It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
Monday, November 08, 2021
Indoor farming could improve B.C. food security amid climate change
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As the cost of LED lights and other technology drops, more
produce will be grown indoors
CBC News ·
A worker tends to cucumber plants in a Glenwood Valley Farms indoor agriculture facility in Langley, B.C. (Harold Dupuis/CBC)
It's a chilly, wet October day in Langley, B.C., and Colin Chapdelaine, president of B.C. Hothouse Foods, is standing in a warm field of cucumbers. He's surrounded by the plants — and a complex system of LED lights, irrigation, walls and a roof.
According to Chapdelaine, the cucumbers are ready to pick just 18 days after small plants are put into their substrate-filled containers in the facility. A day later, the cucumbers will be in stores.
The best part? They can be grown all year.
This is indoor growing — or controlled environment agriculture — a version of agriculture far-removed from the system in which most fruits and vegetables are still cultivated.
"What's happening right now is very exciting," said Chapdelaine. "There's a renaissance in farming that's happening right now before our eyes, in our time."
Colin Chapdelaine, president of B.C. Hothouse Foods, says produce like tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers and strawberries can be grown locally under lights to avoid shipping them from places like California. (Harold Dupuis/CBC)
The revolution can't come quickly enough, according to Lenore Newman, director of the food and agriculture institute at the University of the Fraser Valley, who closely watched the effects of climate change over the summer — both in B.C. and in the United States.
"When I look at the heat dome event out west this year, it was catastrophic," said Newman, noting both the human toll and the toll the wildfires, heat waves, and droughts took on crops in California.
She said $1.2 billion in food is imported to British Columbia from California each year, with more coming from places like Mexico.
"When you're eating a California strawberry, you're literally eating California water, which they can't afford to send to us," said Newman.
For her, the advantages to local indoor growing include eliminating long shipping routes — and all the carbon emissions and food waste they bring — reduced water and pesticide use, as well as better-managed labour conditions.
Chapdelaine said the indoor-grown crops his company markets require less pesticide than crops grown in an open field. The water is also recovered and cycled through the irrigation system, meaning some plants need less than 10 per cent the water needed outdoors.
Improving technology
The infrastructure required to grow indoors is significant, and of course it comes at a cost, but Chapdelaine said the price of LED lights has rapidly decreased, and other technology has also improved to make this kind of growing viable for more types of crops.
High-value produce like tomatoes, peppers and cucumbers have been among the most successful crops in the 150 acres of facilities his company markets, but Chapdelaine said strawberries are expected to fill 25 acres next season.
For Newman, the next big thing in controlled environment agriculture in the province will be leafy greens and herbs. More and more types of plant will become profitable to grow indoors as LED and other costs continue to drop.
But she doesn't expect certain crops to be grown in greenhouses under lights any time soon, even if the fields where they're grown are subject to extreme weather like last summer's heat dome. According to Newman, crops like wheat, pulses and potatoes will likely stay outside in the dirt.
With files from Anne-Julie Têtu
Biden weighs shutting down another pipeline despite runaway gas prices: Energy Secretary Granholm argues 'fuel prices are going to skyrocket this winter anyway' President Joe Biden's Administration is considering shutting down the Line 5 oil pipeline that links Superior, Wisconsin with Sarnia, Ontario, sources report A group of Republican lawmakers issued a letter to Biden on Thursday urging him to keep the line in operation They argued termination would exacerbate fuel shortages and increase prices The lawmakers cited concerns over energy prices as midwesterners enter into the winter season However, Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm alleged that fuel prices are going to skyrocket this winter anyway Meanwhile, Michigan's 12 federally recognized tribes also called on Biden last week asking him to move forward with the shutdown The Biden Administration has yet to make a decision about Line 5's operation
The Biden Administration is considering shutting down a Michigan oil pipeline despite warnings from Republican lawmakers who believe the move would result in fuel price shocks throughout the Midwest.
The administration is exploring the possibility of terminating the Line 5 pipeline - which links Superior, Wisconsin, with Sarnia, Ontario - and gathering data to determine if shutting down the line will cause a surge in fuel pricing, according to published reports.
In a letter dated Thursday, 13 Congress members - led by Ohio Rep. Bob Latta - urged the president to keep the oil line in operation, saying: 'Line 5 is essential to the lifeblood of the Midwest.'
'Should this pipeline be shut down, tens of thousands of jobs would be lost across Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and the region; billions of dollars in economic activity would be in jeopardy; and the environment would be at greater risk due to additional trucks operating on roadways and railroads carrying hazardous materials,' the legislators wrote.
'Furthermore, as we enter the winter months and temperatures drop across the Midwest, the termination of Line 5 will undoubtedly further exacerbate shortages and price increases in home heating fuels like natural gas and propane at a time when Americans are already facing rapidly rising energy prices, steep home heating costs, global supply shortages, and skyrocketing gas prices.'
