Mid-Shore Science (Hammond)

Mid-Shore Science: Wetlands and Climate Resilience with Dr. Ariana Sutton-Grier

December 16, 2020 by Al Hammond

Ariana Sutton-Grier is a distinguished scientist with expertise in coastal ecosystems. In particular her research has focused on the role these ecosystems—both the coasts and associated wetlands—play as living infrastructure that improves climate resilience by helping protect against storm surges and rising sea-levels. These coastal ecosystems also turn out to be important in storing large amounts of carbon that would otherwise escape to the atmosphere as greenhouse gases, accelerating climate change. In the Chesapeake Bay, they are also important for maintaining fisheries and as recreational assets. Dr. Sutton-Grier is a visiting professor at the University of Maryland and recently gave an invited lecture at that university’s Horn Point Laboratory, excerpted here by permission.

In a follow-up interview, Dr. Sutton-Grier made clear the importance of living or green infrastructure on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay and preservation or restoration of wetlands. Not only do salt marshes and sea grasses and oyster beds help reduce wave energy and inland flooding, they survive extreme storm events like hurricanes better than bulkheads and stone riprap. Healthy coastal ecosystems also adjust better to rising sea levels by being able to grow and keep pace with rising waters. Moreover, these coastal ecosystems help slow climate change by capturing and storing large amounts of carbon for long periods of time. On a per acre basis, in fact, coastal ecosystems often store more carbon than the world’s tropical forests.

Restoring and protecting coastal wetlands—and potentially even creating new wetlands—could enhance carbon capture and storage, and might be able to be partially funded by carbon capture credits. Maryland has some 3100 miles of tidal shoreline around the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries and along the Atlantic coast—a remarkable resource. Moreover, Sutton-Grier points out, the region around the Bay is mostly flat, meaning that as sea levels inevitably rise, coastal wetlands can potentially migrate inland, preserving both fisheries and recreational opportunities, and their unique carbon storage capabilities, for the long term.

Maryland Secretary of the Environment Ben Grumbles recently underscored the importance of green infrastructure on the Eastern Shore. In response to a question from the Spy, he identified the need for more such efforts as perhaps the most important step that Maryland could take in improving the resilience of the Chesapeake Bay and its surroundings to rising sea levels, storm flooding, and other impact of climate change.

Preserving and perhaps expanding coastal wetlands around the Bay might be the most significant green infrastructure opportunity. It would involve significant societal tradeoffs, but could provide a way to offset rising sea levels and storm surge flooding. Indeed, sea level rise is already causing salt water intrusion and frequent flooding in low-lying areas such as much of Dorchester and in other parts of the Eastern Shore, making farming difficult and threatening some residential and commercial areas. If such activities were equitably re-located, and replaced by tidal marshes and other wetlands, the entire Bay region would be better protected against rising waters, while enhancing fisheries and recreational opportunities and also helping to slow climate change.

Al Hammond was trained as a scientist (Stanford, Harvard) but became a distinguished science journalist, reporting for Science (a leading scientific journal) and many other technical and popular magazines and on a daily radio program for CBS. He subsequently founded and served as editor-in-chief for 4 national science-related publications as well as editor-in-chief for the United Nation’s bi-annual environmental report. More recently, he has written, edited, or contributed to many national assessments of scientific research for federal science agencies. Dr. Hammond makes his home in Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

The Future of Finance…and much Else by Al Hammond

September 25, 2020 by Al Hammond

With mail-in voting poised to begin in Maryland next month, there have been concerns (mostly misplaced) about the security of that process. By the time of next presidential election in 2024, however, it’s likely that voting from home via a novel technology called “blockchain” will completely eliminate any chance of fraud. Blockchains are also poised to eliminate fraud from credit card purchases and simplify (as well as secure) cross-border financial transactions. So blockchains are likely to be part of your financial future. But what is this novel and still poorly understood technology and where did it come from?

The invention of the internet created a fundamental shift in how we access and share information. In effect, the internet digitized the sharing of information in ways that made email, web sites, and smart phone apps possible—in the process changing the way we live. Now another technological innovation, the blockchain, looks ready to digitize both how we store information safely and how we share value (via digital money or digital tokens that convey ownership of physical assets). Indeed, the CEO of IBM has said “What the internet was for communication, blockchain will do for trusted transactions.”

The first blockchain—the bitcoin blockchain—was created in 2009 by an anonymous inventor who was also a gifted programmer. A blockchain is just digital record of transactions that is stored in a global network of computers in such a way that each page or “block” of transactions is unalterably linked to the previous one—forming a continuous set or “chain” of blocks of data. The computer network operates under consensus rules written into the blockchain software, so that all nodes of the network have to agree before a new block of transaction data can be added to the records. Because the records are stored in multiple places (distributed across thousands of nodes in the bitcoin network) and protected by advanced cryptography, no one person or institution has control of the data. That makes the data virtually impossible to alter—an intruder would have to take over more than half of the nodes simultaneously—and therefore much safer than your data stored at a credit agency, a merchant, or a credit card company (all of which can and have been hacked).

The bitcoin blockchain was intended to create a store of value that could not be manipulated by governments (by, for example, printing huge sums of money). But its invention stimulated a flood of ideas about how to apply the blockchain idea to other problems or opportunities. These innovations—involving many different consensus rules, but all using linked blocks of data distributed across many nodes—now seem poised to transform banking, credit cards, real estate transactions, and many other financial activities. Blockchains could even enable secure, fraud-free voting from home, while keeping the information about how each individual votes completely anonymous: indeed, the U.S. Postal Service has been issued a patent for just such a voting system.

