Wednesday, October 7, 2020

Saul wins the Einstein Prize from APS

Saul Teukolsky won the 2021 Einstein Prize from the APS. He shares it with Cliff Will. They say it's "for outstanding contributions to observational tests of general relativity with theories of gravitational waves, astrophysical black holes, and neutron stars."

Saul was my PhD advisor together with Ira Wasserman. They were amazing. I've watched Saul build the group that run the first simulation that produced a BH waveform -- the first orbit was such a big thing -- and then they produced LIGO templates. Later LIGO saw something very similar to the templates, and the first gravitational waves were observed. The books Saul has written: Numerical Recepies and "Black Holes, White Dwarfs and Neutron Stars" are in the library of most graduate students across the world. I can't think of anyone who deserves the prize more. So proud!

Andrea Ghez wins the Nobel Prize in Physics

UCLA's Andrea Ghez, a fierceless explorer of our galaxy, wins the Nobel Prize. She proved that supermassive black holes exist in galactic centres observationally by mapping the movement of stars. Their high velocity implied the presence of a very heavy object. In addition to being a wonderful astronomer, she is the mother of two boys, which means she succeeded in being both a mom and an award winning scientist and that there is hope for other women who want to have it all. She breaks the 60 year cycle by wining the Nobel Prize in physics only two years after Donna Strickland. Donna won hers for generating high intensity, ultra-short pulses of light. Before Donna, the previous female Nobel laurate was Maria Goeppert-Mayer in 1963. Then came Marie Curie in 1903. Thank you, Andrea, for being such an inspiration!

Andrea shares her prize with Sir Roger Penrose, who showed that black holes were a viable theoretical possibility, and Reinhard Genzel, the co-director of the Max Planck Institute for extra-terrestrial physics.

The Nobel Prize in Chemestry was also awarded to two women -- Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna -- for developing a method known as CRISPR-cas9, which enables the precise editing of specific genes in the DNA to, e.g., remove errors that lead to diseases.

From clocks to corn and potatoes to politics to life

This morning I had a meeting with colleagues from Bucharest and Timisoara on potentially building a centre for atomic clock research in Romania. It is not clear where the money would come from, and what can be proposed and where, but there is some enthusiasm. I am the only one without affiliation to a Romanian institution because there is little room here for people from abroad.

Then in the afternoon I went to Salbagel with my mom and the kids. With the help of two ladies from the neighorhood -- both in their fifties -- we picked our potatoes and some of the corn. We had planted one sack of potatoes in the spring, and tomatoes, pumpkins, cucumbers, carrots, salad, raddishes, onions, peppers, and beans. We had some salad, raddishes, carrots, onions and beans earlier in the summer during and before the heavy rains started. Then today we picked three sacks of potatoes, a sack of nuts, which need to be cracked later, three sacks of corn for the chicken, six pumpkins and a few figs. The rest of the vegetables were either over-run with grass or just rotted away. Several trees dried because of the combination of rain and draught. I did not think trees could have too much water.

While I held the baby, and Edward and the ladies dugged and picked potatoes, we had a group discussion on world-affairs and on local affairs. My helpers were factory workers. One had extended family working in Spain. They said the COVID deaths were few both here and abroad. They did not know anyone who had been sick or had died from COVID-19. In Lugoj we know of a relative of a friend who died of COVID-19. She was 94 years old, and had a stroke before she caught COVID-19. Another death is the neighbor of another friend. He was severely overweight at 150 kg, and could not lose weight. Last year he had caught pneumonia and barely survived with damaged lungs. This year he got out in the rain and got COVID-19. He did not make it. His wife also had COVID and survived. If one divides the number of daily deaths by the number of counties, they get between one and two deaths per county per day. It's not signficant and people are angry and afraid of getting locked-in again and losing the little they have. They don't trust leaders. They don't trust that the measures are for the good of little people like them and us. They think this virus is used to make the very rich even richer and to ruin their future, and the future and livelihood of their children and grandchildren. They are not the kind of people who would go out and protest. They don't have the time or the inclination for such matters.

