote many newspaper articles and books on bridge. He owned the first firm of playing card manufacturers  to develop plastic cards, Kem Cards, and developed and owned a chain of bridge schools with teachers qualified in the Culbertson bidding system. He continued to play high-stakes rubber bridge for many years, but gave up tournament and match competition in 1938 to write and to work for world peace. Total Peace (1943) and Must We Fight Russia? (1947) were his most important books.


                                      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ely_Culbertson

Transistors that Process and Store Data

Perdue University has found a way to improve transistor function in a manner that makes chips more powerful.  See this link:


https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191209161323.htm

The Value of a Dog's Life

Dogs mean so much to humans that it is hard to determine what a dog’s life is worth


There is an interesting article about this issue online at

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2019/12/12/whats_the_value_of_your_dogs_life.html

Making Electrons Flow Like Water

The findings could help reduce resistance in electronic devices


Weizmann Institute of Science – September 12, 2019 -- We often speak of electrons “flowing” through materials, but in fact, they do not normally move like a liquid. Such “hydrodynamic” electron flow had been predicted, though, and Weizmann Institute of Science researchers recently managed, with the help of a unique technique to image electrons flowing like the water flowing in a pipe. This is the first time such “liquid electron flow” has been visualized, and it has vital implications for future electronic devices.


Electrons usually move through conductors more like a gas thana liquid. That is, they do not collide with one another, but rather, they tend to bounce off impurities and imperfections in the material. A fluid flow, in contrast, takes it shape – be it waves or whirlpools – from frequent collisions between the particles in liquid.  


To make electrons flow like a liquid, one needs a different kind of conductor, and the team turned to graphene, which is a one-atom-thick sheet of carbon, and which can be made exceptionally clean. 

“Theories suggest that liquid electrons can perform cool feats that their non-liquid counterparts cannot. But to get a clear-cut proof that electrons can, indeed, form a liquid state, we wanted to directly visualize their flow,” said Prof. Shahal Ilani, head of the team in the Institute’s Condensed Matter Physics Department.


To image the electron flow in the graphene, the researchers needed to develop a technique that would be both powerful enough to peer inside a material, yet gentle enough to avoid disrupting the flow.       
The Weizmann team created such a technique, as they recently reported in Nature Nanotechnology. 

This method uses a nanoscale detector built from a carbon-nanotube transistor, and the team found that can image the properties of flowing electrons with unprecedented sensitivity. “Our technique is at least 1000 times more sensitive than alternate methods; this enables us to image phenomena that previously could only be studied indirectly,” says Dr. Joseph Sulpizio, in Ilani’s lab.


In a new study published in Nature, the Weizmann researchers applied their novel imaging technique to state-of-the-art graphene devices produced in the group of Prof. Andre Geim at the University of Manchester. These devices were nanoscale channels designed to guide the flowing electrons. The team observed the hallmark signature of hydrodynamic flow: Just like water in a pipe, the electrons in the graphene flowed faster in the center of the channel and slowed down at the walls.


This demonstration – that under the right conditions, electrons can mimic the patterns of a conventional liquid –  may prove beneficial for creating new types of electronic devices, including low-power ones in which hydrodynamic flow lowers the electrical resistance. “Computing centers and consumer electronics are devouring an ever increasing amount of energy, and it’s imperative to find ways to make electrons flow with less resistance,” said Dr. Lior Ella, also of Ilani’s group.


