Recently in Business and Technology Category

The MPG Illusion -- Needing Math?

Now that gas is almost $5.00 per gallon many people seem to be more than a little worried, if not about global warming than simply about the price of gas. Of course some lobbyists and commentators continue their efforts to preserve status quo, whole hog energy use that exacerbates global warming. These efforts ultimately undermine independence from foreign oil and adaptation of measures that would stem to pace of global warming. In "Communicating Climate Change", last year I wrote:

"If we've moved beyond the climate change "debate", however, as I argue we have, we've only entered another stage. I'm not sure what to call it, but it if we appropriated something like the familiar five stages of dealing with catastrophe- denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance, then maybe people have moved on to some sort of denial/bargaining phase. People get ideas about how we can buy our way out, with some carbon credits, some alternative energy, or some prizes. Again, this is procrastination. If buying our way out doesn't work, at least we've bought some time."

Science published an article the other day in their Policy Forum section from a couple of Duke business professors. "The MPG Illusion" (June 20th) argued that people misunderstand the miles per gallon (mpg) standard. The authors ask the question, if you had a choice of upgrading one of two cars with a car with a better MPG rating which would you replace? Unlike Europe, where the mileage standard is expressed in liters per 100 kilometer, in the US, miles per gallon (mpg) refers to the distance a gallon of gas will achieve in a vehicle: 1000 gallons per 10,000 miles equals 10mpg. Not very many people understand that, according to their poll.

Increases in mileage are calculated so that 30% better gas mileage means 23% less gas used. 30% greater "mpg" means greater distance per gallon of gas, instead of traveling 100 miles you would now be able to travel 130 miles, so 100%/1.3 = 76.9, 23% less fuel. Most people assume the relationship between miles driven and gas consumed is linear, but its actually curvilinear. From there, the authors argue that small upgrades, say from a "10 mpg" rated car to a "20 mpg" car, may save the consumer more on gas than upgrading from 25mpg to 50mpg.

Their goal was to see whether people ranked choices in mathematically correct ways and so they structured their question carefully. But if their point is to illustrate that the standard is deceiving, as they say in the video, why do they need to publish an article in Science, and perambulate through all the math and graphs?

Promoting a clearer standard isn't their only goal. They open their Science piece criticizing a NYT columnist who questioned the sense of giving an IRS hybrid car tax break to people who buy "a hybrid Dodge Durango that gets 14 miles per gallon instead of 12 thanks to its second, electric power source."

But doesn't the NYT author have a point? Why would the government offer a credit? The authors acknowledge this: "The basic argument is correct: The environment would benefit most if all consumers purchased highly efficient cars that get 40 MPG, not 14, and incentives should be tied to achieving such efficiency." This hat tip to clear thinking is only 27 words of their Science article, versus 1708 words explaining calculations that in effect justify why upgrading from a 1978 Cadillac or your grandpa's farm tractor to an SUV is a choice that consumers should feel good about. While the question is carefully constructed around consumer choices about two cars driven equally and yields a conclusion showing that consumers don't understand mpg math, why this question?

In effect, the authors' piece would be brilliant in a Dodge Durango or Ford ad to boost those double digit sales drops. But back to the New York Times article. Why wouldn't a person upgrade from a 10mpg car to a 50mpg car? A 10 mpg car would use 1000 gallons per 10,000 miles, and a 50mpg would use 200 gallons per 10,000 miles. 800 fewer gallons of gas. That much less pollution. $5,000 of gas, versus $1,000. Why can't we shoot for that?

Consumers are making exactly these choices. Ford sold 55% fewer SUV's last month, and 40% fewer pick-ups then in the previous year. In our last post we quoted from the NYT article, America, Asleep at the Spigot", in which Senator Dingell (R-MI), told the NYT" "He likes it sitting in his driveway, he likes it big, he likes it safe". It seems that "He" is changing "His" mind about "Big" and "Safe", when faced with $150 per fill-up. "He" is choosing a Prius instead of a pick-up.

Global Warming: Too Much Evidence

There's a direct correlation between energy cost and use, just as there's a direct correlation between increased cigarette taxes, and decreased smoking. Lobbyists routinely argue the opposite in order to justify low taxes and minimal regulation. But the fact that car owners are switching to more efficient cars is a market coup for global warming as well as free-market advocates. This should please all of us who support liberal economic policies, as well as "let the market" commentators. But paradoxically, some of columnists are still stuck with in their delusional refrains from 2005.

A Wall Street Journal blogger now claims there's too much evidence on global warming, so much that it's not believable (WSJ July 1, 2008, "Global Warming as Mass Neurosis"). "What isn't evidence of global warming?" he asks. My favorite! For years it was, "there is not enough evidence". And now, simply invert the sentence to arrive at your next phase of denial. Last year when you pulled his string he said "Not Enough Evidence!!!" and alarms rang -- Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! This year they retooled, so yank the cord to hear, "Too Much Evidence!!! Whooop! Whooop! Whooop! American Girl could immortalize his likeness as the Denier Doll from the historical series "When Carbon was King" or "When the Air was Breathable". Of course next he instructs: "[s]o let's stop fussing about the interpretation of ice core samples from the South Pole". He will no doubt shuffle around in these arguments until the water's licking up around his ankles.

He insists that global warming is either a socialist, religious, or psychological affront to our way of life by those who believe that prosperity is corrupt. Last year we wrote in "Climate Change: Fueling the "Debate", "if you're crazy-dizzy snapping your head around to follow first the one side, than the other, simply follow the money for the truth." Perhaps our columnist hasn't invested in any emerging energy markets.

Sanity and Samsø

As last year and the year before, available at our fingertips, along with the woulda-coulda-shoulda crowd and the bloviators, is the full range of serious and interesting discussions. Consumers are making changes around global warming not only by buying Priuses, but by using alternative energy sources or cutting back their energy use.

In the New Yorker this month, Elizabeth Kobert wrote a great article called "The Island in The Wind". The first part of the article was about the residents of Samsø an island in Denmark that progressed from consuming enough oil and electricity to provide energy for 4,300 people, to generating enough renewable energy through wind turbines and other sources to produce energy for the whole island and sell some back to the grid. The island accomplished this with a combination of initiative, work, leadership and community investment, but with no initial motivating monetary reward.

While generating their own energy however, the islanders didn't reduce their consumption. For that part of the story Kolbert goes to Switzerland, where the 2,000-Watt Society aims to motivate people to reduce energy consumption to 2,000 Watts per person with only 500 Watts consumed from non-renewable sources. Scandinavians consume 6,000 Watts per year per person, and US citizens consume ~15,000 Watts per year per person, so the 2,000 Watt goal gives some populations room to grow while others should strive to cut back on energy use.

When we wrote "Sea Change or Littoral Disaster" in 2006 it seemed like we'd never turn a corner. We wrote "We need no more evidence. We have decades of studies indicating that our lives will change, but its easier to wait for another headline and hope a miracle intervenes, if nothing else than in the guise of government action." Times are decidedly more optimistic. Of course there the same gradient of action, inaction, denial, and procrastination, but when I reflect on the general attitudes of the past couple of years I'm amazed at all the change happening in 2008.

Last year we wrote in "Green Spirit", about the wave of environmental sentiment sweeping the US. The New Yorker had captured the mood in a cartoon depicting one plant executive asking another whether they could dye the smoke from the stacks green.

The most unlikely corporations were hopping all over themselves to play green. BP had just launched two sites, The Green Curve, and A Little Better Gas Station, complete with games like "Gas Mania" and kid friendly distractions. The BP sites are no longer standalone so not quite so much fun, but have been incorporated into bp.com in all their original kelly green and neon yellow glory.

These sites come and go, and of course now other companies have launched a new crop of green spirit. First up is Chevron's www.willyoujoinus.com. "Will you join us" is a collaboration between The Economist, The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, and the oil company. The site tells us that "the demand for energy becomes greater, and every day it becomes harder to find". Driving home the point, a global oil consumption ticker spins through millions of barrels consumed during your site visit. The homepage asks viewers to "join the discussion". I suppose it would be impertinent to ask them to put a profits ticker underneath the consumption ticker -- "finding energy" is research and capital intensive.

The current discussion topic is "Global Food Prices & Energy Supplies, Finding a Balance". Fortunately, it's not all gloom and doom, you can "Play Energyville" too.

It's better than astrology and all the rage. Genetic testing offered as a gamut of services, under marketing rubrics along the lines of "Discover Your True Self!" Some of this discovery is whimsical, for instance, the company 23andMe offers visitors to their website graphics and insight on the percentage of people in their company prone to wet ear wax, not flaky, determined by a dominant allele. Some tests are more diagnostic, claiming to promote health. Salugen touts the fantastic slogan "DNA Customized Nutrition" and offers vitamins with their DNA testing. The Genelex website says DNA testing can be used to fine tune the dose of prescription drugs used for treatment of diseases like depression, cancer and epilepsy. Its a burgeoning, unexplored, market. How will it evolve?

