randform

Last time when I was in Göttingen I found a poster at the math department documenting an art science collaboration between mathematics professors William Thurston, Kazushi Ahara and Sadayoshi Kojima on one side and a team around clothing designer Issey Miyake, notably including chief designer Dai Fujiwara of Issey Miyake (here a link to a partial version of the poster, see also absnews article by Jenny Barchfield). A result of this collaboration is that the Issey Miyake Fall-Winter 2010-2011 ready-to-wear collection is inspired by the geometrization conjecture.

From the poster:

In the mid-October of 2009, Prof. Thurston showed us the detail drawings of the “8 Geometry Link models as Metaphor of the Universe” They inspired us to make the collection based on them, accompanying design study with rope and toile. Considering the body itself as the Universe, we have added our own interpretation of beauty to them. The new perception of the body shared by all the members of the team resulted in the discoveries of new lines and forms, which were then applied to textile, color and detail studies. Thus the new collection has taken shape steadily, revealing its whole picture eventually. To sum up the exchange with Prof. Thurston led us to find a completely new kind of beauty and embody it in clothing. This mission was, as it were, an odyssee to explore the Universe with infinite imaginations.

The geometrization conjecture roughly says (I am not an expert on this) that a three dimensional volume form without boundary (a two dimensional analog of such a form would be for example the surface form (i.e. the “skin”) of a ball or the surface form of a doughnut) can be decomposed into “pieces” which have one of 8 characteristic “geometric structures”, which means roughly that in a small neighbourhood of any such “piece” there is – out of only 8 characteristic ways – one specific way to measure length. A theorem states that any three dimensional (oriented) volume form without boundary can be obtained by cutting a “thick” (that is instead of a rope take a ribbon) link out of a three dimensional sphere. Thus you can characterize special types of three dimensional volume forms (here: “the pieces”) by assigning a link to them. This is – by what I understood sofar- why there are 8 links (or link models) on the poster – they characterize the 8 types of possible “pieces”, which built up three dimensional volume forms without boundary.

Why do they call these 8 links “Metaphor of the Universe”? I can only make wild guesses, which sound rather like science fiction than science: Maybe if you imagine the space of the universe to be eventually such a three dimensional volume then by cutting it into pieces (may be along black hole horizons huh?!) and “measuring distances” (determine a metric) one could make deductions about the actual form of the universe? Or – reversely by making assumptions about the form of the universe (like e.g. that its space is a three sphere) one may get informations about what could be inside black holes…given that one finds all black holes…(this is just a funny joke).

But joking aside – I think they call it Metaphor of the Universe because these simple 8 links may be used to describe quite complicated things.

->wikipedia link math and fiber arts

“Flautenkreuz” photography by Brad Löw

According to what I read in the study Ökonomische Auswirkungen einer Laufzeitverlaengerung deutscher Kernkraftwerke (in german) which was made on behalf of the BDI (the “umbrella organisation of german industries”) (BDI site) the operational life-span of nuclear power plants in Germany to
-40 years would lead to a financial gain (via cost saving) from:

approximately 3.3 billion Euro/year (2015) to approx. 6 billion Euro/year (2020) (table 3-1, p. 34 of the study),

extending the operational life-span to
-60 years would even lead to a gain from:

approx. 8 billion Euro/year (2020) to approx. 10 billion Euro/year (2025) or approx. 9.3 billion Euro/year (2030) (from table 3-2, p. 35, of the study ).

So on average one can roughly say that the life-span extension of nuclear power plants would lead -according to what I read in this study- to a financial gain of -very roughly averaged- at least 5 billion euros per year. Since it is expected that electricity prices will be made according to market value and not according to that gain which is due to unexpected life-span extensions one could infer that this gain will be the gain of the electricity industry. Consequently the german government (which is planning a life-span extension of nuclear power plants) is planning to demand a share of that prospected gain for their new cuts plans in the socalled “Sparpaket”. According to Spiegel Online the current plans are to ask the electricity industry for a share of 2.3 billion per year. Thus if I conclude rightly this means that the electricity industry may keep a gain of at least 2.7 billion per year (or up to 7.7 billion per year depending on life-span extension) . It is not clear how much of that would be reinvested into renewable energies. Social cuts according to Spiegel Online on that page.

