Monthly Archives: October 2011

Personal Life

AI Challenge 2011

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Around this time last year, I participated in the Google AI Challenge, eventually finishing in 47th place out of nearly 5,000 participants. The contest this year had a bit of shaky start. There was some controversy over the name of the contest as it’s wholly organized by the Computer Science Club of the University of Waterloo. Google is providing sponsorship and has agreed to allow their name to be used but is otherwise completely uninvolved in what is otherwise a student project. Hence, this year the name is simply AI Challenge with a note that it’s sponsored by Google.

That wasn’t the only problem. Despite deciding on the nature of the game to be played fairly early on, the organizing team seemed to have a great deal of trouble coming up with the required tools, documenting everything and making sure the starter packages all work properly. It was annoying to see that while the contest had already started and is open to submissions, the website and the rules of the contest were still a work in progress. Nevertheless, everything now seems to be working correctly, apart from the fact that the server is far too slow and that there aren’t enough games being played. So I’ve submitted an entry and you can track my progress here.

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Science

Nobel Prizes 2011

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As usual the announcement of the recipients of the Nobel Prizes for 2011 happened with almost no fanfare in the mainstream press. As I did last year, here’s a summary of this year’s winners.

  • The Physics prize goes to Saul Perlmutter, Brian P. Schmidt and Adam G. Riess for a discovery that all astronomy buffs now knows: that the universe is not only expanding but the rate of expansion itself continues to accelerate. This was worked out by studying distant supernovae and noting the Doppler Effect on its light as the distance between the supernovae and the Earth increases. Today, physicists still have no real explanation of why the universe continues to expand at an increasing rate, indicating that some force, other than the residual energy of the Big Bang, is pushing space apart. This is what physicists label “dark energy” for now while they search for a better understanding of what is going on.
  • The Chemistry prize goes to a single individual, Daniel Shechtman, for a discovery that will make mathematicians as well as chemists proud. While studying a slice of aluminium-manganese alloy, he inadvertently stumbled on quasicrystals a heretofore unknown form of materials. Normal crystals consist of atoms that are packed together in a symmetrical and repeating pattern. Shechtman however discovered a type of crystal that have orders of symmetry that  that were previously thought to be impossible, allowing them to fit together in such a way that the pattern never perfectly repeats itself. In 2D form, mathematicians know this as Penrose tiling, named after the British mathematician Roger Penrose, who first formally formulated this form of geometry. Islamic artists however have been known to use this sort of motif in their work for centuries. Today, quasicrystals are used in many areas of materials science, such as the liquid crystals in display screens and some types of steel.
  • The Physiology prize goes to three persons who all worked on the immune system though the discoveries are not directly related. Bruce Beutler and Jules Hoffmann discovered a protein-binding mechanism that helps the immune system recognize invaders and trigger a defensive response. Ralph Steinman discovered the dendritic cell, which he found helps to activate T-lymphocytes, which play a role in the immune system’s ability to adapt to different types of threats. The prize underwent a bit of controversy this year as the rules state that Nobel Prizes may not be awarded to deceased individuals. As it turned out, Steinman passed away just before he received the news that he had been awarded the prize. As the Nobel committee was unaware of his death at the time of their decision, the decision was allowed to stand.
  • The Economics prize goes to Thomas Sargent and Christopher Sims. Both economists worked on uncovering cause and effect in macroeconomics, in particular addressing how to incorporate changing expectations by rational actors in a macroeconomic model. Sargent showed how businesses and households learn about economic conditions and adjust their expectations accordingly and how this in turn should be taken into account of within macroeconometrics. Sims developed the statistical tool of vector autoregression that is used to work out the effects of how a change in economic conditions affects both the supply and demand curve in complex ways.
  • The Literature prize goes to a Swedish poet, Tomas Tranströmer, who is not well-known outside of his home country. His oeuvre, which is not large, is characterized by the committee as being economical and granting fresh access to reality. This is the first time that a poet has won the prize since 1996.

As usual, detailed information on the recipients and explanations of their work can be found on the official Nobel Prize website.

