China to Russia: Who's the Bitch Now?

Mirnaya was once a thriving garrison town with a movie theater, a kindergarten and a park. The Soviet army maintained a base here to keep an eye on neighboring China. Then the Soviet Union collapsed and the military left. To survive, those who stayed behind gradually dismantled and sold off what was left, piece by piece. First they removed the windows from the prefabricated buildings where the officers had once lived and sold them in Chita. Then they ripped radiators and pipes from the walls and sold them to scrap dealers, who then sold the metal in China. The buildings now stand like skeletons in the steppes, evidence of a ruined country. _Spiegel

Spiegel
China's border gate is to the left, above, and Russia's is to the right. A load of Russian lumber is moving into China. A lot of raw materials and natural resources have been moving from Russia into China, recently, where the Chinese turn the materials into finished products to sell at a significant markup.

The main thing going into Russia from China is Chinese settlers and investors, building Chinese colonies and outposts inside the very heart of Russia's source of wealth and economic power.

The border between the fallen superpower Russia and the People's Republic, which is gradually becoming a superpower, measures 3,645 kilometers, one of the longest borders in the world. And perhaps this border, where Europe's last offshoots encounter 1.3 billion Chinese, and where Christianity collides with Buddhism and Confucianism, is also one of the most important in the power struggles of the new century.

...Siberia, which covers three-quarters of the landmass of Russia, is home to only a quarter of the country's population: 38 million people. This is the equivalent of the population of Poland, except that Siberia is 40 times the size. It is a situation that many fear could once again spark the eternal rivalry between Russia and China, a rivalry that last produced military clashes in the 1960s.

Chinese investors have already bought a former tank factory in Chita, where they are now producing trucks. They already control the markets in Russian border towns, where they are the richest private business owners. "China invests more in the Russian Far East than our own government does," writes the Moscow newspaper Niezawisimaja Gazieta.

...Years ago Dmitry Rogozin, Russia's eloquent NATO ambassador, said half-jokingly that the Chinese would soon be "crossing the border in small groups of five million." And Vladimir Putin, shortly after being elected president, warned: "Unless we make a serious effort, the Russians in the border regions will have to speak Chinese, Japanese and Korean in a few decades." This hardly seems an exaggeration, given that there are six million Russians living in Eastern Siberia, compared with the 90 million living in China's northern provinces.

...Russian tourists heading to China to buy inexpensive goods are forced to wait up to 12 hours in their cars. These people, who work for distributors and are popularly known as "silk worms" or "camels," travel to China several times a month to bring goods to Russia: jeans and blouses, electric shavers and children's toys, athletic shoes made by a low-wage manufacturer called "Adidos" and chainsaws labeled "Stihl." They are pirated products, and are manufactured in southern China.

... the Chinese aren't just interested in Russian lumber. They also want Russian oil. Some 1,300 kilometers farther to the east, past empty steppes where a driver is likely to encounter no more than three cars an hour, is the small city of Skovorodino. It is the terminal point of the most expensive infrastructure project in the new Russia, a "pipeline with geopolitical significance," as Prime Minister Putin raves.

... _Spiegel

Making the Wildlands Safer for Modern Humans

Imagine an insect repellant that not only is thousands of times more effective than DEET – the active ingredient in most commercial mosquito repellants – but also works against all types of insects, including flies, moths and ants.

That possibility has been created by the discovery of a new class of insect repellant made in the laboratory of Vanderbilt Professor of Biological Sciences and Pharmacology Laurence Zwiebel and reported this week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. _Vanderbilt

Vanderbilt via Photo Researchers Inc 2011
Vanderbilt researchers have made some startling discoveries regarding insects' sense of smell which has led to the creation of super-powerful new insect repellants. If the discoveries prove to be as meaningful as they now appear, a trip to the wilderness or to the tropics has just gotten a lot safer and more pleasant.

In preliminary tests with mosquitoes, the researchers found the new class of repellant, called Vanderbilt University Allosteric Agonist or VUAA1, to be thousands of times more effective than DEET. The compound works by affecting insects’ sense of smell through a newly discovered molecular channel.

“If a compound like VUAA1 can activate every mosquito odorant receptor at once, then it could overwhelm the insect’s sense of smell, creating a repellant effect akin to stepping onto an elevator with someone wearing too much perfume, except this would be far worse for the mosquito,” said Patrick Jones, a post-doctoral fellow who conducted the study with graduate students David Rinker and Gregory Pask.

The researchers have just begun behavioral studies with the compound.

“It’s too soon to determine whether this specific compound can act as the basis of a commercial product,” Zwiebel cautioned. “But it is the first of its kind and, as such, can be used to develop other similar compounds that have characteristics appropriate for commercialization.” _Vanderbilt

This is a very basic type of discovery, which perhaps should have been made decades ago. But the fact is, out of the legions of researchers in labs around the world, only a relative few of them have the necessary cognitive and creative complement to make original discoveries -- and have the confidence to persist long enough to prove them to the sceptical outside world.

But imagine a trip up the Amazon, the Mekong, or the Congo without mosquitos or flies nipping at your head and body wherever you turn, night or day, at the risk of malaria, dengue, yellow fever, encephalitis and worse? Imagine a campout in a boreal forest during the summertime, without the black flies and the mosquitos, which rapidly drink your blood until you are only a shriveled husk of your former self?

Or just imagine a normal weekend outdoor cookout without the buzzing and biting pests of summer. How would your world change?

