Something for kids to get excited about

CubeSats in Mars orbit (artist illustration) - NASA

There was great jubilation on Monday as NASA’s latest mission to Mars, the Insight lander, successfully touched down. This $828 million mission is nearly parsimonious when compared to the $150 billion cost of the International Space Station. And it is hoped to answer a deeply existential question – what happened to Mars’s oceans and atmosphere?

Some researchers believe that, long ago, Mars was potentially able to support life with liquid water and a relatively thick atmosphere. But its lack of a strong magnetosphere, such as Earth possesses, allowed the solar wind to eventually sweep away much of the atmosphere thereby allowing the oceans to evaporate into space. Insight will perform seismic studies to allow us to understand the dynamics of Mars’s core and perhaps the cause of her fate.

But in all the excitement, short thrift was given to another remarkable achievement. Insight did not fly alone, but was accompanied by a pair of diminutive, briefcase-size companions flying in formation with her. Two identical miniature spacecraft, each about 30 pounds, detached from Insight once underway and accompanied her across deep space, then went into orbit around Mars as Insight landed. Named MarCO-A and MarCO-B, Jet Propulsion Lab engineers whimsically nicknamed them WALL-E and EVE after the animated characters in the 2008 film WALL-E.

MarCO-A and -B are communication satellites and relay data between Insight and Earth. They were the first to report Insight’s successful landing. More importantly, they have proven that CubeSats (which they are) are capable of withstanding the rigors of a 300-million mile journey through deep space and arrive with pinpoint accuracy. 

A CubeSat is a standardized miniature satellite whose specifications were established in 1999 by California Polytechnic University and Stanford University. Since then over 800 CubeSats have been launched into low Earth orbit to perform a wide variety of purposes. One of the key differentiators of CubeSats is that they are hitchhikers and don’t have their own primary launch vehicle. This is the major contributor to their low cost.

CubeSats have been designed and deployed by a variety of commercial, governmental, and academic establishments, including universities, high schools, and even middle schools. That last bit is incredibly important.

Robertsville Middle School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, recently was notified by NASA that their student proposal to loft a CubeSat into orbit had been approved. The photos of exuberant girls and boys are enough to warm the heart of any STEM teacher. RamSat (so named because the school mascot is a ram) will launch as soon as next year and will use imaging data to determine forest coverage lost to wildfires.

Peter Thornton, a scientist from the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, says it well.

“This is such an exciting opportunity for the students. They will now have the chance to design, build, carry out and own a satellite mission. They will be the mission scientists, the communication specialists, and the logistics experts. They will calculate orbits, learn to aim their satellite camera at selected targets on the ground, radio their commands to RamSat, and receive and interpret the digital data streams broadcast by RamSat, containing imagery and all the other important data gathered on-board.

“They’ll be working as a team to identify and solve problems, and they will be working with NASA professionals to integrate RamSat into the launch and deployment mission,” Thornton said. “I can’t think of a more exciting project to ignite the students’ curiosity and passion for science and engineering.”

It is very likely that the girls and boys working on this project will be able to answer the age-old question of first year Algebra students: “When will I ever use this stuff in real life?”

Robertsville Middle kids will be living it. Maybe Wamsutta will be next?

Why we thank our veterans

World War II Memorial

Just this week we celebrated Veteran’s Day, a very special one since it has been 100 years since the hostilities of World War I ended. The Armistice, a truce between Germany and the Allies, went into effect on the "eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month" of 1918.

Also this week we mourned the 80^th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the night of 9-10 November in 1938 when the Nazi persecution of Jews became violently physical. These two events, separated by a mere twenty years, are not unrelated.

The causes of World War I were many. The simplest, and best known, was the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria-Hungary at the hands of a Serbian assassin. This was a tribal act driven by the desire of Serbia to take Bosnia and Herzogovina from Austria-Hungary as their native populations were all Slavic. This caused Austria-Hungary to attack Serbia, who had a mutual defense pact with Russia, the subsequent attack by which pulled Germany, who had their own pact with Austria-Hungary, into the conflict. But France had a defense pact with Russia, thus entering the fray. Germany attacked Belgium on the way to getting at France which caused Britain (who had a pact with both France and Belgium), and later the United States, to pile on. Japan opportunistically entered on the side of the Allies in order to claim German possessions in Asia. Italy, promised territory in secret negotiations, later entered on the side of the Allies.

