Worked To Death - Literally

An article was released today stating that “a record number of Japanese people literally worked themselves to death last year, despite campaigns to ease the country's notoriously long office hours. Some 355 workers fell severely ill or died from overwork in the year to March, the highest figure on record and 7.6 percent up from the previous year, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Labour said.”

http://www.physorg.com/news98605002.html

You have to hand it to those Japanese business types; they really dedicate themselves to their jobs. Gotta drive that capitalist bullet train, ya know. Capitalism was our main contribution to the Japanese after we blasted the hell out of them in WWII. Call it a sympathy gift from one evil empire to another. We should have seen it coming, what with the extreme dedication the people of Japan have to their work ethic and sense of social unity.

According to the article, there has been an increase in part-time positions manned by people in their 20’s and 30’s. With youth comes greater energy, and the young are less likely to feel pressure and energy-drain from having kids and mortgages and such, factors that, I assure you from personal experience, slowly drain the energy from you like a Sith lord. There have been plenty of days I thought my kids and my job were killing me. Any day now I expect my coworkers to come in and find me collapsed onto my lab bench, the victim of work-induced heart attack, my dead-lab-rat drool mingling with spilled reagents. All those young people and their wicked energy means the older, more closer-to-death workers have to pump up their effort to compensate. Many of those who died were killed by stroke or heart attack, and I already have a heart condition.

But it’s not just the older Japanese who are suffering. Even the 20- and 30-somethings are seeing an increase in mental health problems. In short, they're being driven crazy by their work load.

A potential antidote for overworked Japanese? HERE

Let’s hope the Japanese work ethic doesn’t come here. I remember a few years ago, one particularly horrible slavemaster – I mean boss – that I had at the time actually suggested that we STACK lab benches, with one person working at the bench on the floor and another person on an elevated platform at a higher bench “like they do in Japan.” I’m not sure if he was telling the truth, but I shiver at the idea, even if it was do-able. Around that time an HR person, who was equally evil, proposed that the R&D teams go to nights shifts, too. Luckily they are both gone, now.

Lately I’ve been rebelling a bit and haven’t come in much at night or on the weekends. I just haven’t had the energy. I thought I was slacking, but now I have a legitimate excuse. “Sorry, boss, but I can’t come in this weekend. It may kill me!”

Did my heart flutter? Ooh, my arm just went numb. I'm . . . I'm . . . Gaackk! . . . .

Save Your Data On Bacteria

I worry about stupid things, sometimes. Not practical things, like how I’m going to potty train my toddlers or where I can buy an affordable steam cleaner, but about the big, giant things I could probably never do anything about. Those “oh my god” sorts of problems that most people shake their heads about but don’t think on any further because they’re sensible enough to know they couldn’t possible do anything about it, like forging peace in the Middle East, controlling AIDS in central Africa, and stopping the polar ice caps from melting. You know, the “little things.”

For instance, I worry about what’s going to happen to all the monumental loads of data and information the world generates every day. Is it safe? Where does it all go? How can we insure it never gets lost or corrupted? I absolutely loathe the idea that someone would spend valuable time collecting information and recording it, only to lose it. I guess that’s what makes me a good lab rat. And, yes, I have multiple backups for all my data, right down to a spreadsheet for my VCR and DVD movies at home. What? You don’t have such a spreadsheet? How else am I to remember that I have a VCR tape copy of Highlander? (“There can be only one!”)

Previously I posted about how a state official in Alaska had accidentally deleted 800,000 refund payment files, then accidentally deleted the backup disc. A second backup had been corrupted. This is exactly the sort of thing that worries me. Luckily they had the original paper documents, and after months of overtime by employees they re-entered all the data.

Once upon a time all we had was papyrus and velum, then we invented paper. There are still a few of these ancient documents around, preserved by desert conditions and now tucked away in museums, but think of all the documents that were lost over thousands of years! Where would civilization be, now, if they had been safeguarded better? Essentially, most of our modern information is still on paper, paper that for the most part is made with cheaper and less durable ingredients, I might add. Now we have digitized storage media, but the accident in Alaska shows how unreliable that is, even in the short term. Hundreds of years from now, do you think we’ll be able to retrieve that information? Do you think we’ll even have the same technology lying around to do it?

