Author Archives: R.E. Buxbaum

About R.E. Buxbaum

Robert Buxbaum is a life-long engineer, a product of New York's Brooklyn Technical High School, New York's Cooper Union to Science and Art, and Princeton University where he got a PhD in Chemical Engineering. From 1981 to 1991 he was a professor of Chemical Engineering at Michigan State, and now runs an engineering shop in Oak Park, outside of Detroit, Michigan. REB Research manufactures and sells hydrogen generation and purification equipment. He's married with 3 wonderful children who, he's told, would prefer to not be mentioned except by way of complete, unadulterated compliments. As of 2016, he's running to be the drain commissioner/ water resources commissioner of Oakland county.

Comparing Artemis SLS to Saturn V and Falcon heavy

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This week, the Artemis I, Orion capsule splashed down to general applause after circling the moon with mannequins. The launch cost $4.1 Billion, and the project, $50 Billion so far, of $93 Billion expected. Artemis II will carry people around the moon, and Artemis III is expected to land the first woman and person of color. The goal isn’t one I find inspiring, and I feel even less inspired by the technology. I see few advances in Artemis compared to the Saturn V of 50 years ago. And in several ways, it looks like a step backwards.

The graphic below compares the Artemis I SLS (Space Launch System) to the Saturn V. The SLS is 10% lighter, but the payload is lighter, too. It can carry 27 tons to the moon, while the Saturn V sent 50 tons to the moon. I’d expect more weight by now. We have carbon fiber and aramids, and they did not. Add to this that the cost per flight is higher, $4.1 B, versus $1.49 B in 2022 dollars for a Saturn V ($185 million in 1969 dollars). What’s more there was no new engine development or production, so the flight numbers are limited: Each SLS launch throws away five, space shuttle engines. When they are all gone, the project ends. We have no plans or ability to make more engines.

Comparison of Apollo Saturn V and Artemis SLS. The SLS has less lift weight and costs more per launch.

As it happens, there was a better alternative available, the Falcon heavy from SpaceX. The Falcon heavy has been flying for 5 years now, and costs only $141 million per launch, about 1/30 as much as an Artemus launch. The rocket is largely reusable, with 3D printed engines, and boosters that land on their tails. Each SLS is expensive because it’s essentially a new airplane built specially for each flight. Every part but the capsule is thrown away. Adding to the cost of SLS launches is the fuel; hydrogen, the same fuel as the space shuttle. Per energy it’s very expensive. The energy cost for the SLS boosters is high too, and the efficiency is low; each SLS booster costs $290M, more than the cost of two Falcon heavy launches. Falcon launches are cheap, in part because the engines burn kerosine, as did the Saturn V at low altitude. Beyond cost hydrogen has low thrust per flow (low momentum), and is hard to handle; hydrogen leaks caused two Artemis scrubs, and numerous Shuttle delays. I discussed the physics of rocket engines in a post seven years ago.

This graph of $/kg to low earth orbit is mostly from futureblind.com. I added the data for Artemis SLS. Saturn V and Falcon use cheaper fuel and a leaner management team.

It might be argued that Artemis SLS is an inspirational advance because it can lift an entire moon project in one shot, but the Saturn V lifted that and more, all of Skylab. Besides, there is no need to lift everything on one launch. Elon Musk has proposed lifting in two stages, sending the moon rocket and moon lander to low earth orbit with one launch, then lifting fuel and the astronauts on a second launch. Given the low cost of a Falcon heavy launch, Musk’s approach is sure to save money. It also helps develop space refueling, an important technology.

Musk’s Falcon may still reach the moon because NASA still needs a moon lander. NASA has awarded the lander contract to three companies for now, Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, Dynetics-Aerodyne makers of the Saturn V, and Musk’s SpaceX. If the SpaceX version wins, a modified Falcon will be sent to the moon on a Falcon heavy along with a space station. Artemis III will rendezvous with them, astronauts will descend to the moon on the lander, and will use the lander to ascend. They’ll then transfer to an Orion capsule for the return journey. NASA has also contracted with Bezos’s Blue origin for planetary, Earth observation, and exploration plans. I suspect that Musk’s lander will win, if only because of reliability. There have been 59 Falcon launches this year, all of them with safe landings. By contrast, no Blue Origin or Dynetics rocket has landed, and Blue Origin does not expect to achieve orbital velocity till 2025.

As best I can tell, the reason we’re using the Artemis SLS with its old engines is inspiration. The Artemis program director, Charlie Blackwell-Thompson is female, and an expert in space shuttle engines. Previous directors were male. Previous astronauts too were mostly male. Musk is not only male, but his products suffer from him being considered a horrible person, a toxic male, in the Tony Stark (Iron Man) mold. Even Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson are considered better, though their technology is worse. See my comparison of SpaceX, Virgin Blue, and Blue Origin.

To me, the biggest blocks to NASA’s inspirational aims, in my opinion, are the program directors who gave us the moon landing. These were two Nazi SS commanders (SS Sturmbannführers), Arthur Rudolph and Wernher Von Braun. Not only were they male and white, they were barely Americanized Nazis, elevated to their role at NASA after killing off virtually all of their 20,000, mostly Jewish, slave workers making rockets for Hitler. Here’s a song about Von Braun, by Tom Lehrer. Among those killed was Von Braun’s professor. In his autobiography, Von Braun showed no sign of regret for any of this, nor does he take blame. The slave labor camp they ran, Dora-Mittelbau, had the highest death rate of all slave labor camps, and when some workers suggested that they could work better if they were fed, the directors, Rudolph and Von Braun had 80 machine gunned to death. Still, Von Braun got us to the moon, and his inspirational comments line the walls at NASA, Kennedy. Blackwell-Thompson and Bezos are surely more inspirational, but their designs seem like dead ends. We may still have to use Musk’s SpaceX if we want a lander or a moon program after the space shuttle’s engines are used up. As Von Braun liked to point out, “Sacrifices have to be made.”

