DaveRant

Science and Digital Briefs for May 23, 2018

By Dave Bunting, Shopper Editor

Cougar kills biker near Snoqualmie WA

A cougar attacked two bikers, killing one, in the first cougar attack fatality in Washington State in nearly a century.

The bikers, 31-year-old Isaac “Izzy” Sederbaum of Seattle, and 32-year-old Sonja “SJ” Brooks, also of Seattle, were biking near Snoqualmie, east of Seattle.

The two bikers saw that the cougar was following them. They took correct action, stopped cycling, tried correctly to scare it away, which was to appear as big as possible, talk angrily at it, and use a weapon, in this case one of their bikes, to hit at it.

It did leave them, but soon returned, attacked Sederbaum, taking his head in its mouth. Brooks tried to escape, but the animal then ran after her, and killed her.

Sederbaum, seriously injured, rode his bike to where he had cell service, and called authorities.

Game agents quickly found the cougar with Brooks’ body in its nearby den, treed it with dogs, and euthanized it.

The cougar’s behavior is very unusual- cougars almost never attack humans. They usually very skillfully stay out of sight. But this cougar was emaciated; weighing only 100 pounds, it was about 80 pounds underweight, and likely starving. Its body will be examined by the veterinarians at Washington State University to try to discover why it was so underweight, and whether it has any disease that might explain the extraordinary behavior.

Sonja Brooks was a very valuable person, and we mourn her loss. She was the director of operations at Hillman City Collaboratory, where grass-roots organizations and people share the space, and was a research assistant at William James College in Massachusetts. A Linked-In profile also states Brooks had been the office manager of G&O Family Cyclery in Seattle’s Greenwood neighborhood. While living in the Boston area, Brooks was a manager at Boston Center for the Arts and a bicycle mechanic. According to the profile, Brooks earned a doctorate in philosophy at Boston University in 2016.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2rY70SQ

Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife
Advice about Encountering a Cougar

Relatively few people will ever catch a glimpse of a cougar much less confront one. If you come face to face with a cougar, your actions can either help or hinder a quick retreat by the animal.

Here are some things to remember:

• Stop, pick up small children immediately, and don’t run. Running and rapid movements may trigger an attack. Remember, at close range, a cougar’s instinct is to chase.
• If your dog fights the cougar, DO NOT enter the fight! Leave the area and the animals!
• Face the cougar. Talk to it very firmly in growling, snarling tones while slowly backing away. Always leave the animal an escape route.
• Try to appear larger than the cougar. Get above it (e.g., step up onto a rock or stump). If wearing a jacket, hold it open to further increase your apparent size. If you are in a group, stand shoulder-to-shoulder to appear intimidating.
• Do not take your eyes off the cougar or turn your back. Do not crouch down or try to hide.
• Never approach the cougar, especially if it is near a kill or with kittens, and never offer it food.
• If the cougar does not flee, be more assertive. If it shows signs of aggression (crouches with ears back, teeth bared, hissing, tail twitching, and hind feet pumping in preparation to jump), shout, wave your arms and throw anything you have available (water bottle, book, backpack). The idea is to convince the cougar that you are not prey, but a potential danger.
• If the cougar attacks, fight back. Be aggressive and try to stay on your feet. Cougars have usually been driven away by people who have fought back using anything within reach, including sticks, rocks, shovels, backpacks, and clothing—even bare hands. If you are aggressive enough, a cougar will flee, realizing it has made a mistake. Pepper spray in the cougar’s face is also effective in the extreme unlikelihood of a close encounter with a cougar.
• A cougar may be killed to protect immediate threats to public safety or immediate threats to property such as livestock (RCW 77.36.030). A person taking such action must have a reasonable belief that the animal poses a threat of serious physical harm, that this harm is imminent, and that killing the animal is the only reasonable available means to prevent the harm.

 

We support you, Congresswoman Jaime Herrera-Beutler!

Though we recognize President Trump is an inexperienced politician and a former disgusting playboy, we thank you and him so much for your and his:

• Tax reductions increasing paychecks in southwest Washington, 
• Support for our gun rights, protections for schools, and keeping guns out of the hands of people who will misuse them, 
• Your attack on the opioid epidemic, 
• Your defeats against ISIS, 
• Your support for LEGAL immigration, and most especially, 
• His leadership of world sanctions against North Korea which will hopefully bring them to eliminate their nuclear weapon development, which is a clear and terrible REAL threat to us in southwest Washington.
• We agree with you that tariffs are bad when everyone is playing fair. But when China and other nations send steel and other products here at ridiculously low subsidized prices, killing our critically needed steel industry and steel workers, tariffs must be applied until they convince nations to trade fairly.

Your opponents tout their holding of open forums. You have been limited in holding forums because your forums have been brutally attacked by their crude, trained, and suspectedly paid attackers who have ruined your forums and made holding them almost impossible. I tweeted your opponent Carolyn Long:

@ElectLong You strongly advocate open public meetings but what about opponents packing, overwhelming meetings, intentionally destroying openness, with trained, suspectedly paid brutal attackers, as your supporters have done to @HerreraBeutler? We’re all for open discourse, but ..?

Notably, she has not responded. She knows she and her supporters are guilty of very unfair and destructive campaign tactics.

