Category Archives: Science

China, India and their long term demographics

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I found this to be really interesting. Via RAND:

Demographic contrasts between China and India will become more pronounced in the coming decades, and these differences hold implications for the countries’ relative economic prospects. China’s population is larger than India’s, but India’s population is expected to surpass China’s by 2025. China’s population is older than India’s and beginning to age rapidly, which may constrain economic growth, whereas an increasing percentage of India’s population will consist of working-age people through 2030, giving India an important demographic advantage.

The report expands on this idea:

Reflecting this changing age composition, the two countries will experience different patterns in the percentage of population that is of working age (customarily ages 15–64). In China, this percentage peaked in 2010, at 73 percent, and is beginning to decline; by 2035, it is expected to fall to 60 percent. By contrast, India’s working-age population as a share of the total population is gradually increasing. From its 2010 level of 65 percent, the percentage of people of working age is expected to increase gradually; to crest at about 68 percent around 2030 — the same year that India will surpass China on this statistic; and then to decline slowly.

Demographic Dividend or Drag? What These Differences Imply for Each Country’s Future Economic Prospect

When a growing share of a country’s population reaches working age, conditions may be ripe for that country to reap a “demographic dividend” — that is, to realize income growth and savings because a higher proportion of its population is able to contribute to the economy. From this standpoint, for the next several decades, China’s demographics will not be more favorable for supporting economic growth than they are now. A high ratio of working-age people to dependents contributed significantly to China’s economic growth in the past two decades, but China’s proportion of working-age people is at its peak and will soon begin to decline.

Moreover, China is now entering an era when its rapidly aging population — leading to rising ratios of dependents to workers and rising health costs for the growing cohort of elderly — could constrain economic growth. Savings rates may fall as a larger fraction of the population begins to use savings for retirement, thus reducing the flow of private capital into investments, while the government also diverts more of the budget from public investment to pension and health payments. In addition, the elderly in China (as well as in India) traditionally rely on family members to care for them in old age. If adult children divert more of their time and money toward taking care of their elderly parents rather joining the modern labor force, the forecasted rates of economic growth may not materialize.

In India, by contrast, the demographic window of opportunity is still wide open. India will have an important demographic advantage — an increasing percentage of working-age people — that will produce favorable conditions for a demographic dividend until around 2030, when the ratio of working-age people to dependents is expected to peak.

Something to think about.

The Nannies in Washington Working Overtime Pushing ‘Energy Saving’ Light Bulbs

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Have you heard of the Department of Energy’s “L” prize?

Washington, D.C. – The U.S. Department of Energy today announced that Philips Lighting North America has won the 60-watt replacement bulb category of the Bright Tomorrow Lighting Prize (L Prize) competition. The Department of Energy’s L Prize challenged the lighting industry to develop high performance, energy-saving replacements for conventional light bulbs that will save American consumers and businesses money.

Yep, you read that blurb correctly. Our very broke Federal Government handed Phillips Lighting North America (a subsidiary of Royal Philips Electronics of the Netherlands) a cool $10 million for developing a LED light bulb with the equivalent light output of a 60 watt incandescent.

The DOE press release goes on to discuss the performance of Phillips new LED bulbs’ performance with respect to its lifetime hours, performance at temperature extremes, performance in humidity. One aspect the DOE’s press release does not cover is light quality. This is because the ‘harsh’ and slightly blueish light emitted from LED’s that are great for the piercing daytime running lights used on newer cars create unpleasing lighting in your living room.

The reason LED lighting in a home, or any interior application, is unpleasing is because LED light is monochromatic, meaning an LED only emits a narrow wavelength of light (color). Unlike a traditional incandescent bulb that emits a true white light (made up of the entire visible spectrum of light) a white LED is either a combination of red, green and blue LED’s or a blue LED coated with yellow phosphorus.

Did you know there is no such thing as a white LED chip? “White” LEDs (packaged devices) start with a blue LED chip, also referred to in the LED industry as a blue “pump”. Then a yellow-based phosphor is applied over the blue chip – refer back to Figure 1. This combination of colors makes use of a phenomenon known as metamerism which occurs when our eyes and brain perceive two different but complementary colors as “mixing” to “create” a third complementary color. When the blue light shines through the yellow phosphor it is down-converted into what we see as white light. Blue LED chip + yellow-based phosphor = white light.

This tricking of the eye into seeing white light creating the harshness and blueish tint of the light emitted from white LED’s. White light from incandescent bulbs don’t have this problem. I’ll let Bill Nye explain…

The DOE is handing out a $10 million prize to the electronics giant Phillips Co. for creating a light bulb consumers aren’t asking for and don’t want. And, when consumers do purchase them, they will be unhappy with the light provided.

One final point. If white LED’s can perform in an automotive application (vibration, environmental extremes, voltage fluctuations, humidity, life testing etc.) why is the DOE retesting the LED’s?

