A water purification system that uses nanotechnology to remove
bacteria, viruses and other contaminants may be able to deliver clean
drinking water to rural communities for less than $3 a year per family,
according to a new study.
Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in Chennai,
India, developed a purification device that filters water through a
specially crafted mixture of nanoparticles to remove harmful contaminants. Their study was published today (May 6) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The device, which is currently being tested in communities in India,
could offer an affordable way to provide small families with at least 10
liters (2.6 gallons) of safe drinking water
per day, said study co-author Thalappil Pradeep, a professor in the
department of chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras. ...
Suicide rates among middle-aged Americans have risen sharply in the past
decade, prompting concern that a generation of baby boomers who have
faced years of economic worry and easy access to prescription
painkillers may be particularly vulnerable to self-inflicted harm.
More people now die of suicide than in car accidents, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which published the findings in Friday’s issue
of its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. In 2010 there were 33,687
deaths from motor vehicle crashes and 38,364 suicides.
Suicide has typically been viewed as a problem of teenagers and the
elderly, and the surge in suicide rates among middle-aged Americans is
surprising.
From 1999 to 2010, the suicide rate among Americans ages 35 to 64 rose
by nearly 30 percent, to 17.6 deaths per 100,000 people, up from 13.7.
Although suicide rates are growing among both middle-aged men and women,
far more men take their own lives. The suicide rate for middle-aged men
was 27.3 deaths per 100,000, while for women it was 8.1 deaths per
100,000.
The most pronounced increases were seen among men in their 50s, a group
in which suicide rates jumped by nearly 50 percent, to about 30 per
100,000. For women, the largest increase was seen in those ages 60 to
64, among whom rates increased by nearly 60 percent, to 7.0 per 100,000. ...
In the past three decades, the number of Americans who
are on disability has skyrocketed. The rise has come even as medical
advances have allowed many more people to remain on the job, and new
laws have banned workplace discrimination against the disabled. Every
month, 14 million people now get a disability check from the government.
The federal government spends more money each year on cash
payments for disabled former workers than it spends on food stamps and
welfare combined. Yet people relying on disability payments are often
overlooked in discussions of the social safety net. People on federal
disability do not work. Yet because they are not technically part of the
labor force, they are not counted among the unemployed.
In other words, people on disability don't show up in any of
the places we usually look to see how the economy is doing. But the
story of these programs -- who goes on them, and why, and what happens
after that -- is, to a large extent, the story of the U.S. economy. It's
the story not only of an aging workforce, but also of a hidden,
increasingly expensive safety net. ...
... According to the World Bank, the world's fertility rate is 2.45, slightly above the replacement rate of 2.1. Some demographers believe that by 2020, global fertility will drop below the replacement rate for the first time in history. Why? Because the world is getting richer.
As
people become wealthier, they have fewer kids. When times are good,
instead of reproducing exponentially (like rabbits), people prefer to
spend resources nurturing fewer children, for instance by investing in
education and saving money for the future. This trend toward smaller
families has been observed throughout the developed world, from the
United States to Europe to Asia.
The poorest parts of the world,
most notably sub-Saharan Africa, still have sky-high fertility rates,
but they are declining. The solution is just what it has been elsewhere:
more education, easier access to contraception and economic growth.
Catastrophe avoided.
Consequently, no serious demographer believes
that human population growth resembles cancer or the plague. On the
contrary, the United Nations projects a global population of 9.3 billion
by 2050 and 10.1 billion by 2100. In other words, it will take about 40
years to add 2 billion people, but 50 years to add 1 billion after
that. After world population peaks, it is quite possible that it will
stop growing altogether and might even decline.
Despite all
indications to the contrary, global population cataclysm isn't at hand
and never will be unless the well-established and widely researched
trends reverse themselves. That's not likely.
Issue 104 examines the impact of automation on Europe and America and the varying responses of the church to the problems that developed. Topics examined are mission work, the rise of the Social Gospel, the impact of papal pronouncements, the Methodist phenomenon, Christian capitalists, attempts at communal living and much more.
"Despite the tough economy, many of the nation’s largest churches are
thriving, with increased offerings and plans to hire more staff, a new
survey shows.
Just 3 percent of churches with 2,000 or more attendance
surveyed by Leadership Network, a Dallas-based church think tank, said
they were affected “very negatively” by the economy in recent years.
