Zark's

Science Rediscovers the Concept of Margin

Before the Sony Walkman or Sony Trinitron, Japanese manufacturers embraced a concept named Just-in-Time-Manufacturing.  Instead of building large warehouses to stock the components necessary for production, they orchestrated planes, trains, and trucks to arrive with the exact components just before the parts were needed at the production line. (Today, just-in-time-manufacturing is named lean manufacturing.)

The manufacturer no longer had to carry the costs and risks of inventory.  This was eventually extended throughout our culture.  Just-in-time is used for retail, fast-food, and now even in computing. 

Suppose though, the steering wheels don't arrive on time - then the production line stops.  So it is a risk. But we no longer evaluate cost-reward, it is standard practice.  Just-in-time has infiltrated our culture where our personal lives are just-in-time. 

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The converse to just-in-time is margin - extra space, time, money, instead of sharpening the point of the pencil to its finest possible mark.  We have lost that throughout culture, including our lives.

Curiously researchers at Georgia Tech have published More Workers Working Might Not Get More Work Done, Ants (and Robots) Show.  They studied ants and discovered that ants schedule idleness, with perhaps 30% idle while others are fully engaged.  It isn't that 30% of the ant population is lazy - depending upon the environment, the slackers might start working and others idle themselves. 

Our culture needs to rediscover the benefits of margin.

Vascular Drainage a Link to Alzheimer's Disease?

I keep looking for hope in the battle against Alzheimer's Disease.  Recently Virginia Tech published research that sounds plausible. Study identifies possible treatment target for Alzheimer’s, age-related cognitive decline tells that dysfunction of the drainage pathways in the brain can affect cognitive decline and appearance of Alzheimer's Disease symptoms. 

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 As people become older, the ability to drain cellular debris from the brain might decline by fifty percent.  Some of that cellular debris includes proteins responsible for Alzheimer's pathology. It follows that buildup occurs when the proteins are not cleared from the neurons.

By increasing the drainage flow from mice afflicted with Alzheimer's pathology, their cognitive capability was increased.  The research note does not state the size of the improvement, but hopefully inch-by-inch, we are coming closer to treatments that will demonstratively improve patients quality of life.

 

Book Review - Things I'll Never forget: Memories of a Marine in Vietnam

This past week I read, Things I'll Never forget: Memories of a Marine in Vietnam, by James M. Dixon.  I have read several books from a national and strategic history perspective, but never from an infantry soldier, or 'grunt'.

Dixon describes the 13 month tour of Vietnam he lived through after graduating from high school.  I doubt that any Vietnam veteran could tell such a story face-to-face.  The author admits that his wife had never heard many of the stories until proofing his text.  The experiences of an infantry veteran are so personal and horrific that Dixon deserves a badge of courage for writing it.

That doesn't mean reading the text is painful - it isn't it.  Dixon became a school teacher after leaving Vietnam and there are many humorous stories about his fellow soldiers and officers.  Many times I would have to stop reading for a couple of minutes because I was laughing aloud. And I kept flipping pages because I wanted to know what happened next.

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But it was deadly serious in Vietnam.  Although they were called, 'baby killers' back home, the soldiers were fighting a treacherous enemy who booby-trapped the bodies of dead Americans with grenades.  Dixon writes he remembers the first and last he killed,and in between, it is a blur. 

The author grew up as a Quaker, and his book is not a defense of war or the policies that placed so many young Americans 9000 miles from home.  Instead, it is a life-tempered recollection and analysis of 13 months immediately after high school.  Dixon tells that he lived with the memories by forgetting and not talking about his experiences.  He isn't ashamed of his service or what he did.  It was just very intense.

We all know - War is hell, but most of us don't really know what that means.  I don't know of any Vietnam veteran who talks about what they experienced.  I'm grateful that Dixon has provided us a valuable record of life as an infantry soldier in Vietnam.  I'm sorry that I never recognized them for the heroes that they are.

 

 

Alzheimer's Hope?

At the 2018 Alzheimer's Association International Conference in Chicago, a drug named BAN2401 has showed some promise in preventing beta amyloid plaques from forming in addition to reducing existing plaque clusters.  CNN reports it also provides a 30 percent improvement in cognitive processing. 

Although beta amyloid plaques are correlated with Alzheimer's Disease, that doesn't imply they are the cause.  Many beta amyloid inhibitors have been studied over the past ten years, but there has been little success in improving cognitive processing to date.  Consider that a high white blood cell count (WBC) rarely indicates a problem with a patient's bone marrow; but rather there is an infection.  Perhaps beta amyloid plaques in the brain are an indicator rather than cause.

