Aqueducts and Data Centers

 Frontinus was a Roman Engineer who was one of the principals behind the building of the aqueducts. It is worth reading his works, htey provide insight to structures that have lasted 2000 years. 

Now a  union coordinator writes in the NY Times that electricians, especially union ones,  are a prime reason we should build data centers willy nilly across our suburbs. He does note:

The debate shouldn’t be data centers, yes or no. Instead, it should center on the rules and who enforces them. Over the years, the best operators I have worked with, CloudHQ, Equinix and Stack Infrastructure, have been genuinely responsive to community concerns, working hard to mitigate noise, improve aesthetics and invest in technologies that reduce environmental impacts. And yes, there are impacts. Innovation in energy and resource efficiency, though, is not just a reaction to criticism — it’s central to the industry’s success. Communities that partner with data centers on water-recycling systems, transparent power-purchase agreements and community benefit agreements that specify the host area’s gains before any permits are issued deliver real revenue and real jobs with manageable costs. Communities that allow developers to write their own rules have, predictably, suffered worse outcomes.

 Yes, the community should be involved. But the data center builders are rushing head strong into massive construction before any of the questions are even addressed. 

My father and brother were IBEW members and I worked along side my father.  The unions can be powerful entities for better or worse. But jobs alone are not the driver. 

Also for anyone who has ever built such facilities, I have, installation is but one step. Operations are different. The install jobs are transient, they do not last. Thus the argument has a fundamental fallacy. Operators want a few people as possible. Get the job done and move on. 

Oh, and yes, aqueducts were built by slaves! 

In the Navy

 My father was in the Navy in WW II. He managed to return once to the US in late 1944 after the Battle of Surigao Strait and the friendly fire on his ship by the USS Denver. A short period where I lived with my mother in Berkeley. There was no cell phone, Zoom etc. His mother never complained to the Navy Department, she was dead.

Now I read about mothers, fathers, mother-in-law and the like front page complaining about their wonderful children not being fed well enough and being far from home too long!

One must be kidding! Imagine what the shipmates may think of "Little Billy" not having his favorite ice cream of Fruit Loops! This is why they call it a war!  

Think of what the Marines or Army soldiers go through, no water, poor food, and a rather aggressive enemy.

The Navy is not a subsidiary of Norwegian Cruise Line, it is a military organization. "little Billy"may now be the most underappreciated sailor on board! 

The Old Days of Teaching

 

Back in the days when I was teaching (MIT, Columbia, GWU, Poly NYU) I used chalk and blackboard. Each lecture had a theme, a point I wanted to get across, and my writings became props for what I wanted to say.

I kept a look out for every students eyes, did they follow or did I get MEGO, "my eyes glazed over" syndrome. I interacted with those so afflicted. In effect each lecture was a one act play with a single actor, and the script was painted on the blackboard. The holding of the chalk, the dust on my jacket, the little comments to see how many were still awake.

Now the advantage was in engineering you gave exams to have the student "show that" in detail. That meant receiving long had written exposes of what they hopefully knew. An A was 90 and above etc. You could not curve the grades a whole lot. They were what they were. 

 Now in an interesting piece in CATO's web site:

 Teachers, like many professionals, have expressed concerns about how AI might change or replace their jobs. AI can certainly help students in ways we traditionally associate with teachers, but it can also expand the reach of a good teacher. Education has evolved with many technologies, and the best teachers have evolved with it. Great teachers won’t be replaced by AI; they’ll be the ones who carefully adapt to it.

 Indeed, AI can't catch the "I'm lost" look in a students eye, not can it perform so as to both get the point across as well as create human interaction, by definition.

Plan B or even C

 As one looks at the issues of blocking the straits, one really must ask what Defense (eg War) planners were doing. This was always a clear single point of failure. Since the late 70s after the overthrow of the old Iranian Government, the threat was imminent. The Saudis had built a modest plan B to the Red Sea but on to the Med had been in place since the 80s but became unworkable after the many conflicts.

There is talk about building a new pipeline. One would assume that given the master builders we have in DC that building a pipeline across a desert would be super easy. Just money and people which we seem to have plenty of. 

We have millions looking for work, this is a great place for them. We can even gold plate parts and name for important donors!

Just a thought! 

An Interesting Cancer Vaccine

 Melanoma is/was a highly aggressive and deadly skin cancer. Early detection often results in an elimination of the lesion. However many patients fails to get checked even when they note a problematic lesion.

 As new mRNA vaccine developed by Merck et al, notes:

Intismeran autogene (intismeran; formerly V940 or mRNA-4157) is an mRNA-based individualized neoantigen therapy. We report 5-year outcomes of intismeran plus pembrolizumab from the phase IIb KEYNOTE-942 study (ClinicalTrials.gov identifier: NCT03897881). Eligible patients with resected stage IIIB to IV cutaneous melanoma were randomly assigned 2:1 to receive nine doses of intramuscular intismeran 1 mg once every 3 weeks plus 18 doses of intravenous pembrolizumab 200 mg once every 3 weeks or 18 doses of intravenous pembrolizumab 200 mg once every 3 weeks. The primary end point was recurrence-free survival (RFS); secondary end points included distant metastasis-free survival (DMFS) and safety. Five-year analyses were descriptive. Among 157 randomly assigned patients (intismeran plus pembrolizumab, n 5 107; pembrolizumab, n 5 50), the median planned follow-up at data cutoff (December 15, 2025) was 60.3 (range, 50.5-76.4) months. Intismeran plus pembrolizumab continued to prolong RFS (hazard ratio [HR], 0.510 [95% CI, 0.294 to 0.887) and DMFS (HR, 0.411 [95% CI, 0.200 to 0.843]), with a favorable trend in overall survival (HR, 0.471 [95% CI, 0.165 to 1.345]) versus pembrolizumab. Safety profile continued to be manageable, with no new safety signals. Intismeran plus pembrolizumab was associated with  increased T-cell receptor clonality and novel clonotypes versus pembrolizumab; greater novel clone expansion was observed in patients without versus with recurrence in the combination arm. After a 5-year follow-up, intismeran plus pembrolizumab demonstrated sustained, durable treatment  benefits versus pembrolizumab alone in resected high-risk melanoma.

 The NY Times notes:

 Scientists create intismeran by sequencing the patient’s tumor and selecting what are called “neoantigens,” which teach the immune system how to attack the cancer. They use the fast, flexible mRNA technology to create a vaccine with neoantigens selected for each patient — a process that takes about six weeks. “It is certainly gratifying to see these exciting results — to come full circle, from our early proof-of-concept results to now,” Dr. Catherine Wu, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School and the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and a leader in the field, wrote in an email. “It is highly conceivable that this treatment paradigm will be extendable to other cancers as well.”

 We have recently examined cancer vaccines of this type. They may have significant results. In addition, two years ago we proposed a similar pproach to prostate cancer treatment.

Multiple Outages and JCP&L

 Almost every week we have a massive power outage. The one just now is due to a tree branch falling. The Power companies are supposed to trim and or cut trees. They do not. It is cheaper to send out a crew. However the customers are thrown into the dark. Someone should file a class action suit, love to join in.

This is what happens when tech companies are run by accountants and lawyers, in my opinion, dumb ones at that! 

And they want these incompetents to run AI power supplies!