Close to half — 47 percent — said they were affected “somewhat
negatively,” but one-third said they were not affected at all. ..."
... It's not surprising that younger entrepreneurial firms are considered more innovative. After all, they are born from a new idea, and survive by finding creative ways to make that idea commercially viable. Larger, well-rooted companies however have just as much motivation to be innovative — and, as Scott Anthony has argued, they have even more resources to invest in new ventures. So why doesn't innovation thrive in mature organizations? ...
... First, he says, the focus of an established firm is to execute an existing business model — to make sure it operates efficiently and satisfies customers. In contrast, the main job of a start-up is to search for a workable business model, to find the right match between customer needs and what the company can profitably offer. In other words in a start-up, innovation is not just about implementing a creative idea, but rather the search for a way to turn some aspect of that idea into something that customers are willing to pay for. ...
... discovering a new business model is inherently risky, and is far more likely to fail than to succeed ...
... Finally, Blank notes that the people who are best suited to search for new business models and conduct iterative experiments usually are not the same managers who succeed at running existing business units. ...
5. A fascinating, if sobering, look at the conflict over islands off the coast of East Asia. Trouble at sea
"President Barack Obama's proposed tilt of U.S. priorities toward the Pacific – and away from the historical link to Europe – represents one of the most encouraging aspects of his foreign policy. Although welcome, we should recognize that this shift comes about three decades too late and that it may miss the rising geopolitical centrality of sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America. The emergence of these longtime historically impoverished backwaters has been largely missed as American policy-makers and businesses are now obsessed with the challenges and opportunities posed by the emergence of China and, to a lesser extent, India. Sub-Saharan Africa, for example, over the past decade has produced six of the world's 10 fastest-growing economies. Through 2011-15, according to the International Monetary Fund, seven of the fastest-growing countries will be African, and Africa as a whole will surpass the slowing growth rates in Asia, particularly China.
This growth has caused the region's poverty rates, still unacceptably high, to fall from 56.5 percent in 1990 to 47 percent today. Further growth will likely push poverty levels down further."
8. New Geography also asks, Is the Family Finished? Some interesting thoughts about the impact of declining birthrates in the U.S.
Pew Research Center has compiled key findings from a new analysis of the
nation’s foreign-born population, based on U.S. Census Bureau’s 2011
American Community Survey.
With more than half the population of many U.S. cities who are
multicultural and Hispanics comprising more and more of the
U.S. population, when does it become meaningless and redundant to
execute marketing strategy that is directed to a general market and a
Latino market perceived to be homogenous?
11. Committee on Economic Development has an interesting piece looking at both the ideological and economic aspects underlying the debate about the minimum wage. Raising the Minimum Wage: “Which Side Are You On?”
"It is an easy call if you are either (a) a strict libertarian or (b) an
enthusiastic advocate of the less fortunate with limited concern about
the scarcity of resources. (If you belong to both of those groups,
there is little advice that I can offer.) However, in between those
poles of opinion, things become rather murky, rather quickly."
... Comparing the Democrat and Republican participants turned up differences in two brain regions: the right amygdala and the left posterior insula. Republicans showed more activity than Democrats in the right amygdala when making a risky decision. This brain region is important for processing fear, risk and reward.
Meanwhile, Democrats showed more activity in the left posterior insula, a portion of the brain responsible for processing emotions, particularly visceral emotional cues from the body. The particular region of the insula that showed the heightened activity has also been linked with "theory of mind," or the ability to understand what others might be thinking. ...
... The functional differences did mesh well with political beliefs,
however. The researchers were able to predict a person's political
party by looking at their brain function 82.9 percent of the time. In
comparison, knowing the structure of these regions predicts party
correctly 71 percent of the time, and knowing someone's parents'
political affiliation can tell you theirs 69.5 percent of the time, the
researchers wrote. ...
STERLING, Va. - Perched by a computer monitor wedged between shelves of cough drops and the pharmacy in a bustling Walmart, Mohamed Khader taps out answers to questions such as how often he eats vegetables, whether anyone in his family has diabetes and his age.
He tests his eyesight, weighs himself and checks his blood pressure as a middle-aged couple watches at the blue-and-white SoloHealth station advertising "free health screenings." ...