Robert Buxbaum, December 21, 2022. Here’s a bit more about Rudolph, von Braun, the Peenemünda rocket facility, and the Dora-Mittelbau slave labor camp. I may post photos of Von Braun with Hitler and Himmler in SS regalia, but feel uncomfortable doing so at the moment. I feel similarly about posting links to Von Braun’s inspirational interviews.

Coffee decreases your chance of Parkinson’s, a lot.

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Some years ago, I thought to help my daughter understand statistics by reanalyzing the data from a 2004 study on coffee and Parkinson’s disease mortality, “Coffee consumption, gender, and Parkinson’s disease mortality in the cancer prevention study II cohort: the modifying effects of estrogen” , Am J Epidemiol. 2004 Nov 15;160(10):977-84, see it here

For the study, a cohort of over 1 million people was enrolled in 1982 and assessed for diet, smoking, alcohol, etc. Causes of deaths were ascertained through death certificates from January 1, 1989, through 1998. Death certificate data suggested that coffee decreased Parkinson’s mortality in men but not in women after adjustment for age, smoking, and alcohol intake. They used a technique I didn’t like though, ANOVA, analysis of variance. That is they compare the outcome of those who drank a lot of coffee (4 cups or more) to those who drank nothing. Though women in the coffee cohort had about 49% the death rate, it was not statistically significant by the ANOVA measure (p = 0.6). The authors of the study understood estrogen to be the reason for the difference.

Based on R2, coffee appears to significantly decrease the risk of Parkinson’s mortality in both men and women.

I thought we could do a better by graphical analysis, see plot at right, especially using R2 to analyze the trend. According to this plot it appears that coffee significantly reduces the likelihood of death in both men and women, confidence better than 90%. Women don’t tend to drink as much coffee as men, but the relative effect per cup is stronger than in men, it appears, and the trend line is clearer too. In the ANOVA, it appears that the effect in women is small because women are less prone Parkinson’s.

The benefit of coffee has been seen as well, in this study, looking at extreme drinkers. Benefits appear for other brain problems too, like Alzheimer’s. It seems that 2-4 cups of coffee per day also reduces the tendency for suicide, and decreases the rate of gout. It seems to be a preventative against kidney stones, too.

There is a confounding behavior that I should note, it’s possible that people who begin to feel signs of Parkinson’s, etc. stop drinking coffee. I doubt it, give the study’s design, but it’s worth a mention. The same confounding is also present in a previous analysis I did that suggested that being overweight protected from dementia, and from Alzheimer’s. Maybe pre-dementia people start loosing weight long before other symptoms appear.

Dr. Robert E. Buxbaum, and C.M. Buxbaum, December 15, 2022

A simpler way to recycle the waste fuel of a SOFC.

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My favorite fuel cells burn hydrogen-rich hydrocarbon fuels, like methane (natural gas) instead of pure hydrogen. Methane is far more energy dense, and costs far less than hydrogen per energy content. The US has plenty of methane and has pipelines that distribute it to every city and town. It’s a low CO2 fuel, and we can lower the CO2 impact further by mixing in hydrogen to get hythane. Elon Musk has called hydrogen- powered fuel cells “fool cells”, methane-powered fuel cells look a lot less foolish. They easily compete with his batteries and with gasoline. Besides, Musk has chosen methane as the fuel for his proposed starship to Mars.

Solid oxide fuel cells, SOFCs, can use methane directly without any pre-reformer. They operate at 800°C or so. At these temperatures, methane reacts with water (steam) within the fuel cell to form hydrogen by the reaction, CH4 + H2O –> 3H2 + CO. The hydrogen, and to a lesser extent the CO is oxidized in the fuel cell to create electricity,, but the methane is not 100% consumed, generally. Unused methane, CO, and some hydrogen exits a solid oxide fuel cell along with the products of combustion, CO2 and water.

Several researchers have looked for ways to recycle this waste fuel to capture the energy value. Six years ago, I patented a membrane method to extract the waste fuel and recycle it, see a description here. I now see this method as too complex, and have applied for a patent on a simpler version, shown below as Figure 1. As before the main work is done by a membrane but here I dispense with the water gas shift reactor, and many of the heat exchangers of the previous approach.

Simple way to improve fuel use in a high temperature fuel cell, using just a membrane.

The fuel cell system of Fig. 1 operates at somewhat elevated pressure, 2 atm or more. It is expected that the majority of the exhaust going to the membrane will be CO2 and water. Most of this will pass through the membrane and will exhaust to the air. The rest is mixed with fresh methane and recycles to the fuel cell. Despite the pressure of the fuel cell, very a little energy is needed for recirculation since the methane does not go through the membrane. The result is a light, simple, and energy efficient process. If you are interested, please contact me at REB Research. Or you can purchase the silicone membrane module here. Alternately, see here for flux information and other applications.

Robert Buxbaum, December 8, 2022.