Major financial institutions are adopting blockchain technology at a rapid pace. Fidelity and Morgan Stanley are preparing to offer their customers access to bitcoin and other digital or “crypto” currencies as well as stocks. The U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, which regulates banks, has just approved U.S. banks to store digital currencies for their customers (many European banks already do). And virtually every major bank is exploring blockchain applications. Mastercard is developing a blockchain replacement for debit and credit cards that could eliminate the growing and costly incidence of fraud and theft. Square, a financial firm that services small merchants, also enables individuals that use its cash app to buy and sell bitcoin or use it to pay bills—resulting in $875 million of bitcoin revenue last year. Paypal is preparing to offer similar services to its 300 million users worldwide. Walmart and UPS are starting to use blockchains to track supply chains and facilitate cross-border transactions. At a global level, the Depository Trust Closing Corporation, which settles some $54 trillion in cross-border financial transactions a year, has already closed $10 trillion in transactions with a blockchain. China recently launched a national blockchain platform and with it a prospective national digital currency. So blockchains are rapidly going mainstream.

Much of the attention around these innovations has focused on digital or “crypto” currencies such as bitcoin, a form of digital money that is not issued by a government or managed by a financial institution and which can be instantly transferred from one person to another anywhere in the world. In effect, bitcoin is a kind of software, created by the consensus rules of its underlying blockchain. That blockchain permanently stores the complete history of every bitcoin transaction, and updates the information—verifying and adding new transactions on which all the nodes of the network agree—about every 8 minutes. The operators of the nodes are paid for their services by transaction fees charged those making transactions and by a block grant of new bitcoin—created by the network’s governing consensus rules. Those rules also dictate that the supply of new bitcoin is cut in half every 4 years and will never exceed 21 million bitcoin. (About three-quarters of that amount has already been created.) So if demand increases while supply is limited, the price of bitcoin will rise—which accounts for its growing attractiveness as an investment. For that reason, bitcoin is often described as a potential digital gold, a secure (if volatile) store of value—and indeed, since its creation, the value of bitcoin has risen faster than gold or any other asset class, including stocks. In contrast, the purchasing power of the U.S. dollar has declined 20 percent since 2008.

One limiting factor to widespread use of bitcoin and other digital tokens is that they are not yet exactly consumer friendly. They are mostly bought or sold on digital exchanges (some of which have been hacked) and are typically stored in digital wallets that can be intimidating to use (since sending bitcoin to a wrong address is not recoverable). On the other hand, you can trade or send bitcoin to a friend 24/7 and the transaction typically takes only a few minutes—compared to as much as several days and much higher fees to send money across borders through the banking system. And improvements are coming, both in ease of access and use, in faster transactions, and secure third-party custody.

Adoption and use of bitcoin and other digital tokens is also accelerating. About 10 percent of the U.S. population are now believed to own some bitcoin. One analyst—noting that it took 10 years for 10 percent of the U.S. population to use the internet, but then adoption reached more than 70 percent in a second 10 years—predicts that bitcoin is following a similar timeline, with adoption driven both by increasingly institutional use and by millennials and still younger generations (who tend to be more comfortable with digital objects). More fundamentally, blockchain innovations are nearing commercial use in many different sectors of the economy—in the U.S., in Europe, and especially in Asia.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

By the Way, How Do You Predict the Behavior of Rockfish or Crabs? By Al Hammond

August 10, 2020 by Al Hammond

Kenny Rose is an applied mathematician and fisheries scientist by training and has worked on many ecosystems throughout the US and internationally. He has spent years studying the San Francisco Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, and now focuses on the Chesapeake Bay at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science’s Horn Point Laboratory near Cambridge, Maryland.

Mathematical models—like those used for weather forecasts or to predict storm tracks—are key to studying and predicting many environmental phenomena. They typically take in data about the current state of the environment, then use computerized versions of physical laws to calculate expected outcomes. And even though nature sometimes doesn’t behave as predicted, it’s still useful to know that rain is expected or if the tide in the Bay is going to be high.

Dr. Kenny Rose, the France-Merrick Professor in Sustainable Ecosystem Restoration at Horn Point Laboratory of the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science

But what if there are no laws that apply, only some fuzzy rules of thumb? For example, what if you want to model the behavior of fish—not just how they move around, but how they respond to warmer water or a depleted food supply? For that matter, how would you model the behavior of people or of corporations? There are no physical laws for that, but scientists have developed a different type of model for just such purposes. Called an “agent-based model” or sometimes a “complex adaptive system” model, it creates a virtual world that can track the interaction of large numbers of agents (rockfish or blue crabs or people) with each other and with the environment around them. Such models depend on assumptions about the nature of those interactions, and if those are reasonably accurate, then what emerges from the model calculations is predictions or simulations of population-level behavior—for example, will there be plenty of crabs this year? Or how stable and resilient is the Bay’s rockfish population in the face of warming and more acidic waters (because of higher carbon dioxide levels) as a result of a changing climate.

Such predictions—often based on hundreds or thousands of simulations with varying assumptions—can be compared to observed behavior to test and refine the modeling assumptions. For many fish species in Chesapeake Bay, it turns out that the critical assumptions have to do with survival while they are larvae and juveniles (before they become full adults): most very young fish don’t survive. Is that because of food availability; or does it depend on whether they live near the bottom of the bay or near the surface; or does it depend on their risk of being eaten before they can reproduce? So modelers test these and other assumptions, while also testing such variables as temperature, salinity, and the type of bottom (does it offer good ways for a young fish to hide?).

These types of virtual world models have been used for simulating such things as how fish group together, population size under different harvesting plans, interactions between different species, and the sustainability of ecosystems. At the Horn Point Laboratory, one on-going application of such models is to simulate how fish group together—known as schooling—and to test different ways to set up underwater cameras (also simulated), in order to get the most accurate estimate of the number of fish. That’s because fisheries scientists are increasingly using waterproof cameras located on the ocean bottom or on underwater drones to track populations in locations that are difficult to sample directly. But calibrating what the cameras show is tricky, because they may miss some when underwater visibility is poor or count the same fish multiple times. So Rose helped build an agent-based model of fish movements and is using that virtual world to calculate correction factors for the camera and ideas about better camera placement, leading to more accurate population counts.