Your opponents Carolyn Long and the outsider from Oregon opposes almost every one of your points above, your accomplishments, that are so important to us in southwest Washington.

White Paper by David R. Bunting, Packwood, Washington. Concerned Citizen and ex-Gifford Pinchot National Forest Engineering Staff, Registered Professional Civil Engineer and Land Surveyor, Washington and Oregon.

April, 2018 still being updated

Use of large areas of National Forest land is being lost because forest roads are made undriveable by weather damage, and the U.S. Forest Service is not repairing them.

First, I have seen reports by Forest Service Washington Office (must have been retired) officers that the employees responsible for handling the requests for funds to the Dept. of Agriculture, are opposed to public use of the National Forests, that they desire turning National Forests essentially into National Parks, where of course freedom of the public to use the forest is harshly limited. I have heard and seen statements of high level Forest Service officers talking of “reducing our footprint.” Reducing our footprint literally means reducing our use of the forests, and is not a goal ever approved by anyone. I don’t want my footprint reduced, do you? I want to be free to put my footprint as I’ve always put it, don’t you? Yes, there is skulduggery, trickery intending to reduce our free use of the forests, in the reduction of road maintenance funding.

Second, the roads are fully professionally engineered much the same as highways to be permanent, safe, easily-maintained roads, very expensively constructed- costing typically a quarter million dollars per mile in today’s dollars- just the crushed aggregate gravel surfacing was $100,000 per mile- and located using responsible land management principles to serve whole drainages, mountainsides or other large areas, for whatever use we, the landowners, wished to make of those areas. Those uses included our personal hunting, fishing, mushroom gathering, camping, watching wildlife and all the rest, plus management for our benefit of water, soil, wildlife, range, timber and other resources, which management we delegated to our hired managers, the U. S. Forest Service. Most of the full standard permanent roads being lost now were never temporary roads, “logging spurs” or roads purposed for only the immediate timber sale. We spent considerable extra money making these roads permanent, safe and easily maintained, so they could serve our needs in that area of forest forever.

Third, responsible management of these road infrastructure improvements requires, by any standard of management, that they be maintained so as to remain useable. As in most public infrastructure, maintenance costs only a small fraction of construction cost, and especially for public facilities currently being used, and known to be needed through the future, and is deemed justified. But roads several miles long, having cost a million dollars or more to build, are allowed to be come undrivable because of a washed out culvert that would cost only $10,000 to repair; repair of this million dollar permanent road providing access to a national forest area would cost only one one-hundredth of the road’s construction cost. We gave the Forest Service millions of dollars to build safe, easily-maintained permanent roads so we could access the national forest forever. Proper management for our benefit cannot be allowing the roads to become damaged so that we, who own them and whose money paid for their construction for our use and benefit, cannot use them. If they become unusable, we landowners are unable to visit the large served areas of the forests, and our managers become unable to manage them; our access is impossible. We lose use of our forests.

Fourth, yes, the Forest Service has not been given sufficient funds to maintain them, but they have never asked for sufficient funds, nor explained to the grantors of funds the huge losses of expensive infrastructure, the resulting denial of forest access to Americans to millions of acres of forest.

The budget is proposed “by the President,” but obviously he knows nothing about forest road maintenance. It is really proposed by his budget staff who also know nothing about forest road maintenance, based on advice given by the Secretary of Agriculture who knows nothing about forest road maintenance, based on advice he is given by the Chief of the Forest Service who also knows nothing about forest road maintenance. The Chief is in turn advised by his DC budget staff who also know nothing about forest road maintenance. They are advised by the individual regional offices’ budget staffs who also know nothing about forest road maintenance, and they are in turn advised by the individual National Forest Supervisors who know little about forest road maintenance. The Forest Supervisors finally are advised by the District Rangers and their staffs who finally should know about forest road maintenance.

Indeed the Congressional politicians may cut the recommendations “of the President.” It is true we really can’t complain about that if it happens for justifiable reasons: we elected the politicians, and almost all of us want government spending reduced. But civil servants all the way up the line must- and usually do- and usually with positive results- cry very loudly when their funds are so inadequate as to cause serious damage.

I have written to our Congresswoman Jaime Herrera-Beutler many times asking her to increase Forest Service road maintenance funding.

Admittedly, there are complicating issues, i.e.: a) There are no employees left in the Forest Service who understand the quality engineering and high cost that went into the roads; we’re all retired or dead. The records of the road planning and construction have long ago been sent to distant archives. The roads now look almost natural, as though they required little modification of the natural environment- we intended them to look this way- we planted native grasses to help them look natural. Without a blink current forest managers will abandon a road, the only road providing access to a large forest area, many miles long with a concrete bridge or two, that cost over two million dollars in today’s money. When our congresswoman asks them about the roads, they really don’t understand the issue enough to know how to answer.  b) Wet areas like western Washington and Oregon get very much more water damage, require very much more repair, than roads in dry country, so maintenance costs averaged per mile applied over all roads result in much less adequate funds in our wet area. c) Many high level Forest Service officers bring experience from areas where roads were much less expensively built and require very much less maintenance. d) A different but just as painful aspect of denying public access: The Forest Service land management capability is so understaffed that they cannot adequately manage the extensive lands under their control, so closing access reduces both public activity and their farthest work distances, toward a smaller and lower-activity management area that their limited capability can perhaps more adequately handle. I understand this as another aspect of the Forest Service being underfunded that they should also cry loudly about, but recognize it as the continuation of the very wrong undeserved but well-entrenched anti-Forest Service attitude generated intentionally by preservationists back in the Spotted Owl years.

