data-ink ratio

Here’s a wiki post about Edward Tufte’s data-ink ratio:

Tufte refers to data-ink as the non-erasable ink used for the presentation of data. If data-ink would be removed from the image, the graphic would lose the content. Non-Data-Ink is accordingly the ink that does not transport the information but it is used for scales, labels and edges. The data-ink ratio is the proportion of Ink that is used to present actual data compared to the total amount of ink (or pixels) used in the entire display. (Ratio of Data-Ink to non-Data-Ink).

Good graphics should include only data-Ink. Non-Data-Ink is to be deleted everywhere where possible. The reason for this is to avoid drawing the attention of viewers of the data presentation to irrelevant elements.

The goal is to design a display with the highest possible data-ink ratio (that is, as close to the total of 1.0), without eliminating something that is necessary for effective communication.

Before I offer an opinion,  I should state the disclaimer that you should definitely listen to Edward Tufte, not me! So here’s my opinion: this idea is clearly absurd when taken to extremes because it would just mean a bunch of dots on a page that you have no way of interpreting. I can’t think of a way of making graphs without axes, scales, and a legend. Labels, arrows, and text boxes are an alternative which I find myself using often when giving projected slide presentations in fairly large rooms.

A reasonable interpretation of Tufte, I think, is to ask yourself whether each new thing you are adding to a graph provides useful information to the reader/viewer, increases the chances that the reader/viewer will draw the right conclusions, and makes the reader/viewer’s job easier or harder. The holy grail is to help your audience imbibe the point of the graph with very little effort. Unnecessary 3D effects and clip art aren’t going to do that. A splash of color and some nice big labels that middle aged people can read from the back of the room just might help.

“automated curation of wild places”

This is a fascinating idea, could even be attempted on other planets, and provides limitless ideas for dystopian science fiction about what could go wrong and/or whether we could all be experiencing some form of “automated curation” right now.

Designing Autonomy: Opportunities for New Wildness in the Anthropocene
Bradley Cantrell, Laura J. Martin, and Erle C. Ellis

Maintaining wild places increasingly involves intensive human interventions. Several recent projects use semi-automated mediating technologies to enact conservation and restoration actions, including re-seeding and invasive species eradication. Could a deep-learning system sustain the autonomy of nonhuman ecological processes at designated sites without direct human interventions? We explore here the prospects for automated curation of wild places, as well as the technical and ethical questions that such co-creation poses for ecologists, conservationists, and designers. Our goal is to foster innovative approaches to creating and maintaining the autonomy of evolving ecological systems.

After rooting around just a bit I was able to find an open source proof of this paper here.

National Popular Vote Interstate Compact

What’s interesting about the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact is that it is not a constitutional amendment. As I understand it, because the Constitution gives the states a fair amount of leeway to decide how they want to cast their electoral votes, the “winner take all” electoral college system as it has existed in recent years could be circumvented without legislative or judicial action at the federal level, and each vote would be equal. One person one vote, what a concept for the world’s self-proclaimed greatest democracy!

The organization’s website tallies which states have agreed to this so far:

The National Popular Vote bill has now passed a total of 35 state legislative chambers in 23 states.  The National Popular Vote bill will take effect when enacted into law by states possessing 270 electoral votes (a majority of the 538 electoral votes).  It has been enacted into law in 11 states possessing 165 electoral votes (CA, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA).  The bill will take effect when enacted by states possessing an additional 105 electoral votes.

So we’re more than halfway there, which sounds pretty good. However, the states represented above are ones that have very good reason to feel that their citizen’s votes have been marginalized. Big “swing” states like my home state of Pennsylvania end up having much more power in picking the President than is really warranted by our populations. Even though a majority of citizens supports implementing the popular vote (which is just logical and obvious), our cynical state politicians are not likely to support it. States like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan and Wisconsin may eventually lose some electoral votes over time if our populations keep shrinking. Populous and growing states with a lot of electoral votes like Florida and Texas are where this fight would have to be won.

I think the world would be a better place if Al Gore and Hillary Clinton had both been elected, per the clearly stated preference of the citizens of our country. But this really shouldn’t be a partisan issue because sooner or later it will sting both parties. I recognize that sooner or later, an election will come in which a candidate I support might lose the popular vote and win the electoral vote. I still support abolishing the electoral college system anyway, because it is just the obviously right thing to do.

Congo

This disturbing article in The Week reminds us that there is still a nasty war going on in Congo, and that part of the driver is fighting over minerals used to make smart phones.