Science

Steve Jobs’ death used as example by natural health advocates

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By now most people will have read all manner of eulogies about the co-founder of Apple, but you’ve probably haven’t read anything like this ridiculous editorial. Natural health nuts all around the world who decry conventional, evidence-based medicine and claim that cancer can be cured simply using vitamins and health supplements are pointing to Jobs’ death as proof that chemotherapy and radiotherapy doesn’t work. The article also goes on to a weird tangent on how Jobs was a once in a lifetime creative talent who was sadly abused by the capitalistic forces of society.

The irony of this particular editorial is that Jobs seemed to actually favor alternative health remedies, for the all good it did him. As his bio on Wikipedia makes clear, Jobs is pretty much the living embodiment of the counterculture, pot-smoking, hippie demography. So much so that he saved money from his first job to go on a pilgrimage to India and came back as a Buddhist with a shaved head. In short, he’s exactly the type of person who would read a website like Natural News and be skeptical of evidence-based medicine. According to this Fortune article from 2008, when Jobs first learned of his cancer, he resisted treating it with conventional methods and chose instead to go on a special diet and explored alternative treatments.

It was only nine months after his cancer was first diagnosed, following pressure from his company staff and investors worried about his health and after learning that his tumor had grown despite the alternative medicine he was using, that Jobs agreed to undergo the surgical procedure his doctors had recommended. At that time the surgery was considered a complete success but even back in 2008, it was pointed out that by delaying the procedure for so long, Jobs had dramatically increased his chances of his cancer recurring. It is arguable that things might be different today if Jobs had chosen to heed his doctors advice immediately.

On a personal note, I knew a colleague while working in the Solomon Islands who was diagnosed with head and neck cancer. Being a Johor native, he underwent treatment in Singapore but was eager to come back to work. A short time after he arrived back in the Solomon Islands, some symptoms recurred. Instead of flying back to Malaysia immediately, he listened to some of the local people and decided to have a local traditional medicine man treat him in a remote village. Most of the staff of the company opposed this as we were worried about him and it was difficult to stay in contact with him. According to his account, the treatment consisted of various oils and using hands to press the fluid out of his developing tumor. He stayed at the village for more than six months. Eventually, his condition deteriorated until he was forced to fly back and he was immediately hospitalized in Singapore. He died less than two months later. I remember his case keenly because he was the exact same age as me and died in his late twenties.

 

Science

Recent Interesting Science Articles (Sep ’11)

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Only three articles this month as I’ve had very little to browse. Note to friends: I’ve since resigned from my job in Seremban as it was a little too busy for my schedule and wasn’t really what I wanted anyway. This means that Ill probably have a bit more time for my blog from now on.

  • The biggest science news in September is of course the announcement that scientists at CERN seem to have observed neutrinos moving faster than the speed of light. The particle accelerator in Switzerland sent a stream of neutrinos that traveled through to planet to the San Grasso facility in central Italy. However, the neutrinos arrived some 60 nanoseconds earlier than it would take light to travel the same distance, prompting a lot of excitement among the scientific community. If it is validated, this finding would overthrow Einstein’s theory of special relativity and the entire foundation of theoretical physics. The best working theory at the moment is that some variant of superstring theory is true and the neutrinos are taking a shortcut through one of the extra curled-up dimensions postulated in the theory. Most scientists are still wary as the discrepancy might more plausibly be explained as a measurement error but it is telling that a less publicized experiment known as MINOS in the US noticed unusually fast neutrinos back in 2007.
  • Science-fiction writers have long played with the idea of inorganic life but Lee Cronin of the University of Glasgow is making actual cell-like structures made of metallic molecules. Rather than using carbon-based building blocks, his team uses “polyoxometalates” made of metal atoms such as tungsten. They are able to get their molecules to self-assemble into cell-like spheres in a solution and get their surfaces to behave like cell membranes. Unfortunately, he still doesn’t have an analogue of DNA yet, which is arguably the true key to a life form that is able to self-replicate, but this is a decent theoretical framework to start imagining how inorganic life might evolve in a vastly different environment from ours.
  • The Economist has an article on moral philosophy, in particular on research on the psychology of the kind of people who would actually adhere to a fully utilitarian set of values. A famous utilitarian thought experiment is the runaway train which if it continues on its present course will kill several people. However, if someone were to divert the train to a side track these people would be saved but one person would die. If you were the person who had the switch in your hand, would you pull it and sacrifice one person to save many? It turns out most people, ninety percent of them in fact, would choose not to intervene at all and allow fate to take its course but this is not the utilitarian response. So two researchers had the idea of taking a bunch of undergraduates and quizzing them about a variety of situations to find those who would choose the utilitarian response. Then they correlated this with a standard personality test. It turns out that the people who leaned towards utilitarianism tended to have psychopathic tendencies, which when you think about it makes perfect sense.
News & Politics