My hero, Peter Cooper of New York, 1791-1883.

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Peter Cooper

It’s good to have hero, someone whose approach to life, family and business you admire that you might reasonably be able to follow. As an engineer, inventor, I came to regard Peter Cooper of New York as a hero. He made his own business and was a success, in business and with his family without being crooked. This is something that is not as common as you might think. When I was in 4th grade, we got weekly assignments to read a biography and write about it. I tended to read about scientists and inventors then and after. I quickly discovered that successful inventors tended to die broke, estranged from their family and friends. Edison, Tesla, Salk, Goodyear, and Ford are examples. Tesla didn’t marry. Henry Ford’s children were messed up. Salk had a miserable marriage. Almost everyone working on the Atom Bomb had issues with the government. Most didn’t benefit financially. They died hated by the press as mass-murderers, and pursued by the FBI as potential spies. It was a sad pattern for someone who hoped to be an inventor -engineer.

The one major exception I found was Peter Cooper, an inventor, industrialist, and New York politician who was honest, and who died wealthy and liked with a good family. One result of reading about him was to conclude that some engineering areas are better than others; generally making weapons is not a path to personal success.

Tom Thumb, the blower at right is the secret to its light weight per power.

Peter Cooper was different, both in operation and outcome. Though he made some weapons (gun barrels) and inverted a remote control torpedo, these were not weapons of mass killing. Besides he but thee for “the good side” of the Civil War. And, when Cooper made an invention or a product, he made sure to have the capital available to make a profit on it too. He worked hard to make sure his products were monopolies, using a combination of patents and publicity to secure their position.

Brand management helps.

Cooper was a strong family man who made sure to own his own business, and made sure to control the sources of key materials too. He liked to invest in other businesses, but only as the controlling share-holder, or as a bond holder, believing that minor share-holders tend to be cheated. He was pro monopoly, pro trusts, and a big proponet of detailed contracts, so everyone knew where they stood. A famous invention of Cooper’s was Jello, a flavored, light version of his hide-glue, see the patent here. Besides patenting it, he sold the product with his brand, thus helping to maintain the monopoly.

Cooper was generous with donations to the poor, but not to everyone, and not with loans. And he would not sign anyone’s note as a guarantor. Borrowers tended to renege, he found, and they resent you besides. You lose your money, and lost them as a friend. He founded two free colleges, Cooper Union, and the Cooper-Limestone Institute, plus an inventor’s institute. (I got my education, free from Cooper Union.) Cooper ran these institutions in his lifetime, not waiting till he was dead to part with his money. Many do this in the vain hope that others will run the institution as they would.

Peter Cooper always sought a monopoly, or a near monopoly, patenting his own inventions, or buying the rights to others’ patents to help make it so. He believed that monopolies were good, saying they were the only sort of business that made money while allowing him to treat his workers well. If an invention would not result in a monopoly, Peter Cooper gave the rights away.

The list of inventions he didn’t patent include the instruments to test the quality of glue and steel (quality control is important), and a tide-powered ferry in New York. Perhaps his most famous unpainted invention was a lightweight, high power steam locomotive, “The Tom Thumb”, made in 1840. Innovations included beveled wheels to center the carriage on its rails, and a blower on the boiler fire, see photo above. The blower meant he could generate high-power in a small space at light weight. These are significant innovations, but Cooper did not foresee having a monopoly, so he didn’t pursue these ideas. Instead, he focussed on making rails and wire rope; he patented the process to roll steel, and the process for making coke from coal. Also on his glue/jello business. Since he made these items from dead cows and horses, he found he could also sell “foot oil” and steam-pounded leather, “Chamois”. He also pursued a telephone/ telegraph business across the Atlantic, more on that below, but only after getting monopoly rights for 50 years.

Cooper managed to stay friends with those he competed with by paying license fees for any patents he used (he tried to negotiate low rates), or buying or selling the patent rights as seemed appropriate. He also licensed his patents, and rented out buildings he didn’t need. He rented at a rate of 7% of the sale price, a metric I’ve used myself, considering rental to be like buying on loan. There is a theory of stock-buying that matches this.

The story the telegraph cable across the Atlantic is instructive to seeing how the pieces fit together. The first significant underwater cable was not laid by Cooper, by a Canadian inventor, Frederick Gisborne. It was laid in 1852 between Prince Edward Island and New Brunswick. Through personal connections, Gisborne’s company got exclusive rights for 30 years, for this and for a cable that would go to Newfoundland, but he didn’t have the money or baking to make it happen. The first cable failed, and Gisborne ran out of money and support. Only his exclusive rights remained. This is the typical story of an inventor/ engineer/businessman who has to rely on other peoples’ money and patience.

A few months after the failure, a friend of Cooper’s, Cyrus Field, convinced Cooper that good money could be made, and public good could be done, if Cooper could lay such a cable all the way to London. One thing that attracted Cooper to the project was that the cable could be made as an insulated iron-copper rope in Cooper’s own factory. Cooper, Field, and some partners (see painting below) bought Gisborne’s company, along with their exclusive rights, and formed a new company, The New York, Newfoundland & London Telegraph Company, see charter here. The founders are imagined* with a globe and a section of cable sitting on their table. Gisborne, though not shown in the painting, was a charter member, and made chief engineer. Cooper was president. He also traveled on the boat with Gisborne to lay the cable across the St. Lawrence – just to be sure he knew what was going on. This cable provided a trial for The Trans Atlantic cable.

