X Files noted

A few quick comments on last night's short season opener for X Files in Australia:

*  I don't think Channel Ten could possibly have done more to attempt to ruin the atmosphere of the show, what with its advertising of Shane Warne and the execrable "I'm a Celebrity" show  running along the foot of the screen after every ad break.   Way to make people really hate you, Ten...

*  Look, I still like the actors and the re-visiting of old conspiracies, but the whole problem with the main conspiracy in the show being the alien/human hybrid stuff was that it never made sense as to why it was being done and to what end.  I'm not at all sure that re-visiting this aspect of the series is at all wise, but that seems to be where we are heading.

*  Scully's hairstyle was hardly flattering.  

*  Still, I'll be watching it again tonight, even while I grind my teeth about Channel Ten.

Monday quantum science

[1512.08275] The Too-Late-Choice Experiment: Bell's Proof within a Setting where the Nonlocal Effect's Target is an Earlier Event

This seems relevant to what Sabine was saying at Backreaction recently about free will and the quantum world, although (of course) I am not sure exactly sure what retrocausality means for free will.  The abstract:

In the EPR experiment, each measurement addresses the question "What spin
value has this particle along this orientation?" The outcome then proves that
the spin value has been affected by the distant experimenter's choice of spin
orientation. We propose a new setting where the question is reversed: "What is
the orientation along which this particle has this spin value?" It turns out
that the orientation is similarly subject to nonlocal effects. To enable the
reversal, each particle's interaction with a beam-splitter at t1 leaves its
spin orientation superposed. Then at t2, the experimenter selects an "up" or
"down" spin value for this yet-undefined orientation. Only after the two
particles undergo this procedure, the two measurements are completed, each
particle having its spin value along a definite orientation. By Bell's theorem,
it is now the "choice" of orientation that must be nonlocally transmitted
between the particles upon completing the measurement. This choice, however,
has preceded the experimenter's selection. This seems to lend support for the
time-symmetric interpretations of QM, where retrocausality plays a significant
role. We conclude with a brief comparison between these interpretations and
their traditional alternatives, Copenhagen, Bohmian mechanics and the Many
Worlds Interpretation. 

A review of an interesting sounding book

Paul Krugman Reviews ‘The Rise and Fall of American Growth’ by Robert J. Gordon - The New York Times

Here's what it's about:

Robert J. Gordon, a distinguished macro­economist and economic historian at Northwestern, has been arguing for a long time against the techno-optimism that saturates our culture, with its constant assertion that we’re in the midst of revolutionary change. Starting at the height of the dot-com frenzy, he has repeatedly called for perspective.  Developments in information and communication technology, he has
insisted, just don’t measure up to past achievements. Specifically, he has argued that the I.T. revolution is less important than any one of the five Great Inventions that powered economic growth from 1870 to 1970: electricity, urban sanitation, chemicals and pharmaceuticals, the internal combustion engine and modern communication.

In “The Rise and Fall of American Growth,” Gordon doubles down on that theme, declaring that the kind of rapid economic growth we still consider our due, and expect to continue forever, was in fact a one-time-only event. First came the Great Inventions, almost all dating from the late 19th century. Then came refinement and exploitation of
those inventions — a process that took time, and exerted its peak effect on economic growth between 1920 and 1970. Everything since has at best been a faint echo of that great wave, and Gordon doesn’t expect us ever to see anything similar.

Over him, at last

About time the public got over Tarantino, the most undeservedly praised director/writer of my lifetime, I reckon.  

Too hot for Interstellar?

OK, I still haven't seen Interstellar (I've read too much about it that puts me off, but I'll get around to it one day), but it seems that the whole physics set up (giant planet around a black hole "star") gets the details wrong, after all.  (Not sure what Kip Thorne, the physicist who came up with the movie scenario, thinks of this.)

From New Scientist:

Wondering if any more power might be available, the team turned to the film Interstellar, in which a world called Miller’s planet orbits very close to a massive, spinning black hole called Gargantua. General relativity means the black hole’s gravitational pull slows time on the planet so that 1 hour is equal to seven years off-world, a factor of around 60,000.
“We saw the movie, it was a very interesting idea, but then we started thinking about the problems,” says Opatrný.
The energy of light is proportional to its frequency. This means that when light from the CMB hits Miller’s planet, and its frequency is increased by this time dilation, its energy increases. With a time-dilation factor of around 60,000, Miller’s planet would be heated to nearly 900 ˚C.
In the film, the planet is swept by huge tidal waves of water, but Opatrný says his calculations mean molten aluminium would be more likely. Conditions would be cooler if the planet were slightly further out from the black hole, lessening the effects of time dilation and making it more hospitable to life. “It’s interesting that [the analysis] suggests the microwave background would be disastrous for observers on the planet, making the movie once again less realistic,” says Lawrence Krauss of Arizona State University.

For those who like reading about Scruton

A Very British Hatchet Job - The Los Angeles Review of Books

Here's another review of Roger Scruton's recent book, which I have noted previously.  

