Healthcare Revisited

     As I have indicated in earlier posts, my brother in law is a general practitioner here in Warren, so I have both 'inside' and 'outside' information regarding the American healthcare system...I Do Not have answers, only observations on the way things work. I am Not lacking in compassion for the truly needy, but become frustrated about waste and abuses in the way care is or is not provided by both corporations and by individuals who take advantage of the system. What follows is my rant against some of the patients I have witnessed....... What do 5' 1'' and 204 pounds with a body mass index of 38.54 and 5'5", 208 pounds with a BMI of 34.8 and 6'4" with a BMI of 46 have in common? They are representative of the majority of people being referred for "sleep studies" to determine why they have sleep apnea and other problems that interfere with their getting a good night sleep. And such patients are often those developing type 2 diabetes and other lifestyle caused conditions. In fairness to the doctors who authorize a sleep study, their recommendations always include 'exercise and weight loss'...often ignored by the patients. One doctor in Chicago named Monica Peek  has started prescribing lifestyle changes before medications, and her overweight  patients who ate less fat and calories and exercised 20 minutes a day reduced their risk for developing Type 2 diabetes by 58% ( 71%  for those over 60 years old)  Those put on the traditional treatment of metformin, a glucose lowering drug, reduced their risk by only 31%. So shouldn't the first course of action be lifestyle changes Before wasting a couple thousand dollars on a sleep study or other costly but less effective remedies? Meanwhile there are programs in Pennsylvania and other states by which a man with "back pain" can obtain financial "disability" assistance that allows his girlfriend to be paid to help him out the chair etc. Those commercials on TV for 'knee braces' or 'mobility scooters' ( "at No cost to you!" ) of course are paid for by someone-the taxpayers and everyone who pays inflated health insurance premiums. The point is that in addition to the out of control charges by hospitals and drug and insurance companies, many patients are irresponsible regarding their own health. Only the future will determine whether the healthcare system bankrupts the country or if additional cost controls and personal accountability will be implemented.  Now that Obamacare has forced everyone- rich, poor, sick and healthy -to become part of the system, Beth and I are taking advantage of the subsidies to purchase health insurance. (..and for all of you screaming at the White House about "socialized medicine", don't forget that the trillion dollar expansion of Medicare for senior drug coverage (part D) happened in 2003 under the watch of George Bush.)
POSTSCRIPT:   I forgot to mention the $30 billion per year that the healthcare system enjoys in charitable contributions, and the 8 billion hours of volunteer labor that the system enjoyed in 2009...probably more nowadays...What legitimate, well managed business could not do a better job with those kind of benefits? Most retail managers for instance would love to have even 10 free hours of labor a year!

More Quantum Weirdness

   This is the most recent experiment confirming the apparently random nature of the Universe, and how our senses co-create reality as we perceive and measure the world around us. No one is sure of exactly where the transition between the micro and macro worlds exists, but it's fascinating to wonder how it all relates to how the human mind constructs it's version of existence.

    >"Random number generators developed at ICFO -- The Institute of Photonic Sciences, by the groups of ICREA Professors Morgan W. Mitchell and Valerio Pruneri, played a critical role in the historic experiment was published online today in Nature by the group of Ronald Hanson at TU Delft. The experiment gives the strongest refutation to date of Albert Einstein's principle of "local realism," which says that the universe obeys laws, not chance, and that there is no communication faster than light.