The founding individuals to lay a transatlantic cable. Peter Cooper at left is the chairman, Cyrus Field is standing, Samuel Morse is at the back. Frederic Gisborne, a founder, does not appear in the paining. Typical.

Samuel Morse was hired as an electrician; he is pictured in the painting, but was not a charter member. Part of the problem with Morse was that he owned the patent on Morse-telegraphy, and Cooper didn’t want to pay his “exorbitant” fees. So Cooper and Field bought an alternative telegraph patent from David Hughes, a Kentucky school teacher. This telegraph system used tones instead of clicks and printed whole letters at a time. By hiring Morse, but not his patents, Cooper saved money, while retaining Morse’s friendship and expertise. The alternative could have been a nasty spat. Their telegraph company sub-licensed Hughes’s tone-method a group of western telegraph owners, “The Western Union,” who used it for many years, producing the distinctive Western Union Telegrams. With enough money in hand and credibility from the Canadian trial, the group secured 50 years monopoly rights for a telegraph line across the Atlantic. Laying the cable took many years, with semi-failed attempts in 1857, 1858, and 1865. When the eventual success came in 1866, the 50 years’ monopoly rights they’d secured meant that they made money from the start. They could treat workers fairly. Marconi would discover that Cooper wrote a good contract; his wireless telegraph required a widely different route.

I should also note that Peter Cooper was politically active: he started as a Democrat, helped form the Republican Party, bringing Lincoln to speak in NY for the first time, and ended up founding the Greenback-Labor Party, running for president as a Greenback. He was strongly for tariffs, and strongly against inflation. He said that the dollar should have the same value for all time for the same reason that the foot should have the same length and the pound the same weight. I have written in favor of tariffs off and on. They help keep manufacturing in America, and help insure that those who require French wine or German cars pay the majority of US taxes. They are also a non-violent vehicle for foreign policy.

Operating under these principles, through patents and taxed monopolies, Peter Cooper died wealthy, and liked. Liked by his workers, liked by much of the press, and by his family too, with children who turned out well. The children of rich people often turn out poorly. Carnegie’s children fought each other in court, Ford’s were miserable. Cooper’s children continued in business and politics, successfully and honorably, and in science/ engineering (Peter Coper Hewitt invented the power rectifier, sold to Westinghouse). The success of Peter Cooper’s free college, Cooper Union, influenced many of his friends to open similar institutions. Among his friends who did this were Carnegie, Pratt, Stevens, Rensselaer, and Vanderbilt. He stayed friends with them and with other inventors of the day, despite competing in business and politics. Most rich folks can not do this; they tend to develop big egos, and few principles.

Robert Buxbaum, November 30, 2022. I find the painting interesting. Why was it painted? Why is Gisborne not in it and Morse in the painting — sometimes described as vice President? The charter lists Morse as “electrician”, an employee. Chandler White, holding papers next to Cooper, was Vice President. My guess is that the painting was made to help promote the company and sell stock. They made special cigars with this image too. This essay started as a 5th grade project with my son. See a much earlier version here.

My home-made brandy and still.

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MY home-made still, and messy lab. Note the masking tape seal and the nylon hoses. Nylon is cheaper than copper. The yellow item behind the burner is the cooling water circulation pump. The wire at top and left is the thermocouple.

I have an apple tree, a peach tree, and some grape vines. They’re not big trees, but they give too much fruit to eat. The squirrels get some, and we give some away. As for the rest, I began making wine and apple jack a few years back, but there’s still more fruit than I can use. Being a chemical engineer, I decided to make brandy this year, so far only with pears and apples.

The first steps were the simplest: I collected fruit in a 5 gallon, Ace bucket, and mashed it using a 2×4. I then added some sugar and water and some yeast and let it sit with a cover for a week or two. Bread yeast worked fine for this, and gives a warm flavor, IMHO. A week or so later, I put the mush into a press I had fro grapes, shown below, and extracted the fermented juice. I used a cheesecloth bag with one squeezing, no bag with the other. The bag helped, making cleanup easier.

The fruit press, used to extract liquid. A cheese cloth bag helps.

I did a second fermentation with both batches of fermented mash. This was done in a pot over a hot-plate on warm. I added more sugar and some more yeast and let it ferment for a few more days at about 78°F. To avoid bad yeasts, I washed out the pot and the ace bucket with dilute iodine before using them– I have lots of dilute iodine around from the COVID years. The product went into the aluminum “corn-cooker” shown above, 5 or 6 gallon size, that serves as the still boiler. The aluminum cover of the pot was drilled with a 1″ hole; I then screwed in a 10″ length of 3/4″ galvanized pipe, added a reducing elbow, and screwed that into a flat-plate heat exchanger, shown below. The heat exchanger serves as the condenser, while the 3/4″ pipe is like the cap on a moonshiner still. Its purpose is to keep the foam and splatter from getting in the condenser.

I put the pot on the propane burner stand shown, sealed the lid with masking tape (it worked better than duct tape), hooked up the heat exchanger to a water flow, and started cooking. If you don’t feel like making a still this way, you can buy one at Home Depot for about $150. Whatever route you go, get a good heat exchanger/ condenser. The one on the Home-depot still looks awful. You need to be able to take heat out as fast as the fire puts heat in, and you’ll need minimal pressure drop or the lid won’t seal. The Home Depot still has too little area and too much back-pressure, IMHO. Also, get a good thermometer and put it in the head-space of the pot. I used a thermocouple. Temperature is the only reasonable way to keep track of the progress and avoid toxic distillate.

