Lunar litterbug...Charlie Duke

Astronaut Charlie Duke leaves a family snap on the moon in 1972.

Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project

"Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project"

March 5th, 2013

RocketHub

We are looking for people to help us complete the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project (LOIRP). We call this technoarchaeology - mining the past to support science in the future.  Between 1966 and 1967, NASA sent five Lunar Orbiter missions to the Moon. Their mission was to photograph the lunar surface to help identify future Apollo mission landing sites.  The spacecraft carried 70mm photographic film which was developed automatically in lunar orbit aboard the spacecraft.  The developed film was then scanned with a light beam and this modulated a signal which was sent back to Earth. 

Each image was archived on analog data tape and printed out as photographs for use by the Lunar Orbiter analysis team.  In addition to looking for landing sites, the Lunar Orbiters also produced several stunning photos unlike anything ever seen before. Of note are the "Earthrise" image taken by Lunar Orbiter 1 and the "Picture of the Century" - an oblique view inside the crater Copernicus, taken by Lunar Orbiter 2.

Our imagery was featured prominently on the editorial page of the New York Times and a statement honoring our success was made on the floor of the U.S. House of Representatives and entered into the congressional record. Our "before" picture of the Apollo 11 landing site was featured with an "after" image taken by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of the same location at the official 40th anniversary celebration of the Apollo 11 mission. In early 2013, one of our images was featured in materials handed out in the official package at the Presidential Inauguration. 

By using these old images of the Moon and ones taken recently, we can offer a time machine of sorts whereby changes in the lunar surface over the past half century can be identified.  We have also used our project as a way to preserve these historic images in a way befitting their importance to the human exploration of the Moon.  Our students have also done original science by comparing our highest resolution images with the latest high resolution images of the Moon to look for changes that could indicate quakes, meteor impacts, or volcanism.  But more work remains to be done.  This is where you come in. 

Over the past 5 years, we have been given a number of things relating to the Lunar Orbiter program by original participants in the program. We were most fortunate to receive a number of photographic printouts used during the landing site evaluation process from the personal collections of Don Wilhelms and Don Davis. They donated these materials with the expressed intent that they be used - including by sale or auction - to support our work at LOIRP.    I have added images from my personal collection of microfilm images.

Your generosity will allow us to get up to five tape drive heads refurbished, which are necessary to run the tapes as the tapes act like sandpaper to grind the heads down.  Your generosity will also allow us to pay our engineering team that maintains the 1960’s tape drives, plays the over 700 remaining tapes that we have (at one hour per tape), processes the digital data (over 20 terabytes so far), creates the images (over 600 so far and another 850 to go), and does the paperwork to provide the images to the National Space Science Data Center where they will be archived for the science community.  The images are also provided on our public site ( www.moonviews.com ), via our Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/groups/17596829126/ and follow us at twitter (#LunarOrbiter).  These images will be provided at full resolution for free to anyone that wants them as this data was originally obtained with tax dollars and we wish to provide these to as many people as possible.

We are asking for your support. As an incentive we can offer you several things: depending on your generosity, we can provide one of the original 1960’s era printouts donated by Don Wilhelms and Don Davis. No two are a like - and all are guaranteed to be authentic.  Secondly, we offer you the satisfaction of helping us retrieve these images in a fashion that allows them to be used once again in the exploration of the Moon today and in the future.
 
Published Articles About Our Project

http://news.cnet.com/2300-11386_3-10004237.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/07/22/destination_moon/print.html
http://www.sciencebuzz.org/buzz-tags/dennis-wingo
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/05/090505-moon-photos-video-ap.html
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/mar/22/nation/na-lunar22
http://www.nasa.gov/topics/moonmars/features/LOIRP/index.html
http://boingboing.net/2012/07/12/inside-the-lunar-orbiter-image.html
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10097025-52.html

Biased advertising...Cancer Treatment Centers of America in spotlight

"Special Report: Behind a cancer-treatment firm's rosy survival claims"

by

Sharon Begley and Robin Respaut

March 6th, 2013

Reuters

When the local doctor who had been treating Vicky Hilborn told her that her rare cancer had spread throughout her body, including her brain, she and her husband refused to accept a death sentence. Within days, Keith Hilborn was on the phone with an "oncology information specialist" at Cancer Treatment Centers of America.

Hilborn had seen CTCA's website touting survival rates better than national averages. His call secured Vicky an appointment at the for-profit, privately held company's Philadelphia affiliate, Eastern Regional Medical Center. There, the oncologist who examined Vicky told the couple he had treated other cases of histiocytic sarcoma, the cancer of immune-system cells that she had.