President Joe Biden's Administration is considering shutting down a Michigan oil pipeline despite warnings from Republican lawmakers who believe the move would result in fuel price shocks throughout the midwest
Line 5 is part of a network that moves crude oil and other petroleum products from western Canada to Escanaba, Michigan and transports approximately 540,000 barrels each day.
The pipeline is said to deliver vital products used to heat homes and businesses, fuel vehicles and power other North American industries.
Those in favor of its operation allege shutting it down further exacerbate fuel shortages and price increases as citizens enter the winter months.
However, Energy Secretary and former Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm argues that fuel prices are going to skyrocket this winter anyway.
'Yeah, this is going to happen,' Granholm told CNN on Sunday. 'It will be more expensive this year than last year.'
Thirteen Congress members wrote a letter to Biden Thursday urging him to keep the Line 5 pipeline (pictured) in operation, saying: 'Line 5 is essential to the lifeblood of the midwest.'
Ohio Rep. Bob Latta (left), who is among those leading the effort to keep the pipeline, argues terminating its operation will exacerbate fuel shortages and price increases. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm (right) argues that fuel prices are going to skyrocket this winter anyway
'We are in a slightly beneficial position, well certainly relative to Europe, because their choke hold of natural gas is very significant. But we have the same problem in fuels that the supply chains have, which is that the oil and gas companies are not flipping the switch as quickly as the demand requires.'
According to the lawmakers, the administration's move to terminate Line 5's operation is part of a move to 'appease environmental groups'.
Their claims are echoed by Jason Hayes, director of environmental policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, who alleges that Biden's energy policies and work on Line 5 is 'just one more example of being divorced from reality.'
'They're planning to power an industrial nation like the United States on solar panels and wind turbines,' Hayes told Fox News.
'I hope it doesn't end like this, but where I see it going is unfortunately the same thing that happened in February in Texas: People freezing in their homes.
He continued: 'Most of the time when it's extremely cold or there's a real bad polar vortex situation, typically it's pretty cloudy and there's not a lot of wind.' +9
A group of lawmakers issued a letter to Biden on Thursday, arguing in favor of Line 5
Jason Hayes, director of environmental policy at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, (pictured) echoed the legislators' claims and argued that Biden's energy policies and work on Line 5 is 'just one more example of [the administration] being divorced from reality'
The energy expert also noted that production of solar panels and wind turbines still requires 'oil, natural gas, nuclear and even coal'.
Additionally, proponents of the pipeline allege that the negative impacts of its termination exceed access to fuel and energy prices.
They claim its termination would 'trigger an international spinoff' with Canada.
'The 1977 Transit Pipelines Treaty between the United States and Canada has ensured the uninterrupted transportation of energy products across the border for decades,' Latta and his co-authors wrote.
'Given the strained relations between our two countries brought on by the termination of the Keystone XL pipeline and the prolonged shutdown of cross-border travel due to COVID-19, now is not the time to worsen this critical diplomatic partnership.'
Biden's Administration canceled the Keystone XL pipeline - which ran from Alberta, Canada to Steele City, Nebraska and carried 830,000 barrels of oil each day - in January. The controversial move prompted uproar, especially when the administration waived sanctions against a pipeline for Russia to ship energy to Germany.
The legislators believe terminating Line 5 and breaking another treaty with Canada would ultimately be detrimental to the countries' relationships.
Meanwhile, all twelve of Michigan's federally recognized tribes also called on the president last week, urging him to move forward with the state's efforts to shutdown the pipeline.
'The Governor, the Attorney General, and our Tribal Nations need your Administration's help,' the tribes wrote Friday in a letter obtained by the Detroit Metro Times. '… During your campaign, you promised that you would heed our concerns and act to protect our fundamental interests.'
Meanwhile, all twelve of Michigan's federally recognized tribes also called on the president last week, urging him to move forward with the state's efforts to shutdown Line 5 (pictured)
Whitney Gravelle, president of Bay Mills Indian Community, argues that the tribes were promised the right to fish, hunt and gather in the Great Lakes Anishnaabe area in 1836 when they ceded the lands.
The tribes also argues that their treaty supersedes the Canada agreement.
'We possess rights and interests in the integrity of the Great Lakes that date back to time immemorial, and that are protected by solemn treaties with the United States long predating the agreement Canada rests on,' the letter states.
'We view Line 5 as an existential threat to our treaty-protected rights, resources, and fundamental way of life as Anishinaabe people of the Great Lakes.'
Sources say the Biden Administration has yet to make a decision regarding the operation of Line 5.
WELCOME TO OTTAWA PLAYBOOK. We are your hosts, ZI-ANN LUM and SUE ALLAN. Today, we have news on Line 5. Courtesy POLITICO’s team in Glasgow, we have a reality check on that $130 trillion climate promise. Plus, we catch you up on Canada-U.S. phone calls and visits.