Well, now some Japanese researchers may have found a way to help alleviate my worry. They have found a reliable method to store data on the DNA code of living bacteria, which could protect that data for hundreds or even thousands of years!

Story: http://www.physorg.com/news98542190.html

Scholarly article: http://pubs.acs.org/cgi-bin/sample.cgi/bipret/2007/23/i02/pdf/bp060261y.pdf

That’s right, save data in the DNA of living bacteria in a manner similar to storing data on computer discs. And you thought bacteria was only good for making beer and cheese!

For you non-science types, DNA is made up of four components, called nucleotides, which pair up in specific combinations, or genes, to code for the production of all the proteins that make up cells, organs, and, eventually, YOU, and every other living thing on earth. For decades, molecular biologists have found increasingly clever ways of identifying those codes, manipulating them, synthesizing them, and inserting them into DNA sequences. Left alone, these genetic sequences take thousands, or even millions, of years to change due to random mutations as they are inherited from generation to generation.

Dr. Masaru Tomita and his colleagues have found a way to store data by synthesizing their own genetic sequences. Each combination of the nucleotides in these sequences corresponds to specific binary codes. These binary codes can then be matched with specific letters or numbers. Those sequences were then inserted into the DNA of living bacteria (of the species Bacillus subtilis).

They successfully inserted, then later retrieved, the codes for the phrase "E=mc^2 1905!", referring to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity and the year he published his Nobel-prize-winning theorem. Because they inserted the code in four different locations in the DNA, mutation in one copy can be corrected by the other three copies. Computer simulations, based on the predicted rate of mutation, suggest the code is secure for hundreds to thousands of years.

Though the amount that can be stored in the bacteria is limited by the genome size, and the person who eventually reads the data would need to know the code that deciphers the nucleotide combinations and matches them with numbers and letters, Tomita’s technique essentially safeguards the information far, far into the unseen future. According to the CNN story: "Many people never even thought about storing data for thousands of years," Tomita said. "This may sound like a dream. But we're thinking hundreds of millions of years."

Now THAT would solve my insane worries. All we have to do is figure out how to make a "bacterial disc drive" to store my data for the next thousand years. Then where would I store it? The fridge? -- “Wait, Honey! Don’t throw out that rancid milk! Those bacteria have my movie database saved on them!”

The Dishmaker

Don’t you love eating off of cheap plastic dishes? Well who doesn’t? Look in those cluttered kitchen cabinets of yours. Why, they’re crammed with quality plates, bowls, and cups? Throw them out! Now you can make your own dishes, custom-made for your meal, with the amazing new Dishmaker:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuGvPhglGEc

Yes, through the miracle of pressed-form engineering, you, too, can be part of the dining future imagined by the Jetsons. Once you’ve installed your Dishmaker, a dishwasher-sized appliance that any of us could find room for on our kitchen counters, simply place a plastic disk into the Dishmaker and program in the form you would like. With a little heat and pressure, that wafer-thin red disk turns into the bowl of your dreams, ready to eat off of in just a minute! Presto chango! That was easy!

When you’re finished eating, simply clean off the bowl and return it to the Dishmaker. With the press of a button, that bowl is re-heated and quickly forms back into a disk to be re-used up to a hundred times! What simplicity! It’s a recycler’s dream! Recyclable paper and re-usable glass dishes are for wimps, and far less cool!

But wait, there’s more! Call in the next 10 minutes and receive the Heatsink, another invention by inventor Leonardo Bonanni:

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki9FL2T9hew

The Heatsink screws on to the end of your kitchen faucet. Turn on the cold water and, voila, it glows an icy blue. When the water gets hot, it glows a fiery red. No more need for exerting yourself to put a hand under the water to gauge the temperature. Ow! It burns! It burns! Avoid the pain and simply watch the heatsink.

That’s right, receive your very own Dishmaker with 15 red disks, enough to set a table with cheap, acrylic dishware, and your additional Heatsink, to make a fluorescent party out of running water. Amaze your friends! Be the envy of every chef and caterer for miles around! Call now!