The experimental group at Weizmann also included Asaf Rozen and Debarghya Dutta. The graphene devices were produced by John Birkbeck, Dr. David Perello, and Dr. Moshe Ben-Shalom from the group of Prof. Andre Geim at the University of Manchester. Theoretical calculations and computer simulations to support the experiments were performed by Dr. Thomas Scaffidi, Dr. Tobias Holder, Dr. Raquel Queiroz, Dr. Alessandro Principi and Prof. Ady Stern.


   https://wis-wander.weizmann.ac.il/space-physics/electrons-caught-flowing-water-first-time

Greatest Federal Reserve Chairman Dies

from  CNBC

Paul Volcker, the Carter-Reagan Fed Chairman Who Beat Inflation, Dies at Age 92

By Marty Steinberg, December 9, 2019


Key Points:

• As Fed chief under Presidents Carter and Reagan, Paul Volcker helped tame inflation, but with 20% interest rates that also crunched the economy.
• “Volcker set the table for the long economic expansions of the 1980s and 1990s,” former St. Louis Fed President William Poole said in a 2005 tribute.
• After the Great Recession, Volcker inspired a namesake regulation, the Volcker rule, which sought to rein in commercial banks by prohibiting them from making risky investments in hedge funds and private equity firms.

more at:  https://www.cnbc.com/2019/12/09/paul-volcker-the-carter-reagan-fed-chairman-who-beat-inflation-dies-at-92.html

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =

See also:  

https://news.morningstar.com/all/dow-jones/financials/_201912099535/a-remembrance-the-pragmatism-of-paul-volcker.aspx

Smallpox Completely Eradicated

Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by one of two virus variants, Variola major and Variola minor. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980. The risk of death following contracting the disease was about 30%, with higher rates among babies. Often those who survived had extensive scarring of their skin, and some were left blind.

The initial symptoms of the disease included fever and vomiting. This was followed by formation of sores in the mouth and a skin rash. Over a number of days the skin rash turned into characteristic fluid-filled bumps with a dent in the center. The bumps then scabbed over and fell off, leaving scars. The disease was spread between people or via contaminated objects. Prevention was by the smallpox 

vaccine. Once the disease had developed, certain antiviral medication may have helped.

The origin of smallpox is unknown. The earliest evidence of the disease dates to the 3rd century BCE in Egyptian mummies. The disease historically occurred in outbreaks. In 18th-century Europe, it is estimated 400,000 people per year died from the disease, and one-third of the cases resulted in blindness. These deaths included four reigning monarchs and a queen consort. Smallpox is estimated to have killed up to 300 million people in the 20th century and around 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence. As recently as 1967, 15 million cases occurred a year.

Edward Jenner discovered in 1798 that vaccination could prevent smallpox. In 1967, the WHO intensified efforts to eliminate the disease. Smallpox is one of two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest in 2011. The term "smallpox" was first used in Britain in the early 16th century to distinguish the disease from syphilis, which was then known as the "great pox". Other historical names for the disease include pox, speckled monster, and red plague

Transmission of Smallpox

Transmission occurred through inhalation of airborne Variola virus, usually droplets expressed from the oral, nasal, or pharyngeal mucosa of an infected person. It was transmitted from one person to another primarily through prolonged face-to-face contact with an infected person, usually within a distance of 1.8 m (6 feet), but could also be spread through direct contact with infected bodily fluids or contaminated objects (fomites) such as bedding or clothing. Rarely, smallpox was spread by virus carried in the air in enclosed settings such as buildings, buses, and trains. The virus can cross the placenta, but the incidence of congenital smallpox was relatively low. Smallpox was not notably infectious in the prodromal period and viral shedding was usually delayed until the appearance of the rash, which was often accompanied by lesions in the mouth and pharynx. The virus can be transmitted throughout the course of the illness, but this happened most frequently during the first week of the rash, when most of the skin lesions were intact. Infectivity waned in 7 to 10 days when scabs formed over the lesions, but the infected person was contagious until the last smallpox scab fell off.

Smallpox was highly contagious, but generally spread more slowly and less widely than some other viral diseases, perhaps because transmission required close contact and occurred after the onset of the rash. The overall rate of infection was also affected by the short duration of the infectious stage. In temperate areas, the number of smallpox infections was highest during the winter and spring. In tropical areas, seasonal variation was less evident and the disease was present throughout the year. Age distribution of smallpox infections depended on acquired immunity. Vaccination immunity declined over time and was probably lost within thirty years. Smallpox was not known to be transmitted by insects or animals and there was no asymptomatic carrier state. 