A couple of weeks ago, the California Department of Public Health sent cease-and-desist notices to 13 gene testing services, warning the companies not to offer tests to California consumers. New York state took similar action last November, sending notices to 31 companies. The California notice references a state code that makes it "unlawful for any person to own, operate, maintain, direct, or engage in the business of operating a clinical laboratory, as defined this chapter, unless she or she possesses a valid clinical laboratory licensed issued by the department." The department also objects to tests being ordered without a physician. Some companies have stopped selling services to customers in these states but others continue their business, undaunted, claiming that what they're offering is not subject to the states' rules.

The companies are doing more than selling to consumers though. In addition to offering genetic screens for curiosity or personal health, companies are moving to use the collected data to advance research. 23andMe is collaborating with the Parkinson's Institute to provide information from its customers to help understand that disease. This is in line with some of the company's long term goals, according to the San Francisco Chronicle:

"If 23andMe eventually succeeds in hosting large-scale communities of members with various illnesses, it can become a conduit for pharmaceutical companies that would pay the company to relay their offers to participate in clinical trials [co-founder Linda Avey] said."

Google and Microsoft are also in the process of setting up systems to gather large data sets from patients, a move that may help accelerate understanding of diseases. But there are many unanswered questions about the use and usefulness of the data.

Some say that federal regulation is so scarce and the barrier of entry so low that the direct to consumer industry invites fraudulent players. Others ask what such predictive tests can really predict? One woman interviewed by the journal Nature (453: 570-571) said her test results showed a 34% chance of becoming obese, compared to the average female her age who had 32% chance. Some researchers and public policy advocates ask whether the tests are a waste of money.

Even if the tests are predictive, will they encourage people to change their habits, or is that wishful thinking? Most people know that obesity increases your risk of heart attack, diabetes, cancer, etc. But despite straightforward evidence provided by daily surveillance in low cost mirrors, the western population suffers an epidemic of obesity not stanched by the most accessible information. Will more tests convince people to exercise and eat their vegetables?

Like many health conditions, obesity is not solely determined by genes. But while everyone acknowledges the influence of environment on disease probability, the extent of the influence is unknown. The same caveat applies to genetic influences. Huntington's disease is one disease largely determined by genetics, while autism and many others vary as to the genetic influence. Yet the proliferation of these companies encourages public perception that genetics is extraordinarily predictive of health outcomes.This can be problematic for individual consumers who could be misled about the importance of the data. The implications of incomplete information in the form of genomic data could also problematic when companies start collecting data for analysis.

Some genetic testing companies claim that the information they're providing to consumers is not diagnostic, only informational, they market the information as empowering to the consumer. But companies' collective enthusiasm for getting their hands on the forthcoming data belies their claims that the tests are solely for their customers' curiosity. The value of this information is far greater to the company that amasses collections of individual data than it is to any one individual. And once a company has data that represents recurring revenue potential, how is that information not just as fluid and salable as names, telephone numbers and addresses?

What are the implications of this? On the lighter side, imagine being besieged with junk mail about summer diet camps because at age nine, it's revealed that you show a propensity for Type II diabetes based on your mother's profile. Or imagine you pay to query your risk of arthritis and agree to have this data used by certain parties (identifying information stripped, of course). But then your emails begin to feature ads for joint balms or extra absorbent Q-tips. Can't imagine it?

The World of Silver Spoons and Golden Specks and All that Disinfects

Did you know that a Hong Kong company makes "Antibacterial Table Ware" that can "prevent people from the following diseases: duodenitis caused by spirillums, virosis hepatitis, dysentery caused by salmonella and food poisoning caused by golden staphylococcus"? Such wishful thinking is common in the product claims featured at the Project For Emerging Nanotechnologies' inventory of available nanotechnologies. (PEN is a collaboration of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and the Pew Charitable Trusts.) "Antibacterial Table Ware's" antimicrobial power stems from the "nano silver coating" but the technology has some fine print limitations. During holiday dinner when you're sitting at the table laden with such utensils you would need to urge your mom to "please dawdle", as she ladles the gravy and potatoes onto your plate, so as to give the "Antimicrobial Table Ware" enough time to "kill the attached bacteria and microbial [sic] in ten minutes". (emphasis mine)

The company also makes hairdressing tools that "protect people" from diseases they would (never but for horrendous circumstances) pick up at the beauty parlor, "hairdressing-related infections such as trachoma, conjunctivitis, virosis hepatitis, dermatitis and AIDS." Nanotechnology claims by companies in the US tend to be slightly more responsible, but the precociously labeled products available as imports litter the internet, while regulation and oversight lags behind prolific headfirst investment in the new technologies.

In real life, nanotechnology is not as fantastical as some marketing boasts but is very impressive. Products incorporate elements that are 1-100 nanometers in length -- a nano being a billionth of a meter, and scientists can change the structure of an element in the lab to give it unique properties. So although Carbon nanotubules can be found in nature, in soot for example, one of the most common carbon nanotubules is produced when scientists vaporize carbon between two carbon electrodes. When you think of carbon you'd probably consider the soft form of it -- graphite, or the very hard form -- diamond; however, from carbon nanotubules, scientists now construct materials that are both very light and incredibly strong -- perhaps a hundred times stronger than steel. Carbon nanontubules are used to make electronic brushes used in engines and for future applications in optics, electronics and material science, .

Silver is a proven anti-microbial -- the FDA recently approved silver coated breathing tubes used in ventilators, that may help reduce the risk of pneumonia in hospital settings. Researchers use nanotechnology for drug development and are advancing sophisticated technology to accomplish feats such as delivering drugs to a specific location in the body or building scaffolding for the regeneration of bone, nerves and other body parts. Nanotechnology offers promising advances for almost every field, medicine is just one example. However before much of this promising research yields viable products, nanotechnology will also be relentlessly hyped for selling more mundane items with dubious benefits such as "antimicrobial" socks and refrigerators.

Gilded Age

Nanotechnology products tout anti-bacterial, anti-reflective or stain resistance properties, many of which are not yet proven. Just as flatware marketing preposterously proposes to protect you from infections like Hepatitis A, hundreds of other products collectively promise to erect a magical nanotechnology barrier, a personal missile shield between you and the millions of germs that threaten you.

When you're done sipping your silver nanoparticle preserved soup from your special silver spoon you might want to brush your teeth with "cutting edge toothpaste which innovative nanotechnology is applied", made from "pure nano-sized gold that is highly effective in disinfecting the bacteria in your mouth". And if that company went out of business (likely), you can find some Korean made silver nanotechnology toothpaste that will serve the purpose. The PEN inventory lists hundreds of products with these sorts of thrilling if unsettling properties.

More concerning than blatant labeling for the benefits of nanotechnology however, is the empty labeling from companies which choose not to advertise their nanotechnology because of federal regulations. For instance, the "FresherLonger Miracle Food Storage" containers used to be marketed as "infused with silver nanoparticles that will keep soups, sauces, meats and vegetables "fresher three or even four times longer". Now the same product doesn't mention the silver nanotechnology, only the "airtight silicone-gasket locking system" which helps "retard spoilage". The change in product literature was made to avoid the EPA's regulation of products claiming to be pesticides -- antimicrobials are considered by the EPA to be pesticides.

$50 billion dollars worth of goods incorporating nanotechnology were sold last year, and nanotechnology is entering the consumer marketplace at the rate of 3-4 products a week according to the Project on Emerging Technologies (PEN). There are over 600 consumer products currently on the market, everything from utensils to washing machines to teddy bears, camera lenses, make-up, hearing aids, suntan lotion,clothing, and waterless car washes.

NanoNannies?

Beyond the veracity of labeling, is consuming particles that can't even be seen under a microscope floating around in your body safe? One skin care product called "DNA Skin Optimizer" notes that "Nano technology was chosen because it makes it possible to place the sensitive ingredients in the form of tiny crystals directly into the cell nucleus" -- which, were it true, is certainly not a comforting prospect. Scientists don't know if how nanoparticles accumulate in the body and what interactions and effects they might have, since there are very few studies on the safety of these products.

Last week, however, Nature Nanotechnology published a pilot study suggesting that the safety of carbon nanotubes warrants further investigation. (Poland et al. "Carbon nanotubes introduced into the abdominal cavity of mice show asbestos-like pathogenicity in a pilot study"; doi:10.1038/nnano.2008.111) The researchers subjected the meseothelial lining of the body cavity of mice to carbon nanotubules of varying lengths. Like asbestos, the long fiber carbon nanotubules created an inflammatory response in the mesothelium and scarring, while shorter fibers did not, which indicates (at least) that people who work with carbon nanotubules in manufacturing might be at risk for the same types of problems seen with asbestos exposure.

The environmental risks of this new technology explosion are also unknown but disconcerting. Last month researchers from Arizona State University did some experiments on silver ion containing socks that were marketed for their ability to cut down on foot odor. The researchers washed several brands of socks, and the silver washed out of the socks at various rates. The study motivated concern that the inevitable increase and indiscriminate use of nanotechnology would cast silver into streams and run-off causing environmental damage and endangering the health of species that live in and depend on streams and rivers. Products like Samsung's EPA approved washing machine releases silver ions into every load of wash, a gimmick Samsung calls: "Silver Wash that sterilizes your clothes".