I don’t know, wether the life-span extension of nuclear power plants means that this study is going to be extended.

I also don’t know wether inspection optimization is planned.

ranform wishes all its clients a happy new year and not a happy new ear !

Again on new years eve we will try to avoid the inner districts of Berlin since the roads in Berlin usually feel almost like being in a war at that evening.

Below are some images from the Nishinihon firework show in Ohori Park, Fukuoka from over a year ago. Here firework specialists are creating an amazing firework with high precision. The specialists are even able to rather scientifically predict the height and time of detonation in such a way that they are able to create little images like a smilie or a heart (please see below). Where it should be said that a heart which is poetically dropping down from the skies is of course hilarously kitchy.

Remark: The images were made with a small canon without a tripod.

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update 9.12.09: I just appended the above illustration to belows post and the post
before in order to draw more attention to it.

In an article “Strahlender Abfall von Öl und Gas” by Juergen Doeschner of the public TV station WDR it was reported that the Oil and Gas industry kept quiet about the problem of nuclear waste occurring in oil and gas extraction. Here radioactive waste is due to naturally occurring radioactive materials which are surfaced from subsurface formations.

citation from the article: “Strahlender Abfall von Öl und Gas”

“Der Branchenverband begründet dieses Vorgehen mit der vermeintlichen Ungefährlichkeit der kontaminierten Rückstände. “Wir haben es hier mit natürlicher Radioaktivität in einem relativ geringen aktiven Bereich zu tun, der im Bereich der natürlichen Radioaktivität auch unserer Umgebung liegt”, sagt Verbandssprecher Pick.
[Hartmut Pick, Sprecher des Wirtschaftsverbandes Erdöl- und Erdgasgewinnung (WEG)].

Diese Aussage ist falsch und widerspricht den eigenen Angaben des Verbandes. Denn danach ist die durchschnittliche Belastung der radioaktiven Öl- und Gasabfälle fast 700 mal höher als die durchschnittliche Belastung des Erdbodens. Dem WDR liegt ein Papier der Firma Exxon vor, wonach die mittlere Belastung der Abfälle sogar 3000 mal höher ist.”

translation without guarantee: The business association justifies this approach with the putative innocuity of the contaminated residues. “We are dealing here with naturally occuring radioactivity which is in the range of naturally radioactivity as it occurs in our environment.”, says spokesman of the association Pick.
[Hartmut Pick, spokesman of the business association/Wirtschaftverband Erdöl- und Erdgasgewinnung (WEG)]

This statement is wrong and it is in contradiction to the information given by the association, according to the which the average contamination of radioactive waste from Oil and Gas is about 700 times bigger than the average contamination of the soil. WDR has a document from the company Exxon, according to which the average contamination is even 3000 times bigger.

For comparision a citation from world-nuclear.org of today:

In the oil and gas industry radium-226 and lead-210 are deposited as scale in pipes and equipment. If the scale has an activity of 30,000 Bq/kg it is ‘contaminated’ (Victorian regulations). This means that for Ra-226 scale (decay series of 9 progeny) the level of Ra-226 itself is 3300 Bq/kg. For Pb-210 scale (decay series of 3) the level is 10,000 Bq/kg. These figures refer to the scale, not the overall mass of pipes or other material (cf. Recycling, below). Published data (quoted in Cooper 2003) show radionuclide concentrations in scales up to 300,000 Bq/kg for Pb-210, 250,000 Bq/kg for Ra-226 and 100,000 Bq/kg for Ra-228. In Cooper 2005, the latter two maxima are 100,000 and 40,000 respectively.
->Cooper M.B. 2003, NORM in Australian Industries, report for Radiation Health & Safety Advisory Council.
->Cooper M.B. 2005, NORM in Australian Industries – Review of current inventories and future generation, report for Radiation Health & Safety Advisory Council of ARPANSA.

I understand (?) the citation from nuclear.org as that the australian threshold for contamination with Ra-226 is 3300 Bq/kg, the found value however 250,000 Bq/kg in the first cited report or 100,000 Bq/kg in the second cited report. That would mean that the values for radium 226 (which has a half-life of 1602 years) according to these reports in hard scale are roughly 75 times or roughly 30 times higher than they should be according to australian standards.