Diagnosis of Smallpox

The clinical definition of smallpox is an illness with acute onset of fever equal to or greater than 38.3 °C (101 °F) followed by a rash characterized by firm, deep seated vesicles or pustules in the same stage of development without other apparent cause. When a clinical case was observed, smallpox was confirmed using laboratory tests.

Microscopically, poxviruses produce characteristic cytoplasmic inclusions, the most important of which are known as Guarnieri bodies, and are the sites of viral replication. Guarnieri bodies are readily identified in skin biopsies stained with hematoxylin and eosin, and appear as pink blobs. They are found in virtually all poxvirus infections but the absence of Guarnieri bodies could not be used to rule out smallpox. The diagnosis of an orthopoxvirus infection can also be made rapidly by electron microscopic examination of pustular fluid or scabs. All orthopoxviruses exhibit identical brick-shaped virions by electron microscopy. If particles with the characteristic morphology of herpesviruses are seen this will eliminate smallpox and other orthopoxvirus infections.

Definitive laboratory identification of Variola virus involved growing the virus on chorioallantoic membrane (part of a chicken embryo) and examining the resulting pock lesions under defined temperature conditions. Strains were characterized by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. Serologic tests and enzyme linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA), which measured Variola virus-specific immunoglobulin and antigen were also developed to assist in the diagnosis of infection.

Chickenpox was commonly confused with smallpox in the immediate post-eradication era. Chickenpox and smallpox could be distinguished by several methods. Unlike smallpox, chickenpox does not usually affect the palms and soles. Additionally, chickenpox pustules are of varying size due to variations in the timing of pustule eruption: smallpox pustules are all very nearly the same size since the viral effect progresses more uniformly. A variety of laboratory methods were available for detecting chickenpox in evaluation of suspected smallpox cases.

                                      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smallpox

Vital Spinal Cord Research

Micro implants could restore standing and walking

University of Alberta – December 3, 2019 -- When Vivian Mushahwar first applied to grad school, she wrote about her idea to fix paralysis by rewiring the spinal cord.

It was only after she was accepted into a bioengineering program that the young electrical engineer learned her idea had actually prompted laughter.

"I figured, hey I can fix it, it's just wires," Mushahwar said. "Yeah, well, it's not just wires. So I had to learn the biology along the way."

It's taken Mushahwar a lot of work over two decades at the University of Alberta, but the Canada Research Chair in Functional Restoration is still fixated on the dream of helping people walk again. 

And thanks to an electrical spinal implant pioneered in her laboratory and work in mapping the spinal cord, that dream could become a reality in the next decade.

Because an injured spinal cord dies back, it's not simply a matter of reconnecting a cable. Three herculean feats are needed. You have to translate brain signals. You have to figure out and control the spinal cord. And you have got to get the two sides talking again.

People tend to think the brain does all the thinking, but Mushahwar says the spinal cord has built-in intelligence. A complex chain of motor and sensory networks regulate everything from breathing to bowels, while the brain stem's contribution is basically "go!" and "faster!" Your spinal cord isn't just moving muscles, it's giving you your natural gait.

Other researchers have tried different avenues to restore movement. By sending electrical impulses into leg muscles, it's possible to get people standing or walking again. But the effect is strictly mechanical and not particularly effective. Mushahwar's research has focused on restoring lower-body function after severe injuries using a tiny spinal implant. Hair-like electrical wires plunge deep into the spinal grey matter, sending electrical signals to trigger the networks that already know how to do the hard work.

In a new paper in Scientific Reports, the team showcases a map to identify which parts of the spinal cord trigger the hip, knees, ankles and toes, and the areas that put movements together. The work has shown that the spinal maps have been remarkably consistent across the animal spectrum, but further work is required before moving to human trials.