Understanding how fish school is important for a number of reasons, not just for improving population counts. For juveniles, being in a crowd is one of the best defenses against being eaten. And from a fisheries perspective, schools are often where the best fishing is to be found.

The models do provide insights into population size and the food webs that support it, which lets fishery managers know whether they should allow larger harvests or increase protections in a given location. And because rockfish move around—they might come into the Bay as youngsters, then leave later on—rockfish and many species are managed at regional (mid-Atlantic) scale. Crabs move outside the Bay as well.

This map identifies spawning ground sites for Shad or River herring across the Chesapeake Bay. River herring migrate from saltwater to freshwater to spawn, as do Striped bass, Hickory and American shad, Blueback herring, Alewife, White perch, and Yellow perch. Map produced by the Maryland Department of Natural Resources

Oysters, on the other hand, stay put and are managed locally. Another ongoing effort at the Horn Point laboratory, led by Dr. Elizabeth North, uses modeling to understand how temperature, salinity and circulation patterns in the Bay affect the transport of oyster larvae. That depends initially on models of tides and currents, which can be calculated from physical laws. Then agent-based models build on those results to help the scientists understand where the larvae end up—and where they don’t. This knowledge can be used to ensure oyster larvae have the right habitat in the right location to settle and grow.

The bottom line is that the health of the Bay and of its fisheries now depend on careful management, and today’s management practices in turn depend increasingly on detailed data collection and on sophisticated modeling—including modeling the behavior of fish. So remember to give a mental “thank you” to the modelers the next time you host a crab feast.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Why Farming Data, Not Soybeans, Might Be the Future by Al Hammond

July 20, 2020 by Al Hammond

In a remarkable event a few weeks ago, a majority of the Kent County Commissioners voted for zoning changes that would allow data centers in certain parts of the county. That may have been prescient, because data centers or “farms” are expanding rapidly and the Eastern Shore is potentially well-placed to benefit; at the least, it was a vote for strengthening Kent County’s economy. In addition, on May 7 a new Maryland law came into effect that gives data farms that locate in the state a tax incentive (forgiving sales and use taxes)—a change championed by Kent County’s Economic Development office.

The coronavirus pandemic has accelerated an already strong trend for businesses of all kinds to move their computing, data storage, marketing, and transaction activities to “the cloud.” That means renting data storage and computing facilities in data farms—vast warehouses full of computers and data storage devices—instead of owning and maintaining the equipment themselves. Consumers are moving more activities on-line as well, working from home or chatting with friends and family with Zoom, streaming movies, and ordering from Amazon or Instacart.

All that online activity means more data generation, more storage and data processing needed, more data farms. Yet by some estimates, only about 20 percent of the business activity that could move to the cloud has done so, meaning there is plenty of growth to come. Spending on cloud-based services in the U.S. is expected to jump from $70 billion last year to nearly $200 billion/year by 2023.

The largest providers of such cloud-based services—and the dominant owners of data farms—are Amazon, Microsoft, and Google, but there are lots of smaller providers as well. In particular, data farms at the “edge” of the global network—meaning close to users—are expanding rapidly, simply because consumers now expect a website to load within a couple of seconds and upcoming computing needs such as autonomous vehicles and the Internet of Things (smart devices of all kinds) also demand very rapid responses. Such edge data farms will typically be built within 100 miles of every major urban area. Kent County (and other parts of the Eastern Shore) are thus within range of Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Wilmington, and Philadelphia.

Because data farms use a lot of electric power to run the computers and data servers and for cooling, they tend to locate where low-cost power (and preferably renewable power) is available and land is not expensive. And that ties into another emerging opportunity for the Eastern Shore, which is the coming development of offshore wind farms. Offshore wind could potentially supply twice the generating capacity of all current U.S. power plants, so the resource is huge. And as wind turbines get larger, they become more efficient and the cost of power that they generate drops. New materials—such as carbon fiber blades—are twice as stiff as current fiberglass blades and weigh less, also lowering costs.

Current offshore turbines in Europe typically can generate as much as 8 megawatts, but the new, larger GE wind turbines identified for the proposed Maryland Skipjack wind farm will be rated at 12 megawatts each. Other manufacturers are designing still larger 15 megawatt turbines. So offshore wind power will be low cost. And if Kent County (or some other Eastern Shore county) was to follow the successful example of Easton Utilities and create its own utility that could contract in advance for some of that low-cost power, it would have all the ingredients needed to entice data farms, and could probably sell any excess power to other utilities at a profit.

Data farms are pristine if large structures. They consume a lot of electricity, and sometimes water for cooling, and they can emit an annoying humming sound, but they don’t generate a lot of vehicle traffic nor emit pollution. As such, they are likely ideal tenants of industrial land. Opposition to the zoning change in Kent County focused most heavily on concern that farmland would be converted to data center use, but the final language of the rezoning amendment does not appear to apply to farmland.

A typical data farm also would bring a dozen or so highly-paid, IT-savvy employees to a host county, and might attract related IT businesses as well. But their potentially most important addition to a county’s economy is the value of the land they occupy—which by definition becomes highly valuable industrial property and can be taxed as such: likely valued for tax purposes at $15,000/acre or more. Compare that with farmland—which, no matter how productive of soybeans or other crops, is valued for tax purposes at $500/acre or less under formulas set by the state of Maryland. Thus a 100-acre data farm would generate 30 times as much tax revenue as a 100-acre soybean farm.

No one is suggesting wholescale conversion of farmland to data centers—and the current rezoning does not allow it—but as Kent County Commissioner Tom Mason (himself a sophisticated, large-scale farmer) put it: “Agriculture is not the agriculture of 50 years ago. We need to generate more revenue.” Data farming may be one promising way to do so, if Eastern Shore counties can organize themselves to capture this novel 21st-century form of activity.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Minding a Big Gap: Digital Divide Leaving Students Behind by Al Hammond

June 29, 2020 by Al Hammond

The Covid-19 pandemic has made profound changes in how we live. Many adults have had to adjust to working from home. But for school-age children, the change in their lives since schools closed this spring has been even greater. How are they coping with learning from home? The experience of two Eastern Shore counties—Talbot and Kent—suggests that distance learning can work, but that it doesn’t work for some children or even some teachers. The problems include:

The digital divide. Talbot and Kent are fortunate, because in both counties every schoolchild had already been issued a digital device (tablet, chromebook, macbook, depending on age). In both counties the majority of families with school-age children also have internet access at home—even if kids sometimes have to share it with parents working from home.