As described in Hanson's group web the Delft experiment first "entangled" two electrons trapped inside two different diamond crystals, and then measured the electrons' orientations. In quantum theory entanglement is powerful and mysterious: mathematically the two electrons are described by a single "wave-function" that only specifies whether they agree or disagree, not which direction either spin points. In a mathematical sense, they lose their identities. "Local realism" attempts to explain the same phenomena with less mystery, saying that the particles must be pointing somewhere, we just don't know their directions until we measure them.
When measured, the Delft electrons did indeed appear individually random while agreeing very well. So well, in fact, that they cannot have had pre-existing orientations, as realism claims. This behaviour is only possible if the electrons communicate with each other, something that is very surprising for electrons trapped in different crystals. But here's the amazing part: in the Delft experiment, the diamonds were in different buildings, 1.3 km away from each other. Moreover, the measurements were made so quickly that there wasn't time for the electrons to communicate, not even with signals traveling at the speed of light. This puts "local realism" in a very tight spot: if the electron orientations are real, the electrons must have communicated. But if they communicated, they must have done so faster than the speed of light. There's no way out, and local realism is disproven. Either God does play "dice" with the universe, or electron spins can talk to each other faster than the speed of light.
This amazing experiment called for extremely fast, unpredictable decisions about how to measure the electron orientations. If the measurements had been predictable, the electrons could have agreed in advance which way to point, simulating communications where there wasn't really any, a gap in the experimental proof known as a "loophole." To close this loophole, the Delft team turned to ICFO, who hold the record for the fastest quantum random number generators. ICFO designed a pair of "quantum dice" for the experiment: a special version of their patented random number generation technology, including very fast "randomness extraction" electronics. This produced one extremely pure random bit for each measurement made in the Delft experiment. The bits were produced in about 100 ns, the time it takes light to travel just 30 meters, not nearly enough time for the electrons to communicate. "Delft asked us to go beyond the state of the art in random number generation. Never before has an experiment required such good random numbers in such a short time." Says Carlos Abellán, a PhD student at ICFO and a co-author of the Delft study.
For the ICFO team, the participation in the Delft experiment was more than a chance to contribute to fundamental physics. Prof. Morgan Mitchell comments: "Working on this experiment pushed us to develop technologies that we can now apply to improve communications security and high-performance computing, other areas that require high-speed and high-quality random numbers."
With the help of ICFO's quantum random number generators, the Delft experiment gives a nearly perfect disproof of Einstein's world-view, in which "nothing travels faster than light" and "God does not play dice." At least one of these statements must be wrong. The laws that govern the Universe may indeed be a throw of the dice."<

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Black Bear

       Saw my first bear of the year while riding my bike, and although they are common around here, mostly they avoid humans and thus see, hear or smell us long before we see them. This individual had crossed the road about fifty yards in front of me and disappeared down a bank into a wooded ravine. I was climbing slowly up a hill at the time and figured that it had continued on into the woods, but as I approached the spot where it had gone over the edge, it suddenly popped its head up as if it wanted to return back across the road at the same spot, so was no more than 15 feet to my side. I yelled "Hey!" as if it were a dog, which caused it to turn and run back into the ravine, stopping to look at me some 40 or 50 yards further on. No doubt I had startled it more than it had startled me, and fortunately black bears are very rarely aggressive, so as I talked calmly to it it eventually continued leisurely into the woods.

      One aspect of bears and other living creatures that always impresses me is the vividness of their color-and I consider black a true color when it is part of a wild animal.  It is unlike any other black, being instead a "living" vibrant hue that cannot be duplicated by paint or photograph, and shimmers like an aspen tree in the light. It makes such a contrast with the landscape around it that it appears to be almost separate from, like a crude simulation, yet the animal itself moves fluidly through the woods like a bird through the wind.

      

    

Modern construction

 The local Amish had a barn raising last week during which 75 workers constructed a 96 foot long by 60 foot wide barn and an adjoining 40x24 foot room. Total time? Less than 8 hours..."The men started at 7am and by lunch time most of it was done. They expected to be finished by 3pm."

     “The first Kinzua Railroad Bridge was built by a crew of 40 from 1,552 short tons (1,408 t) of wrought iron in just 94 working days, between May 10 and August 29, 1882. The reason for the short construction time was that scaffolding was not used in the bridge's construction; instead a gin pole was used to build the first tower, then a traveling crane was built atop it and used in building the second tower. The process was then repeated across all 20 towers.^”

        ^{Meanwhile in Warren the concrete bridge along the two lane main road is being replaced...(with modern power equipment assistance)...Construction began in early May and is projected to be finished in mid-September...over four months..I guess readers can see my point-there seems to be no will for efficient work.}

   