The primary fault of the Forest Service is to have not asked for adequate funds, or complained to the fund grantors the damage and loss of access caused by inadequate road maintenance.

I put the primary blame way down on the local district rangers and their staffs. They just don’t ask for enough money and don’t complain about how inadequate maintenance is damaging their roads and reducing access to their forests.

There are probably a hundred instances on just the Gifford Pinchot National Forest, where a road, say five miles long, logically located to provide needed access to a forest area, fully engineered to be permanent, safe and easily maintained, and constructed at cost of over a million dollars in today’s dollars (of money deducted from dollars that otherwise were headed directly into the federal treasury), is made unusable by a culvert washout whose repair would cost less than ten thousand dollars. The repair cost is literally exactly a penny to save a dollar. The district doesn’t have the ten thousand dollars to repair the road so the million dollar road is closed, and needed access by both the public and the Forest Service managers to that forest area is lost. This is nonsense.

If we build a million dollar building and some ten thousand dollar damage occurs, say to its water system, no one would suggest abandoning the building- we provide the ten thousand dollars to make the repair, saving the million-dollar building. Yet being unwilling to spend a penny to save a dollar is exactly what the Forest Service DC office is doing by its very inadequate road maintenance funding.

We all agree that we want to reduce deficits and taxes, but saving a penny that costs us a dollar is nonsense.

A third of 18- to 24-year old Americans not sure the world is round.

Only 66 percent of 18- to 24-year-olds in the U.S. are confident that the world is round, according to a new national survey.

The very reliable scientific site space.com says it doesn’t mean all the rest think the world is flat. But 4 percent of the 18- to 24-year-old age group said they actually believe the world is flat. There seem to be a relatively large number in this age group who are willing to entertain doubts: 9 percent said they had always believed the world was round but were recently having doubts, 5 percent said they had always believed the world was flat but were becoming skeptical of that conclusion and 16 percent just weren’t sure.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2qVChpb

College with no degree, but a job and no debt

A California college-alternative school called MissionU offers a one-year, data-science program with study of 40 to 50 hours per week, and visits to high-tech businesses in the Bay area.

Students pay the school a percentage of income for three years after graduation.

This type of college is the next step up from short boot camps where students are taught software-engineering skills. In 2017 there were at least 95 similar one-year schools as reported in Course Report, which produced over 22,000 graduates, with tuition cost around $11,000.

In a related issue, analysts are observing that many high school students are graduating without ever having used a regular keyboard, also that the use of currency is becoming so limited that high school and even college students must now be taught how to make change using coins.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2qULtdj

New Common Application used by over 750 colleges

A new single standard application form is now accepted by over 750 colleges.

Prospective college students can fill out this form and use the one form to apply to many colleges, instead of having to do the specific long forms provided by all the separate colleges.

Info:   commonapp.org

Want to know what about you FaceBook and Google are selling?

Take a deep breath and expect to spend much of a day looking through each of these:

Facebook’s info includes every message you’ve ever sent or been sent, every file you’ve ever sent or been sent, all the contacts in your phone, and all the audio messages you’ve ever sent or been sent, plus much, much more!

Facebook info on you:

Info:   shpr.fyi/2qTRUx0

Google’s link includes your bookmarks, emails, contacts, your Google Drive files, plus your YouTube videos, the photos you’ve taken on your phone, the businesses you’ve bought from, the products you’ve bought through Google. They also have data from your calendar, your Google hangout sessions, every location you’ve visited, the music you listen to, the Google books you’ve purchased, the Google groups you’re in, the websites you’ve created, the phones you’ve owned, the pages you’ve shared, how many steps you walk in a day, and much, much more.

Google info on you:

Info:   google.com/takeout

New brain cells ARE generated in old age!

The hippocampus, a small part of the brain, has a unique shape, similar to that of a horseshoe. It not only assists with the storage of long term memories, but is also responsible for the memory of the location of objects or people. We would not even be able to remember where our house is without the work of the hippocampus. Alzheimer’s disease, (a disease that effects elderly people and often results in loss of memory) has been proven to have affected and damaged this area of the brain. Info regarding our brain:

Info:   shpr.fyi/2qXTM7d

A new study has learned that ongoing brain cell regeneration in the hippocampus is likely, and that it sustains cognitive function throughout life. The ability to separate similar memory patterns and recover from stress may depend on this regeneration of brain cells. New brain cells are generated in the dentate gyrus, a part of the adult human hippocampus, even after middle age.

Healthy elderly people have the potential to remain cognitively and emotionally more intact than commonly believed, due to the persistence of this brain cell regeneration into and beyond the eighth decade of life.

As has long been known, exercise enhances cerebral blood volume, which results in better cognitive performance in humans.

Editor note: Good news for me, your editor Dave Bunting, as I’m 79, having almost completed my eighth decade. I, as well as everyone around me, knows I am more and more absent-minded, but, happily, my recent test for Alzheimers was negative.

