omenti

invention

a minipost

I've heard Yasmin Williams a few times  She's an exceptionally inventive guitarist and NPR's Tiny Desk Concert series has featured her a few times.  Here's her latest visit.  

 

(definitely go fullscreen to watch her technique.  Fullscreen doesn't work in some browsers, so go to the NPR link above for their version.)

 

Invention is often a mixture of curiosity and just playing around with things.  The process can seem opaque if it's outside your field, but it's basically playfulness. It's at the heart of art, literature, music, science, technology, sports and much more.  It moves civilization.  

 

 

opportunity++

Now it's posh, but London's Soho district was a rather unfortunate place in the mid 19th century.  The region was experiencing dramatic growth, but it didn't connect to London's sewer system.  Residences crammed in with slaughter houses and rendering plants overloaded a primitive sewer system that was unable to serve everyone.  Cesspools ran over and untreated waste flowed directly into the Thames.  This was taking place during a worldwide pandemic. London had seen outbreaks before, but the 1854  outbreak on Broad Street changed the course of history.

 

John Snow is famous for mapping out cholera deaths in the area and noting a cluster served by a water pump on Broad Street. The pump drew water from a well that was contaminated by human and animal sewage. The Broad Street pump was removed from service, but didn't make much of a dent in the three or four thousand cholera deaths in London.  What made a difference was what he did next. - an analysis of deaths in regions served by water pumped from the Thames.  He set up a double blind experiment and showed cholera was carried by an agent in the water rather than the dominate theory that it was "bad air" (miasma).  It was the beginning of scientific epidemiology and modern public health. 

 

There's a pub named in his honor near the location of the pump that started his line of reasoning.

 

Over the last year and a half we've been  learning just how important public health is.  It seems odd to unquestionaingly spend so much on a war industry when a pandemic mixed with politics and a fear of science has prove more lethal than war.  That aside we're learning fresh air is critical with airborne spread diseases.  During an outbreak that means masks universally worn as a first and final line of defense and frequent air changes.  With the delta variant of SARS-CoV-2  it looks like you need at least fifteen air changes an hour to qualify as safe with minimal masking.  Outside of clean rooms and operating theaters that's a tall order indoors.  We can get part of the way there with in-room air cleaners, upgraded HVAC systems and opening windows when you can.  I've been spending some time doing this to learn a bit and have come to the conclusion that, although effective, it's sort of a piano wire and chewing gum approach.   Real fixes require an architectural design approach informed by science to create new spaces as well as retrofit existing ones.  Very few people do the science and much needs to be done.  New technologies probably need to be developed and there needs to be a better understanding of what can be done with what exists.. 

 

Creating clean spaces goes well beyond the current pandemic.  Clean indoor rooms can have an impact on the flu plus there are a number of chemicals that outgas that we mostly ignore.  And many of us have had to deal with PM 2.5 pollution from forest fires and combustion.    The question is how do you make this desirable enough that we learn how to make and implement better designs than we have?   How do you spark a revolution in public health that involves architecture design and retrofit on a massive scale?

 

Unfortunately successful public health measures are often seen as expensive overkill.  Perhaps carbon dioxide concentration is the answer.  Over the years studies have shown decreases in cognitive functions and alertness linked to higher  CO₂ concentrations.¹ Generally 1000 parts per million is seen as a boundary, but some studies show decreased mental ability around 800 ppm.  Many offices and schools regularly exceed 1000 when occupied.  Your car is probably several thousand in a half hour  if you aren't bringing in outside air.  How much would a school spend to upgrade the mental ability of its students?  Would a company pay extra for more alert workers who function at higher cognitive levels and get sick less often? And what about homes?  Many homes are worse than offices - maybe working from home should be rethought or at least certified.   

_________

¹ A fairly recent study on cognitive function associated with CO₂ and VOC exposure 

 

 

looking back on long term focused change

Apple introduced two new laptops this week.  Fourteen and sixteen inch versions of the MacBook Pro.  On the surface they show a company responding to a certain class of users who value functionality over style.  A serious reversal from the days when Jony Ive dictated a minimalist approach.  Very nice laptops that happen to be extremely powerful. As fast as the most powerful Intel laptops with a much lower power consumption. It is likely these will run quietly most of the time - useful on video calls.   And while Intel has been almost stalled on increasing performance, Apples M chip series is only beginning its ramp.

 

I'm not a historian, but here's a rough sketch.  