Interview with Kelly Griffith, Superintendent Talbot County Public Schools

But some children—as many as 15 percent—have no access at home, either because they live in remote locations or because their families can’t afford it. (In both counties, about 50 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-price lunch.) Others have some access, maybe over a mobile phone, but not enough to stream a live session with a teacher or even to download a big homework file. So for these children, access means traveling to a WiFi hotspot, assuming that the family has a car and a parent at home who can drive them there and wait while the student goes online. Both counties have scrambled to provide more hotspots, working with county IT departments and commercial service providers; and both counties now have WiFi on their school buses, so that they serve as a kind of mobile hotspot. Talbot has also been mailing weekly packets of schoolwork to students who can’t get them any other way.

It’s not just students who lack access—so do some teachers is both counties. It’s a measure of their dedication that those teachers have been driving to school to deliver lessons from an empty classroom or even, in some cases, teaching from their car while parked at a WiFi hotspot.

Teachers are essential. As Bill Poore, Kent County Public School’s IT director says, “Zoom doesn’t replace a teacher’s hands-on help” with reading, or a stubborn arithmetic problem. And while some parents feel comfortable providing that kind of help at home, others do not—especially if it’s been a long time since they confronted an algebra problem or are simply not familiar with the devices and software tools that enable distance learning.

The schools are attempting to help: Kent County has adopted an on-line learning management system that simplifies things for kids or parents, and they have bought all-new devices for every student for the coming year. Talbot focused this past spring on basic topics that could be most easily grasped by a student or a parent without a teacher’s real-time presence (so-called “asynchronous learning”) and is working to have students catchup and finish any incompletes with week-long “boot camps” over the summer. But as Talbot County Public School’s Superintendent Kelly Griffith explains, “synchronous learning is important, because it increases student involvement.”

No one knows yet whether schools will be able to reopen in September, and even if they do, whether parents will feel comfortable sending their children while the pandemic is still active. So Griffith’s goal is to get everyone connected—to close the digital divide, one way or another—and she is seeking state permission for virtual programming. That might mean scheduled sessions with both teacher and students online together: English composition at 9, arithmetic at 10, science at 11.

Making rural broadband—and more effective learning—a policy priority. Last week, governor Larry Hogan announced a $45 million program to address the education digital divide. It includes a plan to build out wireless educational networks in western and southern parts of the state and on the Eastern Shore, using wireless frequencies reserved for educational use or other available frequencies. Hogan’s plan also includes money for devices and software tools, and for innovation grants to help public schools test new online educational strategies. It’s not likely that these new networks will be in place in time to help the coming school year, but it’s nonetheless a worthwhile effort that will eventually help to close the digital divide in rural Maryland.

The broader challenge, however, is to rethink education strategies. No matter how good the technology is, teachers will still need to play a central role. But why not design the educational process so that it happens seamlessly at school and at home? Why not use virtual reality tools (including virtual field trips) and hands-on interactive tools (such as 3D printers) to enhance student engagement—techniques now being rapidly adopted for industrial training? Why not use artificial intelligence tools to monitor student learning in real time and adjust the process individually to how each student learns best? It’s pertinent that in international comparisons, U.S. school children rank behind those of 12 other countries in reading and no better than 30th place in mathematics—and those dismal rankings haven’t changed in recent decades. Moreover the labor market is changing much faster than school curriculums—we’re going to need more software engineers and data managers and fewer truck drivers or assembly line workers.

Maybe the disruption of the schools by the pandemic—and the renewed attention to enabling every student to learn—will turn out to be the catalyst we need to reinvent education too.

Dave Wheelan contributed to this article

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

The Transportation Revolution by Al Hammond

June 8, 2020 by Al Hammond

If you are thinking of buying a new car or light truck anytime soon, you may want to reconsider. That’s because conventional gasoline-powered vehicles are about to become technologically obsolete and economically uncompetitive—which means it will become progressively harder to find gas stations to refuel them, mechanics to repair them, or buyers for used vehicles when you want to sell.

One cause of this transformation is the impending surge in the production of electric cars and trucks by every major manufacturer. These electric models—apart from the cost of the batteries that power them—are already cheaper to produce (many fewer parts) and maintain than those with internal combustion engines. The batteries themselves are about to see dramatic improvements that will increase their driving range on a single charge to 600 miles or more, reduce the time required to recharge them, increase their lifetime, and lower their cost—which in turn will make electric vehicles less expensive to buy and far less expensive to operate than comparable gasoline-powered models. Indeed, Tony Seba, a Stanford University economist, has published estimates that electric vehicles will soon be 90% cheaper to operate than gas-powered cars, taking into account the cost of fuel and repairs over the lifetime of the vehicle. All these changes add up to one thing: gas-powered vehicles may no longer make economic sense.

A second major technology-driven shift is the coming scale-up of autonomous or “self-driving” vehicles that use multiple sensors to detect roads, traffic signals, driving conditions, and other vehicles, combined with artificial intelligence tools to interpret this data instantaneously and guide the vehicle accordingly. That will save lives: human drivers make mistakes that cause nearly 40,000 fatalities and 4 million injuries per year in the U.S. alone. The proliferation of self-driving vehicles will also mean that people can potentially use their travel time to do other things.

