Brunosan

Mi vida en el Max Planck

2013-06-17T00:00:00-04:00

-Last week it was announced that The 2013 Prince of Asturias Award for International Cooperation has gone to the Max Planck Society. The Asturias newspaper “El comercio” asked me to tell their readers how is it to make a PhD at the Max Planck. This is what I sent. –

Todavía me quedaban ocho asignaturas de la carrera de Física, cuando en febrero solicité mi beca de doctorado al Max Planck. Mi profesor de Física Estelar II me lo recomendó.Yo acababa de llegar de Oviedo a La Laguna para terminar la carrera con la especialidad de Astrofísica y me pareció una locura. Los pocos compañeros a los que se lo dije me dijeron que me olvidase. Imposible. No me lo podía creer cuando en junio me invitaron a ir a dar una charla al comité de selección para la última fase. Nunca me olvidaré de que al acabar la misma todos los asistentes, investigadores de alto rango, se pusieron a dar golpes en las mesas, como llamando a la puerta. Luego supe que esa es la forma de aplaudir en academia en Alemania. Sólo aceptarían a nueve de los veinte candidatos, de entre los más de 500 que se habían presentado. Todos tenían excepcionales cualidades.

Mis tres últimos exámenes de septiembre los pase con la presión y el orgullo de tener una beca en el Max Planck esperándome. En enero de 2005 me mudé a Alemania para empezar mi doctorado en física solar con el Max Planck y la Universidad de Goettingen. En mi caso era el Instituto Max Planck para el Estudio del Sistema Solar y Mas Allá. Mi contrato era de tres años para estudiar la atmósfera solar, con un director de tesis muy experimentado, instalaciones y recursos punteros, acceso a los mejores telescopios solares del mundo (volviendo a Tenerife), un salario de unos 1000 € netos al mes y un despacho. Además, Goettingen resultó ser una ciudad universitaria con mucho ambiente, y situada en el centro de Europa. No sabía decir ni “hola” en alemán, pero no pude ir con más ganas y menos dudas.

El Max Planck es un centro muy competitivo donde se trabaja duro. Reúnen a los mejores investigadores y les ofrecen buenas condiciones, pero también esperan mucho de ellos. Fueron tres años muy intensos aprendiendo con los mejores profesionales. Mi doctorado obtuvo un “magna cum laude”, pero además publiqué tres artículos en revistas académicas -uno de ellos portada- asistí a cuatro conferencias internacionales presentando pósters o charlas. Pasé en total unos 100 días en el telescopio VTT en Tenerife . Publiqué artículos de divulgación dentro y fuera de España. La NASA publicó mis datos de divulgación un par de veces. En el Max Planck participé en unos catorce cursos y seminarios sobre temas avanzados para que obtuviésemos la mejor visión posible de campos similares al nuestro y de lo que nuestros compañeros hacían. Además, cada uno de nosotros teníamos que presentar su trabajo y se incentivaba el cruce de colaboraciones dentro y fuera del Instituto. Para el eclipse solar de 2006 en Turquía nos organizaron un viaje para verlo y que todo el Instituto aprendiese sobre física solar.

Básicamente mi tesis consistía en ayudar a entender por qué la atmósfera del Sol esta más caliente que su superficie. Parece contradictorio si el calor viene de dentro del Sol. Mi trabajo era usar los mejores instrumentos en los telescopios solares de Canarias para registrar la dinámica de las nubes de plasma de la atmósfera solar. Procesar los datos para extraer la mejor señal e información posible, y luego usar las teorías del momento para ver si podían explicar las observaciones. Un largo proceso que involucraba aprender desde Óptica, para entender el funcionamiento del telescopio, hasta magnetohidrodinámica, para entender las ondas de plasma que veía en los datos.

Más de cuatro años después, mantengo contacto con muchos de mis compañeros de entonces. Están los que siguen trabajando en el Max Planck, los que trabajan para la NASA, los que se han vuelto a su país para trabajar en la universidad en puestos relevantes, los que se han pasado a otros campos de la ciencia, divulgación o temas completamente diferentes.

Mi tiempo en el Max Planck terminó cuando tuve la posibilidad de trabajar con cohetes y satélites de la NASA en Washington DC. Pero por encima del honroso título y el paso a mi siguiente capítulo, me formé como científico y persona. Aprendí sobre la física solar, la ciencia en general y la vida; junto con mis compañeros, con quien muchos de ellos aún mantengo un buen contacto. Cada dos años el Instituto organiza conferencias para reunir a los antiguos doctorandos y mantener un grupo unido.

He tenido el honor de comprobar el alto nivel de prestigio que ostenta esta institución, lo mucho que cuida a sus trabajadores y las relaciones dentro y fuera de sus paredes, durante y después de trabajar con ellos. Es por eso que me enorgullece leer sobre el premio que la Fundación Príncipe de Asturias otorga al Max Planck, más que justificado en el apartado de cooperación.

Mi agradecimiento al Instituto Max Planck, que me dio la oportunidad de recibir una sólida formación. Bien me hubiera gustado haber podido realizar o continuar mi trabajo en España, país donde tenemos grandes talentos pero en el que triste y equivocadamente, a mi juicio, la política de inversión en investigación y ciencia no es una prioridad.