Nanotechnology has broad funding support from Congress and research in this area is flourishing. However scientists and some consumer groups are worried that there are too many unknowns about nanotechnology's safety and that more research should be aimed at investigating the potential hazards. Scientists from industry, environmental groups and academia acknowledge that not only are we producing products with unknown risks without regulation, but that the lack of regulation may cause consumers to become skittish about nanotechnology.

Earlier this month a group of consumer groups recently petitioned the EPA to take a stronger stance on nanotechnology, specifically on products that market silver as a pesticide (antimicrobial). Congress is currently considering legislation on nanotechnology but legislators pared funding for studies on the health and environmental risks of the technology.

ConocoPhillips and BP have submitted a plan to build a gas pipeline through Alaska. Tony Hayward, BP's chief executive told the Financial Times Wednesday: "This project is vital for North American energy consumers and for the future of the Alaska oil and gas industry". Robin West, chairman of PFC Energy, told FT: "This is a critical project linking vast gas reserves with markets that are going to need that gas".But will the gas line make it to the lower 48 states?

The Financial Times reported that most of the 4bn cubic feet of natural gas per day will go to the Alberta tar sands to fuel the extraction of bitumen from which synthetic oil will be produced. Natural gas is needed for the energy intensive process of getting oil from the gummy viscous asphalt substance contained in the sands.

Saudi Arabia's oil reserves are considered the largest in the world, the Alberta tar sands are the second largest. They cover a large area 50,000 square miles, about the size of Florida -- or Nepal, North Korea, Malawi, Greece or Tibet. Work to extract bitumen is underway by about 40 companies involved in 143 projects, the main sites being at Athabasca, Cold Lake, and Peace River deposits sands are expected to yield over a trillion barrels of oil.

Elizabeth Kolbert wrote about the Alberta tar sands endeavor last November in a New Yorker article, "Unconventional Crude: Canada's synthetic -fuels boom", where she described the difficult process of extracting the viscous bitumen. Bitumen close to the surface can be mined then extracted from the sand. First the surface vegetation and soil is removed to access the sands. Then tons of sand are removed via open pit mining and transported to an extraction plant. The the sand is the soaked and agitated with hot water so the bitumen can be siphoned off. Since bitumen is only about 10% of the sand by volume, the multi-step process is necessary.

Most of the bitumen containing sands are deep beneath the surface 100-250 feet down, in which case the extraction becomes even more complicated. Since the mid-1800's engineers have been trying to find efficient methods for extracting the oil. At one point engineers hatched a plan with government to detonate atom bombs beneath the surface to release the oil. The scheme was part of Project Plowshare, which sought to utilize atomic bombs for peaceful purposes. Scientists proposed "earthmoving" for all kinds of activities, including oil and gas extraction, canal building, etc.. One test came in the form of Project Gasbuggy, which used nuclear energy in the form of an atomic bomb to release natural gas in New Mexico. A Time magazine article from 1967 described the experiment as experienced by invitees of the government and gas company which sponsored project:

"..the earth jolted underfoot and a dull, distant boom was heard, followed by a second, more gentle, rolling shock. Someone shouted: "We did it! We did it!" Hand shakes were exchanged all around. The U.S. had successfully set off the first nuclear explosion sponsored jointly by the Government and industry."

A marker designates the Gasbuggy Project site, where no digging is currently allowed -- Atomictourist.com has more details.The USSR also did work in the peacetime use of atomic bombs for oil and gas excavation and apparently worked to extract bitumen from sands like Alberta's. Project Plowshare eventually got dropped when enthusiasm for nuclear "earthmoving" waned.

The methods used today aren't quite as extreme, for instance the two main in-situ processes employed are Cyclic Steam Stimulation (CSS), and Steam Assisted Gravity Drainage (SAGD). These both heat the sand mixture which makes the bitumen less viscous, more like molasses, which will flow. Kolbert describes SAGD:

"Typically, two horizontal wells are drilled into the sands, one above the other. High-pressure steam is injected into the top well; eventually, the tar sands grow hot enough-- nearly four hundred degrees-- that bitumen begins to flow into the bottom well."

All of the current methods of bitumen extraction are energy intensive. SAGD uses the equivalent of 1 barrel out of 3 extracted from the sand pits. The process is laborious and energy intensive, and currently fueled by natural gas. Kolbert notes that by 2012 the tar sand extractions will require "2 billion cubic feet of natural gas a day, or enough to heat all the homes in Canada". Therefore the pipeline, as the Financial Times reports .

The extraction process uses significantly more energy than what is consumed in drilling for oil, in fact carbon emissions produced are 50% higher per barrel of oil consumed. People question how such an energy intensive project can go forward when the overall goal is to lower global emissions. As well, other problems, such as environmental destruction from the mining, ground water pollution and air pollution also dog the project. Despite the environmental concern and pockets of resistance however, oil prices are so high that politicians support the investment and its outcomes, both positive (more oil) and controversial.

For the current project, Conoco bid with BP, reports the paper, because BP's reputation is fairly damaged in Alaska after several large spills. Previous to this new bid, Conoco had submitted a bid in response to the state's Alaska Gasline Inducement Act (AGIA), however the state approved only one company's bid: TransCanada's. As a next step, BP/Conoco will fund an "open season", seeking companies to commit to transporting the gas, before asking Congress for regulatory approval for the project.

Charlie Rose concluded a thirteen part series on science earlier this week, with another interesting episode, "The Imperative of Science". Sharing his table were Paul Nurse, who shared the Nobel Prize of Physiology or Medicine in 2001 and is currently President of Rockefeller University; Bruce Alberts, a biochemist, author of texts like the definitive Molecular Biology of the Cell, former two time president of the National Academy of Sciences and Editor-in-chief of the journal Science; Lisa Randall, Harvard particle physicist and author; physicist Shirley Ann Jackson who is the President of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and Harold Varmus, who shared the 1989 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, headed the NIH through a heady science period and is now the president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. The focus was the importance of science and it naturally was an interesting, convivial, and lively, if general, discussion.

The group said that the US has become complacent about its long time position as a world leader in science and that increased global competition in science demands decisive action if the country is to maintain its status. The participants emphasized the need for better science education. Alberts brought up primary and secondary education, and they all discussed the importance of improving college curricula. They stressed that appreciation of the scientific process and experimentation should be a more central part of liberal arts education, and that all students, not just those who show great promise to be scientists, should learn and experiment at science.

Thinking scientifically is not only important to understanding science, these leaders pointed out, but to processing of all complex problems; the goal is not only to resist "the dogma of talk radio" but to be an active participant in democracy. (they ran with the science is democracy idea)

They all nodded, agreeing with one scientist who crisis in science to a frog sitting in the pot of water as the heat gets turned up. According to this allegory a frog that sits in cold water will stay and perish when the temperature is raised (by some demented frog torturer). When I heard this I applied the critical thinking and research skills that only scientific training can hone, and learned that the frog tale is an urban myth. The good news is that apparently frogs save themselves rather than fatally habituating to hot water -- though to be honest, mine is second hand information. Apart from urban myths, the urgency for science in America is real, as is the human tendency to disastrously ignore problems that creep up on us.

The group discussed various ways to reinvigorate American science as was done with focus and enterprise after Sputnik. Perhaps a problem like global warming could rouse national science spirit, they said. (Coincidentally, Al Gore applied the frog allegory to this problem in An Inconvenient Truth)

The scientists expressed nervous concern that our leaders be able to "connect the dots". A president needs to lead the nation to an understanding of science's central place in society and needs to focus attention on fundamentals like education and funding in order to assure both the nation's preeminence in science and increased public understanding of science. Politicians need to support science in a broad cross-disciplinary way, they said. The goal should not be to tackle a series of individual problems but to recognize the commonalities across disciplines and build a foundation upon which science progress thrives with long-term bipartisan support.

Rose asked whether there was enough interest in science among voters to warrant a presidential science debate, adding ""voters are there if you can get on the right side of it". The scientists righted course, expressing incredulity that there weren't already strong public science platforms, and supporting a debate to reassure Democrat and Republican voters of candidates' commitments to national competitiveness via science.

Here's the link to watch/listen to the video its entirety.

-------------------------------------------

When Merck's AIDS vaccine candidate failed in clinical trials, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in the National Institutes of Health (NIH) called a summit. The drug candidate did not reduce HIV infections, in fact the adenovirus based vaccine seemed to increase the risk of infections.

The meeting of scientists on March 25th in Washington focussed on the future of HIV/AIDS research in light of the fallout of Merck vaccine trials. Scientists including Anthony Fauci, who heads the NIAID, agree that funding needs to be redirected towards a broader research agenda and ideas beyond drug development and vaccines. Science last week noted that the decision about whether to proceed with the large NIH clinical trial planned for its HIV vaccine is still pending. ("Review of Vaccine Failure Prompts a Return to Basics" DOI: 10.1126/science.320.5872.30)

Nature also reported on the summit last week, pointing out that these clinical AIDS trials went forward not necessarily based on the strength of the science -- one of the vaccine candidates had a unimpressive track record -- but because programs needed to "show the public that progress is being made, thereby justifying the millions of dollars from philanthropists and taxpayers". ("Broken Promises" doi:10.1038/452503a).