 

  The Motorola 6502 was simple chip that retailed for about $25 in the mid 1970s.  The price made it popular with hobbyists.   Steve Wozniak used it in the Apple I and the commercially successful Apple II.  This started down on a long relationship with Motorola.  Beginning in the 80s Intel supplied the x86 chips used in IBM compatible PCs.  During the 80s Apple had moved to Motorola's 68x processors.  By the late 80s Motorola was falling behind.  Apple was in the unenviable position of being tied to a substandard processor.   Some in the company wanted to design their own processor, but Apple lacked the necessary resources.  Instead they turned to IBM which made fantastic silicon and was working on a reduced instruction set processor family (RISC) known as the PowerPC (PPC) 

 

I won't go into the RISC vs CISC wars of the 80s and 90s (CISC is complex instruction set) other than mentioning there were two competing processor architectures.   Intel's x86 and the Motorola 68x family were both CISC.  Apple was internally interested in the higher compute power per watt performance with possible with RISC.  Interested enough that they became part of a joint venture that changed the history of technology.

 

ARM was originally the Acorn RISC Machine - an English home computer the BBC was pushing.   Apple was the majority holder of a joint venture between Acorn, Apple and a chip maker called VLSI technology.  The company was headquartered in Cambridge, England and took the then novel approach of licensing their design rather than making chips.  To say this was successful is understatement.  Apple used ARM chips in the Apple Newton.  It was a failure and taken off the market when Steve Jobs returned to Apple, but the desire to have their own processor was there and a few changes forced by the market made it possible in the longer term. 

 

Apple introduced their first Power PC machine with an IBM processor in 1994.  It was fine as long as it was running software designed for the chip.  The problem was most software companies were more interested in supporting the fast growing Wintel platform.  Attempted to keep some market, Apple created an emulator that made the PPC act like it was a 68x processor.  It was a beautiful piece of software, but 68x programs ran slower on the PPC machines than on three year old 68x based machines.  Apple stayed alive, but nearly went out of business.  Then Steve Jobs returned with a much better operating system and - well - himself. 

 

By the early 2000s Apple emerged with some great industrial design and a growing number of PPC native programs.  Then came a tiny RISC machine called the iPod that only played music.  It gave them experience with integrated hardware, software and a service.  It may have also marked a point where Apple came out with something not only surprising, but cool.  But IBM was failing to keep the PPC relevant.  Apple needed to jump. This time the only choice was going back to the CISC x86 Intel processors.   Mac OSX, Apple's Unix based operating system, had been running on Intel chips for several years.  The software was improving quickly, but getting important developers write native applications was difficult.   Once again Apple built an emulator.   This time they had some internal experience with the process.  It was called Rosetta.   PPC instructions were converted to x86 instructions..  It wasn't perfect, but was efficient and good enough that the platform was growing again.  Growing enough to convince developers to write native software.  And  Apple was giving them the software creation tools to do it.

 

The pain of two major shifts and some interesting new products on the drawing board.  They needed their own silicon.  They purchased a small silicon design company and built it in the US and Israel.  It took years, but over time  the results have been remarkable  Systems on chips for the iPhone, iPad, AirPods, HomePods, the Apple Watch, and a variety of small support computers used in other devices like a pencil and a keyboard display.  All of these run versions of MacOS, use the same development tools,  and many are integrated into similar services.  

 

About five years ago Intel began to run out of steam.  Apple was working on its third huge transition for PC class machines. This time going from Intel x86 to their own M series ARM (RISC) based chips.  The first laptop was introduced last year.  The M1 was basically an iPad chip in a laptop. The operating system and a lot of Apple and third party software runs brilliantly on it.  The emulator runs native x86 programs about as fast as they ran on Apple's x86 laptops.  

 

That brings us to the announcement a few days ago - the M1 Max and M1 Max Pro.  (scroll down a bit for the chips) Both use the same ARM based design The larger Pro chip and has 57 billion transistors while the original 1985 ARM1 chip had just 25,000 transistors.  The ARM1 was made with 3 micron process (very roughly the distance between lines and spaces in the lithography) - that's 3,000 nanometers.  The M1 Max Pro uses a 5 nanometer process.  

 

Here's a relative size comparison.  ARM1 in red M1 Max Pro in blue. (A real M1 is about 20mm wide and the ARM1 is about 7mm) Look closely between the two and you may see a red one pixel dot. That's how big the ARM1 would be if it was made with the same process used in the newer chip.  

 

A feature of putting so much on a single chip is subcomponents can be directly connected on silicon.  It offers  greater performance and is more power efficient than putting data on a bus and shipping it around from chip to chip and then back again.  Such integration is very difficult  if you're selling a general purpose chip. Phone and PC makers need to differentiate their product and that usually means doing it with a mixture of chips and the software that binds them.  Apple doesn't suffer that restriction.  And, until Intel's architecture, there appears to be a lot of blue sky for performance improvement.  The real competition will probably come from other ARM chips, but Apple has a lead.  Here's some very early commentary from Anandtech.