Info:  shpr.fyi/2qWw77c

Human Memory Improved By Stimulation Device

This recent study first learned the nerve electronic signals that patients’ brains were generating when they were remembering successfuilly. Then they artificially generated these same signals during memory tests, which did indeed improve their ability to remember.

The test was on patients in a hospital who already had electrodes implanted into their brains for treatment of epilepsy.

The technology may lead to future devices we could wear externally to help us remember.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2KcXmmL

Chatbots are becoming more skillful

Talking to your voice assistant, like Amazon Echo, Google Home, Apple HomePod, Insignia Voice, isn’t much like a human conversation, more like a walkie-talkie or texting experience. However, these chatbots are amazing, recognizing different people and pets visually and by the sound of their voices.
But Microsoft is trying to make talking to its Xiaoice bot more like a conversation with a human, more like a back-and-forth listening and talking experience.
One difference is that the user doesn’t have to continually repeat the “wake” word. Another is that the bot tries to identify and respond to emotion expressed in the user’s voice. Some voice bots also are watching the user, and interpreting facial expressions or motions. Along with anticipating the person’s next words, another skill being developed is responding without waiting for the person’s speech to finish, as we humans do. They are becoming able to chitchat, remember personal details, and having a sense of humor.
Voice assistants are anticipated to be in 55% of U.S. households by 2022.
Info:   shpr.fyi/2Ho0xqU

Everett Boeing Wins Jobs From Europe

American Airlines has ordered 47 U.S.-built Boeing 787 Dreamliners in a deal valued at $12 billion at list prices, while cancelling a major order for Europe-built Airbus A350s. The order for US manufacturer Boeing comes in the wake of protectionist trade measures by President Donald Trump, who champions buying from US manufacturers. Most of the 787 final assembly takes place at the Boeing Factory in Everett, Washington. Everett Boeing jobs are paying $31 to $44 per hour, and offer plenty of voluntary overtime.

Boeing Everett phone: 866-473-2016.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2H0cjKn

Manufacturing jobs strongest increase in three years

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that in March, manufacturing jobs grew by the strongest numbers in three years. Manufacturing jobs grew by 22,000 jobs in March, and have grown by one million two hundred thousand jobs since U.S. manufacturing hit a bottom in 2010.

This March gain was amidst the excellent performance of the U.S. economy as a whole, which added 241,000 jobs in March, exceeding the expected number of 200,000.

Many economists believe that the entire economy is based on and depends critically on manufacturing as the “pump” that produces the money flowing up through and supporting all the rest of the primarily service economy. They worry that, in 2016, manufacturing jobs comprised only 7.9% of all U.S. jobs, down from 9.5% in 2006, and 38% in 1940, and that manufacturing jobs are predicted to fall to only 6.9% in 2026.

The possibility is that a “small” glitch causing loss of only, for example, 10% of manufacturing jobs, which is only less than one percent of all U.S. jobs, could bring the loss of the same 10% of all the manufacturing-supported jobs up through the economy.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2EyCbrp

Department of Homeland Security is building a database of journalists

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is building a database of Media Monitoring Service, of all journalists, bloggers and other who influence public opinion.

Records will include the journalist’s “sentiment” as well as geographical spread.

The issue comes amid heightened interest in accuracy in media, “fake news,” and the potential for foreigners to influence popular opinion prior to elections.

Nineteen lawmakers including Reps. Josh Gottheimer (D-N.J.), Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.), Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), and Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), sent a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month, asking whether a well-known arab-based media news service should register as a foreign agent because it “often directly undermines” U.S. interests with favorable coverage of Hamas, Hezbollah and al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, organizations long labelled as terrorists by the U.S. Government.

Likely I, Dave Bunting, your editor, will be one of the very least among those in the database.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2EwxFcY

Be careful typing .com. Typing .cm instead may lead to big trouble

Mistyping the .com in the URL area of your browser can lead you into big trouble.

Make sure you never type .cm when you mean .com.

Domain names ending in .cm, otherwise imitating the .com address you’re seeking, have been legally registered by criminals. The site your reach will appear identical to the site you were seeking, but will be gathering all your personal and financial data to be used against you.

Also, the Cyrillic alphabet, used across eastern Europe, has 11 lower-case characters that are identical – or very similar – to Latin letters and numbers. Criminals can register a domain name identical to a real domain, like google.com, except with one of its Latin letters replaced by the identical-appearing Cyrillic letter, and if you click on that link, you will go to the criminal’s lair, a place you’ll wish you hadn’t gone.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2IFZmm2

Info:   shpr.fyi/2H6gLHz

Info:   shpr.fyi/2EwAY3S

Chinese Unfair Competition Has Almost Destroyed U.S. Solar Panel Manufacturing

China builds its solar panel factories to production level, then “bankrupts” them, then gives them free to “private” owners, who can, as a result, manufacture the panels for sale prices as low as one percent of their true price as produced by American manufacturers.

China’s solar-power production capacity expanded more than tenfold from 2007 to 2012. Now six of the top 10 world solar-panel makers are Chinese, including the top two, compared with none a decade ago.