The Nature editorial offers analysis of this HIV-AIDS vaccine experience, noting that ambitious commitments made in a flush funding environment in the early part of this decade short-changed basic research. These choices to heavily fund drug development are regarded less forgivingly in light of the trial failures and the budget shortfalls of recent years, according to the journal. Nature warns other fields, for instance stem-cell research, autism, and Parkinson's disease, are repeating these same mistakes.

The business approach comes with a high stakes mentality and ample, vigorous marketing that can ratchet up expectations both within the organization, the field and the public arena. The business-oriented nature of many philanthropic organizations influences the focus on development and can distort public expectations. But investors can and do influence the direction of an entire field. When a field becomes dominated by a few foundations it can gather tremendous productive momentum, but it can also stampede so hard down a particular path with such strong momentum in a particular direction. If that direction proves to be less fruitful than hoped research cannot turn around on a dime.

Each high-funded disease has its own idiosyncratic pitfalls, but behind the good works and fine intentions of charities, but the science research rarely responds to pressure, unlike many entrepreneurial ventures. When scientists request research funding, the results don't always yield answers as quickly as businesses might hope -- research is the mythical man myth on steroids. Some people investing in biotech and international public health come from businesses very unlike public health with its vagaries of not only politics and human behavior, but biology.

In today's fast paced communications and computing climate, intense focus on "results" is inherent to our culture. Expectations carry over from the successful and extraordinarily speedy progress of the genome sequencing. Scientists and politicians built hopes during that time that drug development and an accelerated understanding of human disease would follow. It has, but did we expect more? TV drug advertising gives the impression that scientists are developing a pill for every insignificant hangnail, when many of these drugs aren't new, just the subjects of new marketing campaigns. Meanwhile tougher diseases and conditions remain elusive.

High profile funding can influence the research environment and lead to a very public dead end. In the larger picture, despite the wisdom that should be accruing from these experiences, politicians, technology leaders, and pundits sometimes wax-on about technology's potential to produce solutions not only for specific diseases but for extremely complicated social problems such as global warming and healthcare. But while science research may yield pharmaceuticals and oil extraction techniques but one cannot look to science or technology to solve the healthcare crisis in the United States. Science and technology contextualize these problems and are integral in our lives but despite heady declarations, they are not central to the solutions.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Acronym Required has written previously about these subjects, AIDS and research directions, and vaccines. Here are a couple of our vaccine articles:

Vaccinations -- Why Worry?
Polio Vaccinations - The end of a scourge?
Group B Strep Vaccine Development
Vaccine Development For Infectious Diseases

Sequoia Systems sent Princeton professor Ed Felten an e-mail, warning that if Felten's lab proceeded to analyze the security and/or hackability of Sequoia's voting machines, the company would consider its intellectual property infringed. The move followed disturbing reports about Sequoia voting machines in New Jersey, for instance that 10,000 voting machines were uncertified by the state, that February primary officials noted irregularities in the vote records, and that Princeton professor Andrew Appel bought a few Sequoia machines at a state auction site and managed to program them to misappropriate votes.

The Sequoia Systems' letter warns that the company "retained counsel to stop any infringement of our intellectual properties, including any non-compliant analysis". Felten produced a demo last year showing how to hack a Diebold machine in one minute, and recently published a paper on the Diebold machines' vulnerabilities.

---------------------------------------------

Acronym Required also mentioned voting machines in this post.

Microhoo, Forward to the Future

Microsoft's Chief Technology Officer Ray Ozzie talked at a Las Vegas technology conference recently about the company's plans to build a "seamless mesh" computing infrastructure, inclusive of online applications and mobile devices. Microsoft is of course looking to extend its reach and in keeping with this goal aggressively proposes to merge with Yahoo. In public relations efforts focused on its Yahoo offer the company spins out comforting nuggets of merger wisdom. Ozzie told the Financial Times Monday: "'Technology companies, if they dive in and just smash things together for smashing them together's sake, it's reckless, it's just simply reckless.'" ("Microsoft in No Rush to Merge Yahoo Technology.") The message for investors, employers and customers is that Microsoft understands the risks of large mergers.

Meanwhile, as Mr. Ozzie spews sage adages about the heedless smashing together of things, Microsoft contends with product fallout from its latest operating system. In "They Criticized Vista. And They Should Know", the New York Times describes Vista's incompatibility problems and quotes three top executives who make disparaging on-the-record remarks. Granted they don't sling zingers worthy of Democratic presidential campaign staff, but one Microsoft executive who bought a "Vista Capable" PC, then thrashed through reckoning with its limited functionality told the Times: "I now have a $2,100 e-mail machine."

According to the story, many users refuse to upgrade and instead run XP because of Vista's reputation for various issues like: "[t]he graphics chip that couldn't handle Vista's whizzy special effects. The long delays as it loaded. The applications that ran at slower speeds. The printers, scanners and other hardware peripherals, which work dandily with XP, that lacked the necessary software, the drivers, to work well with Vista." All these problems after multiple launch delays. Is Vista a "smashed together" product?

Trash From The Past

If Vista had been launched at another time in history, like after any one of its proceeding operating systems -- MS-DOS, Windows 1.0, 2.0, 286, 386, 3.0, or Windows for Workgroups 3.1 or 3.11, for instance, these users might be duly appreciative. Today's new operating systems are comparatively customer friendly. Mind you today's customers have every right to complain heartily -- but lets get some perspective from the systems of yore.

Once operating systems didn't come bundled on PCs and setting them up took hours. This was often a collaborative group effort, as individuals all over the world, through trials and tribulation, would acquire tricks for easing the process then share their expertise on websites or via newgroups. Here's how one set of instructions for installing Windows for Workgroups 3.11, circa 1995, touted the new operating system from the Redmond company: "WFWG 3.11 is a real product with a real manual and Microsoft support. If there is a problem installing it, then there are many other sources of information available for troubleshooting the problem." Hard to overemphasize the importance of other sources back then.

If you weren't blessed with a CD-Rom, you'd do the installation by floppy, and so for Windows for Workgroups you'd get your pile of installation floppy discs and settle down at your computer for some fun. Four steps in, the guide offered some advice on the part, "add network protocol"

"With a bit of luck, the TCP/IP-32 protocol will be in the list. If not, then it is an "Unlisted or Updated Protocol" which is the first choice. Unfortunately, even if the TCP/IP protocol is listed, WFWG generally doesn't really know where to find it. It may invent a plausible but incorrect directory...No matter what choice is made, be prepared to fill in a dialog box with the letter and directory where the Microsoft TCP/IP distribution directory is found. Once the files are located, WFWG will copy them into the WFWG system and will add the protocol to the list in the Network Drivers and Network Setup panels. Back out by clicking the various OK buttons."

That's how it went, not mind-boggling, but tedious. If the installation was successful it was a great moment, but you'd keep that pile of floppies close at hand because who knew? If soon after you tried to install some software in an order that the operating system found offensive or if the computer for no apparent reason ceased to function in a predictable way, often your only recourse was to "reinstall". Vista is a system with today's problems, as all Microsoft operating systems have had age appropriate glitches for perpetual cutting edge user demanded technologies.

Crash To the Past

Vista problems were accompanied by a less than straight-forward marketing scheme with confusing (some say deceptive) advertising. In order to market Vista to lower end computers, the NYT says, Microsoft changed the label on new PC's. from the definitive "Vista Ready", which it wasn't, to the more wishy-washy "Vista Capable", a dubious distinction that many customers assumed meant "able", but actually meant "unable", and "incapable" of running any version of Vista except the scaled down one called "Home Basic", missing many of Vista's advertised features. There's the catch.

The judge in the lawsuit against Microsoft granted the case class-action status, so the plaintiffs who bought a PC labeled "Windows Vista Capable" could seek compensation for the company's deceptive marketing aimed at increasing demand. Microsoft appealed the class-action status, saying since customers had "different information" they weren't all in the same class, and because, "[c]ontinued proceedings here would cost Microsoft a substantial sum of money for discovery and divert key personnel from full-time tasks." But doesn't Microsoft systematically buck for court proceedings in lieu of nicer, profit-curtailing behavior? What better use of key personnel then?

They DOS Protest Too Much

Sure, some key personnel -- top executives -- spend time complaining to the New York Times about Vista. The paper quoted Microsoft VP Mike Nash saying "I personally got burned", which is interesting because VP's usually don't get "burned" on operating systems they (buy?) at steep employee discounts, especially when they have a stake in the company's rising stock. But still, when your executives go on the record with such admissions it can't be good -- or can it? Since key personnel are unlikely to join the class action suit, maybe their playing the we're all in it together card?

Some key personnel also make soothing sounds about the future and Microhoo, and some more stay busy shaking off the past and a chaffed EU, which seethes over MS refusals to share code and play nice. Last month the EU fined Microsoft 1.3 billion Euros for interoperability issues. The company has 3 months to pay off the fine which increases daily as the value of the dollar sinks.

Some complained that the fine was staggering, but to keep this in perspective -- Microsoft is worth hundreds of billions of dollars. No company likes piles of cash to whither away but this relatively small fine is also an important piece of the business model, balanced by profits rendered from the same strategies that peeved the EU. Yes, Microsoft has promised to be less secretive and more open in the future but it will no doubt will appeal the decision.