To say it was complex is a vast understatement. WWI was to be the war to end all wars but we know how that worked out. Let’s take an abbreviated tour of the major chain of events since.

First, when WWI ended, Germany was permitted to accept a truce rather than surrender. This allowed her to retain a small standing army. More importantly, harsh reparation (repayment) terms were imposed, causing great hardship to the German peoples as the worldwide Great Depression unfolded. Conditions were ripe for a savior, and indeed, Adolph Hitler rose to power promising to return Germany to her former glory. Hitler’s Nazi party was racist and believed that their Aryan race was superior. To them, Jews, Romans, and Slavs were inferior and undesirable. This led, inevitably, to the Kristallnacht in 1938, the Holocaust that followed, and the state of Israel today.

World War II was predictable due to German and Japanese expansionism. The communist state of the Soviet Union (which formed during the interwar period – you were warned that this is abbreviated), first entered the conflict on the side of Germany but then was figuratively stabbed in the back by Hitler and switched alliance to the Allies. Our relationship with the Soviets was one of convenience, not shared values.

Then WWII was won, but this time Germany (and Japan) were required to surrender. Their leaders were deposed, governments disassembled, and they were occupied by Allied forces with the goal of building democratic institutions. That Japan and Germany are today peaceful, democratic, and rank as the world’s 3^rd and 4^th largest economies speaks to the grand success of this approach (in stark contrast to Iraq).

In the post-war years began the great struggle against communism, the Cold War.

In addition to the Soviet Union, Mao Zedong’s communist party revolted in 1947 and came into control of that country. (A vestige of free China exists in Taiwan. While China has risen to be the number two world economy, it has done so at the expense of repressive policies over its peoples in the most highly surveilled nation on earth.)

The Korean War was a dispute between the south (democratic) and the north (communist). China (openly) and the Soviet Union (covertly) lined up to support the north while the United Nations (mainly staffed by US forces), fought for the south. This conflict was the opening salvo in the Cold War and has not to this day been resolved.

The Vietnam War, which many misunderstand, was another major “hot” struggle of the Cold War, with China and the Soviet Union supporting the communist north and the United States the democratic south. Vietnam was an example of a political war with strategies and limitations set in Washington. The generals were not allowed to win the war and, even when we did win an enormous battle (such as the Tet Offensive and the Battle for Hue City), our domestic media presented it as a loss. When Americans were captured by the enemy, they were cursed and spat upon. When our military returned home, they were likewise cursed and spat upon. Those that did so had no grasp of history.

If there is one lesson, it is that the peace and prosperity of the world is largely due to America’s place in it. When we step back, the world becomes more dangerous. When we step forward, it becomes more safe. That is what you should really be thanking our veterans for.

The Trouble With Bernie

“The State is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else.”

Frédéric Bastiat, 1801-1850

Socialism has become de rigueur once again, accounting for the popularity of politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Several recent polls have shown young people, most particularly, open to socialist ideas. As summarized by CNBC, “According to a new poll from Gallup, young Americans are souring on capitalism. Less than half, 45 percent, view capitalism positively.”

This should come as no surprise. Support for socialist ideas is inversely related to one’s sense of confidence. That is, as people feel less confident in their ability to negotiate the world, their attraction to socialist ideas increases. And while the economy is booming (in spite of a currently volatile stock market), we are faced with great technology-driven disruptions. Artificial intelligence and automation are already devouring routine jobs and promise to consume even more. In the not too long run, Uber drivers and over-the-road truckers will be supplanted by robots.

In light of such uncertainties, it is reasonable for young people to ask “how will I support myself?” 

While learned professors have written millions of words detailing socialist concepts, let’s try to boil it down to the bare essentials: individual effort and private property.

Imagine a slide switch which, when moved fully to the left represents complete collectivism. In this extreme, there is no such thing as private property. The state, that is the collective, owns all assets and individuals own nothing. The result of one’s labor is added to the collective pool and you have no right to any part of it individually. Food, clothing, and shelter are doled out at as the collective wills.

