An Argument Against Universal Basic Income

At first blush, universal basic income (UBI) seems a very attractive idea, especially to a progressive. Yet it suffers from two serious problems. First, the odds are very high that an effort to secure UBI would prove quixotic. Second, and more disconcerting, any possibility of overcoming the formidable obstacles to UBI will almost certainly require a left-right coalition that has significant conservative support — and conservative support for UBI rests on an approach that would increase poverty, rather than reduce it.

The key issues related to UBI include what it would cost, how it would be paid for, and the risks it poses. Let’s take these one at a time.

link.

How China Took Control of Bitcoin

A delegation of American executives flew to Beijing in April for a secret meeting just blocks from Tiananmen Square. They had come to court the new kingmakers in one of the strangest experiments in money the world has seen: the virtual currency known as Bitcoin.

Against long odds, and despite an abstruse structure, in which supercomputers “mine” the currency via mathematical formulas, Bitcoin has become a multibillion-dollar industry. It has attracted major investments from Silicon Valley and a significant following on Wall Street.

Yet Bitcoin, which is both a new kind of digital money and an unusual financial network, is having something of an identity crisis. Like so many technologies before it, the virtual currency is coming up against the inevitable push and pull between commercial growth and the purity of its original ambitions.

In its early conception, Bitcoin was to exist beyond the control of any single government or country. It would be based everywhere and nowhere.

Yet despite the talk of a borderless currency, a handful of Chinese companies have effectively assumed majority control of the Bitcoin network. They have done so through canny investments and vast farms of computer servers dispersed around the country. The American delegation flew to Beijing because that was where much of the Bitcoin power was concentrated.

link.

Academic Bun fight: Is Nanotyrannus Really a Juvenile Tyrannosaurus?

Damnit, the groove is real and only in Nanotyrannus!

When a groove is not a groove: Clarification of the appearance of the dentary groove in tyrannosauroid theropods and the distinction between Nanotyrannus and Tyrannosaurus. Reply to Comment on: “Distribution of the dentary groove of theropod dinosaurs: implications for theropod phylogeny and the validity of the genus Nanotyrannus Bakker et al., 1988”

Authors:

Schmerge et al

Abstract:

The occurrence of a lateral groove in the dentary of theropod dinosaurs was argued to be a key diagnostic character for establishing the validity of Nanotyrannus lancensis as a unique taxon separate from Tyrannosaurus rex by Schmerge and Rothschild (2016). The validity of this distinction has been challenged in a comment paper by Brusatte et al. (2016). The main criticisms raised in this comment address the methodology of the original study, the distribution of the dentary groove in theropods, the possibility of ontogenetic variability in the occurrence of the dentary groove, and the application of phylogenetic analysis to studying character distributions. In this reply, we clarify the definition of the theropod dentary groove, elucidate the difference between a true dentary groove and the appearance of a false “pseudo-groove”, justify our original methodology with a discussion of the errors involved in identifying grooves by Brusatte et al. (in press), and support our original findings with descriptions of additional specimens. Investigation of additional specimens of Nanotyrannus, as well as critical examination of Tyrannosaurus specimens presented by Brusatte et al. (2016), reaffirm the result of our original study that Nanotyrannus can be differentiated from Tyrannosaurus based on the depth of its dentary groove, independent of ontogenetic stage. Despite any possible ontogenetic variation in the appearance of the dentary groove that can be interpreted, all specimens of Nanotyrannus possess distinct grooves whereas Tyrannosaurus lacks a groove. The most parsimonious explanation for the different appearance of these grooves is that Nanotyrannus does not represent a juvenile Tyrannosaurus.

gimme a break.