Después de dos años en el laboratorio de cohetes, pasé a la Academia de Ciencias de EEUU para hacer política científica. Actualmente soy Director de Ciencia y Tecnología de una ONG sobre cambio climático. Soy “Joven Líder Mundial” del Foro Económico Mundial y asesoro a varias empresas y ONGs sobre asuntos científicos y tecnológicos.

My Impact Journey to rural Myanmar

2013-06-16T00:00:00-04:00

– During my recent trip to Myanmar (or Burma, or Birmania) we had the chance to visit a rural village. This was part of the World Economic Forum Young Global Leaders meeting. This is a little report about the experience.–

Kungyangon Township is roughly 3 hours southwest of Yangon. I write “roughly” because the drivers of our 4 SUV parade, with police, lost their way. Not much to blame since some of the roads, bridges or even the village itself are not on the map. Oddly enough I could still spot the missed turn with my GPS and the data I had downloaded on the hotel Wifi. We also had, as I was told by our local translator, a group of 30 police that the government sent to “protect us”. Problem is they sent it to another village with a similar name, so we never saw them.

Leaving Yangon itself took 40 minutes, as the roads are flooded with cars. On our way back a police motorbike tried to open the parade with lights and sounds, with much despair. The road infrastructure is not prepared to the boom of cars that is flooding the streets after the government suddenly eased the licenses to buy cars. This move also devalued previous cars by 90% as a local told us. Construction to build overpasses, similar to Bangkok and other cities, is underway which also complicates traffic around the city. In the outskirts of the city we saw new factories surrounded by rapidly growing slums literally built over the swamp waters.

Once in the countryside we saw beautiful scenery of inundated crop lands, other fields and green vegetation. Along the route there was a constant trickle of illegal traders and motorbikers which set up a inter-village transportation system. As we arrived to Taungone village inside Kungyangon township, with barely paved roads, we split into 3 groups to optimize our time. Some went to villages close by lucky enough to have electricity and schools, some not. Our visit was arranged by Proximity Designs, an NGO which basically manufactures low-cost versions of agricultural technology to help local farmers save time and increase productivity. For example, a raised water reservoir filled using a pedal-pump to later irrigate with a gravity assisted drop system. They sell those products together with some money to buy seeds, and they let them repay over time when the harvest comes.

The house our group visited belongs to the neighbor of the village who serves as the contact and first-user of the NGO services. In his house, a 3 foot raised palm-tree cube where they live, sleep and socialize, we were greeted also by his family and a few neighbors excited and honoured to get to know us. They had also prepared plenty of food and drinks, that we respectfully had to decline. Primarily we wanted to learn from them, answer any question they might have for us, and see what they wanted for their future and how we could help.

They greatly appreciate the innovations Proximity provides, as they save time to do other things and get better harvest. They sell most of their harvest. They had to build everything after the Cyclone Nargis in 2008 yet they were not focusing in building better resilience or moving out. They don´t have a mindset of using the profit to invest, to build a better house or to move to a better place. Their profits had other priorities, which left nothing more. They use the money for two things: send kids to school, and “donate to the poor”. Struck by their compassion by wanted to know more. It seems that compassion and community caring are strong parts of their culture (mostly buddhist). In their words, “making full use of what is given, and giving more to what is taken. It doesn´t matter if you are poor or rich, dumb or Noble prize winner. What you take is your standard of living, what you give shows your character.”

When the kids go, too early, to the city, the panorama is not easy. Their salary, at the factories, is roughly 70$/month, they have living expenses of around 45$/month, and they send back to their parents around 20$/month. As they say, this is not a favorable long term solutions, and they seek local jobs. They wanted factories closeby so their kids don´t need to leave and collectively improve as a community.

One of their actions is to sustain a local school for orphans and kids whose parents are too poor to send them to the public school. That school in particular was created by a Chinese Grammy or Nobel prize winner (they could not tell which one). This year they were struggling to fund it, but they were proud of making their best to help. Total cost of education per each of the 80 kids was around 20$/year. At that point my wallet with 40$ felt really heavy. We asked to visit the school if possible and we were heart struck by the school.

Driven purely by our empathy and compassion we shared our experience with fellow YGLs on later days and we raised over 1300$ for that school. But at the same time we also debated about this action. Why even that school and not others that are even less served? Should you give them the money, as easy as it is for us to provide great help? Or should you better enable them to better sustain themselves? It is hard for me to conceptualize a market mechanism to sustain an orphanage school. Moreover donations is what the locals do here, so why not pitch in? Furthermore, our unsolicited donation of most of their yearly budget in advance and no plans could be very disruptive and might incentivize unsustainable growth, misuse or corruption. It is our moral urge to help, but also our responsibility to avoid hurting them. After some debate, we finally talked to Proximity Labs, who are locally trusted and knowledgeable, to serve as stewards of the money for that school to ensure our wish to help them actually makes the best positive impact.