The company may express yearning to be free on the internet and in mobile devices, but its bread and butter is embedded in its desktop products -- its software, its browser and its operating system -- mainframe as that may seem. Steve Balmer commented that the fines were for past issues now behind the company. But the company's profit is in proprietary systems and maintaining market share by shutting down competition. So what to expect? Naturally, Microsoft will continue to conduct business "competitively", as usual.It will build impressive backwards compatible software and strategize about how to squeeze profit out of some of Yahoo's services. To do this still more "key personnel" will be the large teams of razor-teethed lawyers, ready, no doubt, for many court bouts. Brussel's just initiated two new antitrust investigations against the Microsoft.

You're so Sad, We're So Happy

Antidepressants have taken a beating over the past couple of years with a steady stream of difficult news, some of it contradictory -- about studies biased by doctors interests, potential dangers of the drugs for children, limited effectiveness as a result of selective reporting, and patients struggling to withdraw from the drugs. Regardless of the news, many patients critically depend on antidepressants and pharmaceutical companies invest heavily in their development.

Last week Wyeth announced the approval of Pristiq, an antidepressant they're marketing to succeed Effexor XR. Effexor was the first of the serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs), followed by Eli Lilly's Cymbalta. Wyeth won FDA approval for the drug's use as an antidepressant and is hoping to get the drug approved for menopause. This is a savvy move. With the HRTs in decline because of cancer risks Pristiq is the first drug to be marketed as a non-hormonal option for menopause "symptoms".

Eating Your Own Dog Food?

Some doctors question whether "Pristiq", a metabolite of Effexor, is an improvement over any of the drugs currently on the market. Regardless of doubts, the drug is a lithe marketing confection, starting with the name, "Pristiq", which summons to mind "pristine", as in, that is the cleanest most crystal clear pristine lake you've ever seen, and "mystique", as in, wow, he/she has that certain je ne sais quois -- mystique. Ergo "Pristiq". Just saying it makes you want to hop out of the chair, dress well, smile brightly, finish a report, wrap up a business meeting, or throw a dinner party -- tonight, for 50 friends.

With Effexor coming off patent, Wyeth is happy to have Pristiq in the wings. As Gino Germano, Wyeth's president of pharmaceuticals told the New York Times, doctors and patients need to have options. The Times' print edition featured a photo of the beaming Germano, perhaps elated over the FDA approval news and definitely projecting a certain unique Pristiq mystique. Some analysts predict $1.5 billion in sales by 2012.

William Kristol says that "Democrats Should Read Kipling". He bases his recommendation on George Orwell's 1942 essay, "Rudyard Kipling". Kristol responds to the House Democrats' hesitation to sign-off on the Foreign Intelligence Security Act (FISA), by taking a ludicrously bold position and advancing Orwell in support of the surveillance act.

He suggests that Orwell and Kipling would have approved the Bush administration's unfettered surveillance mission -- although more realistic reaction to the juxtaposition of Orwell and the Bush administration might be apoplectic brain stem activity -- 1984!1984! 1984!".

Kristol trots out the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, the Attorney General, a former federal judge, the director of national intelligence, and a retired Vice Admiral, who he says approve of surveillance. But the titles are identical to previous casts of discredited characters -- the ones who slam-dunked the US into Iraq, couldn't remember the facts and never meant to mislead Congress. And they're here to warn us blandly that "surveillance abilities are important to our national security"? Republican, Democrats and citizens agree. That's not the issue.

In Sunday's Los Angeles Times, Andrew P. Napolitano, a former New Jersey Superior Court judge and FOX commentator, wrote in "The Invasion of America", that since 1978, the government has been allowed 99% of its FISA applications. The current provisions would allow unfettered surveillance of phone or e-mail conversations if one of the people was a foreigner. He said:

"Those who believe the Constitution means what it says should tremble at every effort to weaken any of its protections. The Constitution protects all "persons" and all "people" implicated by government behavior....If we lower constitutional protections for foreigners and their American correspondents, for whom will we lower them next?"

FISA was approved by the Senate and the House continues its debate. To address the controversy, Kristol tracked down Orwell's essay on Kipling (a response to T.S. Eliot's essay) "in a used-book store -- in the Milwaukee airport, of all places". Fortunately for readers, they need not venture to a used-book store in Milwaukee as our intrepid columnist did, they can read Orwell's essay on the internet ("the World Wide Web", as it were).

Orwell observed that Kipling was often used for "quotations parroted to and fro without any attempt to look up their context or discover their meaning." Indeed, that seems to be Orwell's own plight as well. Kristol clips sentences from Orwell's essay to cobble together his threadbare argument: Democrats should support FISA because the Republican party has been in power so long that only they understand how to rule the country.

Kristol gets off to a rough start using Orwell's oft-quoted comment that Kipling's writing was '''morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting'''. He brazenly edits Orwell's sentence, which actually read: "jingo imperialist, he is morally insensitive and aesthetically disgusting" (emphasis mine). Kristol says Democrats should be more like Kipling, who -- and he carefully selects another snippet of text -- "at least tried to imagine what action and responsibility are like".

So does Kristol intend to suggest that Democrats toady the administration with "jingo imperialism" like an early 20th century children's story writer -- or dare we suggest, like some columnists at the New York Times? Should Democrats kowtow to those who like to "think of themselves as the governing party "(emphasis mine)? Or are those in the "ruling power" the "jingo imperialists"? Quoting the sentence out of context as he does, Kristol leaves plenty of room for readers' interpretations, but distorts rather than elucidates Orwell on Kipling, (via T.S. Eliot, the impetus for Orwell's essay).

Kipling can't be scissored and dressed up like a little paper doll in patriotic neoliberal red white and blue trousers. Kipling was not some caricature scribe, but a paradoxical and contradictory writer whose views of England and its empire changed over time.

Edmund Wilson, Sara Suleri, W.H. Auden, Salman Rusdie, Edward Said, TS Eliot, and many more have studied Kipling's contradictions, nationalism, imperialism and racist attitudes. One biographer, David Gilmour wrote in "The Long Recessional: The Imperial Life of Rudyard Kipling, of "his early role as apostle of the empire, the embodiment of imperial aspiration, and his later one as the prophet of national decline." Kristol lauded Kipling for "identif[ying] himself with the ruling power and not with the opposition." But this was not Kipling, who often wrote from the perspective of the non-rulers.

Christopher Hitchens wrote a review of Gilmour's political biography in the June, 2002 issue of The Atlantic, called "A Man of Permanent Contradictions". Hitchens characterized Kipling as a deft marketeer: "his entire success as a bard derived from the ability to shift between Low and High Church, so to speak." Hitchens quotes Kipling's poem "If", which seems to recognize of the need for political versatility:

In keeping with Kipling's literary fate of being widely adapted by all parties, the poem was a favorite of "José Antonio Primo de Rivera, the founder of Spanish fascism, and of President Woodrow Wilson. It was apparently written in honor of Leander Starr Jameson, a British colonial pirate who led an aggressive raid into Boer territory, precipitating the horrible South African war", Hitchens points out. I suppose its a complementary tradition then, that Kristol adopt Kipling as a neoliberal mascot.

But jingo imperialist he may have been, Kipling also embodied a stoicism and sense of military duty that's unfamiliar to much of the ruling elite today. When his son was denied commission into the army, Kipling pulled strings so he could enlist. As Hitchens writes:

"Ultimately, Kipling's two greatest literary and emotional attainments - the ability to evoke childhood and the capacity to ennoble imperialism - contradicted themselves too flatly and painfully, and culminated in the shattering sacrifice of his beloved son, John, on the Western Front in 1915. This was enough inner contradiction for several lifetimes."²

For all the variably scathing and favorable analysis, the pondering, questioning, loathing and admiration, Kipling remains enigmatic. He celebrated the empire, but foresaw its decline. Writes Hitchens; "To those born or brought up in England after 1914, let alone 1945, the sense of a waning day is part of the assumed historical outcome. It was Kipling's achievement to have sounded this sad, admonishing note during the imperial midday, and to have conveyed the premonition among his hearers that dusk was nearer than they had thought." The poem "Recessional", as quoted by Hitchens, warns of the Empire's demise:

Orwell wrote that while Kipling celebrated empire, he chaffed at its failings, saying: "He could not foresee, therefore, that the same motives which brought the Empire into existence would end by destroying it...The modern totalitarians know what they are doing, and the nineteenth-century English did not know what they were doing."

Kristol blurs Orwell's meanings and Kipling's complexities and contradictions. He grasps at Kipling's legacy and crafts a familiar Republican myth for loyalists. Ever the party scribe, Kristol draws Democrats as "refined people who snigger at the sometimes inept and ungraceful ways of the Republicans". Adept himself at fiction, Kristol charges that Democrats, once they controlled the Congress, "ensured that [Bush] couldn't turn those failures [in Iraq] around." This brand of subterfuge masking as patriotism is not Kipling's, nor should any of us continue to embrace it.