They work hard. In two hours the potatoes, corn and nuts were picked. They delve into family history. One lady is the Godmother of the other. The aunt of the God-daugther owned my house before her daugther sold it to the person I bought it from. With the money she purchased a one room apartment in a small, nearby city because she was tired of working on the farm. The house has four rooms in two separate buildings, 6000 square meters of garden attached, and a nice well with a bucket, which is the only water source at the moment. This cousin did not invite her to her mother's funeral. This was unjust because her mother had helped them even though they had only been half-sisters -- only the father was common. So, the revenge was that she did not invite the cousin to her own mother's funeral, and they don't speak now. She still felt bitter that the cousin was visiting other people when she returned to the village, but not herself. I did not know that funerals were attended by invitation. But each area has different customs.

The two ladies are the only ones in their families who work in the garden. They are both overweight, but kind, hard-working, and very efficient -- they are so much faster at field-work than me or than their own children that I feel useless, lazy and ashamed of not doing more each day. What will happen to the land when they are gone? One has a son and three grand-children because her daugther-in-law is religious. The daugther-in-law is only 25, blond with long, thick, curly hair and still very pretty. She might have even more children (I feel ancient at 38). She does not help in the garden because she cares for the children and her husband does not do much either, but he works for a company and carried the sacks of corn and potatoes to the car for us. Perhaps one of the grandchildren will take interest in field-work, and learn from his grandmother. The other lady has two children, and two grand-children. One of the grand-children is in their first year of medical school and the other is seven and likes pupies. They ask me what I do. I tell them that I worked in a university teaching science and mathematics and doing research until four years ago, and now I am a caretaker with an interest in science and education. They have respect for math. Few can do it well and teach it to others. I forget to say I write. But I only do so when I don't have enough energy for one of the many chores that need to get done or when I cannot sleep like today. I am not particularly good at keeping a house clean, at cooking or at being a caretaker, but I do my best. These two ladies understand me better than my colleagues or my brother who think I do nothing all day.

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

Health Experts join anti-lockdown movement

BBC news reports that several thousand health experts and scientists around the world have joined the anti-lockdown movement. Nearly 6,000 experts, including dozens from the UK, say the approach is having a devastating impact on physical and mental health as well as society. They argue that the harmful effects of the measures have not been studied or taken into account, and that low-risk individuals need to be allowed to function normally while providing extra care for the most vulnerable. This means that they recommend schools should stay open and have in-person teaching. While this approach is still controversial due to the long-COVID cases, it seems to be favored by majority of the population.

In Romania (and in the rest of the world) the number of cases are growing as are the number of deaths. There were over 70 deaths today. Generally, about 800 people die daily in Romania from all causes. Given that the COVID numbers are only 10%, the numbers are relatively low. In hospitals, the COVID sections here are reported to hold 30 to 50 beds and often have just one sink and one bathroom. The medication given to treat COVID-19 causes several days of severe diarrhea and vomiting. I imagine doing that in the one shared sink and bathroom, which is cleaned sporadically, and shudder. If a person is old and/or has pre-existent conditions, and the weather is hot -- this summer had months of temperatures over 30 degrees, their probability of survival must go down. They mix people who have symptoms with people who are asymptomatic and let them care for each other in this blissful one-sink, one-bath environment with doctors and nurses visting rarely while dressed in these strage suits and staying as little as possible because they are afraid for their own lives. Each person stays there for two weeks. For non-COVID patients, all health care is delayed, unless it's an emergency, until the COVID test comes back, and then the care provided is more questionable than ever before. People are surprised by the high number of daily deaths and that the number is going up. I am only surprised the number of deaths is so low. It brings us to question if COVID is really that deadly and how much more deadly do we make it than it has to be. It would be better if the healthcare system was functional and prepared and if there were no random measures in place that debilitate.