After our visit all three groups gathered to have lunch and share experiences. Our lunch was prepared by the Yangon Bakehouse back in Yangon city, who provides disadvantaged Myanmar with job skills and experience, life skills training and opportunities for future employment. They prepared 750 lunch boxes for all our Impact Journeys that day.

One of the other groups met a similar household as the one we got to know. In their case, the electricity is only 3 Km away so they need to get do without it. For example education with candle lights. The investment to extend the electricity grid I believe was around a few thousand dollars, but the are also thinking about solar panels. They are closer to the river which provides better lands and other sources of food like frogs but also dangerous snake bites. Moreover, the overflow of the tides occasionally inundates their crops with salty water, for which they have no way of protection. They also have a community project where they built a local library from a donated 2 story building. In their case Proximity Labs is also helping them improve their agricultural capacity, but they emphasized on the finance help and the reduced operating expenses (e.g. pedal pumps vs petrol pumps).

Our last group found a very entrepreneurial community with many ideas and motivation to build their own jobs via co-ops but they needed finance to kickstart. Their main struggle comes from the ongoing poverty cycle. Roughly 70% of the jobs, working the crops, comes from 30% of the people who are landowners (not legally as the government owns the land). The loans these owners need to cultivate at the same time prevents them from surplus accumulation to avoid increasing interest fees. As the land owners struggle with a harder climate and other challenges, they end up forced to sell their lands and become part of the growing seasonal workers which themselves struggle to find work from the remaining landowners, and when they do is around 3$/day. Since there were no labor animals, agricultural innovation was technological for which help like Proximity Labs is instrumental to find better finance and save time.

It was truly an Impact Journey for us and we hope we were also able to help them. We came and learnt, but at least we also share so that their reality is more visible. Our gratitude to the YGL Staff and Proximity Labs for enabling us to visit this village and learn about their work. As we were discussing about their services and network of operations, we realized we could easily help with communications. As part of the YGL conference welcome package we had local SIM cards with 10$, many of which went unused. Other people bought cheap local phones to use the SIM cards. Turns out getting access to a GSM SIM card is done by lottery and is still in the $60 range. Our idea was to request to fellow YGLs to consider donating their SIM cards and bought phones before leaving the country. Again I was impressed by the response of this awesome group when we collected more than 50 SIM cards and several phones. I was thrilled to give these to their CEO and visit the offices where I also trained their staff to put the villages and roads on the map.

This impromptu idea of gathering SIM cards to reuse and share led to this other one: Why don´t we push this initiative? On every conference, set up a box where anyone can leave relevant, unwanted or unused conference items and hotel toiletries to be given to a local social organization. Interested? Drop an email and let´s talk.

Why is the mirror of the Google Glass inverted?

2013-05-06T00:00:00-04:00

These past days I have had the chance to play for the first time with the Google Glass from Silica Labs. This post is not about the experience, you can find about that online. What drove my interest is the hardware, in particular the eyepiece. If Google Glass is to become popularized, the eyepiece needs to be as small and invisible as possible. I´m pretty sure they have invested a lot of time on that. Upon close inspection I think they have decided to ship a first option, but they continue to work on that. Perhaps as an “innovation slack” to keep ahead of copycats, or because the main audience for now are developers to build apps for the consumer market later on. And developers don´t mind the geeky aspect that much.

If you look closely you´ll see that the eyepiece is a nanoprojector inside the bulk piece. The little image is sent sideways to a 50% mirror that directs half the light to the eye. This is done to also allow 50% of the light from the outside reach the eye, thus making the image superimposed over the real world.

But if you think about it, the mirror on the Google Glass is inclined in the opposite direction. Why?

On the first option (as the first diagram above) the image gets 50% of the light. With the opposite direction (as the Google Glass), you only get 25% of the light: the beam goes twice over the half-mirror, once through and once reflected. The second option also needs a mirror at the end of the eyepiece to reflect back the light. On the image below I´m taking a picture of the outside of the mirror, along the axis of the eyepiece.

Why the second option, with a double pass? I think the reason is augmentation. The mirror at the end is not flat, but slightly spherical (or parabolic). A concave mirror creates an augmented virtual image if the object is before the focus. On the side image you can see the piece is nearly flat but no quite so. Thus the image you see on the outside (convex mirror) is smaller. The radius is much bigger than the distance to the eye. The virtual image if the screen is therefore then bigger than it would be with a flat mirror.

This means that the overall light path on the eyepiece of the Google Glass looks like this:

After playing with the Glasses for a weekend and letting anyone use them, they all love it, but agree that it looks too… geeky, too bulky. I believe there must be better options, smaller and less visible when you wear them. Perhaps:

A single non-flat semi-transparent mirror instead of the flat one. This what we use on a special type of telescopes. They are called asymmetrical or off-axis. They come with their own set of problems (like chromatic aberrations), but in such a small light path I would still argue to try it, with some combination of software to correct these problems. Still, that option would probably introduce strange field aberrations on the transmitted background image.
Direct projection from the side of the glass into the lens. Problem here would be to place inside the lens and yet outside the normal field of vision, so it´s only available on the corner, not in the middle of your normal view.