Perhaps Kristol attempts to reach beyond 1980's history, the worn cowboy hat and stirrups of the Reagan figurehead, but the plot is the same. Whose nightmare/dream is this? I'm not drawing any parallels between the US and British empires -- an analogy that would be as perilous as Kristol's -- but it's no longer morning in America.

Kristol attempts to sketch, a lovable and omniscient administration, a clan of sometimes bumbling but honest and well meaning folks, bible loving people just like you and me, who know what's best for us and happened upon power by the love of God (and the Supreme Court). They do not exist. What Kristol hails is a cold, organized machine with profiteering corporate intentions for Iraq and frighteningly little regard for the Constitution, you or me.

-------------------------------------------------------

¹ Here is the full text of Orwell's book about Big Brother, "1984".

---------------------------------------------------

Acronym Required previously wrote on immunity for telecoms, and FISA. We also wrote on Rikki-Tikki-Tavi and mongooses.

In Elizabeth Kolbert's book, "Field Notes from a Catastrophe" she reported on global warming as it affected communities throughout the world. Her clear descriptions of global warming cut through denialist's claims, which at the time were still effectively muddying public understanding of climate change. She first published the book as a three part series in the New Yorker in 2005. She was not upbeat in her conclusions: "It may seem impossible to imagine that a technologically advanced society could choose, in essence, to destroy itself, but that is what we're now in the process of doing"

In a more recent New Yorker, December 24/31 issue, Kolbert reported on Al Gore's Nobel Prize acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize. In his address, Gore acknowledged that we're doing good work but face an uphill battle in tackling climate change:

"today, we dumped another 70 million tons of global-warming pollution into the thin shell of atmosphere surrounding our planet, as if it were an open sewer. And tomorrow, we will dump a slightly larger amount, with the cumulative concentrations now trapping more and more heat from the sun."

Gore did not end on that note, but elaborated his call to arms. Kolbert however, used Gore's statement of the current problem, from which he launched the rest of his speech, as her article's final paragraph.

Therefore, with Kolbert's take on the somber piece of Gore's message in mind, I was even more affected by the full page Nissan Maxima ad that followed her article two pages later (19mpg city/24mpg highway). Then a couple of pages after that was the four page Chrysler insert presenting some "celebs" who were taking their 3 kids on a road trip to see the Griffith Light Show. Chrysler says its Town & Country minivan "knows how to let the good times roll". (16mpg city/23mpg highway). The article on Gore was preceded by the two page Lexis LS ad (16 mpg city/24 mpg highway).

The prominent message, therefore, which yields hundreds of thousands of dollars for the New Yorker, is about shiny new cars. Pages of car ads that fail to mention a whit about MPG ratings or emissions. So readers may indeed read Kolbert's fine print about Gore's speech and about how critical it is for the US to act on global warming. This is the challenge that many agree is the world's most pressing. But automobile manufacturer's don't even feign public attention to the challenge in their expensive glossy pages. And why would the New Yorker turn down the cash, I suppose?

----------------------------------------------------------------

Acronym Required has written previously on the environment and and consumer advertising, for instance: Cars: Buying Cognitive Dissonance".

There seems to be a new trend among sports retailers. Many large chains are discontinuing the sale of polycarbonate bottles. These popular drink bottles contain bisphenol A, an endocrine disruptor. Nalgene bottles, made by Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., are ubiquitous among athletes, and the company has successfully cultivated a new market for its colored plastic bottles to augment its labware market. However as awareness about the health risks of bisphenol A containing polycarbonate spreads, it makes sense that the bottles would lose favor among sports enthusiasts who comprise some of the most health conscious and environmentally aware consumers.

Last week, Canada's Mountain Equipment Co-Op (MEC), announced that it would discontinue the sale of polycarbonate bottles including Nalgene bottles. MEC is sports co-op started in Vancouver, similar in theory to Seatle's REI (Recreational Equipment Inc.). The company has followed the bisphenol A research for three years, a MEC spokesperson said, and will continue to follow the research. For now, however, they won't be selling the bottles.

Today, Lululemon, another Canadian retailer specializing in workout gear, announced that it plans to stop selling the polycarbonate bottles in January. Lululemon is an international retail chain with stores in the US, Australia, and Japan. The company last gained attention when it denied a New York Times investigation which found that the company's seaweed fiber yoga clothes didn't have seaweed in them.

Patagonia, the North American sports retailer, also does not sell polycarbonate bottles, but instead sells metal drink containers.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Acronym Required has been following various aspects of the bisphenol A story for a few years.

Yahoo In China

This week, Yahoo settled a lawsuit brought against the company by two Chinese citizens and their families. The lawsuit accused Yahoo of aiding and abetting torture under the Alien Tort Claims Act and the Torture Victims Protection Act. Yahoo had been giving Chinese authorities the names of dissidents who were then arrested, tried, and imprisoned -- guilty of using Yahoo services for pro-democracy activity. Two of these citizens, now in prison with ten year sentences, attracted the attention of the global community. In September, 2002, Yahoo turned over account information of Wang Xiaoning, who was charged by China of "inciting subversion" (creating a publication that advocated "a multiparty political system, separation of powers, and general elections"). Later Yahoo turned over information for Shi Tao, who China accused of transmitting "state secrets" (information about China's plans for handling the anniversary of Tiannamen square).

Yahoo defended its actions, saying it was bound to Chinese law. Furthermore, the questions had no place in American courts, they said, since Yahoo had: "no control over the sovereign Government of the People's Republic of China, the laws it passes and the manner in which it enforces its laws."

Yahoo In France

This is very different from what Yahoo said in a case in the French courts in 2000, when they claimed that they were an American company not subject to the laws of France. In that case Mark Knobel, a Paris resident, had found a cache of Nazi mementos being sold on Yahoo auction sites. Knobel asked Yahoo to remove the merchandise, a request that AOL had honored in a similar situation two years earlier. The company founders, Jerry Yang and David Filo were busy celebrating the dot com era. Their company namesake, "Yahoo", is one is who is "rude unsophisticated and brash", and the stock price was close to $500 a share.¹ Yahoo refused to remove the Nazi items.

"'It is very difficult to do business if you have to wake up every day and say 'OK, whose laws do I follow?', said Heather Killen, a Yahoo vice president, "We have many countries and many laws and just one Internet"'

While different than their China claim, their train of thought was apt. The Internet in 1990 was a new place, a proper noun -- like Atlantis or Shamhala. Internet businesses were much closer to the manifesto issuing 1990's, when some of the Internet's first users fostered ideas about Cyberspace, the democratic, borderless social space over which sovereign governments could not lord. In the midst of e-commerce proliferation, many inside and outside of the technology grappled with the question of whether nation-states would take a lesser role.

However, French lawyers in 2000 didn't buy Yahoo's argument. French laws applied to radio and television, why would they not apply to the internet? Judge Jean-Jacques Gomez ordered Yahoo to make the Nazi paraphernalia inaccessible via the French internet. Yahoo then tried to argue that they couldn't technologically remove Nazi merchandise on sites hosted in the United States for the sake of the French. It was impossible -- how could you tell where the user was geographically located?

The court drew in expert witnesses who demonstrated that this assertion was false. Yahoo at the time was serving up French ads to French users from sites the company had mirrored in Switzerland. Yahoo's actions weren't protected under the laws of a sovereign US. In 2001 after more protracted dispute and non-compliance with the court requests, Yahoo removed Nazi merchandise.

In the Chinese case, as in the French case, Yahoo was cagey. They first testified to Congress that they had no idea of the fates that befell the Chinese whose names the company had turned over to the government. But a translated copy of the Chinese authority's warrant turned up on the internet. Congress held another hearing, and the committee's title indicated the tone the meeting would take: "Yahoo! Inc.'s Provision of False Information to Congress.". House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Tom Lantos (D-CA) (very active himself fighting crimes against humanity), subjected Yahoo's CEO and council to scathing rebuke, and demanded that Yang apologize to the families of imprisoned men. Shortly thereafter, a cowed Yahoo settled with the families.

Yahoo et al: Stateless to Stateful to....?

In 1990 when international discourse circled the question of whether states were relevant, Yahoo based its defense in France on the sentiment they weren't. In July, 2002, Yahoo entered China's business world with stock trading at $9.71, humbler than the 2000 highs. Yahoo was one of 300 companies to sign a document issued by the Chinese government, "Public Pledge on Self-Discipline for the Chinese Internet Industry". The companies agreed to follow various Chinese dictates aimed at cracking down on the internet's potential to democratically inform and enlighten, to question the government. The Chinese surveillance and censorship society blossomed. Few people in the business hungry US found these companies' stances disagreeable. Human Rights Watch was one who did fear the worst, warning in August 2002, that Yahoo "risks complicity in rights abuses". "If it implements the pledge, Yahoo! will become an agent of Chinese law enforcement."

Today, the US dithers about whether waterboarding is torture or not, revels in its own abundant state secrets, and wiretaps to its heart's content, covering its actions with the sinister haze of terroristic threats and legal immunity. Contractors in Iraq have upon occasion raped, killed and pillaged -- but there's always profit. The US leaps to do business with countries led by borderline or full-fledged tyrants who spout various "nationalist" ideas. Despite the current milieu, taking the moral high ground is worthwhile every now and again. Talking about "spread of democracy" serves certain ends. There are instances when the chimes of a declarative moral stance resonate with a public eager for seemingly anachronistic sentimentalities, like when a Senate committee member lambasted Yahoo during the hearings: "morally you are pygmies".

