An anti-Obama wave

November 5, 2014

The results so far seem to apply nationwide and are as clear a “wave” as there can be.

My perception is of an overwhelming urge to vote against Barack Obama first and “for” somebody or something else second. Democratic voters just stayed away. The low voter turnout (c. 38%) is further evidence that it is disillusion with Obama which predominates.

A Red Wave then across the Senate, the House and among Governors. (In most other parts of the world red is the colour of the left and blue the colour of free-market conservatism).

Obama has 2 years left to go and though he has not achieved very much over the last 6 years, even with a Democratic Senate, he will now be reduced to bypassing Congress and issuing Presidential decrees. Increasingly he is going to be irrelevant.

But most likely he will continue his preferred course of “academic inaction”, but even inaction – as we have seen – can do a great deal of damage.

 

 

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Supreme Court rules against Bollywood union ban on women make-up artists

November 4, 2014

I posted recently about the challenge to the Bollywood union’s ban on women make up artists. The Supreme Court in India has now ruled that this ban is illegal (but in India labour laws are still among the most restrictive in the world though the new Modi government is beginning to address them). The court has given the union one week to delete their own rule restricting women and has assured the petitioners that if the union does not, the Court will.

Indian Express:

The 59-year-old practice in the Indian film industry that bars women from being classified as make-up artists is set to end with the Supreme Court stating on Monday that it would not allow this “constitutionally impermissible discrimination” to continue.

In the film industry, only men are allowed to become make-up artists while women are classified as hairdressers. The trade unions say this is to ensure that the men are not deprived of work.

“How can this discrimination continue? We will not permit this. It cannot be allowed under our Constitution. Why should only a male artist be allowed to put make-up? How can it be said that only men can be make-up artists and women can be hairdressers? We don’t see a reason to prohibit a woman from becoming a make-up artist if she is qualified,” said a bench of Justices Dipak Misra and U U Lalit.

“You better delete this clause on your own. Remove this immediately. We are in 2014, not in 1935. Such things cannot continue even for a day,” the court told the Cine Costume Make-up Artists and Hair Dressers Association (CCMAA). The court said the film industry, as a unit, could not be allowed to prolong this “gender bias”.

The court was hearing a petition by Charu Khurana and other women make-up artists, who were rebuffed by the CCMAA when they sought make-up artist cards. Khurana qualified from the Cinema Make-up School, California, but her application for membership was rejected by the CCMAA in 2009 because she is a woman.

The bench directed the body to come back with a “positive response” within a week. Khurana’s counsel, Jyotika Kalra, complained that Maharashtra’s union refused to delete the clause even after a state government order. “Don’t worry. If they don’t do it this time, we will order deletion,” assured the bench.

In the meantime the new Modi government has initiated moves to rationalise some of India’s archaic and restrictive labour laws:

India’s labour laws are restrictive in nature and hurt investments in the manufacturing sector. The Industrial Disputes Act (1947) has rigid provisions such as compulsory and prior government approval in the case of layoffs, retrenchment and closure of industrial establishments employing more than 100 workers. This clause applies even when there is a good reason to shut shop, or worker productivity is seriously low.

The Contract Labour (Regulation and Abolition) Act (1970) states that if the job content or nature of work of employees needs to be changed, 21 days’ notice must be given. The changes also require the consent of the employees, and this can be tricky.

While the right of workers to associate is important, the Trade Union Act (1926) provides for the creation of trade unions where even outsiders can be office-bearers. This hurts investor faith and restricts economic growth.

Rigid labour laws discourage firms from trying to introduce new technology, requiring some workers to be retrenched. This deters FDI because of the fear that it would not be possible to dismiss unproductive workers or to downsize during a downturn. Hence getting FDI into export-oriented labour-intensive sectors in India has not been fully achieved.

In contrast, China has succeeded in attracting FDI to export-oriented labour-intensive manufacturing, in part because of flexible labour laws such as the contract labour system implemented in 1995. Whereas in India, employers have taken to hiring workers on contract outside the institutional and legislative ambit, resulting in informalisation of the labour market. This hampers worker well-being. ……

To undo the malady in India’s labour market, some changes have recently been initiated in the three acts that largely govern India’s labour market: the Factories Act (1948), the Labour Laws Act (1988) and the Apprenticeship Act (1961). Amendments to some restrictive provisions of all these acts have been cleared by the Cabinet and are set to be tabled in Parliament. Key changes proposed include dropping the punitive clause that calls for the imprisonment of company directors who fail to implement the Apprenticeship Act of 1961.