A flat-plate heat exchanger, used as a condenser.

The extra weight of the heat exchanger and pipe helps hold the lid down, by the way, but it would not be enough if there was a lot of back pressure in the heat exchanger-condenser. If your lid doesn’t seal, you’ll lose your product. If you have problems, get a better heat exchanger. I made sure that the distillate flows down as it condenses. Up-flow adds back pressure and reduces condenser efficiency. I cooled the condenser with water circulated to a bucket with the cooling water flowing up, counter current to the distillate flow. I could have used tap water via a hose with proper fittings for cooling, but was afraid of major leaks all over the floor.

With the system shown, and the propane on high, it took about 20 minutes to raise the temperature to near boiling. To avoid splatter, I turned down the heater as the temperature approached 150°F. The first distillate came out at 165°F, a temperature that indicated it was not alcohol or anything you’d want to drink. I threw away the first 2-3 oz of this product. You can sniff or sip a tiny amount to convince yourself that this this is really nasty, acetone, I suspect, plus ethyl acetate, and maybe some ether and methanol. Throw it away!

After the first 2-3 ounces, I collected everything to 211°F. Product started coming in earnest at about 172°F. I ended distillation at 211°F when I’d collected nearly 3 quarts. For my first run, my electronic thermometer was off and I stopped too early — you need a good thermometer. The material I collected and was OK in taste, especially when diluted a bit. To test the strength, I set some on fire, the classic “100% proof test”, and diluted till it to about 70% beyond. This is 70% proof, by the classic method. I also tried a refractometer, comparing the results to whiskey. I was aiming for 60-80 proof (30-40%).

My 1 gallon aging barrel.

I tried distilling a second time to improve the flavor. The result was stronger, but much worse tasting with a loss of fruit flavor. By contrast, a much better resulted from putting some distillate (one pass) in an oak barrel we had used for wine. Just one day in the barrel helped a lot. I’ve also seen success putting charred wood cubes set into a glass bottle of distillate. Note: my barrel, as purchased, had leaks. I sealed them with wood glue before use.

I only looked up distilling law after my runs. It varies state to state. In Michigan, making spirits for consumption, either 1 gal or 60,000 gal/year, requires a “Distilling, Rectifying, Blending and/or Bottling Spirits” Permit, from the ATF Tax and Trade Bureau (“TTB”) plus a Small Distiller license from Michigan. Based on the sale of stills at Home Depot and a call to the ATF, it appears there is little interest in pursuing home distillers who do not sell, despite the activity being illegal. This appears similar to state of affairs with personal use marijuana growers in the state. Your state’s laws may be different, and your revenuers may be more enthusiastic. If you decide to distill, here’s some music, the Dukes of Hazard theme song.

Robert Buxbaum, November 23, 2022.

The main building block of Alzheimer’s research was faked. Now, what.

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Much of health research is a search for simple, bio-molecular causes for our medical problems. These can result in pill-solutions. Diseases tend to be more complex, but Alzheimers seemed to work that way, until this summer when it turned out that the data supporting the simple theory was faked. Alzheimer’s is a devastating cognitive disease that is accompanied by a degenerating brain, with sticky, beta-amyloid plaques and tangles. About 16 years ago, this report, published in Nature seemed to show that a beta-amyloid, Aβ*56, caused the plaques and caused cognitive decline independent of any other Alzheimers indicators. 

The visual difference between an Alzheimer brain and a normal brain is that the former has shrunk. Maybe fat is relevant, fat body leads to a fat brain, and less AZ, maybe?

We were on the way to a cure, or so it seemed. Several studies by this group backed the initial results, and much of Alzheimer’s research was directed into an effort to fill in the story, and find ways to reduce the amount and bonding of this amyloid and others like it. Several other groups claimed they could not find the amyloid at all, or show that amyloids caused the symptoms described. But most negative results went unpublished. The theory was so satisfying, and the evidence from a few so strong, that the NIH poured billions into this approach, over $1B in this year alone. The FDA approved aducanumab, a drug from Biogen, on the assumption that it should work, even though it showed little to no benefit, and had some deadly side effects. Other firms followed, asking for approval of related anti-amyloid drugs that should work.

When news of the fraud came out, detected by Matthew Scragg and a few lone curmudgeons, stock prices plummeted in the drug companies. It now appears that the original work was made up, presented to journals and to the NIH using photoshopped images. For the group that did the fake work, it may mean jail time, for most other groups, the claim is that their work is still relevant. Doctors still prescribe the medications as they have nothing better to offer (Aducanumab therapy costs $50,000 per year). Maybe it’s time to start looking at alternative approaches and theories, sidelined over the last 16 years.

Some alternative theories posit that another molecule is responsible, particularly tau, associated with the tangles. Another sidelined theory is that amyloids are good. For example, that it’s the loss of soluble amyloids that causes Alzheimer’s. Alternately, that inflammation is the root cause, and that the amyloid plaques and tangles are a response to the inflammation, a bandage, perhaps. These theories could explain why the anti-amyloid drugs so often resulted in patient death.

It could be that high bmi protects from dementia. Either that or the diseases that cause weight loss cause dementia. It’s debated here.

It’s also possible that the inability of nerve cells to dispose of waste is the cause of AZ. In heathy people, waste is removed through acidic enzymes within lysosomes. Patients with decreased acid activity have a buildup of waste that includes amyloids. Perhaps the cure is to restore the acid enzymes.