 

While not many people will buy high-end laptops, they continue to buy the iPhone -  arguably one of the most popular consumer products ever made - along with a large supporting infrastructure of apps and services. And they make smart wireless headphones, smart speakers, smart watches, smart pencils and more.  All of this is based on the same core hardware and software architecture.   As a friend pointed out it's like the same company makes Ferraris, ebikes and everything in between using the same fundamental design philosophy and somehow making it work.   Not a perfect analogy as Apple has a much broader range.

 

A Moore's Law observation.  In 1985 the transistor count for all of the computers Apple sold in 1985 was about 25 bilion - less than half the count on a single M1 Max Pro chip. 

 

 

 

 

getting to clean enough

It's becoming clear that the SARS-CoV-2 virus will be around for a long time.  We're probably much closer to the beginning than the end.   Hotspots will shift and new variants arise so it makes sense to be ready to mitigate risks as much as possible.  Vaccinating the world should be a high priority along with next generation vaccines, better treatments, testing, high quality masks when the risk is high, etc. etc.  

 

Improving local air quality is low hanging fruit.  To first order that means high quality masks in hotspots along with fresh air.   Room air filtration and circulation can be a powerful tool.  As living animals we exhale carbon dioxide.  In pristine location, say a mountain top in Hawaii, you can measure the baseline concentration. Air is about 420 ppm (parts per million) carbon dioxide - a bit over 0.04%.  Enclosed spaces with people have higher concentrations.  You're breathing some of the air from other people.  If people are the only source, you can calculate the percent of the total air in the room that's exhaled:

        CO₂ concentration (ppm)        % of total air that is exhaled 

                    420                                                  0%

                    600                                                0.5%  

                    800                                                1.0%

                    1000                                              1.5%

                    2400                                               5.0%

 

With these numbers it was believed the risk is low for up to an hour if everyone was wearing a simple cloth mask and one person was infected with the alpha variant with carbon dioxide concentrations as high as 800 ppm.  The delta variant changes the threshold.   Now the one hour number is about 600 ppm with everyone wearing a surgical mask.¹  Of course the probability of an infected person being in the room is low if you're in an area where the infection rate is low.  

 

It would be good to know the concentrations where ever you go:   offices, classrooms, stores, theaters, taxis, airplanes etc.²  Consumer grade carbon dioxide meters can be purchased for $100 to $300.  If you're really interested I can make a recommendation, but I've only used a few.  We'll probably see a rapid improvement as these are going to be essential tools.  Japan is requiring them in many public places and school rooms.³  It's important to have an NDIR sensor (basically it's doing spectroscopy with an infrared laser to measure concentration  - there are many other techniques, but this is the cheapest with enough accuracy and repeatability).  These are accurate to about 50 ppm, so ignore the more exact looking reading and just round up to the next multiple of 50  - if it reads 537 just call it 550.    It takes about two minutes to get a stable reading and you'll want one that stores measurements.  The model I like talks to an iPhone app which gives you a nice chart of the day.   For businesses and schools it's a good way to check if the rooms are getting good airflow.   I saw one schoolroom that exceeded 3000 ppm when students were present. It turned out an air return duct was blocked - a thirty minute fix gave the students clean air again.

 

High carbon dioxide concentrations make people drowsy and sap cognitive abilities.  It hasn't been carefully studied, but readings over 1000 ppm can make you drowsy and perhaps a bit feeble minded.  One Army study suggests 800 ppm should be a warning level.  Half-jokingly I told a superintendent that he could justify the cost of measurement though improved test scores.  It turned out that's what sold him.  Maybe it's a way to upgrade the collective intellectual capacity of an office.  Another benefit is a possible reduction in airborne diseases like the flu.  

 

You can't always open windows and doors to get a solid draft, but HVAC systems can often have their fan settings increased and room vents adjusted. High quality filters can capture viruses along with other particulate like some from a fire.  MERV-13 is a sweet spot for price,  the ability to snare virus sized particles and not requiring more powerful fans.  And you can buy or build portable air cleaners.

 

The hot ticket for rolling your own is a very simple design known as the Corsi-Rosenthal cube.  Here's the public domain diagram we used to build 84 of them for about $5,000  (the cost shown in the drawing doesn't involve much shopping around).  We used the cardboard from the shipping boxes the fans came in.  The shroud is very important.  Square corners disturb the airflow and can drop the unit's efficiency by about a third. A normal sized classroom for 30 to 40 students probably needs two units.  Keep them away from walls, doors,  and openable windows.  The filters will probably last the school year if you turn them off when people aren't in the room.  Most of the classrooms are showing readings under 600 ppm with these and the school's HVAC system fans all on high.  The boxes make a big difference.  Commercial air cleaners with good filters probably make more sense in offices and schools if they want to go long term, but 600 cfpm MERV-13 filters are about $500 and in short supply these days.   Like carbon dioxide meters I suspect we'll see some movement on air filter and fan design. 