Their competition forced many American and European solar-panel manufacturers into bankruptcy. Two dozen quit or cut back operations during President Barack Obama’s first term, damaging the heady optimism then about clean energy producing jobs.

The United States and the European Union determined that Chinese solar-panel makers were dumping panels for less than the true cost of producing them, the cost had they had to include factory construction and amortization costs in their pricing.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2uVj0ID

 

Good time for us drivers to decide to quit using electronic devices while driving

The Washington State Patrol has extra emphasis patrols looking for drivers using electronic devices from April 2 through 14.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2GzU8HJ

Pacific Ocean has vastly large floating plastic dump

The huge floating dump is trapped in the large system of circulating ocean currents between California and Hawaii.

It is an immense accumulation of bags, bottles, containers, fishing nets and microparticles known as the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” (GPGP) and has now been measured to spread over 618,000 square miles. That is equal to the states of Washington, Oregon, California, Idaho, Montana and Nevada combined. It has grown 16 times larger since it was last measured.

A research team from the Ocean Cleanup Foundation, a Dutch start-up aiming to scoop up half the debris in the GPGP within five years, were surprised in particular in the build-up of larger plastic items, which accounted for more than 90 percent of the GPGP’s mass. This might offer a glimmer of hope, as larger plastics are far easier to find and fish out than microplastics.

Info:     shpr.fyi/2q2jbgC

Ink dot size computer has over 100,000 transistors

IBM has introduced its new CPU or central processing unit, the heart of all computers, which is only 1mm x 1mm, about 1/32” x 1/32”. The CPU contains 100,000 transistor plus other components.

That is a small fraction of the transistors in the CPUs powering today’s laptops, but is similar to the number of transistors in the CPU that in 1981 powered the first IBM PC Personal Computer.

One use for the tiny device will be high-tech drug containers to prevent the current widespread fraudulent manufacture of fake look-alike drugs.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2EfwQVV

Many good jobs in Iowa

As is true throughout the midwest, Iowa manufacturers are begging for trained workers for their factories.

The many schools offering even free training for these jobs can’t get enough workers to fill their classrooms.

National surveys show that the number of unemployed persons per job opening has fallen from about eight in 2010 to only one now, and this problem is worst in the Midwest.

An example is Mason City, Iowa. With about 28,000 residents, Mason City is the largest town in about a 100-mile radius. It supports industries like manufacturing, construction and agriculture.

Firms in rural areas are more likely to report their applicant pool is limited, the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta said. Controlling for other factors, such as the size of a business or education level required for a job, 68% of rural firms reported too few applicants for open jobs, versus 57% of employers in urban areas.

The Mason City IowaWorks employment office’s phone: 641-422-1524.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2H743pv

Spring Must Be Here 

Seattle Mariners baseball season opens this Thursday, Mar. 29.

Tickets:   shpr.fyi/2GsHSMy

Chinese space station to fall between this Friday and Sunday

China’s first space station, Tiangong-1, has exhausted its fuel, thus it cannot still be controlled to keep it in orbit. The 8.5-ton station is gradually falling into the thin upper atmosphere, being slowed more and more by air friction.

It is expected to fall, appearing like a meteor, with the date now pinned down (?) to between this Friday, March 30 and Sunday, April 1. It will be torn and burned up by the heat and friction, and only a few, or perhaps no fragments are expected to survive long enough to hit the ground. The fragments, if any, are expected to fall toward the ground within a 200-mile area, likely at latitudes less than 43°, south of our latitude of about 46°.

It is tumbling, thus the air friction is varying, so its rate of slowing is varying. Until it gets closer to its final fall, where it will fall can’t be determined.

The Tiangong-1 or Heavenly Palace lab was launched in 2011 – part of China’s scientific push to become a space superpower. It was used for both manned and unmanned missions and visited by China’s first female astronaut, Liu Yang, in 2012.

Info: shpr.fyi/2FiEgNu

Queen Prefers Jam First Then Cream

English people in the communities of Cornwall and Devon have disagreed bitterly for centuries about whether, on a scone, the jam or cream goes on first.

When a publication recently published an ad in Cornwall showing scones with the cream on first, Devon style. Many subscribers reacted by writing nasty letters and quitting their subscriptions.

The Royal Chef has given at least the Queen’s preference.

At tea in Buckingham Palace, he reports the Queen always had her scones with home-made Balmoral jam first with clotted cream on top.

Info:     shpr.fyi/2pHHRdl

Editor Note: I’ll go get a couple of scones and try it both ways- I guess sour cream is about the same as clotted cream. Stay tuned and I’ll give you the scientific answer: which is best.

Millions are deleting Facebook accounts

Facebook has long been known to accumulate massive personal data about almost every person in the world, for the purpose of selling this data to advertiser corporations, governments, researchers, and just now learned, to political parties.

Facebook is a huge worldwide operation costing billions of dollars to run. Facebook’s expenses are paid using the money earned from such sales.

Facebook is nothing but the accumulating and selling of our personal information.

Multi-billionaire Mark Zuckerberg, essentially the owner of Facebook and probably the wealthiest person in the world, just testified before Congress last week about selling personal data of millions of Americans to a political party.

Because of his control of what millions see and accept as truth, Zuckerberg is termed “possibly the most powerful man in the world.”