So alone by looking at the contamination with radium it seems there is a rather expensive nuclear waste problem in the oil and gas industry. Thus as the Strahlender Abfall von Öl und Gas”-article by Juergen Doeschner also reports the radioactivity threat from this kind of waste is in Kasachstan meanwhile bigger than the threat which stems from earlier nuclear bomb tests, furthermore in the US contaminated pipes where donated to preschools and Britain is spilling its corresponding problematic waste into the north sea.

In an earlier randform post about scaling factors in nuclear power generation I tried to explain what is implied if nuclear power generation is going to be increased. Among others I was talking about the risk of a nuclear accident which is going to rise by scaling things up. An important quantity in risk assessment in nuclear power generation is the core damage frequency. The corresponding Wikipedia article links to a ressource by the Electric Power Research Institute by which the probability of a damage of the nuclear core was in 2005 (i.e. the more dangerous type of fast breeder reactors, which will dominate in the future is included in this average only to a small amount) at 2*10^(-5)=0.00002 per reactor and year (there seem to be ressources which indicate that this frequency may be higher though).

This means that is if one has approx. 500 reactors worldwide the likelihood of a core damage somewhere in the world was in 2005 one damage in 100 years, if we take again a factor ten as in the randform post about scaling factors in nuclear power generation then this would rise to one core damage every 10 years. If we include an higher risk for fast breeders (which is a technology, which hasnt been tested exhaustively) then this likelihood rises again. Core damages are quite crucial because they can lead to a nuclear meltdown.

Other risks are therefore often calculated in relation to the core damage frequency. While answering to a comment about Leukemia I stumbled upon the “Studies on Applying Risk Informed In-Service Inspection for Indian Nuclear Power Plant and Heavy Water Plant” by G. Vinod from the reactor safety division at the indian Babha Atomic Research Centre in which probabilistic safety assessment techniques for indian nuclear power plants which among others are using the core damage frequency are discussed in particular with regard to optimizing inspection. A citation from the article

An optimum plan should be devised subjected to constraints such as risk to plant, cost of inspection and radiation exposure to workers, if the component is in radioactive area.

Its not clear to me to what extent inspection optimization may lead to an increase of the core damage frequency.

In a comment about a recent study whose neutrality was not so clear I was asked by a reader:

If there is all this data as you say on the internet then why do you need this reputation thing at all, i mean can’t you just check wether this Greiser person is right?

The study which the reader meant to be checked used data about leukemia occurences in children who lived in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant. This data was -to a great extend- gathered together via the internet and was then statistically evaluated. So the reader assumed that -given that all the necessary information is available- that one could just check wether the study is right.

My answer:
In principle -given that all information is provided in the study- and – given that oneself can access all data (this is unfortunately not always that easy) one can check wether all the in the study given data was correctly evaluated, one can follow the statistic reasoning and the methods which were used a.s.o. The question wether the study is correct or not should thus not be expected to be answered plainly with a yes or no, but at least include explanations about the involved methodology. All that takes a lot of knowledge and experience which is -for an outsider- not so easy to acquire. That is even though I am a mathematician it would take me probably quite some time to understand and evaluate the involved reasoning (it is not exactly my field), it is quite likely that I would end up with open questions and thus would need to consult other people.

One can compare this a little bit with a medical diagnosis, that is in principle all the medical information is available in text books, articles etc. and without having studied medicine one can have a “feeling” about how correct a diagnosis is, however – depending on the symptoms and ones own knowledge- people usually prefer to see a doctor instead of feeling inclined to cure themselves. The craftmanship of a mathematician -although this may not be so obvious- is comparable to that of a physician.

Nevertheless it happens that people won’t go see a doctor. This may happen because people can’t afford to pay a doctor and/or because they are convinced that their methods (or those of a non-medical-doctor) are better. And there are indeed cases were non-doctors may have better results. Nevertheless the typical scenario is that a learned doctor knows more and can help you better than a non-doctor. This holds also true for “crowd knowledge” that is you may ask around in fora about what to do with what symptoms, but typically you wouldnt like to rely on them completely.