Now we move the switch all the way to the right. This is complete individualism and represents no collective ownership of anything. All assets are completely owned by individuals and food, clothing, and shelter are acquired only to the extent that each individual can provide for themselves.

Now, each of these extremes is highly unlikely to ever exist as long as more than one human populates the planet. In fact, the switch hovers near the middle, perhaps a bit left in Scandinavian countries and a bit right in the United States, but all productive economies in the world both respect private property rights while providing collective support. Good examples of collective efforts include military defense, roadways, and certain government programs such as welfare and social security.

Another major aspect of the slider switch is this: when moved all the way to the left (collectivism), there is no incentive for individual effort. You may work as hard as you can or as little as you like and your personal outcome is the same. When the switch is all the way to the right, your survival is completely dependent on your individual effort and success – work or die.

Looping back to the increasing allure of socialism, young people, fearing for their future, want to nudge the switch to the left. They are willing to exchange opportunity for safety, liberty for security, achievement for guarantees. This is understandable as they have not yet grown confident of their own abilities.

But unfortunately, due to human nature, socialism reduces the incentive to excel. So while all can share in the collective pot, that pot itself will tend to suffer.

A good example of this is the early travails and then triumphs of the Pilgrims, as chronicled by Nathaniel Philbrick in his book “Mayflower.”

“The fall of 1623 marked the end of Plymouth’s debilitating food shortages. For the last two planting seasons, the Pilgrims had grown crops communally – the approach first used at Jamestown and other English settlements. But as the disastrous harvest of the previous fall had shown, something drastic needed to be done.”

“In April, [William] Bradford had decided that each household should be assigned its own plot to cultivate, with the understanding that each family kept whatever it grew. The change in attitude was stunning. Families were now willing to work much harder than they had ever worked before. In previous years, the men had tended the fields while the women tended the children at home. ‘The women now went willingly into the field,’ Bradford wrote, ‘and took their little ones with them to set the corn.’ The Pilgrims had stumbled on the power of capitalism. Although the fortunes of the colony still teetered precariously in the years ahead, the inhabitants never again starved.”

A good lesson for us all.

Finally, regarding private property rights, remember that even ardent socialists lock their doors.

5G is coming. Why you should care.

Imagine a cocktail party, a loud cacophony of sound permeating the room, booming music and shrieks of laughter. You are shouting at the top of your lungs to your distant better half while she is simultaneously whispering to you. Further, imagine that you understand her perfectly.

This unlikely bit of magic is the equivalent of 5G full duplex radio, where your cellphone will be transmitting and receiving on the same exact frequency at the same exact time. Today’s cell phones can transmit and receive at the same time, but only on different frequencies. This new technique effectively doubles the amount of information (voice or data) that can be carried by an allotted frequency spectrum, one of the significant promises of 5G.

5G is the fifth generation of cellular radio technology and is currently being phased in. It promises extremely high speed, very low latency (delay), increased data capacity, and energy savings among other advantages.

There are a number of new technologies required to support 5G. You will hear of New Radio (NR), millimeter wavelength, small cells, massive MIMO, beamforming, full duplex, M2M, and other cool stuff. But keep in mind, most of these are used to support the major performance objectives of high data rate and low latency. Let’s focus on them.

High 5G data rate offers an alternative to cable

5G has an achievable performance target of one gigabit per second. A traditional wired home cable WiFi connection of 100 megabits per seconds is considered extremely fast. 5G is at least 10 times faster which offers a very real alternative to traditional cable. Recent research in Australia revealed that one in three households there were interested in subscribing to 5G services to replace cable for internet access. Especially in new service areas, cellular radio access will be much more economic than fiber cable runs.

High 5G data rate will enable new cellular applications

Current 4G cellular commonly offers 10 megabits per second download, so 5G will increase that by a factor of 100. While such a huge performance increase is not required for reading email or updating Facebook, an entire new panoply of applications will be enabled. Think virtual reality and augmented reality. But then think further, beyond a human cellphone user, and consider server-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-vehicle communications of autonomous automobiles. This is the tip of the iceberg of new applications enabled by 5G’s extreme high performance. It is almost impossible to foresee the application landscape five or ten years hence.

Low 5G latency is good for gamers. Surgery, not so much.

