Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Pulling together

Tucked away in a piece about the Jerk-O-Meter was this research result:

The most remarkable thing was that we could correlate people’s behavior and proximity—who they spent time with—who were their friends. So we could do an almost perfect prediction of who were their friends. And the number of friends you had in a work group, friends defined by people you spend time with [outside work] was an almost perfect predictor of how productive the work group was. I find that fascinating. If you go to the management school here (at MIT) it’s all about leadership. The one thing you won’t hear about is, encouraging people to have friends and creating an environment that fosters that sort of social support.

Perhaps national-building efforts could take a cue from this. It's not enough to have effective leadership and stable institutions. How does one build up social networks? How does one weave social fabrics? Building and maintaining stability in the form of intangible social infrastructure is key.

Extrapolating further, a decapitation attack upon an authoritarian regime won't result in a stable society if the key thing which held it together was fear. There have to be positive motivations for societal cohesion.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

Chemical alternatives to sleep

DARPA partly funded research into ampakines to combat the effects of sleep deprivation.

The drug, currently known as CX717, is designed to act on a type of chemical receptor that is involved in cell-to-cell communication involving the neurotransmitter glutamate...
[The monkeys] were then deprived of sleep for between 30 and 36 hours - which the researchers say is equivalent to humans going for 72 hours without sleep.
The animals were tested again, and fared worse on all the tests.
But after being sleep-deprived once more and re-tested after being given the drug, their performance was restored to normal levels.

That's three days. It's been reported that soldiers used modafinil in recent combat; reports indicate that drug also provides an effective period of three days, perhaps longer.

...sold by Pennsylvania drugmaker Cephalon under the name Provigil, the compound can keep users up for two or three days at a stretch, with negligible side effects and little risk of addiction. ...although the Pentagon won't comment, several news outlets reported that coalition troops were taking it during the drive to Baghdad earlier this year.

I wonder if some regimen combining modafinil and CX717 would have a synergystic effect, breaking well past the barrier of a week without sleep. Civilians as well as the military could benefit from the capability, as well as abuse it.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

Bypassing ethnic profiling

What does it mean when a Spanish train bombing subject is arrested in Serbia?

The suspect, identified as Abdelmajid Bouchar, a 22-year-old Moroccan who allegedly fled a suburban Madrid apartment shortly before alleged ringleaders in the attack blew themselves up inside that home to avoid arrest, three weeks after the massacre.
Bouchar had been living in Belgrade under an assumed name and a fake Iraqi passport, the ministry said in a statement. There was also an international arrest warrant for him.

Could he have been in contact with a sleeper cell or recruiting in Bosnia? The U.S. Treasury Department notes that al Qaida once funded mujahideen in Bosnia:

In 1993, Batterjee incorporated BIF in the United States, where it also provided financial and operational support to mujahideen fighters worldwide, including members of al Qaida in Afghanistan, the Sudan, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Chechnya. At one point, UBL confirmed to an associate that BIF was one of the non-governmental organizations providing funds to al Qaida.

Such sleepers would likely be indistinguishable from Western Europeans, enabling them to bypass ethnic profiling.

The body as battlefield

There is an immunological arms race happening within our bodies. Bacteria launch defenses in response to antibacterial peptides:

University of Washington (UW) and McGill University researchers have revealed a molecular mechanism whereby bacteria can recognize tiny antimicrobial peptide molecules, then respond by becoming more virulent.
...the same molecules that the body sends out to help destroy salmonella inadvertently launch bacterial defenses. It is as if missiles armed, rather than demolished, the target. The body's antimicrobial peptides bind to an enzyme, PhoQ, that acts as a watchtower and interceptor near the surface of bacteria cell membranes. The peptide binding activates PhoQ, which sets off a cascade of signals. The signals turn on a large set of bacterial genes. Some of genes are responsible for products that fortify the bacterial cell surface and protect the bacteria from being killed.

The human body in turn mobilizes responses to bacterial RNA:

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have published the first study to test the role of RNA chemical modifications on immunity. They have demonstrated that RNA from bacteria stimulates immune cells to orchestrate destruction of invading pathogens. Most RNA from human cells is recognized as being self and does not stimulate an immune response to the same extent as invading bacteria or viruses. The researchers hypothesize that if this self-recognition fails, then autoimmune diseases such as systemic lupus erythematosus could result.

This implies two obvious approaches for nanotech-enhanced bioweapons: enhance bacterial virulence and cripple the body's response to bacterial RNA. Similarly, nanotech-enhanced biodefenses might defeat bacterial virulence mechanisms and enhance the body's capacity to recognize and defend against bacterial proteins.