"He said, ‘We'll have you back on your feet in no time,'" Keith recalled.

Vicky's cancer treatment was forestalled by an infection and other complications that kept her at Eastern Regional for three weeks. In July 2009, when she got back home, things changed. Despite Keith's calls, he said, CTCA did not schedule another appointment. As his wife got sicker, Keith, a former deputy sheriff in western Pennsylvania, was reduced to begging.

The oncology information specialist "said don't bring her here," he recalled. "I said you don't understand; we're going to lose her if you don't treat her. She told me I'd just have to accept that."

Vicky Hilborn never got another appointment with CTCA. She died on September 6, 2009, at age 48.

CTCA is not unique in turning away patients. A lot of doctors, hospitals and other healthcare providers in the United States decline to treat people who can't pay, or have inadequate insurance, among other reasons. What sets CTCA apart is that rejecting certain patients and, even more, culling some of its patients from its survival data lets the company tout in ads and post on its website patient outcomes that look dramatically better than they would if the company treated all comers. These are the rosy survival numbers that attract people like the Hilborns.

BEATING THE AVERAGES

CTCA reports on its website that the percentage of its patients who are alive after six months, a year, 18 months and longer regularly tops national figures. For instance, 60 percent of its non-small-cell lung cancer patients are alive at six months, CTCA says, compared to 38 percent nationally. And 64 percent of its prostate cancer patients are alive at three years, versus 38 percent nationally.

Such claims are misleading, according to nine experts in cancer and medical statistics whom Reuters asked to review CTCA's survival numbers and its statistical methodology.

The experts were unanimous that CTCA's patients are different from the patients the company compares them to, in a way that skews their survival data. It has relatively few elderly patients, even though cancer is a disease of the aged. It has almost none who are uninsured or covered by Medicaid - patients who tend to die sooner if they develop cancer and who are comparatively numerous in national statistics.

Carolyn Holmes, a former CTCA oncology information specialist in Tulsa, Oklahoma, said she and others routinely tried to turn away people who "were the wrong demographic" because they were less likely to have an insurance policy that CTCA preferred. Holmes said she would try to "let those people down easy."

Equally significant, CTCA includes in its outcomes data only those patients "who received treatment at CTCA for the duration of their illness" - patients who have the ability to travel to CTCA locations from the get-go, without seeking local treatment first. That means excluding, for example, those who have exhausted treatment options closer to home and arrive at a CTCA facility with advanced disease.

Accepting only selected patients and calculating survival outcomes from only some of them "is a huge bias and gives an enormous advantage to CTCA," said biostatistician Donald Berry of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston.

The company defends its practices. Spokeswoman Pamela Browner White said CTCA's survival data are in "no way misleading, nor do they deviate from best practices in statistical collection and analysis." As for the Hilborns, she said, the company does not discuss individual cases.

Cancer Treatment Centers of America got in trouble with regulators in 1996, when the Federal Trade Commission accused it of, among other things, presenting survival claims it couldn't support. The company entered into a consent decree with the FTC and, without admitting any of the allegations, agreed not to make unsubstantiated outcomes claims. The company also "implemented a voluntary, robust compliance program," White said.

Asked if CTCA's current outcomes claims conform to the consent decree, Richard Cleland, the agency's assistant director for advertising practices, said: "No one at the commission can comment on non-public information."

"A FREE-MARKET GUY"

Cancer Treatment Centers of America, which estimates it treats 4 percent to 8 percent of U.S. patients with complex and late-stage cancer, was founded in 1988 by Richard J. Stephenson, who has served as chairman ever since.

Stephenson, who declined to comment for this article, serves on the board of FreedomWorks, a non-profit group that advocates for small government and low taxes, and he is "very much a free-market guy," CTCA President and Chief Executive Stephen Bonner told Reuters.

He also has a history of pushing limits. A graduate of Northwestern University Law School, Stephenson started out as an investment banker. In 1966 he became a trustee of Americans Building Constitutionally, an organization that helped wealthy individuals set up not-for-profit corporations and personal trusts to avoid paying federal income and inheritance taxes.

In 1969, a California state court found the group's top official and six others guilty of grand theft or conspiring to commit grand theft. Stephenson had pleaded no contest to false advertising, a misdemeanor, and testified for the state, according to media reports at the time.

