Monthly Archives: December 2018

The hard scrabble dictionary

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The rules or Scrabble are unchanging and always changing. The general rule is that Scrabble allows the use of every common word in the English language. In practice, there are two or more dictionaries of words. One of these has virtually no abbreviations, only a few foreign-derived words, and only a select few offensive terms. It is this one, “The Official Scrabble Players Dictionary,” that determines play. You’ll need the other dictionary to look up swear words or secondary meanings, or find common abbreviations.

Words get removed from the scrabble dictionary when someone -- anyone might find them offensive.

Words get removed from the scrabble dictionary when someone — anyone might find them offensive.

Both of these dictionaries change on a regular basis, by the way. And this is as it should be, and both exist in both English and American versions. The common dictionary adds words slowly, as they come into use and drops them slowly as they fall out. The Scrabble dictionary changes fast and for no obvious reason, adding and removing words for political and social aspect and for improved playability (whatever that is). Thus there is little rhyme or reason to the additions or deletions. Four years ago some ten 4000 words were added, mostly unusual words, and many insult words were removed. When the dictionary was changed again in September of this year, players are not told of some changes, but for the most part, there no obvious way to guess. Several words that were offensive in the last version, now are not. Other words that were OK then are now removed as offensive. You’ll play a word you’ve used for years and be told that it is no longer valid. Or someone will use a word you’ve never seen, and never will see otherwise, and you’ll find it is valid. Words added this year include: OK (previously an abbreviation), zen (previously a foreign word), and sheeple (previously a portmanteau, non-word). Also, I’m happy to say, fuck (a welcome addition). I looked up a bunch of previously removed insult words, and find that goy and spic are back, but i find that negro is not.  There is no list in print that tells you what’s been added, and that’s not right. Some articles have a few examples of new words, and some claim to have a list, but clearly it’s only a small fraction of the real list. There is nothing like a full addition list that I could find.

I’ve a bigger gripe though against removed words, especially when they are common words made to disappear for political effect. The previous dictionary, 2014, removed spic, goy, goyim, and negro; that was not right. The current dictionary added back all but negro (check for yourself, here). The word is still in use, both verbally and in literature, and not particularly offensive, less offensive than spic, IMHO. The American Negro College Fund doesn’t seem to mind the word negro. Malcolm X didn’t either. No one tells you these words are gone; they just disappear in the night.

My opinion, such as it is. I’m asking Mattel, Hasbro, Colliers, and/or Merriam-Webster: allow in all normal words, despite the fact that several have implied insults, or real ones. AND PUBLISH A COMPLETE CORRECTIONS PAGE, you [non recognized word]. Thank you.

Robert Buxbaum, December 27, 2018.

We don’t need no stinking primary clarifier

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Virtually every sewage plant of Oakland County uses the activated sludge process, shown in the layout below. Raw sewage comes in, and goes through physical separation — screening, grit removal, and a first clarifier – settling tank before moving to the activated sludge oxidation reactor. The 1st clarifier, shown at left below, removes about half of the incoming organics, but it often stinks and sometimes it “pops” bubbles of fart. This is usually during periods of low flow, like at night. When the flow is slow, it arrives at the plant as a rotting smelly mess; it’s often hard to keep the bubbles of smell down.

Typical Oakland Sewage plant, activated sludge process with a primary clarifier.

Typical Oakland County Sewage treatment plant, activated sludge process with a primary clarifier.

The smell is much improved in the oxidation reactor, analyzed here, and in the 2nd clarifier, shown above at right. Following that is a filter, an ultraviolet cleanup stage, and the liquids are discharged to a local river. In Oakland county, the solids from the two clarifiers are hauled off to a farm, or buried in a landfill. Burial in a landfill is a costly waste, as I discuss here. The throughputs for most of these treatment plants is only about 2-3 million gallons of sewage per day. But Oakland county can produce 500 million gallons of sewage per day. The majority of this goes to Detroit for treatment, and sometimes the overflow is dumped rotting and smelly, in the rivers.

A few months ago, I visited the Sycamore Creek Wastewater facility outside of Cincinnati. This is an 8 million gallon per day plant that uses the “extended aeration process”, shown in the sketch below. I noticed several things I liked: the high throughput (the plant looks no bigger than our 2-3 million gallon plants) and the lack of a bad smell, primarily. The Sycamore Creek plant had an empty hole where the primary clarifier had once been. Lacking this clarifier, the screened sewage could not sit and pop. Instead it goes directly from grit removal to the oxidation reactor, a reactor that looks no bigger than in our plants. This reactor manages a four times higher throughput, I think, because of a higher concentration of cellular catalyst. Consider the following equation derived in a previous post:

ln C°/C = kV/Q.