Monday, August 22, 2005

Anger and control

CMU researchers found that recollections of anger or fear could bias a person's outlook with regard to the likelihood of future attacks and coping with terrorism.

Each time, they created experiences that accentuated one of the multiple emotions that the attacks evoked: fear, anger or sadness. One year out, the respondents' emotional reactions to the attacks continued to predict their perception of the risk of terrorism: Those who had their fear heightened were more pessimistic about the likelihood of future attacks and coping with the risk of terrorism, while those who had their anger heightened were more optimistic.

The use of anger or fear seems analogous to a fight or flight response. Interestingly, sadness was neutral in impact.

Anger is sometimes adaptive, sometimes not:

Anger is probably beneficial in this context because it increases people's sense of control, comments Lerner, who also has looked at this aspect of the phenomenon...
"At the same time anger effectively provides a sense of certainty and prepares people for action," she says, "it also simplifies their judgment processes and leaves them prone to bias."

This illusion of control (it is, after all, contextual whether or not the sense of control is validated) has potential psychological benefits. Cf. this 1996 press release on optimistic bias in children:

Capps has found that normal healthy children have an optimistic bias in believing they will be protected from harm that others encounter. They think they have all kinds of control over negative events in life, rating themselves as less likely to be affected by danger than the "typical kid," she said.
"It's important for parents to provide this illusory faith," said Capps. "It gives an extra buffer against fear, anxiety and depression."

Anger can thus be a psychologically adaptive means of coping with lack of control, altering one's perception. However, that benefit is distinct from how adaptive it is with regard to more objectively bettering one's situation.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Exercise craze

So far this month, there was Peace Shield 2005, held in the Ukraine region; armed forces from Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania, Turkey, Ukraine, and the United States participated in scenarios based on Iraq.

Taiwan held an exercise which staged the repulsion of an attack from mainland China.

China and Russia are holding Peace Mission 2005 near Vladivostok, staging the amphibious invasion of an imaginary country.

Meanwhile, Japan hosted the annual JASEX military exercise near Okinawa, demonstrating U.S. capability in the reigion.

Also, Singapore hosted Operation Deep Sabre; Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Russia, Singapore, the U.K., and the U.S. participated in exercises simulating the interception of ships carrying WMD.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Shocks through the system

Kenya appears to have become a chokepoint for oil in East Africa. Due to delays and protests over new rules over duties, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, Congo and northern Tanzania may face fuel shortages, which consequent impacts upon their economies.

Perhaps it's little wonder that Tanzania has agreed to Angola's proposal for a modest hydroelectric power study to by completed by 2008, which could lead to a Chinese-built dam by 2017.

Zimbabewe appears to be undergoing an inflation spiral triggered by sharp price hikes, as the price of oil is state-regulated.

The International Energy Agency notes that Africa and Asia are highly vulnerable to a rise in the price of oil:

The economies of oil-importing developing countries in Asia and Africa would suffer most from higher oil prices because their economies are more dependent on imported oil. In addition, energy-intensive manufacturing generally accounts for a larger share of their GDP and energy is used less efficiently. On average, oil-importing developing countries use more than twice as much oil to produce one unit of economic output as do developed countries.

The rise in oil prices may negate the impact of G8 debt relief.

It is also little wonder that China and India are looking to Africa for oil:

China has more recently become a player in the energy field on the west coast of Africa, which is the largest producer of oil on the continent. West Africa provides the United States with 15 per cent of oil imports and this is projected to grow to as much as 20-25% over the coming decade. Nigeria and Angola are the main producers and China has become active in both countries. Angola represents how China puts its assets together to build its presence. In connection with its bid to win rights to exploration of a bloc, China offered Angola a $2 billion soft loan as part of a longer term aid package. China won the bid, and - as an indication that China is not the only new player on the continent - the closest competitor was India.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

DNA ancestry testing increasingly used in law enforcement

Last year, I noted that British police used DNA to narrow down the racial ancestry of an unknown sex offender.

American police are not only using DNA-determined ancestry to narrow down suspects, but also to determine the racial ancestry of murder victims.