FILE - In this Thursday, Nov. 12, 2020, file photo provided by the Michigan Office of the Governor, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addresses the state during a speech in Lansing, Mich. Whitmer's office took legal action Friday to force the shutdown of Enbridge's Line 5 pipeline by revoking the easement that allows an underwater section to run through the Straits of Mackinac. (Michigan Office of the Governor via AP, File) | Michigan Office of the Governor via AP, File
Revoking the pipeline’s permits would please environmentalists and Michigan Gov. GRETCHEN WHITMER. Citing environmental concerns, the Democrat campaigned on a promise to shut down the pipeline that delivers crude oil, light synthetic crude and natural gas liquids from Alberta to Ontario through Wisconsin, the Great Lakes and Michigan.
The issue landed in the White House after Canada’s decision to invoke the 1977 Pipeline Transit treaty a month ago to ensure the continued operation of the 68-year-old pipeline.
“The Canadians have forced their hand,” an oil industry source with knowledge of the effort tells POLITICO. They described the U.S. Department of Energy as holding “ongoing discussions” to determine Line 5’s impact on markets. “They won’t have to take a position tomorrow, but they will have to take one soon.”
White House National Climate Adviser GINA MCCARTHY met with pipeline opposition groups in mid-October where Line 5 was raised. “They’re playing things close to their chest,” said one person who was at the meeting. “But we expect them to announce something after Build Back Better passes.”
Evoking the treaty means bilateral negotiations are on the horizon. Global Affairs spokesperson LAMA KHODR says the pipeline is a “top priority” for Canada and that Canadian officials were seeking to enter formal negotiations with the U.S. “as soon as possible.” Khodr declined to provide additional details because the matter is “ongoing.”
— Two new players: Foreign affairs, headed by new Minister MÉLANIE JOLY, is running point on the file which has become an irritant to bilateral relations. What’s a better gift for a new appointment (paging newly confirmed U.S. Ambassador to Canada DAVID COHEN) than a hot potato?
WORKING ON THE RELATIONSHIP — JOLY shared some phone time with U.S. Secretary of State ANTONY BLINKEN on Wednesday. She spoke to The Star’s SUSAN DELACOURT soon after. Joly told Delacourt she’s been doing a lot of talking, including calls with RALPH GOODALE, KIRSTEN HILLMAN, DOMINIC BARTON, STEPHANE DION and FRANK McKENNA.
Diwali: NASA's "festival of lights" from up above is a sparkling starfield
SHYLAJA VARMA NOVEMBER 05, 2021 Diwali 2021: NASA shared an image of stars captured by Hubble Space Telescope. (Image credit: Photo tweeted by @NASA)
US space agency NASA today sent its Diwali wishes with a stunning image of a cluster of stars.
The photo is of a densely packed, roughly spherical collection of stars, that lies close to the center of the Milky Way. It was captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. “Happy #Diwali to all who celebrate! This stellar festival of lights, called a globular cluster, was captured by @NASAHubble. It contains a densely-packed collection of colorful stars close to the heart of the Milky Way,” NASA tweeted. People responded to the Diwali wish, with some terming the photo the real festival of lights.
“The real #FestivalOfLights is what we see during the #night time in the clear #sky. Sadly it's difficult to see that because of the fake one we celebrate on #Earth by #bursting #crackers,” Twitter user Pragyan said. The point made by the user seem valid as pollution levels shot through the roof in cities like Delhi after people celebrated Diwali with firecrackers, in violation of the cracker ban in the capital amid a sharp increase in fumes from farm fires. NASA's Diwali post received over 1,500 retweets and over 3,000 'likes'.
US President Joe Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Apple chief Tim Cook were among those who wished people on Diwali. Biden posted on Twitter a picture of him lighting diyas (earthen lamps) along with First Lady Jill Biden at the White House.Diwali, or Deepavali, marks the victory of good over evil, light over darkness and knowledge over ignorance.
EL IDIOTA
Politician suggests bombing erupting La Palma volcano to stop lava flow The volcano has been erupting for 42 days, and shows no signs of stopping.
The volcano is just over a week away from breaking its all-time record for longest duration erupting. (Image credit: Andreas Weibel via Getty Images)
Bombing the sizzling lava flows of La Palma's still-erupting volcano may be the only way to prevent the destruction the molten rivers are causing, a Spanish politician has suggested. Bombing runs could be used, according to its advocate, to redirect the deadly lava from flowing into populated areas.
The La Cumbre Vieja volcano in Spain's Canary Islands entered its 42nd day of eruptions Monday (Nov. 1). About 7,000 locals have been forced to flee their homes as lava flows, fountaining from the volcano up to thousands of feet into the air, have devastated homes, offices and large tracts of land throughout the southwestern part of the island, Live Science previously reported.