More importantly, many people won’t need or want to buy a car at all—they will summon a self-driving vehicle to take them where they want to go. This revolution—often called Transportation-as-a-Service (TaaS)—will happen in urban areas first, reducing traffic congestion and air pollution. Already Waymo (owned by Google) has driven autonomous vehicles over 20 million miles without any accidents and has completed 100,000 self-driving rides in its test city, Phoenix, Arizona; it is buying another 60,000 self-driving vehicles to use there, which may enable it to provide half of all the local travel needs for that city. Waymo is not alone: a company called Aptiv has also completed 100,000 self-driving rides in Las Vegas and is starting service in several other U.S. cities.

For those of us that live in small towns or rural areas and can’t imagine not having a vehicle in the driveway or carport, the TaaS transformation may seem irrelevant, but we will nonetheless be affected by it. Among other changes, TaaS combined with electric vehicles will disrupt the car insurance business, lower the revenue that governments get from gasoline taxes, save families that can avoid buying a car lots of money, and lower the cost of shipping goods (because of self-driving trucks). TaaS will change the value of homes and other real estate (imagine what can be built on all those soon-to-be-empty parking lots, which in cities like Los Angeles take up nearly one-third of the space, or how much less attractive a house outside the range of a TaaS service might be to a potential buyer). It will also enable expanded home delivery services for packages or food by self-driving electric vehicles or battery-powered drones.

If all this seems too abstract, consider the following: Consumer Reports estimates it costs about $15,000 to fill up a Jeep Liberty over five years, if you drive 12,000 miles per year; the electricity to power an electric Jeep Liberty is estimated to cost less than $1,600 over the same period. And fuel savings are just the beginning. The drivetrain in a conventional car has as many as 2,000 moving parts, compared to as few as 20 in an electric car. Electric vehicles have motors, not engines, so they don’t need to shift gears… and they don’t need oil, spark plugs, air filters, coolant, or transmission fluid. A conventional car’s engine might last 150,000 miles before it needs rebuilding, but electric car motors can last 600,000 miles or more. That’s why some electric car makers warranty the drive unit for up to 8 years, with unlimited miles—something no gas-powered car can offer.

So if you could buy essentially the same car, except cheaper and 90 percent less costly to use and maintain, quieter to drive, capable of much more rapid acceleration and greater pulling power, as well as likely to last several times as long, which would you buy? That’s why many experts think that electric vehicles will account for more than half of all new cars and trucks sold in the U.S. within 5 years. And because of TaaS, the total number of cars sold is likely to be far lower—and most cities are likely to have fleets of electric, self-driving cars that can each deliver 100,000 miles of rides a year with little maintenance.

While all that’s good for us as transportation users, it means disruptive change for quite a few segments of the economy. Professional drivers—chauffeurs, cab drivers, truckers—may simply disappear. Demand for mechanics and replacement auto parts will drop. Insurance companies will have fewer accidents to pay for and will have to lower premiums, losing revenue. We won’t need as many gas stations and truck stops—electric cars will mostly recharge overnight at home and self-driving trucks don’t need to stop for food and rest. Oil companies will suffer. With less traffic on the roads, driving (or being driven by your car) may replace short-haul air traffic and the hassles of airports, to the detriment of the airline industry. On longer trips, you could simply sleep in your car’s fully reclining seats while it drives you, so roadside hotels and motels may face problems as well. And as TaaS scales up, the sales of auto manufacturers will drop; many may not survive.

That’s what disruptive technological change looks like. It happened before when cars replaced horses; now it’s happening again as electric vehicles with self-driving capabilities replace conventional cars and trucks.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Saving the Choptank…and the Bay? By Al Hammond

May 18, 2020 by Al Hammond

It’s no secret that the health of the Chesapeake Bay ecosystem and its valuable blue crab and striped bass fisheries have been under threat from the region’s growing population and expanding economic activity. But a recent ShoreRivers report on improving water quality in some parts of the Eastern Shore of Maryland seems to suggest a positive trend. This is a story about actions leading to that trend, in which a U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) laboratory located in Oxford, Maryland, has played a key role.

Agricultural land use dominates some parts of the Choptank watershed and is a major source of sediment and fertilizer runoff that contributes to poor water quality which may harm economically important fisheries. Source: NOAA

The seriousness of the environmental threat to the Bay’s fisheries was confirmed by a 2015 NOAA scientific study and a number of earlier studies that documented impaired water quality and poor biological health. A primary cause of the degradation, the studies found, was transformation of the natural landscape by agricultural activity and urbanization in ways that increased runoff into streams and rivers: runoff of sediment, nutrients such as fertilizers, and chemical and bacterial pollutants. The result is murky water, reduced underwater vegetation, and declining numbers of fish, crabs, and oysters coupled with increased levels of bacteria, fish disease, and fish parasites. The pattern of degradation seemed to track the types of predominant local land use, whether urban, agricultural, or forest.

NOAA scientists from Cooperative Oxford Laboratory pull a seine net in fish community composition sampling for the Tred Avon River ecological assessment. Source: NOAA

Since 1983, the Chesapeake Bay Program has been working to improve the Bay. The latest agreement, signed in 2014 by six states, the District of Columbia and the EPA on behalf of seven federal agencies, committed to achieving a long list of measurable outcomes and improvements. Included in these are water quality targets to reduce sediment and nutrient runoff and to restore native oyster habitat and populations in 10 tributaries, 5 in Maryland and 5 in Virginia, by 2025. (Oysters filter and thus help clean the water).

Also in 2014, NOAA designated the Choptank River—the longest and largest river that empties into the bay and a key blue crab producer—a habitat focus area. As part of the overall Choptank effort, NOAA initiated a detailed scientific assessment of one of the river’s tributaries—the Tred Avon River that flows from Easton to where it empties into the larger Choptank near Oxford.