My favorite theory is based on statistical data that shows that fat people are less likely to develop Alzheimers. This might lead to a junk-food cure. The fitness industry is very much against this theory–It’s debated here. They tend to support the inflammation model, claiming that diseases cause Alzheimer’s and cause patients to loose weight first. Could be. I note that Henry Kissinger is the only active politician of my era, the early 70s, still alive and writing intelligently.

Robert Buxbaum, November 17-19, 2022. I hope that Matthew Schragg comes out OK, by the way. Ben Franklin pointed out, that “No good deed goes unpunished.”

Transparent, super wood

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As mentioned in a previous post, wood is more among the strongest materials per unit weight, making it ideal for table tops and telephone polls. On a per pound basis, most species of wood are more than twice as strong as aluminum or mild steel. Wood’s structure is is the reason; it’s a natural composite of air-filled, aligned tubes of crystalline cellulose, held together by natural glue, lignin.

In terms of raw strength though, pounds/in2, wood is not particularly strong, only about 7000 psi (45MPa) both in tension and compression, about half the strength of aluminum. It is thus not well suited to supporting heavy structures, like skyscrapers. (I calculate the maximum height of a skyscraper here), but wood can be modified to make it stronger by removing most of the air, and replacing it with plastic. The result is a stronger, denser, flexible composite, that is typically transparent. The flower below is seen behind a sheet of transparent wood.

A picture of a flower taken through a piece of transparent super-wood.

To make a fairly strong, transparent wood, you take ordinary low-density wood (beech or balsa are good) and soak it in alkali (NaOH). This bleaches the wood, softens the cellulose, and dissolves most of the lignin. You next wash off the alkali and soak the wood in a low viscosity epoxy or acrylic. Now, put it in a vacuum chamber to remove the air — you’ll need a brick to hold the wood down in the liquid. You’ll see bubbles in the epoxy as the air leaves. Then, when the vacuum is released, the wood soaks up the epoxy or acrylic. On curing, you get a composite strong and transparent, but not super strong.

To make the wood really strong, super-strong, you need to compress the uncured, epoxy soaked wood. One method is to put it in a vice. This drives off more of the air and further aligns the cellulose fibers. You now cure it as before (you need a really slow cure epoxy or a UV-cure polymer). The resultant product have been found to have tensile strengths as high as 270 MPa in the direction of alignment, over 40,000 psi. This is three times stronger than regular aluminum, 90 MPa, (13,500 psi). It’s about the strength of the strongest normal aluminum alloy, 6061. It’s sort of expensive to make, but it’s flexible and transparent, making it suitable for space windows and solar cells. It’s the lightest flexible transparent material known. It’s biodegradable, and that’s very cool, IMHO. See here for a comparison with other, high strength, transparent composites.

Robert Buxbaum, November 10, 2022. I think further developments along this line would make an excellent high school science fair project, college thesis, or PhD research project. Compare different woods, or epoxies, different alkalis, and temperatures, or other processing ideas. How strong and transparent can you make this material, or look at other uses. Can you use it for roof solar cells, like Musk’s but lighter, or mold it for auto panels, it’s already lighter and stronger, or use it as bullet-proof glass or airplane windows.

Is the right the source of antisemitism in America.

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Hillary Clinton famously called Trump supporters “a basket of deplorables” and went on to explain that half of them were “unredeemable”, Nazis and Klansmen, while the other half “needed reeducation.” Her statement was applauded on the left, and taken as an insult on the right. To this day, Biden and his group make the claim that Republicans are antisemites and a threat to American democracy. The proof here is a 2017 video of Klansmen carrying torches, saying “Jews will not replace us,” as they protested the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee in Virginia. A further claim is that the rise in antisemitic incidents, shootings, beatings, etc., are the result of Trump and the Republicans. Things are not quite so black and white, or course, e.g. during the ANTIFA protests/riots four synagogs were attacked in LA alone, and the Crown-Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn was torched. Many of the attackers of Jews have Islamic names and left association, things that don’t suggest Republicans but Democrats.

CNN has claimed that the difference is intent: Trump’s intent is evil, while ANTIFA’s is to elevate black and Moslem lives by allowing them to vent their righteous anger (on Jews). The Moslems who attacked Jews in Monsey, India, Paris and elsewhere are acting for justice, while the marchers in Charlottesville march for hate. In a special program on “Antisemitism in American”, CNN made the claim that no Jew should support the Republicans or Jewish Israel, an apartheid, colonial occupation in their view. This appears to be the view of the Biden White House too. They have yet to congratulate the winner of Israeli presidential elections, 5 days after the election. They contacted Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian leader instead, to discuss joint efforts to enhance Palestinian security. Obama did the same, seven years ago, not congratulating the Israeli election winner (Netanyahu), and snubbed the Israeli delegation on their visit, leaving them to sit alone without food or photographs.

According to the CNN expert on Antisemitism, the lefts’ dismissal of Israel’s leaders is because European Jews are not Jews at all, but Russians with no connection to the land. To my thinking claims like this against a group’s identity are horribly hurtful — CNN’s expert was claiming, essentially, that the jews were lying about everything since the beginning. If Jews are not from Israel, why have we prayed in that direction for return, and in the language of that land. If we did not build the old synagogs, when did we displace the builders and take over their language and culture? Attacks on Jewish identity are more serious, in my mind, than any march for Robert E. Lee. (I’ve written in favor of the peace hammered out between Grant and Lee).