Ideas for Apps for the Google Glass

After using them for a weekend, talking about them with colleagues at Silica Labs, and wear them at various situations, I got a few ideas for apps:

Climb app. Save videos and pictures of your climbs. At any climbing place, make a picture of the route to help you flash tricky points, locate best places for hooks and save videos as you make your way up. If the route is long, the belayer can talk and see the climber and videochat to give support without releasing the rope.
Talking queues. When you meet someone and start talking, start flashing cards of his/her interest, pictures, notes. Content could come from the CV if it´s a work interview, OkCupid profile if it´s a first date, live speech assistance from someone who is listening and watching what you see, …
Buffer record. Continuously save video or frames every few seconds, and overwrite them in a continuous loop. This can be important in case of accident if you are on the road, you are a police officer, or you think you saw something worth saving when it already started.
Glass Notifier. An app that just pushes notifications to your Glass. I´m thinking of any app that currently flashes notification on your phone. Just taking them and pushing them as a card to the glass. (Agenda, Whatsapp, Facebook, Instagram, Google Now, Email)

[Idea] Apple patent to protect your phone screen

2013-04-08T00:00:00-04:00

How to avoid breaking your glass screen when you drop your phone? Phones fall down, and sometimes nothing happens and sometime the screen shatters. Can it be avoided? Making the glass thicker is a solution but increases the weight. I got an idea to fix that.

Today I was attending a talk by Mark P Mills on Patent Law at the Notre Dame Law School. He mentioned that Apple had just patented a way to prevent shattered iPhone screens, but he didn´t go to the details, just that he thought it was difficult.

Apple indeed has a patent to protect the hard disk when your laptop falls. They do so by detecting a free fall via accelerometers. When the laptop detects it has been dropped it will park the read/write heads of the hard disk, thus avoiding those heads scratching the surface of the disk when it hits the ground.

But how do they protect the screen? The idea would then be to detect a free fall, and quickly orient the phone in the air so that it touches ground on the back, or on the side, or whatever position is deemed most likely to help survive the phone with minimal damage.

When I wrote this post I didn´t look at the patent, but I thought about it and this my idea: Drop the battery.

Rotating the phone mid air requires a burst of energy. You could get there using puffs of air, but that would take space for the hardware. You could also use gyroscopes (like satellites use) but they are not that quick. You need to move a significant portion of the phone mass to rotate the thing quickly…. the battery.

The idea is then to insert 4 special screws on each corner of the battery. When the accelerometers detect that the phone is falling, it would calculate the momentum of inertia (how exactly is the phone is rotating) and carefully release 2 of the screws to create a counter momentum of inertia that compensates that rotation. As the battery unwinds the rotation is compensated. If the rotation needed is less than the full 90˚ turn, the other 2 screws will also be released, letting the battery separate at the exact moment the phone is properly oriented ( thus reducing also the weight on impact).

To gain more momentum of inertia of the rotation of the battery, one could increase the angular speed using screws with small springs. Here is a quick sketch of the whole thing:

No idea is that is what Apple thought of, but may be there is a chance Apple would finally make replaceable batteries in the end. :)

Update: For reference, as I upload this, I find the Apple patent online. I still thing my solution is better and simpler :)

How a tweet led to a rocket factory

2013-03-14T00:00:00-04:00

This is the little story of how Foursquare and Twitter led to a VIP visit to Space X, the rocket factory, back in 2010.

I was at a conference in Irvine, CA. This is when I worked as a fellow of the Space Studies Board of the National Academies. The sessions were great but I had no plans the evening of the first day. After I was done with work I went to the bar for a quick bite. It occurred to me that may be they had a Foursquare deal, so I used my mobile to check in. Indeed they had a free appetizer if you ordered a beer. Cool.

I also noticed someone else had checked-in there 10 minutes before. Out of curiosity I clicked her profile and she had a linked Twitter account. She was a science journalist that was also participating on the conference. Few minutes before she had tweeted about the same appetizer I had ordered. She had done a great presentation earlier that day and I was dying to know more about her work. I tweeted her and waited for her phone to ping to make sure she would tie that random connection when I introduced myself:

@christienic funny, we were actually sitting next to each other at the bar, and I also got the offer. Btw, good points on the panel.
— Bruno Sánchez-A Nuño (@brunosan) November 8, 2010

We started chatting about Twitter and Foursquare which were fairly unknown services back then. Really nice conversation. Then we talked about the conference, our common background interest in space and what not. I must have had a poker face when she asked If I knew Space X. Turns out she is a good friend of Elon Musk, and she was going to visit the rocket factory the next day. She then offered me to come along.

Elon was somewhere else taking care of some “Tesla” thing that day, but his personal assistant Mary Beth and the astronaut Ken Bowersox gave us an awesome tour around the rocket factory. I had many technical questions, and Jeff was very keen to answer all of them. Had I been american I would have quit my job at NAS to work there (ITAR regulations prohibit us foreigners to do so, or even see some types of hardware. My previous work at Department of Defense calibrating a rocket camera was borderline, so I knew well about it. For my work at NRL and visits at the NASA JPL and the Pentagon I was kind of used to that. Very annoying). Still with the ITAR restriction Ken and Mary Beth were very accommodating to make sure we stayed on ITAR limits but make it a great experience.

