Category: Miscellaney Page 7 of 14

The 2016 campaign season brought to the surface awesome levels of political discontent. After the election, instead of wondering where that anger came from, most of the press quickly pivoted to a new tale about a Russian plot to attack our Democracy. This conveyed the impression that the election season we’d just lived through had been an aberration, thrown off the rails by an extraordinary espionage conspiracy between Trump and a cabal of evil foreigners.

This narrative contradicted everything I’d seen traveling across America in my two years of covering the campaign. The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system.

The anger wasn’t just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans’ chosen $150 million contender, Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or $50 million per delegate). It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” with little money and close to no institutional support became a surprise contender.

The media doesn’t talk much about working-class America. But when it does, it mainly has one thing to say about it: that it’s entirely white, male, and very right-wing. All those things are lies….

Central to this story is the decline of labor reporting, once a mainstay of major dailies. Today, by contrast, as Martin puts it: “A conference gathering of labor/workforce beat reporters from the country’s leading newspapers could fit into a single booth at an Applebee’s.” Of the country’s top twenty-five newspapers, he notes, a majority no longer covers the workplace/labor beat on a full-time basis, and the landscape for such reporting appears to be even bleaker on television (one 2013 survey cited by Martin, for example, reveals that only 0.3 percent of network TV news in the years 2008, 2009, and 2011 covered labor issues).

Abigail Disney: What It’s Like to Grow Up With More Money Than You’ll Ever Spend
[The Cut, via The Big Picture 4-1-19]

In what ways did your dad change, other than having a jet?Actually, having a jet is a really big deal. If I were queen of the world, I would pass a law against private jets, because they enable you to get around a certain reality. You don’t have to go through an airport terminal, you don’t have to interact, you don’t have to be patient, you don’t have to be uncomfortable. These are the things that remind us we’re human….

How did the jet change your dad? It wasn’t just the plane, but it’s not a small thing when you don’t have to be patient or be around other people. It creates this notion that you’re a little bit better than they are. And for the past 40 years, everything in American culture has been reinforcing that belief. We say, “Job creators, entrepreneurs, these are the people who make America great.” So there are people walking around with substantial wealth who think that they have it because they’re better. It’s fundamental to remember that you’re just a member of the human race, like everybody else, and there’s nothing about your money that makes you better than anyone else. If you don’t know that and you have money, it’s the road to hell, no matter how much stuff you have around you….

They did a study at the Chronicle of Philanthropy years ago where they asked people who inherited money, “What amount of money would you need to feel totally secure?” And every single one of them, no matter what they had, named a number that was roughly twice what they inherited. So that’s what you need to know about money, right? If that is your primary measure of success or value in life, then good luck with that, because it will never feel good.

Thinking Beyond Monetary Policy and Banking Regulation to Manage the Next Economic Downturn [Roosevelt Institute, via Naked Capitalism 4-4-19]

Our corporate sector is broken. Corporations aren’t making productive investments or putting the more than $1 trillion of firm-level debt toward growth-inducing uses, such as research and development (R&D), capital investments, or better compensation for our workforce. Instead, they’re putting more and more funds, largely financed by debt, toward rewarding shareholders, which is reaching upwards of $2.9 trillion since 2012 through a combination of stock buybacks and takeovers of non-financial corporations….

… Irene Tung, from the National Employment Law Project (NELP), and I found that the restaurant industry spent more on payouts to shareholders, in the form of buybacks, than it made in profits—ultimately funding buybacks through debt and/or cash reserves. Buybacks actually totaled nearly 140 percent of net profits in the restaurant industry alone. “Leveraged buybacks”—the issuance of new corporate debt in order to fund stock buybacks—is more pervasive and contributes to the highly skewed economy we have today. McDonald’s, for example, could have paid each of its 1.9 million workers almost $4,000 more a year if the company redirected the money it spends on buybacks to workers’ paychecks instead….

Unless we fix our broken corporate sector—which means rectifying today’s high-profit, low-wage economy—banking regulation, securities laws, and monetary policy can only go so far. We need to think outside banking regulatory levers and instead implement solutions that encourage the kind of corporate behavior that prioritizes productive activities that grow the real economy—corporate behavior that supports higher wages, better jobs, and new business development, for example. To redirect our corporate sector to the productive, growth inducing activities we seek, we need to rein in corporate power by raising taxes on corporations, the financial sector, and capital; revamping our antitrust laws to break up concentrated and anticompetitive market power; and reforming the laws that govern corporate decision-making.