According to the latest survey performed by the European satellite system Copernicus, the lava has destroyed 2,519 buildings and now covers 3.6 square miles (9.4 square kilometers). With the island bracing for even more destruction due to a series of earthquakes that has shaken the land in recent days, Casimiro Curbelo, the president of the municipal council of La Gomera, a neighboring island, has suggested that the lava flows could be diverted through more extreme measures — by getting a plane to bomb them.
"Isn't there a plane that could fly and drop [a bomb]? It arrives, drops and boom. And it sends the lava in a different direction?" Curbelo said during a debate on the Canary Islands' Radio Faycán. "Maybe it's madness, but I get the impression from a technological point of view that it should be tried."
Curbelo's suggestion stirred up criticism and produced a handful of memes depicting him alongside Bruce Willis in the film "Armageddon," in which the actor's character is tasked with destroying an Earth-bound asteroid with a nuclear bomb.
But despite the derision aimed at it, Curbelo's outlandish proposal isn't totally unprecedented. In 1935, when lava flowing from Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano began trickling perilously close to the town of Hilo, the U.S. Army commanded by the future Gen. George S. Patton dropped 20 high explosive bombs onto the lava river. Following the bombardment, the lava flow stopped, but the success of the mission has been disputed — both pilots and geologists who flew on the bombing mission believed that the flow was slowing anyway, according to the U.S. Geological Survey; and later appraisals made by the USGS support the conclusion that its halting was a coincidence, the USGS said.
More recently, in 1983, a more successful attempt was made using dynamite to divert the lava flow of the then erupting Mount Etna away from a a nearby village. Engineers placed around 900 pounds (408 kilograms) of explosives, enclosed in water-cooled pipes, next to the flow. The goal was to blast the lava river into an artificial trench. The experiment was successful, according to one of the engineers at the time, blasting most of the lava into an artificial trench where it was redirected. But the explosion also split another part of the lava stream, sending many locals out to the mountain with shovels to contend with the flow's unpredictable new branches.
Spain's military has not responded to Curbelo's suggestion, and neither has Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. However, Sanchez has promised to accelerate aid deliveries to devastated residents.
The eruption hasn't caused any deaths, and life has remained relatively undisturbed for the 85,000 residents who live away from the island's severely affected western side.
The volcano is close to reaching its 1949 record of 47 days for its longest time spent erupting.
Originally published on Live Science.
Expansion of California gas plant that leaked methane in 2015 draws criticism
Critics say the decision comes at a high cost to both the climate and human health
In this 9 December 2015 photo, crews work on a relief well at the Aliso Canyon facility above the Porter Ranch area of Los Angeles.
California regulators voted Thursday to increase the capacity of a Los Angeles natural gas storage field, where a 2015 blowout caused the nation’s largest-ever methane leak and forced thousands from their homes.
The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) voted unanimously to increased the storage capacity of the underground Aliso Canyon field to 41bn cubic feet (1.1bn cubic meters) of natural gas from 34bn cubic feet (962m cubic meters), citing concerns that winter energy needs could otherwise go unmet.
“Our decision today helps ensure energy reliability for the Los Angeles Basin this winter in a safe and reliable manner,” Commissioner Martha Guzman Aceves said in a statement, adding that the agency will continue considering how to close the facility as California transitions to “a clean energy economy”.
Officials also framed the plan as a compromise. An alternative plan proposed an increase to more than 68bn cubic feet – Aliso Canyon’s maximum capacity.
California has some of the most ambitious environmental goals and policies in the nation, and has pledged to produce all its energy from clean sources by 2045. But the state has also struggled to keep the lights on with rolling blackouts and energy shortages, which have been complicated by the drought’s strain on hydroelectric power.
Over the summer, as temperatures surged and air conditioners blasted, the California governor declared a state of emergency over the energy supply strain, estimating a 3,500 megawatt shortage. The state projects next summer will be worse, and officials say the deficit could grow to 5,000 megawatts in 2022 – the amount needed to power roughly 5.2m homes.
But critics of the increase are concerned that relying on natural gas as a stopgap comes at a high cost to both the climate and human health.
Southern California residents affected by the blowout of the SoCalGas Aliso Canyon storage protest outside Governor Gavin Newsom’s home last year.
Photograph: Paul Kitagaki Jr/ZUMA Wire/REX/Shutterstock
Neighbors and activists who want Aliso Canyon permanently closed said the increase was unnecessary and had urged the CPUC to reject it. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Alex Padilla have joined in calling for its closure. “More than six years after the well failure at Aliso Canyon endangered the health of more than 7,000 families, it is increasingly clear that we must close this facility in order to protect the safety of Californians,” they wrote in a joint statement issued before the decision.