And that´s how I got a personalized visit to Space X, by the hand of an astronaut. You can see all the pictures here on Flickr. Surely it was not only a tweet, but a combination of really awesome people like Christie, Mary Beth and Ken, my professional interest on space and being so proactive. But still, like in this story where Charlie Loyd landed a job at Mapbox it was the flapping of the butterfly wings.

Thank you Christie, Mary Beth and Ken. You are awesome.

Young Global Leader 2013

2013-03-12T00:00:00-04:00

Today the World Economic Forum (WEF) announces this year awards of “Young Global Leaders” (YGL). I am one of them.

According to the website:

“Young Global Leaders represent the future of leadership, coming from all regions of the world and representing business, government, civil society, arts & culture, academia and media, as well as social entrepreneurs.

Nominated under 40, these young leaders are proposed through a qualified nomination process and assessed according to rigorous selection criteria accepting only the very best leaders who have already demonstrated their commitment to serving society at large."

Back in May 2012 I was asked by a work colleague who was interested in our work if I minded to be proposed to be YGL. I didn’t know what that was, but we then talked about my life, and the motivation behind my perhaps peculiar professional path. Plain honest conversation.

I then read a bit about the YGL, and I was highly impressed. Nominations go through a internal and external evaluation and screening process. Some of the previous awardees include Sergey Brin (Google), Jimmy Wales (Wikipedia), Marissa Mayer (Yahoo), Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook), and countless other successful CEOs, ministers, athletes, … I found a wonderful Youtube Channel with short videos to “Meet the YGL”. Very motivational and impressive.

And so I forgot about my nomination.

To my surprise, just few weeks ago, I received an email with this Subject:

“You Have Been Honored as a Young Global Leader 2013”

And so I started receiving information about the group, activities, a fellow “mentor”, events, … Turns out I am the only spaniard this year.

Since then I have spent some time back on that YouTube channel, reading information provided, talking with fellow YGLs, interacting with the YGL headquarters in Geneva and hunting tweets and blog posts of other YGLs.

I don´t know yet what really is the YGL, but I am certain this is an amazing opportunity and an honor. I am truly humbled and thankful for this nomination. Reading the roster of fellow YGLs, I can only take this as an acknowledgement of a trajectory that is still very short. It has not been easy, and the passion that drives me rejoices with this opportunity: a clear motivation to help bring Science and Technology closer to Society.

Being a YGL, I am told, is a transformational experience. Certainly, having the chance to get to know such a Forum of doers will be motivating.

For now, I´m planning to squeeze as much time as possible to take the most of this opportunity WEF is offering. Let´s do it.

“I don´t know where is the limit, but I know where the limit is not” @josefajram

Update: Yahoo Spain has run an interview, in spanish. At some point it was on the front page of Yahoo. Crazy day.

Walking the talk in climate change

2013-02-13T00:00:00-05:00

“It is not about the Science, it is not about mitigation, it is not about projections… it´s about all of that, on top of the current adaptation gap”.

This is what I was thinking as I left the NAS/NASA workshop Walking the talk: Climate Science in Service to Resilient Federal Properties.

This workshop, incidentally, was canceled few hours short of its original date, October 31st, due to Sandy. On the second attempt, it was again almost cancelled, due to exceptional wind and rain conditions in DC. That pretty much summarizes my take-away from the meeting.

NASA, as a forerunner, shared their progress securing their federal facilities against the changing climate. They talked about the process from the science of data and models, to the implementation of adaptation measures such as physical storm surge barriers at their coastal rocket facilities.

I found of special relevance the importance they gave to avoid a purely science driven approach. It´s just not only about the science pushing data to decision makers. Indeed, NASA partnered with architects, contractors, journalists and other stakeholders with the goal of being responsive to all actors involved on this process.

Still, the disconnect exists. Even on a room filled with federal employees whose boss in 2009 established a presidential Climate change Adaptation Task Force (along with the mandate to “manage the effects of climate change in short and long term”), as well as concrete 2011 Implementing Instructions for Federal Agency Climate Change Adaptation Planning. One of the first question from another federal employee was about the uncertainty of climate science. To him, inaction was wiser until we know to what we should adapt to. And so we debated and polarized even more the issue.

Where is this disconnect coming from? Part of this, I believe, is that climate change is linked to mitigation and future consequences. The future overshadows the present. For example, sea level rise is present on every discussion on climate change, while storm surges are often not so. Yet these already have costly consequences. Perhaps we´ll see this loop closing as people connect with the unfortunate, reality of increasing extreme events like storm surges, droughts, blizzards… Here at home, not overseas on the TV. As we connect with our current climate vulnerability: There is already an adaptation gap that needs to be addressed. Building resiliency, protecting lives, saving ecosystems, safeguarding livelihoods, protecting investments and infrastructures, identifying new opportunities and challenges. This, in turn, will unleash an inclusive role of all stakeholders, including the underplayed private sector.

