Opening the Way for Brain-like Computers

Research has long strived to develop computers to work as energy efficiently as our brains. A study, led by researchers at the University of Gothenburg, has succeeded for the first time in combining a memory function with a calculation function in the same component. The discovery opens the way for more efficient technologies, everything from mobile phones to self-driving cars.

From:  The Faculty of Science

November 29, 2021 -- In recent years, computers have been able to tackle advanced cognitive tasks, like language and image recognition or displaying superhuman chess skills, thanks in large part to artificial intelligence (AI). At the same time, the human brain is still unmatched in its ability to perform tasks effectively and energy efficiently.

“Finding new ways of performing calculations that resemble the brain’s energy-efficient processes has been a major goal of research for decades. Cognitive tasks, like image and voice recognition, require significant computer power, and mobile applications, in particular, like mobile phones, drones and satellites, require energy efficient solutions,” says Johan Åkerman, professor of applied spintronics at the University of Gothenburg.

Important breakthrough

Working with a research team at Tohoko University, Åkerman led a study that has now taken an important step forward in achieving this goal. In the study, now published in the highly ranked journal Nature Materials, the researchers succeeded for the first time in linking the two main tools for advanced calculations: oscillator networks and memristors.

Åkerman describes oscillators as oscillating circuits that can perform calculations and that are comparable to human nerve cells. Memristors are programable resistors that can also perform calculations and that have integrated memory. This makes them comparable to memory cells. Integrating the two is a major advancement by the researchers.

“This is an important breakthrough because we show that it is possible to combine a memory function with a calculating function in the same component. These components work more like the brain’s energy-efficient neural networks, allowing them to become important building blocks in future, more brain-like computers.”

Enables energy-efficient technologies

According to Johan Åkerman, the discovery will enable faster, easier to use and less energy consuming technologies in many areas. He feels that it is a huge advantage that the research team has successfully produced the components in an extremely small footprint: hundreds of components fit into an area equivalent to a single bacterium. This can be of particular importance in smaller applications like mobile phones.

“More energy-efficient calculations could lead to new functionality in mobile phones. An example is digital assistants like Siri or Google. Today, all processing is done by servers since the calculations require too much energy for the small size of a phone. If the calculations could instead be performed locally, on the actual phone, they could be done faster and easier without a need to connect to servers.”

He notes self-driving cars and drones as other examples of where more energy-efficient calculations could drive developments.

“The more energy-efficiently that cognitive calculations can be performed, the more applications become possible. That’s why our study really has the potential to advance the field.”

Text: Ulrika Ernström

https://www.gu.se/en/news/new-discovery-opens-the-way-for-brain-like-computers

  

Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is a NASA space mission aimed at testing a method of planetary defense against near-Earth objects (NEOs). In September 2022, a space probe is set to deliberately crash into the minor-planet moon Dimorphos of the double asteroid Didymos to assess the future potential of a spacecraft impact to deflect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth through a transference of momentum.

DART is a joint project between NASA and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL).  It is being administered by NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, and several NASA laboratories and offices are providing technical support.  International partners, such as the space agencies of European Space Agency (ESA), Italian Space Agency (ASI), and JAXA Japan, are contributing to related or subsequent projects. In August 2018, NASA approved the project to start the final design and assembly phase. The DART spacecraft was successfully launched on 24 November 2021, with collision slated for 26 September 2022.

Background

Originally, the European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA had independent plans for missions to test asteroid deflection strategies, and by 2015 they struck a collaboration called AIDA (Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment) involving two separate spacecraft launches that work in synergy.  Under the proposal, the European spacecraft, AIM, would have launched in December 2020, and DART in July 2021.  AIM would have orbited the larger asteroid to study its composition and that of its moon.  DART would then impact the asteroid's moon in September 2022, during a close approach to Earth.  AIM would have studied the asteroid's strength, surface physical properties, and internal structure, as well as measure the effect on the asteroid moon's orbit around the larger asteroid.

The AIM orbiter was cancelled, the full characterization of the asteroids will not be obtained, and the effects of the impact by DART will be monitored from ground-based telescopes and radar.

In June 2017, NASA approved a move from concept development to the preliminary design phase, and in August 2018 NASA approved the project to start the final design and assembly phase.

It was originally planned for DART to be a secondary payload on a commercial launch to keep costs low; however, a mission update presentation in November 2018 noted that the mission has a dedicated launch vehicle.

On 11 April 2019, NASA announced that a SpaceX Falcon 9 would be used to launch DART.

Scientists estimate 25,000 large asteroids are in the Solar System, though to date, surveys have detected about 8,000; therefore, NASA officials think it is imperative to develop an effective plan should a near-Earth object threaten Earth.

Description of Spacecraft

The DART spacecraft is an impactor with a mass of 610 kg (1,340 lb), that hosts no scientific payload other than a Sun sensor, a star tracker, and a 20 cm (7.9 in) aperture camera called Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO). DRACO is based on the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) onboard New Horizons spacecraft, and will support autonomous navigation to impact the asteroid's moon at its center.

DART spacecraft uses the NEXT ion thruster, a type of solar electric propulsion.  It will be powered by 22 m² (240 sq ft) solar arrays to generate the ~3.5-kW needed to power the NASA Evolutionary Xenon Thruster–Commercial (NEXT-C) engine.  The spacecraft's solar arrays use a Roll Out Solar Array (ROSA) design, and this was tested on the International Space Station in June 2017 as part of Expedition 52, delivered to the station by the SpaceX CRS-11 commercial cargo mission.

Using ROSA as the structure, a small portion of the DART solar array is configured to demonstrate Transformational Solar Array technology, which has very-high-efficiency solar cells and reflective concentrators providing three times more power than current solar array technology.

The DART spacecraft is the first spacecraft to use a new type of high gain communication antenna, that is, a Spiral Radial Line Slot Array (RLSA). The antenna operates at the X-band NASA Deep Space Network (NASA DSN) frequencies of 7.2 and 8.4-GHz. The fabricated antenna exceeds the given requirements and has been tested through environments resulting in a TRL-6 design.

Mission and Impact

It is estimated that the impact of the 500 kg (1,100 lb) DART at 6.6 km/s (4.1 mi/s) will produce a velocity change on the order of 0.4 mm/s, which leads to a small change in trajectory of the asteroid system, but over time, it leads to a large shift of path.  Over a span of years, the cumulative trajectory change from such a small change in velocity could mitigate the risk of a hypothetical Earth-bound asteroid hitting Earth.  The impact will target the center of figure of Dimorphos and should decrease the orbital period, currently 11.92 hours, by roughly 10 minutes.