Zuckerberg once called people who gave him their data “dumb f**ks.”

Facebook users worldwide have become disturbed by this sale of their personal information, and millions are deleting their Facebook accounts.

Info:     shpr.fyi/2GdF1qI

Facebook sued for privacy violation by Cook County, Illinois

In this sixth case against Facebook to be filed in federal courts, the county claims Facebook violated users’ privacy when it violated Illinois laws against fraud.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2GtQ0MF

Elon Musk joins deleteFacebook movement, deletes SpaceX and Tesla.

Musk deleted the SpaceX and Tesla Facebook pages as soon as he was told they existed. He had not known his companies had Facebook pages until then.

Info:   shpr.fyi/2Gdbleg

Our Facebook personal data is being sold for $5.20.

The most important parts of your identity can be sold online for just a few dollars.

Consumers have to spend hours of their time — and, sometimes, their own money — when they find out their driver’s license, Facebook “likes” or Social Security number have been exposed to hackers. But those who sell them are making only petty cash.

Facebook logins can be sold for $5.20 each, Criminals buy them because they then have access to personal data that could potentially let them hack into more of an individual’s accounts.

You can use your Facebook account to log into many of your sites, including, likely, your bank. Just so, a criminal with your Facebook credentials can do the same.

The Shopper has strongly advised readers against logging into any site using their Facebook or Google identities.

Info:    shpr.fyi/2pLjuv9

How to delete your Facebook account

Deleting your Facebook account is not easy; many who have tried have been unsuccessful.

Here is one apparently good set of instructions from YouTube:

Info:    shpr.fyi/2Gg0a02

How to delete your data in Google

Google is as bad or worse than Facebook at accumulating and selling our personal data, and this is true even for people who have never been Google users, so people should consider deleting their info also from Google. Again, it’s not easy. One set of instructions from YouTube:

Info:    shpr.fyi/2I79Nig

Intel new chips to protect against against Spectre & Meltdownin NEW devices only.

Almost all Intel chips in computers and other devices have internal flaws making them vulnerable to the Spectre & Meltdown attacks discovered recently.

Intel has developed new chips which block this vulnerability. They will start shipping the chips later this year, to be used in manufacture of new devices.

Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich said the new chips would guard against hardware flaws dubbed Meltdown and Spectre which could leave millions of computing device vulnerable to hackers.

The vulnerability in existing devices cannot directly be fixed. Partially effective and troublesome software fixes for many existing devices containing Intel chips are offered from various sources, but are not fully effective, may be difficult to install, and are unlikely to get installed in millions of devices. No fixes are even offered for jillions of inexpensive low-tech consumer devices like webcams and routers.

Microsoft, for example, in its many Windows updates, including its monthly “Second Tuesday” updates, has provided such partial fixes, but the vulnerability is in the hardware, the manufactured chips, and cannot be well fixed by software such as Windows.

Info:     shpr.fyi/2GeBTuK

Chinese space station will fall soon

China’s first space station, Tiangong-1, has exhausted its fuel, thus it cannot still be controlled to keep it in orbit. The 8.5-ton station is gradually falling into the thin upper atmosphere, being slowed more and more by air friction.

It is expected to fall, appearing like a meteor, between Mar. 24 and Apr. 19. It will be broken up by the heat and friction, and only a few, or perhaps no fragments are expected to survive long enough to hit the ground. The fragments, if any, are expected to fall toward the ground within a 200-mile area, likely at latitudes less than 43°, south of our latitude of about 46°.

It is tumbling, thus the air friction is varying, so its rate of slowing is varying. Until it gets closer to its final fall, where it will fall can’t be determined.

The Tiangong-1 or Heavenly Palace lab was launched in 2011 – part of China’s scientific push to become a space superpower. It was used for both manned and unmanned missions and visited by China’s first female astronaut, Liu Yang, in 2012.

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Tesla Roadster has traveled over two million miles

Elon Musk’s cherry red Tesla Roadster is doing things no electric car has ever done before. On Feb. 6th it left Earth as a fun test and lightweight payload onboard a test firing of the Falcon Heavy Rocket, the most powerful rocket lift system ever built.

On Feb. 8th the roadster crossed the orbit of the Moon.

It is expected to orbit the sun and eventually in 10 million years return to Earth, burning up in the atmosphere as a small meteor.

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History of stone knapping

The advancement of early humans is hard to measure as between the different geographic areas of the world, and between the different stages of advancement.

Seizing as a tool to measure this advancement, Željko Režek of the Max Planck Institute, in Leipzig, Germany, has chosen the length and complexity of the edges on stone tools produced by knapping, the chipping off of flakes of material to produce sharp edges.

Knapping the process used to create arrowheads, knives and similar tools from flint stone.

Throughout early years, the average length of working edges increased relative to flake size. Early Pleistocene stone flakes, made by humans had the shortest working edges in the study. After many years of trying, though, flake edges started getting longer, and it appears that humans learned how to control platform depth and exterior platform angle in order to get more sharp edges relative to the size of their flakes.

That trend continued with modern humans, but at the same time, edge length also started to vary more from site to site. Modern humans living more recently produced the flakes with both the longest and the shortest sharp edges for their size. It looked as if humans had learned how to make more efficient flakes, but they didn’t always put that knowledge to work.