No Videos For The Troops

It just became tougher to share videos and pictures with American soldiers in Iraq:

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/internet/05/14/military.sites.blocked.ap/index.html

Today my precious little niece, age 20, ships out to Iraq. She finished army boot camp and MP training a mere 2 weeks ago. She gets a little more training in Kuwait, then it’s off to the horrors of war for her, and she’ll be right in the thick of it. I still see her as a little girl in my mind, so the thought of her going off to kill people in an unjustified quagmire of a war that serves no apparent American interests doesn’t sit well with me, especially since I was one of those folks standing at my courthouse with anti-war signs back when it all started. But it’s the choice she made for herself. All I can do is hope she comes back in one piece, physically and mentally. I don’t want her to join the over 3100 Americans who have been killed, or the tens of thousands who have been seriously wounded.

Of course I hope to keep in touch with her while she’s “over there.” She brought her new laptop computer with her, and has a couple of email addresses and the internet, but she’ll be relying on the army electronic networks to keep in digital contact with us.

Many servicemen and servicewomen and their families use photosharing and video websites, like YouTube, MySpace, and Photobucket, to keep in touch with each other. Consider THIS video from someone to their Uncle Keith in Iraq.

Troops are also able to share their experience with the world at large, such as in THIS footage (“Looks like they blew up the showers again.”), or THIS patriotic footage of actual fighting.

But the military has decided to make these and many other photo- and video-sharing sites off-limits to their troops using military networks, starting today. Here is the DoD notice to soldiers: http://www.usfk.mil/usfk/bell-sends/5_11_07_27%20-%2007%20Restricted%20Access%20to%20Internet%20Entertainment%20Sites%20Across%20DoD%20Networks.pdf.

They say it’s because it slows the system down too much, but you would think the world’s most funded army would be able to have a decent networking system that could handle the bandwidth. They also say they worry about sensitive information being leaked. Maybe they have a point there, but don’t they already censor such things? No, I think they are afraid more about morale, since a great many videos and photos out there are being put out about the horrors the civilian population are facing (over 600,000 civilians have died, according to one estimate, and over 2.6 million have refugee status according to the U.N.), and increasing numbers of anti-war videos are being published. Here is a good example, but WARNING, it contains very graphic images: HERE. My niece has told me how nearly everyone she has met so far in the military is strongly against the war. And we’re talking about the new recruits, who are supposed to be “gung-ho” fresh from boot camp!

The military’s reaction is strangely hypocritical, since they are posting their own videos on the web, for the sake of recruitment and banging the patriotic drums, even have their own channel on YouTube (EXAMPLE). It’s a two-way street. As the CNN article says, this war is as much about minds and action as it is about bombs and guns. When the troops aren’t able to broadcast their side of things, all you are left with is official propaganda and the many, many videos put out by the other side.

Oh, well. For now I can still send emails to my niece, at least, as well as standard mail. Let’s hope cooler heads prevail and bring home the troops soon, anyhow.

Bring ‘em home, Bush.

Addendum: On a related note, the U.S. military set up its own YouTube channel just last week, and about a week before that they banned all blog posting by soldiers without express supervisory approval for each post (see blog links at this post: http://tailrank.com/1851635/The-end-of-military-blogs). Of course, how many supervisors would allow it, thinking that any perceived slip would fall on their heads? It all adds up to a serious clamp-down on soldier communications while at the same time increasing the military's propaganda machine. What's next? Will the military forbid email? Are the soldiers to be reduced to WWII-era censored snail mail, too? In a weird and scary way, it seems to me that the very people who are supposed to lay their lives on the line for our rights are denied most of those same rights, almost to the level of inmates in our prison system.

Update (5/18/07): Today PhysOrg.com released an interview with the YouTube co-founders: http://www.physorg.com/news98692938.html. They said they could not understand why the military, with its massive network and its own YouTube channel, would use the excuse of not having enough bandwidth for its soldiers to use the system. They went on to explain how they were willing to work with the military to solve the problems, and that they censor particularly violent videos.