Of course, on top of this current vulnerability, challenges will increase, specially for the most vulnerable.

Perhaps americans, as constituency, will connect with the climate and thus push it up on the political agenda. Perhaps then political leadership will catalyze. For that, a second term president certainly helps.

Treating climate change as a mitigation issue with incremental impacts in the future is ill-informed. Manhattan probably has the greenest least polluting modern buildings, and yet it will continue to flood until we take action on building resilience to climate.

Upgrading the World Data Bank

2013-01-17T00:00:00-05:00

The Open Data Catalog at the World Bank is a fantastic resource. I´ve used it many, many times. Specially while developing the GAIN Index. I´m sure I´ve spent hours on that domain. It´s astonishing the amount of information they´ve gathered on a consistent way.

Our Gain Index indeed uses, and references, roughly 80% of it´s components directly back to the Catalog. Proudly, but oddly, a number of people have told me that they use our page instead of the Bank´s to get a glimpse of the data for a particular country. As humbling as that is, it´s odd that our page gets visits to see the components, not the aggregation we do for our purposes. It´s like buying a book for the Bibliography.

Last Thursday the data team posted a call for input. They are upgrading the Catalog to be “more technologically capable, but also more user friendly, readable and understandable”. On their summary of the proposition they highlight: Search, Federation, user friendliness, better metadata, and scalable.

These are my six points of feedback: fast, flat, visual, better feedback, support more granularity of data, and open the source.

SPEED

The Catalog must be fast. And I can propose a concrete benchmark:
Faster than using the traditional sets of Excel files many people use. That´s the inertia from part of their target users. Why would I prefer to fire up the website every time If I can download the whole thing to my disk? This is specially important if you don´t have a fast connection, like it happens in many parts of the world.

Avoid full page reloads. A substantial percentage of the page will be the same, and it will not have the content I am looking for ( navigation links, legal/institutional notices, …). Having light overheads of headers and technologies like AJAX could help with this.
Transfer to the client browser as much as possible. Browsers can do amazing things, not just painting server states. Either using things like node.js or via other options, it could speed things up significantly. Also, the less the servers do, the more the IT and security guys at the Bank will like it. Back when I worked inside the Department of Defense, Javascript was golden, and PHP was evil.
Asynchronous calls. Avoid linearity. This is related to avoiding full page reloads if I, e.g., want to add a country to a plot, or I´ve requested more info on a particular data point.

All these points are actually related to make the Catalog feel less like a website and more like an app.

As flat as possible

This is also related with speed. Minimize the clicks-to-target. The distance from the front page to any piece of information should less than, say, three clicks, or two. Same for the most common cases like i.e. showing the world´s GDP compared to x and y country.

Low friction for basic users

If journalists and general citizens are target groups, I believe having a simple visual landing page is very important. Something they might be used to. Something like a Google Search style. Faceted searches are good for experts but intimidating if you don´t know the answer to all options presented. And they occupy a lot of space on the screen.

I also love maps, interactive maps. Personally, and this is the way I´m leading the upgrade of GAIN, a simple interactive map like GAIN and then adding search fields like Google (or Wolfram Alpha). Procrastinating folks can navigate the map slipping towards deeper levels of detail. The search box, small but prominent, gives you access to everything. Coupling it with some predictive/popular suggestion could be very powerful to allow one click links to queries like:

GDP of the World, and Spain and Sub-Saharian countries.
Top 10 countries by Population.
What measures and years aer available for Nuaru since 2000?

Feedback

Over the course of these 2 years working with the Catalog I´ve found around around 50 cases of small bugs, missing explanations or unexpected behaviours. The feedback channel, an email, is very opaque to the rest of the users. Certainly the answer has been always positive and every email I´ve sent was replied. Even when I tweeted about it, like when I found out that apparently 99% of the nurses in Netherlands had been fired:

Thanks for the Netherlands Nurses find @brunosan - I'll take a look! The source data from the WHO looks the same, so we can ask them too :-)
— Tariq Khokhar (@tkb) August 1, 2012

…

@brunosan Bizarre. That or maybe they only divided the midwives and not midwives + nurses. Will pass it on - thanks again!
— Tariq Khokhar (@tkb) August 1, 2012

It would be great If you could flag data, or measures, and leave feedback, or requests. Other users could reply, or vote, raising prominence to the issue. I can see how this could also pressure the original sources of the data which on many causes are also the root of the issue, like the example above with the nurses data.

Fixing identified issues with the data is specially important if you intend to use the data directly via APIs. Otherwise, you need extra steps to fix those issues.