A brutal civil war in Congo has displaced more people in the past year than the wars in Syria and Iraq…

The government of President Joseph Kabila appears to be behind some of the atrocities. After the rebel faction Kamuina Nsapu rose up last fall against Kabila’s government, both the Congolese army and the rebels engaged in atrocities. But the most horrific attacks in recent months have been the work of a new militia, Bana Mura, which the U.N. says was created and armed by Kabila’s government. Bana Mura militants, of a different ethnic group than the Kamwina Nsapu, have slaughtered whole villages, going door-to-door and killing everyone they found — babies, parents, grandparents…

Impoverished Congo has $24 trillion worth of mineral wealth in the ground, including cobalt, diamonds, gold, and coltan — a highly valuable ore containing the heat-resistant element tantalum, used to make the circuit boards in smartphones, laptops, and other electronic devices. The proceeds, often made off child labor, fund the rebel factions and the Congolese military — much as “blood diamonds” did in Sierra Leone. U.S. companies participate indirectly, by buying tantalum and circuit boards, and directly, by investing in Congolese mining: Just last year, U.S. hedge fund Och-Ziff Capital Management was hit with a record fine of $412 million for bribing Kabila for mineral concessions.

 

Volvo

According to Fast Company, Volvo is planning a move to 100% hybrid and electric cars.

Between 2019 and 2021, Volvo will launch five 100% electric cars–three Volvo models and two under Polestar, its premium brand. The rest of its new models will be either hybrid plug-ins or hybrids that generate power from braking.

The company is moving towards electrification more quickly than it initially thought was possible. In 2015, when Volvo first announced a plan for electrification, the company’s senior vice president of research and development said that the Volvo would focus on hybrids and that it would take time for fully electric cars to be viable.

But battery costs have plunged, falling almost 80% between 2010 and 2016, and are likely to fall further. Charging infrastructure is spreading. New regulations, like an EU law that limits CO2 emissions for cars, and France’s newly announced phase-out of internal combustion engines by 2040, mean that traditional technology has to change. And customer demand is increasing.

Electric cars don’t solve all the problems cars cause of course, such as urban sprawl, pedestrian deaths, obesity, and wasted time. But they solve the air pollution problem (locally, at least, and regionally if there is also a shift to cleaner power plants) and the problem of producing, refining, transporting and storing large quantities of toxic and carcinogenic gasoline and diesel fuel.

who is left behind by automobile-dependent urban design?

I like this list from Todd Litman on Planetizen of the groups of people who are left behind (quite literally, left at home or waiting for buses and taxis or friends or relatives that might never come) by car-dependent urban form.

Non-Automobile Travel Demands

  • Youths 10-20 (10-30% of population).
  • Seniors who do not or should not drive (5-15%).
  • Adults unable to drive due to disability (3-5%).
  • Lower income households burdened by vehicle expenses (15-30%).
  • Law-abiding drinkers.
  • Community visitors who lack a vehicle or driver’s license.
  • People who want to walk or bike for enjoyment and health.
  • Drivers who want to avoid chauffeuring burdens.
  • Residents who want to reduce traffic and parking congestion, accidents and pollution emissions.

I like this list because it is crystal clear that there is not any one political orientation, ethnic group, or income level disproportionately burdened. It is a large swath of the population cutting across all these groups. Reducing all the hidden subsidies and incentives to remain car dependent would not be a reduction of freedom for the population, as some self-styled “conservatives” would have us believe. It would be an increase in the options and lifestyle choices available to all of us.

The only thing I would change on this list is to start youths at age 0. Plenty of young families where I live (a very-walkable, somewhat-bikable-for-the-brave community with dirty-slow-but-reliable-public-transportation) put children in daycare by age 1, and almost all put them in preschool by age 3 or 4 because there is no public preschool provided. Then, starting at age 5, many people choose not to send their children to the public school within walking distance of their home because they believe a public, charter, or private school farther from home will provide a better education and give them advantages in life.

One more overlooked factor is that state law provides no flexibility on car seats and booster seats for children when using taxis or ride hailing services, or when driving on low speed urban streets vs. highways, or flexibility on helmet laws when safe protected bike infrastructure is available. (Mostly) well-intentioned politicians from car-dependent areas of the state pass these laws without considering the non-car-dependent portion of the population they serve.

printed solar panels and batteries

According to Inhabitat, a company in Australia is working on thin, flexible, cheap “printed” batteries and solar panels, which could be attached to each other.

Solar energy appeals to a lot of people concerned about the environment and reducing electricity costs, but the cost of installing the energy-generating panels remains prohibitively high for a lot of people – even though prices are gradually falling. Printed Energy has proposed a solution. The Australian company is on a mission to print out ultra-thin, flexible screen-printed batteries, which can then be applied on top of super-thin flexible screen-printed solar panels, considerably cutting installation costs.

Earlier this week, the company signed a deal with UNSW and the University of Queensland — and received backing from the federal government —  to produce the printed batteries and offer them on the market. The $12 million project also received a $2 million grant from the Cooperate Research Centres Projects scheme. Having obtained funding, Printed Energy now seeks to produce “solid state” batteries that are thin and can be printed in a “roll-to-roll” process — similar to a newspaper. The printed batteries will also be adaptable to any shape.

The idea isn’t to pair the printed batteries with existing solar technology but to match it with printed solar panels, and other devices the batteries could power. According to Rodger Whitby, CEO of Printed Energy and of the St Baker Energy Innovation Fund, the printed battery technology is ideal for powering sensors, devices for the internet, disposable healthcare devices and, of course, renewable energy. While the invention could revolutionize the renewable energy industry, the company’s main priority is developing the batteries for “disposable devices.” Battery storage for solar will follow. Said Whitby, “We are really thinking of this type of battery in a different paradigm. We have also got IP for printed PV – so the idea is to have a sub-strata plastic sheet, and print solar on one side and battery on the other.”