Toilet espionage

Stalin 'used secret laboratory to analyse Mao's excrement' - BBC News

Remarkable (if true):

Mr Atamanenko claims that in December 1949, Soviet spies used this system to evaluate the Chinese leader Mao Zedong who was on a visit to Moscow. They had allegedly installed special toilets for Mao, which were connected not to sewers, but to secret boxes.

For 10 days Mao was plied with food and drink and his waste products whisked off for
analysis. Once Mao's stools had been scrutinised and studied, Stalin reportedly poo poo-ed the idea of signing an agreement with him.

Bad HIV news

HIV becoming resistant to key drug, study finds - BBC News

Splitting the sample size roughly into two groups the study found that in Africa 60% of patients were resistant to Tenofovir, whereas in Europe the figure was only 20%.

The paper, which has been published in The Lancet Infectious Diseases journal,
said poor administration of the drug, in terms of regularly taking the right levels of Tenofovir could be explanation for the discrepancy.

"If the right levels of the drug are not taken, as in they are too low or not regularly maintained, the virus can overcome the drug and become resistant," Dr Gupta told the BBC News website.

"Tenofovir is a critical part of our armamentarium against HIV, so it is extremely concerning to see such a high level of resistance to this drug," he added.

The paper also suggested that Tenofovir-resistant strains of HIV could be passed on from person to person.

"We certainly cannot dismiss the possibility that resistant strains can spread between people and should not be complacent. We are now conducting further studies to get a more detailed picture of how Tenofovir-resistant viruses develop and spread," Dr Gupta said.

So that's what a physics professor's whiteboard looks like?

Bringing time and space together for universal symmetry

Go on:  have a read of the article, but also look at the whiteboard.  

The lonely professor

Was it mere co-incidence that the day after there were several news reports about the record low rate of smoking amongst Australian youth (something that the stories noted might be at least partially attributed to plain packaging - but the claims was cautiously made) that Sinclair Davidson posted a long critique of another paper that looked at whether plain packaging was making adults more likely to quit.

For those who could even bother following the highly technical argument, the bottom line is that the evidence from the study isn't that overwhelming.   M'eh.

Seems a bit beside the point, when before its introduction, I believe the main hoped for effect of plain packaging was to be to discourage young people taking up the habit, and the study wasn't even looking at that.  The survey evidence which did get publicity does indicate that it may be having that effect.  

So the Professor's attempts to deride plain packaging as possibly being effective are being seen, even by some who comment at his blog, as rather obsessive (and, I would add, desperate).  As someone in comments said:

Sinc: wish you would drop this embarrassing obsession

Every time I see Simon Chapman on the TV talking up dropping smoking rates, I imagine a blood pressure spike happening in a certain office at RMIT.  And then a scurry to look at some anti tobacco research or other to see what pointless nitpicking can be made of it.

Update:  if you want to read (or at least glance at) evidence for a truly obsessive personality disorder, you need only read the extremely lengthy comments that commenter "Some History" comes up with at every single post where the Prof whines about plain packaging not being proved to be effective.  

Update 2:  Oh!  A new post by SD  seems to be correct in saying that the paper discussed in the news (linked above) may have mis-spoke when saying that youth smoking was at "record lows".   Although, truth be told, how much weight one should put on the difference between 2.5 and 3.2% in voluntary responses on surveys by teenagers is debatable.

Still, as usual, the overall picture remains a matter of not seeing the wood for the trees.  Just like with climate change.

Mosquito borne diseases and climate change

While it seems that a feared expansion of malaria due to a warming climate hasn't happened (and the reasons why are a matter of much debate), there is renewed concern with the zika virus outbreak that other mosquito borne diseases are spreading faster because of the increased range (and life span?) of mosquitoes.  As explained in this Vox article, there are pretty good reasons to suspect a warming, wetter climate is already playing a role:

The spread of Zika is part of an unnerving trend: Several mosquito-borne tropical illnesses have lately been spreading into regions of the world that have never experienced them.

A viral disease called chikungunya — which had never appeared in the Western Hemisphere until 2013 — has lately affected Central and South America, even making an appearance in Florida last year. (Its name comes from the Makonde language of Tanzania, where it was discovered in 1952; it means "that which bends up," referring to the contorted physique of a person afflicted by the virus.)

Dengue fever, known as "breakbone fever," has also seen new outbreaks in Puerto Rico, Florida, Gulf Coast states, and Hawaii — all places that hadn't usually been affected. In 2015, Brazil reported nearly 1.6 million dengue cases, a big increase from 569,000 in 2014.

Zika, dengue, and chikungunya are all spread by a species of mosquito called Aedes (in particular the Aedes aegypti and Aedes albopictus mosquitoes). For reasons researchers don't understand, these mosquitoes have been more effective at bringing diseases to new places lately, affecting fresh populations that don't yet have the antibodies to fight off the viruses.

Heidi Brown, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Arizona, explained there are at least three factors that help these illnesses spread: the number of mosquitoes out there, the number that are biting humans infected with the virus, and the number that are surviving long enough to infect other humans.