\The implications of moving to a human clinical setting would be massive, but must follow further 

work that needs to be done in animals. Being able to control standing and walking would improve bone health, improve bowel and bladder function, and reduce pressure ulcers. It could help treat cardiovascular disease -- the main cause of death for spinal cord patients -- while bolstering mental health and quality of life. For those with less severe spinal injuries, an implant could be therapeutic, removing the need for months of grueling physical therapy regimes that have limited success.

"We think that intraspinal stimulation itself will get people to start walking longer and longer, and maybe even faster," said Mushahwar. "That in itself becomes their therapy."

Progress can move at a remarkable pace, yet it's often maddeningly slow.

"There's been an explosion of knowledge in neuroscience over the last 20 years," Mushahwar said. "We're at the edge of merging the human and the machine."

Given the nature of incremental funding and research, a realistic timeline for this type of progress might be close to a decade.

Mushahwar is the director of the SMART Network, a collaboration of more than 100 U of A scientists and learners who intentionally break disciplinary silos to think of unique ways to tackle neural injuries and diseases. That has meant working with researchers like neuroscientist Kathryn Todd and biochemist Matthew Churchward, both in the psychiatry department, to create three-dimensional cell cultures that simulate the testing of electrodes.

The next steps are fine-tuning the hardware -- miniaturizing an implantable stimulator -- and securing Health Canada and FDA approvals for clinical trials. Previous research has tackled the problem of translating brain signals and intent into commands to the intraspinal implant; however, the first generation of the intraspinal implants will require a patient to control walking and movement. Future implants could include a connection to the brain.

It's the same goal Mushahwar had decades ago. Except now it's no longer a laughable idea.

"Imagine the future," Mushahwar said. "A person just thinks and commands are transmitted to the spinal cord. People stand up and walk. This is the dream."

---

                    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191203094810.htm

A New Office of Technology Assessment

Time to Reeducate Congress About Science and Technology

By M. Anthony Mills

RealClear Science -- December 06, 2019 -- Political momentum is building to revive the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA), a congressional agency that once provided lawmakers with nonpartisan technical expertise. Presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren and Andrew Yang have even made reviving the OTA planks of their platforms, with Yang making a plug for the OTA during the fifth Democratic debate.

Although there have been efforts to reopen or re-imagine the OTA since its closure in 1995, Capitol Hill has been abuzz this past year with proposals to get Congress up to speed on science and technology (S&T). In the fall of 2018, Congress directed the Congressional Research Service (CRS) to contract with the National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) to study the issue, intimating that Congress may actually mean business. The NAPA report, released shortly before the Thanksgiving holiday, offered recommendations for whether and how to strengthen Congress’ “technology assessment” capacity and to improve S&T expertise in Congress generally.

What is technology assessment, and does Congress really need it?

The term “technology assessment” dates to the 1960s when lawmakers, and members of Congress in particular, became increasingly concerned about their inability to grapple effectively with the challenges and opportunities posed by modern technology. The result of these debates was the Technology Assessment Act of 1972, which created a new congressional agency whose primary purpose would be “to provide early indications of the probable beneficial and adverse impacts of the applications of technology and to develop other coordinate information which may assist the Congress.”

Part of Congress’ motivation in creating the OTA was to ensure the legislature had its own unbiased source of expertise, thus decreasing its dependence on the executive branch. This was part of a broader effort in the late 1960s and early 1970s to strengthen Congress and counterbalance the power of the executive. It was hoped that the OTA, in particular, would allow Congress to take ownership of technical matters that had become predominantly the purview of executive agencies. As one representative put it0, although members of Congress “are not scientists ... in our system of government we have our responsibility. We are not the rubber stamps of the administrative branch of government.”