The actual velocity change and orbital shift are uncertain. There is a poorly understood "momentum enhancement" effect due to the contribution of recoil momentum from impact ejecta.  It is expected that the final momentum transferred to the largest remaining fragment of the asteroid could be up to 3-5 times the incident momentum, and getting good measurements of the effects, which will help refine models of such impacts, is one of the main goals of the mission.  Initial estimates of the change in binary orbit period should be known within a week.  A detailed reconnaissance and assessment will be performed a few years later by a spacecraft called Hera, approved by ESA in November 2019.

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

 

British Logistics in the Falklands War

The 1982 British military campaign to recapture the Falkland Islands depended on complex logistical arrangements.  The logistical difficulties of operating 7,000 nautical miles (8,100 mi; 13,000 km) from home were formidable.  The Argentine invasion of the Falkland Islands came at a time when the Royal Navy's amphibious capability was being run down; but it still possessed the aircraft carriers HMS Hermes and Invincible, the landing platform dock (LPD) ships HMS Fearless and Intrepid, and six landing ship logistics (LSL) ships. To provide the necessary logistic support, the Royal Navy's ships were augmented by ships taken up from trade (STUFT).

The British Army and Royal Navy developed a base at Ascension Island, a British territory in the mid-Atlantic 3,700 nautical miles (4,300 mi; 6,900 km) from the UK and 3,300 nautical miles (3,800 mi; 6,100 km) from the Falkland Islands. Although it had an airfield with an excellent runway, there was only a small hardstand area for parking aircraft and no parallel taxiways. There was an anchorage, but no port facilities—just a lone jetty. Ascension was used as a convenient place for the amphibious ships to re-stow their equipment, and as a base for Hercules transport aircraft, which were modified by the addition of auxiliary fuel tanks and aerial refueling probes. With the support of Victor tankers, these modifications allowed the transports to deliver priority supplies to the South Atlantic.

The 3rd Commando Brigade landed at Ajax Bay, Port San Carlos and San Carlos on East Falkland, but struggled to build up its supplies as the Argentine air forces made repeated attacks on ships in Falkland Sound.  SS Atlantic Conveyorwas struck by two Exocet AM39 missiles, and sank with three Chinook and six Wessex helicopters still on board, along with their tools and spare parts, and other vital stores including tent accommodation. The loss of the helicopters on Atlantic Conveyor was a serious blow; it forced the 3rd Commando Brigade to make a loaded march across East Falkland. The Brigade Maintenance Area (BMA) was struck by an Argentine air attack on 27 May that destroyed hundreds of rounds of mortar and artillery ammunition. Forward Brigade Maintenance Areas (FBMAs) were established at Teal Inlet for the 3rd Commando Brigade and Fitzroy for the 5th Infantry Brigade.  Some 500 rounds per gun were delivered to gun positions by helicopters to enable the artillery to support the attacks on the mountains ringing Port Stanley.  The successful conclusion of these battles resulted in the surrender of the Argentine forces in the Falklands on 14 June.

Background of the Conflict

Tensions between Britain and Argentina over the disputed Falkland Islands (Malvinas) rose swiftly after Argentine scrap metal merchants and Argentina Marines raised the Argentine flag over South Georgia Island on 19 March 1982, and on 2 April, Argentine forces occupied the Falkland Islands.  The British government had already taken some action on 29 March, ordering the submarines HMS Spartan and HMS Splendid to sail for the South Atlantic.  Spartan left Gibraltar on 1 April, and Splendid sailed from Faslane the same day. A third submarine, HMS Conqueror, followed on 4 April.

The Royal Fleet Auxiliary (RFA) stores ship RFA Fort Austin was despatched from the Western Mediterranean to replenish the only British warship in the South Atlantic, the patrol vessel HMS Endurance, which was down to its last three weeks' supplies. The tanker RFA Appleleaf, which had left Curaçao bound for the United Kingdom with a full load of fuel, received orders on 27 March to divert to Gibraltar, embark stores there, and join Endurance and Fort Austin in the South Atlantic.

When intelligence was received in London on 31 March that the Falklands would be invaded on 2 April, the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and the Secretary of State for Defence, John Nott, instructed the First Sea Lord, Admiral of the Fleet Sir Henry Leach, to ready a force to recapture the islands.  The Commander-in-Chief Fleet, Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse, who was based at Northwood Headquarters, was placed in command of Task Force 317, with overall responsibility for this operation, codenamed Operation Corporate.  Air Marshal Sir John Curtiss was appointed air component commander, and Major General Jeremy Moore, land component commander.

Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward, Flag Officer First Flotilla, commanded the aircraft carrier battle group (TG 317.8); Commodore Michael Clapp, the Commodor, Amphibious Warfare, commanded the amphibious force (TG 317.0); and Brigadier Julian Thompson, the landing force (TG 317.1).  Thompson's force was built around his 3rd Commando Brigade, which had three battalions of the Royal Marines (40 Commando, 42 Commando and 45 Commando), and supporting units including its own logistic support unit, the Commando Logistic Regiment. About 80 per cent of the Commando Logistic Regiment's men were Royal Marines; the rest came from the British Army and Royal Navy.

Aftermath of the Falklands War

Lieutenant Colonel Leslie Kennedy arrived at San Carlos soon after the Argentine surrender as Commander Royal Engineers (CRE) Works, Falkland Islands. His task was to rehabilitate Port Stanley. It took the sappers of 9 Parachute Squadron and 61 Field Squadron four days to restore the water supply to Port Stanley. By this time, the reservoirs were down to two days' supply. In the meantime it was supplied by Fort Toronto through a dracone moored offshore. A military water supply point at Moody Brook was constructed and operated by 3 Field Squadron. The town's consumption was about 12,000 imperial gallons (55,000 l) per day. The electric grid had also been damaged by shellfire, and took a week longer to repair. Its capacity was still limited, so it was supplemented by two 250 KW Army generators. A separate military power station was subsequently established. Fuel was supplied using a dracone.

The major task was restoration of the port and airfield. In the interim, the Hercules transports continued to fly from Ascension, dropping high priority items.  The postal unit moved from Ajax Bay into the Post Office at Port Stanley.  At first, mail bags were airdropped but some fell into Argentine minefields. A method was then devised to allow the Hercules to deliver bags without having to land by trailing a grappling hook attached to the bags which snagged a wire strung between two poles.