... As Americans gain coverage under the federal health law, putting increased demand on primary care doctors and spurring interest in cheaper, more convenient care, unmanned kiosks like these may be part of what their manufacturer bills as a "self-service healthcare revolution." ...
Recent developments in the field of nanotechnology might give new
meaning to the phrase “nothing gold can stay.” Atoms and bonds developed
not by Mother Nature, but by scientists, are gaining momentum as the
building blocks for cutting-edge materials.
Using nanoparticles as “atoms” and DNA as “bonds,” Chad Mirkin, the
director of Northwestern University’s International Institute for
Nanotechnology, is constructing his very own periodic table. So far Mirkin has built more than 200 distinct crystal structures with 17 different particle arrangements. ...
Huff Post has an interesting article about using 3-D printing to print a human ear made of live tissue. Included in this post is a TED video about printing any number of organs. Late in the presentation is a presentation of a 3-D printed kidney. This is all still experimental and have no trials have been run on the printed organs, but the progress in this form of bio-tech is truly remarkable.
Last week I linked an article reporting that rich
countries are trashing up to half of all food. Our distribution channels
are good but we tend to waste a lot of food through our consumption habits.
Emerging nations are wasting food too, but for different reasons. Distribution
channels are so bad that great quantities of food are wasted in transit. Furthermore,
because the distribution channels are so bad, and food must pass through so
many middle-men, it is often more expensive than it would otherwise need to be.
Business Insider now reports:
Last fall, following a relaxation in
India’s foreign-investment rules, [Wal-Mart] said it was planning to open its
first stores in the country in the next two years, tapping into a prized $490
billion retail sector. But to cash in, Wal-Mart and other foreign
retailers will have to solve a fundamental problem: how to move goods into
stores efficiently in a country that offers big retailers little in the way of
modern logistics and is plagued by dilapidated infrastructure.
The hurdles are particularly daunting in
the food sector, which makes up more than half of the revenues at the
Bentonville, Ark.- based company.
Watch this video by the Wall Street Journal as the document the
route of food from field to table. Here the age old cry of the various agents
in present decrepit system opposing streamlined distribution for fear of losing
their positions. The reality is that if distribution improves, then food will
become cheaper, people will have more disposable income, people will eat
better, people will become more productive, and all this will in turn lead to
the formation of new businesses and jobs. I'm not saying the change will be
painless and that some will not suffer in the process but I suspect the
trade-off for the masses in terms of improved quality of life is huge.
1. Too often Westerners perceive African economy as a monolithic basket case. There are actually many regions of that are very hopeful. Ozwald Boateng explains Why entrepreneurs are back in Africa
3. Lots of recent talk about whether or not e-books will ever actually totally supplant hard copy books. This week Mashable explores Why Are People Still Buying CDs? (And people are still buying them.)
7. I almost didn't link this article because I could swear I've linked it before. Why Does Deja Vu Happen?
8. Several months ago I saw a speech expert interviewed has offered voice training to a number of famous figures. One was Margaret Thatcher. They showed her speaking in the 1970s and then in the 1980s, after receiving voice training. A big piece of the change was lessening the modulation in tone and pitch, which tends to vary more widely with female voices. The changes were intended to make her sound more authoritative, which both men and women, unjustified as it may be, more often associate with male vocal traits. But apparently, the thing that really triggers gender detection in our language is the way we use S's. Change Your Perceived Gender by Pronouncing S's Differently
... People in developed countries throw away 30 to 50 percent
of the food they purchase, according to a new report by the Institution
of Mechanical Engineers. In total, the researchers estimated, 1.2 to 2
billion tons of food is thrown out every year without reaching a human
stomach.
A major reason we're tossing our food is that stores push us to buy too much of it,
the report found. Additionally, supermarkets often reject shipments of
vegetables and fruits that don't meet their marketing standards. As a
result, 30 to 50 percent of food produced on the planet is discarded as useless, even if some of it is perfectly edible.
My understanding is that there is also food waste in
developing nations, though for different reasons. Poor infrastructure and
technology lead to spoilage and waste as the food moves from the field to the
dinner plate. A combination of more productive agricultural methods and just
modest reductions in waste would make food more plentiful without using one
more acre of land.