Iranian Nukes

    ~ Despite what the war and fear mongers and other protesters who likely have not even read the Iran nuclear deal say, scientists are the people I prefer to put my trust in regarding such matters. I have read the books and articles of some of the signatories mentioned below and know them to be smart, thoughtful people. It is hard to comprehend the level of ignorance and small mindedness in many of our political leaders, but I suppose that politics in general attracts a certain personality type which does not often include our best minds...The following is from the NY Times:

   "Twenty-nine of the nation’s top scientists — including Nobel laureates, veteran makers of nuclear arms and former White House science advisers — wrote to President Obama on Saturday to praise the Iran deal, calling it innovative and stringent.

The letter, from some of the world’s most knowledgeable experts in the fields of nuclear weapons and arms control, arrives as Mr. Obama is lobbying Congress, the American public and the nation’s allies to support the agreement.

The two-page letter may give the White House arguments a boost after the blow Mr. Obama suffered on Thursday when Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, a Democrat and among the most influential Jewish voices in Congress announced he would oppose the deal, which calls for Iran to curb its nuclear program and allow inspections in return for an end to international oil and financial sanctions.

The first signature on the letter is from Richard L. Garwin, a physicist who helped design the world’s first hydrogen bomb and has long advised Washington on nuclear weapons and arms control. He is among the last living physicists who helped usher in the nuclear age. Also signing is Siegfried S. Hecker, a Stanford professor who, from 1986 to 1997, directed the Los Alamos weapons laboratory...

      Other prominent signatories include Freeman Dyson of Princeton, Sidney Drell of Stanford and Rush D. Holt, a physicist and former member of Congress who now leads the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the world’s largest general scientific society.

Most of the 29 who signed the letter are physicists, and many of them have held what the government calls Q clearances — granting access to a special category of secret information that bears on the design of nuclear arms and is considered equivalent to the military’s top secret security clearance.

Many of them have advised Congress, the White House or federal agencies over the decades. For instance, Frank von Hippel, a Princeton physicist, served as assistant director for national security in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Clinton administration.

The five Nobel laureates who signed are Leon N. Cooper of Brown University; Sheldon L. Glashow of Boston University; David Gross of the University of California, Santa Barbara; Burton Richter of Stanford; and Frank Wilczek of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The letter uses the words “innovative” and “stringent” more than a half-dozen times, saying, for instance, that the Iran accord has “more stringent constraints than any previously negotiated nonproliferation framework.”

Animal Life...

     One of the wonderful things about this area-and I admit I don't report on them enough-is that one occasionally sees wild life near town that simply does not exist in more populated places. So as I sat in the parking lot of Walmart waiting for the light to change, a bald eagle flew directly over the car, flying as unhurriedly as if it were in the wilds of Alaska. That is not a common sight but neither is it rare, for they nest right on the edge of town, feeding in the Allegheny and Conewango rivers. This individual likely was returning from the latter to the mountains right behind the store. On the 24th I had to restrain the dog from chasing another porcupine, which are abundant locally and one of which had stuck her face with quills about five years ago. Apparently she did not remember the experience for I had to yell several times to call her back, otherwise she would easily have caught its slow moving form and suffered the same consequence. We also see deer and black bear in town and coyote anywhere, and the streams contain native trout. Fortunately, two life forms that are rare in Warren are ticks and mosquitoes, which is surprising given the abundance of water. It is possible to go an entire summer without seeing more than two or three-and I am not one to sit indoors during the warm months!

Reality

     Below is a recent article from the online site 'Science Daily' outlining the weirdness of quantum physics...I like to remind people that our brains are constructed of this stuff, and to follow the Buddhist advice not to cling too tightly to anything-including opinions...

        

>>The bizarre nature of reality as laid out by quantum theory has survived another test, with scientists performing a famous experiment and proving that reality does not exist until it is measured.
Physicists at The Australian National University (ANU) have conducted John Wheeler's delayed-choice thought experiment, which involves a moving object that is given the choice to act like a particle or a wave. Wheeler's experiment then asks -- at which point does the object decide?