Restricting movement and social interaction in ways that cause severe depression and deepen existent health problems in people of all ages while taking measures that successfuly decimate the heath care systems accross the world and temporarily destroy the educational system and then assigning random grades to students cannot be good. I am glad some scientists and some health experts agree that the approach is wrong. Will the approach change? It remains to be seen.

Saturday, October 3, 2020

The most famous man in the world, Donald Trump, has the coronavirus. What next?

How will this play out? Below is my attempt at predicting the future. We will see in a few months if I am correct.

While I believe the overall mortality rate for the Coronavirus to be about 0.2%, in Donald Trump’s age group, and with his risk factors (stress, work, overweight), the mortality should be considerably higher than average. He is old, overworked and with a few extra pounds. As a public figure he might also have been exposed to a significat viral quantity. So, it would not be surprising if he gets seriously ill before he gets better.

In my view, the most likely scenario is
— Trump recovers after a week or two. Like Berlusconi or Prince Charles, he makes a full recovery and returns to the campaign.
— Biden is likely to catch COVID-19, too. It’s not the sort of thing we can protect ourselves from indefinitely. Already, between one quarter and one half of the US population has been infected. It won’t be long until everybody in the US gets this virus. Biden is also very old and fragile.
— With Biden dead or also disabled by Corona, Turmp goes on to win the election. His chief electoral promise is that he will end the Corona crisis and make America Great. When choosing between two old presidents, both Corona high risk, the American electorate would be inclined to choose the one with immunity to the illness.
— Once elected, Trump will end the Corona Crisis by presidential decree and publish it on Twitter. As all precautionary measures are rolled back, the virus will also stop naturally as it runs out of people it can infect. Trump can use his personal example to deal with the virus.
— China’s Xi also ended the Corona pandemic by presidential decree. It probably also worked once everyone was infected. Otherwise, there should have been a 2nd wave. The Chinese funeral law was amended to speed up cremations and to make it difficult to count the dead.
— As the world will disagree with Trump, they will continue the quarantine, putting America on path to becoming great again.

Sure, there is always a chance the experimental therapies tried on Trump won't work and he will die, or, like the much younger Boris Johnson, stay disabled for some time. Furthermore, Trump is sufficiently annoying to many in the US political scene to, perhaps, justify tweaking his treatment plan so, perhaps, he dies.

It seems sloppy, incompetent management of the Corona crisis is the best strategy: allow the population to get infected as quick as possible and return the economy to normal.

A requirement for the return to normality is that there are fewer cases. This is, in general, only achieved once everyone is infected and the diseases dies out.

Thursday, October 1, 2020

Mihai on Physics and COVID-19 with Suzette

Suzette has a wonderful youtube channel called "Suzette is exploring the world". She talks to various scientists and works hard to make her videos come to life. Here she interviewed Mihai on his science career and on our COVID-19 book. Thank you and keep the good work, Suzette! Science needs more talented women like you!

Trump tests positive for COVID-19

He'll probably make it just like Boris Johnson did ... unfortunately COVID-19 is not a reliable killer when one wants it to be... Of course, I don't want to be glad of others misfortunes, but in this case I might make an exception. Although, I have to remind myself that Trump is human, and the image we see of him was mostly created by the media.

Cleaning lady wins elections: democracy in Russia?

She entered the competition because her boss wanted a sure win. Marina Udgodskaya, a cleaning, lady wins elections in a Russian village! The village is supportive. They say that they will help her be a good mayor. It's too early to tell, but she might go down in history as an influential politician. Modesty and asking for opinions from people who care and for the right kind of help might just be more important than pedigree when trying to get things done. For now, she turned off her phone, and continues to clean the floors until the current mayor leaves office, which is a statement in itself.

I wonder how many people would vote for a member of White House cleaning staff to replace the US president? They must be qualified to end up there. Likely the cleaning ladies (or gentlemen) of the White House can give more coherent speaches than the president. And not just in the US -- in many other countries, which we call democratic. But is democracy really true today? Especially with the COVID-19 measures?