Five years ago I wrote a piece called, Technophysio
Evolution and Demographic Transition, explaining the dynamics and trends of
global population growth and decline. Slate has and excellent article
explaining the Demographic Transition Model.
Research suggests we may actually face a declining world population in the coming years.
The world’s seemingly relentless march toward overpopulation achieved
a notable milestone in 2012: Somewhere on the planet, according to U.S.
Census Bureau estimates, the 7 billionth living person came into existence.
Lucky No. 7,000,000,000 probably celebrated his or her birthday
sometime in March and added to a population that’s already stressing the
planet’s limited supplies of food, energy, and clean water. Should this trend continue, as the Los Angeles Times noted in a five-part series marking the occasion, by midcentury, “living conditions are likely to be bleak for much of humanity.”
A somewhat more arcane milestone, meanwhile, generated no media
coverage at all: It took humankind 13 years to add its 7 billionth.
That’s longer than the 12 years it took to add the 6 billionth—the first
time in human history that interval had grown. (The 2 billionth, 3
billionth, 4 billionth, and 5 billionth took 123, 33, 14, and 13 years,
respectively.) In other words, the rate of global population growth has
slowed. And it’s expected to keep slowing. Indeed, according to experts’
best estimates, the total population of Earth will stop growing within
the lifespan of people alive today.
And then it will fall. ...
... Why is this happening? Scientists who study population dynamics point to a phenomenon called “demographic transition.”
“For hundreds of thousands of years,” explains Warren Sanderson, a
professor of economics at Stony Brook University, “in order for humanity
to survive things like epidemics and wars and famine, birthrates had to
be very high.” Eventually, thanks to technology, death rates started to
fall in Europe and in North America, and the population size soared. In
time, though, birthrates fell as well, and the population leveled out.
The same pattern has repeated in countries around the world. Demographic
transition, Sanderson says, “is a shift between two very different
long-run states: from high death rates and high birthrates to low death
rates and low birthrates.” Not only is the pattern well-documented, it’s
well under way: Already, more than half the world’s population is
reproducing at below the replacement rate. ...
... One of the most contentious issues is the question of whether birthrates in developed countries will remain low. The United Nation’s most recent forecast,
released in 2010, assumes that low-fertility countries will eventually
revert to a birthrate of around 2.0. In that scenario, the world population tops out at about 10 billion
and stays there. But there’s no reason to believe that that birthrates
will behave in that way—no one has every observed an inherent human
tendency to have a nice, arithmetically stable 2.1 children per couple.
On the contrary, people either tend to have an enormous number of kids
(as they did throughout most of human history and still do in the most
impoverished, war-torn parts of Africa) or far too few. We know how to
dampen excessive population growth—just educate girls. The other problem
has proved much more intractable: No one’s figured out how to boost
fertility in countries where it has imploded. Singapore has been encouraging parenthood for nearly 30 years, with cash incentives of up to $18,000 per child. Its birthrate? A gasping-for-air 1.2. When Sweden started offering parents generous support, the birthrate soared but then fell back again, and after years of fluctuating, it now stands at 1.9—very high for Europe but still below replacement level.
The reason for the implacability of demographic transition can be
expressed in one word: education. One of the first things that countries
do when they start to develop is educate their young people, including
girls. That dramatically improves the size and quality of the workforce.
But it also introduces an opportunity cost for having babies. “Women
with more schooling tend to have fewer children,” says William Butz, a
senior research scholar at IIASA. ...
WASHINGTON — National health spending climbed to $2.7 trillion in 2011,
or an average of $8,700 for every person in the country, but as a share
of the economy, it remained stable for the third consecutive year, the
Obama administration said Monday.
The rate of increase in health spending, 3.9 percent in 2011, was the
same as in 2009 and 2010 — the lowest annual rates recorded in the 52
years the government has been collecting such data.
Federal officials could not say for sure whether the low growth in
health spending represented the start of a trend or reflected the
continuing effects of the recession, which crimped the economy from
December 2007 to June 2009. ...
