Author Archives: rdmyers75@hotmail.com

scientific bathing

Apparently, you can influence your circadian rhythm by heating up or cooling down your body at certain times of day, and a well-timed and designed bath is one way to do that. You’ll need a clock, a water thermometer, an air thermometer, and an understanding of the metric system.

In the study, researchers at the University of Freiburg in Germany assigned 45 people with depression to either soak in 40C water for up to 30 minutes and then wrap themselves in blankets and hot water bottles for a further 20 minutes, or take 40 to 45 minutes of aerobic exercise twice a week. Eight weeks later, those taking regular warm baths in the afternoon scored six points lower on a commonly used depression scale, while the exercise group scored three points lower on average…

Your bathwater should be just a little hotter than body temperature, which is about 37C. Somewhere between 40C and 45C is ideal…

Consider the temperature of the room as well. A Japanese study showed that bathing in 41C water in a 25C room increased body temperature more than taking a bath in a 14C room. However, if taking a bath to promote sleep before bed, the room temperature should be cooler: 18C is ideal.

 

 

can a nuclear warhead trigger a volcano or earthquake?

I think you have to take this with a grain of salt, but yes, according to this dubious Russian source. The article bases part of its argument on Giphys of Terminator 2 and 2012.

The president of the Academy of Geopolitical Problems believes that an “asymmetrical response” would work much better for Russia, as it is able to produce nuclear weapons with a yield of more than 100 megatons.

If “areas with critically dangerous geophysical conditions in the US (like the Yellowstone Supervolcano or the San Andreas Fault)” are targeted by those warheads, “such an attack guarantees the destruction of the US as a state and the entire transnational elite,” he said.

The production of around 40 or 50 such mega-warheads for ICBMs or extra-long-range torpedoes would make sure that at least a few of them reach their target no matter how a nuclear conflict between the US and Russia develops, the expert said.

Digging into Wikipedia a little bit, the largest nuclear weapon ever tested was in fact a 50-megaton bomb detonated by the USSR in 1961, and it was originally designed to be 100 megatons. The largest ever detonated by the US was 15 megaton device in 1954. It is worth noting thought that modern nuclear missiles can have 8 or more warheads attached to them.

the quantum internet

A paper in Nature explains what a “quantum internet” could look like.

In stage 1, users will start getting into the quantum game, in which a sender creates quantum states, typically for photons. These would be sent to a receiver, either along an optical fibre or through a laser pulse beamed across open space. At this stage, any two users will be able to create a private encryption key that only they know…

In stage 2, the quantum internet will harness the powerful phenomenon of entanglement. Its first goal will be to make quantum encryption essentially unbreakable. Most of the techniques that this stage requires already exist, at least as rudimentary lab demonstrations.

Stages 3 to 5 will, for the first time, enable any two users to store and exchange quantum bits, or qubits. These are units of quantum information, similar to classical 1s and 0s, but they can be in a superposition of both 1 and 0 simultaneously. Qubits are also the basis for quantum computation. (A number of laboratories — both in academia and at large corporations, such as IBM or Google — have been building increasingly complex quantum computers; the most advanced ones have memories that can hold a few dozen qubits.)

So it seems as though the main advantage of a quantum internet would be truly secure communications. Which I guess is at least something, but doesn’t seem as though it would revolutionize everyday life anytime soon. There are no predictions in this article about when it might happen other than “a long time”.

Washington State carbon tax on the ballot

Washington State has a carbon tax on the ballot in the November election. The oil industry is fighting it tooth and nail, but it also has high-profile backers.

A $3 million boost in spending is largely due to an influx of cash from BP America, one of the major oil companies operating refineries in the state. Phillips66, formerly the led donor, has given $7.20 million, followed by Andeavor (the former Tesoro) at $4.3 million.

Supporters of the carbon fee have raised over $12 million, or half of what Big Oil has put into defeating the measure. Its backers include businesses such as Microsoft, the American Lung Assn., Gov. Jay Inslee, environmentalist and labor leaders.

The latest infusion to the “Yes” side is a $1 million donation from former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates has donated $1 million.

Interesting that the oil industry is tentatively supporting a national carbon tax at the same time they are fighting this so aggressively. It suggests they are afraid of these state-level taxes and would rather do some wheeling and dealing in Congress to get a weaker deal in place that would block stronger taxes like this one.

more jobs doesn’t lessen poverty?

This article digs into a study on correlations between poverty, job creation and social mobility (along with several other factors). Unfortunately, just creating new jobs in low-income areas didn’t seem to increase the chances of children moving up the economic ladder compared to their parents. However, living or moving to a neighborhood where most people are employed does increase the chances of a child moving up the economic ladder compared to their parents.

It’s puzzling. The explanation that is easy to jump to is that cultural factors are very important and can’t be changed overnight. I’m sure there is some truth to that. I can think of other potential factors though – maybe parents in low income areas are taking those jobs, but whatever extra income they are pulling in is not enough to offset spending less time with their children. Maybe they are more likely to be single parents, lack extended family support, struggle with substance abuse and mental illness, not be able to afford high quality health care and child care, and live in low-performing school districts. Under these circumstances, it wouldn’t be too surprising that their children are not getting ahead. Those middle class professional parents in the neighborhoods where everyone is employed are probably scraping together enough to pay for decent health care and child care, and are probably demanding more from their school systems.

climate change threatens barley yields

A new study says climate change is likely to threaten barley yields, leading to high beer prices later in the century. I’m hoping this is wrong and we can grow hops and barley in the formerly frozen tundra of Canada and Siberia. Of course the bigger picture is about grain yields overall, and that is not just about average temperature but about extreme heat and drought.