Towards organic resolution

This is a big one I´m also struggling with. Most of the available data is at the national level. There are many reasons for that, from feasibility and gathering constrains, to pragmatism to the scale most users wanted. Nowadays it´s increasingly easy to get data, but also we demand more granularity. For some Indicators national scale makes sense, like fiscal policies, but for many other the higher the resolution the better. For example access to energy at the national level is important to prioritize in the global context, but knowing on which region to focus is equally relevant. This is specially the case for big heterogeneous countries, like India, China, Russia, USA …

What I’m proposing, and is the direction I´m planning to develop at GAIN, is an organic resolution protocol:

There is a background database with all available measures, at all available resolutions, as a network of nodes with plenty relations among them based on geography, economy, culture, correlations, …
If the user request one of them, it´s instantly served.
Sometimes one might need aggregates of available data, like for example all countries from LAC, or spanish speaking, or cities inside this watershed. The interface then requests that job and it´s served aggregated as the median or envelope values (this can probably be also done at the client level via Javascript).
Sometimes the data is simply not available, and then some working assumptions could be suggested like based on geographical neighbours, similar countries in other correlated measures, temporal extrapolations … In these cases probably more computation is needed, specially to provide degree of uncertanty.

Open the Source

Just like the White House releases much of the web tools they developed, the World Banks could do that. Even more, more than releasing, engaging in a conversation with the community e.g. using github: aggregating forks, issues, pull requests…

The data portal is a fantastic tool for both researchers and casual users. It´s already well ahead of the curve. But there is much more it could be done, no only to improve the portal and consumption of data, but also to spread best uses and help others catch up on their online resources.

Back in April 2010, the former President of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick, said:

"It's important to make the data and knowledge of the World Bank
available to everyone. Statistics tell the story of people in developing
and emerging countries and can play an important part in helping to
overcome poverty."

or as an american told me:

"In God we trust... but everyone else bring data"

2nd Marathon

2012-12-02T00:00:00-05:00

Last week I ran the NCR Trail Marathon in Baltimore. This is only 4 weeks after my first marathon.

I didn’t actually train for it, as it was not on my plans four days before the race. I crossed the start line breaking plenty of recommendations, like getting some time off, new shoes, new clothes, no music for the first time, first trail race, no setting goals or paces, …

Somehow I managed to pull quite an enjoyable race and beating my best marathon time.

A friend of mine was running this race with someone else, but that person cancelled. A thought I could just join my friend. The race takes place north of Baltimore, so he had to take the train the day before, then the tram, get a hotel, go to race, and then come back. I decided to go with him, start the race to help him pace. I had run my first marathon only 4 weeks prior, so I didn´t want to push my body for too much. Deep inside I also wanted to try, as I felt pretty well recovered from the first race.

This is a trail marathon but, thankfully most of it goes using an old train line. This means that it goes through a forest on an unpaved road but is mostly flat. The course is back and forth, with roughly a 75m elevation change in the turn around:

One of the most important rules I´ve read about marathons is never to try something new on the race day. Well:

First time travelling for a race, with all the hotel, eating changes, and not seen the race track before.
New shoes.
Forgot my Gu energy gels at home, so I planned on just using dates as fuel, and a couple of Gu I could get.
New thermal clothes, since it was going to be quite cold.
First time running without music. (Not allowed, but then most people had music… too late!)
I´ve never paced someone else or run with anyone. …

This is also a small race in the forest with 400 participants, not a 30.000+ in DC, so most of the time you will be alone, and probably among better runners.

The race

This is the School where we gathered before the race:

When I crossed the start line, my goal was to keep my pace not faster than a 4:30 marathon, and run along my friend. Right on mile 3 or so, we decided to split ways. I was feeling great so I increased the pace a little bit, but always keeping it slow. Reading my bpm after the race, I managed to keep it well below my anaerobic limit of 150, and I was running pretty smooth in the 130-140 range. It was quite cold so sweating was not a problem, and the new tighter clothes kept me warm without chaffing risk. I was running on a small pack of 4 people, without minding my pace much, any race strategy or anything. It is surprising how your mind just drifts off. I had no music but watching the forest around, feeling my own body and keeping the pace of the group was actually good. I didn´t miss the music at all.

Since I only had 3 Gu energy gels instead of the 6 I used in the previous marathon, I decided to keep the dates I had brought for breakfast and eat 2 every 30 minutes or so. I rationed my Gu to eat one each way on the half point of the back and forth track, and also one the turn around. I have to say that it feel much better on the stomach and I had no lack of energy compared to using twice the gels like last time.

Getting to mile 13 was quite a good feeling. I only had to go back. It is a bit of an irony that you ran all these miles only to find a sign that says, “turn around”. That’s the image at the top of this post.

Despite having only run once since the last marathon 4 weeks prior I was in pretty good shape. I had a small pain on my right hip, which I think might be for running too slow. My hypothesis is that I was running slower than I usually do, so I started to bounce up and down instead of down and forward. That little extra bounce down was being absorbed by the knees and hip, and hence the pain. And of course, the lack of training.

On the turn around I made a small pause to make the picture and also drink water. When I went back, after a mile or so, I decided to do the rest of the race, now slightly downhill, enjoying the forest and pushing a little bit more. According to Strava that has all my runs since 2009, on that second half marathon I made my best ever 400m (4:07min/km) but also best ½ mile, 5km, mile, 10 km, 15 km and 10 miles. I think I overtook 50 runners or so in the second half.