We also need policies to rebuild worker power. Workers are a key stakeholder within firms and across our economy at large, who play a critical role in generating corporate value. Bold policy solutions are necessary to rebalance economic power and ensure that workers—who are investing in companies with their own labor on a daily basis—have a voice in the firm and agency over their lives. This includes policies that give workers a say over how corporate boards are structured, including who sits on them. This also must include building countervailing power for workers by promoting workplace unionization, encouraging bargaining across industries, and protecting workers’ rights to engage in collective action—most notably, the right to strike.

….a wide and deep-ranging distinction between “business” and “industry” and a broad view of the nature of “institutions.”

Veblen discerned that the high command of the “institution” of modern capitalism was vested in the most powerful of financiers, who by controlling the flow of credit to important industries were able to manipulate them for their own ends… more directly concerned with the material contribution of society. In this high command was reflected most clearly and extremely the spirit of pure gain (monetary) or pecuniary profit, entirely abstracted from material efficiency or service.

On the other hand, the all-important “institution” making material progress was “technology,” the state of the industrial arts.

The industrial arts, in Veblen’s sense, were not only the arts proper but the habits, skills, transmission of skills, and the opportunity to develop and advance them. It was not physical capital or labor, let alone funds, which were to Veblen the great productive factor, but the cumulative growth of the technological habits of thought that comprised the machine process; without this intangible element physical instruments and labor would be of little use. Productivity was therefore an indivisible social phenomenon, not an individual one, a function of the given technology.

Economics in the real world

By 1935, Norway was on the brink. The Conservative-led government was losing legitimacy daily; the 1 percent became increasingly desperate as militancy grew among workers and farmers. A complete overthrow might be just a couple years away, radical workers thought. However, the misery of the poor became more urgent daily, and the Labor Party felt increasing pressure from its members to alleviate their suffering, which it could do only if it took charge of the government in a compromise agreement with the other side.

This it did. In a compromise that allowed owners to retain the right to own and manage their firms, Labor in 1935 took the reins of government in coalition with the Agrarian Party. They expanded the economy and started public works projects to head toward a policy of full employment that became the keystone of Norwegian economic policy. Labor’s success and the continued militancy of workers enabled steady inroads against the privileges of the one percent, to the point that majority ownership of all large firms was taken by the public interest. (There is an entry on this case as well at the Global Nonviolent Action Database.)

The one percent thereby lost its historic power to dominate the economy and society. Not until three decades later could the Conservatives return to a governing coalition, having by then accepted the new rules of the game, including a high degree of public ownership of the means of production, extremely progressive taxation, strong business regulation for the public good and the virtual abolition of poverty. When Conservatives eventually tried a fling with neoliberal policies, the economy generated a bubble and headed for disaster. (Sound familiar?)

Labor stepped in, seized the three largest banks, fired the top management, left the stockholders without a dime and refused to bail out any of the smaller banks. The well-purged Norwegian financial sector was not one of those that lurched into crisis in 2008; carefully regulated and much of it publicly owned, the sector was solid.

The Birth of Predatory Capitalism: How the Free World Took Four Giant Leaps to Self-Destruction
[Medium, via Mike Norman Economics 2-10-19]

Economics in the real world

Considering the booming economy, dropping unemployment numbers and the return of many once-emigrated young Portuguese citizens, it seems Portugal is on the rise. Facing the policies of socialist Prime Minister António Costa, which include properly supporting the welfare state and investing in the public sector instead of austerity measures, right-wing populists don’t stand a chance.

Debunking Deregulation: Bank Credit Guidance and Productive Investment
[Evonomics, 2-19-19, via a reader]

In a new UCL Institute for Innovation and Public Purpose (IIPP) working paper, co-authored with Dutch economists Dirk Bezemer and Lu Zhang and Frank van Lerven, we examine the theoretical, historical and empirical evidence around credit policy and its effects on the allocation of credit.

