Quantum biology

Aeons ago, my biophysical chemistry lectures used to speculate about electron flows along the double helix. Now the hot topic is quantum tunneling of protons catalyzing biological reactions:

Biochemistry | Evolving enzymes | Economist.com

IMAGINE hitting a tennis ball against a wall. Time after time, the ball bounces back. But, just occasionally, the ball disappears only to reappear on the other side of the wall. The wall is solid; no bricks are missing. It sounds surreal, but in the weird world of quantum mechanics such occurrences, involving very small objects over very short distances, are an everyday effect known as quantum tunnelling.

Whether such an effect could account for odd behaviour at larger sizes and distances has long been the subject of debate... The answer, reported in this week's issue of Science, is that enzymes also exploit this quantum-mechanical loophole.

The researchers, based at the University of Manchester and the University of Bristol, both in Britain, studied a compound called tryptamine ... an enzyme called aromatic amine dehydrogenase (AADH) removes hydrogen from tryptamine.

Hydrogen, the simplest atom, consists of a single proton encircled by a single electron. As electrons are point-like, their quantum mechanical behaviour is well known. But protons are far bigger, and the idea that they might be able to quantum tunnel is more controversial. Yet the AADH catalyses the breakage of the otherwise very stable, carbon-hydrogen bond at ambient temperatures, a feat that would appear to be impossible.

... the British researchers raise the possibility that short-range tunnelling in enzymes might be the result of evolutionary pressure...

Well, if it does happen, what would it arise from other than evolutionary pressures? That last sentence is an odd exception to a well done article.

It all seems very improbable, but if it is physically possible, then I suppose natural selection would come up with a solution. Maybe this is what was going on during that vast period of time between the cooling of the earth and the rise of the organism -- perhaps "solving" the puzzle of quantum catalysis is a much harder problem than going from a bacteria to a naked ape.

There's a historical angle. I dimly recall that Schrodinger and some colleagues speculated about a quasi-mystical quantum mechanical "spark" to life and consciousness; some more recent books have continued the trend. Ineffable quantum phenomemon is the geek alternative to the Soul. It would be amusing if this turned out to be, in some sense, true.

But can I trust The Economist on this? They recently wrote an article on GeneDupe's plan to create living versions of mythological monsters:

PAOLO FRIL, chairman and chief scientific officer of GeneDupe, based in San Melito, California, is a man with a dream. That dream is a dragon in every home...

I didn't blog on that one as I simply figured The Economist had been duped by some whacko; indeed I barely skimmed it. Alas, this week they revealed, through the title above a letter to the editor, that I ought to have thought about what the letters in the name PAOLO FRIL could also spell. Really, they are not trustworthy.

PS. If enzymes really can quantum tunnel protons, there will be some novel industrial applications of the technique. It would not be the first time the 'blind watchmaker' has taught we sighted watchmakers.

PPS. My second son promises that when he grows up, he will bring mythical monsters to life and resurrect beasts long extinct. Heck, maybe he'll do me too ...

America the big: my seating proposal

The good news is thatlast year my travel duties declined. The bad news is that I lost elite status. Now I fly cargo, where conditions are rugged. Today I was in the aisle seat. Not bad, but the very agreeable gentleman in the window seat weighed well over 350 lbs, and the guy in the middle was probably in the upper 200s. I sat somewhat sideways.

The world's getting bigger, and there's no miracle cure is sight. Of course catastrophic economic collapse from mismanagement, plague and global climate change may alleviate this problem, but for now we're "stuck" with it. It's not fair to punish the big people -- nobody outside of the NFL chooses to weight 300 lbs. The best evidence we have suggests most humans cannot control their weight.

So here's my solution -- another example of why we need government. Mandate that airlines provide a free extra seat for everyone enrolled in the 'fly-big' program. Enrollment is optional, but the benefit is obvious. A discrete abdominal measurement is all that's required, and the traveler gets special status. Nothing need be said, it simply happens that they always have an open middle seat by them. Ticket prices go up a bit, but since it's mandated there's no competitive disadvantage. A win-win situation, and well worth a few extra bucks a ticket.

Return of the Kings

Pharyngula writes:

Exxon CEO Lee Raymond's salary is $190,915.

Per day.

Bush - he can't even cut taxes

Bush's single claim to fame is "tax cutter". He can't even do that properly:

With Tax Break Expired, Middle Class Faces a Greater Burden for 2006 - New York Times

...The A.M.T. will cost Americans who earn $50,000 to $200,000 nearly $13 billion more next April. That is about how much people who earn more than $1 million will save because of the break on investment income like dividends and capital gains. Both figures were provided by the Tax Policy Center, which is a joint project of the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute.

It's as though Bush were running an IQ test on his voters. So far they're failing.

Ironically the AMT somewhat resembles the tax reform we need. It removes a lot of exemptions, if it were the only tax our returns would be simpler.