Common sense says the object is either wave-like or particle-like, independent of how we measure it. But quantum physics predicts that whether you observe wave like behavior (interference) or particle behavior (no interference) depends only on how it is actually measured at the end of its journey. This is exactly what the ANU team found.
"It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it," said Associate Professor Andrew Truscott from the ANU Research School of Physics and Engineering.
Despite the apparent weirdness, the results confirm the validity of quantum theory, which governs the world of the very small, and has enabled the development of many technologies such as LEDs, lasers and computer chips.
The ANU team not only succeeded in building the experiment, which seemed nearly impossible when it was proposed in 1978, but reversed Wheeler's original concept of light beams being bounced by mirrors, and instead used atoms scattered by laser light.
"Quantum physics predictions about interference seem odd enough when applied to light, which seems more like a wave, but to have done the experiment with atoms, which are complicated things that have mass and interact with electric fields and so on, adds to the weirdness," said PhD student Roman Khakimov.
Professor Truscott's team first trapped a collection of helium atoms in a suspended state known as a Bose-Einstein condensate, and then ejected them until there was only a single atom left.
The single atom was then dropped through a pair of counter-propagating laser beams, which formed a grating pattern that acted as crossroads in the same way a solid grating would scatter light.
A second light grating to recombine the paths was randomly added, which led to constructive or destructive interference as if the atom had travelled both paths. When the second light grating was not added, no interference was observed as if the atom chose only one path.
However, the random number determining whether the grating was added was only generated after the atom had passed through the crossroads.
If one chooses to believe that the atom really did take a particular path or paths then one has to accept that a future measurement is affecting the atom's past, said Truscott.
"The atoms did not travel from A to B. It was only when they were measured at the end of the journey that their wave-like or particle-like behavior was brought into existence," he said.<<

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Ahh...Spring...?

Finally some sun and warm air, so we have been able to get out on the mountain bikes a few times. Unfortunately, this being Western PA there are snow showers and a high temperature of 45 predicted for the end of next week...POSTSCRIPT: April 23...Snow overnight continues today, accumulating an inch in town and 3 inches in other places...April snows are not uncommon around here and fortunately are short lived. POSTSCRIPT: May 2...Saw the first butterfly yesterday, a Spring Azure blue, and today the first cabbage butterfly and also an American Copper. Two to three weeks later than most years.

January Revisited

No doubt I beat a dead horse regarding the weather around here, but as a warm weather person I am astounded ( disgusted...)by  how crummy it can be. These pics were taken an hour ago about 1/2 mile from downtown Warren at a place called Morrison Run. The creek, which flows through a wooded valley then underneath the railroad tunnel beside the road,  empties into the Allegheny river a quarter mile further downstream.The ice ledge in the last photograph is two feet thick and the snow in the woods is about a foot deep. The road itself is solid ice covered by last nights dusting of snowfall, and because this area is shaded by Hemlock trees and the steep  terrain, it likely won't fully melt for another three weeks. The dog and I had been unable to access the road for almost two months because of the snow( her legs literally are not long enough), and only the past two weeks of moderate melting have progressed things this far. The snow has melted elsewhere except for  plowed piles, thus coming here is like entering a separate micro climate-as if we had risen several thousand feet in elevation. Although I do appreciate the beauty of winter, after four months it grows tedious, and I long to wear short sleeves and ride my mountain bike...
POSTSCRIPT: March 31st- Five more inches of snow so far this morning...Really? I mean..really?