 

cancer and immunotherapy

The Washington Post has an article about a new cancer treatment.

When a patient is treated under the Novartis process, T cells are extracted from a patient’s blood, frozen and sent to the company’s plant in Morris Plains, N.J. There, the cells are genetically modified to attack the cancer, expanded in number, refrozen and shipped back to the patient for infusion.

Once inside the body, the cells multiply exponentially and go hunting for the CD19 protein, which appears on a kind of white blood cell that can give rise to diseases, such as leukemia and lymphoma. The turnaround time for manufacturing the therapy, called “vein-to-vein” time, will be an estimated 22 days, Novartis officials told the committee Wednesday.

From the start of Wednesday’s meeting, committee members made clear that they were not concerned about the treatment’s efficacy, which has been well established — 83 percent of patients went into remission in the pivotal Novartis trial.

 

food security in Asia and the Pacific

This 2013 report from the Asian Development Bank has some eye-popping statistics.

Trends in population, economic growth, industrialization, urbanization, and changing dietary patterns have largely encumbered already scarce natural resources. Total arable land per person in East and South Asia has been shrinking, falling from almost one-quarter hectare per person 50 years ago to an estimated one-tenth hectare by 2050. Water resources are also strained. Across Asia, between 60% and 90% of water is used for agriculture. However, share of household and industrial water consumption almost doubled during 1992–2002. The region would need an additional 2.4 billion cubic meters of water each day to provide each consumer with 1,800 calories per day by 2050. The growth in yields has been declining in Asia. And the projected impact of climate change will significantly affect soil and water resources in many subregions.

Expanding cultivated lands is no longer an option for food production growth in nearly all countries in Asia and the Pacifi c. Although most arable land is accounted for, there remains considerable room to increase crop yields even with currently available resources and existing technologies—provided appropriate market incentives and public support mechanisms are in place. Agricultural output and productivity can be raised in two broad ways: (i) through improved productivity at the farm level, and (ii) through better postharvest productivity. In South and Southeast Asia, about one-third of food production is lost as it travels through the supply chain.

During my brief time living in Asia and working on urban development and water resources projects, I started to have a sense that the sheer scale of human activity in Asia is such that it will determine our civilization’s future. What we do here in the United States or the western hemisphere more generally is less consequential, simply because we don’t have the scale of population, agricultural and industrial production, consumption, and more importantly, exponential growth of all these things that Asia is experiencing.

I am not an expert on agriculture, so it is easy for me to sit here and opine on organic farming and sustainable agriculture. Feeding people by the billions is a serious business where any missteps have unacceptable consequences, and so far a combination of irrigation, fossil-fuel derived fertilizer, massive surface water diversion and groundwater mining has largely managed to do that, although the poor sometimes get left behind. In the short term I don’t think we want to disrupt this system. But we better give some serious thought to whether it is sustainable (in the dictionary sense) in the face of exponential population and consumption growth. If not, the scale of human misery that will result could be truly awful.

So I would look for incremental improvements to farming practices that increase sustainability and reduce long-term risk without decreasing output. Soil and water conservation seem like a good place to start to me. If your farming practices are building the amount and fertility of the soil from year to year without causing water scarcity or pollution, that is a good clue that you may be doing something sustainable.

climate change and shareholder revolts for big oil

According to Bloomberg, the board at Exxon just lost a fairly key shareholder vote on revealing business risks due to climate change. Part of the story is that large institutional shareholders like venture capital funds are concerned about these risks. These aren’t good guys acting out of purely ethical concerns of course – they are concerned about risks to the profits they are expecting.

Growth in support was driven by unprecedented majority votes for shareholder proposals asking Exxon Mobil Corp., Occidental Petroleum Corp. and electric utility PPL Corp. to report on the long-term business impacts of climate change. This proxy season marked the first time that kind of proposal has passed over board opposition. It also marked the first time BlackRock Inc. and likely more of the companies’ largest shareholders voted in its favor.

“When a company as prominent as Exxon Mobil loses a vote,” the board or corporate governance team may change its negotiating stance in the future so that it doesn’t happen again, James Copland, a senior fellow and director of legal policy at the Manhattan Institute, told Bloomberg BNA…

Even though the proposals aren’t binding, boards that fail to respond to climate concerns could be held accountable come director election time. That’s already happened at Exxon Mobil, where BlackRock voted against the re-election of two directors after repeated requests to meet with the board to better understand its oversight of climate risk and other issues were rebuffed.

We are starting to see amoral, conservative actors in the finance and insurance industries demand action to mitigate climate risk. The good news is markets will respond and action will be taken. The bad news is amoral investors and markets tend to react to big and short term risks, and by the time the risks are big and short term, the best chances to take meaningful mitigation action may have passed.