Peaceful? Yes, But Death is Always Just Moments Away

Experience Human Flight from Betty Wants In on Vimeo.

High adventure awaits you, in many places and forms. Whether high in the atmosphere, deep beneath the sea, at extreme mountain elevations or in far polar regions -- excitement always walks hand in hand with death. Even more so as humans step out into space environments such as orbital stations and colonies, or lunar outposts.

One augenblick of inattention, and you are gone.

Yes, I know it looks peaceful, and even easy. But focus, intelligence, and competence are only starting points to survival. If a person or society is unwilling to put in the work, it will die in Idiocracy.

Video credit: Gizmodo

70 kg Seaplane Designed in Finland

PO
This one-seater carbon fibre plane lands and takes off on water, and weighs but 70 kg. It was designed by a Finnish aerospace engineer, has a topspeed of around 140 kph, and a wingspan of 5m. It will come in multiple models, with prices starting at US$ 39k. The company plans to start taking orders in 3 months.

The first version, one electric only, and two fuel based versions. The electric-only version has a 20kW engine. The two petrol-based engined run on 24 bhp and 35 bhp, respectively. The top speed on these planes is roughly 140 km/h, with a minimum speed of 70 km/h . The FlyNano has a wingspan of five meters. The plan can support a take off weight of 200 kg, as well as a take off speed of about 70km/h. In theory, the plane can travel about up to 70 kilometers in a single fueling, or charging, depending on the model that you have chosen to fly. _PO

The plane would be mainly for sport and recreation. For lake hopping, island hopping, or seastead hopping, the plane might be practical as a light mail carrier or courier craft. Future STOL (short takeoff or landing) versions of such planes might be convenient for getting out of a populated area quickly. Just be sure to have plenty of fuel caches pre-placed.

If You Can Survive the Zombie Apocalypse, You Can Survive Almost Anything

Riverboat Zombie Survival Compound
The imaginative survival scheme pictured above should provide a creative boost to your survival planning efforts. Here are a number of things to keep in mind when planning for your apocalypse of choice:

Basic Considerations for Planning Survival Compounds

100 Items that Disappear from the Shelves First In a Panic

Homemade Fuels: PDF Handbook for Downdraft Gasifiers

FEMA PDF Plans for Homemade Stratified Downdraft Gasifier

PDF Ideas for making your own propane from bio-feedstocks PDF

More on biopropane from MIT Technology Review

You can run a gasoline generator, tractor, or automobile with gasifier-produced syngas, from wood chips etc.

Use your imagination to discover ways to provide the items most in demand in a crisis. You may have the kernel for a profitable business to see you through the apocalypse of choice. Accept only gold, silver, or high grade ammunition as payment.

Can Bernard Way Kickstart "Arc Island" and Beat Seasteading.org?

Patri Friedman's Seasteading.org has been the primary website for seasteaders for a number of years now. Certainly Patri has worked the PR circuit and appeared on a number of TV shows and in some prestigious publications. He is currently in The Bahamas, giving a talk on seasteading at the Association of Private Enterprise Education.

The only way for Bernard Way to push Patri out of the limelight would be to deliver on a promise which Patri has so far been unable to keep: to build an actual working seastead.

Arc Island will be the largest civil engineering project in history, to build an entire floating structure the size of Manhattan that can be moved to different locations in the world, can be built upon and using a completely modular approach expanded as it grows.

We are creating a new civilisation from scratch, the scientific, economic, social and technological implications are huge; this is not an extension of another country, this will be its own country, with its own economic, political and legal structure. We want to take all the cutting edge ideas from all disciplines and apply them to this idea, and we want you to be part of it. _Kickstarter

Kickstarter is a fundraising site, and Mr. Way is working the site in order to get a start on necessary fundraising -- in order to start the new civilisation.

We’ve seen some great projects come out of Kickstarter, but nothing can top this. UK-born, SF-living Benjamin Peter Bernard Way wants to make an island. Oh, but not just any island. His Arc Island concept would be movable. Ah yes, and it would also be the size of Manhattan.

You see, Mr. Way has some big ideas. With big ideas come big projects, and this one is no exception. He’s had a number of ideas over the years, raising £25 million for a venture known as Pulsar while still in his teens. Though he was diluted out of the business, Way wasn’t to be kept down.

In the years that have followed his departure from Pulsar, Way has been involved with no fewer than 10 different companies. In fact, if his last name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the brother of Hermione Way, the founder of Newspepper and our hostess with the mostess for TNW Video. _TheNextWeb_via_ImpactLab

The proof is in the pudding, not in the PR or the fundraising. But when it comes to competition for achieving world-changing enterprises, the more the merrier. Certainly Mr. Way's "Manhattan sized floating island" concept is somewhat more ambitious than Patri Friedman's mini-stead concept he is floating currently.

May the best seastead win, and actually provide meaningful societal and civilisational choices, in a world that is growing ideologically and Idiocratically hidebound.

Artificial Intelligence in Dire Need of Better Brain Architectures?

Randal Koene - Whole Brain Emulation from Raj Dye on Vimeo.

The above is a video from a conference on artificial general intelligence (AGI) held in Switzerland, last year. The speaker is a neuroscientist -- an outsider to the typical AI person who attends AI conferences. His appearance at the AGI conference indicates that the entire approach to AI is in a state of flux.