Jonathan Klick - University of Pennsylvania Law School; Erasmus School of Law; PERC - Property and Environment Research Center
Joshua D. Wright - George Mason University School of Law
November 2, 2012
Abstract: Recently, many jurisdictions have implemented bans or imposed taxes upon plastic grocery bags on environmental grounds. San Francisco County was the first major US jurisdiction to enact such a regulation, implementing a ban in 2007. There is evidence, however, that reusable grocery bags, a common substitute for plastic bags, contain potentially harmful bacteria. We examine emergency room admissions related to these bacteria in the wake of the San Francisco ban. We find that ER visits spiked when the ban went into effect. Relative to other counties, ER admissions increase by at least one fourth, and deaths exhibit a similar increase.
"... Although the number of evangelical churches in the United States
declined for many years, the trend reversed in 2006, with more new
churches opening each year since, according to the Leadership Network’s
most recent surveys. This wave of “church planting” has been highest
among nondenominational pastors, free to experiment outside traditional
hierarchies.
“I hear a lot of pastors say, ‘I’m not just trying to be creative and
avant-garde, I think this is maybe the last chance for me,’ ” said Doug Pagitt, the founder of Solomon’s Porch in Minneapolis.
Mr. Pagitt has written several books on church innovations, many of which were first developed in the “emergent” church movement of the last decade or among “missional” churches whose practices focus on life outside the church.
Many of their innovations are being adopted by an increasing number of pastors in the mainstream.
... But in March, unbeknown to Ms. Pu, a critical meeting had occurred between Foxconn’s top executives and a high-ranking Apple official. The companies had committed themselves to a series of wide-ranging reforms. Foxconn, China’s largest private employer, pledged to sharply curtail workers’ hours and significantly increase wages — reforms that, if fully carried out next year as planned, could create a ripple effect that benefits tens of millions of workers across the electronics industry, employment experts say.
Other reforms were more personal. Protective foam sprouted on low stairwell ceilings inside factories. Automatic shut-off devices appeared on whirring machines. Ms. Pu got her chair. This autumn, she even heard that some workers had received cushioned seats.
The changes also extend to California, where Apple is based. Apple, the electronics industry’s behemoth, in the last year has tripled its corporate social responsibility staff, has re-evaluated how it works with manufacturers, has asked competitors to help curb excessive overtime in China and has reached out to advocacy groups it once rebuffed.
Executives at companies like Hewlett-Packard and Intel say those shifts have convinced many electronics companies that they must also overhaul how they interact with foreign plants and workers — often at a cost to their bottom lines, though, analysts say, probably not so much as to affect consumer prices. As Apple and Foxconn became fodder for “Saturday Night Live” and questions during presidential debates, device designers and manufacturers concluded the industry’s reputation was at risk. ...
"...Launched in July, the Seattle-based Egraphs' business model is simple, but pretty clever. Fans can peruse the company website to see if their favorite athlete has partnered up with Egraphs. Each player's section has a number of professionally shot action photographs included, typically priced between $25 and $50. The fan pays and sends the athlete a message through the website, including some personal details or memories.
The athlete then receives that message on his custom iPad app, using the the information provided to write a personalized note and electronic autograph on the selected photo. The photo is then sent electronically to the fan, who can save it digitally, share it on social media or order a physical print. Revenue is split between company and athlete. ..."
8. This month is the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade ruling, legalizing abortion across the country. Time magazine has a feature article about the Pro-Choice movement this week that suggests 1973 may have been the high-water mark for the movement. Unfortunately, the article is behind a pay wall. Here is a short clip summarizing their take.
"...Academic Publishers will tell you that creating modern textbooks is an expensive, labor-intensive process that demands charging high prices. But as Kevin Carey noted in a recent Slate piece, the industry also shares some of the dysfunctions that help drive up the cost of healthcare spending. Just as doctors prescribe prescription drugs they'll never have to pay for, college professors often assign titles with little consideration of cost. Students, like patients worried about their health, don't have much choice to pay up, lest they risk their grades. Meanwhile, Carey illustrates how publishers have done just about everything within their power to prop up their profits, from bundling textbooks with software that forces students to buy new editions instead of cheaper used copies, to suing a low-cost textbook start-ups over flimsy copyright claims. ..."