Here, C° and C are the incoming and exit concentrations of soluble organic; k is the reaction rate, proportional to cellular concentration, V is the volume of the reactor, Q is the flow, and ln is natural log. The higher cellular concentration in the extended aeration plant results in an increased reaction rate, k. The higher the value of k, the higher the allowed flow, Q, per reactor volume, V.

The single clarifier at the end of the Sycamore Creek plant does not look particularly big. My sense is that it deals with a lot more sludge and flow than is seen in our 2nd clarifiers because (I imaging) the sludge is higher density, thus faster settling. I expect that, without the 1 clarifier, there is extra iron and sulfate in the sludge, and more large particles too. In our plants, a lot of these things are removed in the primary clarifier. Sludge density is also increased, I think, because the Cincinnati plant recycle a greater percentage of the sludge (I list it as 90% in the diagram). Extra iron in the reactor also helps to remove phosphates from the water effluent that flows back to the river, an important pollution concern. Iron phosphates are insoluble, and thus leave with the sludge. In Oakland county’s activated sludge plants, it is typical to add iron to the reactor or clarifier. In Cincinnati’s extended aeration plant, I’m told, iron addition is generally not needed.

Typical Oakland Sewage plant, activated sludge process with a primary clarifier.

Cincinnati sewage treatment plant, extended aeration process with no primary clarifier.

The extended aeration part of the above process refers to the secondary sludge oxidizer, the continuously stirred tank reactor, or CSTR shown at lower right above. The “CSTR” is about 1/5 the volume of the main oxidation reactor and about the size of a clarifier. Oxidation in the CSTR compliments that in the main oxidizer removing organics, making bio-polymer, and improving (I think) the quality of the sludge that goes to the farms. Oxidation in the CSTR reduces the amount of sludge that goes to the farms. The sludge that does go, is  less-toxic and more concentrated in organics and minerals. I’m not sure if the CSTR product is as good as the product from an anaerobic digester, or if the CSTR is cheaper to operate, but it looks cheaper since there is no roof, and no (or minimal) heating. This secondary oxidizer is very efficient at removing organics because the cellular catalyst concentration is very high – much higher than in the main oxidizer.

During periods of high load, early morning, the CSTR seems to serve as a holding tank so that sludge does not build up in the clarifier. Too much sludge in the clarifier can start to rot, and ruin the effluent quality. The way you tell if there is too much sludge, by the way, is through a device called the “sludge judge.” I love that name. The Cincinnati plant used a centrifugal drier; none of our plants do. The Cincinnati plant had gap the bubble spots of the main oxidizer. This is good for denitrification, I’m told, an important process that I discuss elsewhere.

The liquid output of their clarifier (or ours) is not pure enough to be sent directly to the river. In this plant, the near-pure water from the clarifier is sent to a trickling filter, a bed of sand and anthracite that removes colloidal remnants. Some of our plants do the same. I suspect that the large surface area in this filter is also home to some catalysis: last stage oxidation of remaining bio-organics. On a regular basis, the filter bed is reverse-flushed to remove cellular buildup, slime, and send it to the beginning of the process. The trickling filter output is then sent to an ultraviolet, bacteria-killing step before being released to the rivers. All in all, I suspect that an extended aeration process like this is worth looking into for Oakland County, especially for our North Pontiac sewage treatment facility. That plant is particularly bad smelling, and clearly too small to treat all its sewage. Perhaps we can increase the throughput and decrease the smell at a minimal cost.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, December 18, 2018. I’m running for water commissioner of Oakland county, MI. If you like, visit my campaign site. Here are some sludge jokes and my campaign song.

Measles, anti-vaxers, and the pious lies of the CDC.

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Measles is a horrible disease that contributed to the downfall that had been declared dead in the US, wiped out by immunization, but it has reappeared. A lot of the blame goes to folks who refuse to vaccinate: anti-vaxers in the popular press. The Center for Disease Control is doing its best to promote to stop the anti-vaxers, and promote vaccination for all, but in doing so, I find they present the risks of measles worse than they are. While I’m sympathetic to the goal, I’m not a fan of bending the truth. Lies hurt the people who speak them and the ones who believe them, and they can hurt the health of immune-compromized children who are pushed to vaccinate. You will see my arguments below.

The CDC’s most-used value for the mortality rate for measles is 0.3%. It appears, for example, in line two of the following table from Orenstein et al., 2004. This table also includes measles-caused complications, broken down by type and patient age; read the full article here.

Measles complications, death rates, US, 1987-2000, CDC.

Measles complications, death rates, US, 1987-2000, CDC, Orenstein et. al. 2004.