The famous mile 20, where many people hit the wall went by and I was managing the struggle. The pain in the hip was worse but I wanted to finish without walking. Unfortunately mile 24 had a horrendous slope that I just couldn’t do, so I walked it. A fellow runner cheered me to push, as the finish line was just a mile away. It was hard, but I went back to running, and when I saw the end I managed to squeeze a sprint to cross with 180 bpm, a full smile and the surreal fact I had done a faster marathon.

Results data

The results for all runners are already available. This time there is no location data, so no mapping for these runners. What I could do is create the same visualizations as last time, and compare the statistical results with the last race.

This race is 8 times smaller, and my hypothesis is that you would find mostly good local runners yielding better times on average, runners from far away trying to qualify to other races, like Boston, also faster, and also another set with slower local runners trying the distance.

When I was nearing the turn around I found the runners on the lead. Turns out that the second one, who was already struggling when I saw him, was running his first marathon, and he did not use the water stops, or had any gel. He was crazy fast, and I later knew he hit hard the wall around mile 18 and was taken to the hospital. Not a joke!

Note: For the comparison of this race (NCR) with the Marine Corp Marathon (MCM) I had to normalize the histograms to the total number of race participants. Otherwise the NCR histogram is too small to be seen. So when you see 0.04 on y axis it meas 4% of the finishers.

Runners by Age

66% of participants were male. Most women were actually grouped on the 35-40 bin. Compared to the MCM, the 25-30 women were mostly missing, but on the other side, there were more women 35-40. Numbers for women are much more concentrated than men, whose biggest group was 45-50 years old. Overall there seems to be less younger participants.

Runners by time

In terms of time, this race (which is 7 times smaller) deviates significantly from the nice Gaussian shape of the MCM. Smaller races don´t yield scalable results. The 4 hours milestome is much more apparent in both men and women, with another peak for women around 4:30. After that time, there is consistently better times for this smaller race than the more popular MCM. Big races attract slower runners. On the other side fast runners are proportionally much more prominent, specifically faster men.

Combining both dimensions one gets again the scatterplot of Hours by runner Age and Gender. As I was mentioning in the beginning, the smaller NCR race seems to attract mostly faster runners, regardless of Age. The group of faster men in the outer rim is still apparent but vague.

From this plot one can also see the bigger more famous MCM race is able to attract many more (overall) slower runners, specially on the 15-35 age range.

Most of the results lie within the envelope of the bigger race, which thus indicates that a bigger, more popular race, also includes the type of participants of smaller races.

Also like last time, I try to estimate those who are not able to keep a constant pace, and e.g. hit the wall on the second half. This does not include those who have to leave the race, as only finishers are taken into account. This might be important, as I can guess that the cold temperatures made many walkers quit the race.

NCR runners on this smaller race seem to be able to keep their paces much better. The graph is remarkably vertical without much deviation on either side. The Wall is barely visible with an impact of less than 1 hour on the finish time.

Again women seem remarkably better at setting a pace and keeping it the whole race.

Some extra Resources

All the python code and data for the visualizations is available on this github repository.
I used this nifty Flickr Visualizer to check all race pictures quickly and find the only one among 400 or so where I am.

Does the Universe have a purpose?

2012-11-30T00:00:00-05:00

Neil deGrasse Tyson is, to my taste, one of the greatest outreach scientist of our time. Not long ago, the Templeton Fundation asked leading scientist and scholars “Does the Universe have a purpose?”. His answer is the one I like the most.

Anyone who expresses a more definitive response to the question is claiming access to knowledge not based on empirical foundations. This remarkably persistent way of thinking, common to most religions and some branches of philosophy, has failed badly in past efforts to understand, and thereby predict the operations of the universe and our place within it.

To assert that the universe has a purpose implies the universe has intent. And intent implies a desired outcome. But who would do the desiring? And what would a desired outcome be? That carbon-based life is inevitable? Or that sentient primates are life’s neurological pinnacle? Are answers to these questions even possible without expressing a profound bias of human sentiment? Of course humans were not around to ask these questions for 99.9999% of cosmic history. So if the purpose of the universe was to create humans then the cosmos was embarrassingly inefficient about it.

And if a further purpose of the universe was to create a fertile cradle for life, then our cosmic environment has got an odd way of showing it. Life on Earth, during more than 3.5 billion years of existence, has been persistently assaulted by natural sources of mayhem, death, and destruction. Ecological devastation exacted by volcanoes, climate change, earthquakes, tsunamis, storms, pestilence, and especially killer asteroids have left extinct 99.9% of all species that have ever lived here.

How about human life itself? If you are religious, you might declare that the purpose of life is to serve God. But if you’re one of the 100 billion bacteria living and working in a single centimeter of our lower intestine (rivaling, by the way, the total number of humans who have ever been born) you would give an entirely different answer. You might instead say that the purpose of human life is to provide you with a dark, but idyllic, anaerobic habitat of fecal matter.

So in the absence of human hubris, and after we filter out the delusional assessments it promotes within us, the universe looks more and more random. Whenever events that are purported to occur in our best interest are as numerous as other events that would just as soon kill us, then intent is hard, if not impossible, to assert. So while I cannot claim to know for sure whether or not the universe has a purpose, the case against it is strong, and visible to anyone who sees the universe as it is rather than as they wish it to be.