12. Baseball Pitchers like Phil Niekro, Tim Wakefield, and now, R. A. Dickey did their magic throwing a knuckleball. Pitchers who master usually do very well and it puts less stress on the arm. So why don't more pitchers throw it? Why the Knuckleball Isn’t Thrown by More Pitchers in Major League Baseball
"... The first kind of Christianity avoids reactionary authoritarianism
but is often a therapeutic or vanilla mush that fails to ask anything of
anybody out of fear of giving offense. The second kind of Christianity
offers stern, clear moral directives that attract people seeking the
“specific instruction, even confrontation that calls us to grow in
discipleship” (p. 6), but disastrously embraces right-wing ideology and
baptizes that as the content of Christianity.
Both of these versions of Christianity are so deeply flawed, says
Stassen, that both are contributing to the alarming spread of secularism
in the U.S. The first version of Christianity is so thin as to lack any
particular reason why one would want to get out of bed on Sunday and go
to church; the second is so reactionary as to drive thoughtful people
into an anti-religious posture if they conclude that religion equals
right-wing authoritarianism.
I believe this is a stark but actually quite accurate depiction of
the primary problems afflicting the Protestantisms of the left and of
the right in the current U.S. setting. ..."
"While not exclusive to Latin America, the culture of family, support,
and living a life to spend time with your family, I think, is an
important part of Latin American culture that keeps people positive.
Being with those close to you and finding other friends and partners
that value that way of life is a key part of Latin American culture.
That might be the main reason why people remain positive: they are never
truly alone. Interestingly, many discussions and documentaries about
immigrant groups in the United States
show an internal conflict among many who move to the US and who do not
wish to lose their support systems in a new culture rooted in
individualism. While being motivated and entrepreneurial is valued, a
life being with your family, where you are never truly alone, is the
basis for many cultures in many parts of the world. Many new Americans
frown on the thought that children can detach themselves from their
family at 18 years of age. They believe people can only truly thrive as a
family."
"A Pew Internet Research Center survey released Thursday found that the
percentage of Americans aged 16 and older who read an e-book grew from
16 percent in 2011 to 23 percent this year. Readers of traditional books
dropped from 72 percent to 67 percent. Overall, those reading books of
any kind dropped from 78 percent to 75 percent, a shift Pew called
statistically insignificant."
Puerto Rico, Vermont, and Rhode Island are the only states (and territory) that saw a net decrease in population over the year.
The fastest growing region was the South (1.06% population growth) followed by the West (1.03% population growth).
North Dakota and the District of Columbia had the highest population growth, with 2.5% and 2.3% population growth, respectively. Texas, Wyoming, and Utah also saw major growth.
West Virginia and Maine are the only two states where people are dying faster than they are being born, with 0.93 and 0.99 births for each death.
Utah (3.44) and Alaska (3.33) had the highest birth to death ratio in 2012. That means 3.44 babies were born for each death in Utah.
Domestic migration determines the rate that people leave and enter states to and from other states. Per capita, more natives left New York, Illinois, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island to move somewhere else than any other states.
On the other hand, people flocked to North Dakota, D.C., Wyoming and South Carolina.
The states that had the highest rates of international migration — that is, the rate of immigrants coming in — were Hawaii, New Jersey, Florida, New York and D.C.
Puerto Rico is seeing a massive exodus — 1% of their population left last year.
15. When we think of transportation in the United States, few of us think about river and costal water transportation. Yet a great many goods and commodities are shipped on our rivers. The Midwest drought is having an impact on a major artery of that transportation network. The Mississippi River's Water Levels Are Dropping, And Could Shut Down Trade Next Week
"In other words, Americans are increasingly likely to have to purchase
and replace these goods some time soon as they get more and more worn
out. That's bullish for spending, jobs, and the economy as a whole."
"... Yet a few differences between the sexes do seem to hold up to scrutiny. One is spatial abilities. If men look at an object, for example, they are slightly faster at guessing what it would look like if it were rotated 180 degrees. There are plenty of women who do better than individual men. But overall there’s a stasticially significant difference in their average performance. This kind of difference carries over from one culture to another. It’s even detectable in babies. ...
... Whenever we reflect on human evolution, it pays to compare our species to other animals. And in the case of spatial abilities, the comparison is fascinating. Almost a century ago, the psychologist Helen Hubbet found that male rats could get through a maze faster than females. The difference can also be found in a number of other species. ...