The study—conducted by NOAA’s Cooperative Oxford Laboratory—was a massive effort. Dr. Shawn McLaughlin, who directed the research, says it involved repeated sampling and data collection: “For three years we conducted daily, weekly, or monthly field trips to river sites in eight Tred Avon sub-watersheds spanning forested areas, agricultural lands, and urban areas.” The scientists measured water clarity and dissolved oxygen levels, concentrations of nitrogen and other nutrients, the presence of underwater vegetation, and numbers and types of fish and their health—including seasonal patterns. The resulting 2018 report documents the impacts of different land use patterns on water quality and fisheries health and suggests management practices that could help mitigate damage and restore ecological condition. The findings include:

Urban areas such as Easton, with their abundance of paved surfaces, are a major source of runoff, leading to higher levels of chemical contaminants, nutrients, and fecal bacteria as well as low dissolved oxygen levels in nearby bottom waters and the absence of many fish species during high summer temperatures.
Agricultural areas also showed high levels of nutrients and poor water clarity (which affects underwater vegetation that provides shelter and food for fish).
Watersheds dominated by forests had relatively good water quality and abundant fish and shellfish species.

The report pointed out the need for continuing efforts to reduce nutrient and sediment runoff across the entire ecosystem and the importance of preserving critical habitats for fish and shellfish, especially in spawning areas such as the Choptank. It also calls for innovative management approaches such as planting or restoring oyster beds and setting thresholds for land development.

Concurrent with the research, as part of the overall Choptank effort, NOAA’s Chesapeake Bay Office initiated an effort to coordinate local organizations with similar goals to achieve more than would be feasible if they acted alone. While this “collective impact” strategy had proven itself at community-scale, attempting it on a much larger scale was a novel approach for NOAA. An experienced environmental consultant was hired to stimulate and coordinate local action by working with local governments, non-profit organizations, philanthropic donors, and other stakeholders such as ShoreRivers.

Sampling water quality as part of the Tred Avon Assessment. Source: NOAA

The consultant, Joanna Ogburn, brought many groups together and created Envision The Choptank (envisionthechoptank.org), a partnership focused on pairing the scientific findings with local knowledge and local actors to find collaborative solutions. It used preliminary data from the NOAA Tred Avon study along with other Chesapeake Bay Program studies and data to guide pilot projects, get people excited about what was happening, and promote best practices among county officials, farmers and individual homeowners. The organization also hired coordinators to work with landowners 1-to-1, raised funds to provide incentives, and linked landowners to technical assistance. The Envision partner organizations have helped to engage many different entities, share tools and information and ideas, and coordinate strategies and funding efforts.

The effort has paid off. It enabled McLaughlin and her research team to meet with local, state and federal officials to share the evidence connecting land use to the condition of the aquatic ecosystem. It brought the laboratory together with Easton officials, Talbot county government and public works representatives, and ShoreRivers to discuss ways to “green” the proposed Port Street development in Easton by minimizing additional impervious surfaces that would intensify runoff. Envision partners also identified two stream restoration projects within the urban area and provided the Town of Easton with a small grant to design the projects, which led to a larger state grant to fully fund the work.

In another example, Envision partners engaged residential landowners to reduce storm water drainage. Using locations in the lower Choptank that the Oxford data showed regularly had low water quality, they got the Nature Conservancy to do digital map studies to determine the lands draining to those locations, then invited all the relevant landowners to workshops. There they taught residential homeowners how to build rain gardens and other techniques that improve water quality and the attractiveness of their properties. Envision partners have used the same strategy to identify agricultural landowners that are significant sources of runoff, so that they can reach out to them.

More than 35 organizations are now involved with Envision the Choptank, which is now expanding its efforts across the entire Choptank ecosystem. It organized a $1 million grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation to engage, incentivize, and work with farmers in creating buffers and other strategies to manage runoff. Joanna Ogburn comments that “This grant is helping us launch a new wave of interventions. We’ve been able to build financial incentive programs to overcome the challenges landowners and farmers face in implementing restoration practices. We’re hoping to engage landowners in the Choptank watershed in creating buffers, wetland restoration, and drainage ditch management practices, ultimately restoring 230 acres.” And, as the latest ShoreRivers report suggests, these actions—at state and county and local levels—are beginning to show results.

It’s clear that the research and the scientific data it produced were critical in persuading both public officials and individual farmers and homeowners to get involved and take action. But it’s also clear that communication efforts and coalition building to find and implement local solutions were equally important—and that the Cooperative Oxford Laboratory played a central role in both. Suzanne Skelley, director of the lab, noted “Using research results to inform decision-making, especially to improve ecosystem condition while enhancing community resilience, is a core mission of the Lab and of NOAA.” The winning formula for saving the Choptank, and perhaps the broader Chesapeake Bay ecosystem, seems to be: science + communication/engagement + local action.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Why COVID-19 is Far From Over for the Mid-Shore by Al Hammond

April 13, 2020 by Al Hammond

At the start of the second week of April, hospitalizations are peaking in New York, the largest epicenter of the pandemic in the U.S. Meanwhile, there are just 9 known cases of the virus in Kent County, 10 in Talbot, and 16 in each of Queen Anne and Caroline counties. President Trump is talking about “reopening” the U.S. economy and sending people back to work. But don’t be misled. Many more people will get seriously ill in the months to come, and even if the virus seems to retreat in the warm summer months, it is likely to resurge in the fall and winter.

We don’t really know how widespread the virus is, because many of those infected show no symptoms, even though they can infect others. The only careful survey took place in Iceland, which tested 5 percent of its population and found that about 50 percent of those infected showed no symptoms. Applied to the U.S., that would mean at least 800,000 people have been infected, half of whom don’t know it and are likely infecting those around them. Consider also that in the period from December through February, when the virus was actively spreading in China, more than 750,000 people entered the U.S. from that country. So it is likely that the virus is far more widespread than we know.

Just consider what it means if an infected person spreads it to 2 others—then the next day those 2 infect 4 others, and so on—the definition of exponential growth. The math works out such that a single case could grow to over 200 million infected Americans within a single month. It’s easy to see how big cities such as New York quickly became hot spots of infection.

