Category Archives: Web Article Review

California street trees

Here’s a new article on street trees. I am slightly puzzled over how the number of trees could increase while density per mile decreased. They appear to be taking a snapshot of the actual number of trees rather than just counting trees planted. They also appear to be counting the number of trees rather than trying to measure canopy area. So the answer must be that more streets were built and planted at a lower density than the old ones. This just adds to the overwhelming evidence that trees are incredibly valuable to society, and yet the entities responsible for investing and maintaining them are chronically underfunded, and those always seem to be some of the first funds to go when cash is tight. It’s a shame. Well, I did my part by planting two little trees last weekend.

Structure, Function and Value of Street Trees in California, USA

This study compiled recent inventory data from 929,823 street trees in 50 cities to determine trends in tree number and density, identify priority investments and create baseline data against which the efficacy of future practices can be evaluated. The number of street trees increased from 5.9 million in 1988 to 9.1 million in 2014, about one for every four residents. Street tree density declined from 65.6 to 46.6 trees per km, nearly a 30% drop. City streets are at 36.3% of full stocking. State-wide, only London planetree (Platanus x hispanica) comprises over 10% of the total, suggesting good state-wide species diversity. However, at the city scale, 39 communities were overly reliant on a single species. The state’s street trees remove 567,748 t CO2 (92,253 t se) annually, equivalent to taking 120,000 cars off the road. Their asset value is $2.49 billion ($75.1 million se). The annual value (USD) of all ecosystem services is $1.0 billion ($58.3 million se), or $110.63 per tree ($29.17 per capita). Given an average annual per tree management cost of $19.00, $5.82 in benefit is returned for every $1 spent. Management implications could include establishing an aggressive program to plant the 16 million vacant sites and replace removed trees, while restricting planting of overabundant species. Given the tree population’s youth there is likely need to invest in pruning young trees for structure and form, which can reduce subsequent costs for treating defects in mature trees.

more on Tesla and buttock thrusting

Mr. Money Mustache has taken a ride in a Tesla. He says a number of things that were news to me. First, he says the car in question, the $75,000 Tesla S, was the best-selling luxury car in the United States in 2015, claiming over 25% of market share. It’s electric, powered by a rechargeable battery. You can drive about 3 hours and then have to stop to charge for 30 minutes. Tesla has built a network of thousands of free, solar-powered chargers “in the U.S. Europe, China, and elsewhere”. And this car is self-driving right now on the highway, although a person has to take control in the city. All these were things I expected to see commercially widespread in maybe 5-10 years, with skeptics saying 20+ years, but I had no idea they were widespread and commercially available (okay, to be honest, available to the rich) right now. Prices will come down.

He goes on to talk about how self-driving, solar-powered cars could change cities:

Although only multimillionaires should even consider buying a car this expensive, there’s nothing inherently expensive about electric car technology in general. Almost half of the cost of this car is in the battery, and the price of that technology has been dropping like a stone – down by over 80% in just the last 10 years. Tesla just announced their next car, the Model 3, which is almost as good by any reasonable standard and will sell for $35,000. General Motors has a competing model called the Bolt that will be ready much sooner, and all the other car companies are scrambling to catch up…

But the real way to win the car game is not to play it. The best life is spent not sitting on your buttocks within the confines of a car, but using the fine muscles within that curvaceous piece of engineering to thrust your legs downward as you provide your own propulsion. And that’s why I’m excited about what Tesla is doing.

They started deliberately at the top of the market by making prestigious and fun toys for rich people, because we’ll buy anything. But in the long run, the cars are destined to become ever-cheaper, and to be bought by the million by fleet companies like Uber. With cheap autonomous driving at our fingertips, you can summon a car for the time you need it, and then it can promptly go off and serve somebody else. Thus, won’t need to consume our cities with large parking lots, and we won’t need huge garages at home. It might even replace the expensive hassle of local-scale public transportation that we’ve struggled with for so long.

I for one am looking forward to hearing friends and neighbors fret less about parking, get out there and thrust those buttocks!

Philadelphia prison population might be cut by a third

I found this news pretty surprising:

Philadelphia’s prisons hold on average more than 7,000 inmates each day – the highest incarceration rate of any major American city.

The powers that be want to cut it by more than a third, 34 percent to be exact, during the next three years.

Part of that will call for addressing racial bias in the justice system… “Folks cannot get what they need in the way of drug treatment, counseling, job training, social skill training behind bars,” said Mayor Jim Kenney.

The article goes on to quote judges who agree with this. It’s certainly good news. If so many people involved in the system agree that one-third of people in prison are there because of racial bias, are nonviolent, and don’t need to be there, and it can really be fixed so quickly, what took so long?

 

designing genetic circuits

This article in Science describes design of circuits that can be translated directly to DNA sequences, which when built will perform the function of the circuit.
Programming circuitry for synthetic biology

As synthetic biology techniques become more powerful, researchers are anticipating a future in which the design of biological circuits will be similar to the design of integrated circuits in electronics. Nielsen et al. describe what is essentially a programming language to design computational circuits in living cells. The circuits generated on plasmids expressed in Escherichia coli required careful insulation from their genetic context, but primarily functioned as specified. The circuits could, for example, regulate cellular functions in response to multiple environmental signals. Such a strategy can facilitate the development of more complex circuits by genetic engineering.

electric cars

This article argues that electric cars could be about to take off in a big way, and draws an analogy to the disruption of the cell phone industry caused by the iPhone.