The attitude up until recently has been that intelligence does not rely upon any particular substrate, eg, a brain. AI researchers have boldly believed for several decades that intelligence could be built algorithmically inside machine architectures over a relatively short time span. "Sometime within 10 years . . ."

They have been saying the same thing -- "within 10 years" -- since the 1950s. Clearly not very much has happened in the way of significant breakthroughs since the 1950s. In fact, contemporary AI researchers themselves may well be growing less impressive, over time, than the pioneers of the field.

Hence the perceived need for possibly re-thinking the whole "substrate" approach. Another video in the series deals with the requirements of "cognitive architecture." An impressive phrase, although the reality is likely to prove far less impressive.

Surface Detail Fractal World

Another intriguing fractal video. Amazingly complex transformations take place according to very simple rule sets. Change occurs at all scales, and the end result -- if any -- is not predictable. It sounds like the basis of a gambling game. I know! We can call it "life."

Video h/t

US Cities De-Populating

WSJ_via_NewsAlert
First, US cities saw "white flight" -- where white Americans fled cities in the face of dropping property values and rising crime rates and tax rates. Now we are seeing "black flight" from US cities for some of the same reasons. Detroit is the worst example of this de-population phenomenon, but not the only one, according to the 2010 US census.

In all, the city [Detroit] lost more than 237,000 residents, including 185,000 blacks and about 41,000 whites. The Hispanic population ticked up by 1,500. Meanwhile, the black population in neighboring Macomb County more than tripled to 72,723, constituting 8.6% of the county's population in 2010, compared with 2.7% a decade earlier. Oakland County's African-American population rose 36% to 164,078.

...In 1950, Detroit was the fifth-largest city in America, behind New York, Chicago, Philadelphia and Los Angeles, and it was in the top 10 as recently as the 1990 Census. Now, Detroit is likely to fall to 19th, behind Indianapolis and Columbus, Ohio.

...Some pockets of Detroit are seeing growth, led by immigrants, young professionals and artisans, which Mayor Bing sees as an important trend. "We are getting a lot of that 21-to-30 population moving back to the city," he said. "I think that bodes very well for us."

...Detroit's largely Hispanic southwest neighborhood remains stable, helped by new immigration, cheap housing and low barriers of entry, said Angela Reyes, executive director of the Detroit Hispanic Development Corp., a community organization. _WSJ

WSJThe movement of populations out of crumbling, crime-ridden cities to safer and better-maintained outlying areas is just a foretaste of a larger and wider migration. Americans are in fact moving out of states that are dominated by machine politics, government unions, and high-crime cities. They are moving to states with lower taxes, more business-friendly policies, fewer compulsory unionisation policies, and generally less crime.

Relative newcomer governors of New Jersey, Wisconsin, Ohio, and other states are fighting to save their states from the fate of Detroit, Michigan, Illinois, and California -- states that had been particularly burdened by debt caused by government unions and machine politics. But success is not guaranteed.

In order for western nations such as the US, Canada, the UK, and several European nations to survive, they will need to adopt an entirely new psychology of resourcefulness, toughness, and responsibility. The current paths of hyper-indebtedness, high taxes, over-sized governments and government unions etc. cannot be sustained.

An Arch of Towering Dimensions

Inhabitat
Think of it as a skyscraper laid on its side, shaped into a dome with large holes in it. There is a lot of living and working room implied, depending upon the thickness of the dome itself, and its diameter.

This proposed arched building is a unique solution to the question of how to create density without dominating a skyline or swallowing green space. Proposed for the city of Rennes, France, the gargantuan inhabited dome placed second in this year’s eVolo skyscraper competition. Designed by Yoann Mescam, Paul-Eric Schirr-Bonnans, and Xavier Schirr-Bonnans, Flat Tower envelops a vast green space, has the ability to collect sun and rainwater and is also a sustainable solution to developing appropriately large scale developments. _Inhabitat

Inhabitat
It is easy to imagine a seastead dome of this type, arching over a floating base of sufficient buoyancy. The lower, semi-submerged portion may be a mirror-image inverted dome, or another shape more conducive to cross-water directional travel.

The most important consideration is often to nudge oneself out of conventional, rutted ways of thinking, into a workspace for envisioning novel structures, mechanisms, and devices.

A New Approach to "Cliff Dwelling"

All images via Inhabitat

This return to cave-like cliff dwellings is inspired by Brazil's teeming populations of shanty towns, or favelas. As the current wave of tall and ultra-tall buildings rises and subsides, humans in depressed economies will find it too expensive to afford the maintenance required to keep the buildings functioning. But they may have a use -- providing neo-cavemen rooms with a view.

Inspired by favelas or Brazilian shanty towns, the structures are box-like homes that can be attached onto the facades of other buildings. Reyes’ concept is unique in that it actually enlists able-bodied survivors to assist with the implementation of the shelters – a cool idea, since it empowers them to take action instead of simply sitting around, waiting for help. Reyes envisions that the pre-constructed structures could be airlifted by helicopter to sites where they are needed and then guided into place with the help of survivors. They “clip” onto building facades using leverage.

Each shelter would contain beds, lighting, storage and a skylight and be made of recycled materials from local construction sites. There would also be attachments for solar energy, water purification and organic farming. Finding muse in the famous favela paintings of Rio de Janeiro, Reyes also hopes that survivors will be able to use the walls of their shelters as canvases once they are settled in, using painting as a creative outlet as they begin the process of healing. _Inhabitat

Like cliffside cavemen in the past, the neo-cavemen may find living high above the teeming masses and ground-level predators, to be safer.