In the article "Yahoo Isn't the Only Villain", the Los Angeles Times points out that the entire Chinese national firewall, espionage program and internet surveillance system is built and supported with U.S. technology. Cisco built the firewall and supplies other technology. Skype (Ebay) scans instant messages,Google's search filters offensive ideas, and Microsoft, Dell and H.P. also participate. Many of these companies aren't new to the game, IBM supplied the technology for the efficient Nazi state too.

The head of the Chinese company, China Security and Surveillance, who also serves as the technology director of the ministry of public security that runs Project Golden Shield. The company recently incorporated as a US publicly traded company to encourage western investment. China Security and Surveillance financed itself with loans and private placements with 17 US institutional investors. China Public Security Technology and other companies have done the same thing.

The New York Times reported that the Chinese security industry was valued at $500 million in 2003 and is predicted to be 43 $billion by 2010. Finance message boards such as Yahoo's buzz with anticipation. Tom Lantos is leading the charge to set up guidelines for US companies working in China. If accomplished, it will be a feat -- businesses busily hack away at the effort.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

¹In the book, "Who Controls the Internet, Illusions of a Borderless World," Jack Goldsmith and Tim Wu describe Yahoo's challenge to France's control of the internet back in 2000. They trace the history that led to the French legal battle and the position that Yahoo subsequently took with China.

The site Collegehumor.com does a skit of the un-aired pilot for the Fox Show 24, back in 1994.

Microsoft Comes out Swinging

Microsoft announced this week that open source software infringes on 235 of its patents. The company is cagey about which patents and what the detailed infringements are. It does say that the Linux kernel infringes 42 patents, and that Linux's user interface (UI) infringes on 65 patents -- some very proprietary button placement no doubt, and very precious look and feel.

If they revealed more of the details, the software in question could be changed, and/or people would refute their charges. Instead, in an atmosphere of heightened awareness about frivolous patents, they're careful to avoid an SCO-like courtroom reckoning. Instead, reminiscent of the RIAA, the company is shrewdly using the media to brandish the specter of lawsuits over the growing open source community.

Microsoft paid Novell a few hundred million dollars for "coupons", which Microsoft can then sell to customers for Linux subscriptions. Novell, arguably eviscerated by Microsoft in the past, heaved itself back into a negotiating position with its SUSE Linux. Microsoft, for its part, has increasing found its expensive, proprietary, patch-needy software challenged by Linux. The deal was no doubt an attempt to stem the growing number of businesses abandoning its platform and opting for Linux.

There's a article on Microsoft's position, with some history on Linux, licensing, the legal claims, and open source in this Fortune article. The deal exploited loopholes in the GPL license which governs Linux distribution. Novell and Microsoft agreed not to sue each other's customers for patent infringement. The marketing collaboration may have been primary for Novell, and Microsoft was most likely also motivated to set a precedent. However, as Fortune noted, the deal naturally received scathing reviews from some small companies and open source purists.

"In free-software circles...the Microsoft-Novell entente was met with apoplectic rage. Novell's most eminent Linux developer quit in protest. Stallman [and his Free Software Foundation], of course, denounced it. Not only did it make a mockery of free-software principles, but it threatened the community's common-defense strategy."

Apparently companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard, AIG, and members of the Open Source Development Lab (OSDL), approved the collaboration, which also got Linus Torvalds' blessing.

Ghosts of Big Blue

What's Microsoft up to? Some people have suggested that the Vista rollout wasn't as successful as Microsoft had hoped and that Microsoft is desperate. Microsoft sometimes misses the boat, and when they do they generally try anything they can to get back in the game anyway they can. They were famously late to the Internet party, but they now brag about Word's new html capabilities. They might be able to symbolically improve the 2003 edition of Word simply by adding the word "blog" to the dictionary. The 2003 version suggested that when I typed "blog", what I really meant "bog", or "bloc", or "blot", or "blob" or "blow" (in that order). As in, gee, we're really bogged down with Vista, let's form a bloc against Linux, let's obliterate it. Open source? We don't hear you, we don't hear you -- let's blot it out! Let's turn Linux customers to trembling blobs. Wow, this open source "movement's" tougher than we thought; this really blows.

Microsoft fails to surprise, since it has a track record of using strong-arm tactics, but open-source is not Netscape. Open source has growing support, both from organizations and individuals. Sun's Jonathan Schwartz, in a little Sun manifesto, did suggest pithily the Microsoft needs to wise up and "innovate, not litigate". He notes:

"You would be wise to listen to the customers you're threatening to sue - they can leave you, especially if you give them motivation. Remember, they wouldn't be motivated unless your products were somehow missing the mark."

Open source, he said, "is not a genie any litigator I know can put back in a bottle."

However it will most likely be a protracted battle. According to the Fortune article, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, AIG Technologies, HSBC, Wal-Mart, Dell and Reed Elsevier have bought coupons. These clients are naturally tremendously risk adverse and this may seem like a good option for them and their customers, rather than have Microsoft forever dangling hints of law suits around them. But importantly, these companies also depend on patent protection. They probably recognize open source as a common foe. Indeed some of them, like Reed Elsevier, are fighting their own, similar, open access battles.

Sciences International: Health and the Environment

It reads like the classic story of the fox guarding the hen house. Sciences International, (SI), a small company with clients like the American Chemistry Council, Dupont, WR Grace, and Exxon Mobil, also ran the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR), a project in the NIH's toxicology program (NTP) charged with deciding which environmental toxins pose health risks to reproduction and the development of unborn children.

Science International wrote a report last year on bisphenol A's (BPA) safety, which came to the attention of the public and congress when the Environmental Working Group (EWG) alleged that the conclusions were biased towards industry research studies in a Feb. 28th letter to the NIH hiring director.

Reproductive health and development, like children's health, is always a lightening rod for public attention, and increasingly, so is bisphenol A. Science International's review of the literature on bisphenol A caused enough concern among scientists, members of congress, and public health official that in the ensuing brouhaha, the NIH's National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) terminated Science International's $5.24 million contract running CERHR. After the termination, Herman Gibb, the president of the approximately ten person company insisted to the Washington Post, "I don't ever believe in my heart of hearts there was a conflict of interest".

When the story made headlines last month it seemed to confirm our worst fears. NIEHS accepted a contract apparently written by Science's International to run CERHR without listing company's conflicts of interest, an arrangement that seems ripe for abuse. Acronym Required looked into the details of the story, which do little to allay those concerns. Had SI, working for the FDA, the NIH, and now CERHR, as well as significant numbers of chemical companies perhaps systematically watered down environmental safeguard regulations over the past decade to suit it's corporate clients? The Science International incident reveals the potential pitfalls of blending government and industry work, both for companies like SI and for public health and welfare.

Science International's Bisphenol A Study

Bisphenol A binds to estrogen receptors and can cause deleterious health effects such as decreased sperm count, enlarged prostate, cancers, diabetes, early puberty, and immunological and developmental effects. It's potent at very small doses and ubiquitous, found in everything from dental resins to household products like canned food, plastic food containers, and baby bottles. Today 95% of the population carries detectable levels of the chemical in their blood and hundreds of scientific research reports indicate BPA's toxicity to humans.

According to critics, Science International's first draft report on the health effects of BPA was biased. The report concluded the opposite of what hundreds of government funded BPA studies conclude. A survey of the research on bisphenol A effects shows that 92% over 100 (109/119) government studies on BPA found adverse health effects, whereas all 11 industry funded studies found that BPA caused no adverse health effects. Scientists critical of the Science's International report said that the review panel favored industry results while ignoring unreliable industry results base on unscientific methodologies like lab protocols that used no controls.The EWG also questioned whether SI's principal scientist could neutrally evaluate the dangers of bisphenol A (BPA) since he had worked with Dow Chemical and the European Chemical Industry Council -- entities with business interests in BPA.

Sciences International wrote the meta-study of the research studies, then chose the panel who reviewed their work. While SI said that the final conclusions as to the hazards of bisphenol A during reproduction and development were the panel's, when Acronym Required looked at the panel's edits of Science International's first draft they were stylistic, not scientific.

A New GovBiz Model?

Can a company consult to the chemistry industry and also evaluate the safety of that industry's products -- without bias? Can we trust government, industry partnerships to evaluate science when their contractual agreements cede the very principles we use to ensure integrity in research and in business, like peer review, conflict of interest statements, and competitive bidding processes? An older CERHR website described the partnership between SI and the CERHR:

"Under the direction of Michael Shelby, Ph.D., Director, CERHR at NIEHS, scientific and support staff at NIEHS and Sciences International, Inc. operate the Center for the Evaluation of Risks to Human Reproduction (CERHR). The Principal Investigator, Anthony Scialli, M.D., leads the scientific and support staff at Sciences International, Inc."