But cases are rising rapidly now even in small towns and remote rural communities—where a quarter of all hospitals have fragile finances even before the pandemic and are largely unprepared clinically for a surge of cases requiring ventilators. Testing is not widespread in rural areas, meaning we don’t really know the extent of the threat. And the virus has hardly been eliminated even in urban areas past their peak. So “opening up” the economy and sending people back to work anytime soon will simply launch a second wave of infections.

To open up safely will require massive testing—so we know who had already had the virus and is therefore immune and can’t affect others, so can be allowed to work—or waiting until 50 or 60 percent of the population becomes immune, enabling what is called “herd immunity.” That means it’s hard for the virus to spread, because those who are immune can’t pass it on. But letting the virus run free could still take several seasons of the virus to build up a herd immunity, and in the meantime would kill many of those who are most vulnerable—those over 70 or who have underlying health problems.

The current wave of testing identifies who is ill with the virus. To find those who have already had it and recovered requires a different kind of test—a so-called antibody test that identifies a specific protein in a person’s blood created by their immune system to fight the virus. The test requires only a finger prick of blood, results are available within a few minutes, and mass manufacture of the tests has begun. Still, it will likely take months and a coordinated national strategy to test every person working or who wants to go back to work, so that even a partial reopening of the economy safely is possible. Development of an effective vaccine will very likely happen within a year—but that means after the likely fall-winter resurgence of the virus. Until then, social distancing, working from home, and continued closure of non-essential businesses are the only effective tools.

Meanwhile, there is some good news on the vaccine front. The University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine (UPMC) just announced a potential vaccine for COVID-19. The team of scientists there did extensive research on earlier pandemic viruses: MERS in 2014 and SARS back in 2003. Both of those were also coronaviruses similar in the molecular structure to COVID-19. Their new vaccine research was just published in The Lancet, a leading medical journal. What’s unique about this vaccine is the delivery mechanism, which uses a small patch the size of a fingertip—like a small bandage—that has 400 very tiny micro-needles that painlessly deliver the vaccine over time, teaching the body how to produce antibodies to fight COVID-19.

This ease of use will help speed up adoption tremendously if the vaccine makes it to market. But clinical trials to confirm that the vaccine does no harm, even to vulnerable patients, and then to show that it really does protect people against infection, will take many months. For now, staying at home is the only “vaccine” that we have.

Al Hammond was trained as a scientist (Stanford, Harvard) but became a distinguished science journalist, reporting for Science and many other magazines and on a daily radio program for CBS. He subsequently founded and served as editor-in-chief for four national science-related publications as well as editor-in-chief for the United Nation’s bi-annual environmental report. Dr. Hammond makes his home in Chestertown on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

21st Century Learning: The Future of Education in Kent County, Part II by Al Hammond

March 1, 2018 by Al Hammond

“Myki Ruby Bernard, a middle school student, is soldering her Code Club project—part of the hands-on approach to digital technology used in Kent County public schools”. Photo credit Laura Jacob.

21^st Century Learning: The Future of Education in Kent County, Part II

Talk to parents of students enrolled in Kent County public schools, and a common question is: What does my child do all day? In fact, students don’t spend the whole day looking at screens—a frequently expressed concern. But they do have chromebooks (simplified laptops), tablets, or laptops accessible to them throughout the school day, and can take them home from 6^th grade on. The schools’ digital platform is accessible wherever there is an internet connection, and high school teachers frequently assign course segments or practice sessions for students to do at home or over weekends.

Beyond the Discovery Education content, the Google education apps, and a set of administrative and teacher support tools (see Part I), Kent County schools don’t mandate specific digital tools or lesson plans. Teachers choose those they want to use and what they think works best with their students. Moreover, the innovation ferment in the Ed Tech sectors and in schools with digital platforms across the country means that there are new tools and creative new lesson plans that use those tools introduced every year. The result is continual experimentation, with teachers in Kent County sharing ideas and discoveries with each other. (See Box at end of article, A Short Guide to Digital Learning Tools)

Beyond specific tools, what counts is how a teacher uses them to enhance student involvement and learning. Here is what this reporter observed in three specific 50-minute classes last week.

3^rd Grade math, Kelley Melvin. The focus in 3^rd grade, Kelley tells me, is really mastering multiplication, both memorizing the multiplication tables and being able to apply them in many different contexts. Today’s class will use three different digital tools—a whole class exercise at their desks; then one where students are on their feet and moving around the room, working in teams; then individual exercises at their desks again.

“Gallery Walk” tool helps teams of students learn basic math. Photo credit Kelley Melvin

The class starts with a Kahoot session reviewing the concept of area. Every child enters their secret game pin on their tablet, which keeps their answers private from other students. The video screen shows a rectangle, with the area and the length given, and asks, what is the missing width. Kelley reminds the class of the formula for area, length times width, and says “think before you click”. Then she starts the clock, giving students 30 seconds to select the right answer on their tablet, which shows four color-coded choices. Music plays while students ponder. And the video screen tabulates responses (while keeping individual answers anonymous). Everyone gets this one right. Cheers break out.

Then a new exercise, with more complicated geometry. Then another. Kelley reviews the formula for area again. Then more exercises, nearly a dozen over a span of about 15 minutes. The Kahoot software keeps track of each student’s answer to each exercise, so that Kelley can see where any individual student is having trouble. To see Kahoot in action, watch this short video.

The class then switches to an activity called Gallery Walk, where pre-assigned teams of 3 students gather at stations around the room to complete exercises that are posted under a plastic sheet. One child has a marker and writes out the answers on the plastic sheet. A second child then uses his or her tablet to take a photo of the answer and submits it digitally. The third then erases the answer, clearing the slate for the next team. (See photos) The teams are working under a time limit, and when the bell rings, they move onto the next station and a new exercise. The teams also rotate roles, so everyone gets chances to take and submit the photo of the result—which they think is cool, and makes the whole exercise fun. Meanwhile, the tool has stored each team’s work, so that Kelley can review it later (often at home), make comments on it, and send it back to students—all digitally.