The child, dubbed "Precious Doe" by local residents, appeared to be black. But new DNA tests that can determine a person's heritage indicated she was of mixed ancestry — about 40% white. That meant she almost certainly had a white grandparent.
This year, a tip led police to an Oklahoma woman who had not reported her young daughter's disappearance. When the woman was found to have both a black and a white parent, police moved in. Further DNA tests determined that the woman, Michelle Johnson, was the girl's mother. Johnson and her husband, Harrell Johnson, the victim's stepfather, have been charged in the slaying...
In 2004, police in Charlottesville, Va., used ancestry testing to confirm the race of a suspect in six unsolved rapes that began in 1997. Police had been criticized for seeking DNA samples from local black men based on victims' descriptions of the assailant. The testing indicated that he indeed was of Sub-Saharan African descent.
Ancestry testing also has been used on a female skeleton that was found in the snow near Mammoth Lake, Calif., in May 2003. The slain woman initially was misidentified as southeast Asian, based on witnesses' descriptions of a woman seen in the area. DNAPrint Genomics found she actually was a Native American, a finding confirmed by analyses of her diet and bone composition and further DNA tests.

Looking back further, there was a Louisiana case in 2003. A serial killer's ancestry was apparently successfully profiled.

Setting aside the issue of just what is really being measured when racial proportion is claimed, overreliance on this technology may create new vulnerabilities. It's possible that juries may underestimate the potential for error:

But some defense lawyers say CSI and similar shows make jurors rely too heavily on scientific findings and unwilling to accept that those findings can be compromised by human or technical errors.

Errors could arise from causes as simple as samples being switched.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Nanotech weapons of the future

This tiny excerpt in Jane's hints that nanotech could be used to increase the potency of chemical weapons by permitting them to selectively target organs.

Almost 80% of the article is reserved for subscribers. Let's see what a bit of scanning of open sources on the net can reveal about the likely content, shall we?

A January piece in Technology Review points to the use of nanometals to create superthermites via nanoaluminum and iron oxide; such nanoenergtics promises thermobaric cave-busting thermobaric weapons much more powerful than the vaunted "Daisy Cutter" or MOAB. Not that portable thermobarics couldn't be used for urban ops or cave assaults.

Nanotech could possibly enable compact nuclear detonators, making briefcase nukes capable of taking down a building a reality. A Jane's expert is quoted as saying that the United States, Germany, and Russia were funding research in that direction.

This 2004 piece in The Bulletin warns that carbon nanotubes could conceivably be used to enhance toxin delivery in bioweapons, even enabling them to bypass immune defenses acquired by vaccination, as well as making more durable bioweapons. Nonlethal anti-materials nanotech is also mentioned, though such weaponry was conceptualized at least as far back as 1994.

The United States is currently leading in nanotech investment, though China claimed to be third after Japan for nanotech patents in 2003.

It's not all bad. Nanotech is also being developed for defensive purposes against biological and chemical weapons.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Potential blowback for Iran?

Recently, Rumsfeld chided Iran for providing support to Iraqi insurgents:

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Tuesday that weapons recently confiscated in Iraq were "clearly, unambiguously from Iran" and admonished Tehran for allowing the explosives to cross the border...
"What you do know of certain knowledge is the Iranians did not stop it from coming in," he said.
Rumsfeld said the weapons create problems for the Iraqi government, coalition forces and the international community.
"And ultimately, it's a problem for Iran," he added.

Meanwhile, this report suggests that Iran may be facing the threat of Sunni insurgency, but has soft-pedalled it:

On 13 July, the Dubai-based Al-Arabiyah television station broadcast segments of a videotape that purportedly showed the execution of Shahab Mansuri, an Iranian security official. The hitherto unknown group, calling itself God's Soldiers of the Sunni Mujahedin, captured the official sometime in mid-June, releasing a video of the hostage on 20 June. In this video, the group demanded the release of its jailed members by the Iranian authorities within three weeks or receive the "hostage's head as a gift to the elected president [Mahmoud Ahmadinejad]", Al-Arabiya reported.

It would appear that disruption of the U.S.-led stabilization effort may be coming at a price for Iran.

Here's a worst case scenario. Iran is known to have biological and chemical weapons programs, has a nuclear power program, is suspected of having a nuclear weapons program, and has uranium on native soil. If a Sunni uprising overthrow were to overthrow the Shia government, it's possible that al Qaida and friends would gain ready access to WMD.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Global warming and the limits of linear projection

While the debate over global warming continues in the U.S.A., it appears several other countries are weighing the threat posed by climate change in the near term:

Chinese planners have been concerned since 2003 that climate change may hamper construction and stability of the Qinghai-Tibet railway, partially built over permafrost. More recently, a Chinese climatologist warned that safety of the railyay may be compromised by 2050 given current trends; i.e. assuming a linear continuation of the trend

Russian researchers have observed that large areas of frozen peat bog in Siberia are melting, threatening to release a massive amount of methane, a greenhouse gas. Such a release may have a nonlinear impact, accelerating global warming.