The Government is also going to do away with a proposed amendment to the Act that would mandate employers to absorb at least half of its apprentices in regular jobs.

In order to provide flexibility to managers and employers, the amendment to the Factories Act includes doubling the provision of overtime from 50 hours a quarter to 100 hours in some cases and from 75 hours to 125 hours in others involving work of public interest. This is seen by some as being anti-labour as it imposes greater working hours without ensuring their security and welfare. …..

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Signs of global cooling accumulate while IPCC denies evidence and relies on models

November 2, 2014

Rational argument cannot penetrate faith.

Ask for evidence and you get model results. Ask for proof that the models are valid and you get hindcasts based on adjusted data. Ask for evidence of man-made emissions causing global warming and the answer is that it must be so for there is no other explanation. There isn’t if you don’t want to see it.

The IPCC believes that model results – even where the models are wrong – provide “conclusive” evidence of not just man-made global warming but that it is due to the emissions of carbon dioxide. It is politics not science. And the politics from India and China have ensured that the IPCC accepts fossil fuels till 2100!!!

For there is – in fact – no actual evidence in the form of data or measurements. There are only model results. There are only model forecasts where the track record shows that every IPCC forecast has been wrong. Fossil fuels – especially gas – will be around and will continue for many hundreds of years unless cheap fusion comes earlier.

Instead of real data showing support for the models, the evidence is accumulating that not only are the models wrong, but also that there are more indications that a global cooling is underway rather than global warming. Real measurements and real data show:

  1. that global temperatures have been stagnant for 18 years while carbon dioxide emissions have increased by 70% and carbon dioxide concentration has increased just under 15%,
  2. that therefore carbon dioxide concentration in the atmosphere has had no significant effect on global temperature,
  3. that the emissions and absorption of carbon dioxide from “natural” causes has an uncertainty of around 10%
  4. that man made carbon dioxide emissions make up less than 5% of all carbon dioxide emissions and their contribution to carbon dioxide concentration is of the order of 40% (assuming that there is no lag between accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and absorption mechanisms from the atmosphere),
  5. that global temperatures actually show a small downward trend over the last 10 years,
  6. that global temperatures of the past have been corrupted by being adjusted or otherwise homogenised with the intent (conscious or unconscious) to cool the past,
  7. that man-made carbon dioxide emissions have been overestimated and in reality are much lower as a proportion of natural emission sources,
  8. that natural carbon dioxide absorption processes are larger than assumed,
  9. that Antarctic ice cover is at the highest levels ever recorded,
  10. that Arctic ice cover has returned to be within 1 SD of the long term 1980-2010 average,
  11. that the rate of sea-level rise is still at the same rate as the long-term recovery from the last glacial,
  12. that snow cover in the northern hemisphere is increasing
  13. that ice cover on the Great Lakes is increasing,
  14. that there is more forest cover now than when the alarmism began, and
  15. that polar bear numbers are healthy and increasing,

Add to this that a VEI5+ volcano eruption has not occurred since 1991 and is long overdue. It will most likely show up along the Pacific Ring of Fire or in Indonesia. Consider also that the Bárðarbunga  volcano in Iceland has been producing sulphur dioxide at a rate which in 9 weeks has pumped twice as much SO2 into the atmosphere than all of Europe does in a year. Bárðarbunga  volcano is far from VEI5+ levels and the eruption could continue for months. The SO2 emissions are not all reaching the stratosphere but will surely lead to increased cloud formation around sulphur aerosols and cloud levels will probably be high through at least next year. It becomes increasingly clear that further cooling effects are already in the “natural” pipeline of events. Some new glacier formation has been observed in the Scottish highlands. Some Alpine and Himalayan glaciers have started to increase and while others still decrease, the observation of increase where there has been none before is highly significant. The Great lakes have seen unprecedentedly high ice cover levels. Snow cover in the northern hemisphere is high and is lasting longer into spring than for some time.