Our motivation, aside from the crisis, is the remarkable ‘debt shift’ in advanced economies over the past 40 years which has seen banks move away from their primary textbook role of lending to non-financial firms to support productive investment. Whilst total bank credit has roughly doubled relative to GDP since the early 1970s in advanced economies, the share of credit supporting firms has actually fallen, from 60% to 40%. The vast expansion in lending has been mainly to support households to buy houses and, to a lesser extent, consumer goods and the purchase of financial assets.

Mortgage and other asset-market lending typically does not generate income streams sufficient to finance the growth of debt. Instead, the empirical evidence suggests that after a certain point relative to GDP, increases in mortgage debt typically slows growth and increase financial instability as asset prices rise faster than incomes.

These new empirical findings support a much older body of theory that argues that credit markets, left to their own devices, will not optimise the allocation of resources. Instead, following Joseph Schumpeter’s, Keynes’ and Hyman Minsky’s arguments, they will tend to shift financial resources away from real-sector investment and innovation and towards asset markets and speculation; away from equitable income growth and towards capital gains that polarises wealth and income; and away from a robust, stable growth path and towards fragile boom-busts cycles with frequent crises….

The financial liberalisation and deregulation of the 1980s saw the gradual removal of credit guidance and credit control policies which were seen to distort the efficient allocation of capital. This was a key element of the ‘Washington Consensus’ pushed by the World Bank and the IMF to developing countries. Many State Investment Banks were also privatised.

Our empirical investigation of the relationship between credit policy and credit allocation examines two time periods with different samples. Firstly, for the 1973 to 2005 period, for advanced economies, we find that the liberalisation of credit markets and removal of credit guidance is significantly associated with a lower share of lending to non-financial firms, supporting the Schumpeter-Keynes-Minsky hypothesis.

A Look Back at How Reforming Wall Street Failed So Miserably Under Obama
Pam Martens, March 7, 2019 [Wall Street on Parade]

Strategic Political Economy

What goes up: are predictions of a population crisis wrong?
Darrell Bricker and John Ibbitson [The Guardian, via Mike Norman Economics 3-8-19]

Some good news, World population may peak at below 9 billion and then start to go down. As people become urbanized they don’t want so many children. In the field extra hands are useful, in a city an extra child is an extra mouth to feed. And women want careers and less children.

These remarks offer a window on one of the most compelling questions of our time: how many people will fill the Earth? The United Nations Population Division projects that numbers will swell to more than 11 billion by the end of this century, almost 4 billion more than are alive today. Where will they live? How will we feed them? How many more of us can our fragile planet withstand?

But a growing body of opinion believes the UN is wrong. We will not reach 11 billion by 2100. Instead, the human population will top out at somewhere between 8 and 9 billion around the middle of the century, and then begin to decline.

ørgenRanders, a Norwegian academic who decades ago warned of a potential global catastrophe caused by overpopulation, has changed his mind. “The world population will never reach nine billion people,” he now believes. “It will peak at 8 billion in 2040, and then decline.”Similarly, Prof Wolfgang Lutz and his fellow demographers at Vienna’s International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis predict the human population will stabilise by mid-century and then start to go down.

Strategic 100 Global Infrastructure List (pdf)
[via Railway Age 3-7-19]
A list of the 100 largest infrastructure projects in the world. The list includes projects from 30 countries. Compiled by CG/LA Infrastructure Inc., headquartered in Washington, D.C.

Black Agenda [ADOS – American Descendants of Slavery, via Naked Capitalism 3-4-19]

We demand a New Deal for Black America which includes, but is not limited to:

• We need set asides for American descendants of slavery, not “minorities”, a throw-away category which includes all groups except white men. That categorization has allowed Democrats to use programs like affirmative actions as “giveaways” to all groups in exchange for votes. The bribery must end. That begins with a new designation on the Census with ADOS and another for Black immigrants. Black immigrants should be barred from accessing affirmative action and other set asides intended for ADOS, as should Asians, Latinos, white women, and other “minority” groups. In addition, ADOS hiring and employment data must be demanded for all businesses receiving tax credits, incentives, and governmental support. As well as all governmental agencies national, state and local. It is our belief that this will show that there are minimal if any ADOS professionals in fields including but not limited to engineering, medical, legal and tech.

