A watery apocalypse for Tokyo?

I didn't even realise, until I saw a special (and fascinating) report on Catalyst last year that parts of Tokyo were at high risk of flooding, and huge engineering projects underground have been built to protect the city.

Well, the recent floods just north of the city have led to some dire warnings about how much worse things will be when the same amount of rainfall hits closer to the metropolis.  It sounds very serious indeed:

With the effects of global warming becoming increasingly obvious, the climatic conditions that triggered torrential rain in Ibaraki and Tochigi prefectures two weeks ago is no longer a rarity, and the odds are “100 percent” that similar downpours will hit Tokyo, says Nobuyuki Tsuchiya, a civil engineering expert and author of the 2014 book “Shuto Suibotsu” (“The Capital Submerged”)....

“It so happened that the rain zone moved (northeast) after striking Tokyo and stayed over the Kinugawa River. But think what a disaster it may have been if the band of rain had moved about 50 km westward and struck the Tone and Arakawa rivers instead....

The rupture of the Tone and Arakawa rivers would cause “far more severe devastation” than that of the Kinugawa deluge, he said.

With the Arakawa, for example, boasting one of the densest populations in its surrounding areas of any river in Japan, extensive flooding would lead to unprecedented fatalities and an economic catastrophe that would send shock waves around the world, Tsuchiya said.

Well, this guy has a book to sell, but it is  not as if he is alone:

Indeed, a 2010 government report released by a panel of outside disaster-prevention experts calculated several possible death tolls in the event that the Tone and Arakawa rivers rupture. The deadliest scenario was if the Tone River broke its banks near the cities of Koga and Bando in western Ibaraki, in which case the death toll could rise to as many as 6,300, the report said.

Tsuchiya said, however, that Tokyo should brace for an even more apocalyptic scenario, noting the amount of rain that entered the Kinugawa River was far larger than that anticipated by the report.

“If Tokyo is struck by the same level of downpours that hit the Kinugawa, I’d say the damage would be far more disastrous.”

It therefore seems that if an earthquake doesn't kill thousands there in the coming years, floods probably will....

A "doctor caused epidemic"

It's always interesting to look at how and why particular drug abuse problems start, and the resurgence of heroin in midwest America gets this explanation in The Economist:

The heroin epidemic in the Midwest is closely linked to the rampant opiate epidemic. As doctors prescribed opioid painkillers such as OxyContin more and more liberally, their abuse grew. Sales of prescription opioid painkillers have increased 300% since 1999, according to the federal Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), even though the amount of pain Americans report to their physicians has not changed.

 Three-quarters of heroin addicts used to take prescription drugs and switched to heroin, which is cheaper and more easily available on the black market. A gram of pure heroin costs less than half what it did in the 1980s, in real terms. “This is a doctor-caused epidemic,” says Tom Frieden, boss of the CDC. In states with higher prescription rate of opioid painkillers, such as Michigan, Ohio and Indiana, the number of heroin addicts is higher too.

In depressed areas in the Rust Belt, where poverty and unemployment rates shot up as factories shut down and jobs disappeared, the drug epidemic is ravaging once-idyllic communities. Indiana had a brutal wake-up call earlier this year when Austin, a small rural community just off the interstate between Indianapolis and Louisville, was the epicentre of the largest outbreak of HIV infections ever seen in the state. Nearly 200 people were infected in a population of just 4,200 because addicts injecting Opana, a prescription painkiller that delivers a potent high, shared needles, which is the fastest way for an infection to spread. “We have never documented anything like it,” says Mr Frieden.

The importance of Chinese box office, again

China Box Office: Tom Cruise's 'Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation' Crosses $100M - Forbes

That's in 10 days of release.  In America, it is approaching $200 million but slowing down.

An earlier prediction I posted said some think it might reach $250 million in China.

One might say that it pays to panda to the Chinese market.  (Ha.)

About time

Doctor Who exterminated by X Factor in 10-year low for season opener | Media | The Guardian

I had been wondering whether the now completely unwatchable Dr Who would be suffering in the ratings, and it appears it certainly is.    As I have been saying for at least a couple of years now, it needs to be rested for a decade or so, and then revived (if at all) under a completely new team. 

And the Guardian can stop being Dr Who Nerd Central, too.

A different type of Troll

For those who are using the Australian streaming service Stan,  can I suggest you watch the 2011 Norwegian film Trollhunter.

It's not that it's what I would exactly call a great movie - it's just that it's an eccentric idea for a "found footage" mockumentary that is very well executed and enjoyable.  And you get to see lots of Norway, which looks wet, cold, pretty empty, and (for the most part) pretty spectacular.  I want to go there.