The winning Philips product excelled through rigorous short-term and long-term performance testing carried out by independent laboratories and field assessments conducted with utilities and other partners. The product also performed well through a series of stress tests, in which the product was subjected to extreme conditions such as high and low temperatures, humidity, vibration, high and low voltage, and various electrical waveform distortions. The Philips L Prize winning product was also required to have a useful lifetime of more than 25,000 hours, compared with 1,000 to 3,000 hours for the products these highly efficient bulbs are intended to replace.

Just wondering.

The United States Map Based On Who We Call And Text Most

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The United States map as represented by counties that text and called each other more often:

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The call map reveals some interesting connections based on phone calling patterns. Some states merge like Kentucky and Tennessee or North and South Carolina. California splits into a northern and southern region. Illinois drops the southern half of the state and merges with eastern Wisconsin.

Next, looking at a map based on SMS (text messaging) patterns shows several variations to the call map.

click for a larger version

First off, notice how California, based on SMS patterns, is now split into three regions and the Georgia / Alabama alignment based on phone calls has split based on SMS patterns.

Interesting stuff….

Guess who is funding Russia’s next generation manned spacecraft…

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The American taxpayer. Via MIT Technology Review:

With the U.S. manned space program grounded following the last mission of the space shuttle, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft is the only avenue into space for NASA astronauts. And, in an unprecedented arrangement for NASA, U.S. taxpayers will now provide the Russian government with the extra cash it needs to build a new-generation manned vehicle to replace the 40-year-old Soyuz.

Just as in 1993, when the Russian space agency suddenly found itself in the driver’s seat of the stalled U.S.-led space station program by providing crucial elements of the outpost from their own stillborn Mir-2 project, Moscow space officials can again hardly believe their luck. The retirement of the U.S. space shuttle before its replacement is ready means a lucrative deal for Russia to transport all crews to the International Space Station in the next several years.

However, as the Russian space agency’s officials are celebrating this windfall, the leaders of the Russian space industry are far from resting on their laurels—they are pushing ahead with plans for a new spacecraft and launcher.

One more example of the government spending money with nothing to show for it.

Going Green Without Thinking: Back Up Generation Capacity For Wind Power Is Very Expensive

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Remind me again what is so great about those stupid windmills that Obama and the left are so obsessed with?

Via The Telegraph (UK):

Centrica and other energy companies last week told DECC that, if Britain is to spend £100 billion on building thousands of wind turbines, it will require the building of 17 new gas-fired power stations simply to provide back-up for all those times when the wind drops and the windmills produce even less power than usual.

We will thus be landed in the ludicrous position of having to spend an additional £10 billion on those 17 dedicated power stations, which will be kept running on “spinning reserve”, 24 hours a day, just to make up for the fundamental problem of wind turbines. This is that their power continually fluctuates anywhere between full capacity to zero (where it often stood last winter, when national electricity demand was at a peak). So unless back-up power is instantly available to match any shortfall, the lights will go out.

It gets better…

While the gas turbines in “spinning reserve” mode, waiting to compensate for wind fluctuations, the turbines will consume natural gas and emit CO2 while not generating any electricity. And, in an ironic twist that will send environmentalists over the edge, it turns out that while the gas standby units are in “spinning reserve” mode they are less efficient and emit MORE CO2 than when they running at normal capacity.

Isn’t the supposed “global warming” caused by CO2 emission the reason for the windmills in the first place?

H/T Ace

If The Data Doesn’t Fit The Hypothesis, Create Data That Does Fit

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This is becoming more and more of trend with the global warming crowd. Via World Climate Report:

To make a long story short, Czymzik et al. examined sediment deposits in a well-situated lake in southern Germany, and they found the sediments beautifully preserved flood events from the past. Consistent with what others had found, this team concluded that flood “frequency distribution over the entire 450 year time series is not stationary but reveals maxima for colder periods of the Little Ice Age when solar activity was reduced.” That is something we see over and over – extreme events occurring in cold periods, not warm ones.

In light of the above, and from the plethora of other studies which fail to find a human influence of extreme weather, we’ll leave you with this incredible one sentence summary of an article by Laurens Bouwer in the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society – a statement that still has us shaking our heads:

“Lacking significant impact from anthropogenic warming so far, the best way to assess the potential influence of climate change on disaster losses may be to analyze future projections rather than historical data.”

So we should disregard the lessons from past data on hail in China, extreme precipitation events in Hawaii, floods in southern Germany, or the historical occurences of other extreme weather, and instead turn to climate model projections for guidance? We can only hope that he is kidding.

H/T Climate Depot

Made In Detroit: A new way to make lighter, stronger steel

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This is really a big deal… And it was invented in Detroit.

A Detroit entrepreneur surprised university engineers here recently, when he invented a heat-treatment that makes steel 7 percent stronger than any steel on record – in less than 10 seconds.

In fact, the steel, now trademarked as Flash Bainite, has tested stronger and more shock-absorbing than the most common titanium alloys used by industry.