Mothering Ain't What It Used To Be, But We Still Love You

I dedicate this blog post to – who else – Mom!

Happy Mother's Day! Today in the United States we celebrate all that is right and good about yo momma. Yes, on this glorious day of spring we step aside from the usual family squabbles and aim our loving glances at dear old mom, that all-too-human being with the second X chromosome who suckled us at her teat, rushed to our sides and kissed our boo-boos, worried about us when we were late getting home, and took care of uncountable loads of diapers, dishes, and laundry just to keep us happy, healthy, and wearing clean underwear. Who else but Mom would simultaneously pat down our hair with her own saliva while at the same time scolding us for poking at our siblings?

Mothering isn't the same job it used to be, for better or worse. While modern conveniences like dishwashers, microwave ovens, and washing machines have made the job of being mom a little easier than when she was a baby and Grandma did the job, modern living has also brought with it new and imposing worries about what her kids will face "out there," like drugs, school shootings, and Britney Spears. Let us not forget, too, that rising costs and changes in expectations from the feminist movements have led to Mom working outside the house. This brings independence and better pay, but it also has increased Mom's stress level and work load, particularly if Dad doesn't help out around the house as much as he should (A very interesting recent study found the amount of work that men do actually equals the amount of work that women do, on average, if you add up time working both in the home and outside the home for both sexes, at least in countries that aren't economically depressed).

But I think Mothering has also become more stressful because of a less tangible change in society. It seems to me that when Mom was being raised by Grandma, Grandma only had opinionated family members and nosey neighbors to tell her how to raise her baby. Since the time my generation was born, in the late 60's and early 70's, parenting has increasingly become the topic of concern for politicians, academics, and socialites, blaming every evil of society on bad parenting techniques. Do we have the hippies to blame for it?

Now, oddly, it's the grown-up hippies who have chimed in to the issue. Oh my God, what are you doing letting your kid watch Looney Tunes alone while eating Ding-Dongs while you're off in the kitchen doing dishes? Don't you know Looney Tunes is violent? Billy is sure to grow up to be a mass-murderer after watching Wile E. Coyote get clobbered for the thousandth time with his own Acme-brand anvil. Eating Ding-Dongs and not exercising are sure to make your kid morbidly obese. And why aren't you sitting there next to him? God only knows what he may be seeing or thinking without you there to guide him. Why, this poster boy is certain to grow up to prove the politicians right! Naughty mommy! That's it, we're blaming all of society's problems on you unless you feed him soy oat clusters, clothe him in American-made organic cotton, help him answer all of his math questions, and take him on rigorous bicycling trips to cultural-appreciation courses! And you'd better do it with a smile, too, Mum! If he sees you looking stressed, it's sure to send him straight to lifelong therapy.

An international conference on childrearing in the age of ‘intensive parenting’ will be held at the University of Kent’s School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social Research later this month:

http://www.alphagalileo.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=readrelease&releaseid=520432&ez_search=1

As stated in the report: "Dr Ellie Lee, the conference organiser, explained that her own research about women’s experience of feeding their babies had led her to want to organise the event. ‘The research showed that a basic, everyday aspect of being a mother has become moralised and politicised,’ she said. ‘The choices women make in this area seem to have become bound up for many with identity, with demoralising consequences.'"

So I'm not alone in my perceptions, despite the fact that I'm your typical clueless, overweight, butt-scratching American dad. But let me play devil's advocate a moment and say that, while modern life has brought many evils, today's children are safer than ever because of "interference" from politicians and academics. As studies emerge, and policies change, parents are better informed, and so are their kids. It's because of this that we have mandated car seats, for instance, child labor laws, child abuse laws, recall notices for toys, and those little ratings for TV that pop up in the corner of your screen for you to ignore. My mother raised me the best she knew how and has always loved me with all her heart, but I would like to think I am raising my kids in a more emotionally and physically healthy manner simply because society has provided better outlets and more updated information. Only time will tell.

But Mom, Grandma, and all you other mothers out there, you ARE appreciated for making us eat our veggies, clean our rooms, and sit up straight all these years. We children are better off for it (but I'm still not eating my Brussel sprouts - so there!).