Built in the 1970s, the airfield had a 4,100-by-150-foot (1,250 by 46 m) runway. It was unusable because it had been cratered by the RAF. Its rehabilitation was undertaken by 11 Field Squadron and 59 Independent Commando Squadron.  The Argentinians had already repaired three craters. The others were filled in and topped with Argentine aluminium matting. A huge crater caused by a 1,000-pound (450 kg) bomb required over 1,000 square metres (11,000 sq ft) of matting. "Scabs", or scrapes in the runway surface, of which there were several hundred, were repaired with Bostik 276, a magnesium phosphate cement and aggregate mixture. There were 47 Hercules and several hundred Harrier landings before the airfield was closed for repairs on 15 August.

The runway was too short for use by the RAF's Phantoms, so 50 Field Squadron (which had been detailed for the task in May) began extending it to 6,100 feet (1,900 m). Some 9,000 long tons (9,100 t) of airfield construction stores, plant and equipment were landed for this purpose. 25,000 long tons (25,000 t) of quartz granite rock fill was used, which was obtained by 3 and 60 Field Squadrons from a local quarry. Aluminium matting was laid along the whole length of the runway. The first Hercules landed on the new runway on 28 August.  Subsequently, RAF Mount Pleasant was built as a permanent airbase, and opened by Prince Andrew on 12 May 1985.

Sites for the breakdown and storage of bulk supplies were limited, and the warehouses were initially used for the Argentine prisoners.  While Port Stanley provided anchorages for deep draft vessels, its berths were only 6 to 10 metres (20 to 33 ft) deep, suitable only for shallow draft vessels. The Royal Engineers built two slipways for mexeflotes and LCUs.  As late as April 1983, the Ministry of Defence had 25 ships on charter to supply the Falkland Islands. About 1,000 personnel were being ferried to and from the islands each month, requiring the services of Uganda and Cunard Countess.  To provide a regular service, a ferry, the SS St Edmund was taken up and commissioned as a troopship, HMS Keren.  The port was replaced by a £23 million floating wharf and warehouse complex that opened on 26 April 1984. This consisted of six 800-foot (240 m) North Sea oil rig support barges that were linked together. Atop them were warehouses, refrigerated storages, and accommodation and mess facilities for 200 people. It could berth vessels up to 1,000 feet (300 m) long, and was connected to the shore by a 623-foot (190 m) two-lane causeway. An access road was constructed by 37 Engineer Regiment.

With the end of hostilities in the Falklands (although Operation Keyhole, the reoccupation of Thule Island in the South Sandwich Islands, remained, and was concluded on 20 June), the British forces became responsible for feeding the civilian population and 11,848 Argentine prisoners. Due to the British blockade of the island, they had only three days' rations. The prisoners were initially issued with Argentine rations, but the British withheld the officer rations as they contained alcohol. Prisoners rioted on 16 June, setting fire to their clothing store. Those taken at Goose Green had already been repatriated to Argentina via Montevideo in neutral Uruguay on Norland. Some 5,000 Argentine prisoners were embarked on Canberra and 1,000 on Norland on 17 June. By 20 June 10,250 prisoners had been repatriated. Only 593 remained, including Menéndez. These were held for intelligence gathering, and to encourage Argentina to end hostilities. One British prisoner, Flight Lieutenant Jeffrey Glover, was held in Argentina; he was released on 16 July. The last Argentine prisoners were repatriated by 14 July.

The Bakery Section of 91 Ordnance Company baked its first loaf in the Falkland Islands on 30 June. It baked up to 6,000 loaves per day before settling down to just 4,000 by August.  Although rations could soon be supplemented with fresh fruit and vegetables, it was not until August that the troops could be fed fresh rations.

Lessons Learned from the Falklands War

In the logistics section of its report to Parliament on the lessons of the war, the Ministry of Defence highlighted the prodigious expenditure of ammunition and missiles; the high level of logistic support required for operations outside western Europe; the importance of civil resources in the defence effort; and the utility of aerial refuelling.  The value of the Royal Navy's amphibious forces was reassessed. A replacement for the lost Sir Galahad was ordered, and two roll-on roll-off ferries, RFA Sir Caradoc and Sir Lamorak, were chartered while the new RFA Sir Galahad was built and Sir Tristram was repaired. However, the government still dithered over the replacement of the Fearless-class LPDs; and replacements, the Albion class, were not ordered until 1996.  The oil rig support ship MV Stena Inspector was purchased in 1983, and became RFA Diligence, while Astronomer and Contender Bezant were retained as RFA Reliant and Argus respectively. The value of STUFT was recognised, and over the next few years STUFT would see active service in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.

The Falkland War was also studied in other countries, notably in China, where it was the subject of organised teaching and research at the PLA Naval Command College in Nanjing.  The Americans were impressed by the speed with which the British were able to mobilise their forces and get them moving to the theatre of operations in response to a crisis that had erupted with very little warning.  A programme was already under way to improve American sealift capability, and between 1982 and 1986, the United States Congress appropriated and spent US$7 billion on the purchase or lease of new logistics ships. They would be tested in the 1991 Gulf War.  Thompson felt that the overriding importance of logistics as the driving factor of operations was overlooked. He was particularly disappointed that the 5th Infantry Brigade had not used the time it had before embarkation to remedy more of its logistical shortcomings.

Logistics lessons drawn from the conflict were not new, but had not been learned either. These included the failure to integrate operational and tactical planning; improper tactical loading of ships; outdated planning data for consumables, particularly fuel and ammunition; lack of heavy-lift helicopters and poor discipline in the employment of helicopters; shortages of land transport; the employment of new and highly complex equipment on the battlefield; faulty casualty evacuation plans; and the need for post-conflict planning.  British and American commentators observed that much of this could be traced to logistically unrealistic peacetime training and exercises, and called for more exercises where there were "no permanent quarters to house the troops, no Federal Express to deliver critical supply parts, no power production and no in-place hookups for communications or intelligence information."

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

Shape-Shifting Ceramics Weep and Explode

This discovery could improve everything from medical devices to electronics.

From:  University of Minnesota

November 17, 2021 -- An international team of researchers from the University of Minnesota Twin Cities and Kiel University in Germany have discovered a path that could lead to shape-shifting ceramic materials.

The research is published open access in Nature, the world's leading multidisciplinary science journal.

Anyone who has ever dropped a coffee cup and watched it break into several pieces, knows that ceramics are brittle. Subject to the slightest deformation, they shatter. However, ceramics are used for more than just dishes and bathroom tiles, they are used in electronics because, depending on their composition, they may be semiconducting, superconducting, ferroelectric, or insulating. Ceramics are also non corrosive and used in making a wide variety of products, including spark plugs, fiber optics, medical devices, space shuttle tiles, chemical sensors, and skis.