Nations with average population IQs below 90 -- and without a market dominant high-IQ minority to run things -- will lose the ability to sustain advanced technologies with the coming anarchy. The high tech infrastructure still remaining after such societies collapse will be scavenged and parasitised as needed, as pockets of humanity across the third world revert to the caves.


Images via Inhabitat

Cross-posted at Al Fin

Seasteading: Getting Beyond The Celebrity-Seeking Dilettante Phase

More Designs Here
Up to this point, seasteading seems to be more about appearances and fads than about actually building a seastead as an ongoing concern -- as a real alternative to government monopoly. The Seasteading Institute has promoted a number of conferences and a good deal of media coverage, but when it comes to the nitty-gritty of making a life on the ocean, most of the ideas one finds on the site lack heft. The bottom line is that a seastead will have to pay for itself.

It is clear that aesthetics is playing far too great a role -- and economics far too small a role -- in many of the themes and schemes thrown around in popular seasteading circles. After all, there is no need to reinvent the wheel in terms of basic marine structure. Actual commercial enterprises such as the oil & gas industry and marine mining concerns, have made significant engineering advances and continue to do so, in terms of habitable ocean-going vessels which are also commercial platforms.

One exciting material prospect for building working seasteads, is pre-stressed concrete:

Through innovation with precast and prestressed concrete, some latest trends are now focused toward the development and construction of floating ocean platforms used to extract minerals, energy, and other natural resources.

Precast and prestressed concrete platforms have been constructed to support phosphate processing plants, floating liquefied propane gas (LPG) processing and storage facilities, and oil exploration platforms that are transported afloat and grounded for drilling.

For ocean platforms, the size and weight of prestressed and precast concrete construction will provide the greatest dynamic stability due to its large inertial advantage. Long-term durability of concrete construction in an ocean environment has been proven by actual service of existing prestressed precast concrete platforms over the last several decades. _civil-online

By taking advantage of the lessons already learned and earned by offshore industries, seasteaders who are serious about pulling their own weight can find starting opportunities and niches. Just as in a successful marriage, the means of supporting the group comes first, then the details of housing, recreation, etc.

The World's Largest Family

All Images from DailyMail

This is Ziona Chana and his family. They live comfortably and happily in a multi-story home with 100 rooms. It is said by his sons that Chana marries the poorest women of the village, in order to provide them with a better life.

These are Chana's 39 wives. His youngest wives occupy the rooms closest to his own. His wives provide companionship one by one, according to an orderly scheduled rotation.

The 100 room household is a busy place, with constant cooking, cleaning, childcare, and other typical concerns. Chana is pleased to be the husband of the world's largest family.

The family lives in India, Mizoram state.

Cross-posted to Al Fin

More at DailyMail

Plenty of Room in the Fractalverse

Think of it as a fractal condensation of matter, energy, and space, out of the void. The fractalverse can expand itself as needed, sometimes taking advantage of multiple overlapping dimensions as needs arise.

In the fractalverse, you can make all the real estate you could ever want, as long as you understand the rules.

So if you are concerned that asteroid Apophis may destroy the Earth in the year 2036, consider reserving your own expanding accomodation in the fractalverse. Reservations for trans-dimensional departures are being accepted now.

International Beauty Contestants of Blended Photographs

Image Source (via iSteve)
What if they gave an international beauty contest and the only ones showing up were blended photographs from each country? Who would win?

Describing someone as average-looking is rarely seen as a compliment. But most of us would be quite happy to look like a computer-generated depiction of the 'average' English woman, Welsh woman, or even the average Burmese. More than 100 women of 41 different nationalities and ethnicities were photographed in cities all over the world in an effort to find common regional features.

The photos were carefully laid over each-other using a computer program to create an individual image for each area - and the biggest surprise is that the 'common' faces are all quite beautiful. There are, of course, regional differences in face shapes, colours and features.
Peruvians and Iranians have bigger mouths, Ethiopians and Samoans have curlier hair, and fringes seem to be big in Latvia and Poland.

South African Photographer Mike Mike - who inspired the images with a web project called The Face of Tomorrow compiling the faces of various cities - explains: 'Blonde hair gets lost pretty quickly when you start averaging. 'You'd need a population 75 per cent blonde to get it visibly remaining. You'd probably have to go to Iceland for that result.' Mike, who lives in Istanbul, travels the world taking photos of the first 100 people he can persuade to pose in each place - noting their nationality every time. _DailyMail

He got the idea for his website while studying at Goldsmiths College, London.

"Sitting on the Underground train, I was intrigued by the sheer diversity of the place - Somalis, Indians, Americans, Zimbabweans, Scandinavians...," he said.

"I thought 'What is this place? What is a Londoner?' The patterns I see are an underlying connectedness between all people," Mike added. _BritainNews

Al Fin is most drawn to the Polish, Puerto Rican, and Peruvian faces, although several of the other blends are startlingly attractive as well. Obviously these blended-photos are not actually representative of most of the countries represented, just as beauty contestants in a beauty meet are not representative of their own home populations.

A lot of lessons on statistics and epidemiology could be taught, using these blended photos. In fact, most male students would prefer such an approach, I believe.