Scotty's Ashes Are Lost, On Earth!

At the end of April I had a post about how the cremated remains of James Doohan (“Scotty” from Star Trek) and Gordon Cooper (NASA astronaut from the Mercury and Gemini missions) had been blasted into orbit, along with ashes from about 200 other people.

It seems I spoke too soon.

According to a report released yesterday, their rocket didn’t actually end up in orbit. Instead, it crashed somewhere in New Mexico’s mountains and is currently lost!

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18594384/?GT1=9951

Oops! Talk about a half-ashed launch! As the rocket was headed back earthward, I could just hear the conversation between Doohan and Cooper’s ghosts:

Gordo: “Houston, we have a problem. Scotty, we need more power.”

Scotty: “I’m givin’ ‘er all she’s got, Cap’n! The warp coil can’t take much more ‘o this!”

Are they looking for the rocket’s “remains”? You bet your ash they are, but the landscape is so rugged and overgrown with vegetation they are having a very difficult time.

I wonder what state the ashes are in. Are the little cans all opened and jumbled up? Will they try to scoop up the ashes and divvy up the remains between the cans? Are Gordo and Scotty truly going to spend eternity together? How much of an effort will be made to separate out bits of debris, soil, and rocket fuel?

They are bringing in telemetry equipment to search. Stay tuned to this blog post for updates.

Update (5/19/07): They found the rocket and ash cannisters, unharmed. See the update post at: http://angrylabrat.blogspot.com/2007/05/they-found-scottys-ash.html.

Space Mail, Tether-Style

How the heck do you get stuff from Space back to Earth? Drop it, of course. Let gravity take it. Unfortunately you have deal with the whole toasty atmosphere re-entry thing. Oh, and you should probably be able to point the stuff in the right direction with the right speed to get it precisely to where you have to go. And then there’s sticking the landing. Like they say, “It’s not the fall that kills ya, it’s when you hit the ground.”

Up ‘til now, getting materials to the Earth from space in one piece has involved huge, clunky, expensive space capsules, large amounts of rocket fuel, and gigantic efforts by men and machines to retrieve materials. This has usually been done by way of Soyuz capsules or shuttle missions, at least from the International Space Station (ISS). Experimental samples, mother’s day letters to Mom, captured space aliens, it all has to go this route.

But in the last couple years, nearly 500 students from all over Europe have been working as a team on a plucky little contraption which should make this clunky method obsolete, at least for small payloads:

Story:
http://www.physorg.com/news98013455.html

Nitty-Gritty Details:
http://www.delta-utec.com/CDRdocumentation/YES2-CDR-E0001-1.pdf

European Space Agency Page:
http://www.esa.int/esaED/SEMVJ1AATME_highereducation_0.html

The students have worked on a project called YES2, or Young Engineering Satellite 2, whereby they have created a delivery system called Fotino (and generated numerous theses and dissertations in the process). Fotino is this little spherical capsule, about 1.3 feet (0.4 meters) in diameter, that contains the items to be transported from space. It will piggyback on the European Space Agency’s Foton-M3 microgravity satellite due to be launched in September. During the flight, Foton will eject the Fotino delivery system. Here’s the kicker: there will be no use of rocket fuel to guide the drop. Instead, the system will deploy a 30-kilometer-long, super-strong tether, at the end of which is the Fotino capsule. That’s almost 19 miles long, for you non-metric folks. Said YES2 engineer Marco Stelzer from Germany: 'The tether is made of Dyneema. The same material used by kite surfers to surf through the waves on the end of their kite. Strong stuff.' This will be the longest man-made object ever erected by mankind in space. Orbital dynamics will cause the tether to swing, guiding the capsule’s trajectory and speed. At the right moment in the swing, the capsule will be released to fall to earth. It’s sorta like the Olympic hammer throw. Since Fotino is made of a heatshield material, the contents should be safe from the re-entry burn. It will then make a parachuted landing in a rural area of Russia and record the whole process.

If this works, it will be a new method by which astronauts at the ISS can send stuff to earth without going all “Right Stuff” on it. So, in the future, all they have to do is “swing” the goods down to Houston.