On the other end of the materials spectrum are shape memory alloys. They are some of the most deformable or reshapable materials known. Shape memory alloys rely on this tremendous deformability when functioning as medical stents, the backbone of a vibrant medical device industry both in the Twin Cities area and in Germany.

The origin of this shape-shifting behavior is a solid-to-solid phase transformation. Different from the process of crystallization-melting-recrystallization, crystalline solid-solid transitions take place solely in the solid state. By changing temperature (or pressure), a crystalline solid can be transformed into another crystalline solid without entering a liquid phase.

In this new research, the route to producing a reversible shape memory ceramic was anything but straightforward. The researchers first tried a recipe that has worked for the discovery of new metallic shape memory materials. That involves a delicate tuning of the distances between atoms by compositional changes, so that the two phases fit together well. They implemented this recipe, but, instead of improving the deformability of the ceramic, they observed that some specimens exploded when they passed through the phase transformation. Others gradually fell apart into a pile of powder, a phenomenon they termed "weeping."

With yet another composition, they observed a reversible transformation, easily transforming back and forth between the phases, much like a shape memory material. The mathematical conditions under which reversible transformation occurs can be applied widely and provide a way forward toward the paradoxical shape-memory ceramic.

"We were quite amazed by our results. Shape-memory ceramics would be a completely new kind of functional material," said Richard James, a co-author of the study and a Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the University of Minnesota's Department of Aerospace Engineering Mechanics. "There is a great need for shape memory actuators that can function in high temperature or in corrosive environments. But what excites us most is the prospect of new ferroelectric ceramics. In these materials, the phase transformation can be used to generate electricity from small temperature differences."

The team from Germany was responsible for the experimental part and the chemical and structural investigation at the nanoscale.

"For the explanation of our experimental discovery that, contrary to expectation, the ceramics are extremely incompatible and explode or decay, the collaboration with Richard James' group at the University of Minnesota was very valuable," says Eckhard Quandt, a co-author of the study and a professor in the Institute for Materials Science, at Kiel University. "The theory developed on this basis not only describes the behavior, but also shows the way to get to the desired compatible shape memory ceramics."

James also highlighted the importance of the collaboration between the University of Minnesota and Kiel University.

"Our collaboration with Eckhard Quandt's group at Kiel University has been tremendously productive," added James. "As in all such collaborations, there is sufficient overlap that we communicate well, but each group brings plenty of ideas and techniques that expand our collective ability to discover."

In addition to James and Quandt, the research team included Lorenz Kienle from Kiel University Andriy Lotnyk from the Leibniz Institute of Surface Engineering, and graduate students Hanlin Gu, Jascha Romer, and Justin Jetter.

The researchers were supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation, a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship on the `Mathematical Design of Materials' from the U.S. Department of Defense, a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) grant from the Office of Naval Research, a Mercator Fellowship from the German Research Foundation, and the Reinhart Koselleck Project from the German National Science Foundation.

              https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211117211559.htm 

Broadway Composer Stephen Sondheim Died

Stephen Joshua Sondheim (March 22, 1930 – November 26, 2021) was an American composer and lyricist. One of the most important figures in 20th-century musical theater, Sondheim has been praised for having “reinvented the American musical" with shows that tackle "unexpected themes that range far beyond the [genre's] traditional subjects" with "music and lyrics of unprecedented complexity and sophistication."  His shows have been acclaimed for addressing "darker, more harrowing elements of the human experience," with songs often tinged with "ambivalence" about various aspects of life.

Sondheim's best-known works as composer and lyricist include A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1962), Company (1970), Follies (1971), A Little Night Music (1973), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (1979), Sunday in the Park with George (1984), and Into the Woods (1987).  He is also known for writing the lyrics for West Side Story (1957) and Gypsy (1959).

Sondheim's accolades include nine Tony Awards (including a Lifetime Achievement Tony in 2008), an Academy Award, eight Grammy Awards, a Pulitzer Prize, a Laurence Olivier Award, and a 2015 Presidential Medal of Freedom.  He also has a theatre named for him on both Broadway and the West End in London.  Sondheim has written film music, contributing “Goodbye for Now" for Warren Beatty's 1981 Reds. He wrote five songs for 1990's Dick Tracy, including "Sooner or Later (I Always Get My Man)", sung in the film by Madonna, which won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.  Film adaptations of Sondheim's work include West Side Story (1961), Gypsy (1962), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), A Little Night Music (1977), Gypsy (1993), Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street (2007), Into the Woods (2014), West Side Story (2021), and Merrily We Roll Along (TBA).

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

  

Strange, Rocky Exoplanets

A new astrogeology study suggests that most nearby rocky exoplanets are quite unlike anything in our Solar System

From:  Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy (AURA)

November 2, 2021 -- An astronomer from NSF's NOIRLab has teamed up with a geologist from California State University, Fresno, to make the first estimates of rock types that exist on planets orbiting nearby stars. After studying the chemical composition of "polluted" white dwarfs, they have concluded that most rocky planets orbiting nearby stars are more diverse and exotic than previously thought, with types of rocks not found anywhere in our Solar System.

Astronomers have discovered thousands of planets orbiting stars in our galaxy -- known as exoplanets. However, it's difficult to know what exactly these planets are made of, or whether any resemble Earth. To try to find out, astronomer Siyi Xu of NSF's NOIRLab partnered with geologist Keith Putirka of California State University, Fresno, to study the atmospheres of what are known as polluted white dwarfs. These are the dense, collapsed cores of once-normal stars like the Sun that contain foreign material from planets, asteroids, or other rocky bodies that once orbited the star but eventually fell into the white dwarf and "contaminated" its atmosphere. By looking for elements that wouldn't naturally exist in a white dwarf's atmosphere (anything other than hydrogen and helium), scientists can figure out what the rocky planetary objects that fell into the star were made of.

Putirka and Xu looked at 23 polluted white dwarfs, all within about 650 light-years of the Sun, where calcium, silicon, magnesium, and iron had been measured with precision using the W. M. Keck Observatory in Hawai'i, the Hubble Space Telescope, and other observatories. The scientists then used the measured abundances of those elements to reconstruct the minerals and rocks that would form from them. They found that these white dwarfs have a much wider range of compositions than any of the inner planets in our Solar System, suggesting their planets had a wider variety of rock types. In fact, some of the compositions are so unusual that Putirka and Xu had to create new names (such as "quartz pyroxenites" and "periclase dunites") to classify the novel rock types that must have existed on those planets.

"While some exoplanets that once orbited polluted white dwarfs appear similar to Earth, most have rock types that are exotic to our Solar System," said Xu. "They have no direct counterparts in the Solar System."