Stephenson ventured into healthcare in 1975, when he and partners bought Zion-Benton Hospital in Zion, Illinois, renaming it American International Hospital. By the late 1980s, American International was facing financial problems and its "reputation had been severely damaged" by local press reports about its use of unproven cancer treatments, according to a 2004 court opinion on a successful petition by a former CTCA president seeking an increased valuation for his share of the company.

In 1988, Stephenson founded CTCA. He was motivated, said CEO Bonner, by the difficulty he had identifying and obtaining the best therapies for his mother after she developed bladder cancer. She died in 1982.

Stephenson began building what was to become a national network of cancer centers that would uphold "the Mother Standard," described on the company website as "a warm, nurturing approach (that) involves caring for patients as we would want care for our own mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers, and other loved ones."

The hospitals also would seek patients "who were willing to travel to receive treatment" and "who were covered by private commercial insurance and could afford those expenses not paid by insurance," according to the 2004 court opinion.

THE TOUGH CASES

Today, CTCA - with hospitals in Illinois, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, plus an outpatient clinic in Washington state and headquarters in Schaumburg, Illinois - is the only hospital system in the country that specializes solely in complex and advanced cancers. It does not release revenue or profit figures.

The company has treated about 50,000 patients since 1988, CEO Bonner said. (By comparison, the non-profit MD Anderson, a leading cancer center, treated about 115,000 patients last year.) CTCA expects 6,000 new patients and 15,000 to 16,000 continuing patients this year, he said, and is considering expanding in the Pacific Northwest, the Northeast and even Asia.

At each facility, the standard cancer treatments - radiation and chemotherapy - adhere to national guidelines, Bonner said. "But because we see mostly patients with later-stage, complex cancers, they often need something else," he added - psychological and spiritual support as well as "holistic" interventions such as yoga, acupuncture and reiki, a laying-on of hands.

More and more academic cancer centers offer such alternative medicine, which some insurers cover.

"Patients who feel they are understood and empowered will have a better outcome," Bonner said. They'll summon the strength to continue therapy, "even if the last thing they want to do is another round of chemotherapy."

The CTCA formula resonates with many patients. According to Healthgrades, a doctor- and hospital-ratings site, CTCA facilities consistently beat national averages in patient satisfaction.

"We were very impressed with the personal attention," said Rose Weistock, whose husband, Harvey, was treated for non-small-cell lung cancer at the Zion hospital, now the Midwestern Regional Medical Center, after his local physician gave him three to five years to live. "You didn't feel like you were just a number," she said.

CTCA flew the couple at no charge from their Maryland home to Chicago - complete with limo from the airport - to tour the hospital and undergo tests. Harvey, an accountant who had medical insurance through his job, began chemotherapy on that 2004 visit. The Weistocks appreciated the emphasis on what CTCA calls a cancer-fighting diet and on boosting the immune system through mind-body and spiritual practices.

Harvey died in a Maryland hospital in 2005. The family sued CTCA, alleging that he died after receiving chemotherapy he couldn't tolerate, and settled out of court. Still, Rose's admiration for the hospital's personal attention remains unwavering.

HOPEFUL PITCH

"They market hope," Gail Robison, a staff nurse at the Zion hospital from 2003 to 2007, said of CTCA.

The marketing typically features CTCA's state-of-the-art care and holistic approach. Ads note that featured patients might not be representative: "You should not expect to experience these results."

The ads also challenge viewers to "compare our treatment results to national averages." Doing so, on the company's website, shows that CTCA's reported survival outcomes regularly beat those averages.

Experts in medical data who reviewed CTCA's claims for Reuters say those claims are suspect because of what they called deviations from best practices in statistics - in particular, comparing its carefully selected patients to those nationwide.

"It makes their data look better than it is," said Robert Strawderman, professor and chairman of biostatistics at the University of Rochester. "So the comparisons used to suggest that CTCA has better survival rates are pretty meaningless."

The selection process begins when a prospective patient first contacts CTCA, by phone or web chat, and speaks to an oncology information specialist. "The first thing you do is be kind and greet them, but you're qualifying them," said Carolyn Holmes, the former oncology information specialist. "You ask, ‘How old are you?' meaning, ‘Are you Medicare-age?'"

Holmes says she learned to recognize callers with "Cadillac insurance policies" and those from poor zip codes. She said she tried to redirect undesirable patients away from CTCA.

"You don't want them," Holmes said about Medicare patients. Medicaid? "Absolutely not." Other former employees confirmed her account of screening patients based on their means of payment.