Data rate describes the speed of a connection once data starts to flow. Think of a NASCAR racer going 200 mph. Latency, on the other hand, measures how long it takes that data to start flowing between the sender and the receiver. Think of how long it takes that NASCAR racer to get from zero to 200 mph.

5G promises to offer very low latency of one one-thousandth of a second (one millisecond). For PC gamers, this is a boon. Gamers like to experience their virtual environments as if they were unfolding in real time. Business users, similarly, want videoconferences to unfold smoothly.

You will hear claims that 5G low latency will aid a surgeon in New York to perform robotic surgery in San Francisco. That is balderdash. The propagation of a signal in a fiber backhaul network over 3,000 miles will add a minimum of 25 milliseconds to the connection, dwarfing any advantage of low 5G latency. No, latency is subject to the laws of physics, so to be of benefit, network nodes (servers, users, routers, etc.) must be in relatively close proximity.

Is 5G real?

Yes, 5G is real and is being rolled out now. Billions of dollars are being invested in research and infrastructure. One measure of this reality is the number of 5G patents filed, which is huge and growing.

Are there impediments?

Yes, there are impediments, mostly political. The federal government recently decreed that state and local authorities cannot slow-roll the approval of 5G base stations. 5G uses very high radio frequencies and thus the area serviced by each base station is relatively small. Therefore, there will be a large number of small base stations. Political impediments would be very costly.

Will I need a new phone?

Yes, but when you next upgrade to a new phone, it will most likely support 5G. Some already do. In the meanwhile, carriers will continue to support and expand current 4G networks.

Bottom line.

5G is new, heavily marketed, and subject to much hype. But it is real, significant, and will lead to applications we can’t currently envision. Let’s all smile, relax, and enjoy the ride.

Here's an idea... Let's enforce some laws.

The most recent issue of Guns and Ammo magazine ranks Massachusetts near the top of a list of states hostile to gun owners. Only New York and New Jersey are stricter.

It is reasonable to think that non-gun-owners would celebrate the Massachusetts ranking. And that gun owners might not. While that’s true, a recent survey suggests a surprising amount of agreement between these camps.

The survey of 2,100 people, conducted by the John Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research and reported in the American Journal of Public Health, tested support for 24 gun policies. Here is there overall finding: “Although there are important areas where Americans disagree on guns, large majorities of both gun owners and non–gun owners strongly support measures to strengthen US gun laws.”

The authors go on to describe that areas of most common support, that is, upon which both gun-owners and non-gun-owners agree. “Policies with high public support and minimal support gaps by gun ownership status included universal background checks, greater accountability for licensed gun dealers unable to account for their inventory, higher safety training standards for concealed carry permit holders, improved reporting of records related to mental illness for background checks, gun prohibitions for persons subject to temporary domestic violence restraining orders, and gun violence restraining orders.”

This is good news for policy makers as it indicates broad common ground for minimizing firearms deaths. The authors, however, with abundant understatement, sound a cautious note: “insufficient enforcement of and compliance with these laws limit their effects.”

It is this last bit that drives honest gun owners absolutely nuts.

Politicians, as is their wont, continue to press for new, more restrictive gun laws. In Massachusetts, Attorney General Maura Healey roils gun owners by reinterpreting laws previously passed by the legislature. In Rhode Island, Governor Gina Raimondo creates new gun restrictions by dictate without legislative action. It is not a comforting environment for gun owners.

The most common complaint you will hear from these folks is this: “Instead of a new law, why don’t you just enforce the ones that we already have?”

They have a point, and here is a good example.

In March of this year, John D. Williams of Madison, Maine, was arrested in Haverhill, Mass. According to The Eagle-Tribune (North Andover), “State troopers arrested a man from Maine for having a gun without a license after they came upon his stranded vehicle on the side of Interstate 495.”

Williams was charged with the following: possession of and carrying a firearm, improper storage of a firearm, possession of ammunition without a Firearms Identification Card, possession of a large capacity feeding device, and several traffic offenses. Williams was held on $10,000 bail.

Williams appeared before Judge Michael Patten who reduced his bail to $7,500 in spite of the gun charges and a long criminal history. Williams appealed his bail to the Essex superior Court and Judge Timothy Feeley further reduced it to $5,000. Williams paid the bail and was released.