A well failure on 23 October 2015 led to the release of nearly 100,000 tons of methane and other substances into the air for nearly four months before it was controlled.
The blowout was blamed for sickening thousands of residents who moved out of their homes near the San Fernando Valley to escape a sulfurous stench and maladies such as headaches, nausea and nose bleeds.
Before Thursday’s vote, some families told the commission they still smell gas and one Porter Ranch resident said she was afraid to open her windows, the Los Angeles Daily News reported.
“The Public Utilities Commission voted today in favor of fossil fuel interests, not the wellbeing of California ratepayers,” said Food & Water Watch’s California director Alexandra Nagy in a statement. “Allowing any increase in storage capacity at SoCalGas’ Aliso Canyon facility is not only dangerous, it is needless,” she added, saying that it will create a “disastrous glut” of natural gas.
SoCalGas said Aliso Canyon and other storage facilities will be essential in delivering gas and keeping energy prices stable this winter, when prices are expected to rise nationwide and interstate pipeline repairs limit regional supplies.
SoCalGas spent more than $1bn on the the blowout, with most of the sum going toward temporarily relocating 8,000 families.
State regulators found SoCalGas failed to investigate previous well failures at the storage site and didn’t adequately assess its aging wells for disaster potential before the blowout.
Last month, SoCalGas and its parent company, Sempra Energy, agreed to pay up to $1.8bn to settle lawsuits by 35,000 people. The agreement is subject to about 97% of plaintiffs accepting it and could be reduced if fewer agree.
SoCalGas previously reached a $120m court settlement with the state attorney general and agreed to a $4m settlement with Los Angeles county prosecutors after being convicted in Los Angeles superior court of failing to quickly report the leak to state authorities.
The Toronto Public Library houses one of the planet’s biggest science-fiction archives
NOVEMBER 7, 2021
As a young reader, David Silverberg was influenced by writers JRR Tolkien, CS Lewis, David Eddings and Kurt Vonnegut. His lifelong interest in science fiction and fantasy led him to examine the Merrill Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy at the Toronto Public Library (TPL) in 2010.
There, she found a “cozy, but impressively large lair of other like-minded people,” says Toronto Star contributor and writing coach Silverberg. “I was really impressed by the range of material they had, from old sci-fi magazines to unique books by Ray Bradbury, Marion Zimmer Bradley, and Isaac Asimov.”
In the half-century since American-Canadian science-fiction writer and editor Judith Merrill donated her personal collection of 5,000 items to TPL, the genre has grown with it, enjoying enormous popularity on TV and in books and films. The much-anticipated “Dune”, based on Frank Herbert’s 1965 novel, opened in theaters on October 22 and grossed over US$223 million worldwide.
Last month, TPL opened the “Spised Out: 50 Years of the Merrill Collection” exhibit at the Toronto Reference Library’s TD Gallery on Yonge Street, showcasing a collection that now contains 80,000 items, making it one of the largest research collections in the world. makes one. of speculative fiction and popular culture – and the greatest in a public library setting.
Lillian H. on College Street. Located on the third floor of the Smith Branch, the original collection – which includes fiction, non-fiction, autobiographies, magazines, pulp magazines, graphic novels, manuscripts, correspondence, original art and role-playing. Books – Originally called Space Out Library before the name was officially changed in 1990.
“The collection is certainly a Toronto treasure,” says Sephora Henderson, senior department head for the Merrill Collection, before adding that as with most of the library’s resources, “there are still many people who haven’t discovered this gem yet. ”
DOC SAVAGE THE MAN OF BRONZE SHOULD BE PLAYED BY DWAYNE THE ROCK JOHNSON
times have changed Since the inception of the archive. “In the 1970s, science fiction was written by a handful of writers, mostly men, and almost entirely white,” says Kim Hull, a general librarian at TPL. “This has changed radically, with more diverse representation becoming apparent in recent years, with many more women, POCs and gender-nonconforming people writing across all genres under the speculative-fiction umbrella.”
The collection is home to many valuable works, the rarest being the William M. Timlin is a book “The ship that went to Mars.” “It’s a title from the 1920s,” says Hull, “that had a very limited print run of 2,000 copies. The whereabouts of most copies are unknown.”
Rare or not, “all items have great cultural value,” Henderson says, “as they inform users about trends in the genre. Like ‘Frankenstein,’ ‘Dracula,’ ‘1984’ and ‘Dune’ Titles have been hugely influential in shaping modern literature and have become coveted in popular culture at large.
Silverberg, for one, thinks it’s important to make more people aware of how culturally significant sci-fi and fantasy writers have become in the wider literary landscape. “His imaginative world-building,” he says, “has inspired countless young writers. [including myself] To pick up the pen.”