Putirka describes what these new rock types might mean for the rocky worlds they belong to. "Some of the rock types that we see from the white dwarf data would dissolve more water than rocks on Earth and might impact how oceans are developed," he explained. "Some rock types might melt at much lower temperatures and produce thicker crust than Earth rocks, and some rock types might be weaker, which might facilitate the development of plate tectonics."

Earlier studies of polluted white dwarfs had found elements from rocky bodies, including calcium, aluminum, and lithium. However, Putirka and Xu explain that those are minor elements (which typically make up a small part of an Earth rock) and measurements of major elements (which make up a large part of an Earth rock), especially silicon, are needed to truly know what kind of rock types would have existed on those planets.

In addition, Putirka and Xu state that the high levels of magnesium and low levels of silicon measured in the white dwarfs' atmospheres suggest that the rocky debris detected likely came from the interiors of the planets -- from the mantle, not their crust. Some previous studies of polluted white dwarfs reported signs that continental crust existed on the rocky planets that once orbited those stars, but Putirka and Xu found no evidence of crustal rocks. However, the observations do not completely rule out that the planets had continental crust or other crust types. "We believe that if crustal rock exists, we are unable to see it, probably because it occurs in too small a fraction compared to the mass of other planetary components, like the core and mantle, to be measured," Putirka stated.

According to Xu, the pairing of an astronomer and a geologist was the key to unlocking the secrets hidden in the atmospheres of the polluted white dwarfs. "I met Keith Putirka at a conference and was excited that he could help me understand the systems that I was observing. He taught me geology and I taught him astronomy, and we figured out how to make sense of these mysterious exoplanetary systems."

The pair's results are published in the 2 November 2021 issue of Nature Communications.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211102180527.htm

 

Cheaper Data Privacy for Machine Learning

Computer scientists have discovered an inexpensive way for tech companies to implement a rigorous form of personal data privacy when using or sharing large databases for machine learning.

From: Rice University

November 16, 2021 -- "There are many cases where machine learning could benefit society if data privacy could be ensured," said Anshumali Shrivastava, an associate professor of computer science at Rice. "There's huge potential for improving medical treatments or finding patterns of discrimination, for example, if we could train machine learning systems to search for patterns in large databases of medical or financial records. Today, that's essentially impossible because data privacy methods do not scale."

Shrivastava and Rice graduate student Ben Coleman hope to change that with a new method they'll present this week at CCS 2021, the Association for Computing Machinery's annual flagship conference on computer and communications security. Using a technique called locality sensitive hashing, Shirvastava and Coleman found they could create a small summary of an enormous database of sensitive records. Dubbed RACE, their method draws its name from these summaries, or "repeated array of count estimators" sketches.

Coleman said RACE sketches are both safe to make publicly available and useful for algorithms that use kernel sums, one of the basic building blocks of machine learning, and for machine-learning programs that perform common tasks like classification, ranking and regression analysis. He said RACE could allow companies to both reap the benefits of large-scale, distributed machine learning and uphold a rigorous form of data privacy called differential privacy.

Differential privacy, which is used by more than one tech giant, is based on the idea of adding random noise to obscure individual information.

"There are elegant and powerful techniques to meet differential privacy standards today, but none of them scale," Coleman said. "The computational overhead and the memory requirements grow exponentially as data becomes more dimensional."

Data is increasingly high-dimensional, meaning it contains both many observations and many individual features about each observation.

RACE sketching scales for high-dimensional data, he said. The sketches are small and the computational and memory requirements for constructing them are also easy to distribute.

"Engineers today must either sacrifice their budget or the privacy of their users if they wish to use kernel sums," Shrivastava said. "RACE changes the economics of releasing high-dimensional information with differential privacy. It's simple, fast and 100 times less expensive to run than existing methods."

This is the latest innovation from Shrivasta and his students, who have developed numerous algorithmic strategies to make machine learning and data science faster and more scalable. They and their collaborators have: found a more efficient way for social media companies to keep misinformation from spreading online, discovered how to train large-scale deep learning systems up to 10 times faster for "extreme classification" problems, found a way to more accurately and efficiently estimate the number of identified victims killed in the Syrian civil war, showed it's possible to train deep neural networks as much as 15 times faster on general purpose CPUs (central processing units) than GPUs (graphics processing units), and slashed the amount of time required for searching large metagenomic databases.

The research was supported by the Office of Naval Research's Basic Research Challenge program, the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and Adobe Inc.

            https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211116103110.htm

 

Robert Bly, the Last American Poet, Dies

Robert Elwood Bly (December 23, 1926 – November 21, 2021) was an American poet, essayist, activist and leader of the mythopoetic men's movement.  His best-known prose book is Iron John: A Book About Men (1990), which spent 62 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list, and is a key text of the mythopoetic men's movement. He won the 1968 National Book Award for Poetry for his book The Light Around the Body.

Bly has frequently conducted workshops for men, together with James Hillman, Michael J. Meade, and others, as well as workshops for men and women with Marion Woodman.  He maintained a friendly correspondence with Clarissa Pinkola Estés, author of Women Who Run With the Wolves.  [Estes refers to correspondence with Bly in footnotes to her bestseller, Women Who Run With the Wolves.]  Bly wrote The Maiden King: The Reunion of Masculine and Feminine with Marion Woodman. He published a poetry anthology titled The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart (1992), with James Hillman and Michael Meade co-editing.

Thought and the Men’s Movement

Much of Bly's prose writing focuses on what he saw as the particularly troubled situation in which many males find themselves today. He understood this to be a result of, among other things, the decline of traditional fathering which left young boys unguided through the stages of life leading to maturity. He claimed that in contrast with women who are better informed by their bodies (notably by the beginning and end of their menstrual cycle), men need to be actively guided out of boyhood and into manhood by their elders. Pre-modern cultures had elaborate myths, often enacted as rites of passage, as well as "men's societies" where older men would teach young boys about these gender-specific issues. As modern fathers have become increasingly absent, this knowledge is no longer being passed down the generations, resulting in what he referred to as a Sibling Society.  The "Absence of the Father" is a recurrent theme in Bly's work and according to him, many of the phenomena of depression, juvenile delinquency and lack of leadership in business and politics are linked to it.