Perhaps even more damaging is the left’s attack on Jewish education. The New York Times ran three-page article claiming that Jewish education abuses the students by not teaching real science or history, and by enforcing religious and sexual norms that are counter to the children’s rights — rights that include LGBQT+ expression. While it is true that Jewish education is not a fan of LGBQT+, but neither is Moslem education, or Catholic, or Mormon. Education is how a culture survives. Some Catholic leaders have noted that they have a stake in this.

The left is anti Israel and anti Jewish education, yet claims to be the defenders of Jews because they can’t stand Trump.

Speaking of survival, about half of all Jews now live in Israel, a state established by the UN in 1947 in part as a response to the mass murder of Jews in Europe. Along with Europeans, about half of the Israelis today are exiles from communities wiped out by Moslem governments: from Egypt, Tunisia, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Yemen. If Israel becomes Islamic as Obama favored, they are likely to exile all the Jews as they did in 1968 in Jerusalem, and as the surrounding countries have done. Where would the Jews go? It’s not a problem for Obama-Biden, but it’s a survival problem for Israelis. My sense is that the left is, by far, the more antisemitic, both in terms of culture and physical safety.

Robert Buxbaum, November 7, 2022

Fauci, freedom, and the right to be wrong.

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Doctor Anthony Fauci has been giving graduate addresses at colleges around the country for the past few months, telling students about his struggles and successes in the medical research world, hammering a moral point that they should expect the unexpected and have no tolerance for “the normalization of untruth”, and for “egregious twisting and lies” as were leveled against his approach to COVID (and global warming, it seems). Untruths, racism, and lies spread by “some elected officials”, presumably his exboss. Here is his speech to the Princeton graduates, or see a brief summary of his talk st the University of Michigan.

Dr. Fauci may have the best intentions in criticizing others and deputizing students to enforce the truth.He certainly seems sure that his truth and intentions are 100% pure, but what if Fauci wasn’t quite right, or what if you thought his cure to the pandemic was less than marvelous. His truth may mot be real truth, or real truth for everyone. Beyond that, even if he were always 100% right on science, I believe that people have a fundamental right to make mistakes. “I have a right to be wrong,” as Joss Stone says (see music video). Freedom from imposed righteousness is a fundamental good. Even assuming that Fauci’s lockdowns were the height of righteousness, we have a right to take risks and to act against our own best interests, in my opinion. Consider a saint who really knows what’s right and only wants to do only what’s right. I doubt that even the saint wants a jailer to force it upon him and remove his free will. And the right of the rest of us may not want to do what’s ideal and healthy. We like ice cream even thought we know it’s fattening, and we should have the right to smoke too.

This right to our mistakes is something we deserve, even assuming that Fauci knows the truth for everyone, and that everyone has the same truth, and that all of his rules were for the best. But different people are different, and people’s preferences are different. “A sadist is a masochist who follows the golden rule,” as the saying goes, and Fauci may have been out-and-out wrong.

Humor from a time when one could tolerate hearing that their truths might not be true.

Concerning COVID, I’ve noted that, despite Fauci’s lockdowns and mask mandates, The US did worse than Sweden, and my home state of Michigan did worse than Sweden — worse in terms of deaths, and far worse economically. Michigan has the same size population as Sweden and the same climate and population density so it’s a good comparison. Florida did better than we did too, though they too didn’t close the schools or have mask mandates. Their economy did better too, and children’s education.

Was Fauci right to shut K-12 schools, or to send college students home? Maybe he was only half-right, or totally wrong and blinded by politics. The more Fauci and friends deny having political interests, the more they seem political. Many Fauci’s emails have become public, and he seems highly political, and very often wrong. He also does not take seriously the economic or mental or educational problems caused to the workers that he now blames on his critics. He also seems takes it as a given that those pushing hydroxychloroquine or surface disinfection were liars, despite scientific opinion on the other side.

Fauci’s push for masks went with his claim that surfaces were not major spreaders. I think the opposite is true, and used my blog and YouTube to push iodine as a surface sanitizer and hand wash. Most diseases are spread by surfaces, and I see no reason for COVID to be different. Iodine is known to kill COVID virus, and all virus, fungus, and bacteria. It’s far more lang-lasting than alcohol, too. Maybe I’m wrong, but maybe I’m right, and I have a right to express my science without fear of censure from Fauci’s deputies. As I see it, when an infected person coughs out-spews big droplets and small droplets. The big drops contain far more virus particles. They fall quickly and dry, ready to be picked up by someone who touches the residue. As for the smaller drops, some are certainly locked by masks, but these have fewer virus particles. Besides, the mask just becomes a new surface; you’ll touch your mask to adjust it or take it off. Unless you disinfect your hands with something strong like iodine the virus on your hands will go to your eyes or nose. Trump favored Chlorox for surfaces, and was skewered for it by Fauci and his experts. I think that was wrong, made worse by claims that he was not telling you to inject the Clorox.

On climate too, we do students a disservice by closing the discussion. It’s clear that Gore’s inconvenient truth isn’t completely true, nor are his remedies beneficial, in my opinion. To stop someone’s ability to make mistakes is to wrong him, and limit him. The same applies to many things; the fellow in power always thinks he’s right, and will always have allies to back him. When Robespierre was the enforced virtue and truth during the French Revolution, everyone agreed, but we now think he was wrong. Robespierre removed the head of France’s greatest scientist, Lavoisier. It would take another generation to grow another head like that.