Here one should note an important feature: Among others a doctor is someone who was evaluated by a certain group of people who know the subject. That is professional organisations, universities etc. hand out certificates which should give you some trust that this person knows what he/she is saying and doing. This is mostly what reputation is about. It is a guideline. Or put differently: Given a specified task the chance that you will end up with a completely incapable person which had been certified for this task by a respectable institution should be smaller than the chance that an uncertified person is incapable. This doesnt exclude the case that there are uncertified persons with a better knowledge than certified ones. This is just -at the moment- on average less likely.

I wrote “at the moment”, because there are unfortunately tendencies which dilute this rather helpful feature, as can be seen e.g. in the certification problem in the already mentioned outsourced learning environments/online classes. Certification problems can also be found in “cheap education” e.g. by certifying large amounts of students, which makes cheating easier (for example by handing in essays, which were not authored by oneself), academic misconduct and/or corruption e.g. due to financial interests etc. Moreover the possibilities for free autonomous learning are much, much better than before (which is good), so the number of highly trained individuals without a certificate are most probably on the rise. Traditional systems of evaluation may thus be loosing their influence. Personal recomendations would thus become more important, which makes it on the other hand harder to enter a foreign field as an outsider.

The above (unemployed) patient in the foto had a bad bike accident, which resulted unfortunately not only in a torn muscle. Thanks to a “still” rather good medical care in Germany within one week and with the help of several specialists and MRI a not so common injury could be diagnostized fastly and within 2 months the patient should be able to walk properly again….

Why do I write “still”?

Because in Germany the costs for health care are on the rise. This is not only due to an aging population but also to a great extend due to rising costs for pharmaceutical products, where new, patented products play a major role. According to this article in Berliner Zeitung on total the costs for physicians in Germany are meanwhile smaller than the costs for pharmaceutical products. Nevertheless suggestions of politicians which are about to form Germanys new government suggest to cut down on health care on the whole and instead secure a socalled “basic care” for the masses which could be supplemented by additional care – if you have the money. As a result the stockmarket for certain pharmaceutical companies soared right after the elections.

historical reading: -> hippocratic oath

There had been some uproar in mediascape-Germany about a study with the title “Konzept für ein integriertes Energieforschungsprogramm für Deutschland” (”Concept for an integrated energy-research program for Germany”). According to Financial times Deutschland” (FTD) the study was commissioned by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research however the study had been withheld from the public for 3 months.

The study is now -after the uproar- openly available. The reasons for the ministries policy of secrecy gave of course way to speculations in the press. So among others the study suggests that besides studying halite rock formations as a suitable geological formation for a final nuclear dump site, like the one in Gorleben it is meanwhile scientifically established that also Claystone formations may provide an alternative for a final nuclear waste repository. Since most of these rock formations can (according to FTD) be found in the current ministers “electoral homeland” Baden-Würtemberg and since the german elections will take place in about one and a half weeks it is understandable that the press identified this fact as a possible reason for the withheld (i.e. nobody wants a nuclear dump site in ones own backyard).

Another possible reason why the study was withheld was seen in the fact that the study suggests that an enforced research in nuclear power generation – and in particular in new nuclear fission technology could be a politically desired pathway in energy research (note the subtlety: the study does not suggest to pursue enforced research in nuclear energy, but states that enforced research in nuclear energy, in particular in new reactor types, may be a political request). This is in contrast to the current official political line of the minister and chancelor Angela Merkels party the CDU. Their official line (towards voters) is basically that power genration via nuclear fission should play NO role in Germanys future energy generation.

I have unfortunately currently not the time to study the study in full detail but nevertheless – here are some remarks to the study:

The study was made under the auspices of two german science/humanities academies, namely the National academy of science and the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences and Humanities a third collaborator was the German Academy of Science and Engineering (Acatech), which claims itself to be a non profit agency, which represents the interests of German sciences and technology. Acatech has a strong connection to business, last but not least via funding. This has advantages and disadvantages.

Responsible for the text of the study are Prof. Dr. Frank Behrendt (Institut für Energietechnik, TU Berlin), Prof. Dr. Ortwin Renn (Abteilung für Technik – und Umweltsoziologie, Universität Stuttgart), Prof. Dr. Ferdi Schüth (Max- Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung, Mülheim/Ruhr) and Prof. Dr. Eberhard Umbach (Forschungszentrum Karlsruhe), however the study encompasses contributions from numerous individuals (p.58 of the study) which are researchers from universities but also representatives of companies such as Siemens. As a remark: the company Siemens seems to intent to terminate its engagement within the french nuclear company AREVA, however according to this article it may replace its french engagement with a cooperation with the russian nuclear company Atomenergoprom. This should put the neutrality at least of parts of the study -namely those concerning nuclear power generation- under scrutiny.