Bly therefore saw today's men as half-adults, trapped between boyhood and maturity, in a state where they find it hard to become responsible in their work as well as leaders in their communities. Eventually they might become weak or absent fathers themselves which will cause this behaviour to be passed down to their children. In his book The Sibling Society (1997), Bly argues that a society formed of such men is inherently problematic as it lacks creativity and a deep sense of empathy. The image of half-adults is further reinforced by popular culture which often portrays fathers as naive, overweight and almost always emotionally co-dependent. Historically this represents a recent shift from a traditional patriarchal model and Bly believes that women rushed to fill the gap that was formed through the various youth movements during the 1960s, enhancing men's emotional capacities and helping them to connect with women's age-old pain of repression. It has however also led to the creation of "soft males" who lacked the outwardly directed strength to revitalize the community with assertiveness and a certain warrior strength.

In Bly's view, a potential solution lay in the rediscovery of the meanings hidden in traditional myths and fairytales as well as works of poetry. He researched and collected myths that concern male maturity, often originating from the Grimms' Fairy Tales and published them in various books, Iron John being the best known example.  In contrast to the continual pursuit of higher achievements, that is constantly taught to young men today, the theme of spiritual descent (often being referred to by its Greek term κατάβασις) which is to be found in many of these myths, is presented as a necessary step for coming in contact with the deeper aspects of the masculine self and achieving its full potential. This is often presented as hero, often during the middle of his quest, going underground to pass a period of solitude and sorrow in semi-bestial mode. Bly noticed that a cultural space existed in most traditional societies for such a period in a man's life, in the absence of which, many men today go into a depression and alcoholism as they subconsciously try to emulate this innate ritual.

Bly was influenced by the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung who developed the theory of archetypes, the discrete structures of the Psyche which emerge as images in dreams, myths, and art. The Powerful King, the Evil Witch and the Beautiful Maiden are, according to Jung, some of the imprints of the collective unconscious and Bly wrote extensively about their meaning and relations to modern life. As an example and in accordance with Jung, he considered the Witch to be that part of the male psyche upon which the negative and destructive side of a woman is imprinted and which first developed during infancy to store the imperfections of one's own mother. As a consequence, the Witch's symbols are essentially inverted motherly symbols, where the loving act of cooking is transformed into the brewing of evil potions and knitting clothes takes the form of spider's web. The feeding process is also reversed, with the child now in danger of being eaten to feed the body of the Witch rather than being fed by the mother's own body. In that respect, the Witch is a mark of arrested development on the part of the man as it guards against feminine realities that his psyche is not yet able to incorporate fully. Fairy tales according to this interpretation mostly describe internal battles played out externally, where the hero saves his future bride by killing a witch, as in "The Drummer" (Grimm’s tale 193). This particular concept is expanded in Bly's 1989 talk "The Human Shadow" and the book it presented.

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

The Dangers of Centralized Planning in the Name of Climate Change

By Kevin Mooney

November 21, 2021

[Climate studies are seldom what they seem.  Click on this link:]  https://www.realclearenergy.org/articles/2021/11/21/hot_talk_cold_science_and_the_dangers_of_centralized_planning_in_the_name_of_climate_change_804467.html

Methane Produced From Carbon Dioxide

Efficient catalyst for the light-driven methanation of CO2

From:  Wiley

November 17, 2021 -- Recycling carbon dioxide (CO₂), especially through conversion to methane (CH₄), is compelling while anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are still rising. A useful process for this transformation is photothermal methanation, in which CO₂ and hydrogen are catalytically converted into CH₄ and water upon irradiation with sunlight. In the journal Angewandte Chemie, a team of researchers has now reported the synthesis of a highly active, stable, nickel-carbon catalyst for this reaction.

The team led by Luis Garzón-Tovar and Jorge Gascon at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (Thuwal, Saudi Arabia) was looking for an efficient, economical catalyst for the photothermal methanation of CO₂. Photothermal catalysis is based on the combination of light-driven and thermal chemical processes. In contrast to pure photocatalysis, it has the advantage of allowing longer wavelength light in the visible and IR regions of the spectrum to contribute to driving the reaction.

Instead of precious metals, they sought to base the new catalyst on an abundant, inexpensive metal, and chose to use a high load of nickel nanoparticles on a carbon-based support. Carbon materials are highly promising supports for photothermal catalysis because they absorb a broad spectrum of light, are highly efficient in converting light into heat energy, and have a large surface area.

The team used a nickel-containing metal-organic framework (Ni-MOF-74) as their starting material for producing the catalyst. Controlled pyrolysis of this material at 600°C proved to be optimal. The Ni-MOF-74 decomposes to form uniform finely distributed nickel nanoparticles embedded in a porous graphitic carbon matrix. The resulting material, named Ni@C, demonstrated a high rate of conversion and high selectivity for methanation under artificial UV, visible, and IR light. In a continuous process in a flow-type reactor, the efficiency of the catalyst remained stable over a period of more than 12 hours.

To demonstrate the practical application of this system, an experiment was run outside, under natural sunlight, proving the potential of this new catalyst to reduce CO₂ to CH₄ using solar energy.

       https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211117100104.htm

 

Zodiac Killer Identified at Last?

"A team of specialists who investigate cold cases and claims to have identified the Zodiac Killer earlier this year released a statement that a trove of evidence has been discovered linked to the deceased suspect, Gary Francis Poste."

Details at:  https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crime/zodiac-killer-may-be-unmasked-as-cold-case-team-finds-goldmine-of-evidence/ar-AAQWrNS?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

A New Group of Antibacterial Molecules Has Been Identified

From:  Karolinska Institutet KI News

November 17, 2021 -- Researchers at Karolinska Institutet, Umeå University, and the University of Bonn have identified a new group of molecules that have an antibacterial effect against many antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Since the properties of the molecules can easily be altered chemically, the hope is to develop new, effective antibiotics with few side effects. The findings have been published in the scientific journal PNAS.

The increasing resistance to antibiotics in the world is alarming while few new types of antibiotics have been developed in the past 50 years. There is therefore a great need to find new antibacterial substances.

The majority of antibiotics in clinical use work by inhibiting the bacteria’s ability to form a protective cell wall, causing the bacteria to crack (cell lysis). Besides the well-known penicillin, that inhibit enzymes building up the wall, newer antibiotics such as daptomycin or the recently discovered teixobactin bind to a special molecule, lipid II. Lipid II is needed by all bacteria to build up the cell wall. Antibiotics that bind to this cell wall building block are usually very large and complex molecules and therefore more difficult to improve with chemical methods. These molecules are in addition mostly inactive against a group of problematic bacteria, which are surrounded by an additional layer, the outer membrane, that hinders penetration of these antibacterials.

Attractive target for new antibiotics

“Lipid II is a very attractive target for new antibiotics. We have identified the first small antibacterial compounds that work by binding to this lipid molecule, and in our study, we found no resistant bacterial mutants, which is very promising,” says Birgitta Henriques Normark, professor at the Department of Microbiology, Tumor and Cell Biology, Karolinska Institutet, and one of the article’s three corresponding authors.