Holmes sued Southwestern Regional Medical Center, CTCA's affiliate in Tulsa, in 2012 for terminating her job after she says she experienced symptoms consistent with multiple sclerosis.

CTCA denies any knowledge of Holmes's possible disability and claims she failed to satisfy performance standards, according to court records. The case is pending in Oklahoma federal court.

CTCA spokesman White said that the company has an "insurance-screening process and established criteria" and trains its specialists to direct callers to other resources when CTCA is unable to offer treatment.

CTCA accepts Medicare patients "in some hospitals," said CEO Bonner, and "a tiny bit" of Medicaid. It also has a fund, named for Stephenson's mother, that provides $2.5 million a year in charity care.

SKEWED POOL

The practices Holmes described result in a patient pool that looks very different from the nation's.

At the Zion hospital, about 14 percent of patients were covered by Medicare and 4 percent by Medicaid in 2011, according to data the hospital submitted to Illinois health authorities. Over the previous 10 years, the Medicaid percentage was often in the single digits. Reuters was not able to obtain data from CTCA's other hospitals.

In the database CTCA compares itself to, called SEER and run by the National Cancer Institute, 53 percent of patients were diagnosed at the Medicare-eligible age of 65 or older, and 14 percent are below the poverty level, an indication of those covered by Medicaid or uninsured.

SEER includes patients "with and without insurance, with and without other serious medical conditions, at or not at cancer centers, treated by all types of doctors, not just oncologists, and even including those who never received treatment because the cancer was diagnosed too late," said Celette Skinner, associate director for Population Science & Cancer Control in the Harold C. Simmons Cancer Center at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

Those factors all depress the survival of SEER patients, making CTCA's results look better by comparison.

For instance, patients without insurance, whom state filings show CTCA rarely accepts, are only half as likely to undergo a screening test for cancer, says American Cancer Society statistician Elizabeth Ward. And screened patients are alive longer after diagnosis than are unscreened patients. That reflects the effect of screening, not treatment.

Poor people, whom CTCA rarely treats, also tend to have worse health, such as heart disease and susceptibility to infection. Those "co-morbidities" are responsible for as many as half of all cancer deaths in the year after diagnosis, said Soneji Samir, an expert on cancer statistics at Dartmouth Medical School in Lebanon, New Hampshire. CTCA's patients "have less risk of other causes of death."

CTCA makes every effort to adjust its data so comparisons to the national database are legitimate, said biostatistician Chengjie Xiong of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, who performed CTCA's survival analysis as a consultant to the company.

But "comparisons cannot be done between CTCA and SEER database on income level," he said in an email. That means "there are some differences" between the two patient populations.

Xiong said he is doing new survival calculations using more recent data from CTCA, trying to make sure the comparison to the national database is rigorous. The new results, Xiong said, are expected to be posted on CTCA's website this month.

For some cancers, CTCA will still have better survival rates, he said. For others, "the survival difference in favor of CTCA is no longer statistically significant" after adjusting for several differences between CTCA's patients and those in the national database.

"VERY RED FLAG"

CTCA also excludes from its survival calculations thousands of patients it does treat but who did not receive "treatment at CTCA for the duration of their illness."
"‘The duration of their illness' is a very big and very red flag," said MD Anderson's Berry. CTCA's patients will "tend to be healthier" than those in the general population from which SEER draws its data, he said, adding: "Ability and willingness to travel is an independent factor" associated with longer survival.

No federal or state law requires hospitals to report their cancer outcomes, let alone mandates how to do the calculations. But many healthcare providers voluntarily err on the side of inclusion.

"We follow them for the duration of their illness and still report them even if they were treated elsewhere," said oncologist Alan Campbell, medical director of Spectrum Health, which runs medical practices and hospitals in Michigan. "Doing otherwise could skew your survival numbers."

Other major cancer centers do not report outcomes at all, arguing that the statistics can be manipulated.

CTCA also appears to exclude the vast majority of its patients when it calculates survival data. In survival results from 2004 to 2008 posted on its website, CTCA reported 61 patients with advanced prostate cancer, 97 with advanced breast cancer, 434 with advanced lung cancer, and 165 with advanced colon or rectal cancer. These are the four most common solid tumors. In the same period, CTCA treated thousands of patients at its Zion facility alone, according to filings with state regulators.

"We agree that some of our sample sizes" are small "and have always stated this as a limitation of our study," said Xiong, the consultant to CTCA.