Super Wi-Fi Broadband Covers 50 Mile Radius and More

Super WiFi
A WiFi technology capable of covering an area with a 50 mile radius is likely to revolutionise broadband internet for rural and semi-rural areas. One of the early adopters of the technology is the Yurok American Indian reservation in Northern California, near the Oregon border.

For a glimpse of the wireless future, take a look at the Yurok Indian reservation, an out-of-the-way spot just south of the California-Oregon border at the mouth of the Klamath River. There, among the giant redwoods, stand three new towers built to create a new type of wireless network, known as "super Wi-Fi." If the U.S. Federal Communications Commission gets its way, super Wi-Fi will become a key part of rural America's digital infrastructure.

Most people living on the Yurok's 63,000-acre reservation lack phone service. Almost none have high-speed Internet. The new towers aim to fix both problems. Unlike regular Wi-Fi networks, which are generally limited to beaming high-speed Internet around a house, super Wi-Fi promises to blanket entire neighborhoods with high-speed access.

A Yurok tribal spokesman says the new signals will reach even into the steep-walled valleys that play havoc with most wireless signals.

...Unlike most wireless advances, super Wi-Fi's much-improved range has little to do with better technology. Instead, the dramatic jump comes from the FCC's decision to free up airwaves that have long been reserved exclusively for local TV broadcasts. Those TV airwaves are lower in frequency than standard cellular and Wi-Fi airwaves and thus better able to penetrate buildings and other objects.

...Since rural America has fewer local TV stations, it will have far more of these empty "white spaces" to fill with new wireless signals, points out Alex Besen, who runs an industry consultancy, the Besen Group. In many rural areas, super Wi-Fi will have access to well over 200 megahertz of spectrum, he estimates—more capacity than Verizon and AT&T combined. That huge injection of spectrum could revolutionize the digital infrastructure of rural America, Besen says. _TechnologyReview

Google thinks that Super WiFi will be revolutionary in impact. When you consider what go-anywhere broadband internet could do for global communications, it is hard to disagree.

In other consumer electronics technology news, the tablet computer field will receive some new entries at the 14 Feb 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The stage is set for a battle among new tablet PCs at the Mobile World Congress which will kick off in Barcelona on Feb. 14. Major companies including Samsung, LG, Motorola and HTC are expected to show off their new devices running on the Honeycomb version of Google's Android OS at the show. Honeycomb is better suited to the larger screens of tablets rather than smartphones and supports 3D Google maps and video chat.

...While the iPad will likely stick with its 9.7-inch screen, Samsung is trying to reach a more broad spectrum of customers by targeting different segments with products of different sizes, industry experts say. Samsung's new tablets are equipped with two CPUs and include a high-definition 8-megapixel camera.

LG Electronics is set to release its 8.9-inch Optimus Pad that it revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, while Motorola Mobility is launching its flagship 10-inch Xoom tablet, which was highly acclaimed at CES.

Meanwhile, Apple is expected to unveil the successor to the iPad in March or April in San Francisco._Chosun

Modifying Staple Crops to Raise Intelligence of Third World People

Golden Rice
One of the many problems contributing to low intelligence and low productivity of billions of impoverished third world people, is their dependency on staple food crops which lack key nutrients. Staple crops often grow well in local soils and climates, but are lacking in nutritional components which the human body requires for optimal development and functioning.

On a per acreage basis, corn yield exceeds that of the other two major crops, wheat and soybean, by 2- to 3-fold. However, the nutritional quality of corn protein in these high yielding hybrids remains relatively poor due to its deficiency in essential amino acids, such as lysine. The focus of corn breeding on yield, which has resulted in a shift in grain composition from protein to starch1, has compounded this nutritional deficiency. As a major food and feed staple crop, corn is a poor protein source in both quality and quantity. Advancements in agricultural biotechnology may help improve the nutritional quality of corn protein, starting with lysine enhancement. _isb.vt.edu

Understand that the promotion of yield most often occurs through selective breeding by indigenous farmers, and has resulted in the ability to support more people from the same amount of land. But if protein quality is diminished through indigenous farming practises, persons who are dependent upon such staples will not reach their peak levels of development or performance.

Besides maize, other staples being genetically modified include cassava:

Although cassava is a major source of carbohydrates for 700 million people, mostly in Africa, it normally contains only small amounts of protein. Claude Fauquet of the Danforth Plant Science Center in St Louis, Missouri, and his team bumped up the protein content to 12.5 per cent by adding bean and maize genes to make a protein called zeolin. They were surprised to find that the plant used its natural supply of cyanide to provide the building blocks of the new protein. "Cyanide is a source of nitrogen within the plant," explains Fauquet.

While non-modified cassava supplies just one-fifth of daily protein requirements, the extra protein is enough to supply the needs of infants on a typical cassava-based diet (PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0016256). Fauquet says his root could save 1 in 4 African children from a potentially fatal condition called protein-energy malnutrition. _NS

PLoSONE article with details on cassava modification

Another staple starch crop being modified to produce more protein, is the "protato."

A team of Indian scientists have grown for the first time, a genetically modified spud called ‘protato’ that makes up to 60 per cent more protein per gram than ordinary potatoes.

Apart from that, the new crop created by Subra Chakraborty and colleagues at India's Central Potato Research Institute in Shimla also yielded more potato per hectare, reports New Scientist.