Winter 2015 Postscript

Coldest day of the year with about 1 1/2 feet of snow on the ground...nothing compared to Boston but much worse than Denver or even Billings, Montana...Global warming lately has meant cold and wet east of the Mississippi and warm and dry to the west...The Conewango river empties into the Allegheny river just beyond that last bench, both of them frozen solid enough for ice fishing. A 93 year old woman says that she cannot recall such a prolonged cold spell in Warren although she does remember the river freezing in the past. The coldest local temperature this day was about seven miles from here at -32F. If the temperature goes above 32 F next week it will be the first time in weeks.
POSTSCRIPT: March 21st-The map illustrates global temperatures for the 3 months of December, January and February. It indicates that-unlike most of the planet-the area east of the Mississippi is in some kind of polar trough that has broken all previous records. Of course, some east coast people dismiss the concept of global warming because of this anomaly, and prefer to mock Al Gore etc. Personally, I prefer to trust the science, although I must admit that I am not all that concerned about the eventual effects of climate change. Carbon dioxide levels have been much higher in the past during which time temporal forests and dinosaurs survived near the north pole. Certainly present day life will have to adapt to the changing environment, which means that Florida and Manhattan may eventually be underwater and the west will have to import water or substantially increase desalination and other measures. Granted, I do not see the political nor personal will in most people to address the problems voluntarily( ..hence the resurgence in truck and SUV sales as soon as gasoline prices went down last month), but I assume that societies will adapt by necessity rather than choice, which is typical  human nature...That is, if the oceans and other ecosystems do not crash completely and kill all of us...

Furguson or whatever...

Heard a voice on the radio claim that cops killing black men may amount to modern day lynching, which made me think 'wait a minute'..... According to studies conducted by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, between 1976 and 2011 there were 279,384 black murder victims, of which 262,621 were murdered by other blacks-a 94% figure. As awful as that statistic sounds, the rate of black people killed per 100,000 persons has dropped from around 50 murders in 1976 to around 25 as of 2005. That is still way more than the white rate of around 5 murders per 100,000 in 1976 which had dropped to around 3.5 in 2005. Despite the street protests and genuine grievances in some cases, the bulk of the violence remains black on black, so the real outrage should be directed to that continuing problem.
POSTSCRIPT: April 2015~It seems as though the recent murder of the black man by the Charleston cop-eight shots in the back- WAS a lynching by gun... Ignorant white trash...makes me wonder about justice including an eye for an eye...just tell the guy to start running...So no doubt racial problems still exist, but don't forget that we fought a civil war over this issue and that half of the 500,000 white guys killed were trying to improve the situation...
POST~POSTSCRIPT~ An inspiring book is 'THE PACT' by Drs. Sampson Davis, George Jenkins and Rameck Hunt describing their journey through medical school as they raised themselves from the projects of Newark, N.J.by sticking together and focusing on the positive.

Snowden and the NSA

    I am reading a book by Glenn Greenwald titled "NO PLACE TO HIDE" about Edward Snowden and the NSA, and I recommend it to anyone wanting to know the truth about his whistleblowing. One reason there was so much blowback from our government was that Snowden was no hack, rather a highly competent, informed cyber security expert who simply became morally disturbed by some of the things that the U.S. was and is doing. He seemed to be fully prepared to be ostracized and perhaps imprisoned for his actions, but felt morally compelled to inform the public about the extent of the governments spying. For instance, our government has the capability to remotely turn on your cell phone and use it as a listening device. So assume that for at least ten years every single phone call, email, and online action has or could have been tracked and saved to a massive database. Snowden's fear was that most of us would just shrug and say 'well, we figured that was happening' and not care, or feel powerless to change things, which has happened to some extent. But he wanted the public to be informed and make that choice rather than the rich and powerful cloistered behind the cloak of  "terrorism threat". No doubt some plots have been thwarted by the NSA, and I am no paranoid skeptic regarding our government, but as we witness the sheer incompetence of so many people in power, it heeds us well to be aware of the potential abuses.
        More information from the book:  People complicit with the NSA, such as Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Senator Diane Feinstein, say things like "people have gotten really comfortable not only sharing information of different kinds, but more openly and with more people" and 'the collection of metadata does not constitute surveillance because it does not include the content of any communication'. Yet neither one would willingly make public their E-mail contacts and passwords nor allow video cameras into their homes. Mr. Zuckerberg spent $30 million dollars to buy the four houses adjacent to his Palo Alto home in order to assure his own privacy. So both the government and those people directly responsible for intruding into the average citizens privacy have gone to great lengths to hide their own...just more hypocrisy among those on power. I'm not sure where all this is heading, but as the 1% amasses over 50% of the world's wealth in the next few years, you can be sure that they will do all the can to preserve it.