"I'd have some concerns about why and wonder if some cherry-picking was going on," said Spectrum Health's Campbell.

Moreover, while the standard reporting period for cancer survival is five years after diagnosis, CTCA on its website doesn't go that far; for the four most common tumors, it reports survival up to four years at most. And as Reuters found, the company's advantage often diminishes as the five-year mark approaches (see accompanying graphic).

Soon after Keith Hilborn got Vicky back home, her local doctor cleared her to travel. Keith started calling the CTCA oncology information specialist he had first spoken to. "She said things like ‘We'll have to get back to you,'" Keith said.

They never did. Vicky "was depending on me, and I couldn't get them to treat her," he said. "She never got a single cancer treatment from them."
Hilborn received a statement from CTCA saying Vicky's care cost $319,902.20. "This was just for treating her infection," he said. "My local hospital could charge like that, too, if they flew you around and sent limos for you."

He refused to pay, keeping the reimbursement Vicky's insurer had sent to him. CTCA sued him for payment and won. A sheriff's sale of his belongings is expected to raise money to pay the judgment.

Weimar Republic, cinema, Hollywood

Fritz Lang

"Hollywood's German Influence"

by

A. J. Goldmann

March 4th, 2013

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

They don't make them like they used to. But while the most recent Berlin Film Festival was filled with largely mediocre competition fare, luckily one could seek refuge in the festival's sidebar retrospective, "The Weimar Touch." Co-curated by the Deutsche Kinematek and the Museum of Modern Art—it will be shown in New York with slight modifications from April 3 through May 6—the series used the works of such celebrated directors as Fritz Lang, Ernst Lubitsch and Billy Wilder to make a compelling case for the lasting influence of Weimar-era cinema on Hollywood and beyond.

It is hard to overstate the amount of technical innovation and sheer talent that characterized the German film industry between 1918 and 1933. Today this golden age is best remembered for Expressionist masterpieces such as Robert Wiene's "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" and F.W. Murnau's "Nosferatu." But Weimar filmmaking was much more than just sinister lighting and jagged camera angles. The industry also produced comedies, musicals, melodramas and thrillers that were among the most popular and inventive movies of the era.

When the Nazis took power in 1933, many of Germany's most gifted directors, actors, cinematographers, production designers and composers were forced out of its film industry. All told, the country lost more than 2,000 professionals, many of Jewish descent. And Germany's loss was Hollywood's gain. The themes, techniques and sensibilities that a generation of émigré filmmakers carried with them to Hollywood brought a new degree of sophistication and know-how to American cinema.

"We wanted to examine the richness and the deep influence on film culture—not just in the States, but around the world as well," explained Laurence Kardish, former senior curator of film for MoMA and one of the retrospective's architects. "Don't forget that Hitchcock's first two films were made in Munich, so there's a deep influence at least in terms of professional techniques that he learned here and a certain cynicism and skepticism." The master of suspense is represented at the MoMA retrospective with 1953's "I Confess!" about a priest who is the prime suspect in a murder case.

But "The Weimar Touch" urges viewers to discover more to the Weimar influence than long shadows and claustrophobic ambiance. For instance, one of the most delightful entries is Hollywood's beautiful 1935 version of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" directed by Max Reinhardt, legendary director of the Deutsches Theater, and starring Dick Powell, Olivia de Havilland, James Cagney and Mickey Rooney. Lubitsch was one of Weimar's most successful directors when he came over to Hollywood in 1922. His elegant wit was on display in a string of romantic comedies that were marked by dazzling performances and perfect comic timing. He is represented in the series with "To Be or Not to Be," his once-controversial 1942 Nazi satire set in occupied Warsaw.

In addition to American productions, the retrospective contains little-known works from other countries that served as stops for directors in exile. Kurt Gerron's "Het mysterie van de Mondscheinsonate" (Mystery of the Moonlight Sonata), a 1935 Dutch thriller shot using only natural light, bears the clear influence of both Weimar music-hall films and thrillers. Gerron was trapped in Holland and killed at Auschwitz, but Max Ophüls, whose rare 1936 comedy "Komedie om Geld" (The Trouble with Money) is another of the series' rediscoveries, went on to have a celebrated career in the U.S. and France.

Films by American-born directors Orson Welles and John Ford in the retrospective attest to the influence of Weimar cinema on generations of American directors. "Ford acknowledged Murnau's influence and we know that Welles saw all these films," Mr. Kardish said. Discussing Welles's 1958 film-noir classic "Touch of Evil" he notes that it "also says something that Marlene Dietrich is the star."