But that variation may actually be a sign of technological progress for early humans.

Being able to get a longer-edged flake out of a single strike is a really efficient use of stone, which gives you an advantage when you’re short on resources or when you have to carry a stone a long distance to work or use it. But there are other ways to make sharp edges—for instance, the small, sharp bladelets from the Upper Paleolithic at Abri Pataud cave shelter in France have very short edges but clearly demonstrate sophisticated, efficient craftsmanship.

Knapping is of interest locally especially because retired Lewis County Deputy Sheriff, Forest Service Archeological Site Expert and Cowlitz Stud truck driver, Larry Nelson, of Randle, taught a bit of knapping to many of us some years back.

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Foiled Again reaches for his 100^th win

One amazing racehorse is looking for his 100^th win.

The “harness racing” or “pacer” horse, named “Foiled Again,” has won an incredible 99 races.

Foiled Again’s place in harness racing history is secured, but the 14-year-old pacer is still working at adding to his credentials. This is his final year of racing, as he will soon exceed maximum racing age of 15.

Already the richest horse in the sport’s history, Foiled Again is on the brink of joining the 100-win club. When he does, he will become the 14th pacer in the last 40 years to reach that milestone. The leader at 137 is Niffit, who raced from 1977 to 1989.

“I’m excited for him to achieve this,” trainer Ron Burke said.

“He never was a super high-speed horse that beat them with talent, he beat them with heart and determination. I think that’s what resonates with people.”

We’re watching for his next entries.

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What’s The Anti-ice Substance Sprayed On The Highway?

Two different treatments, and a more complex subject that we anticipated:

Anti-icing is applying chemicals to roadways to prevent frost and ice. Liquid anti-icers are generally applied to the roadway before weather events occur, and prevent ice crystals from bonding to the pavement. We use different chemical anti-icers depending on temperature and humidity.

Anti-icers may be calcium chloride (CaCl2), sodium chloride (NaCl) (rock salt), magnesium chloride (MgCl2), calcium magnesium acetate (CMA), or potassium acetate (KAc). Rock salt is made perhaps four times more effective by treating it with magnesium chloride.

An unusual anti-icer is beet juice. The New York State Thruway Authority is one of several state authorities relying on a mixture of beet ‘juice’ and salt water to help keep highways ice-free. It is not the purple-red beet juice we might get at a veggie juice bar; it’s actually a brownish liquid, made in part from extract of the white sugar beet.

De-icer helps break the bond to keep it from compacting and bonding onto the highway. Solid de-icing chemicals look like sand and are used to keep accumulating snow loose and “plowable” so it can be removed with snowplows. If snow and ice become compact and bonded to a paved surface, the solid chemical de-icers can absorb into the compact snow or ice, melt it and break it up for snowplow removal.

Researchers at a Dutch university are looking into harvesting calcium magnesium acetate, a potent but costly de-icer, from organic waste like roadside grass and kitchen garbage. Also the liquid waste from gas extraction by hydraulic fracturing (fracking) is rich in chemicals, including salts. In the state of New York, this waste water is used to de-ice roads. Because it has a risk of contaminating water and soil, it can only be used after it has been tested and approved by the state’s environment department.

Is it harmful to the environment or my car?

WSDOT thoroughly trains all maintenance work force plus uses the latest technology and equipment. Each winter season, we conduct roadside soil, surface water, or groundwater monitoring at highway system locations. This ongoing effort ranges from academic research projects to less formal “before and after” water sampling and testing.

Most vehicles are made with a protective under coating that helps the vehicle resist damage and corrosion. WSDOT continues to strongly recommend drivers who drive on roads treated with anti-icer wash their vehicles to prevent build-up.

Partly excerpted from the Washington Department of Transportation (WADOT.)

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​ Skipping breakfast may contribute to obesity

The importance of the body’s internal clock and the impact of meal times on the body were the subject of the 2017 Nobel Prize for Medicine, awarded for the discovery of molecular mechanisms controlling our circadian rhythm.

“Our study showed that breakfast consumption triggers the proper cyclic clock gene expression leading to improved glycaemic control,” says Prof. Jakubowicz, of Tel Aviv University, winner of the prize.

“In both healthy individuals and in diabetics, breakfast consumption acutely improved the expression of specific clock genes linked to more efficient weight loss, and was associated with improved glucose and insulin levels after lunch. Proper meal timing—such as consuming breakfast before 9:30 AM—could lead to an improvement of the entire metabolism of the body, facilitate weight loss, and delay complications associated with type 2 diabetes and other age-related disorders.”

Partly excerpted from medicalxpress.com.

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Hypatia Stone Meteorite Mystery

The Hypatia stone, apparently a meteorite, discovered in southwest Egypt by geologist Aly Barakat in 1996, contains a combination of chemicals and minerals that stumps researchers trying to figure out its origin.

This stone is different from all stones and meteorites previously found; it had elements in the wrong proportions, or in forms not usually seen in the inner solar system.