But the models and the presuppositions and the misconceptions of the religious high priests cannot be easily denied by the faithful and have an inertia of their own. The IPCC  remains delusional and in denial about reality. It continues to play its global warming fiddle but it is badly out of tune and its alarmist cacophony is being overtaken by real events.

It may not be a glacial age that is starting but another Little Ice Age looks like it is on its way.

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Misleading headlines do work

November 2, 2014

A new paper reports experimental evidence which shows that misleading headlines do exactly what they set out to do. They direct the reader to take away a conclusion that is not – or not entirely – supported by the content of an article. They are not false but they do succeed in leaving the reader with a “desired” conclusion.

Ecker, Ullrich K. H., Lewandowsky, Stephan, Chang, Ee Pin and Pillai Rekha, The Effects of Subtle Misinformation in News Headlines, Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Oct 27 , 2014, No Pagination Specified. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xap0000028
Abstract:Information presented in news articles can be misleading without being blatantly false. Experiment 1 examined the effects of misleading headlines that emphasize secondary content rather than the article’s primary gist. We investigated how headlines affect readers’ processing of factual news articles and opinion pieces, using both direct memory measures and more indirect reasoning measures. Experiment 2 examined an even more subtle type of misdirection. We presented articles featuring a facial image of one of the protagonists, and examined whether the headline and opening paragraph of an article affected the impressions formed of that face even when the person referred to in the headline was not the person portrayed. We demonstrate that misleading headlines affect readers’ memory, their inferential reasoning and behavioral intentions, as well as the impressions people form of faces. On a theoretical level, we argue that these effects arise not only because headlines constrain further information processing, biasing readers toward a specific interpretation, but also because readers struggle to update their memory in order to correct initial misconceptions. Practical implications for news consumers and media literacy are discussed.
Of course that’s why the headline writer has the last word. And it applies not only to articles but also to lectures and presentations and speeches. Unless the reader (or listener or viewer) returns to the subject and goes through his own thought process, the conclusions presented by the headline, or summary or “take-aways” on a Power Point slide are what remain in the subject’s memory. Provided, of course, that the take-away is not blatantly false. Subtly misleading is – in my experience – far more effective than anything blatantly misleading or just plain wrong.
In this information-rich age, we rely increasingly on surfing headlines and have not the time – or the inclination or the knowledge – to rethink every conclusion we are led to. It becomes easy to have an opinion about anything – even things we know very little about. I would suggest that in the world of instant polls and election advertising the impact of misdirection and the misleading headline is magnified. We tend to believe the misleading headline and “act” – especially where the action is as simple and as painless as to click a “like” button or even to cast a vote. I am quite convinced that when an instant poll follows a web article the response will be in favour of the headline.
The conclusions from this study are not unexpected or counter-intuitive in any way but it is nice to see experimental evidence in support.
FastCompany reports:
The researchers ran two experiments with multiple components, but let’s focus on the part of their study most relevant to the Ebola headline problem. In one test, Ecker and colleagues asked participants to read several short articles. Some of these articles had slightly misleading headlines. Others had headlines that were broadly accurate in the context of the entire article. Take one test article about the safety of consuming genetically modified food. The article quotes a scientific consortium backed by a national science academy as saying that the safety of such food “has been confirmed by many peer-reviewed studies world-wide.” In an attempt to seem balanced, the article also quotes an organic-food advocate (and presumed opponent of GM foods) saying that the long-term health impacts of genetically modified food “remain undetermined.”Some test participants read this article below a fairly accurate (if terribly bland) headline: “GM foods are safe.” Others read it below a headline that wasn’t blatantly wrong but remained slightly misleading or imbalanced: “GM foods may pose long-term health risks.” After reading the articles, test participants answered questions meant to gauge the influence the story might have left on their thoughts or potential behaviors. 

The study results betray the subtle power of misleading headlines. Test participants who read articles with accurate (or “congruent”) headlines tended to rely more on the content of the article itself when answering questions than those who saw misleading (or “incongruent”) headlines. In the case of the genetically modified food, participants who read misleading headlines appeared more concerned with its safety than those who saw a congruent headline–showing a greater willingness to pay extra for non-GM foods, for one thing. This gap in perception occurred despite the fact that both groups read the same exact article in full. The headline had left its mental mark.