In 2007, Nokia was the biggest and most fashionable name in cell phones, with an unassailable lead in hand-held technology. Things had been so good for so long that company executives saw little chance for any competitive challenge–phones were a tough business, they said, and Nokia was reaping the harvest of decades of hard work that no one else could hope to match.

That June, Steve Jobs introduced the iPhone. And seven years later, Nokia—worth a quarter of a trillion dollars at its apex—abjectly sold off its much-diminished phone division to Microsoft. The price was $7 billion, less than 3% of its former value…

On March 31, his Tesla Motors unveiled its long-promised Model 3, a $35,000 electric car that will go 215 miles per charge… In addition to GM’s Chevy Bolt, Nissan will produce a second-generation Leaf with the same 200-mile range and approximately $35,000 price; it will come in 2017. Before that, Toyota will deliver its Prius Prime, a plug-in hybrid; and BMW already has its pure electric i3. The other major carmakers are piling in as well by the end of the decade.

Before the iPhone, some of the best recent examples of disruption are the digital camera displacing the film camera (much to Kodak’s surprise) and the internet all but destroying the newspaper industry. And you could argue that these are no more revolutionary than the advent of automobiles, electricity, steam, and so on back through history. But the point is big technological advances happen in fits and starts on a regular basis, and will continue to do so however surprised and complacent we may continue to be.

Standard Alternative Energy

In a slight irony, The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has joined the fossil fuel divestment movement.

Given the RBF’s deep commitment to combating climate change, the Fund is now committing to a two-step process to address its desire to divest from investments in fossil fuels. Our immediate focus will be on coal and tar sands, two of the most intensive sources of carbon emissions. We are working to eliminate the Fund’s exposure to these energy sources as quickly as possible. Given the structure of some commingled investment funds and investments in highly diversified energy companies, we recognize there may continue to be minimal investments in our portfolio in those energy sectors, but we are committed to reducing our exposure to coal and tar sands to less than one percent of the total portfolio by the end of 2014. As we take the steps to divest from coal and tar sands investments, we are also undertaking a comprehensive analysis of our exposure to any remaining fossil fuel investments and will work with the RBF Investment Committee and board of trustees to determine an appropriate strategy for further divestment over the next few years.

In working to align our endowment investments with our mission and programs, we will adhere to the longstanding mandate of our board of trustees that our assets be invested with the goal of achieving financial returns that will enable the foundation to meet its annual philanthropic obligations, while maintaining the purchasing power of the endowment, so that future generations will also benefit from the foundation’s charitable giving. In uncertain and volatile markets, these financial goals are not easy to achieve. Therefore, our divestment from fossil fuels, which is now underway, will be accomplished through a careful process of evaluating our exposure and a phased approach that proceeds as quickly as is prudent.

where are the tigers?

Wild tiger populations are critically low, but have actually ticked up a bit. Here are the numbers: There are 12 countries thought to have wild tigers, with a global estimate of 3,890. There were 13 until Cambodia recently announced that theirs were gone. India has by far the most, with an estimated 2,226. The next largest populations are only 433, in Russia, and 371, in Indonesia. The rest generally have around a hundred or less.

antibacterial soap

The tide may be finally turning against anti-bacterial soap. Not only does it not improve health, it becomes lodged in your nose and allows antibiotic-resistant germs to breed there.

In the meantime, however, researchers seem to be digging up more and more dirt on the chemicals, particularly triclosan. This antimicrobial is widely used in not just hand soaps, but body washes, shampoos, toothpastes, cosmetics, household cleaners, medical equipment, and more. And it’s just as pervasive in people as it is in homes and clinics. Triclosan easily enters bodies by ingestion (think toothpaste) or skin absorption. It’s commonly found in people’s urine, blood, breast milk, and even their snot.

A 2014 study led by microbiologist Blaise Boles of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor tested 90 adults and found that 41 percent (37 people) had triclosan-laced boogers. Antimicrobial-snot paradoxically doubles your odds of having the potentially-infectious Staphylococcus aureus bacteria up your nose.

In rats exposed to triclosan, Dr. Boles and his colleagues found that triclosan exposure made it more difficult, not less, for the rodents to fend off Staph invasions. Triclosan seems to make the bacteria “stickier”—better able to adhere to proteins and surfaces. That stickiness could be why Staph is so good at hunkering down in the schnoz, setting the stage for future infections.

The article goes on to say they are having an adverse effect on wastewater treatment processes, and possibly on aquatic ecosystems downstream although that doesn’t seem conclusive.

The way I think of clean chemistry, we can break substances into three categories: (1) those we know are useful, non-toxic and safe (basic soap, for example), (2) those that are useful but we know or suspect they may not be safe (laundry and dishwasher detergents for example), and (3) those that are useless and we do not know if they are safe (antibacterial soap is a perfect example!). Saying no to category 3 should be the easy part! They should be banned, and leaders of companies that push these products should be held accountable. The hard part is finding substitutes from category 1 that are just as effective and cost-effective as the ones in category 2. We put up with category 2 because the functions are important enough to us that we are willing to put up with the risks. But consumers are not good judges of that risk, and companies not only are willing to sell them dangerous products, they are willing to use cynical marketing campaigns to boost demand for them.