Dentary groove morphology does not distinguish ‘Nanotyrannus’ as a valid taxon of tyrannosauroid dinosaur. Comment on: “Distribution of the dentary groove of theropod dinosaurs: Implications for theropod phylogeny and the validity of the genus Nanotyrannus Bakker et al., 1988”

Authors:

Brusatte et al

Abstract:

There has been considerable debate about whether the controversial tyrannosauroid dinosaur ‘Nanotyrannus lancensis’ from the uppermost Cretaceous of North America is a valid taxon or a juvenile of the contemporaneous Tyrannosaurus rex. In a recent Cretaceous Research article, Schmerge and Rothschild (2016) brought a new piece of evidence to this discussion: the morphology of the dentary groove, a depression on the lateral surface of the dentary that houses neurovascular foramina. They argued that an alleged ‘Nanotyrannus’ specimen, which possesses a groove, cannot be referable to Tyrannosaurus rex, which they considered as lacking the groove, and they hypothesized that ‘Nanotyrannus’ is closely related to albertosaurine tyrannosauroids, which also are said to possess the groove. However, we show that the groove is a widespread feature of tyrannosauroids that is present in T. rex and many other specimens, and that it is an ontogenetically variable feature that changes from a sharp, deeply-impressed groove to a shallower sulcus as an individual matures. As a result, the presence or absence of a dentary groove does not clarify the validity of ‘Nanotyrannus’ or its phylogenetic position among tyrannosauroids. We consider it most parsimonious that ‘Nanotyrannus’ specimens belong to juvenile T. rex.

Famous Cases of Fossils Faux pas!

Decred: New Innovative Cryptocurrency or Scam?

An alliance of developers have already begun work on a new cryptocurrency, Decred. The new currency is based upon the same Bitcoin model that was previously used with all other cryptocurrencies. However, Decred is saving the main technical features of Bitcoin and fixing all of the issues that Bitcoin had.

While the only clear contributors to the project are community-based such as are Github users, it can be assumed that the developers have a large amount of experience with Bitcoin development, and may even be the original Bitcoin Core developers.

Decred will serve as a hybridized proof-of-work/proof-of-stake consensus system that allows users to create a balance between proof-of-work miners and proof-of-stake users to develop a much more robust consensus.

link.

GeoEngineering: the Climate Change Option no one Wants to Discuss (for a good reason!)

It's the option climate negotiators here are loath to talk about.

What if they fail to curb global warming and the environment gets so dangerous that someone decides to do something drastic and play mad scientist? Should nations purposely pollute the planet to try to counteract man-made warming and cool the world? Scientists are pretty sure they can do it, but should they?

The issue is called geoengineering — purposely tinkering with the planet as opposed to the unintentional warming that's happening now. The most talked about and advanced method involves putting heat-reflecting particles high in the air, but there also have been proposals to seed clouds other ways, put mirrors in space and seed the oceans with iron.

Scientists noticed a temporary but pronounced cooling after the 1991 eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines. What's in mind would be, essentially, an artificial and constant man-made volcano with material released by aircraft or cannons.

No one is talking about doing it — yet. But some scientists want to study it to find about side effects and other issues. And earlier this year, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences said small-scale and controlled experiments could be helpful to inform future decisions.

link.

Google Claims D-Wave Quantum Annealing Computer Works, has Significant Speedups Over Classicaly Computers

During the last two years, the Google Quantum AI team has made progress in understanding the physics governing quantum annealers. We recently applied these new insights to construct proof-of-principle optimization problems and programmed these into the D-Wave 2X quantum annealer that Google operates jointly with NASA. The problems were designed to demonstrate that quantum annealing can offer runtime advantages for hard optimization problems characterized by rugged energy landscapes.

We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing. It is more than 108 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core. We also compared the quantum hardware to another algorithm called Quantum Monte Carlo. This is a method designed to emulate the behavior of quantum systems, but it runs on conventional processors. While the scaling with size between these two methods is comparable, they are again separated by a large factor sometimes as high as 10^8.

link.

What is the Computational Value of Finite Range Tunneling?

Authors:

Denchev et al

Abstract:

Quantum annealing (QA) has been proposed as a quantum enhanced optimization heuristic exploiting tunneling. Here, we demonstrate how finite range tunneling can provide considerable computational advantage. For a crafted problem designed to have tall and narrow energy barriers separating local minima, the D-Wave 2X quantum annealer achieves significant runtime advantages relative to Simulated Annealing (SA). For instances with 945 variables this results in a time-to-99\%-success-probability that is ∼108 times faster than SA running on a single processor core. We also compared physical QA with Quantum Monte Carlo (QMC), an algorithm that emulates quantum tunneling on classical processors. We observe a substantial constant overhead against physical QA: D-Wave 2X runs up to ∼108 times faster than an optimized implementation of QMC on a single core. To investigate whether finite range tunneling will also confer an advantage for problems of practical interest, we conduct numerical studies on binary optimization problems that cannot yet be represented on quantum hardware. For random instances of the number partitioning problem, we find numerically that QMC, as well as other algorithms designed to simulate QA, scale better than SA and better than the best known classical algorithms for this problem. We discuss the implications of these findings for the design of next generation quantum annealers.