Ecker and colleagues believe the big problem with misleading headlines is that they’re just that–misleading, as opposed to downright wrong. Correcting misinformation requires a lot of mental work. People are perfectly capable of doing that work once they recognize the need, but in the case of misleading headlines, that need isn’t always clear. After all, the misleading headline about genetically modified food is true in a very strict sense: the foods may possess long-term health risks, in the same way the world may end tomorrow. As the researchers put it, misleading headlines may have served to nudge behavior “without readers noticing their slant.”

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Reanalysis reveals no significant global warming in New Zealand in the 20th century

October 31, 2014

New Zealand has one of the longest temperature-time series available.  In the past it has been reported that this data-set  confirms the view of global warming of just under 1ºC per century. But that is now highly suspect. A new paper reanalysing the data has been published and shows that the trend is less than one-third of what has been previously assumed.

de Freitas, C.R., Dedekind, M.O. and Brill, B.E. 2014. A reanalysis of long-term surface air temperature trends in New Zealand. Environmental Modeling and Assessment, do1 10.1007/s10666-014-9429-z.

Abstract: Detecting trends in climate is important in assessments of global change based on regional long-term data. Equally important is the reliability of the results that are widely used as a major input for a large number of societal design and planning purposes. New Zealand provides a rare long temperature time series in the Southern Hemisphere, and it is one of the longest continuous climate series available in the Southern Hemisphere Pacific. It is therefore important that this temperature dataset meets the highest quality control standards. New Zealand’s national record for the period 1909 to 2009 is analysed and the data homogenized. Current New Zealand century-long climatology based on 1981 methods produces a trend of 0.91 °C per century. Our analysis, which uses updated measurement techniques and corrects for shelter-contaminated data, produces a trend of 0.28 °C per century.

Dr. Craig Idso writes:

De Freitas et al. report that, whereas the previous analysis yielded a trend of 0.91 ± 0.30°C per century, their analysis – which used updated measurement techniques and corrects for shelter-contaminated data – produces a trend of only 0.28 ± 0.29°C per century, which is a heck of a lot less than what had previously been believed to have been the case.

The significance of de Freitas et al.’s work is two-fold. First, the authors report that the old, contaminated data with the inflated warming trend has been “widely used as inputs for societal design and planning purposes” all across New Zealand. Second, de Freitas et al. note these data are “extensively used in hindcast verifications for regional and local models.” However, as the saying goes, “garbage in equals garbage out.” Therefore, at best, the corrected New Zealand temperature trend, which is three times smaller than the uncorrected version, calls into question all results, findings, conclusions, and policies built upon or derived from the old contaminated data record. And at worst, it invalidates them.

Given the great importance of starting with the proper baseline, one would hope that with so much at stake in terms of economics, personal freedoms, and governance, much greater care and scrutiny would be applied to ensuring the quality and reliability of near-surface air temperature records. But obviously, such has not been the case for New Zealand. And it begs the question as to where else temperature records might be less than par.

To obtain a “global temperature”, raw temperature data from available sites is massaged, applied to geographical grids, corrected, adjusted, “filled-in” and otherwise homogenised. But the algorithms used to make these adjustments inevitably carry the preconceptions and misconceptions of the adjusters. As raw data is reviewed it is becoming increasingly obvious (in the US, in Australia in Germany and now in New Zealand) that “adjustments” that have been made over the last 20 years have been plagued by “confirmation bias”. Rather than a clear-cut warming record what is apparent is that many data-sets have been adjusted to “cool the past”.

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The real Amazons keep their secrets

October 30, 2014
Sarmatian (Amazon) warriior woman (image from RealmsofGold)

Sarmatian (Amazon) warriior woman (image from RealmsofGold)

The stories of the mythical warrior women of central Asia are largely based on the writings of the Greeks and the stories date back to the 8th and the 7th centuries BCE (Homer’s Iliad). By the 5th century BCE, Herodotus refers to a group pf warrior women taken prisoner by the Greeks, who overwhelmed their captors on board ship and then intermingled with the Scythians to give rise to the Sauromatians (6th – 4th centuries BCE) and who in turn evolved to become the nomadic Sarmatians around the 4th century BCE. The Sarmatians  held sway for some 900 years until around 500 CE. If the myths of the Amazon women are based on reality then the reality must pre-date Homer. The original Amazons must then refer to the warrior-women among the ancestors of the Sauromatian peoples who roamed the steppes of southern Russia / central Asia. On horse-back presumably.