On the very day that Williams was due back in a Massachusetts court, he was accused of shooting and killing Maine Sheriff’s Deputy Eugene Cole. Corporal Cole, a US Army veteran, left a wife and four adult children.

This is not an aberration. In a case from April of this year we lost a Cape Cod police officer.  The defendant, Thomas Lantanowich, “is well-known to Cape Cod Law Enforcement as a notorious and violent criminal with 111 prior criminal charges in Massachusetts and currently out on probation with several criminal cases pending” according to the Yarmouth Police Department. 

Officer Sean Gannon, his victim, was also a victim of our porous criminal justice system.

Massachusetts judges routinely issue mere slaps on the wrist for gun violations while politicians continue to clamor for more restrictive laws. Does anyone see the disconnect here?

This is one more thing on which gun owners and non-gun-owners may find common ground: Enforce existing laws and hold criminals accountable for their actions by imposing meaningful punishments.

Here’s what you can do. Read the news. Pay attention. Hold our politicians and judiciary accountable.

Change starts with you.

Pondering life from slightly abaft

Often things seem so clear to us but we are wrong. Sometimes surprisingly so.

We gladly plop down a few bucks, occasionally many bucks, for lottery tickets and think there is a reasonable chance that we will win. But that chance is fleetingly slim, so much so as to fade into shimmering invisibility. A million to one. Ten million to one. Five hundred million to one. But a nearly sure thing, like a very long-term regular investment in a 401K retirement account, doesn’t appeal. A friend, the owner of a convenience store, relates anonymous accounts of customers who spend hundreds of dollars a month on the lottery. To them, that is their retirement plan. Hopes of hitting the big one.

We follow all sort of odd diets with mixed success and poor long-term results, because the experts’ recommendations (National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control, Harvard Health, and so on) just seem so quotidian and lack the snazzy social media seal of approval. We eschew carbohydrates without discriminating between high and low-quality carbs. We overload on meat protein because the typical American serving size is big enough to feed any three people. We consume enough sugar to sink a battleship and enough alcohol to refloat it. And then we sit on our generous behinds, persist in our physical idleness, and wonder why our weight remains stubbornly high. It’s not rocket science.

We wonder how Facebook can treat us, their customers, so shabbily. And while we glory in our belief that Facebook is free, we ignore the ancient dictum that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. Which leads us eventually to the realization that we are not Facebook’s customers. We are its product, neatly catalogued and packaged and sold to advertisers and marketers and pollsters. The same is true of any “free” service such as Google or Twitter or Gmail or Instagram, to each of whom we are only a slick product.

And then there is the media, the cable and broadcast and print behemoths in which we invest our trust. The cracks begin to show when we see a live action reporter struggling against the seemingly gale-force winds of a hurricane, only to spot a couple of teenagers strolling nonchalantly by in the background. We begin to question, are there any other exaggerations or distortions? Slowly, we begin to understand that, here also, we are just a product being delivered to advertisers. And that the key objective of the media is not to inform, but to keep our eyes glued to the screen through the next commercial message. What chumps we are.

Speaking of chumps, we are barraged by a constant variety of telephone and mail and email scams. The attackers are ingenious and constantly changing and refining their approach. “This is the IRS. A recent audit has revealed that you owe $10,000 in additional taxes. If you do not pay immediately, your driver’s license will be suspended.” Or, “This is your grandson. I am in terrible trouble. Please don’t tell my parents. I need $5,000 immediately to be released from jail.”  And so on. These people are vicious sociopaths.

Is there anything we can do in defense?

You darn well betcha there is. The first thing is to become far more skeptical. Skeptical of huge payoffs. Skeptical of profit-making diet plans. Skeptical of free stuff. Skeptical of the media. Skeptical of demands for money. This doesn’t mean becoming hard-hearted, just more discerning and careful.

Next is to inform yourself. Numeracy is vital. Take an adult continuing education course in statistics and probability. And another one in finance. Become more aware of how the world works.

Widen your sources of information. Read several newspapers. Browse many websites. Watch many news channels. Expand your mind.