With a bipartisan structure and no lawmaking power of its own, the OTA evolved over time into a respected support agency alongside CRS, the Congressional Budget Office and the Government Accountability Office (GAO) that offered members and committees nonpartisan advice about technical matters ranging from biotechnology and defense research and development to Alzheimer’s disease and transportation. The OTA’s primary output was its technology assessment reports — cross-disciplinary, peer-reviewed studies on technical subjects initiated by congressional committees and the OTA’s bipartisan Technology Assessment Board. Crucially, these reports did not make policy recommendations, although they did indicate the costs and benefits of various policy approaches to the technical issues at hand.

Congress’ own “think tank” operated until 1995, when it was defunded by congressional Republicans as a part of Newt Gingrich’s Contract with America. The move was primarily symbolic — the OTA’s budget was little more than a rounding error by federal standards — showing Congress’ willingness to shrink government. Ironically, however, it may have helped grow the administrative state by hampering Congress’ ability to conduct meaningful oversight of expert agencies in the executive branch, much less legislate on urgent technical matters.

While cheerleaders for the OTA have made calls to bring back the agency for decades, some of the OTA’s functions have since been lodged elsewhere in Congress. In particular, a 2002 appropriations bill allowed the GAO to initiate an experimental technology assessment program, which became permanent in 2008. GAO has recently redoubled its efforts in this area and hopes to expand its Science and Technology Assessment and Analytics group to as many as 140 staffers to be on par with the OTA in its heyday.

The NAPA report, for its part, recommends leveraging existing congressional support services, including GAO and CRS, rather than reviving or recreating the OTA. The authors suggest that GAO’s technology assessment program can provide the kind of deep, probing analysis that OTA reports used to offer, while CRS can, with adequate resources, offer faster-response advice to members of Congress on whatever S&T issues concern them. Meanwhile, a new Office of the Congressional Science and Technology Advisor can “serve as Congress’ S&T ombudsman, coordinating disparate pools of S&T expertise within the Congress and outside the Congress.” The details of how such a new office would operate — and the political hurdles that would have to be overcome in order to create it — are still to be determined.

Other scholars remain skeptical that existing institutions, such as GAO or CRS, will be able to provide the kind of service that the OTA offered Congress at its best. Details aside, there appears to be an emerging consensus that the Constitution’s first branch is ill-prepared to tackle some of the most pressing challenges of the day and that it will need more and better technical resources to do so.

Democrats have been leading the OTA charge so far, but there are good reasons for Republicans to join the fight, as my colleague Zach Graves and I have argued elsewhere. At a moment when left and right have become preoccupied by the ethical and social implications of emerging technologies — from Big Tech and cybersecurity to automation and biotechnology — as well as the dangers posed by executive power, conservatives and progressives alike should support efforts to equip Congress with the tools it needs to weigh the positives and negatives of emerging technologies and to deliberate about what actions to take, if any. While this would not be a silver bullet, the alternative — the status quo — is to leave such political questions to unelected experts within the executive branch.

M. Anthony Mills is Director of Science Policy at the R Street Institute.

https://www.realclearscience.com/articles/2019/12/06/time_to_reeducate_congress_about_science_and_technology_111210.html

NASA's Parker Solar Probe Findings

Early results findings in three early passes of the sun

NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center – December 4, 2019 -- In August 2018, NASA's Parker Solar 

Probe launched to space, soon becoming the closest-ever spacecraft to the Sun. With cutting-edge scientific instruments to measure the environment around the spacecraft, Parker Solar Probe has completed three of 24 planned passes through never-before-explored parts of the Sun's atmosphere, the corona. On Dec. 4, 2019, four new papers in the journal Nature describe what scientists have learned from this unprecedented exploration of our star -- and what they look forward to learning next.

These findings reveal new information about the behavior of the material and particles that speed away from the Sun, bringing scientists closer to answering fundamental questions about the physics of our star. In the quest to protect astronauts and technology in space, the information Parker has uncovered about how the Sun constantly ejects material and energy will help scientists re-write the models we use to understand and predict the space weather around our planet and understand the process by which stars are created and evolve.