Economics in the Real World

The $4 trillion drop in Americans’ net worth in Q4 was the single largest quarterly dollar drop on record. As a comparison, the U.S. bear market losses from 2007-2009 = $11 trillion dollars. Markets are now 4X as large, so a 20% drawdown is a third as large as a the peak to trough GFC drop.

You can get this and all of the details from the Z.1 Financial Accounts of the United States:

“The net worth of households and nonprofits fell to $104.3 trillion during the fourth quarter of 2018. The value of directly and indirectly held corporate equities decreased $4.6 trillion and the value of real estate increased $0.3 trillion.”

Lambert Strether: “Obama’s miserably inadequate response to the foreclosure crisis is carefully airbrushed out.”

…the country’s third-biggest liner. Kawasaki Kisen Kaisha Ltd. is shrinking its fleet as it faces an estimated $895 million in losses….The company hopes to save $90 million by canceling some container ship charters and trimming its bulk-vessel count, changes that come as the maritime sector struggles with weak freight rates and a capacity glut in major trade lanes. The shipping line also plans to slim its car-carrier network and focus on bigger dry-bulk vessels. “K” Line’s problems stem in part from its stake in Ocean Network Express, the joint venture with Japan‘s two other shipping lines formed to respond to broader shipping industry woes. ONE had a troubled launch last year, and stresses could grow next year as new emissions rules take effect.”

“‘We’re all focused on 2020,’ Lauren Crawford Shaver, a partner at Forbes-Tate who is helping to manage the [Partnership for America’s Health Care Future] campaign, recently told the National Association of Health Underwriters in a podcast produced by the group. Shaver, a former top staffer for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign explained to the group that she is working to peel support away from the ‘Medicare for All’ bill sponsored by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt.”

[Huffington Post, via Naked Capitalism 3-3-19]

If you have a cell phone, a credit card, or even if you just have a job, there’s a very good chance that you’ve been forced to sign away your right to sue your cell phone company, bank, or boss. Indeed, under the Supreme Court’s forced arbitration cases, your boss may order you to sign away your rights under penalty of termination.

On Thursday, Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) introduced legislation called the Forced Arbitration Injustice Repeal (FAIR) Act, which seeks to eliminate many forms of forced arbitration. Though versions of this bill have kicked around Congress for more than a decade — often under the name “Arbitration Fairness Act” — the FAIR Act stands out because of the broad coalition of lawmakers who now support it…. According to the Economic Policy Institute, workers and consumers are significantly less likely to prevail before an arbitrator than before a real judge, and they are awarded significantly less money when they do prevail.

Information Age Dystopia

Here are the data brokers quietly buying and selling your personal information

[Fast Company, via Naked Capitalism 3-4-19]

“Thanks to a new Vermont law requiring companies that buy and sell third-party personal data to register with the Secretary of State, we’ve been able to assemble a list of 121 data brokers operating in the U.S. It’s a rare, rough glimpse into a bustling economy that operates largely in the shadows, and often with few rules…..”

“All that data can be used to target you with ads, classify the riskiness of your lifestyle, help determine your eligibility for a job. Like the companies themselves, the risks can be hard to see. Apart from the dangers of merely collecting and storing all that data, detailed (and often erroneous) consumer profiles can lead to race or income-based discrimination, in a high-tech version of redlining. Piles of personal data are flowing to political parties attempting to influence your vote and government agencies pursuing non-violent criminal suspects. Meanwhile, people-search websites, accessible to virtually anyone with a credit card, can be a goldmine for doxxers, abusers, and stalkers. (The National Network to End Domestic Violence has assembled a guide to data brokers.)”

Data Brokers: What They Know

Barry Ritholtz, March 6, 2019 [The Big Picture]

Facebook’s new move isn’t about privacy. It’s about domination

[Guardian, via Naked Capitalism 3-8-19]

Mark Zuckerberg’s vision for Facebook sounds a lot like China, where I couldn’t buy a cup of coffee without the app that dominates people’s lives there

[Business Insider, via Naked Capitalism 3-8-19]

Amazon Suppliers Panic Amid Purge Aimed at Boosting Profits

Spencer Soper, March 7, 2019 [Bloomberg, via Naked Capitalism 3-8-19]

The abrupt cancellation of orders prompted panic this week at the ShopTalk retail conference that drew more than 8,000 retailers, brands and consultants to Las Vegas. Some attendees said Amazon stopped submitting routine orders last week for a variety of products, often without explanation. The drought continued this week, affecting more vendors and leaving them frustrated about the lack of communication from Amazon.
One vendor who has been selling products to Amazon for five years said he got a canned response when he inquired why his routine weekly purchase order never came through. The response gave him no clarity about his standing as a vendor, he said.