Because the items in the collection are non-circulating, Henderson says, “we have a lot of regular people who visit daily or even weekly.” Visitors included Neil Gaiman, Laurel K. Hamilton, Brandon Sanderson and Corey Doctorow, as well as academics and researchers who have traveled through Australia to access the works. The curious can also view more than 172,000 (and counting) items from the home using the library’s digital archives. Digital access also ensures that these materials will last for generations. “In a special-collections environment, where there are rare books and archival material, great care is taken to handle more material than is absolutely necessary,” says Henderson. “Digital surrogates provide a way to examine and enjoy them without excessive handling.”
Given the popularity of the genre, this will remain a priority. “It will always be geek culture,” Henderson says. “But it is no longer a stigma, but a matter of pride for many.”
America Needs a New Scientific Revolution
A repurposed antidepressant might help treat COVID-19, a remarkable study found. The way this research was funded highlights a big problem—and bigger opportunity—in American science.
Getty; The Atlantic NOVEMBER 5, 2021 About the author: Derek Thompson is a staff writer at The Atlantic, where he writes about economics, technology, and the media. He is the author of Hit Makers and the host of the podcast Crazy/Genius.
Two stories in science are worth cheering right now: the amazing amount of knowledge humanity is gathering about COVID-19 and the quietly revolutionary ways we’re accelerating the pace of discovery.
First, the knowledge: Last week, a large clinical trial concluded that the cheap antidepressant drug fluvoxamine dramatically lowers the chance that people with COVID-19 will get hospitalized or die.
Researchers found that patients who took the drug for at least eight days saw a 91 percent reduction in death rate. Fluvoxamine, which has been used for decades to treat depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder, also reduces inflammation, which alerted scientists to its potential to calm the immune-system storms caused by COVID-19. “This is exciting data,” Daniel Griffin, the chief of infectious disease at the health-care-provider network ProHealth New York, told The Wall Street Journal. “This may end up being standard of care.”
So far, so wonderful. But what makes this study even more remarkable were six boring-sounding words in the paper’s acknowledgments: “The trial was supported by FastGrants.”
What’s that?
Last year, in the chaotic opening innings of the coronavirus pandemic, the George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen and Patrick Collison, the CEO of the payment-processing company Stripe, co-founded a new program for quickly funding scientific research on COVID-19. They called it Fast Grants. Pulling together a small team of early-career scientists to vet several thousand ideas, they sent out the first round of money in about 48 hours. In 2020, they raised more than $50 million and awarded more than 260 grants that supported research on saliva-based tests, long COVID, and clinical trials for repurposed drugs—including fluvoxamine.
Like many new ideas, Fast Grants is an innovation embedded in a critique of the status quo.
Most scientific funding in the United States flows from federal agencies such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. This funding is famously luxurious; the NIH and NSF allocate about $50 billion a year. It is also infamously laborious and slow. Scientists spend up to 40 percent of their time working on research grants rather than on research. And funding agencies sometimes take seven months (or longer) to review an application, respond, or request a resubmission. Anything we can do to accelerate the grant-application process could hugely increase the productivity of science.
The existing layers of bureaucracy have obvious costs in speed. They also have subtle costs in creativity. The NIH’s pre-grant peer-review process requires that many reviewers approve an application. This consensus-oriented style can be a check against novelty—what if one scientist sees extraordinary promise in a wacky idea but the rest of the board sees only its wackiness? The sheer amount of work required to get a grant also penalizes radical creativity. Many scientists, anticipating the turgidity and conservatism of the NIH’s approval system, apply for projects that they anticipate will appeal to the board rather than pour their energies into a truly new idea that, after a 500-day waiting period, might get rejected. This is happening in an academic industry where securing NIH funding can be make-or-break: Since the 1960s, doctoral programs have gotten longer and longer, while the share of Ph.D. holders getting tenure has declined by 40 percent.
Fast Grants aimed to solve the speed problem in several ways. Its application process was designed to take half an hour, and many funding decisions were made within a few days. This wasn’t business as usual. It was Operation Warp Speed for science.
In the past few years, I’ve had many conversations with entrepreneurs, researchers, and writers about the need for a new scientific revolution in this country. These thinkers have diagnosed several paradoxes in the current U.S. science system.
First is the trust paradox. People in professional circles like saying that we “believe the science,” but ironically, the scientific system doesn’t seem to put much confidence in real-life scientists. In a survey of researchers who received Fast Grants, almost 80 percent said that they would change their focus “a lot” if they could deploy their grant money however they liked; more than 60 percent said they would pursue work outside their field of expertise, against the norms of the NIH. “The current grant funding apparatus does not allow some of the best scientists in the world to pursue the research agendas that they themselves think are best,” Collison, Cowen, and the UC Berkeley scientist Patrick Hsu wrote in the online publication Future in June. So major funders have placed researchers in the awkward position of being both celebrated by people who say they love the institution of science and constrained by the actual institution of science.