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Some researchers at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) believe viruses play a role in Alzheimer's disease.  An extensive analysis of postmortem brain samples shows a correlation with viruses and Alzheimer's.  As with beta amyloids, it unknown whether viruses cause the onset of the disease.

The 2018 Alzheimer's Disease Facts and Figures provides a wealth of current information about the disease.  5.7 million Americans are living with Alzheimer's dementia.  Patients aged 65 and older on average survive 4-8 years after initial diagnosis.  About 40 percent of that time is with the most severe stage of dementia.  75 percent of 80-year-old Alzheimer's patients are in nursing homes compared to only 4 percent of those without the disease.  $341,840 is the estimated lifetime cost of care for an Alzheimer's patient.

Those are scary numbers aren't they?  Let your House Representative or Senator know the urgency for increased research.

 

Only Part of Mr. Spock

The iPhone or Android we carry has long surpassed the capabilities of the Star Trek Communicators.  As more health apps are developed, our smartphone will surpass the Star Trek Tricorder as well.

 The transistor was invented in 1947, replacing the vacuum tube.  The latter was called simply a tube in the U.S., but called a valve by the Brits.  They were more descriptive, because both transistors and valves operate like valves; controlling electrical current similar to a water valve.

The integrated circuit is a manufacturing process of how to manufacture a chip with first a few transistors and today, millions of transistors.  It was invented in 1958. 

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This month's IEEE Spectrum tells the first integrated circuit for a complete FM radio was completed in 1977, the Philips TDA7000.  The first microprocessor was available for sale in November 1971.  Your smartphone is an evolution of those two chips, roughly 40+ years of accumulating technology and intellectual property.

What puzzles me though, after Neil Armstrong's giant leap for mankind, we seem to be only making small steps.  We have Mr. Spock's communicator and tricorder, but little else from Star Trek. 

 

 

Who Defines Right for Artificial Intelligence?

I had difficulty choosing an image to represent artificial intelligence (AI).  Eventually it will be globally interconnected systems and systems.  And that is when it becomes particularly worrisome.  AI can make decisions and react instantaneously in contrast to human decision making. 

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Do you recall the film, Thirteen Days, which was a retelling of the Cuban Missile Crisis?  Within the White House situation room, lengthy and passionate discussions determined the course of human history.  (I assume there were complementary discussions within the Kremlin as well.)

AI would simply make a synapse (pun intended) decision based upon its training. 

Deep Learning is a next generation neural networking that includes advances such as hidden layers and convolution.  In order to learn that a particular image is a pig, the system must be taught that it is a pig.  Perhaps all of humanity can agree on classifying a specific mammal as a pig.  But what about the appearance of nuclear missiles in Cuba (or North Korea)?  Humanity has no single answer.  A system trained by the western world would have a different response from the emerging world. 

Some of the world's most momentous decisions have been made by a person or leader that acts outside of character or experience.  Sage decisions at one moment in time can be the opposite in the twinkling of an eye.  AI starts with the principles, ethics, and perceptions of whomever trained it.  Who defines 'right' for AI?

Also consider hidden behavior presented in the training.  An example of stenography is placing text hidden within an image.  Suppose the AI has been taught to open a door to anyone with this stenography?  Most troubling is there is no way to examine the system to detect tampering.  Unlike software written in Java or Swift, the response to such a stimulus can never be known unless it happens.

Stephen Hawking cautioned the BBC that "The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race." 

I don't believe the Cuban Missile Crisis would have had a diplomatic ending with AI.  Humanity should be concerned.

 

What is the Truth About E-Cigarettes?

Probably you know someone that smokes cigarettes and you wonder whether you should counsel them to try using e-cigarettes instead.  Should you or shouldn't you?

A couple of sources that I trust - Centers for Disease Control and Harvard Medical School state unequivocally that e-cigarettes are safer than tobacco cigarettes.  Once stated, both rush to add that e-cigarettes are not a healthy lifestyle selection.

The American Cancer Society recently published a position statement saying that the current generation of e-cigs is less harmful than conventional cigarettes, but the long-term health risk is unknown.  The organization also notes that 1 in 5 deaths is smoking related. 