The team gave the potatoes a gene from the grain amaranth, a South American plant widely eaten across the tropics, including India. It was linked to a DNA code that turns on production of the storage protein in tubers. _IndianExpress

There is no question that such modifications hold one of the keys to successful colonisation of low-gravity space and other planets such as Mars or Luna. The ability to engineer a hardy staple crop which grows in moon gravel or air (aeroponics), and provides virtually all the nutrients and fiber persons need -- including children and pregnant females -- would clearly simplify the food aspect of adaptation to life off Earth.

One of the more famous GM modifications of a staple crop is "golden rice" -- a form of rice engineered to produce high levels of Beta Carotene. In populations suffering chronic Vitamin A deficiencies, such a crop could make a significant improvement in quality of life throughout the human life cycle. Publications detailing the Golden Rice project

Clearly the crop scientists creating the genetically modified foods mentioned above are attempting to create staple crops which the indigenous people will recognise and accept as familiar. But for true pioneers -- such as space colonists -- who are willing to put up with a bit of unfamiliarity initially, a far more radical GM food creation will be required.

What is needed is foods with minimal roots and stems, and maximum edible food. The crop's environment can be structured around its genetic requirements, by design. The food could not have a repellent taste or odour -- probably better for it to have a mild, minimal taste. Space chefs can season the staple to taste like just about anything, as long as the texture and appearance was acceptable.

Wikimedia's Role in Dumbing Down the Idiocracy?

NYT
Several areas of commerce, enterprise, and science remain the province of mainly-male participation. Physics, mathematics, advanced computer science, technical engineering, math-intensive sciences, aircraft test pilots and combat pilots, commercial sea captains, and so on. Most informed people understand that research is dominated by males, but few people realise that technical information intensive areas -- such as highly demanding reference information providers -- are also dominated by males. A lot of politically involved feminists would like to change that situation, but is there a danger in moving too forcefully from the top down when changes may adversely affect critically important services?

...surveys suggest that less than 15 percent of [Wikipedia's] hundreds of thousands of contributors are women.

About a year ago, the Wikimedia Foundation, the organization that runs Wikipedia, collaborated on a study of Wikipedia’s contributor base and discovered that it was barely 13 percent women; the average age of a contributor was in the mid-20s, according to the study by a joint center of the United Nations University and Maastricht University.

...The notion that a collaborative, written project open to all is so skewed to men may be surprising. After all, there is no male-dominated executive team favoring men over women, as there can be in the corporate world; Wikipedia is not a software project, but more a writing experiment — an “exquisite corpse,” or game where each player adds to a larger work.

...The public is increasingly going to Wikipedia as a research source: According to a recent Pew survey, the percentage of all American adults who use the site to look for information increased to 42 percent in May 2010, from 25 percent in February 2007. This translates to 53 percent of adults who regularly use the Internet.

Jane Margolis, co-author of a book on sexism in computer science, “Unlocking the Clubhouse,” argues that Wikipedia is experiencing the same problems of the offline world, where women are less willing to assert their opinions in public. “In almost every space, who are the authorities, the politicians, writers for op-ed pages?” said Ms. Margolis, a senior researcher at the Institute for Democracy, Education and Access at the University of California, Los Angeles.

...Ms. Gardner said that for now she was trying to use subtle persuasion and outreach through her foundation to welcome all newcomers to Wikipedia, rather than advocate for women-specific remedies like recruitment or quotas.

“Gender is a huge hot-button issue for lots of people who feel strongly about it,” she said. “I am not interested in triggering those strong feelings.”

Kat Walsh, a policy analyst and longtime Wikipedia contributor who was elected to the Wikimedia board, agreed that indirect initiatives would cause less unease in the Wikipedia community than more overt efforts.

But she acknowledged the hurdles: “The big problem is that the current Wikipedia community is what came about by letting things develop naturally — trying to influence it in another direction is no longer the easiest path, and requires conscious effort to change.” _NYT

The Wikipedia world is indeed a rough and tumble world of competitive edits and re-writes. If a person cannot withstand criticism and competition, they will not likely last long in that world.

The male hormone testosterone shapes the human brain in multiple ways not yet fully comprehended by science or society at large. Much of what science has learned about the influence of hormones such as testosterone on the gender differences so prevalent in society, is considered not politically correct -- and thus essentially unmentionable in left-leaning tabloids such as the New York Times, quoted above. Testosterone makes males more interested in objects than people, more competitive, have generally superior spatial and higher math skills, physically larger and stronger with greater stamina, tending to greater independence, and generally more logically determined and less emotional in the face of distractions.

Charles Murray's fascinating book, Human Accomplishment, provides a historical reflection of the phenomenon that Wikimedia's executives and critics are struggling with. Males have tended to achieve the lion's share of discoveries, inventions, and masterpieces of art, music, and literature as far back as history can tell.

A population shrinkage is occurring among the more intelligent people of the world -- Europeans and Northeast Asians -- while an explosive growth of population is occurring among the less intelligent people of the world. The average intelligence of the human population is inexorably dropping from near 90 points of IQ, downward -- close to the mid-80s and below. That qualifies as an Idiocracy.

In order to dumb down the Idiocracy, one must institute foolish rules of arbitrary and counter-productive governance, while educating the populace to accept dumbed-down groupthink rather than to think for themselves. It is easier than you might think. What Wikimedia is contemplating -- and what many western governments have done, and called affirmative action -- is an excellent example.

Also published at Al Fin and Al Fin, the Next Level

Small Modular Reactors Set to Thrive in Post-Obama Age

A global race is under way to develop small-reactor designs, says Paul Genoa of the Nuclear Energy Institute, an industry body in Washington, DC. He estimates that more than 20 countries have expressed serious interest in buying mini-reactors.