(It also shows how monster special effects look so much better when incorporated into a real background, rather than the Lord of the Rings/later Star Wars problem of the entire landscape looking digitally fake.)

Just being practical, I guess...

Czech pub installs vomitorium for patrons | barfblog

Here's the photo that seems to prove it:

Yet more renewables optimism

The recent (and relatively abrupt) rise in optimism about renewable energy being able to pretty quickly make a big difference to CO2 production continues with stories like these.

I think I had seen some mention of this before, but strangely enough, Texas is leading America in the production of wind power.   This story last week at Slate noted that its peculiar electricity marketing system means that wind farm owners at times offer their electricity at "negative prices", but an article from earlier this year talks more generally about the Texan story:

In 2014, wind generated 10.6 percent of Texas electricity, up from 9.9 percent the previous year and 6.2 percent in 2009, according to the U.S Energy Information Administration. Wind energy generation that falls under the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), which manages the grid for 24 million Texans, nearly doubled from 2009 to 2014. Currently, Texas has more than 12 gigawatts of wind power capacity installed across the state — equivalent to six Hoover Dams. That figure could jump to 20 gigawatts in a few years with upgrades to the current transmission system, according to Ross Baldick, an engineering professor at University of Texas at Austin.

And the explanation:

So how has the Lone Star state done it? Strong government incentives, sizeable investments in infrastructure, and innovative policies have played an important role. So has the backing of governors of all political persuasions, from liberal Democrat Ann Richards to conservative Republican Rick Perry. But at heart the profit motive has driven the state’s wind energy boom, with ranchers and landowners seeing gold in the spinning turbines on the Texas plains.

I wonder why Texas isn't also the centre of infrasound complaint, then?  I think David Leyonhjelm should be sent over there on a 3 year mission to find out.

In other optimistic assessments about how much you can achieve (and how quickly), I spotted this story Greening the Electric Grid with Gas about a study out of Harvard:

Much of the nation's energy policy is premised on the assumption that clean renewable sources like wind and solar will require huge quantities of storage before they can make a significant dent in the greenhouse gas emissions from electricity generation. A new Harvard study pokes holes in that conventional wisdom. The analysis published today in the journal Energy & Environmental Science finds that the supply of wind and solar power could be increased tenfold without additional storage....

"We're trying to knock out a salient policy meme that says that you can't grow variable renewables without a proportionate increase in storage," Keith said. "We could cut electric-sector carbon emissions to less than a third their current levels using variable renewables with natural gas to manage the intermittency, but this will requires us to keep growing the electricity transmission infrastructure." Keith added, "There is a saw-off between transmission and storage, if siting battles stop new transmission then we must increase storage."

Story prompt that probably isn't original

I occasionally look at Reddit and see "story prompt" postings.  Given last week's story of a physics experiment that will attempt to put a microbe in "two places at once" in a quantum experiment, I thought of my own, but I wouldn't be surprised if it hasn't already been the subject of at least a short story.  Here goes:

Future teleporting won't be about destroying one version of yourself and recreating it elsewhere (as used to be speculated in Star Trek) - it will be about quantum splitting of yourself into two places, with one of you branching off into the (very similar) multiverse, never to be met again.   Quantum computers will make this cheap and simple - so much so that nearly everyone in a country with a modern economy will teleport daily to get to work, the shops, etc.   It'll replace public transport, cars, airlines, etc.  The biggest problem will be limiting the numbers wanting to get to popular destinations.   You just have a home portal, and all major buildings will have there's at the entrance.

One day, however, the Google controlled Universal Teleporting System breaks down (possibly via interference from another universe.)   The quantum duplicates and the original stay in the same universe, every time a person teleports.   Given that (say) a quarter of the world's population teleports at least once daily (many several times a day), within the space of a few hours, the world's population has doubled, with some people finding multiple copies of themselves turning up at their front door, not expecting to find themselves already home.

How does the world deal with this? 

Update:   here's a thread that talks about how "teleportation ethics" has been raised in both Star Trek and other science fiction stories and novels.  But it's based on the problem being that the original person being destroyed or disassembled in the process of being re-constituted somewhere else.  

My prompt isn't worried about that - as the explanation for teleporting will be that the other "you" has gone on to live in another universe - one nearly identical to your own, and the universe if quantum branching all the time anyway, so what's the harm in that?