By the time of the Sauromatians and the succeeding Sarmatians, the warrior women traditions have also evolved.  There is archaeological evidence from the graves of martial, noble women who were interred together with their finery, their weapons and even their horses. Many graves previously just assumed to be those of male warriors have now been revealed by DNA testing to be of women warriors. More than 25% of such graves are now thought to be of women. Such a wide-spread culture must have originated long before.

Adrienne Mayor has a new book out The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women Across the Ancient World which I have been reading over the last few days. It is a fascinating collection of the various myths surrounding the warrior women though it does not bring any light to bear on who they actually were beyond saying they were Scythians. But she does show that many of the myths are just myths and the reality was probably more mundane than the highly erotic, sensationalised version of the Greeks. In fact some of the Greek writings were clearly the tabloid press of their day. Her book is highly readable but it is a compendium of the writings about the Amazons rather than any new theory or hypothesis about their origins. She herself call it her “Encyclopaedia Amazonica”.

The steely women who cut off one breast to accommodate their archery needs was just fiction. There is no evidence that they were “man-eating” – in more ways than one – as the tabloids of the day were wont to narrate. The idea of man-hating, lesbian, hordes, armed to the teeth and rampaging and pillaging innocent heterosexual communities across the steppes made a good story then as it would today. Equally the vision of bands of warrior-virgins ensuring their own extinction was just pulp-fiction. The Persians like the Amazon were enemies who came from the East and many Persian characteristics were attributed to and embellished the Amazon myths. But in Greek – Amazon interactions, the warrior-woman is always conquered by a Greek hero figure!

But there is little doubt in my mind that around 3,000 years ago the Amazons existed.  They were a nomadic community across the steppes of central Asia where women were as likely to be warriors or rulers as men. The had a hierarchical structure but the hierarchy was not based on gender (probably). They were not a horde like the Mongols who came much later. But they were nomadic and they did not allow others to push them around as they rode across their territories. The women were clearly accomplished horse-women. Their economy was based on horses rather than cattle. They used hallucinogenic plant extracts and used tattoos (as marks of status or rank perhaps). They were probably the ancestors of the Sauromatians. They were also arguably the most gender-neutral culture ever to exist – and that includes the present day.

An excellent read.

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Big Pharma’s “Pay-for-delay” tactics delay generic drugs and kill people

October 30, 2014

It is not often that the Huffington Post can bring itself to criticise President Obama. But even their usual blind support for Democrats in general and for Barack Obama in particular has taken a back-seat to their outrage over Obama’s support for Big Pharma and his opposition to generic drugs (often from India) and to Medicines Sans Frontiers (Doctors without borders).

Much of their indignation is due to the collusive practice of “pay-for delay” agreements made by Big Pharma with drug manufacturers – often in developing countries – to delay the introduction of generic medicines – many for life threatening conditions. The purpose of course is to keep their prices high and to maximise their profits on their successful drugs. They delayed the introduction of generic AIDS drugs and are now opposing the introduction of cancer fighting generics.

ThinkProgress: ….. the widespread and arguably collusive practice of “reverse payment” settlements — commonly referred to as “pay for delay” — between brand name drug manufacturers and their cheaper generic drug counterparts. Such arrangements involve brand name drug makers paying off generic manufacturers to delay a generic drug’s release into the market, allowing the brand name producers to further profit off of their significantly more expensive drugs. …..

The practice has been quite successful in maintaining profits. But in the developed world the high – and protected – cost of medicines take away from other resources (people and equipment). In the developing world it denies treatment to many who need it. The difference in price between a generic drug and a “brand name” drug is almost obscene. AIDS treatments of over $12,000 per year reduced to less than $400 using generics from India. A generic version of Nexavar (for treatment of liver and kidney cancer) reduced cost of treatment from $5,000 per month to just $157 per month.

A generic drug only enters the market after patent protection has expired. The original developer has by then had his time to exploit his invention. Production costs at Big Pharma are perhaps upto twice that at low-cost manufacturers – but not much more. Yet they often have support from their governments in the developed countries (in extension of patent protection through patent “bombing” and in global and bi-lateral trade agreements) in maintaining prices which are hundreds of times higher than the production cost.