Film noir is the genre that perhaps most clearly bears the traces of Weimar cinema, and MoMA has selected two of the genre's finest representatives for screening, Welles's "The Stranger" (1946) and Charles Laughton's "Night of the Hunter" (1955).

"Casablanca" (1942) can be seen as the crowning achievement of Los Angeles's émigré community in the 1940s. The plot focuses largely on the existential concerns of European refugees hounded by the Third Reich. Not only were director Michael Curtiz and the majority of the cast European born; many of the actors, including Paul Henreid, Peter Lorre and Conrad Veidt, were themselves refugees with firsthand knowledge of the ordeals many of the film's characters undergo.

Some émigré directors used film to raise public awareness of Hitler's threat. Mr. Kardish mentioned that Anatole Litvak's "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" (1939), which will screen at MoMA, the first studio film to feature Nazis as villains, was heavily condemned by those who opposed a U.S. entry into World War II. "There was a whole hullaballoo about it. A lot of people didn't want to see the film made. The film industry itself warned Warner Brothers not to make the film," he said.

Directors who fled Germany also helped introduce themes of social justice to American cinema. For example, Lang's first Hollywood film, "Fury," also on the program, takes aim at small-town vigilante justice. "These directors started to bring questions about how American society works, and I think it made American society healthier for it," Mr. Kardish said.

While Weimar cinema continues to inspire filmmakers, the festival covers films only through 1959. "That's when the language of cinema changed with Godard and Antonioni," Mr. Kardish explained, pointing to the innovations of the French New Wave auteurs and other filmmakers who rewrote the rules in the 1960s.

The youngest film in the retrospective is "Some Like It Hot" (1959), directed by the Austrian-born Billy Wilder. Freshly arrived in Hollywood in 1933, after a stint in Paris, he wrote screenplays for Lubitsch and roomed with Lorre in Los Angeles. Wilder introduced to American film an element of subversive humor and high jinks that his Hollywood movies would continue to deliver for decades; his acerbic wit and penchant for envelope-pushing material was a defining feature of his filmmaking.

"For me, 'Some Like it Hot' is one of the great Weimar films," Mr. Kardish said. "That film could not have been made without a certain sensibility. That sensibility, I believe, was deeply informed by Berlin in the '20s." The film did not receive Production Code approval, due to its sexual innuendo and gangster bloodshed. As Mr. Kardish noted in introducing the picture at its packed Berlin screening: "This film is a pure joy, but it owes a lot to the concerns of Weimar society, in terms of very black humor, cynicism, questions of identity, violence. And cross-dressing."

Kubrick, Napoleon, Spielberg

"The Amazing Story Behind Kubrick’s Napoleon"

by

Aisha Harris

March 4th, 2013

Slate

After taking on the towering figure of Abraham Lincoln, Steven Spielberg has announced that he is moving on to an equally extraordinary historical personage: Napoleon Bonaparte. Spielberg reportedly plans to produce a miniseries out of a lavish script written by Stanley Kubrick, which the late director completed in 1969 following his 2001: A Space Odyssey.

The story behind the original failed project is fascinating. Kubrick’s Napoleon got as far as the script—which he was apparently unsatisfied with—as well as production and budget notes, before he turned his attention to adaptating Anthony Burgess’ A Clockwork Orange in 1970. During a private screening of that film with the director in 1971, Kubrick mentioned his plans to bring Napoleon to the screen, and Burgess suggested that Beethoven’s third symphony would work well as a template for its structure and musical accompaniment. Kubrick promptly sent him away to work that idea into a novel that could then be turned into a movie; recently discovered correspondence between the two details the progress of their collaboration.

Burgess sent the first half of the Napoleon Symphony manuscript to Kubrick in June 1972, but the problems created by the symphony’s structure—the second of four movements is a funeral march, which would mean that Napoleon would have to be killed off and then somehow resurrected in the final two movements—did not sit well with the director. According to The Telegraph, Kubrick politely turned the novelist down, explaining that he felt he “had reordered the chronology of events to the detriment of the story, that the dialogue lacked realism, and that Burgess’s comic vision of Napoleon fell short of his heroic stature.” (Burgess would eventually finish the highly experimental book on his own and dedicate it in part to Kubrick.)