Elizabeth Warren’s new plan: Break up Amazon, Google and Facebook
[CNN, via Naked Capitalism 3-8-19]

“The proposal was greeted with a cheer from New York State Sen. Julia Salazar, a Democratic Socialist ally of freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and a vocal opponent of New York’s deal to bring Amazon’s second headquarters to Queens… The plan would pose existential threats to the business models that turned certain giant tech firms into money spigots…. Separating Google’s ad business from its Search function, for example, would make Google ads — on which the company depends for nearly all of its revenue — much less valuable. So would requiring Google to divest DoubleClick, the company it acquired in 2008 that vastly expanded the reach of its advertising network.”

Warren’s actual proposal:
Here’s how we can break up Big Tech”

Elizabeth Warren [Medium, via Naked Capitalism 3-8-19]

In this tradition, my administration would restore competition to the tech sector by taking two major steps: First, by passing legislation that requires large tech platforms to be designated as “Platform Utilities” and broken apart from any participant on that platform… Second, my administration would appoint regulators committed to reversing illegal and anti-competitive tech mergers….

As these companies have grown larger and more powerful, they have used their resources and control over the way we use the Internet to squash small businesses and innovation, and substitute their own financial interests for the broader interests of the American people. To restore the balance of power in our democracy, to promote competition, and to ensure that the next generation of technology innovation is as vibrant as the last, it’s time to break up our biggest tech companies.

Elizabeth Warren pulled a ninja move to turn tech angst into a crackdown with real teeth, and tech is going to suffer even if she’s not president

[Business Insider, via Naked Capitalism 3-9-19]

Her proposal threatens to put a spotlight on those companies and their business practices, one that could expose them to reputational harm.

Moreover, it represents an attempt to gain support for a rethinking of antitrust policy, one in which regulators scrutinize the effects of concentrated corporate power on things other than just consumer prices.

Amazon, Facebook, and Alphabet’s power looks benign if viewed only from the lens of consumer prices.

Their power looks much worse if its broader effects are taken into account.

Global ecommerce talks strike at roots of WTO, says India

[The Economic Times, via Naked Capitalism 3-4-19]

In its draft National E-Commerce Policy, India has proposed regulating cross-border data flows, locating computing facilities within the country to ensure job creation and setting up a dedicated ‘data authority’ for issues related to sharing of community data.  It has asserted that the data generated in the country is a national asset, and citizens and the government have a sovereign right over it.

China knows artificial intelligence is rewriting the geopolitical rules, but the rest of the world looks unprepared

[South China Morning Post, via Naked Capitalism 3-9-19]

Google, siding with Saudi Arabia, refuses to remove widely-criticized government app which lets men track women and control their travel

[Insider, via Naked Capitalism 3-4-19]

Triton is the world’s most murderous malware, and it’s spreading

[MIT Technology Review, via Naked Capitalism 3-8-19]

Gutmanis recalls that dealing with the malware at the petrochemical plant, which had been restarted after the second incident, was a nerve-racking experience. “We knew that we couldn’t rely on the integrity of the safety systems,” he says. “It was about as bad as it could get.”

In attacking the plant, the hackers crossed a terrifying Rubicon. This was the first time the cybersecurity world had seen code deliberately designed to put lives at risk. Safety instrumented systems aren’t just found in petrochemical plants; they’re also the last line of defense in everything from transportation systems to water treatment facilities to nuclear power stations.

Triton’s discovery raises questions about how the hackers were able to get into these critical systems. It also comes at a time when industrial facilities are embedding connectivity in all kinds of equipment—a phenomenon known as the industrial internet of things. This connectivity lets workers remotely monitor equipment and rapidly gather data so they can make operations more efficient, but it also gives hackers more potential targets.