A Push in the Australian Senate to Reexamine Whether or not to buy the F-35

A push to examine the wisdom of Australia's planned $24 billion fleet of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters - ranking as the nation's largest ever defence purchase - is underway in the Senate.

Greens defence spokesman Peter Whish-Wilson on Friday has urged the Senate's standing committee on foreign affairs and trade to inquire into the suitability of the stealth jet for Australia's strategic interests.

The move comes after the election last month of new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on a promise to abandon plans to purchase the troubled fighter.

link.

Oy. Don't Vote for Dr Carson

epublican presidential candidate Ben Carson's recollection of being offered a scholarship to the prestigious U.S. Military Academy at West Point was questioned on Friday, potentially damaging the credibility of the 64-year-old retired neurosurgeon.

Also on Friday, Carson's account of how he attempted to stab a friend in his troubled youth came under renewed scrutiny.

Carson, a favorite of conservative activists, who is tied with Donald Trump at the top of Republican primary polls a year before the November 2016 presidential election, has often recounted both tales from his 1990 autobiography on the campaign trail, as he trumpets his rise from poverty in inner-city Detroit to the highest echelons of medicine.

Questions about Carson's account of the West Point scholarship came to the fore after a report by political news website Politico on differing accounts of the scholarship.

On Friday, Carson's campaign said he never sought admission to West Point, and Carson himself angrily denied suggestions that he had misrepresented the facts surrounding the West Point overture.

link.

US presidential hopeful Ben Carson has attracted attention and some ridicule this week for saying Egypt's pyramids were built to store grain. As most schoolchildren know, they were actually tombs for pharaohs. But where did the granary idea come from, and would it even have worked?

Egyptian history isn't something American presidential candidates are usually quizzed about on the campaign trail, but this week Republican Ben Carson faced a barrage of questions after it emerged he believed the pyramids were built by the Biblical figure Joseph for storing grain.

This was revealed on Wednesday when Buzzfeed published a video of Carson addressing students at a Michigan university affiliated with his Seventh-day Adventist Church 17 years ago. But the famed neurosurgeon, currently the frontrunner for the Republican nomination, told inquisitive journalists that his views had not changed.

link.

In March of last year, Dr. Ben Carson, the conservative star considered a potential 2016 Republican presidential candidate, appeared in a video for Mannatech, Inc., a Texas-based medical supplement maker. Smiling into the camera, he extolled the benefits of the company’s “glyconutrient” products:

The wonderful thing about a company like Mannatech is that they recognize that when God made us, He gave us the right fuel. And that fuel was the right kind of healthy food. You know we live in a society that is very sophisticated, and sometimes we’re not able to achieve the original diet. And we have to alter our diet to fit our lifestyle. Many of the natural things are not included in our diet. Basically what the company is doing is trying to find a way to restore natural diet as a medicine or as a mechanism for maintaining health.

Carson’s interactions with Mannatech, a nutritional-supplement company based in suburban Dallas, date back to 2004, when he was a speaker at the company’s annual conferences, MannaFest and MannaQuest. He also spoke at Mannatech conferences in 2011 and 2013, and spoke about “glyconutrients” in a PBS special as recently as last year.

Mannatech has a long, checkered past, stretching back to its founding more than a decade before Carson began touting the company’s supplements. It was started by businessman Samuel L. Caster in late 1993, mere “months,” the Wall Street Journal later noted, before Congress passed the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994, which greatly loosened restrictions on how supplement makers could market their products. Within a few years of its inception, the company was marketing a wide variety of “glyconutrient” products using many of the same tactics previously described in lawsuits against Eagle Shield, Caster’s first company.

link.

The F-35/F-16 Dogfight Debacle

The news has been running around for a number of days.  I've not posted it because I've been trying to stick to my blog post draw down schedule and there are other potential topics which are not getting as much "air time" in the blogosphere.  However, here's where I give in.