Second, there is a specialization paradox. Despite considerable domain specialization in the sciences, individual scientists cannot focus enough on doing hard research in their chosen field.
Since 1970, the number of years the average Ph.D. student in the biosciences spends in graduate school has grown from a little more than five years to almost eight years. Producing experts is taking longer, and those experts are getting less productive. In the famous paper “Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?,” the Stanford University economist Nicholas Bloom and his colleagues found that research productivity has declined sharply across the board since the 1970s. Research from the University of Chicago scholar James Evans has found that as the number of researchers has grown, progress has slowed down in some fields, perhaps because scientists are so overwhelmed by the glut of information they have to process that they’re clustering around the same safe subjects and citing the same few papers.
But in the bigger picture, today’s scientists can’t really specialize in science, because so many of them are forced to devote at least one day a week to begging for money. In the Fast Grants survey, a majority of respondents said they spend “more than one quarter of their time on grant applications.” This is absurd. It’s the height of irrationality, wastefulness, or both that the U.S. education system takes great pains to train scientists to be monkish specialists, only to dump them into an arms race for scarce funding that elbows out the work of doing science.
A third feature of American science is the experimentation paradox: The scientific revolution, which still inspires today’s research, extolled the virtues of experiments. But our scientific institutions are weirdly averse to them. The research establishment created after World War II concentrated scientific funding at the federal level. Institutions such as the NIH and NSF finance wonderful work, but they are neither nimble nor innovative, and the economist Cowen got the idea for Fast Grants by observing their sluggishness at the beginning of the pandemic. Many science reformers propose spicing things up with new lotteries that offer lavish rewards for major breakthroughs, or giving unlimited and unconditional funding to superstars in certain domains. “We need a better science of science,” the writer José Luis Ricón has argued. “The scientific method needs to examine the social practice of science as well, and this should involve funders doing more experiments to see what works.” In other words, we ought to let a thousand Fast Grants–style initiatives bloom, track their long-term productivity, and determine whether there are better ways to finance the sort of scientific breakthroughs that can change the course of history.
Four hundred years ago, the first scientific revolution overthrew old ways of looking at the world and embraced experimentation over tradition. We could use a similar revolution today. The U.S. relies on a fleet of scientific agencies—the CDC, FDA, NIH, and NSF—that are decades old and that, in many cases, act their age. The CDC publishes excellent research, but it utterly failed to respond quickly and adequately in the face of a national emergency. The FDA protects Americans from some terrible medical products, but its protectiveness also deprives Americans of some very good and urgently needed products. The NIH and NSF fund a lot of brilliant research, but their hegemony over scientific funding makes it hard to know whether we could be doing much, much better.
American science needs more science. That means, above all, that we need more experiments. We shouldn’t have to depend on 20th-century institutions to guide 21st-century progress. The lesson of Fast Grants is that we don’t have to.
A Canadian opens up about her secret wartime work — eavesdropping on Japan
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Retired sergeant remembers what it was like on the 'front
Almost 80 years after the fact, retired sergeant Marjorie Stetson is only now able to talk about her top-secret work on Japanese codes during the Second World War. This photo was taken in 1944. (Submitted by Marjorie Stetson )
At age 97, Marjorie Stetson has never told anyone her secret code number — until now.
That's the identity code — 225 — that she typed on every page of her highly classified work for the Canadian Armed Forces during the Second World War.
The retired sergeant's wartime work was so covert, she said, she had to sign 15 separate copies of Canada's Official Secrets Act.
"Nobody knew where I worked," Stetson told CBC News from her home in Massachusetts ahead of Remembrance Day. "Nobody knew what we did. Even my parents never knew what I did in the service."
Her husband, an American sailor she met at a celebration marking the end of the war, passed away a decade ago. She never told him what she really did during the war.
Today, Stetson herself is only now learning about the true scope of her role and the significance of all those sheets of white paper she filled with encrypted messages from Japan.
WATCH | Retired Canadian sergeant reveals her secret work from WW II:
'Nobody knew what we did,' says Marjorie Stetson, 97, who intercepted Japanese codes during the Second World War. 2:19
"She was on the front line of the radio war," said military historian David O'Keefe, who studies Second World War code breaking and signals intelligence. "She really was at the forefront of a dawning of a new era."
Stetson's work made her part of a large transatlantic intelligence network that played a direct role in the United States' decision to drop atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, said O'Keefe, a professor at Marianopolis College in Quebec.
The last one standing
Stetson used a radio receiver to intercept Japanese army and air force communications. She used a special typewriter to transcribe the Japanese codes she heard. Those number-filled documents were sent to code breakers in the U.S. and sometimes England, said O'Keefe — giving the Allies an intelligence edge in the Pacific region
"What she was involved in was extremely important for the war effort," he said. "All that information she gets is eventually turned into actionable intelligence, which then translates into better decision-making and perhaps the saving of thousands, if not millions, of lives."