At least eight different approaches are being developed, mainly in America and Asia, by an army of 3,000 nuclear engineers, according to Ron Moleschi of SNC-Lavalin Nuclear, an engineering firm based in Montreal. Regulatory and licensing procedures are lengthy, so little will be built until around 2017, he says. But after that the industry is expected to take off. The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) estimates that by 2030 at least 40 (and possibly more than 90) small reactors will be in operation. It reckons that more than half of the countries that will build nuclear plants in coming years will plump for these smaller, simpler designs. _Economist

Economist
Obama's Nuclear Regulatory Commission is dragging its feet on nuclear energy -- particularly on new safer, more economical reactor designs such as small modular reactors (SMRs). But Obama's agenda of energy starvation, and its job-killing, industry-killing effects are living on borrowed time. In the real world, all forms of currently suppressed energy -- including small modular nuclear reactors -- will find a way.

Upcoming conferences on Small Modular Reactors:

19-20 April 2011 Conference in Columbia, SC, on Small Modular Reactors:

The conference is expected to draw about 120 people from about 60 companies and agencies around the world, such as China National Nuclear Corp., the International Atomic Energy Agency and Iraq Energy Institute. Also, industry heavyweights like Westinghouse, AREVA and GE have signed up, along with the U.S. Department of Energy, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the U.S. Army and utilities across the nation.

The conference, scheduled to be held April 19-20 at the Marriott Hotel on Main Street, is sponsored by SCE&G and organized by the Carolinas’ Nuclear Cluster and Nuclear Energy Insider _thestate

SMR Conference 23-24 May 2011 Washington, DC...._ Call for abstracts

Small modular reactors can be built more quickly, safely, and cheaply in a controlled factory environment. They can then be shipped to the site for a quick and inexpensive installation -- pre-loaded with fuel and ready to hook up.

The US Navy has been powering ships safely using small nuclear reactors for many decades. One of the most likely future suppliers of SMRs to the civilian market -- Babcock and Wilcox -- just received a new $2 billion award for Naval Nuclear Reactor Components.

But then, the US military has to actually accomplish something -- unlike the civil portion of the US government which generally does no more than consume scarce resources which would be put to better use elsewhere.

Short Primer on Liquid Fuel Nuclear Reactors

EnergyfromThorium
This is a re-published Al Fin article which was adapted from an earlier article at Al Fin Energy

72,000 Square Foot Concrete Country Cabin -- Your Tax Dollars at Work

CCHeadliner
How does a person afford to build a house larger than the White House (55,000 sq. ft), even larger than Bill Gates' mansion (66,000 sq ft)? All you have to do is to own a company that maintains big contracts with the US Defense Dept and several other US government agencies. Under President Obama, the government is central to all wealth formation and disbursal. More on the huge 72,000 square feet country cabin:

Beginning with a 23,000-square-foot basement, the house’s ground level is only slightly smaller and the second story is a little less than 22,000 square feet.

Garage space alone accounts for 4,000 square feet.

Interior plans include two elevators; 15 bedrooms; 14 bathrooms; a two-story, 1,600-square-foot library and two-story, 1,970-square-foot great hall.

The master bedroom is 1,275 square feet.

...“It’s all concrete, and I’ve heard it’ll have bulletproof glass and a concrete roof,” said Steve Johnson, neighbor to the Woods Fork Road property.

...Records show the building is owned by the Steven T. Huff Family, LLC, but exactly who Steven T. Huff is, is largely unknown. His brother, Joe Huff, Ozark, verified the ownership of the property but was reluctant to disclose any more information.

“The technology involved with the construction is proprietary in nature,” Joe Huff said. “it’s not information we are prepared to talk about right now.”

Joe Huff also verified that the structure is being built as a personal residence and identified himself as the “project manager.” However, available information online and in public records indicate Steven Huff is involved in technological engineering.

The property’s deed says the Steven T. Huff Family, LCC is located in Leesburg, Va. Available online records of political campaign contributions show a Steven T. Huff of Leesburg to be an engineer and chief technology officer of Overwatch Systems, Ltd. According to the Overwatch website, the company “delivers multi-source intelligence (multi-INT), geospatial analysis and custom intelligence solutions to the Department of Defense, national agencies and civilian organizations. ... More than 25,000 analysts in the U.S. Department of Defense and the larger intelligence community utilize Overwatch solutions.”

A company overview of Overwatch on the Bloomberg Businessweek website says Overwatch was formerly known as Sensor Systems.

Overwatch also owns the Medical Numerics company, which, according to its website, “enjoys powerful collaborations with the world’s leading medical imaging research organizations, including The United States National Institutes of Health, Harvard Medical School, Yale University, UCLA School of Medicine, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, and Oxford University.”

The Medical Numerics website says Steven Huff founded Sensor Systems—now Overwatch—in 1993. _CCHeadliner

The home is located near Highlandville, Missouri.

All Quiet on the Watchtower?

Martello towers were built, at great cost, along the coasts of Kent, Sussex, Essex and Suffolk at the time of the Napoleonic wars. Originally, there were 103 of these 30ft-high towers, with walls 13ft thick and roof-mounted cannons capable of shooting lead balls a mile out to sea. _Guardian

Guardian
These coastal towers still stand guard along the English coast, watching against the risk of Napoleon re-born. If you imagine yourself as a modern-day watchman, protector against the invading destroyer, one of these towers may be reserved just for you.