David Axe, a complete F-35 hater and then some, was passed a report on how badly a F-35 faired when dogfighting F-16s: it had its lunch eaten and then some.  The fact came out that the plane is really, really underpowered, not to mention has serious ergo problems with the helmet-canopy combo and not to mention canopy-fuselage combo.

There have been several reactions.  Bill Sweetman's response is probably the most all encompassing. It has the best quote about the entire debacle:

“People all need to look at what F-35 really is,” another aviator comments. “A stealth A-7 bomb truck, capable of first-night suppression of enemy air defenses, with limited self-escort. It is, as software-configured right now, not a light air-combat-maneuvering-capable platform. This is what we saw with the early F/A-18E/F blocks: millions of lines of code, and in need of constant update. But, in this case, it’s becoming increasingly easier to rewrite the code laws to allow for those changes.”

Lockheed responded to the whole event by stating dogfighting is obsolete and the F-35 is meant to fire from a distance taking advantage of stealth and long range missiles.

Via Breaking Defense, the US Air Force responded.  The short version is the F-35 is not an F-16 and should not be seen as such.  It is not a dogfighter.  If you need a dogfight, you send in...wait for it...an F-22.  Y'know, that fighter we only bought 180 odd because we didn't need it.  Oops.

Its looking minimally like F-35 needs a new engine.  Wait.  The US Air Force has already started that: its called ADVENT.

Navy Secretary Defends F-35 Last Manned Fighter Statement

U.S. Navy Secretary Ray Mabus on Thursday defended his drive to consolidate the Navy's work on a range of unmanned systems, and said the U.S. military risked losing its leadership role unless it focused on what he called "the future of warfare."

"Unmanned is the future," Mabus said in a speech at the National Press Club. "If we don't keep up in this, if we don't lead on this, we're very certainly going to be bypassed ... because we're not the only ones working on this."

Mabus this month announced plans to name a new civilian deputy assistant secretary to oversee underwater, surface and aerial unmanned systems, and to create a new office on the uniformed military side of the Navy to coordinate and "champion" all aspects of the new weapons systems across the service.

Mabus said he stood by his recent comment that the F-35 fighter jet developed by Lockheed Martin Corp "should be, and almost certainly will be, the last manned strike fighter aircraft the Department of the Navy will ever buy or fly."

The remark drew criticism from pilots across the military.

Focusing on unmanned systems would allow the Navy to reach more places, stay there longer, carry out more dangerous missions, and better protect the lives of its people than continuing to rely on manned fighter jets, manned minehunters and other weapons, Mabus said.

New technology included on the F-35 fighter plane worked so fast the pilots already were not involved, he said.

He noted a recent test of the unmanned X-47B aircraft built by Northrop Grumman Corp, which showed the drone could be refueled at sea.

link.

Transient Methane Plumes Detected by Curiosity in Gale Crater on Mars

Mars methane detection and variability at Gale crater

Authors:

Webster et al

Abstract:

Reports of plumes or patches of methane in the martian atmosphere that vary over monthly time scales have defied explanation to date. From in situ measurements made over a 20-month period by the tunable laser spectrometer of the Sample Analysis at Mars instrument suite on Curiosity at Gale crater, we report detection of background levels of atmospheric methane of mean value 0.69 ± 0.25 parts per billion by volume (ppbv) at the 95% confidence interval (CI). This abundance is lower than model estimates of ultraviolet degradation of accreted interplanetary dust particles or carbonaceous chondrite material. Additionally, in four sequential measurements spanning a 60-sol period (where 1 sol is a martian day), we observed elevated levels of methane of 7.2 ± 2.1 ppbv (95% CI), implying that Mars is episodically producing methane from an additional unknown source.

Canada Taking Delivery of 4 F-35s in 2017

Canada could take delivery of an initial four F-35 fighter jets built by Lockheed Martin Corp in 2017 under an agreement with the U.S. military, although no final decision has been made, sources familiar with the matter said on Friday.

An Oct. 27 briefing chart prepared by the Pentagon's F-35 Joint Program Office maps out plans for the U.S. Air Force to defer four of 26 F-35A purchases in a ninth batch of low-rate production jets, which would allow Canada to take those slots, said the sources, who were not authorized to speak publicly.