In terms of interesting speeches to the graduates, As Marx said (Groucho), “I thought my razor was dull, till I heard his speech.” There here’s a speech against something.

Freedom is the right to be wrong, and stubborn, like Groucho. Now that’s a graduation speech!

Robert Buxbaum, October 28, 2022

Tests designed so that the Ivies pick preppies.

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Elite colleges strive to be selective, and they are, just not for the hard-working scholars they claim to select for. They claim to be color-blind, income-blind, and race-blind, aiming for the best: the most intelligent, most ethical, and hardest working scholar-candidates. Then, to their surprise and satisfaction, all the ivies find that the vast majority of the chosen come from the same rich families and prep-schools as 100 years ago. That happens because the selection is crooked with measures tilted to the rich, Protestant, and preppy.

Through most of the 1900s, most of the ivies had a Jewish quota, enforced formally or informally. They also did their best to discourage middle class, black, and Catholic students in the interest of maintaining the proper student mix. Under Woodrow Wilson, Princeton went further and admitted not one black student. When quotas became illegal, schools began to rely on athletics and tests, with blatant cheating as revealed by the “Varsity Blues” sting operation. In that sting, a dozen or more athletic coaches and high-school administrators were caught taking SAT tests for their richer, connected students, and/or making up phony athletic achievements. The Ivies claimed shock after the cheating was revealed, but it is beyond belief that no one had noticed that these top brains and athletes were neither.

Many top athletes are diagnosed as asthmatic. Some actually are. With the right doctor, you can get an advantage

Another version of this is that richer kids can get extra time to do SAT and ACT tests. The extra time doesn’t show up on the SAT or ACT score, you need a doctor to certify that you are dyslectic or have severe ADHD. Most boys are diagnosed with ADHD these days, itself something of a scam, but most boys don’t get extra test time. You need the right doctor and the right documentation, plus enough money and connections to get the test given by certified test-giver in your own private room. It used to be that the SAT and ACT would report the extra time, but this changed in 2004. Now the extra time, and the disease is not documented, just the higher score. There have been complaints, but the scam goes on. Similar to this, top Olympic athletes can be diagnosed with asthma, and allowed to use performance enhancing, anti-asthma steroids. Again complaints, but no change.

Ivy League schools also tilt to the right families by requiring signs of the right sort of leadership as evaluated by an interview and an essay (see my post on John Kennedy’s essay). You score high on leadership if you helped your relative run for governor. By contrast, if you organized a ping-pong or basketball tournament at your Catholic or Jewish school, you’re the wrong sort of leader. Eagle Scout is sort-of the right sort, and speaking against climate change on TV is. Greta Thernberg and Chelsea Clinton are climate leaders; you, probably are not.

The Ivys explicitly state that they choose for athleticism, but not all sports are equal. All the Ivies claim to need a good women’s lacrosse team, a good crew team, and some good high-divers. Are these sports unavailable at your high-school? What a shame, you’re not a real athlete. You can still try to get in based on extreme leadership and academics.

The Princeton alumni of 1993-1994 were primarily white, rich and preppy. Favoring their children helps insure that the class of 2024 is that way too.

There is no real reason that Harvard needs a top crew team, or needs to excel at women’s lacrosse or high-diving. Sport was not an admission criteria in the 1800s. It was added in the 1900s to avoid admitting Catholics, Jews, and Asians who tended to score well but could not compete on the selected sports. The president of Harvard, Abbot Lowell wrote, “Somehow or other the enrollment of the Jewish students must be limited”. The method he chose, and that all the Ivies came to use, included these tests of leadership and sport, plus a preference for legacies. The children and grand-children of alumni are given significant preferential selection at all the ivies. At Harvard, the acceptance rate for legacy students is about 33%, compared with an overall acceptance rate of under 6%. Since legacies are mostly white, rich, protestant, and preppy, the next generation is guaranteed to be the same.

The Ivies’ methods have been challenged many times over the years. Quotas were found to be illegal as early as 1964. Since then there have been claims of effective quotas, a cause that was pushed under the rug until Donal Trump took it up. Most recently, Harvard, Princeton, and UNC were sued by Asians. One of these, from a poor background scored at the top of his class with a 4.4 GPA and had near-perfect SAT scores, but was rejected for no obvious reason beyond race. The Supreme Court is expected to hear the case in 2023. Ahead of this decision, all eight Ivies have decided to dispense with testing for at least for now. The ivies claim that, by making tests optional, they will avoid locking out students who are great (though somewhat illiterate and innumerate). The real purpose seems to be to lock out pushy Asians who might sue them or be so bright they make the legacies feel dumb.

None of the above would matter if the Ivies were not so wonderful, at least the better ones are. I went to Princeton grad school, see photos. It was great despite its waspy leanings. If you can go there, or to Harvard, Yale, Cornell or Penn, go. My feeling for Brown and Columbia are rather the opposite: they’ve gone to the extreme and voted for BDS, see the text here for Brown’s version. Not only did they vote to boycott Israelis and Israeli produce, the “B” of BDS, the’ve also committed to suppress Zionists everywhere. That’s Jews who support Israel. Several, non ivy schools, have committed to the same. In their view, for open debate to flourish anywhere, proud Jews must be excluded. These are no longer colleges, but Klavens.

Robert Buxbaum, October 20, 2022.