"This first data from Parker reveals our star, the Sun, in new and surprising ways," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for science at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Observing the Sun up close rather than from a much greater distance is giving us an unprecedented view into important solar phenomena and how they affect us on Earth, and gives us new insights relevant to the understanding of active stars across galaxies. It's just the beginning of an incredibly exciting time for heliophysics with Parker at the vanguard of new discoveries."

Though it may seem placid to us here on Earth, the Sun is anything but quiet. Our star is magnetically active, unleashing powerful bursts of light, deluges of particles moving near the speed of light and billion-ton clouds of magnetized material. All this activity affects our planet, injecting damaging particles into the space where our satellites and astronauts fly, disrupting communications and navigation signals, and even -- when intense -- triggering power outages. It's been happening for the Sun's entire 5-billion-year lifetime, and will continue to shape the destinies of Earth and the other planets in our solar system into the future.

"The Sun has fascinated humanity for our entire existence," said Nour E. Raouafi, project scientist for Parker Solar Probe at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, which built and manages the mission for NASA. "We've learned a great deal about our star in the past several decades, but we really needed a mission like Parker Solar Probe to go into the Sun's atmosphere. It's only there that we can really learn the details of these complex solar processes. And what we've learned in just these three solar orbits alone has changed a lot of what we know about the Sun."

What happens on the Sun is critical to understanding how it shapes the space around us. Most of the material that escapes the Sun is part of the solar wind, a continual outflow of solar material that bathes the entire solar system. This ionized gas, called plasma, carries with it the Sun's magnetic field, stretching it out through the solar system in a giant bubble that spans more than 10 billion miles.

The dynamic solar wind

Observed near Earth, the solar wind is a relatively uniform flow of plasma, with occasional turbulent tumbles. But by that point it's traveled over ninety million miles -- and the signatures of the Sun's exact mechanisms for heating and accelerating the solar wind are wiped out. Closer to the solar wind's source, Parker Solar Probe saw a much different picture: a complicated, active system.

"The complexity was mind-blowing when we first started looking at the data," said Stuart Bale, the University of California, Berkeley, lead for Parker Solar Probe's FIELDS instrument suite, which studies the scale and shape of electric and magnetic fields. "Now, I've gotten used to it. But when I show colleagues for the first time, they're just blown away." From Parker's vantage point 15 million miles from the Sun, Bale explained, the solar wind is much more impulsive and unstable than what we see near Earth.

Like the Sun itself, the solar wind is made up of plasma, where negatively charged electrons have separated from positively charged ions, creating a sea of free-floating particles with individual electric charge. These free-floating particles mean plasma carries electric and magnetic fields, and changes in the plasma often make marks on those fields. The FIELDS instruments surveyed the state of the solar wind by measuring and carefully analyzing how the electric and magnetic fields around the spacecraft changed over time, along with measuring waves in the nearby plasma.

These measurements showed quick reversals in the magnetic field and sudden, faster-moving jets of material -- all characteristics that make the solar wind more turbulent. These details are key to understanding how the wind disperses energy as it flows away from the Sun and throughout the solar system.

One type of event in particular drew the eye of the science teams: flips in the direction of the magnetic field, which flows out from the Sun, embedded in the solar wind. These reversals -- dubbed "switchbacks" -- last anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes as they flow over Parker Solar Probe. During a switchback, the magnetic field whips back on itself until it is pointed almost directly back at the Sun. Together, FIELDS and SWEAP, the solar wind instrument suite led by the University of Michigan and managed by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, measured clusters of switchbacks throughout Parker Solar Probe's first two flybys.

"Waves have been seen in the solar wind from the start of the space age, and we assumed that closer to the Sun the waves would get stronger, but we were not expecting to see them organize into these coherent structured velocity spikes," said Justin Kasper, principal investigator for SWEAP -- short for Solar Wind Electrons Alphas and Protons -- at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. "We are detecting remnants of structures from the Sun being hurled into space and violently changing the organization of the flows and magnetic field. This will dramatically change our theories for how the corona and solar wind are being heated."