Monday Wormholes

I've been forgetting to browse the arXiv abstracts for odd physics lately, but here are a few recent ones that have caught my attention:

1.  Can extra dimensional effects allow wormholes without exotic matter?

We explore the existence of Lorentzian wormholes in the context of an effective on-brane, scalar-tensor theory of gravity. In such theories, the timelike convergence condition, which is always violated for wormholes, has contributions, via the field equations,from on-brane matter as well as from an effective geometric stress energy generated by a bulk-induced radion field. It is shown that, for a class of wormholes, the required on-brane matter, as seen by an on-brane observer in the Jordan frame, is not exotic and does not violate the Weak Energy Condition. The presence of the effective geometric stress energy in addition to on-brane matter, is largely responsible for creating this intriguing possibility. Thus, if such wormholes are ever found to exist in the Universe, they would clearly provide pointers towards the existence of a warped extra dimension as proposed in the two-brane model of Randall and Sundrum.

2. Possible existence of wormholes in the central regions of halos 

An earlier study [Rahaman et al. (2014) & Kuhfittig (2014)] has demonstrated the possible existence of wormholes in the outer regions of the galactic halo, based on the Navarro-Frenk-White (NFW) density profile. This paper uses the Universal Rotation Curve (URC) dark matter model to obtain analogous results for the central parts of the halo. This result is an important compliment to the earlier result, thereby confirming the possible existence of wormholes in most of the spiral galaxies. 

3. Analytic self-gravitating Skyrmions, cosmological bounces and wormholes 

We present a self-gravitating Skyrmion, an analytic and globally regular solution of the Einstein- Skyrme system in presence of a cosmological constant with winding number w = 1. The static spacetime metric is the direct product R x S3 and the Skyrmion is the self-gravitating generalization of the static hedgehog solution of Manton and Ruback with unit topological charge. This solution can be promoted to a dynamical one in which the spacetime is a cosmology of the Bianchi type-IX with time-dependent scale and squashing coefficients. Remarkably, the Skyrme equations are still identically satisfied for all values of these parameters. Thus, the complete set of field equations for the Einstein-Skyrme-Lambda system in the topological sector reduces to a pair of coupled, autonomous, nonlinear differential equations for the scale factor and a squashing coefficient. These equations admit analytic bouncing cosmological solutions in which the universe contracts to a mini- mum non-vanishing size, and then expands. A non-trivial byproduct of this solution is that a minor modification of the construction gives rise to a family of stationary, regular configurations in General Relativity with negative cosmological constant supported by an SU(2) nonlinear sigma model. These solutions represent traversable wormholes with NUT parameter in which the only "exotic matter" required for their construction is a negative cosmological constant. 

 Thinking about wormholes seems to be very big in theoretic physics at the moment.

The Leyonhjelm Effect?

Gee, I dunno.  Perhaps the Senator for Guns, Tobacco, Infrasound and Things That Annoy Him But Are Not Within Commonwealth Control Anyway (David Leyonhjelm) should ease up on the frequent media appearances and attention seeking tactics.

Because it doesn't seem to be helping his party's candidates, if this weekend's Canning by-election is any guide. Despite being number two on the ballot paper, at the time of writing, the LDP has polled about 5 times less than the Palmer United Party or Australian Christians;  under half of the votes of the Animal Justice Party; about 10 times less than the Greens; and even less than the Pirate Party.

Maybe the more he's exposed, the less his party's vote?   Embarrassing.

Microbes to the rescue

Feeding the world with plant microbiomes | The Saturday Paper

A short but quite interesting report here on how research into newly discovered plant microbiomes may help increase agricultural output.  For example:

Meanwhile, other bacteria can boost agricultural output. Pseudomonas,
which live in the soil around a plant, make hormones goading roots to
grow. In one trial, inoculating wheat with a cocktail of these bugs over
two years increased yields by more than 30 per cent. Another bacteria, Burkholderia,
has been shown to ramp up rice production. O’Sullivan wants to use
these plant steroids to inspire crops to grow during drought. “There is a
lot of potential here,” she says.

Is it too much to hope for the start of an anti-pandering movement?

Donald Trump doesn’t correct birthers, but how is that any worse than the GOP’s standard climate change pandering?

Yes, this is exactly what I want the the sensible Right in Australia (hopefully, in the form of Malcolm Turnbull) to do - to start telling those on their side the truth about how wrong they are (and how stupid, in most cases) on matters such as climate change, and certain economic tropes (such as "reducing taxes always works"; "Keynesian economics is a crock".)

Update:  here's Krugman's acerbic take on the second GOP debate. 

Awesome hyprocrisy of the Abbott mourners

I was expecting one eyed amnesia to some extent from the Right wing commentariat  (a word, incidentally, that I've just realised I've been misspelling frequently - probably because even the correct spelling is not in my brower's dictionary), but the completely hypocritical "a good man undone by the media and the rabid hatred of the Left" mourning of Abbott from the likes of Bolt and his dunderhead followers is still a stunning example of how ridiculous they have become.  Especially in light of the white hot hatred and rumour mongering they encouraged over Gillard - up to and including cheering a royal commission and police investigation looking into whether she got some free work done on her house 22 years ago.