In this study, researchers at Karolinska Institutet and Umeå University in Sweden have tested a large number of chemical compounds for their ability to lyse pneumococci, bacteria that are the most common cause of community-acquired pneumonia. The initial tests were carried out in collaboration with the Chemical Biology Consortium Sweden (CBCS), a national research infrastructure at SciLifeLab. After a careful follow-up of active compounds from this screening, the researchers, in collaboration with the University of Bonn in Germany, found that a group of molecules called THCz inhibits the formation of the cell wall of the bacterium by binding to lipid II. The molecules could also prevent the formation of the sugar capsule that pneumococci need to escape the immune system and to cause disease.

Easier to change chemically

“The advantage of small molecules like these is that they are easier to change chemically. We hope to be able to change THCz so that the antibacterial effect increases and any negative effects on human cells decrease,” says Fredrik Almqvist, professor at the Department of Chemistry at Umeå University and one of the corresponding authors.

In laboratory experiments, THCz have an antibacterial effect against many antibiotic-resistant bacteria, such as methicillin-resistant staphylococci (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), and penicillin-resistant pneumococci (PNSP). An antibacterial effect was also found against gonococci, which causes gonorrhoea, and mycobacteria, bacteria that can cause severe diseases such as tuberculosis in humans. The researchers were unable to identify any bacteria that developed resistance to THCz in a laboratory environment.

Penetrate the outer cell membrane

We will now also initiate attempts to change the THCz molecule, allowing it to penetrate the outer cell membrane found in some, especially intractable, multi-resistant bacteria,” says Tanja Schneider, professor at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Microbiology at the University of Bonn and one of the corresponding authors.

The research was carried out in close collaboration with Karolinska University Hospital and the University Hospital in Bonn. The study was funded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research, the Swedish Research Council, the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, Region Stockholm, the Göran Gustafsson Foundation, the German Research Foundation (DFG; TRR261) and the German Center for Infection Research (DZIF). There are no reported conflicts of interest.

Publication

”THCz - Small molecules with antimicrobial activity that block cell wall lipid intermediates”. Elisabeth Reithuber, Torbjörn Wixe, Kevin C. Ludwig, Anna Müller, Hanna Uvell, Fabian Grein, Anders E.G. Lindgrenb, Sandra Muschiol, Priyanka Nannapaneni, Anna Eriksson, Tanja Schneider, Staffan Normark, Birgitta Henriques-Normark, Fredrik Almqvist, Peter Mellroth. PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences), online 16 November 2021, doi: 10.1073/pnas.2108244118.

https://news.ki.se/new-group-of-antibacterial-molecules-identified

New Holographic Camera Sees the Unseen

Device can see around corners and through scattering media like fog and human tissue

From:  Northwestern University

November 17, 2021 -- Northwestern University researchers have invented a new high-resolution camera that can see the unseen -- including around corners and through scattering media, such as skin, fog or potentially even the human skull.

Called synthetic wavelength holography, the new method works by indirectly scattering coherent light onto hidden objects, which then scatters again and travels back to a camera. From there, an algorithm reconstructs the scattered light signal to reveal the hidden objects. Due to its high temporal resolution, the method also has potential to image fast-moving objects, such as the beating heart through the chest or speeding cars around a street corner.

The study will be published on Nov. 17 in the journal Nature Communications.

The relatively new research field of imaging objects behind occlusions or scattering media is called non-line-of-sight (NLoS) imaging. Compared to related NLoS imaging technologies, the Northwestern method can rapidly capture full-field images of large areas with submillimeter precision. With this level of resolution, the computational camera could potentially image through the skin to see even the tiniest capillaries at work.

While the method has obvious potential for noninvasive medical imaging, early-warning navigation systems for automobiles and industrial inspection in tightly confined spaces, the researchers believe potential applications are endless.

"Our technology will usher in a new wave of imaging capabilities," said Northwestern's Florian Willomitzer, first author of the study. "Our current sensor prototypes use visible or infrared light, but the principle is universal and could be extended to other wavelengths. For example, the same method could be applied to radio waves for space exploration or underwater acoustic imaging. It can be applied to many areas, and we have only scratched the surface."

Willomitzer is a research assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at Northwestern's McCormick School of Engineering. Northwestern co-authors include Oliver Cossairt, associate professor of computer science and electrical and computer engineering, and former Ph.D. student Fengqiang Li. The Northwestern researchers collaborated closely with Prasanna Rangarajan, Muralidhar Balaji and Marc Christensen, all researchers at Southern Methodist University.

Intercepting scattered light

Seeing around a corner versus imaging an organ inside the human body might seem like very different challenges, but Willomitzer said they are actually closely related. Both deal with scattering media, in which light hits an object and scatters in a manner that a direct image of the object can no longer be seen.

"If you have ever tried to shine a flashlight through your hand, then you have experienced this phenomenon," Willomitzer said. "You see a bright spot on the other side of your hand, but, theoretically, there should be a shadow cast by your bones, revealing the bones' structure. Instead, the light that passes the bones gets scattered within the tissue in all directions, completely blurring out the shadow image."

The goal, then, is to intercept the scattered light in order to reconstruct the inherent information about its time of travel to reveal the hidden object. But that presents its own challenge.

"Nothing is faster than the speed of light, so if you want to measure light's time of travel with high precision, then you need extremely fast detectors," Willomitzer said. "Such detectors can be terribly expensive."

Tailored waves

To eliminate the need for fast detectors, Willomitzer and his colleagues merged light waves from two lasers in order to generate a synthetic light wave that can be specifically tailored to holographic imaging in different scattering scenarios.

"If you can capture the entire light field of an object in a hologram, then you can reconstruct the object's three-dimensional shape in its entirety," Willomitzer explained. "We do this holographic imaging around a corner or through scatterers -- with synthetic waves instead of normal light waves."

Over the years, there have been many NLoS imaging attempts to recover images of hidden objects. But these methods typically have one or more problems. They either have low resolution, an extremely small angular field of regard, require a time-consuming raster scan or need large probing areas to measure the scattered light signal.

The new technology, however, overcomes these issues and is the first method for imaging around corners and through scattering media that combines high spatial resolution, high temporal resolution, a small probing area and a large angular field of view. This means that the camera can image tiny features in tightly confined spaces as well as hidden objects in large areas with high resolution -- even when the objects are moving.