In an article today HuffPo writes:

Obama Has Been Fighting Doctors Without Borders For Years

It’s a little unusual to see the Obama administration singing the praises of Doctors Without Borders, the Nobel Peace Prize-winning nonprofit that is shipping doctors, drugs and supplies to West Africa to combat the Ebola outbreak. …… But the recent executive branch acclaim for Doctors Without Borders obscures a long-running struggle between the humanitarian group and the White House over global drug prices. Through trade talks, meetings with foreign governments and negotiations with multiple U.N. bodies, the Obama administration has aggressively pursued policies that prevent poor countries from accessing low-cost generic versions of expensive name-brand medications, despite persistent calls from Doctors Without Borders for the White House to reverse course.

Americans pay the highest prescription drug prices in the world. Those prices are elevated in large part by aggressive intellectual property standards that grant pharmaceutical companies long-term monopolies on new drugs, letting firms charge whatever they want without regard to traditional market pressures. Generic drugs can’t enter the market whenever those monopolies are in place. Doctors Without Borders, along with many other medical groups and nonprofits, has spent years advocating for looser standards and greater flexibility for developing countries.

Drug companies, of course, argue that they need patents and other government perks to recoup their research and development costs. Large U.S. drug companies don’t seem to be having trouble breaking even, however. Pfizer made $22 billion in 2013, while Merck & Co. posted a $4.5 billion profit and Eli Lilly & Co. earned $4.7 billion.

India’s generic drug market has been at the center of disputes between the White House and Doctors Without Borders. AIDS and HIV medication was wildly expensive in developing countries in the late 1990s — about $12,000 a year per patient in South Africa, a country with an average income of just $2,600 a year, for instance. When Indian generics entered the global market, they were priced as low as $1 a day, enabling programs like George W. Bush’s global AIDS relief plan to serve millions of people.

U.S. drug companies are particularly concerned about repeating that experience with expensive cancer treatments, and they’ve been backed up by the Obama administration, which has placed India on it’s international trade blacklist. In the spring of 2012, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Deputy Director Teresa Stanek Rea attacked India’s government in congressional testimony for approving a generic version of a Bayer AG cancer drug called Nexavar. The generic version cost patients$157 a month. Bayer had been charging over $5,000 a month there, in a country with a per capita income of just $1,410 per year, a price so high that less than 2 percent of potential patients were able to access the drug. But before Congress, Rea falsely called the generic approval an “egregious” violation of World Trade Organization treaties.

Doctors Without Borders called it “unprecedented, really shocking testimony,” but it wasn’t a one-time gaffe from an obscure agency official. In the summer of 2013, Secretary of State John Kerry went to India to pressure its government over its approval of generic versions of patented U.S. and European drugs. When India’s new prime minister, Narendra Modi, made his first visit to the United States in September of this year, Doctors Without Borders urged him to resist the Obama administration’s demands on generic medicine.

“India’s production of affordable medicines is a vital life-line for MSF’s medical humanitarian operations and millions of people in developing countries,” said Rohit Malpani, director of policy and analysis for MSF’s Access Campaign. “India’s patent laws and policies have fostered robust generic competition over the past decade, which has brought the price of medicines down substantially — in the case of HIV, by more than 90 percent. The world can’t afford to see India’s pharmacy shut down by U.S. commercial interests.”

Big Pharma is surely entitled to make a reasonable profit from its inventions. The development costs of unsuccessful drugs also has to be paid for. But any concept of Intellectual Property (which itself is deeply flawed) can be defended when it is based on the denial of the benefits of the invention to other than a privileged few. A denial to the point of loss of life.

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“Free will” is further circumscribed as two genes associated with violence are identified

October 29, 2014

The range of application of human “free will” is increasingly being circumscribed as we identify genes which are associated with specific behavioural characteristics. This is not to say that any gene or set of genes makes certain specific behaviour inevitable – but it does say that that particular behaviour is more probable for that individual. Perhaps it is more accurate to say that an individual’s gene set defines (and therefore constrains) the envelope of possible behaviour. But that itself means that he can only exercise “free will” within the envelope of possible behaviour that is available to him.