Those behind Triton are now on the hunt for new victims. Dragos, a firm that specializes in industrial cybersecurity, and where Gutmanis now works, says it’s seen evidence over the past year or so that the hacking group that built the malware and inserted it into the Saudi plant is using some of the same digital tradecraft to research targets in places outside the Middle East, including North America. And it’s creating new strains of the code in order to compromise a broader range of safety instrumented systems.

Creating new economic potential – science and technology

Analysis: State-level clean energy goals propelling renewables

[Houston Chronicle (tiered subscription model), via American Wind Energy Association 3-5-19]

Renewables are increasing as states like California, New Jersey, Texas and Massachusetts continue to meet and increase their renewable energy targets, L.M. Sixel writes. Texas, for example, surpassed its 1999 goal to have 10,000 megawatts of installed renewable energy capacity by 2025 in 2009.

DNV GL: New logistics solutions needed to support bigger turbines

[North American Windpower online, via American Wind Energy Association 3-8-19]

Larger turbines are driving down costs and improving wind farm productivity, but new logistical solutions in terms of infrastructure and transportation are needed to ensure the industry maintains a low levelized cost of energy nationwide, says DNV GL. On-site manufacturing, segmented blades that can be transported easier and new transit options via air, rail and the road are areas for improvement, it says.

AWEA’s Kiernan: A clean energy economy is within reach

[The Hill via American Wind Energy Association 3-7-19]

Falling costs and technology put the US in a position to move toward a clean energy economy powered by wind and solar now — not years down the road, writes American Wind Energy Association President and CEO Tom Kiernan. He calls on Congress to support transmission grid updates that will enhance reliability and help the cities and states that need wind most access it.

Duke University nixes Durham-Orange light rail
[Railway Age 3-4-19]

Duke University won’t allow a portion of a proposed 7.7-mile light-rail line to pass through its campus. The decision effectively kills the project. GoTriangle is tasked with building the $3.3 billion line that would link UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, downtown Durham and N.C. Central University.

Airbus CEO Tom Enders discusses European aerospace over next 25 Years

Tom Enders, March 5, 2019 [Aviation Week & Space Technology]

In the mid-1990s, European horizons ended at national borders. Industrial consolidation on a national level was well underway—but cross-border cooperation was limited to joint ventures in the fields of missiles, satellites and helicopters. This changed with the big consolidation wave in the U.S., prompted by the “Last Supper”—the U.S. government’s call for restructuring following the drastic decline in U.S. defense budgets after the end of the Cold War. Boeing’s acquisition of McDonnell Douglas sent shockwaves through Europe’s aerospace boardrooms…. Fortunately, Europe’s response was decisive, with the full merger of three “national champions”—France, Germany and Spain—and the transformation of Airbus into a real corporate entity….

The key challenges of the next 25 years will be fundamentally different:

• There will be unprecedented changes in technology that have already started to hit us: digitalization, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and biotech. Data will play at least as important a role as propulsion or aerodynamics. The future competitiveness of European aerospace will be determined by our ability to harvest and utilize this data.
• Aerospace companies must adapt to tectonic shifts in the competitive landscape as powerful new players emerge, especially in China but maybe also from other industries. Aerospace is already on the agenda of daring billionaires in the Silicon Valley. What if one of the West Coast giants teams or merges with our biggest competitor?
• People will become even more important. In the era of globalization, competition for the best and brightest—already a scarce resource today—will intensify. And a whole generation of aerospace engineers is about to retire: 30% of Airbus’ workforce will leave in the next 10 years.
• We must speed up our transition toward sustainable flight. Air passenger growth is expected to keep doubling every 15 years. This is a great business prospect, but it is an even more important responsibility.

SpaceX Crew Dragon Demo Departs Space Station
Irene Klotz, March 8, 2019 [Aerospace Daily & Defense Report / Aviation Week and Space Technology

SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon, nearing the end of an unmanned, six-day demonstration mission, undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) on March 8, aiming for a splashdown in the Atlantic Ocean

Though cargo Dragons have successfully returned from low Earth orbit 17 times since 2010, the new Dragon 2, which is designed to ferry astronauts, has a different, asymmetrically shaped backshell to accommodate eight SuperDraco engines that serve as the capsule’s launch escape system.