A main argument of the study is that the challenges of Germany’s future power generation can only be dealt with in a – what the authors call- “systemic perspective” that is with an approach which integrates not only the scientific and technological demands of power generation but also the juridicial, sociological etc. aspects which are connected with it. The arguments are similar to the IPCC conclusions. For accomplishing this integration approach the study suggests among others to establish energy research clusters (similar to the US american Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC), public-private partnerships like the british Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) and one central german energy research center which bundles the research activity and which serves as an outside representative for Germany’s energy research. The tasks and concrete realizations of such a center havent been yet not very much specified, however integrating and coordinating energy research is in my opinion definitely sound.

Moreover the study collects “no-regret” research options, like research in insulation improvements, energy efficiency, research in how necessary behavioural changes may be adressed appropriately, in how international agreements could be furthered etc. At this place I would have liked to see a stronger discussion of the problems related to patents/intellectual property rights obstructing technological development and international agreement processes.

Within the technological component the study identifies three main research sectors according to which politics can choose to put emphasis on. These are: regenerative energies, carbon based energies and finally -although as pointed out above there is currently no official political backing for this- nuclear energy. The technological aspects of each sector are introduced in the study in a socalled module.

I’d like to concentrate a bit on the nuclear energy module, since the text of the nuclear energy module is mildly put indeed controversial.

As already indicated the aspect that nuclear fission research may be pursued only with the goal of securing its safe pullback (which is the official political line!) is just a little side remark in the text.

In particular it is argued that in order to keep a fall back option on nuclear (fission) energy, Germany could feel strongly advised to support research in new fission technology and thus could feel the need to support the development of fast breeders and in particular in 4′th generation reactorsystems:

Deutschland kann sich aufgrund seiner Expertise hier an vorderster Stelle beteiligen, um unter anderem höchste Sicherheitsstandards zu etablieren.

(translation without guarantee: Germany may – based on its expertise – take part in this in the front row in order to establish among others highest security standards.)

The option that a fallback option on nuclear fission technology could also exist without a german research effort or accomplished with just a small german contribution like within an international noncommercially oriented community research project (my favoured option) is not mentioned.

The study mentions the necessity to keep a fallback option on nuclear fission due to the reason that climate change could have more dramatic consequences than expected, this was also annotated in an earlier randform post.

However the study suggests that such a fallback option may also be justified by the strong pressure which may be due to an international renaissance of nuclear fission technology and which may be due to raising energy needs (p.15) especially in regard to financial feasibility (p.12).

Yet the most problematic part of the nuclear module was the sentence:

“Außerdem müssen bei einer Wiederaufnahme der Forschungsarbeiten zu neuen Reaktoren bereits frühzeitig Ansätze entwickelt werden, mittels derer die Technologie gegebenenfalls umgesetzt werden könnte, ohne Widerständen zu begegnen oder – für den Fall, das dies nicht möglich ist – mit diesen Widerständen konstruktiv umzugehen.”

(translation without guarantee: Furthermore in case of a resumption of the research efforts concerning new reactor types one has to develop at an early stage approaches with which the technology could be realized without encountering resistance or – if this is not possible – develop approaches on how to deal with this resistances in a constructive way.)

I hope this sentence was a very unfortunate phrasing accident and that the authors do not really mean what they write here.

Just a quick link to an interesting article in the Washington monthly about possible future developments within the US and other high-tuition-dependent-educational systems ->College for $99 a Month

very, very short summary: the article explains that cheap online education (eventually outsourced to India etc.) may lure college students into taking standard classes in the internet instead of in a typical college. This development could be accelerated due to the economic crisis. Standard courses usually “nurture” the more specialized classes, hence it can be feared that the overall quality may suffer from this.

Last weakend we were doing a visit to the Deutsche Museum.

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Some images from the Curie museum in Paris featuring among others the investigation of radioactivity by Marie Curie and coworkers.

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