A new study from Finland has identified two genes associated with violent crime. The study of 900 Finnish criminals is published in Molecular Psychiatry.

MedPage:

Variants in two genes were significantly more common in Finnish criminals convicted of multiple violent crimes compared with the general population, researchers said.

Statistical analysis indicated that 5% to 10% of all severe violent crime in Finland could be attributed to these variants, affecting the genes for monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) and CDH13, a neuronal membrane adhesion molecule, according to Jari Tiihonen, MD, PhD, of the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, and colleagues.

Offenders who had committed 10 or more serious violent crimes were significantly more like to carry one of several loss-of-function variants in the MAOA gene (odds ratio 2.66, 95% CI 1.60-4.42) or the so-called rs11649622 variant in the CDH13 gene (OR 2.72, 95% CI 1.77-4.15), versus participants in population-based survey studies in Finland who were considered representative of the general population.

Criminal offenders with no violent crime convictions showed no increases in risk of carrying the flagged MAOA/CDH13, with an OR of 1.12-1.13 relative to the population-based sample, which did not approach statistical significance.

In their report published online in Molecular Psychiatry, they acknowledged that crime “is a complex phenomenon, and the outcome is shaped by both genetic and environmental factors.”

But that doesn’t mean that genetic contributors cannot be identified, they argued. “It is plausible that while research of the genetic background of criminal or violent behavior is hampered by many confounding factors, focusing on extreme phenotypes might yield more robust results,” Tiihonen and colleagues wrote.

J Tiihonen et al, Genetic background of extreme violent behavior, Molecular Psychiatry , (28 October 2014), doi:10.1038/mp.2014.130

This may not have much practical application yet, and there are certainly many more genes which also predispose to violence and a genetic screening for “violent” tendencies is not coming any time soon. Violent tendencies are also certainly not only due to genes and nurture surely has a very significant part to play.

Abstract: In developed countries, the majority of all violent crime is committed by a small group of antisocial recidivistic offenders, but no genes have been shown to contribute to recidivistic violent offending or severe violent behavior, such as homicide. Our results, from two independent cohorts of Finnish prisoners, revealed that a monoamine oxidase A (MAOA) low-activity genotype (contributing to low dopamine turnover rate) as well as the CDH13 gene (coding for neuronal membrane adhesion protein) are associated with extremely violent behavior (at least 10 committed homicides, attempted homicides or batteries). No substantial signal was observed for either MAOA or CDH13 among non-violent offenders, indicating that findings were specific for violent offending, and not largely attributable to substance abuse or antisocial personality disorder. These results indicate both low monoamine metabolism and neuronal membrane dysfunction as plausible factors in the etiology of extreme criminal violent behavior, and imply that at least about 5–10% of all severe violent crime in Finland is attributable to the aforementioned MAOA and CDH13 genotypes.

I conceive an individual’s genes as defining the range of behaviour available to a human and his “nurture” as then determining his actual behaviour by the exercise of what we call “free will”. What is becoming increasingly obvious though, is that any individual’s “free will” is severely circumscribed. The application of “free will” is restricted to be within the envelope of behaviour that the genes allow.

Behaviour envelopes

I envision an individual whose limits are set by his genes. He cannot think faster or run faster or behave differently to what his genes allow. Thus no amount of “free will” (or nurture) could get an individual to behave outside the envelope of his possible behaviour as set by his individual set of genes.

 

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Antares rocket on ISS supply mission explodes on launch

October 29, 2014

An unmanned Orbital Science’s, Antares, cargo rocket carrying a NASA payload to the International Space station has exploded at launch. An earlier launch attempt a day earlier had been scrubbed because a boat wandered into the launch area at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Antares Rocket Explodes During Launch on Oct. 28, 2014

An Orbital Sciences Antares rocket explodes shortly after lifting off on a private cargo mission toward the International Space Station on Oct .28, 2014 from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Credit: NASA TV

Orbital also supports human space flight by supplying commercial cargo resupply services for the International Space Station using our new Antares® rocket and Cygnus™ cargo logistics spacecraft.  In addition, Orbital provides full service engineering, production and technical services for NASA, DoD, commercial and academic space programs.