None of this is a guarantee. But if we all exerted a bit of extra effort, we would find ourselves more in control of our destinies, and more comfortable in our skins.

But all this aside, don’t forget to count your blessings. The beauty of an early sunrise. The joy of gamboling squirrels and chirping birds. The joy of blooming flowers.

Life is a balance. Live it empowered.

Science is in another golden age

It is a truly mind-boggling period to be alive. Every time we turn around, there is news of yet another unbelievable scientific achievement. While science has been said to have had several golden ages (as evinced by such as Da Vinci, Newton, Faraday, Curie, and Einstein), it is fair to say that we are currently in yet another one.

Here is only a small sampling of what is going on lately.

Genetic genealogy solves crimes

The analysis and understanding of human DNA has finally reached the point where old, cold cases are being busted wide open. Earlier this year, police in Washington state arrested William Earl Talbott for the 1987 murders of Jay Cook and Tanya Van Cuylenborg. And more famously, cops in California apprehended Joseph James DeAngelo as the prime suspect in the Golden State Killer murders.

Both arrests were based on a new technique called genetic genealogy, whereby the suspect’s DNA from the evidence files was used to locate his relatives using public genealogy databases. From that starting point, old fashioned police shoe leather was used to zero in on the subject. While there are some real privacy concerns to be managed, this technique promises to bring to justice a great number of heretofore unidentified serial rapists and murderers.

Robots reading your mind

MIT roboticists having been working on the man-machine interface and have made a remarkable breakthrough. Daniela Rus and her colleagues developed a system where a human controller, with electrodes worn on their head and forearm, are able to control the behavior of a robot by simply thinking their commands and flicking their wrists. This technique would be useful for able-bodied humans trying to control robots in noisy or dim environments, and also for patients with limited motor abilities, such as the recently deceased and greatly missed Stephen Hawking.

The current electrode headwear is clunky and expensive but, like all other technologies, would quickly become more sophisticated and cheaper with competition.

Fiber-optic cable seismology

In 1851, the first commercial undersea telegraph cable was laid across the English Channel from France to England. Since then, we have progressively improved the technologies involved and now there are over a million kilometers of fiber optic cables crisscrossing the world’s ocean floors.

Barbara Romanowicz of the University of California and her colleagues have proposed a method to locate under-ocean seismic activity using this network of cables. Light is injected into one end of a fiber cable and the output at the other end is analyzed. If the cable was shaken by seismic activity, the output light will be distorted. By comparing the inputs and outputs of several cables, the location and magnitude of the disturbance can be computed. Since most existing seismic stations are land-based, the technique would add a valuable dimension to the whole picture of seismic activity. This would be particularly useful in posting timely tsunami warnings.

Electronic chips in aerosol spray

If anything seems like science fiction, this is it. MIT chemical engineer Volodymyr Koman and his team have built microscopic electronic chips that can be sprayed into an environment to detect various chemicals or pollutants. Each tiny chip is light-powered and is analyzed by collecting them all up and exposing to electrodes to read out their settings. In the future, the chips may output light signals allowing them to be optically scanned. These tiny sniffers could be used to detect pollution, gas leaks, and other contaminants. Human medicine is also a possible application, with these tiny devices injected into the digestive tract or bloodstream. This is a practical application of the revolutionary field of nanotechnology.

Gut microbes relieve autism

Researchers investigating the causes of autism had theorized that digestive upsets were correlated with the condition. As a result, they suspected that relieving the digestive condition through microbiome intervention might mitigate the autism symptoms.

Rosa Krajmalnik-Brown, of Arizona State University, and her colleagues mounted a small study of 18 children with autism. They performed fecal transplants to boost the childrens’ microbiome, particularly adding the Prevotella bacteria, and found that their autism symptoms were reduced for up to two years. It’s still too soon to call this a cure, but it is certainly encouraging research.

This is just a smattering of what’s going on in the sciences. For instance, a recent experiment used CRISPR gene editing technology to cure muscular dystrophy in beagle puppies. This is enormously promising research.

There is no better time for young women and men to get into STEM studies. Science, math, biology, and physics will provide a red carpet into the enormously exciting and rewarding research of our future.

And, more importantly, you will be greatly improving the human condition. Thank you in advance, and God bless.