 

Some learnings:

Duct tape is frustrating!

Schools have mountains of duct tape.

Eighth graders are the perfect people to enlist if you want to build a lot of them.  Eighth grade girls if you want them to be semi-presentable.

_________

¹ These are rule of thumb numbers based on empirical evidence.  But it's complex with many confounding factors. 

² A closed car can be spectacularly high. I sat in my car for fifteen minutes with one other person and recorded 3800 ppm!  You can drop this by opening the windows.  Opening them diagonally makes a lot of sense for creating airflow.  Airliners have good general circulation, but a given row can be bad.  A flight is probably much safer than a half hour Uber ride if the driver has the windows up.

³ People are already taking measurements in gyms, restaurants, etc and putting them online with locations and business names. It's ad hoc and not very standardized, but there are over 100 locations in NYC the last time I checked.  It makes much more sense for a business to do their air handling homework and post numbers in their establishment as well as their website.  Hopefully at some point a respectable aggregator will step in.

 

                                      

celebrating a friend

Sarah Pavan is a good friend who happens to be a world-class professional beach volleyball player.  In 2019 she and teammate Melissa Humana-Paredes were the world champions.  The video is of the semi-final match against Tokyo gold medalists April Ross and Alix Klineman.  Very high level volleyball in torrential rain for part of the time.  The ball behaves very differently went wet and there were more errors than normal, but also some terrific plays. Melissa injured her left shoulder early in the match, but was able to continue play.  Amazing volleyball from the best players.  There are video dropouts in the first few minutes, but that's before the match is underway.

 

The Canadians went on to silver and the Americans bronze the following day.

__________

 

Sport are an excellent vehicle for getting people engaged in science.  There's also a good deal of serious science involved and some open areas for work.

 

 

hints on how our brains adapt to deal with new concepts

Humans have seen an amazing progression of ideas from basic survival skills to getting a handle on how the universe began and might end and a great richness in between.  We do this with a brain that hasn't changed much in the past fifty thousand years.  How do we do it?

 

Here's a quick summary of some work at Carnegie Mellon University that used functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging as a probe to see how physicists organized conceptual properties.  fMRI is a rather blunt tool, but it was able to show how the brain organized the measurable and immeasurable.

 

Another striking finding was the large degree of commonality across physicists in how their brains represented the concepts. Even though the physicists were trained in different universities, languages and cultures, there was a similarity in brain representations. This commonality in conceptual representations arises because the brain system that automatically comes into play for processing a given type of information is the one that is inherently best suited to that processing. As an analogy, consider that the parts of one's body that come into play to perform a given task are the best suited ones: to catch a tennis ball, a closing hand automatically comes into play, rather than a pair or knees or a mouth or an armpit. Similarly, when physicists are processing information about oscillation, the brain system that comes into play is the one that would normally process rhythmic events, such as dance movements or ripples in a pond. And that is the source of the commonality across people. It is the same brain regions in everyone that are recruited to process a given concept.

 

There are a much broader range of deep concepts in physics that may well have separate organizations, but the technique here is very coarse.  They undoubtedly exist in many other occupations and one has to wonder how the mind of someone with a wide range of interests can dance around and play with different structures.  

 

Creative organizations need have internal access to a range of thinking modes and backgrounds. Like many others I have imposter syndrome when I'm listening to someone with deep experience in a different area.  Their mind has a great fluidity that you don't have became you lack the background and neural organization.  Breaking through this requires communicating at the appropriate level.  It's difficult if you don't know the other people.  One usually thinks of conventional academic subjects, but it's probably more general.  I find it amazing that some soccer or beach volleyball players create a mental map of the position, velocity, and acceleration of the other players including those they can't see and can bounce this off other information and communicate it to their teammate(s).  But great players run into the same problem as academic experts.  Finding the right level is difficult.  Great players rarely make great coaches.

 

Some organizations have worked out how to do this, but others tend towards narrow depth. If they appear to cover a broad range from the outside, inside they often are an array of poorly networked silos of local expertise.   Fortunately there seems to be a growing resistance to siloing.   And that brings me to a special kind of person.

 

Every now and again you come across a human impedance matches.  An impedance match is a bit of circuitry that allows as much of the signal as possible to go from sender to receiver (an over-simplification, but ...)  These people can sit between people with very different backgrounds or thought processes, often more than two, and make sure the signal gets through.    It astonishes me to see these people in action.