"The survival of the mosquito is driven a lot by temperature," she added. Mosquitoes thrive in warm and moist environments. "So people go to the idea of global warming — that climate change and changes in precipitation patterns and temperature are helping mosquitoes survive in different areas." In other words, warming is helping expand the range of places that are habitable to mosquitoes.

There are other factors that may be driving the trend, too: People are traveling more than ever, bringing diseases to new locales. More and more people live in crowded cities, where it's easy for viruses to jump from person to person and for mosquitoes to find large concentrations of humans to feast on.

Eye maintenance is more complicated that I thought

BBC - Future - Why do we get sleep in our eyes?

I didn't know this:

It all begins with tears – or more precisely the tear film that coats our eyes. Mammalian eyes of the terrestrial variety, whether they're found on the faces of humans, dogs, hedgehogs, or elephants, are coated in a three-layered tear film that allows the eyes to function properly.
(Tears work somewhat differently in marine mammals like dolphins and sea lions.)

Closest to the eye is the glycocalyx layer – a layer made mostly of mucus. It coats the cornea and attracts water, which allows for the even distribution of the second layer: the water-based tear solution. It might be just four micrometres thick – about as thick as a single strand of spider silk – but this layer is very important. It keeps our eyes lubricated and washes away potential infections. Finally, there is an outer layer composed of an oily substance called meibum, which is composed of lipids like fatty acids and cholesterol.

Meibum has evolved to be exquisitely tuned to the mammalian body. At normal human body temperature, it is a clear oily fluid. At just one degree cooler, though, it becomes a white, waxy solid – the familiar eye gunk.

Large flakes of this solid can form during sleep for a couple of reasons. First, the body cools down a bit at night in general, so some of the meibum becomes cool enough that it moves below the melting point and turns solid. Second, according to Australian ophthalmologist Robert G. Linton and colleagues, "sleep relaxes the [muscular] action on the [meibomian] gland
ducts…[which] is sufficient to cause far in excess of the normal to exude onto the lids and eyelash roots during sleep". In other words, our eyes are coated with more meibum than usual at night – and so when that meibum cools we can end up with appreciable amounts of eye gunk.

Media notes

*   ABC has been running the BBC quiz show Pointless before the 7pm news; hence I sometimes catch the last 5 or 10 minutes of it.

I assume there are people who will disagree, but I think it's the most stupendously stupid quiz show idea ever conceived, and it's as boring as hell too.   Could the host possibly be any duller?

*  Vox has a lengthy piece on the woeful prospect of Hollywood being stuck for the next 20 years in "expanded movie universes".  The worst news in the article: 

The Transformers films, for example, are no longer being treated as a single series but as a larger world to explore.

Last summer, Paramount hired a gaggle of writers to spend a few weeks brainstorming ideas to broaden the series, an effort that apparently produced at least nine different movie ideas — and producers have said that five of those ideas look viable.

*  To my surprise (as I didn't care much for the second one), Kung Fu Panda 3 is actually getting good reviews.   It may be maintaining its popularity better than Shrek.  

Depressed about physics

The problem that some physicists warned about - what if the Large Hadron Collider finds Higgs, but nothing else very interesting - seems in danger of becoming a reality; and given that there's a more widespread acknowledgement than ever that string theory is an untestable waste of time (well, this is my impression, anyway), it seems that the physics community has fallen into a bit of a depression recently.

Here are a few pieces to back this up:

a.  John Horgan wrote a great piece this month "How Physics Lost its Fizz", and his explanation of why he (used to) find physics so fascinating mirrors a lot of my own interests.    But whether it deserves this full amount of pessimism still seems a bit unclear to me - the problem being that you never know what is just around the corner in both theory and experiment, although it certainly seems true that the era of building ever larger particle colliders is over. 

b.  Starts with a Bang notes that early inflation of the universe sets a natural limit on how far back you can see, as explained in the post "Physicists Must Accept That Some Things are Unknowable".   Not a new idea, perhaps, but good to be reminded.   (And by the way - I really don't quite understand the way inflation is so widely accepted when, at the same time, as far as I know, there is no clear understanding of what caused it.  It has always seemed to me to have more than a touch of the Deus ex machina about it.)

c.  You can also watch a Downfall parody video with a difference:  Hitler doesn't get a postdoc in High Energy Theory.  Somewhat amusing, and realistic, apparently.

Against against the stimulus

Idiotic Anti-Stimulus Talking Point Won’t Die -- NYMag

Heh.  Jonathan Chait writes of the chart that I am sure I have seen at Catallaxy (I think posted by S Davidson himself?):

As I noted before, we can’t prove that the stimulus reduced unemployment because we can’t
measure exactly what unemployment would have looked like otherwise. But the talking point that the stimulus failed because unemployment exceeded the forecasted level is not a serious argument. No reasonably informed person could take it seriously. And yet this blunt and easily refuted bit of propaganda continues to circulate seven years later within the airless bubble of the conservative echo chamber.