Linearity may not be an accurate model of what is yet to come.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Vat-grown meat

Scientists are proposing that current techniques could be extended to enable meat to be grown in a lab.

"In the long term, this is a very feasible idea," said Jason Matheny of the University of Maryland, part of the team whose research has been published in the Tissue Engineering journal.

Some possible advantages:

  • cruelty-free meat
  • mercury-free fish
  • meat from endangered species could be cultured for sale
  • beef tissue free from BSE
  • a reduction in methane, a greenhouse gas, from animal farming
  • a reduction in cattle ranching, leading to less pressure on the Amazon rainforest

Given global overfishing, perhaps laboratory-grown fish will be inevitable.

Not for our kind of people?

This article in the Post-Gazette struck me:

Staff Sgt. Jason Rivera, 26, a Marine recruiter in Pittsburgh, went to the home of a high school student who had expressed interest in joining the Marine Reserve to talk to his parents.
It was a large home in a well-to-do suburb north of the city. Two American flags adorned the yard. The prospect's mom greeted him wearing an American flag T-shirt.
"I want you to know we support you," she gushed.
Rivera soon reached the limits of her support.
"Military service isn't for our son. It isn't for our kind of people," she told him.

Who then is it for? According to this piece in the U.S. Army War College's periodical, Parameters, demographics may have an answer:

In the civilian sector, the United States and the countries of Western Europe have had to rely on immigrants, some of them illegal, to supply needed younger-age labor when domestic birthrates would not have done so. And the same may again have to be the case in military recruitment, with the past indeed filled with numerous illustrative examples.

As fewer Americans step up to the plate, it's possible we may see an American Foreign Legion.

Friday, August 12, 2005

Cheaper DNA sequencing

New DNA sequencing tech has reduced the cost of sequencing the human genome from $20M (USD) to $2.2M. The long term goal is to get it down to $1K. One order of magnitude down, three more to go.

The ultimate aim is individualized prevention and treatment, but I can't help wondering what the potential is for individually tailored pathogens to be engineered. Ethnic bioweapons might be crude compared to the potential of weapons that target a tribe or clan.

Mind you, a tribal bioweapon might be thwarted by cuckoldry, as geneological parentage won't always correspond to biological parentage on the paternal side.

The Liverpool team found that rates of cases where a father was not the biological father of his child ranged from 1% in some studies to as much as 30%.
Experts have generally agreed that the rate is below 10%, with a 4% rate meaning that about one in 25 could be affected.

Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Mecca is already being destroyed

There has recently been some controversy over Republican Congressman Tom Tancredo's answer to the hypothetical question of how the U.S. should respond to multiple nuclear strikes by Islamic terrorists upon U.S. cities:

"Well, what if you said something like — if this happens in the United States, and we determine that it is the result of extremist, fundamentalist Muslims, you know, you could take out their holy sites," Tancredo answered.
"You're talking about bombing Mecca," Campbell said.
"Yeah," Tancredo responded.

It may come as a surprise to learn that historical Mecca is already being destroyed by fundamentalist Islamists. Mathaba News carried this report originally published in the Independent Online:

Historic Mecca, the cradle of Islam, is being buried in an unprecedented onslaught by religious zealots.
Almost all of the rich and multi-layered history of the holy city is gone. The Washington-based Gulf Institute estimates that 95 per cent of millennium-old buildings have been demolished in the past two decades...
A Saudi architect, Sami Angawi, who is an acknowledged specialist on the region's Islamic architecture, told The Independent that the final farewell to Mecca is imminent: "What we are witnessing are the last days of Mecca and Medina."
According to Dr Angawi - who has dedicated his life to preserving Islam's two holiest cities - as few as 20 structures are left that date back to the lifetime of the Prophet 1,400 years ago and those that remain could be bulldozed at any time. "This is the end of history in Mecca and Medina and the end of their future..."
The motive behind the destruction is the Wahhabists' fanatical fear that places of historical and religious interest could give rise to idolatry or polytheism, the worship of multiple and potentially equal gods.

It appears that holy sites aren't revered by the Wahhabis in the same manner as that of Western Christians.

Monday, August 08, 2005

Why biology matters

A few weeks ago, it was reported that the overuse of the antiviral amantadine to combat bird flu in China has likely rendered amantadine useless for humans, leaving us with one less defense against a possible virulent avian flu. All remaining current options are more expensive. It also appears that Vietnam and Thailand may have abused amantadine as well.

On a worrisome note, it's been observed that a a mutation underlying genetic resistance to a chemical may also confer an advantage against hosts rather than being a disadvantage. A current understanding of genetics among decision-makers is increasingly vital to preventing blowback.