There simply has been no media treatment of a Prime Minister as openly disrespectful and bitterly personal as that by the Right wing schlock jocks and Murdoch tabloid press towards Gillard. 

It's as absurd to argue otherwise as it is to deny climate change is real and deserves a strong political response.  [You can take the "Oh, wait a minute..."  joke as too easy.]

Dangerous drinking

It's a little hard to credit that the person handing over this drink did not realise it was dangerous to consume:

It was an 18th-birthday celebration - and the birthday girl was given a free cocktail to celebrate.

But just seconds after Gaby Scanlon, now 20, drank the Nitro-Jägermeister shot, smoke started billowing from her nose and mouth.

"Immediately she was taken violently ill, retching and vomiting and smoking from her nose and mouth," prosecutor Barry Berlin told an English court.

The liquid nitrogen in the drink, which was used to create a smoking effect, pierced her stomach and killed internal tissue.

The court heard that Ms Scanlon experienced "agonising pain" and required surgery to have her stomach removed and her oesophagus connected to her small bowel...

The bar's director Andrew Dunn had seen cocktails containing liquid nitrogen being served a hotel in London and decided to introduce a range at his newly opened bistro, the court heard.

I think the topic for discussion with the children over dinner this weekend will be "Using your own common sense when at a bar or nightclub". 

Marr on Abbott

Vale, Tony Abbott – both a unique man and a unique failure | David Marr | Australia news | The Guardian

It may be a bit flowery in the Marr fashion, but I don't think he treats Abbott unfairly.

Their base is nuts 'cos they're led by nuts

I've been enjoying the Trump angst sweeping through Republican establishment circles, who can't understand how their "base" can be applauding some politically ridiculous lines coming out of an egotistical, shallow, dill.

But now it's producing something even better - the potential start of a realisation that the base is nuts because the entire party has been led by anti-science dills, more interested in ideology than evidence, for the last decade or so.

As Jonathan Chait writes in his summary entitled At Second Presidential Debate, Republicans Try to Out-Crazy Trump, and Succeed:

The most revealing pair of exchanges came at the end. First, Jake Tapper asked Rubio about former Reagan secretary of State George Shultz’s argument that it would be prudent to take out an insurance policy against the effects of carbon emissions in case scientists are right. The question was designed to cut off every possible escape route. Tapper did not ask Rubio to accept climate science, merely the possibility that it might not be wrong. Nor did he ask him to endorse a specific program. Rubio swatted away the premise of the question, insisting, “We’re not going to destroy our economy.” It was telling that Rubio defined literally any policy response to the theory of anthropogenic global warming as economy-destroying.

Tapper then asked Trump about his statements linking vaccine use to autism, a dangerous conspiracy theory that has been conclusively debunked. Trump cited anecdotal evidence to support his crackpot beliefs. Worse, the two doctors on the stage, Ben Carson and Rand Paul, had chances to correct Trump, and both instead gave him tepid support. It is depressing that a presidential field with two doctors cannot even produce sensible views on medicine, let alone anything else. The party’s decades-long flight from empiricism and reason shows no sign of abating. Alas, from Trump to Rubio to Carly Fiorina, it is filled with talented demagogues well suited to pitch America on nonsense.

What a hide!

Spotted in Gulf News:

Green leafy goodness

Take that kale! Watercress is number one powerhouse vegetable - ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

Avert your eyes, Jason Soon - an article all about the good things in green leafy vegetables.

I see that kale is said not to be that great a "superfood" anyway.  I'm relieved to hear it - there are few vegetables I actually ask my wife not to buy, but kale is one of them.   Its tough, rough leaves have never impressed me in the slightest - in fact, I positively dislike it - and I always suspected its popularity was a passing fad.

This report talks up watercress, which is one of my favourite bases for a salad.  It can be bought cheaply from some street markets around Brisbane, at some times of the year, but seems to rarely appear in mainstream fruit and vegetable shops.   There should be more of it.

Maybe cold water is the key?

BBC - Future - The secrets of living to 200 years old

I didn't know bowhead whales are believed to live somewhere between 150 and 210 years.

Update:  I just remembered to check again on the lifespan of the orange roughy (what a great bit of PR it was to rename it from "slimehead") that lives in the deep, cold ocean - 150 years!

Disturbing

Why drivers in China intentionally kill the pedestrians they hit: China’s laws have encouraged the hit to kill phenomenon.

I meant to earlier link to this disturbing article about Chinese society and the (to say the least) problematic way they deal with compensation.

I can only assume there is no compulsory third party insurance as there is Australia (and, I presume, nearly all Western countries?)   Certainly shows the value of it.