NASA launches new SETI project: optical search

I of course, predict this effort will fail:

BBC NEWS | Science/Nature | Telescope bid to spot alien beams

A new optical telescope designed solely to detect light signals from alien civilisations has opened for work at an observatory in Harvard, US.
It will conduct a year-round survey, scanning all of the Milky Way galaxy visible in the Northern Hemisphere...

... Visible light can form tight beams, be incredibly intense, and its high frequencies allow it to carry enormous amounts of information.

Using only present-day terrestrial technology, a bright, tightly focused light beam, such as a laser, can be 10,000 times as bright as its parent star for a brief instant. Such a beam could be easily observed from enormous distances.

'This new search apparatus performs one trillion measurements per second and expands 100,000-fold the sky coverage of our previous optical search,' said the optical telescope's project director, Paul Horowitz of Harvard University, Massachusetts.

On the other hand, I'd imagine that if it's going to work, we'd discover something pretty early. That would make for an interesting summer.

BTW, Greg Bear wrote the short story "Blood Music" in 1982. At the very end he casually resolves the Fermi Paradox using a biological variant of the inescapable singularity solution. That predates my prior "earliest science fiction explanation" by about five years. I need to add that one to my page footnotes!

Rumsfeld out? It's about nuking Iran

Why the new attempt to oust Rumsfeld?

BBC NEWS | Americas | Bush rebuffs attack on Rumsfeld

Six retired generals have spoken out against Mr Rumsfeld's handling of the war in Iraq and apparent disdain for experienced military commanders.

The defence secretary has also personally dismissed suggestions that he should resign.

"Out of thousands and thousands of admirals and generals, if every time two or three people disagreed we changed the secretary of defence of the United States it would be like a merry-go-round," he told Arabic TV channel al-Arabiya.

I'm betting it's about nuking Iran. The prospect of going to war with Iran along with using tactical nuclear weapons, has galvanized the generals. Bad enough to be planning this kind of attack, worse still to do it with an a proven incompetent in command.

The generals can't replace Cheney, so they're focusing on Rumsfeld. As always, it's up to Bush. I can no more predict his thinking than I can predict pulsar signals.

I wonder how many generals secretly wish that old draft-dodging pot-smoking commie was running the country.

Update 4/15/06: Rather to my surprise, the NYT says the same thing. The military is worried abour Rumsfeld leading when Iran is the problem. Emphases mine.

The call by some retired generals for Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld's resignation is more than an effort to assign blame for the problems that the United States has encountered in Iraq. It also reflects concern that military voices are not being given sufficient weight in the Bush administration's deliberations, as well as unease about the important decisions that lie ahead.

... The retired generals, in effect, have declared Mr. Rumsfeld unfit to lead the nation's military forces as the United States faces crucial decisions on how to extricate itself from Iraq and what to do about Iran's nuclear program.

... On Iran, which has not been addressed directly by the dissenting generals, the United States must decide how forceful a position to take to head off Tehran's suspected nuclear weapons program. Mr. Bush has played down the threat of military action, but — with little progress in resolving the dispute through diplomacy — the option of turning to airstrikes is unlikely to go away. In mapping a strategy for Iran, the United States must balance its apprehension about the emergence of a nuclear-armed Iran against the risk that military strikes against Iranian nuclear installations could lead to a wider war and fan regional unrest...

Lifeboat Britain

Dyer claims Britain keeps its nukes to be ready for invading hordes of global warming refugees. Canada, on the other hand, is indefensible. The US will take it.

Well, not much to do about that one ...

Gwynne Dyer has 12 new articles up

2006 has added 12 articles. I've given up on Dyer adding an RSS feed!

Narus: an ominous name

The Narus 6400 is one of the devices the NSA uses to monitor things like the automatic blogger email that I'll get after I post this : Daily Kos: All About NSA's and AT&T's Big Brother Machine, the Narus 6400.

Wave to the man with the camera son.

Economics of outsourcing

This is so obvious, it's strange Joel on software had to teach me it. On the other hand, he claims someone else pointed it out to him...

The Development Abstraction Layer - Joel on Software

... if only 20% of your staff is programmers, and you can save 50% on salary by outsourcing programmers to India, well, how much of a competitive advantage are you really going to get out of that 10% savings?

Hmm.

Why we can't outsource social services to churches

I'd have thought Trinity Lutheran in Minnesota would be better than this.

Pharyngula: Good thing we're moving to faith-based initiatives, huh?

...Trinity Lutheran Church had a sweet deal with county social services, getting remunerated for caring for disabled seniors, until the county pulled a fast one and tried to trick them into caring for a damned minion of the devil transsexual. They signed her up, showed her around, and then she mentioned that she'd had an operation, and the good reverend had to wield his deep personal knowledge of god's mind to smack her down.

Bottom line: having amateurs doing a professionals job is a very bad idea. Faith based social services is just wrong.

Google Calendar: No Safari, no sync?