Canada is one of eight international partners who helped the U.S. military fund development of the advanced warplane, and it announced a sole-source contract to buy 65 planes in 2010.

But Canada's plans were put on hold in 2012 after a parliamentary watchdog faulted the government's process. Sources familiar with the issue have told Reuters that a comprehensive review that ended this spring put the jet ahead of the competition and that European bidders were effectively ruled out. They said a decision still had to be made.

The latest news, first reported by Canadian media, rekindled controversy in Parliament, where an opposition lawmaker immediately criticized the Conservative government for appearing to plow ahead with the F-35 purchases and not permitting a more transparent bidding process.

link.

Walking Deinocheirus Rendering

Deinocheirus mirificus Resolved to be Another Whackidillosaurus (Giant, Cretaceous Hump/Sailback MegaOmnivore Dinosaur)

Resolving the long-standing enigmas of a giant ornithomimosaur Deinocheirus mirificus

Authors:

Lee et al

Abstract:

The holotype of Deinocheirus mirificus was collected by the 1965 Polish–Mongolian Palaeontological Expedition at Altan Uul III in the southern Gobi of Mongolia. Because the holotype consists mostly of giant forelimbs (2.4 m in length) with scapulocoracoids , for almost 50 years Deinocheirus has remained one of the most mysterious dinosaurs. The mosaic of ornithomimosaur and non-ornithomimosaur characters in the holotype has made it difficult to resolve the phylogenetic status of Deinocheirus. Here we describe two new specimens of Deinocheirus that were discovered in the Nemegt Formation of Altan Uul IV in 2006 and Bugiin Tsav in 2009. The Bugiin Tsav specimen (MPC-D 100/127) includes a left forelimb clearly identifiable as Deinocheirus and is 6% longer than the holotype. The Altan Uul IV specimen (MPC-D 100/128) is approximately 74% the size of MPC-D 100/127. Cladistic analysis indicates that Deinocheirus is the largest member of the Ornithomimosauria; however, it has many unique skeletal features unknown in other ornithomimosaurs, indicating that Deinocheirus was a heavily built, non-cursorial animal with an elongate snout, a deep jaw, tall neural spines, a pygostyle, a U-shaped furcula, an expanded pelvis for strong muscle attachments, a relatively short hind limb and broad-tipped pedal unguals. Ecomorphological features in the skull, more than a thousand gastroliths, and stomach contents (fish remains) suggest that Deinocheirus was a megaomnivore that lived in mesic environments.

Academic Bun Fight: Whether or not There is Archaelogical Evidence of People in Uruguay 30,000 Years Ago

Extraordinary Claim!

Arroyo del Vizcaíno, Uruguay: a fossil-rich 30-ka-old megafaunal locality with cut-marked bones

Authors:

Fariña et al

Abstract:

Human–megafauna interaction in the Americas has great scientific and ethical interest because of its implications on Pleistocene extinction. The Arroyo del Vizcaíno site near Sauce, Uruguay has already yielded over 1000 bones belonging to at least 27 individuals, mostly of the giant sloth Lestodon. The assemblage shows some taphonomic features suggestive of human presence, such as a mortality profile dominated by prime adults and little evidence of major fluvial transport. In addition, several bones present deep, asymmetrical, microstriated, sharp and shouldered marks similar to those produced by human stone tools. A few possible lithic elements have also been collected, one of which has the shape of a scraper and micropolish consistent with usage on dry hide. However, the radiocarbon age of the site is unexpectedly old (between 27 and 30 thousand years ago), and thus may be important for understanding the timing of the peopling of America.

Pffle: Bad! Science! Bun thrown!

Archaeological evidences are still missing: a comment on Fariña et al. Arroyo del Vizcaíno site, Uruguay

Authors:

Suárez et al

Extract:

Fariña et al. suggest the possibility of human presence ca 30 ka in the Arroyo del Vizcaíno site (AVS) (southern Uruguay). This is based mainly on the record of cutmarks made by human artefacts on Pleistocene animal bones. They also inform of the finding of a single tiny stone tool and few other possible lithic artefacts. Nevertheless, their research has serious methodological problems and important interpretative errors.

Counterattack! Bad! Paper! Bunn Thrown Back!