Stetson is the only woman out of the dozen she worked with who is still alive to tell her story.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the establishment of the Canadian Women's Army Corps (CWAC). Faced with a shortage of manpower in 1941, the military created the CWAC and enlisted thousands of women to serve. It's a milestone that paved the way for women to serve in the regular forces.
Stetson joined the Canadian Women's Army Corps (CWAC) in 1942 at the age of 18. It's the 80th anniversary of the formation of the CWAC, a pivotal moment that paved the way for women to serve in the regular forces. (Submitted by Marjorie Stetson)
Stetson was just 18 years old when she joined CWAC in 1942.
Her father was injured in the First World War; when he vowed to serve again, Stetson said she wanted to join instead. The army made her wait until her birthday.
Spies in the orchard
After spending two days scrubbing floors in Montreal, she was offered to take a course on telegraphy in Kingston, Ont. She said her time in the Girl Guides gave her a grounding in Morse code and soon she was sent across the country to join an exclusive team.
Stetson said she was one of a dozen women picked up in a truck every day and driven to a hidden location — a white building in a plum orchard in Victoria, B.C.
Stetson said a photographer on her shift took this photo of the building she worked at in Victoria during the Second World War and shared it with her. (Submitted by Marjorie Stetson)
No one unauthorized was allowed into building #3SWS, or permitted to know what went on inside.
"Some of the girls weren't terribly excited about their jobs, but I loved my job," Stetson said. "I liked hearing it and copying it down."
Sealed off by secret work, Stetson said, she had no sense of what was going on with the wider war. She recalled an alert after a German submarine was reported near the coast in 1945 — an emergency that scarcely slowed her and her colleagues down.
'Don't ask me anything else'
"We had to wear our gas masks and our hard hats," she said of the incident. "And just keep working ... It brought you closer to the war.
"We had no idea what was going on there. We just knew what we did and it went to the people who were transforming it into English."
One day, she said, she was invited into an office where a superior praised her work as "first class."
"He said everything I typed was correct," Stetson said. "I said to him, 'Tell me where it goes.'
"He said, 'It goes to Washington, but don't ask me anything else. I can't tell you anything else.'"
It wasn't until three years ago — when Liz Mundy published her book Code Girls — that Stetson started to learn about the intelligence network she served.
Mundy's book told the previously untold story of the tens of thousands of women who served as code gatherers and breakers during the war and helped to save countless lives.
Serving in silence
Sworn to secrecy, their efforts went undisclosed and uncelebrated until 2018.
Stetson said she tracked down Mundy after reading the book and learned she was among the last members of the network still alive.
O'Keefe said that information within the network was "stovepiped" — military members were told only what they needed to know to do their work.
The Americans were responsible for the signals intelligence network on the West Coast, said O'Keefe. Stetson's information likely would have been sent to Seattle before being shared with Washington, he said.
From there, the encrypted messages could either be sent to code breakers in England or deciphered in Washington, he said.
O'Keefe said that information harvested from those messages was used against both Japan and Nazi Germany.
Stetson with her mother and their dog. She never told her parents what she did during the war because she was sworn to secrecy. Her mother passed away without having an inkling, she said. (Submitted by Marjorie Stetson )
The intelligence that led to Hiroshima
He said the Allies were "quite successful" at breaking Japanese Army and Air Force codes. Their most significant breakthrough happened in 1945, O'Keefe said, when decoded messages showed the Japanese knew exactly what the Allies intended to do when it came to invading the home islands.
"It was quite certain that it was going to be a bloodbath," he said. "The Japanese knew what was going on, and through reading their codes, you could see the dispositions they were making, the preparations they were making and, perhaps more importantly, the fact that they weren't going to surrender any time soon.
"They were planning to go down in a blaze of glory."
O'Keefe said that information filtered up to the highest levels of Allied leadership and led directly to the decision to use nuclear weapons in warfare for the first time.
That decision is still profoundly controversial. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki killed tens of thousands of people, mostly civilians. It also hastened the war's end and eliminated the need for a bloody ground invasion.
Stetson likely will never know whether her stacks of neatly typed papers with the number 225 on them played a role in that decision.
"It was a terrible, terrible war," she said. "You want to sit there and cry for all those who never came home ... I hope the world never has another war."
But at age 97, she said, it's a relief to finally be able to talk about a part of history that came close to being forgotten.
"I hope people know that those of us who rushed in, we didn't just wash dishes," she said. "We worked hard, we really worked hard."
The women who worked at #3SWS held an annual reunion. The last was in Ottawa, where they visited the National War Memorial in 1982. (Submitted by Marjorie Stetson)
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