Record-breaking device uses sunlight to produce hydrogen at 15% efficiency 

Scientists at KU Leuven in Belgium have developed a device that combines incoming solar energy and water vapor from the surrounding air to produce a record-breaking daily average of 250 liters (66 gal) of hydrogen throughout the year. According to the researchers’ estimations, an array of 20 such panels paired with an underground pressurized tank could provide the totality of a household’s entire electricity and heating needs for a modest price….

Commercial solar panels can easily surpass that figure, often reaching 18 or 20 percent, but the advantage of this approach is that large amounts of hydrogen can be stored in an underground pressurized tank (at a pressure of approximately 400 bar) without the inevitable losses in capacity that come with battery technology. Using fuel cells, the reserves from the tank can then be converted at will into heating, electricity, or fuel for a hydrogen-powered car with a 90 percent conversion efficiency.

The panel generates a record 250 liters (66 gal) of hydrogen per day and could be used to provide local electricity and heating on the cheap.

Researchers 3D Print Mechanical Logic Gates
[Machine Design Today 3-5-19]

Engineers and scientists from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the University of California, Los Angeles are 3D printing mechanical logic gates, the basic building blocks of computers that can performing any kind of math calculations.
These 3D-printed logic gates could be used to build just about anything, researchers said, embedded into any type of architected material and programmed to react to its environment by physically changing shape without the need for electricity. This would make them useful in areas of high radiation, heat, or pressure…. The gates could be useful in rovers sent to hostile environments such as Venus, as well as in low-power computers intended to survive nuclear or electromagnetic pulse blasts.

Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory scientists and engineers combed mechanical computing with 3D printing to create “sentient” materials that respond to changes in their surroundings, even in extreme environments.

Researchers Gauge Cell Stiffness in Search of Disease
[Machine Design Today, 3-6-19]

The competition for key Democratic campaign staff has been ferocious, and it sets the stage for the life-and-death battle for campaign cash that will unfold over the next several months, winnowing the field even before anyone caucuses in Iowa next February. The money primary already seems to have one provisional casualty: Elizabeth Warren. She appears to have made a rookie mistake by hiring a relatively large campaign staff, followed by a sluggish fund-raising start….

The length of the campaign, and the lack of a dominant early front-runner, will further squeeze resources. And digital fund-raising is reshaping the primary calendar in more subtle ways. The candidates who survive until the end of 2019—by raising money early and establishing sustainable revenue streams—will live on longer in 2020 than they could have in previous years. “It used to be that if you lost Iowa or New Hampshire, your money dried up and you were dead,” says Joe Trippi, strategist for Howard Dean’s 2004 bid, which set a then-record by raising $59 million. “Well, there are gonna be four or five candidates, maybe more, who through low-dollar, online money-raising have enough to go the whole way in the primaries before we even get to Iowa. A lot of these candidates are gonna last longer than their vote support.”

Booker: “What is the ‘Jim Clyburn model?’ It’s the foundation of Cory Booker’s SC strategy”

Senate Republicans voted Monday night to advance the nomination of Allison Jones Rushing, yet another of President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees who is troubling for a number of reasons.

Rushing worked for Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative Christian organization that has been classified as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. She has argued that there were “moral and practical” reasons for banning same-sex marriage.

But it’s her age that may be most notable: She is 36. If she gets confirmed this week, as expected, she will be the youngest federal judge in the country. She has practiced law for only nine years, and her career has focused on defending corporations. She has tried just four cases to verdict or judgment….

Rushing, who is a partner at the D.C.-based law firm Williams & Connolly, is not the only exceptionally young judicial nominee getting a Senate vote this week. McConnell has teed up votes for U.S. circuit court nominees Eric Murphy and Chad Readler, who are 39 and 46, respectively.

All three have the ideological bent that Trump is looking for in his court picks. Murphy, the solicitor general of Ohio, has fought to make it easier to disenfranchise voters, argued against marriage equality in the landmark 2015 Obergefell v. Hodges case before the Supreme Court and argued against reproductive rights. Readler, who is Trump’s acting assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil division, filed a brief in favor of striking down the Affordable Care Act, defended efforts to weaken voting rights and defended Trump’s banon transgender people serving in the military.