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The aerosols inhaled from e-cigs include:

• Nicotine
• Ultrafine particles that can be inhaled deep into the lungs
• Flavoring such as diacetyl, a chemical linked to a serious lung disease
• Volatile organic compounds
• Cancer-causing chemicals
• Heavy metals such as nickel, tin, and lead

Supposedly there are zero-nicotine e-cigs, although some have been measured to actually contain nicotine. 

Nicotine of course, raises blood pressure and heart rate in addition to possible insulin resistance, leading to type-2 diabetes.

University of Iowa researchers published that more people are trying e-cigs, but fewer continue smoking e-cigarettes.  Suspected, but not proven in the study is that e-cigs could be leading users to traditional cigarettes. 

But what about e-cigarettes in helping someone stop smoking?  To date, studies have not shown it.  But the bottom line is the American Cancer Society considers e-cigs less harmful than tobacco cigarettes.

 

 

Disappearing Insects and Natural Science

Millennials probably don't remember, but cleaning windshields after a road trip used to be a bother.  I have posted several times about the disappearing honey bee, but it appears that that all insects are disappearing.  Several articles have appeared recently.  For something not behind a paywall - see Popular Science.  Behind a paywall, see The Silence of the Bugs.

Although insects are well, pests, they are essential for life on Earth.  Have you noticed the number of birds is also declining?  Anecdotally I'll note there appear to be fewer geckos.

Insects are pollinators.  Our world will be very bleak without insects.  Maybe even un-breathable. 

The cause?  Climate change is suspected, but most likely the damage to date has been from pesticides. 

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I performed some online research, trying to understand why such a phenomenon of insect die-off has not been reported and studied.  Although articles from the New York Times and others have been reporting recently, I couldn't find real science articles.  There appears to be a couple of reasons for the absence of science papers.  First, a massive paywall industry now locks up most science papers from general reading.  A typical single article cost is $30. 

I didn't even discover a lot of relevant papers behind paywalls.  It appears we are woefully underfunding natural and environment science. 

Google's parent company, Alphabet, spent $16.6B last year on Research and Development.  Excluding medical research, the National Science Foundation (NSF) provides roughly 60% of federal funding for the sciences.  With a bit of math, we compute the federal government spent a total of $11.7B on all science funding.  Substantially less than what Google spends on research.

It seems inevitable that we would miss noting that 75 percent of flying insects have disappeared in 3 decades, even though 90 percent of all scientists that ever lived are alive today.

Where does this end?  The New York Times has an interesting article today - In Britain, Austerity is Changing Everything.  To summarize, Peter Goodman concludes the UK no longer looks like the rest of Europe, but more closely resembles the U.S.  Privatization and underfunding of public programs and infrastructure is decreasing the quality of life and expectations of a better future.  The late Tom Wolfe, in The Right Stuff, said it simply, "No Bucks.  No Buck Rogers."

 

Why Do Elderly Walk Slowly?

Older runners are disturbingly aware they cannot run as fast as they did when they were younger. The usual explanation is loss of muscle mass.  As we age, we eventually lose 30 percent of our muscle mass.  The Harvard Medical page tells we lose 3-5 percent per decade after age 30. 

Walking is not simple.  There is substantial cognitive control of the body's muscles to first remain upright, and then propel the body forward.  Then consider the vision aspects of avoiding obstacles and adjusting for terrain.

There are many studies correlating walking speed and the onset of Alzheimer's Disease.  It is a paradox though, because physical exercise is known to improve the brain's metabolism.  In college, I did my own unsponsored study on this - I would go for a run at midnight before an exam.  There was not a correlation between test scores and the midnight run.  Hopefully the National Institutes of Health Exert trial will yield better results than I measured. 

I consider it plausible that slow walking speed is associated with declined brain activity.  But that doesn't help us cure the afflicted. Advances have been slow.  You can keep track of them at the National Institute on Aging.

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Colony Collapse Disorder is No Longer Honey Bees' Primary Threat

Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD) appears to have peaked within North American and Europe.  CCD, of course is the malady where they mysteriously leave the hive.  It still a threat, but some scientists claim the honeybee will disappear completely without human intervention.  The biggest threat is the Varroa mite as captured in the photo.  (The mite is the tick-like pest on its back.)  Half of America's bees are carrying mites. 

As the mite feeds upon the bee, it transfers RNA viruses which lead to death. 

Scientists at Bayer have been developing tiny doors for beehives that apply a pesticide to the bee as it enters the hive.  The little aircraft are fragile and pesticides are a threat in themselves.  The Bayer article says the idea came from flea and tick collars. 

European honey bee with a Varroa mite on its back: Photo Credit: Scott Bauer, USDA