Among others, cut-marks are archaeological evidence: reply to ‘Archaeological evidences are still missing: a comment on Fariña et al. Arroyo del Vizcaíno Site, Uruguay’ by Suárez et al.

Authors:

Fariña et al

Abstract:

In Fariña et al. [1], we claimed that a rich fossiliferous locality, Arroyo del Vizcaíno (hereafter, AdV), with marked bones that are much older than widely accepted for human presence in the Americas, deserved ‘to be included in the agenda of early American peopling, either as a not foreseeable discovery … or as an example of natural processes mimicking human presence’. The comments by Suárez et al. [2] fail to offer a hypothesis of such a process. Instead, they mention we incur in ‘serious methodological problems and important interpretative errors’ that remain mostly unexplained.

The Tussle Over the Croc-like Spinosaurus Goes on

link.

Thalassodromeus sebesensis Wasn't a Pterosaur...It was a Turtle

Thalassodromeus sebesensis - a new name for an old turtle. Comment on “Thalassodromeus sebesensis, an out of place and out of time Gondwanan tapejarid pterosaur”, Grellet-Tinner and Codrea

Authors:

Dyke et al

Abstract:

In a recent Gondwana Research article Grellet-Tinner and Codrea (2014) (hereafter “GTC”) describe a single bone (UBB ODA-28, collections of Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj Napoca, Romania) from the Upper Cretaceous Şard Formation (= middle section of the Sebeş Formation) (Transylvanian Basin, Romania) as a pterosaur premaxillary cranial crest. They assign this fossil to a new species of small pterosaur, Thalassodromeus sebesensis (a name first coined in a conference abstract published in 2013; Grellet-Tinner et al., 2013). GTC build a taxonomic argument on the basis of this single incomplete specimen that posits the presence of a major group of pterosaurs hitherto entirely restricted to the Early Cretaceous of South America - thalassodromines (Kellner and Campos, 2007) or thalassodromids (Witton, 2009) - in the European Late Cretaceous. GTC note that “this important discovery doubles the thalassadromine fossil record and demonstrates a 42 million years temporal displacement between the Romanian species and its older Aptian Gondwanan congener Thalassodromeus sethi”. If GTC are correct, this new fossil represents a remarkably unexpected and potentially very important discovery that could rewrite aspects of pterosaur evolutionary history.

We have assembled a large international team who disagree with the arguments presented by GTC. As we demonstrate, the fossil fragment they describe is misidentified; it is, firstly, not from a pterosaur but is clearly a piece of the shell of the turtle Kallokibotion Nopcsa, 1923 and, secondly, is therefore not the groundbreaking discovery of an ‘anachronistic’ Gondwanan pterosaur in Europe as claimed. Because ODA-28 is not a pterosaur, yet alone a Thalassodromeus, GTC’s conclusions on migration routes and insular dwarfism are also unsupported.

 Original authors stick to their guns, but not nicely.

Bristle Like Scales in Ornithischian Dinosaurs From Tithonian (?) Jurassic Russia

A new type of skin derivatives in Ornithischian dinosaurs from the late Jurassic of Transbaikalia (Russia)

Authors:

Saveliev et al

Abstract:

none.

Note: there is some sort of dispute over the fossils.

New Study Claims Placental Mammals Originated in the Cretaceous

Neither phylogenomic nor palaeontological data support a Palaeogene origin of placental mammals.

Authors:

dos Reis et al

Abstract:

O'Leary et al. (O'Leary et al. 2013 Science 339, 662-667. (doi:10.1126/science.1229237)) performed a fossil-only dating analysis of mammals, concluding that the ancestor of placentals post-dated the Cretaceous-Palaeogene boundary, contradicting previous palaeontological and molecular studies that placed the ancestor in the Cretaceous. They incorrectly used fossil ages as species divergence times for crown groups, while in fact the former should merely form minimum-age bounds for the latter. Statistical analyses of the fossil record have shown that crown groups are significantly older than the oldest ingroup fossil, so that fossils do not directly reflect the true ages of clades. Here, we analyse a 20 million nucleotide genome-scale alignment in conjunction with a probabilistic interpretation of the fossil ages from O'Leary et al. Our combined analysis of fossils and molecules demonstrates that Placentalia originated in the Cretaceous.