The 0.3% average mortality rate seems more in tune with the 1800s than today. Similarly, note that the risk of measles-associated encephalitis is given as 10.1%, higher than the risk of measles-diarrhea, 8.2%. Do 10.1% of measles cases today produce encephalitis, a horrible, brain-swelling disease that often causes death. Basically everyone in the 1950s and early 60s got measles (I got it twice), but there were only 1000 cases of encephalitis per year. None of my classmates got encephalitis, and none died. How is this possible; it was the era before antibiotics. Even Orenstein et. al comment that their measles mortality rates appear to be far higher today than in the 1940s and 50s. The article explains that the increase to 3 per thousand, “is most likely due to more complete reporting of measles as a cause of death, HIV infections, and a higher proportion of cases among preschool-aged children and adults.”

A far more likely explanation is that the CDC value is wrong. That the measles cases that were reported and certified as such are the ones that are the most severe. There were about 450 measles deaths per year in the 1940s and 1950s, and 408 in 1962, the last year before the MMR vaccine was developed and by Dr. Hilleman of Merck (a great man of science, forgotten). In the last two decades there were some 2000 measles cases reported US cases but only one measles death. A significant decline in cases, but the ratio does not support the CDC’s death rate. For a better estimate, I propose to divide the total number of measles deaths in 1962 by the average birth rate in the late 1950s. That is to say, I propose to divide 408 by the 4.3 million births per year. From this, I calculate a mortality rate just under 0.01% in 1962, That’s 1/30th the CDC number, and medicine has improved since 1962.

I suspect that the CDC inflates the mortality numbers, in part by cherry-picking its years. It inflates them further by treating “reported measles cases.” as if they were all measles cases. I suspect that the reported cases in these years were mainly the very severe ones. Mild case measles clears up before being reported or certified as measles. This seems the only normal explanation for why 10.1% of cases include encephalitis, and only 8.2% diarrhea. It’s why the CDC’s mortality numbers suggest that, despite antibiotics, our death rate has gone up by a factor of 30 since 1962.

Consider the experience of people who lived in the early 60s. Most children of my era went to public elementary schools with some 1000 other students, all of whom got measles. By the CDC’s mortality number, we should have seen three measles deaths per school, and 101 cases of encephalitis. In reality, if there had been one death in my school it would have been big news, and it’s impossible that 10% of my classmates got encephalitis. Instead, in those years, only 48,000 people were hospitalized per year for measles, and 1,000 of these suffered encephalitis (CDC numbers, reported here).

To see if vaccination is a good idea, lets now consider the risk of vaccination. The CDC reports their vaccine “is virtually risk free”, but what does risk-free mean? A British study finds vaccination-caused neurological damage in 1/365,000 MMR vaccinations, a rate of 0.00027%, with a small fraction leading to death. These problems are mostly found in immunocompromised patients. I will now estimate the neurological risk for actual measles based on the ratio of encephalitis to births, as before using the average birth rate as my estimate for measles cases; 1000/4,300,000 = 0.023%. This is far lower than the risk the CDC reports, and more in line with experience.

The risk for neurological damage from measles that I calculate is 86 times higher risk than the neurological risk from vaccination, suggesting vaccination is a very good thing, on average: The vast majority of people should get vaccinated. But for people with a weakened immune system, my calculations suggest it is worthwhile to not immunize at 12 months as doctors recommend. The main cause of vaccination death is encephalitis, but this only happens in patients with weakened immune systems. If your child’s immune system is weakened, even by a cold, I’d suggest you wait 1-3 months, and would hope that your doctor would concur. If your child has AIDS, ALS, Lupus, or any other, long-term immune problem, you should not vaccinate at all. Not vaccinating your immune-weakened child will weaken the herd immunity, but will protect your child.

We live in a country with significant herd immunity: Even if there were a measles outbreak, it is unlikely there would be 500 cases at one time, and your child’s chance of running into one of them in the next month is very small assuming that you don’t take your child to Disneyland, or to visit relatives from abroad. Also, don’t hang out with anti-vaxers if you are not vaccinated. Associating with anti-vaxers will dramatically increase your child’s risk of infection.

As for autism: there appears to be no autism advantage to pushing off vaccination. Signs of autism typically appear around 12 months, the same age that most children receive their first-stage MMR shot, so some people came to associate the two. Parents who push-off vaccination do not push-off the child’s chance of developing autism, they just increase the chance their child will get measles, and that their child will infect others. Schools are right to bar such children, IMHO.

I’ve noticed that, with health care in, particular, there is a tendency for researchers to mangle statistics so that good things seem better than they are. Health food: is not necessarily so healthy as they say; nor is weight loss. Bicycle helmets: ditto. Sometimes this bleeds over to outright lies. Generic modified grains were branded as cancer-causing based on outright lies and  missionary zeal. I feel that I help a bit, in part by countering individual white lies; in part by teaching folks how to better read statistic arguments. If you are a researcher, I strongly suggest you do not set up your research with a hypothesis so that only one outcome will be publishable or acceptable. Here’s how.

Robert E. Buxbaum, December 9, 2018.