A team of researchers at the University of Johannesburg concluded that it is definitely extraterrestrial. The matrix of the stone, inside which dust grains are embedded, contains a high amount of very specific carbon compounds, called polyaromatic hydrocarbons, or PAH, a major component of interstellar dust, which existed even before our solar system was formed. Interstellar dust is also found in comets and meteorites that have not been heated up for a prolonged period in their history. The majority of PAH in the matrix turned into tiny diamonds, no larger than one micrometer, likely due to the immense heat and pressure when Hypatia made contact with Earth’s atmosphere or surface. However, the diamonds weren’t the only surprise that researchers came across when they analyzed the mysterious stone- it also included a rare form of aluminum, as metal, as tiny nuggets, though aluminum never occurs naturally in this form on earth.

The stone is named after the famous brilliant Western woman astronomer and mathematician, Hypatia, one of the last teachers in the Serapeum, a successor to the great Library of Alexandria, Egypt. She was very brutally murdered by misguided Christians in March, 415 AD.

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Cancer-fighting nanorobots programmed to seek and destroy tumors

At Arizona State University, each nanorobot is made from a flat, rectangular DNA origami sheet, 90 nanometers by 60 nanometers in size. A key blood-clotting enzyme, called thrombin, is attached to the surface.

They were injected with an IV into a mouse, then traveled throughout the bloodstream, homing in on the tumors.

Once bound to the tumor blood vessel surface, the nanorobot was programmed, like the notorious Trojan horse, to deliver its drug cargo in the very heart of the unsuspecting tumor, exposing an enzyme called thrombin that is key to blood clotting.

The nanorobots worked fast, congregating in large numbers to quickly surround the tumor just hours after injection.

Most importantly, there was no evidence of the nanorobots spreading into the brain where it could cause unwanted side effects, such as a stroke.

The treatment blocked tumor blood supply and generated tumor tissue damage within 24 hours while having no effect on healthy tissues. After attacking tumors, most of the nanorobots were cleared and degraded from the body after 24 hours.

By two days, there was evidence of advanced thrombosis, and in three days, thrombi in all tumor vessels were observed.

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Partly excerpted from:

https://phys.org/news/2018-02-cancer-fighting-nanorobots-tumors.html#jCp

Flu Vaccine Is 36% Effective Overall

The vaccine is 67% effective against the A(H1N1)pdm09 viruses and 42% effective against influenza B viruses. Against the season’s dominant strain, the H3N2 strain, was lower, at 25%.

The US Health and Human Services (HHS) reports that of the 63 children who have died of the vaccine thus far, three fourths of them had not received the vaccine.

All the experts on the briefing panel agree that getting a flu shot, even this late in the season, will help protect Americans.

Surgeon General Jerome Adams said, “The flu vaccination is safe, and it is still your best defense. Getting vaccinated does not mean that you can’t or won’t get sick, but it can reduce the duration and severity of illness and limit spread to others.”

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Breakthrough in catalysis may lead to much cleaner Diesel engine emissions

Electric batteries can power cars, but the much greater energy demand in trucks hauling heavy loads will require Diesel engines in trucks for much farther into the future.

Catalysis is an important process that allows us to clean up the pollution that we would otherwise emit into the atmosphere.

In recent years the team at the University of St Andrews in Scotland have been exploring metal nanoparticles prepared at the surface of perovskite oxides.

Perovskite is a naturally-occurring calcium titanium oxide mineral composed of calcium titanate (CaTiO3). Perovskite is found at Magnet Cove, Arkansas, in Italy, in Switzerland, and other places.

Now, working closely with researchers at Newcastle University they have demonstrated that pollution particles may remain pinned to their initial locations, where they can be changed into non-hazardous materials.

These catalysts performed exhaust clean-up from diesel emissions, oxidizing CO and NO simultaneously over hundreds of hours of operation. The concept represents a major advance in the design of earth-abundant metal catalysts rivalling platinum.

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U.S. must invest more in Quantum Computing

I (Editor Dave) will try to give you an very simplified explanation of quantum computing. I’m a physicist by education, finished at UW in 1962 when quantum theory was just beginning to be taught to undergraduates, so I got only a little bit of it, and remember very little of that.

The below is my reply to an inquiry from Washington State Senator Fred Braun’s staff.

My simplified explanation of quantum computing: Suppose we create a quantum pair, many kinds of pairs are possible, but for example, two magnetic particles like those that exist by the jillions on every hard drive disk, one magnetically north, the other south.

When we change one, because they are a quantum pair, the other changes instantaneously.

The change occurs instantly no matter how far they are apart, even across the universe. The communication is not at the speed of light, but instantaneous. Communication within computers, though very fast, does take some time as it is limited by the speed of light, but in quantum computers can be made infinitely fast, instantaneous.

Decryptions of our encrypted messages that now are “impossible,” because they would take millions of years by even our fastest computers, could now be done instantly. The present encryption methods will become useless; there will be no more secure encryption.

And we know that the Chinese are already well ahead of us, and are investing very much more than we are investing in quantum research.

And artificial intelligence, a similar issue as regards Chinese advancements, is just as serious an issue.

Such was the testimony of our top national intelligence experts before the U.S. Congress on Feb. 13. Sadly the media and many members of congress concentrated on the more sensational Trump-Russian conjectures rather than on the very serious security testimony.

The bottom link below is to the full two-hours-plus Congressional hearing.

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