In addition to the BPA report, SI also produced reports profiling the safety of many other chemicals during their contract with CERHR. Sciences International consulted for 10 years with the FDA and the EPA, and worked with corporate clients like GE, Union Carbide, Hoechst Celanese, Otsuka Chemical, Cytek Industries, a plethora of law firms, and industry groups such as the American Chemical Council, Synthetic Organic Chemical, the Acrylonitrile Group, and the American Petroleum Institute. The EWG wrote in one letter to the director of the National Toxicology Program (NTP), about the "ethical concerns surrounding this contractor that involve apparent financial ties with the chemical industry..." Indeed, when we perused SI's older websites, they wrote clearly about the work they performed:

"Nowhere is Sciences' exposure assessment experience more evident than in EPA's new Clean Air Act residual risk program...[]...EPA generally applied, for the first time, this guidance in a recent residual risk case study of the secondary lead smelting industry. That guidance, or some variation of it, will be used to address residual risks for all remaining industrial categories with MACT standards. Working for a coalition of seven major trade associations (Chemical Manufacturers Association, American Petroleum Institute, American Coke and Coal Chemicals Institute, American Iron and Steel Institute, National Mining Association, American Forest and Paper Association, and Association of International Automobile Manufacturers), Sciences prepared detailed comments on the case study approach and results, and presented a report on March 1, 2000, to EPA's Science Advisory Board (SAB). The ensuing SAB draft meeting report clearly showed that Sciences' comments played a major role in their analysis, which included a recommendation to revise the case study and return it to the SAB for a second review.

Sciences also developed a vastly improved exposure and risk assessment method for evaluating coke oven residual risks and recently gathered residual risk data on the gasoline distribution industry for the American Petroleum Institute. Sciences' staff includes an ex-EPA manager who led for six years the hazardous air pollutant regulatory efforts for the Office of Air Quality Planning and Standards (OAQPS). In that position, he managed the initial development of the Human Exposure Model and was a member of the group that wrote the Agency's initial exposure and risk assessment guidelines. Earlier, he conceived of and managed the original 4-year study of the organic chemical manufacturing industry that ultimately formed the basis of the Hazardous Organic NESHAP (HON), he also..."

Naive marketing hype, or conflict of interest? If boasting to chemical companies about your company's power to have its way with government is inherently wrong, then for years Sciences International promiscuously flouted the rule in marketing material on their public website. Clearly, SI had strong ties to the chemical industry. But was it some especially insidious arrangement, a punishable offense? Or is this just how the U.S. government works?

Many companies who contract with the government also work for business clients who gain honest efficiencies and insights from consultants' familiarity with government rules and ruminations. In general, we wouldn't be shocked to find private contractors running public agencies, because privatization is a goal of recent governments -- both Democrat and Republican. The increasingly fuzzy demarcations between private and public entities constitute contracts in Iraq, New Orleans, U.S. National Parks and atmospheric weather monitoring operations. Overall, companies who mix business relationships with government work fare well these days. The Homeland Security Index, for instance, which includes SI's parent company Tetra Tech, rose 5.3% last quarter, whereas the S&P 500 posted -.86%, the DJIA; -1.70%, and Nasdaq; -1.57%. Are these corporate/public relationships the new normal, or something else, given that SI was summarily fired?

The Etiquette of Serving Two Masters

In one of two good pieces Nature wrote on the subject a couple of weeks ago, ("Regulators pull contract for chemical review" 446;958-959, Apr. 26), the author noted, "there's a legal grey area" that contractors navigate in dealing with clients. Nature makes a point. If you find SI's client mix disturbing, then the client list of most law firms or consulting companies might also disturb you. How are consulting companies supposed to separate the clients? Nature quoted one toxicologist who pointed out that the rules are unclear, even for companies like Sciences International, he said, who (as Nature summarized) "try to segregate industrial and government work to limit conflicts".

Contrary to what the consultant assumed, however, and perhaps leading to to its undoing, Science's International did not convincingly "segregate" it's constituencies. Here are some excerpts from their 2005 site.

"...EPA estimated very high cancer risks in one assessment of a regulated industry. Sciences developed a much more accurate exposure model and also reassessed the cancer unit risk estimate using much more recent worker epidemiology data and biologically-based modeling approaches, originally developed by Sciences' experts. Sciences' revised study showed that actual risk estimates were two to three orders of magnitude lower than EPA's earlier conservative estimates...."

"Sciences has unique experience in assessing health risks due to inhaled air toxicants. Sciences' experts were selected by the EPA, as sole source contractors, to work on the underlying methodology by which the EPA develops its safe levels of exposure to chemicals by the inhalation route..."

"...Through a contract with the EPA, Sciences carried out the quality assurance and validation of BMDS, making several critical recommendations that influenced its development. ...[]...Sciences is also currently involved in a similar effort for EPA's recently developed Categorical Regression (CatReg) software...[]...A 5-person Sciences International team is writing the EPA Benchmark Dose Guidelines. With all these considerations in mind, we are in an excellent position to apply the BMDS and CatReg methods to particular substances that would benefit from these approaches."

"[Sciences International scientists]...have applied a biologically-based model approach to coke oven emissions for the industry and derived an alternative cancer potency factor which has been accepted by the EPA. We believe that our ability to utilize accurate dosimetry and pharmacodynamic models in tandem in risk assessments provides unique opportunities to the chemical industry."

SI's statements seem clearly intended to sway a corporate audience. SI clearly tries to establish itself as an ally to the chemical industry, "working on underlying methodogies", a company who changed EPA estimates "two to three orders of magnitude lower", who made "critical recommendations" that "influenced" standards, and created "unique opportunities [for] the chemical industry". Under their "sole contractor" status, SI and its government clients had perhaps short-circuited the bidding process. EWG highlighted portions of a 1999 a letter from SI to RJ Reynolds, where the company wrote:

"Our experience in supporting these government agencies in the advancement of science gives Science a unique credibility to negotiate with regulators of behalf of our private sector clients, to speak authoritatively in the scientific community, and to be accepted in legal proceedings and by the public."

According to Sciences International's own self-promotion, it had broad influence in many agencies, which benefited chemical companies. But without knowledge about the specific science behind SI's marketing, it's difficult to discern what changes they made. It would require a research team to analyze whether those changes were indeed detrimental to health -- whether they are a sleight on behalf of industry, or whether SI simply refined the EPA's less accurate or outdated measurement techniques. Maybe the government standards for indoor and outdoor air, water, etc., did benefit from adjustments based on SI's expertise.

Toxic Puffery

Many big companies in Science International's position keep a more sanctified public front, a website splashed with value concoctions of their love for children, concern for animals and stewardship of the great outdoors. Naively or greedily, Sciences International tossed discretion to the wind and instead promoted their business, aggressively emphasizing the their influential role in government and their willingness to leverage that value proposition for corporate clients.

SI redesigned their website a couple of years ago, and seemingly came to its corporate senses, including a more publicly agreeable photo collage of children and trees, and a client list scrubbed of corporate entities. The new site brags less about the company's experience drafting "more accurate" measurements of exposure assessment and dose-response for the EPA. But sometimes information on the internet doesn't die as cleanly as people might wish. Occasionally ghosts of past lurk about to startle the unsuspecting with a bump in the night, a startling reminder of pasts long since banquished. SI's old website revealed SI's habit of not separating clients. The entire business model, in fact, leveraged conflicts of interest.

"...Sciences' methods development work is often sponsored by public agencies, such as the U.S. EPA, while applications work is most often for the private sector where agents of particular concern need to be addressed. Sciences' knowledge of the acceptable regulatory methods and practices can facilitate ultimate acceptance of these analyses for the private sector."

Dr. Gibb insisted that in cases where SI's government work with one chemical coincided with corporate work, consultants on one contract had no knowledge of what their cohorts were doing on another. How shall we interpret that? On one hand, consulting can be like that. On the other, this was a ten person company. The president doesn't know what people are working on? He complained to the journal Nature that the NIEHS action was unfair "with a capital U". Perhaps so, but then it would probably be fair to say that for whatever their intents and purposes, SI's record just happened to look fishy with a capital F.

Despite the challenge of sorting out what the company was really up to, SI's work is fraught with appearances of conflict of interest. As EWG pointed out, the NIH was remiss not to look at Sciences International's website years earlier. Even a half-hearted glance would have hinted at a slew of conflicts.

According to the Los Angeles Times, in response to NIH inquiries about their duel roles, Sciences International acknowledged that they had prepared Federal health reviews for styrene, ethylene glycol, and soy formula, while working for a styrene trade group, the American Chemistry Council, and the United Soybean Board. However, the president, Herman Gibb, told the Washington Post that he had only learned "last month", because of the NIH's information request request, that the company had worked for the chemical trade companies while simultaneously working to ascertain safe levels for those chemicals.

(Read the continuation of this story, starting with "Vanity Press and Educating the Layperson", in the next post)

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Acronym Required previously wrote about bisphenol A in the following articles:

Plastic Bottles- Protecting Your Baby, by the ACC (July, 2005)

Bisphenol-A and Phthalates Bill in California (January, 2006)

San Francisco Bans Bisphenol A, Phthalates (July, 2006)

San Francisco phthalates & Bisphenol A Ban (November, 2006)