Google Calendar does not support Safari.

I don't see a way to sync with iSync -- but maybe someone will build it.Official Google Blog: It's about time

... integrated with Gmail so you can add events mentioned in messages to your calendar with just one click.
.... simple to see calendars from your friends and family, or calendars you find with the built-in calendar search tool, right next to your own calendar. You can choose to share as much or as little of your own calendar, too.
.... You can turn any event on your calendar into an invitation just by adding the email addresses of your guests. They can see and respond to your invitation, whether or not they use Google Calendar themselves.
... Event reminders by email and text message to your mobile phone
... supports the iCal standard
... can add customized Google Calendar event reminder buttons to their pages, letting visitors quickly add copies of events to their calendars.The lack of Safari support is disappointing, but as I recall Gmail started out without it as well.

The Massachusetts miracle: healthcare reform

Most of the times I talk about America's problems with inequity and adapting to globalization, I mention the need to break the connection between employment and healthcare. Health care insurance should have nothing to do with employment status, irregardless of whether the delivery mechanism is single payor governmental care, medical savings accounts, or traditional insurance plans.

I figured this was unlikely to happen in the US barring a populist uprising in the 2008 elections. I knew there were rumbles from Massachusetts, but I didn't pay enough attention to them. My mistake ... (emphases mine):

Massachusetts Legislation on Insurance Becomes Law - New York Times

BOSTON, April 12 — In a ceremony full of pomp and political backpatting, Gov. Mitt Romney signed Massachusetts' landmark health care legislation Wednesday, setting the stage for the state to be the first to provide health coverage to virtually all of its citizens.

... Mr. Romney is considering running for president in 2008, and the success of the bipartisan health care plan could become a major selling point of his candidacy.

... "This isn't 100 percent of what anyone in this room wanted," Mr. Romney said. "But the differences between us are small."

Mr. Kennedy said, "You may well have fired the shot heard round the world on health care in America. I hope so."

The law is projected to provide coverage for about 515,000 of the state's 550,000 uninsured people and leave less than 1 percent of the population uncovered. It goes further than those of any other state.

It requires residents to obtain health insurance by July 1, 2007. People who can afford insurance and do not buy it will be penalized on their state income taxes.

The law takes the $1 billion in the state's free-care pool, which paid for medical care for patients without insurance, and uses it to subsidize insurance for people who cannot afford it. The legislation also makes it possible for more individuals and businesses to buy insurance with pre-tax dollars, saving them money. And it includes a system to encourage insurance companies to provide more affordable plans with fewer benefits or higher deductibles.

... The legislation, months in the making, almost fell apart over disagreements about whether businesses should be charged and how much if they were. Mr. Romney wanted no business fee. Mr. DiMasi wanted a much higher business assessment of 5 percent of a company's payroll,

... Mr. DiMasi, in an interview last week, said: "I see a significant commitment of businesses to contribute in some way to the insurance costs of the uninsured. I see this as a significant principle, whatever the dollar figure is."...

DiMasi, the democrat, is wrong. Romney, the alleged republican, is right. We need to break the relationship between employment and healthcare, not perpetuate it.

Even if McCain hadn' t mutated into an anti-evolution social conservative Bush clone, Romney would now have displaced him as the tolerable Republican candidate. Fortunately for whoever gets the Democratic nomination, there's no way in heck Romney will survive the GOP's nominating process.

ABC News has a relatively technical analysis of Iran's nuclear program

Anthony Cordesman is a well known name in security circles. ABC News, oddly enough, features a technical analylsis he did of Iran's nuclear program.

ABC News: Analysis: Iran's Nuclear Leap Forward

... These are old P-1 centrifuges. It takes thousands operating continuously for a year to have major output and 10,000s to get seriously into the weapons grade production.

It's a weird world when network TV delivers in depth analysis -- in written form. Where it's picked up by Google's news processor and highlighted.

Imagine how that would sound in 1990.

In a world where there's zero trust of the US government, it's handy to have these analyses lying about. I don't necessarily trust Cordesman, but unlike the Bush administration he hasn't proven himself to be utterly untrustworthy.

Generals hate Rumsfeld. What about Bush?

The pressure to dump Rumsfeld grows. We've seen this before, rumor had him gone about a year ago. On the other hand, he sounded very tired and almost human the other day.

The revolt against Donald Rumsfeld. By Fred Kaplan

... It is startling to hear, in private conversations, how widely and deeply the U.S. officer corps despises this secretary of defense. The joke in some Pentagon circles is that if Rumsfeld were meeting with the service chiefs and commanders and a group of terrorists barged into the room and kidnapped him, not a single general would lift a finger to help him...

Rumsfeld stays because Bush wants him. Ultimately it is Bush who is responsible for what Rumsfeld does. The generals aren't dolts, they know that. Makes one wonder if they now despise Bush as well.

That is not a thought a general can express ... Rumsfeld is a handy proxy.