The exact source of the switchbacks isn't yet understood, but Parker Solar Probe's measurements have allowed scientists to narrow down the possibilities.

Among the many particles that perpetually stream from the Sun are a constant beam of fast-moving electrons, which ride along the Sun's magnetic field lines out into the solar system. These electrons always flow strictly along the shape of the field lines moving out from the Sun, regardless of whether the north pole of the magnetic field in that particular region is pointing towards or away from the Sun. But Parker Solar Probe measured this flow of electrons going in the opposite direction, flipping back towards the Sun -- showing that the magnetic field itself must be bending back towards the Sun, rather than Parker Solar Probe merely encountering a different magnetic field line from the Sun that points in the opposite direction. This suggests that the switchbacks are kinks in the magnetic field -- localized disturbances traveling away from the Sun, rather than a change in the magnetic field as it emerges from the Sun.

Parker Solar Probe's observations of the switchbacks suggest that these events will grow even more common as the spacecraft gets closer to the Sun. The mission's next solar encounter on Jan. 29, 2020, will carry the spacecraft nearer to the Sun than ever before, and may shed new light on this process. Not only does such information help change our understanding of what causes the solar wind and space weather around us, it also helps us understand a fundamental process of how stars work and how they release energy into their environment.

The rotating solar wind

Some of Parker Solar Probe's measurements are bringing scientists closer to answers to decades-old questions. One such question is about how, exactly, the solar wind flows out from the Sun.

Near Earth, we see the solar wind flowing almost radially -- meaning it's streaming directly from the Sun, straight out in all directions. But the Sun rotates as it releases the solar wind; before it breaks free, the solar wind was spinning along with it. This is a bit like children riding on a playground park carousel -- the atmosphere rotates with the Sun much like the outer part of the carousel rotates, but the farther you go from the center, the faster you are moving in space. A child on the edge might jump off and would, at that point, move in a straight line outward, rather than continue rotating. In a similar way, there's some point between the Sun and Earth, the solar wind transitions from rotating along with the Sun to flowing directly outwards, or radially, like we see from Earth.

Exactly where the solar wind transitions from a rotational flow to a perfectly radial flow has implications for how the Sun sheds energy. Finding that point may help us better understand the lifecycle of other stars or the formation of protoplanetary disks, the dense disks of gas and dust around young stars that eventually coalesce into planets.

Now, for the first time -- rather than just seeing that straight flow that we see near Earth -- Parker Solar Probe was able to observe the solar wind while it was still rotating. It's as if Parker Solar Probe got a view of the whirling carousel directly for the first time, not just the children jumping off it. Parker Solar Probe's solar wind instrument detected rotation starting more than 20 million miles from the Sun, and as Parker approached its perihelion point, the speed of the rotation increased. The strength of the circulation was stronger than many scientists had predicted, but it also transitioned more quickly than predicted to an outward flow, which is what helps mask these effects from where we usually sit, about 93 million miles from the Sun.

"The large rotational flow of the solar wind seen during the first encounters has been a real surprise," said Kasper. "While we hoped to eventually see rotational motion closer to the Sun, the high speeds we are seeing in these first encounters is nearly ten times larger than predicted by the standard models."

Dust near the Sun

Another question approaching an answer is the elusive dust-free zone. Our solar system is awash in dust -- the cosmic crumbs of collisions that formed planets, asteroids, comets and other celestial bodies billions of years ago. Scientists have long suspected that, close to the Sun, this dust would be heated to high temperatures by powerful sunlight, turning it into a gas and creating a dust-free region around the Sun. But no one had ever observed it.

For the first time, Parker Solar Probe's imagers saw the cosmic dust begin to thin out. Because WISPR -- Parker Solar Probe's imaging instrument, led by the Naval Research Lab -- looks out the side of the spacecraft, it can see wide swaths of the corona and solar wind, including regions closer to the Sun. These images show dust starting to thin a little over 7 million miles from the Sun, and this decrease in dust continues steadily to the current limits of WISPR's measurements at a little over 4 million miles from the Sun.