Decreases in global beer supply due to extreme drought and heat

Beer is the most popular alcoholic beverage in the world by volume consumed, and yields of its main ingredient, barley, decline sharply in periods of extreme drought and heat. Although the frequency and severity of drought and heat extremes increase substantially in range of future climate scenarios by five Earth System Models, the vulnerability of beer supply to such extremes has never been assessed. We couple a process-based crop model (decision support system for agrotechnology transfer) and a global economic model (Global Trade Analysis Project model) to evaluate the effects of concurrent drought and heat extremes projected under a range of future climate scenarios. We find that these extreme events may cause substantial decreases in barley yields worldwide. Average yield losses range from 3% to 17% depending on the severity of the conditions. Decreases in the global supply of barley lead to proportionally larger decreases in barley used to make beer and ultimately result in dramatic regional decreases in beer consumption (for example, −32% in Argentina) and increases in beer prices (for example, +193% in Ireland). Although not the most concerning impact of future climate change, climate-related weather extremes may threaten the availability and economic accessibility of beer.

haunted houses

The New York Times has a roundup of haunted house stories just in time for Halloween. I have read only two on the list – The Shining, which I liked, and Slade House, which I didn’t.

I’m not too big on horror but I occasionally dabble. Sometimes you remember where you were when you read certain books, and it happens that I read these two books in Thailand two Octobers four years apart. I like Lovecraft. I am interested in reading the “laundry series” by Charles Stross, which sounds like a mix between Men in Black and Monster Hunter International (which I also read in Thailand incidentally – traveling is when I read and Thailand is a place I travel, so there.)

illegal oil trade

This article from Yale says there is a large illegal trade in oil. My first thought was that if countries or companies are producing oil, don’t they have the right to sell it to whoever they want? It turns out, oil is being stolen and sold by groups or even individuals who are not the actual producers in some cases, and in other cases it is being smuggled or laundered by producers who are under international sanctions.

In some cases, subnational actors openly export oil despite official prohibition by central governments. The Kurdistan Regional Government in Iraq maintains it is their region’s constitutional right to export oil independently, in defiance of the central government. With Baghdad withholding the region’s 17 percent of budget share, the regional government sought economic independence through hydrocarbons and found a degree of international sympathy, given its role in combatting ISIS and hosting 1.9 million refugees and internally displaced people. The unrefined product was sent via pipeline through Turkey’s Ceyhan port, loaded by various Greek shipping companies on tankers, then stored in Malta or Israel until buyers were found. Shifting routes of Kurdish oil tankers can be observed on sites like tankertrackers.com…

With 90 percent of the world’s goods, 30 percent of which are total hydrocarbons, traded by sea, much of the illegal fuel trade is conducted on water. Two thirds of global daily oil exports are transported by sea, reports the UN Conference on Trade and Development, and a staggering 64 percent of international waters are areas beyond any national jurisdiction. Non-state actors offshore West Africa, Bangladesh or Indonesia take advantage of loopholes created by international law and the law of the sea. Transfer of illegal fuel is often done ship to ship on neutral waters – with one ship commercially legal, recognized as carrying legitimate imports at the final port of destination. Thus, illegal crude from countries such as Libya or Syria finds its way to EU markets.  Recently Russian ships have been found involved in smuggling oil products to North Korea through ship to ship transfers.

Armed theft and piracy also occurs. Hijackings off the coast of Somalia resumed in 2017, the first since 2012, after the international community reduced enforcement. Beyond jurisdictional issues, many governments are overwhelmed by other maritime security threats and cannot prioritize the illegal trade. In fact, fuel traders have reported that the problem is so pervasive that many companies calculate in advance for losses up to 0.4 percent of any ordered cargo volumes.

 

statistical analysis of the Supreme Court

A statistical analysis of the U.S. Supreme Court suggests that it is not all that partisan after all. Okay, I admit it, I am really just pretending to understand half the words in the abstract below. It’s always kind of fun when physicists dabble in fields outside their usual boundaries, like economics or politics.

Partisan Intuition Belies Strong, Institutional Consensus and Wide Zipf’s Law for Voting Blocs in US Supreme Court

The US Supreme Court throughout the twentieth century has been characterized as being divided between liberals and conservatives, suggesting that ideologically similar justices would have voted similarly had they overlapped in tenure. What if they had? I build a minimal, pairwise maximum entropy model to infer how 36 justices from 1946–2016 would have all voted on a Super Court. The model is strikingly consistent with a standard voting model from political science, W-Nominate, despite using 105 less parameters and fitting the observed statistics better. I find that consensus dominates the Super Court and strong correlations in voting span nearly 100 years, defining an emergent institutional timescale that surpasses the tenure of any single justice. Thus, the collective behavior of the Court over time reveals a stable institution insulated from the seemingly rapid pace of political change. Beyond consensus, I discover a rich structure of dissenting blocs with a heavy-tailed, scale-free distribution consistent with data from the Second Rehnquist Court. Consequently, a low-dimensional description of voting with a fixed number of ideological modes is inherently misleading because even votes that defy such a description are probable. Instead of assuming that strong higher order correlations like voting blocs are induced by features of the cases, the institution, and the justices, I show that such complexity can be expressed in a minimal model relying only on pairwise correlations in voting.