While Kubrick’s Napoleon project never came to fruition during his lifetime, what is purported to be his original script is available in full  online —and in 2011, Stanley Kubrick’s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made was published, a book that incorporates his extensive research and source documents for the proposed film. Those who have read the script in full have reported that it is an incredibly ambitious film with plenty of potential had Kubrick been able to get the film off the ground.

“By far the biggest strength of Kubrick's Napoleon script is the maximum clarity with which it handles this most complex subject,” IGN noted in 2000, shortly after the script surfaced on the web. “A story that could have been nothing but a mess of dates, places, and battles is instead vividly rendered in epic terms and precise details.” And writer J.S. Bernstein has pointed to the themes familiar to other films in Kubrick’s oeuvre, most notably the use of voice-over narration (as seen in A Clockwork Orange) and Napoleon’s close relationship with his mother and teddy bear (as in A.I.: Artificial Intelligence).

In 2000, IGN suggested that Spielberg would be the wrong person to helm the project, noting that in contrast to A.I., which Spielberg developed from another long-stalled Kubrick project, the director was never actually involved with Napoleon prior to Kubrick’s death. While that may be true, perhaps we derive our faith in Spielberg from a project he did on his own the same year as A.I.: The miniseries Band of Brothers showed that Spielberg could do excellent work in that genre—and the expanded format does seem best for Kubrick’s grand vision, as well as Napoleon’s grandiose life.


Stanley Kubrick...astounding film director

'bout time...pull on the reigns for scientific misconduct

"UK funders get tough on research misconduct"

by

Leila Sattary

March 4th, 2013

Chemistry World

Universities who do not take cases of research misconduct seriously could have their funding withdrawn. The new sanctions are set out in the revised  Policy and Guidelines on Governance of Good Research Conduct , published by Research Councils UK (RCUK).

Research misconduct usually involves offences like the fabrication or falsification of data or the misrepresentation of the level of involvement of individuals. Penalties could be applied to universities or research organisations which fail to meet RCUK’s obligations for research integrity – for example, if institutions conduct incomplete or biased investigations into alleged misconduct or if their researchers have committed ‘persistent research misconduct’. Such failures could result in existing grants being revoked, applications getting rejected ‘for any period of time, including indefinitely’ or even retrospectively clawing back funding from the institution.

There has been a steady rise in scientific misconduct cases, with approximately one in 10,000 papers retracted because of misconduct. In 2010, UK-based journal Acta Crystallographica Section E was forced to retract dozens of papers describing over 70 crystal structures found to have been fabricated by Chinese researchers.

Ethical behaviour by peer reviewers is also discussed in the new policy. Peer reviewers of grant applications and papers are warned against breaches of confidentiality, misappropriation of the contents of documents and failures to speak up about conflicts of interest or when they are not expert enough to complete a review. The potential for misconduct by peer reviewers is a common worry for researchers and famous cases highlight that bad practice can happen.

The addition of penalties to the original RCUK policy published in 2009 have come in response to criticisms by the House of Commons science and technology committee.

James Parry, chief executive of the independent UK Research Integrity Office welcomes the revised guidance and sees the development as an important step in the journey towards sustaining and enhancing integrity in UK research. ‘Organisations which fund research must be able to satisfy themselves that those funds are used appropriately, checking this through clear and proportionate means,’ he says.

RCUK’s new policy is clear on the onus on institutions to train and support their researchers and also protect whistleblowers in research misconduct cases. Rick Rylance, chair of RCUK, said: ‘A commitment to good research conduct lies at the heart of an effective research system. High standards of integrity underpin the quality and reliability of research outcomes and of the decisions we make about funding.’

Vocabulary list--#17

Wake up!...POSP stringer Tim and compiled another vocabulary list.

abecedarian

ay-bee-see-DAIR-ee-uhn

noun

1. One who is learning the alphabet, hence, a beginner.
2. One engaged in teaching the alphabet.
3. Pertaining to the letters of the alphabet.
4. Arranged alphabetically.
5. Rudimentary, elementary.


adrumbrate

ad-um-brate

transitive verb

To give only the main facts and not the details about something, especially something that will happen in the future.


anencephalous

an-a-sef-a-lus

adjective

Brainless, lacking a brain, empty-headed.


anthropomorphism

an-throw-po-mor-fizm

noun

The attribution of human traits to inanimate objects and nonhuman beings, such as animals and gods. 


atavistic

at-uh-VIS-tik

adjective

Of, pertaining to, or characterized by atavism, reverting to or suggesting the characteristics of a remote ancestor or primitive type.