The overall effect is magical: brick fort on the outside, palatial home within. The main space, approached from the entrance lobby, is breathtaking, with the climb up the spiral stairs enjoyably spooky, and the top floor a revelation: all light, space and comfort, with little hint of ostentation. But then you don't need decoration when you have the sea and all its moods just beyond the parapet, with ships hoving in and out of view, and sunlight playing over that lichen-encrusted brickwork throughout the day. _Guardian

Some refurbishment will be required, however. Back in the day of Napoleon, they lacked such modern amenities as satellite television, the internet, electricity, and . . . flush toilets. Interior designs and standards of interior thermal control may have changed a bit as well.

Think it over. If Europe and the UK experience half the tumult that seems to be headed that way, you may be happy to be living in a fortress by the time the storm passes over.

What Happens to the Planetary Power Supply When Sol Erupts?

SolarFlare NASA
What would happen to electrical infrastructure on Earth if the sun passes through a period of massive solar flaring as occurred in 1859 or 1921?

On Earth, power lines, data connections and even oil and gas pipelines are potentially vulnerable.

An early warning of the risk came in 1859, when the biggest CME ever observed unleashed red, purple and green auroras even in tropical latitudes.

The new-fangled technology of the telegraph went crazy. Geomagnetically-induced currents in the wires shocked telegraph operators and even set the telegraph paper on fire.

In 1989, a far smaller flare knocked out power from Canada's Hydro Quebec generator, inflicting a nine-hour blackout for six million people.

...Recurrence of a 1921 event today would fry 350 major transformers, leaving more than 130 million people without power, it heard. A bigger storm could cost between a trillion and two trillion dollars in the first year, and full recovery could take between four and 10 years. _Breitbart

Here's the scary part: if government leaders follow through on their threat to install a "smart grid" in order to facilitate "green energy", the power grid will become up to 100 times more vulnerable to solar flares, EMP attacks, and computer hacker attacks. Think about that at your next Sierra Club outing.

Previously published at Al Fin the Next Level

Obama Inflates Zombie Bubble to Bursting Point

Wired

Zombies have become particularly popular since Barack Obama ascended to the US Senate, and into the presidency. Undeterred by the ongoing Great Obama Economic Depression, the Zombie Bubble continues to inflate against all economic odds.

Zombie franchises continued to spike even when the Dow plummeted in 2008, and they’ve kept going. This can mean only one thing: a zombie bubble. _Wired

The graphic above fails to even scratch the surface of the vast horde of zombie flicks and TV shows that have been produced over the past several years.

When even the president of the world's sole superpower is himself a zombie, how could an investment into the zombie bubble fail? How indeed. Tune in again in mid-November of 2012.

Make Mine a Hemp and Lime

The building seen at left is a HemPod.  It was made by University of Bath researchers to demonstrate the usefulness of simple, renewable materials for high-performance, high-value, low maintenance and upkeep housing.

Called the "HemPod," this one-storey building has highly insulating walls made from the chopped woody core, or shiv, of the industrial hemp plant mixed with a specially developed lime-based binder.
The hemp shiv traps air in the walls, and the hemp itself is porous, making the walls incredibly well insulated. The lime-based binder sticks together and protects the hemp and makes the building material highly fire resistant.

..."The walls are breathable and act as a sort of passive air-conditioning system, meaning that the internal humidity is kept constant and the quality of the air within the house is very good. The walls also have a 'virtual thermal mass' because of the remarkable pore structure of hemp shiv combined with the properties of the lime binder, which means the building is much more thermally efficient and the temperature inside the house stays fairly constant."
Professor Pete Walker, Director of the BRE Centre for Innovative Construction Materials, added: "The aim of the project is to provide some robust data to persuade the mainstream building industry to use this building material more widely.

"Hemp grows really quickly; it only takes the area the size of a rugby pitch to grow enough hemp in three months to build a typical three-bedroom house.

..."Every part of the plant can be used, so there's no waste -- the shiv is used for building, the fibres can make car panels, clothing or paper, and the seeds can be used for food or oil. So it's a very efficient, renewable material.

"Lime has been used in construction for millennia, and combining it with industrial hemp is a significant development in the effort to make construction more sustainable."
Environmentally-friendly building materials are often more expensive than traditional materials, but the Renewable House project (www.renewable-house.co.uk) funded by the Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) and the National Non-Food Crops Centre (NNFCC) demonstrated a cost of around £75,000 (excluding foundations) to build a three-bedroom Code 4 house from hemp-lime making it competitive with conventional bricks and mortar. _SD

Manyof the same features of "breathable walls" and built-in thermal mass can be found in more primitive materials such as slip-form compressed straw-clay walled buildings. But it seems more likely that more processed hemp materials combined with a lime binder would be far more durable than the clay slip walls. It will be interesting to see the data that comes out of this experiment.

How to Fly a Helicopter

Flying a helicopter is slightly more instinctive and intuitive than flying a fixed-wing aircraft. Since your "wings" are rotating, you are in constant control of all aspects of flying. This short video presents a quickie look at the art of helicopter flying. But don't try it at home in a real helicopter until you get more training.

Some of the electronic simulators for piloting a helicopter are pretty impressive. Start with the basics. If it works out, you can have access to more personal freedom of movement than you ever thought possible.