"This dust-free zone was predicted decades ago, but has never been seen before," said Russ Howard, principal investigator for the WISPR suite -- short for Wide-field Imager for Solar Probe -- at the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. "We are now seeing what's happening to the dust near the Sun."

At the rate of thinning, scientists expect to see a truly dust-free zone starting a little more than 2-3 million miles from the Sun -- meaning Parker Solar Probe could observe the dust-free zone as early as 2020, when its sixth flyby of the Sun will carry it closer to our star than ever before.

Putting space weather under a microscope

Parker Solar Probe's measurements have given us a new perspective on two types of space weather events: energetic particle storms and coronal mass ejections.

Tiny particles -- both electrons and ions -- are accelerated by solar activity, creating storms of energetic particles. Events on the Sun can send these particles rocketing out into the solar system at nearly the speed of light, meaning they reach Earth in under half an hour and can impact other worlds on similarly short time scales. These particles carry a lot of energy, so they can damage spacecraft electronics and even endanger astronauts, especially those in deep space, outside the protection of Earth's magnetic field -- and the short warning time for such particles makes them difficult to avoid.

Understanding exactly how these particles are accelerated to such high speeds is crucial. But even though they zip to Earth in as little as a few minutes, that's still enough time for the particles to lose the signatures of the processes that accelerated them in the first place. By whipping around the Sun at just a few million miles away, Parker Solar Probe can measure these particles just after they've left the Sun, shedding new light on how they are released.

Already, Parker Solar Probe's IS?IS instruments, led by Princeton University, have measured several never-before-seen energetic particle events -- events so small that all trace of them is lost before they reach Earth or any of our near-Earth satellites. These instruments have also measured a rare type of particle burst with a particularly high number of heavier elements -- suggesting that both types of events may be more common than scientists previously thought.

"It's amazing -- even at solar minimum conditions, the Sun produces many more tiny energetic particle events than we ever thought," said David McComas, principal investigator for the Integrated Science Investigation of the Sun suite, or IS?IS, at Princeton University in New Jersey. "These measurements will help us unravel the sources, acceleration, and transport of solar energetic particles and ultimately better protect satellites and astronauts in the future."

Data from the WISPR instruments also provided unprecedented detail on structures in the corona and solar wind -- including coronal mass ejections, billion-ton clouds of solar material that the Sun sends hurtling out into the solar system. CMEs can trigger a range of effects on Earth and other worlds, from sparking auroras to inducing electric currents that can damage power grids and pipelines. WISPR's unique perspective, looking alongside such events as they travel away from the Sun, has already shed new light on the range of events our star can unleash.

"Since Parker Solar Probe was matching the Sun's rotation, we could watch the outflow of material for days and see the evolution of structures," said Howard. "Observations near Earth have made us think that fine structures in the corona segue into a smooth flow, and we're finding out that's not true. This will help us do better modeling of how events travel between the Sun and Earth."

As Parker Solar Probe continues on its journey, it will make 21 more close approaches to the Sun at progressively closer distances, culminating in three orbits a mere 3.83 million miles from the solar surface.

"The Sun is the only star we can examine this closely," said Nicola Fox, director of the Heliophysics Division at NASA Headquarters. "Getting data at the source is already revolutionizing our understanding of our own star and stars across the universe. Our little spacecraft is soldiering through brutal conditions to send home startling and exciting revelations."

Data from Parker Solar Probe's first two solar encounters is available to the public online:

https://blogs.nasa.gov/parkersolarprobe/2019/11/12/first-parker-solar-probe-science-data-released-to-public/

Parker Solar Probe is part of NASA's Living with a Star program to explore aspects of the Sun-Earth system that directly affect life and society. The Living with a Star program is managed by the agency's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Johns Hopkins APL designed, built and operates the spacecraft.

                   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/12/191204144903.htm