Designed to provide responsive, low-cost, and reliable access to space, Antares is a two-stage vehicle (with optional third stage) that provides low-Earth orbit (LEO) launch capability for payloads weighing over 5,000 kg. Internally funded by Orbital, Antares completed a risk reduction mission and a demonstration of commercial re-supply services for the International Space Station (ISS) under a NASA Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) agreement in 2013. Antares currently is under contract for eight Commercial Resupply Missions (CRS) to deliver cargo to the International Space Station, the first of which was completed in early 2014

The previous 4 launches of the Antares have been successful. The business of operating private launch vehicles is still a risky and expensive business. Orbital Science’s contract with NASA in 2008 was for NASA to provide $171 million in addition to the $150 million to be funded by Orbital. As of December 2013 costs expended had reached $530 million with $288 million coming from NASA. Orbital is quoted on the NYSE and in 2013 had revenues of $1.36 billion with a net income of $68 million (c. 5%). They report an operating margin of 8.3% so development costs are a little over 3% of revenues.

Space.com:

A private Orbital Sciences-built cargo launch to the International Space Station ended in a fiery explosion just seconds after liftoff Tuesday night (Oct. 28).

Orbital’s unmanned Antares rocket exploded in a brilliant fireball shortly after launching from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia at 6:22 p.m. EDT (2222 GMT), crashing back down to the launch pad in a flaming heap. The Antares was carrying Orbital’s unmanned Cygnus spacecraft, which was toting 5,000 pounds (2,268 kilograms) of food, scientific experiments and other supplies on this flight — the third cargo mission to the space station under a $1.9 billion contract the company holds with NASA.

Antares visibility map

Antares first nighttime launch from Wallops Flight Facility planned for October 27th – Visibility area — image NASA

 

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Did one false report in Swedish newspaper cause the submarine fiasco?

October 28, 2014

I have posted earlier about the “Russian submarine in the Stockholm archipelago” hysteria which gripped the Swedish media and – apparently – the Swedish military for 6 days. (Though my perception is that the hysteria was with the media and the military and not with the general public. It did not cause much general alarm but it did provide another subject for after-dinner conversation and for wild speculation in the bars).The hunt is now over and there is plenty of egg on many faces. The Russian press and social media are having a field day with Swedish military alarmism.

But all of it may have originated from just one false article in the right-leaning Svenska Dagbladet. Of course it was compounded by further false sightings. This is a report from the left-leaning Dagens Nyheter (the nearest media competitor to the Svenska Dagbladet).

Dagens Nyheter: The operation carried out by the Swedish armed forces in the Stockholm archipelago was not triggered by one emergency call in Russian. So says Naval Intelligence to DN.

On Saturday, October 18th the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet revealed that an emergency call in Russian set off the alarm and started the hunt for a damaged Russian submarine in the Stockholm archipelago. The newspaper also said that there had been encrypted radio traffic between a transmitter in the archipelago and one transmitter located in Kaliningrad where large parts of the Russian Baltic Fleet is located. This news was reproduced by virtually all Swedish media, including DN. The disclosure also received international attention.

Already in last Friday’s paper newspaper DN revealed that no radio communications between the field of operation and Kaliningrad were intercepted during the six-day operation.

DN has now with the support of Freedom of Information rules obtained a copy of the transcript from the Armed Forces and has had the transcript translated.
Documents relating to military operations are usually completely or partly exempt under secrecy rules. When documents are denied the authorities are required to disclose an “Incident Report”.  Those denied documents can then appeal the decision. But no Russian emergency traffic ever occurred according to the military’s own investigation reported DN’s intelligence source. The documents just do not exist, according to the military.

“I thought it was exciting to read about the Russian emergency call you reported. But there is no such thing – the information is incorrect” says a source in Navy intelligence.

Has there been any radio traffic from Stockholm archipelago to and from Kaliningrad?

“There is traffic from Kaliningrad constantly, 24 hours a day. This is nothing strange. It’s just like any of our radio stations everywhere in Sweden – they transmit all the time” says DN’s source.

And if all the fuss was triggered by just one false report in the Svenska Dagbladet, it begs the question as to whether it was just bad journalism or whether there was another motive and a hidden agenda? And why did the Swedish military react so hysterically to just one bad media report?

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