bon vivant

bon-vee-VONT

noun

A person with refined and sociable tastes, especially one who enjoys fine food and drink.


brabble

BRAB-uhl

verb

To argue stubbornly about trifles, wrangle.

noun

Noisy, quarrelsome chatter.


butterfaith

noun

A girl who is fun, intelligent, beautiful, perfect in every way... except she's devoutly religious.


dyslogistic

dis-luh-JIS-tik

adjective

Conveying disapproval or censure, not complimentary or eulogistic.


ephemeral  

ih-FEM-uh-rul

adjective

Lasting a very short time.


epexegesis

ep-ek-si-JEE-sis

noun

1. The addition of a word or words to explain a preceding word or sentence.
2. The word or words so added.


eurytopic

yur-ih-TAH-pik

adjective

Tolerant of wide variation in one or more environmental factors.


factotum

fak-TOH-tuhm

noun
1. A person having many diverse activities or responsibilities.
2. A general servant.


intemerate

in-TEM-er-it

adjective

Inviolate, undefiled, unsullied, pure.


irrefrangible

ir-i-FRAN-juh-buhl

adjective

1. Not to be broken or violated, inviolable, an irrefrangible rule of etiquette.
2. Incapable of being refracted.


jabberwocky

JAB-er-wah-kee

noun

Meaningless speech or writing.


jackanapes

JAK-uh-neyps

noun

1. An impertinent, presumptuous person, especially a young man, whippersnapper.
2. An impudent, mischievous child.
3. Archaic. An ape or monkey.


Jacobin 

JAK-uh-bin

noun

1. An extreme radical, especially in politics.
2. (In the French Revolution) a member of a radical society or club of revolutionaries that promoted the Reign of Terror and other extreme measures, active chiefly from 1789 to 1794: so called from the Dominican convent in Paris, where they originally met.
3. A Dominican friar.
4. (Lowercase) one of a fancy breed of domestic pigeons having neck feathers that hang over the head like a hood.


kibitzer

KIB-it-ser

noun

1. A giver of uninvited or unwanted advice.
2. A spectator at a card game who looks at the players' cards over their shoulders, especially one who gives unsolicited advice.
3. A person who jokes, chitchats, or makes wisecracks, especially while others are trying to work or to discuss something seriously.


kinchin

kin-chin

noun

A child.


mainour

MEY-ner

noun

A stolen article found on the person of or near the thief, to be taken with the mainour.


mala fide

mal-uh-FYE-dee

adverb or adjective

With or in bad faith.


meretricious

mair-uh-TRISH-us

adjective

1. Of or relating to a prostitute, having the nature of prostitution.
2. Twdrily and falsely attractive.
3. Superficially significant, pretentious.


métier

MET-yay

noun

1. Vocation, trade.
2. An area of activity in which one excels, forte.


nomothetic

nah-muh-THET-ik

adjective

Relating to, involving, or dealing with abstract, general, or universal statements or laws.


obnubilate

ob-NOO-buh-leyt

verb

To cloud over, becloud; obscure.


paraph

PAR-uhf

noun

A flourish made after a signature, as in a document, originally as a precaution against forgery.


roseate

ROH-zee-ut

adjective

1. Resembling a rose especially in having a pink color.
2. Overly optimistic, viewed favorably.


satrap

SEY-trap

noun

1. A subordinate ruler, often a despotic one.
2. A governor of a province under the ancient Persian monarchy.


sangfroid

SAHNG-FRWAH

noun

Self-possession or imperturbability especially under strain.


tchotchke

CHAHCH-kuh

noun

Knickknack, trinket.


thimblerig

THIM-bul-rig

verb

1. To cheat by trickery.
2. To swindle by a trick in which a small ball or pea is quickly shifted from under one to another of three small cups to fool the spectator guessing its location.


umber

UHM-ber

noun

1. North England Dialect, shade, shadow.
2. An earth consisting chiefly of a hydrated oxide of iron and some oxide of manganese, used in its natural state as a brown pigment (raw umber) or, after heating, as a reddish-brown pigment (burnt umber).
3. The color of such a pigment, dark dusky brown or dark reddish brown.
4. Ichthyology. the European grayling, Thymallus thymallus.

adjective

Of the color umber.

verb

To color with or as if with umber.


varia

VAIR-ee-uh

noun

Miscellaneous items, especially a miscellany of literary works.


word-hoard

WURD-hawrd

noun

A person's vocabulary.


zakuska

zuh-KOOS-kuh

noun

An hors d'oeuvre.


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