The Flash Bainite process is a new way to heat treat steel in 10 seconds rather than in hours (or days) like current processes.

“Steel is what we would call a ‘mature technology.’ We’d like to think we know most everything about it,” he said. “If someone invented a way to strengthen the strongest steels even a few percent, that would be a big deal. But 7 percent? That’s huge.”

Yet, when inventor Gary Cola initially approached him, Babu didn’t know what to think.

“The process that Gary described – it shouldn’t have worked,” he said. “I didn’t believe him. So he took my students and me to Detroit.”

Cola showed them his proprietary lab setup at SFP Works, LLC., where rollers carried steel sheets through flames as hot as 1100 degrees Celsius and then into a cooling liquid bath.

Though the typical temperature and length of time for hardening varies by industry, most steels are heat-treated at around 900 degrees Celsius for a few hours. Others are heated at similar temperatures for days.

Cola’s entire process took less than 10 seconds.

He claimed that the resulting steel was 7 percent stronger than martensitic advanced high-strength steel. [Martensitic steel is so named because the internal microstructure is entirely composed of a crystal form called martensite.] Cola further claimed that his steel could be drawn – that is, thinned and lengthened – 30 percent more than martensitic steels without losing its enhanced strength.

If that were true, then Cola’s steel could enable carmakers to build frames that are up to 30 percent thinner and lighter without compromising safety. Or, it could reinforce an armored vehicle without weighing it down.

“We asked for a few samples to test, and it turned out that everything he said was true,” said Ohio State graduate student Tapasvi Lolla. “Then it was up to us to understand what was happening.”

Cola is a self-taught metallurgist, and he wanted help from Babu and his team to reveal the physics behind the process – to understand it in detail so that he could find ways to adapt it and even improve it.

This is the type of business  that will create a large footprint of economic activity and many spin-offs. I would hope the political leadership in Michigan, who are endlessly prattling on about creating jobs, would clear the decks, remove all regulatory barriers and get Gary Cola processing steel in Michigan.

Do Musicians Have More Developed Brains?

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Frequent visitors to MCT know I’m a big music fan, so you know this caught my eye while I was perusing the Freakonomics blog:

A new study (abstract here; summary here) argues that musicians have more highly developed brains than the rest of us. The research relates the concept of high mind development to the potential to become really good at something:

New research shows that musicians’ brains are highly developed in a way that makes the musicians alert, interested in learning, disposed to see the whole picture, calm, and playful. The same traits have previously been found among world-class athletes, top-level managers, and individuals who practice transcendental meditation.

Very interesting stuff.

The Freakonomics Guys Are Catching Up To MCT On Electric Vehicles

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If you read the Freakonomics Blog, you would read this about Electric Vehicles today:

Electric cars are all the rage today, but some of the smartest people I know believe that moving towards electric vehicles is a terrible idea.

It’s like the Freakonomic guys have been reading motorcitytimes.com since its inception.

The blog post continues pointing out (eerily mirroring motorcitytimes.com)out the flawed economics of Electric vehicles:

Looking casually as an outsider at the unappealing economics of electric vehicles (the need for a new and immensely expensive infrastructure, cars that cost much more than either traditional gas engines or hybrids, limited ranges and long recharging times), I find it hard to understand why the Obama administration is pushing electric cars

Then the Freakonomics post moves on to a discussion of another MCT mainstay, rare earth materials:

Be careful what you wish for, however, because if electric cars become a mainstay, we may be trading one dependence for another that is even more troubling. Ninety-five percent of the world’s output of rare-earth metals today comes from one country: China. By some estimates, demand will outstrip supply within five years.

This sounds remarkably like a MCT post titled No Free Lunches: Trade Expensive Imported Foreign Oil For Expensive Imported Foreign Lithium (June 8th, 2010):

If goal is to move to large scale electric vehicle production. the next problem is where are we going to get the lithium needed to construct the batteries? The United States has only a very small reserve of lithium. The majority (by some estimates over half) the worlds lithium resides in Bolivia. So, rather than import expensive and dangerous foreign oil from places like Canada and Mexico we will end up importing expensive and dangerous foreign lithium from places like Bolivia.

Even the supply chain to construct these electric cars are going to require lots of petroleum. Are we going to use sail powered vessels to ship the lithium from Bolivia? Of course not. The entire supply chain, including shipping, will require petroleum.

It’s good to see that people are starting to catch on that the electric vehicle is not going to live up to the liberal / environmentalists hype.

Here are a few posts @MCT concerning electric vehicles / rare earth materials and green energy for your perusal:

More On Rare Earth Materials: China Is Reducing Exports By 10% In 2011

Rare Earth Materials And The Incompetence Of Debbie Stabenow (D-MI)

Electric Vehicles: Hyped For One Hundred Years

Obama’s Volt 281… 2011 Dodge Charger 3,263

Obma’s SOTU And His Flawed Green Energy Economics

Pravda: Energy is the keystone to any and every economy