Turning 'walls into mirrors'

Because light only travels on straight paths, an opaque barrier (such as a wall, shrub or automobile) must be present in order for the new device to see around corners. The light is emitted from the sensor unit (which could be mounted on top of a car), bounces off the barrier, then hits the object around the corner. The light then bounces back to the barrier and ultimately back into the detector of the sensor unit.

"It's like we can plant a virtual computational camera on every remote surface to see the world from the surface's perspective," Willomitzer said.

For people driving roads curving through a mountain pass or snaking through a rural forest, this method could prevent accidents by revealing other cars or deer just out of sight around the bend. "This technique turns walls into mirrors," Willomitzer said. "It gets better as the technique also can work at night and in foggy weather conditions."

In this manner, the high-resolution technology also could replace (or supplement) endoscopes for medical and industrial imaging. Instead of needing a flexible camera, capable of turning corners and twisting through tight spaces -- for a colonoscopy, for example -- synthetic wavelength holography could use light to see around the many folds inside the intestines.

Similarly, synthetic wavelength holography could image inside industrial equipment while it is still running -- a feat that is impossible for current endoscopes.

"If you have a running turbine and want to inspect defects inside, you would typically use an endoscope," Willomitzer said. "But some defects only show up when the device is in motion. You cannot use an endoscope and look inside the turbine from the front while it is running. Our sensor can look inside a running turbine to detect structures that are smaller than one millimeter."

Although the technology is currently a prototype, Willomitzer believes it will eventually be used to help drivers avoid accidents. "It's still a long way to go before we see these kinds of imagers built in cars or approved for medical applications," he said. "Maybe 10 years or even more, but it will come."

          https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211117100106.htm

 

Low Cost Private School Education

Actually Exists in the Developing World yet is wanted and needed in the USA

By Keri D. lngraham

November 17, 2021 -- Low-cost private schools exist throughout developing nations at remarkable rates. Why not in the U.S.?

The words low-cost and private education seem antithetical. With the cost of tuition averaging nearly $12,000 per year, private education is financially out of reach for most families. Of the 56.4 million U.S. K-12 students, only about ten percent (5.72 million) are enrolled in private schools. While there is a growing number of homeschooled students and students in other non-traditional forms of school — public charter schools, virtual, microschools, learning pods, and hybrid options — the overwhelming majority attend traditional public schools.

The Current Reality

On average, private school students outperform their public school peers in test scores, graduation rates, and percentages matriculating to college. This is despite public schools’ spending on average $4,000 more per student each year. The same is true for students who attend charter schools or homeschool — better academic results and less money spent.

According to EdChoice’s 2021 Schooling in America Survey, conducted from June-July 2021, only 34% of parents of students attending traditional public school indicate that is their preference. Despite only ten percent currently attending private school, 40% of all parents desire private school for their children. Furthermore, only 31% of current public school parents are very satisfied with their children’s public district school, while 72% of private school parents are very satisfied. Alas, the high tuition costs of private schools (as opposed to free public schools) keep most families in a situation they don’t prefer.

One hopeful note is that school choice is gaining record new ground in 2021, with five additional states’ implementing educational saving accounts (making the total ten states) and the expansion of private school tuition vouchers in multiple states. However, most parents still don’t have access to private schools. Many school choice funding allowances only cover a portion of private school tuition, and many are limited to special needs students or the lowest income brackets. In many cases, the total number of students eligible for these state funding allowances is capped to a small number. Today, less than one-half of one percent of students have access to a private school voucher. Even when we include all forms of school choice funding avenues and charter schools, fewer than one in fifteen students in America have access to these options.

A Question Worth Exploring

What if low-cost private education existed in the U.S.? Given the dissatisfaction with traditional public schools and the desire for private education alternatives mentioned above, it’s a crucial question.

James Tooley, in his recently released book, Really Good Schools: Global Lessons for High-Caliber, Low-Cost Education, shares his remarkable journey of discovering, studying, and starting low-cost private schools serving poor and low-income families in developing nations. A product of grassroots movement rather than central organization or control, these low-cost private schools in countries marked by extreme poverty for a high percentage of their population are a part of a global movement — largely unheard of by those in the developed world.

Particularly surprising is that parents living in poverty are opting to send their children to tuition-charging private schools when free, government-provided schools are available. The reason is perhaps not so surprising: parents desire quality education and care for their children, even if it causes financial hardship. Overwhelmingly, parents in these schools communicated that a nurturing classroom atmosphere and freedom from a “hidden curriculum” lead to their sacrificial decision to enroll their children in private school. And these are not just a few outlier families — low-cost private schools educate a significant number of students. For example, in Kampala, Uganda, 84% of primary-school children are enrolled in private education.

Similar to the experience in the U.S., Tooley’s research found that “children in low-cost private schools outperform those in government schools, after controlling for all relevant background variables. And the schools do it for a fraction of the per-pupil cost.” Likewise, parental satisfaction with private schools in developing nations is significantly higher than in government-run public schools.

Tooley makes a key observation from his in-depth work studying developing nations: “Even though public-school teachers ‘are extremely well-paid,’ they are ‘permanent government employees with no accountability for the work they (fail to) do.” On the other hand, private school teachers must ensure student learning standards are high and must equip students with the academic knowledge and skills they need to succeed. Otherwise, parents won’t pay tuition and will instead take their students to another school.

Making private education possible for low-income families has required innovative approaches. For example, in many countries, workers are often paid daily for labor jobs or by selling goods at the market rather than by a monthly or weekly paycheck. Therefore, many schools offer enrolled students a daily “pay as you learn” rate rather than having to pay a hefty tuition payment covering a longer period of time, such as a monthly or quarterly.

Applicability for America

What can we learn from these developing world private schools? Can their experience be replicated in the U.S.? While the economic landscapes differ, the undergirding principles are universal — private education provides competition to government public schools and promotes accountability. Both of these ingredients are foundational to providing quality education. Private schools are accountable to parents for providing quality academic results, or they will cease to exist. The education monopoly in American K-12 public education, on the other hand, results in the perpetuation of a dismal status quo, which fails to effectively educate over 70% of its students.

America would be wise to learn from developing nations and aggressively increase private education — making it available to low-income families and those in poverty, not just to the upper-middle class, wealthy, and elite. It starts with putting more education dollars where they belong — in the hands of parents, who can best decide where their kids should be educated. The resulting boom in educational entrepreneurship would put the U.S. as a leader in K-12 education.

Keri D. Ingraham is a Fellow at Discovery Institute and Director of the Institute’s American Center for Transforming Education. This article is part one of a three-part series. 

https://www.realcleareducation.com/articles/2021/11/17/what_if_low-cost_private_education_existed_110671.html