Return of the financial crisis

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Last week has been a very exciting time for anyone with any money in the stock markets. The KLCI plunged to lows not seen since the depths of the financial crisis of 2008, then strongly rebounded over the next couple of days. Anyone who had bought SP Setia’s warrants early in the week practically saw their money doubled following the takeover announcement by PNB. This week looks set to be a continuation of the rollercoaster ride though the overall trend remains bearish. I personally expect the markets to edge down for at least the next few months, though there will certainly be plenty of technical rebounds along the way.

The pundits are calling this the return of the financial crisis. For those in the US, it feels more like the crisis merely took a breather and is now back with a vengeance. For middle-class Americans in particular, it has already been a lost decade echoing what happened to Japan. With no end in sight for the European debt crisis and with the Americans set for a rematch between the Republicans and the Democrats over the raising of the debt limit in November, things look certain to grow worse before they can get any better.

What galls me the most however is the fact that this rerun of the crisis is almost entirely due to political factors rather than fundamental economics. Yes, America’s budget deficit looks bad and their debt is growing at an unsustainable pace. But that is really a long-term problem and in the short and medium term, the US debt is perfectly fine. US bond yields are laughably low and there is no prospect of them going up any time soon. With inflation low as well, the US government still has plenty of scope to use fiscal policy to stimulate the economy.

Over the long term, the US debt problem can be attributed almost entirely to healthcare costs. They need to do a fundamental rethink of how much right their citizens have to healthcare and how to distribute those costs. They need to either accept that there is a certain point beyond which each extra month of life that they can give a dying patient isn’t worth the money or to accept that taxes need to raised significantly to pay for the healthcare costs of the elderly. Everything else is a sideshow that buys a bit of extra time but will never resolve the problem until they confront this choice head on.

As for Europe, I agree with The Economist in that the EU needs to man up and draw a line between insolvent and illiquid countries. Greece is insolvent. Everyone knows this no matter how fervently EU authorities deny it. Portugal may or may not be insolvent depending on the next few months. Every other country in the EU currently under pressure in the bond markets is merely illiquid. Insolvent countries need to have their loans restructured, essentially imposing losses on creditors. This would destabilize the EU banking system. So be it. Let bank shareholders eat the losses until their equity is gone, then use public money to recapitalize the banks and rebuild the financial system as necessary. Basically, the EU should bail out banks as institutions, but not their shareholders and not insolvent countries.

In the meantime, illiquid countries need to be given unlimited backing by the rest of the EU. This will increase borrowing costs for safe countries like Germany and the Netherlands, but their public needs to accept this as the cost needed to save the EU.

Naturally, none of this will happen because the political costs are too great. In the US, the Tea Party has successfully sold to the general public the idea that deficits must be cut immediately and savagely without any care of how much damage this would cause to the economy and no politician will dare to say otherwise. Similarly, no politician in the US will dare to tell American citizens that sometimes a tiny incremental improvement in healthcare isn’t worth the massive costs it would incur.

In the EU, singling out Greece would be too humiliating to contemplate and the more often Sarkozy and Merkel declare their infinite support for Greece, the harder it will be to do the right thing no matter how much more worse Greece gets. And of course, any northern politician who dares to tell his voters that they need to pay a bit more tax to help out the southern countries will be cleaned out at the polls in election season, even if this means everyone will be better off in the long run.

This means that both the US and the EU will continue to limp on, kicking the can down the road as far as they are able. Sometimes it sucks to be a democracy.