“Gallery Walk” Students work as team on a question and write their answer on the erasable plastic sheet Photo credit Kelley Melvin

Finally, students use a tool called Splash Math—one of their favorites—to do individual arithmetic exercises by hand at their desks, before entering their answer on the tablet. Each student’s exercises are skill-adjusted to that student, and the tool both tracks each student’s answers (so Kelley or teaching aids that circulate can see where a student is having problems and help) and won’t let the student move on until they have mastered that skill. The tool also awards digital “coins” for each right answer, which the kids can use to “buy” digital fish for their private aquarium—an incentive system that keeps kids motivated.

6^th grade science, Amelia Markosian. Amelia is teaching a segment on rocks—rock types, their distinctive properties, how they are formed, where they are found. As the students come into the room, a tool called Science Sizzler is on the video screen with questions on a previously assigned article about igneous rocks. Students sit at their desk, turn on their tablets, and start work on answering the questions, submitting their answers on Google Classroom. When the class formally starts, Amelia asks if they have any questions about igneous rocks, and they do; a short discussion ensues. Science Sizzler is in effect a daily warm-up exercise with new questions every day to get the students engaged in the subject matter and prompt an opening discussion, where the teacher can answer questions and show pictures or hold up examples (in this case of rocks).

Then Amelia introduces a Radical Rocky Recognition Mission—her name for a Google Classroom interactive lab on rock types, introduced with a music video featuring a song about the rock cycle. The lab is designed both to impart information, but also to teach critical thinking skills, and it gives feedback, so that students end up with a score for the lab. The students get involved in the lab, on their tablets—they’re doing the work, leaving Amelia free to circulate and help individually with students. Every student works at their own speed—some complete the lab early and share their scores with the teacher, then go on to other things.

When everyone has finished the lab, Amelia opens another group discussion by asking each student to name their favorite type of rock, and say why they chose it. Some of the answers are amusing, provoking laughter. Others prompt students to make follow-on comments. Amelia uses the discussion to reinforce some of the lessons from the lab. The discussion is still going strong—and no one seems bored—when the bell rings.

12^th grade Advanced Placement Psychology, Caron Saunders. Today’s class is small because a number of students are out with the flu. The students carry laptops and are very savvy about digital tools. The class is preparing for the Advanced Placement exam toward the end of school that will give those who pass it credits that enable them to skip introductory college classes. Today’s class is mostly review of psychology concepts and the specialized vocabulary used to name and describe them. Caron tells them to start a tool called quizlet.live, a kind of digital flashcards. It gives the students, working in teams, a definition and asks them to select the matching vocabulary term. The team approach forces collaboration. If the team picks the wrong answer, the tool gives them immediate feedback. Meanwhile, Caron can circulate and observe or reinforce understanding.

The class then moves on to individualized flashcards, and the tool adjusts the definitions for each student to focus on areas where he or she is weak (based on their prior use of the tool). It starts with multiple choice, but then moves to asking students to write out definitions from scratch. Caron can circulate, or prepare another lesson on her tablet, or set up a homework assignment.

Caron says that she also often uses Ed Puzzle, a video that stops and asks the students to answer a question before it continues, and which can be used by a group or by individual students or even when the student is at home (for weekend review or for students that are out ill). She also uses a tool called Noodle to give multiple choice tests, both because it gives student instant feedback (right or wrong)—promoting learning—and also, for wrong answers, gives the student a second chance at the question (for which Caron awards a correct answer half credit).

As the bell rings, Caron assigns homework for which the students will use a tool called Amanda that provides on-line lectures by leading high school psychology teachers.

What’s common to all of these classes is that none of the teachers are lecturing. The digital tools provide content (sometimes organized by the teacher in advance and often automatically customized to the student’s attainment level), and the students are actively involved in learning—absorbing or researching content, practicing skills, collaborating with other students. Meanwhile the digital platform remembers and stores everything—no paper shuffling here. Teachers, freed from both lecturing and many administrative tasks, focus on helping individual students, re-inforcing key learning, guiding classroom discussions—as well as on creating or finding lesson plans that will engage their students.

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A Short Guide to Digital Learning Tools

Some tools are widely used in Kent County public schools, because teachers find that they work. They are a far cry from textbooks, homework sheets, calculators, and flashcards (although there are digital flashcards) The short descriptions below—hardly a complete list—give some sense of what life in school is like these days:

Clever. Home base for all the tools that students use. It works like a tablet on the web—a student logs on and clicks on the app or tool, including Google apps such as email and Microsoft apps such as Office 365 for writing documents or creating presentations.
Boards. These are similar to a website, can display text, photos, videos, and are easy for even elementary school students to create. Teachers use them to send assignments to students, and students use them to prepare their work and send it back to the teacher. For example, if a teacher assigned a lesson about the different categories of living things, each student would pick an example that interests them and research the topic further. A student intrigued by crocodiles might investigate them as an example of reptiles, for example, and build their own board with facts, pictures, and other things he or she has learned about where crocodiles live, what they eat, etc. The students then share the board with other students in their study group, who comment and help the student improve it. When it’s ready, the student uploads it to the teacher, who can share it the whole class for discussion.
Kahoot. An informal assessment tool that gauges class learning and also helps to review lessons, but which feels like a game show, with competition, lively music, and rewards. It’s very interactive and engaging, but gives the class as a whole (and each student privately) a clear sense of whether they are mastering the content. Some teachers let students create their own review questions and manage a Kahoot for the class.
Virtual Field Trips. Let’s a teacher take the class on a multi-media “trip” to anywhere in the world to see and learn about local conditions or unique artwork.
Gizmo. An interactive tool used in grades 3-9 to simulate mathematics concepts or run virtual science experiments. It allows students to vary the numbers or the conditions to see how things change and to make graphs.
Frontrow. A tool that gives a student feedback on areas where they are weak in mathematics or English and then provides practice exercises targeted to overcome those weaknesses.
Mondo guided reading. This tools helps early grade students to learn new words, to speak them correctly, and to master spoken and written language.

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The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

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