... Clint and his colleagues propose a different explanation: male spatial ability is not an adaptation so much as a side effect. Males produce testosterone as they develop, and the hormone has a clear benefit in terms of reproduction, increasing male fertility. But testosterone also happens to produce a lot of side effects, including male pattern baldness and an increased chance of developing acne. It would be absurd to say acne was an adaptation favored by natural selection. The same goes for the male edge in spatial ability, Clint and his colleagues argue. They note that when male rats are castrated, they do worse at navigating a maze; when they are given shots of testosterone, they regain their skill. ..."
3. Four Harvard and MIT grads are experimenting with direct aid to the poor. "GiveDirectly, the brainchild of four Harvard and MIT graduate students, is so simple, it's genius. Give poor Kenyan families $1,000 -- and let them do whatever they want with it." Can 4 Economists Build the Most Economically Efficient Charity Ever?
"... Despite
its reputation as a leftwing utopia, Sweden is now a laboratory for
rightwing radicalism. Over the past 15 years a coalition of liberals and
conservatives has brought in for-profit free schools in education, has
sliced welfare to pay off the deficit and has privatised large parts of
the health service.
Their success is envied by the centre right
in Britain. Despite predictions of doom, Sweden's economy continues to
grow and its pro-business coalition has remained in power since 2006.
The last election was the first time since the war that a centre-right
government had been re-elected after serving a full term.
As the
state has been shrunk, the private sector has moved in. Göran Dahlgren, a
former head civil servant at the Swedish department of health and a
visiting professor at the University of Liverpool, says that "almost all
welfare services are now owned by private equity firms". ..."
"... We
have reached a point in our economy where it is becoming increasingly
clear that businesses are being measured not just for their profit, but
also for their impact. And I’m not just talking about writing a check or
funding a charity; I’m referring to business models for which community
involvement and inspirational brand building are the profit centers.
(Think Warby Parker, TOMS, and startups such as SOMA.) I recently went
to a conference where the founders of a startup posited a powerful idea:
the future of marketing is philanthropy. But I think the even bigger
idea is the future of business is morality. My grandfather saw this
early on.
At a time when the moral framework of America appears
to be fractured – or at the very least confused – businesses are in the
propitious position to espouse cultural standards that can help restore
values that our youth can use to build the next generation of positive
enterprise. In fact, whether businesses succeed in creating and
promoting positive cultures might determine whether they stay in
business at all. The future of business is morality, and the future is
now.
Whether it’s the job of the corporation or not to set the
moral tone for society, the expectation is trending towards companies
setting the right example for others to follow. With the sharp rise in
entrepreneurship, young companies have the opportunity to establish
strong cultures early on and share them with their communities. Money
must have a moral center, and from greater consciousness in business,
greater profit will follow. ..."
"New data show an increasing contribution of mental and behavioral disorders to deterioration in the health-related quality of life among teens in the U.S. and Canada over the past two decades, and increases elsewhere around the globe."
More people moved out of California in 2011 than moved in, according to the latest report from the U.S. Census Bureau, signaling that the Democrat-run state’s economic woes continue to drive residents away.
Most statisticians attribute California’s net loss of 100,000 people last year to its high cost of living, increased population density and troubling unemployment rate.
The widening middle class in Mexico is also encouraging some immigrants to remain in that country instead of moving to California.
Texas — home to lower taxes, less regulation and what the Manhattan Institute calls a “labor pool with the right skills at the right price” — is one of the most attractive destinations for companies departing from California, according to the Census Bureau. ...
"The country reported 85 executions in 2000 but only 43 in 2012, according to a new report released by the Death Penalty Information Center. Plus, far fewer people are being sentenced to death row in the first place. The year 2000 saw 224 new inmates sentenced to death, while 2012 saw only 78, according to the report."
15. Conor Friedersdorf at the Atlantic had a great piece Why 'If We Can Just Save One Child ...' Is a Bad Argument, referring to a statement President Obama made at Newtown, CT. When we deal with complex topics like gun control, we are always
talking about tradeoffs. For instance, I know how we can save more
than 30,000 lives. The were 32,367 traffic fatalities last
year. Let's set the speed limit to 5 miles per hour. Nearly all those lives would be saved. Should we do this "if we can save just
one more life"? I, like Friedersforf, am not advocating any particular
policy. I'm just pointing out the absurdity of making statements like this, as politicians often do.
"I found that the structural supports of evangelicalism are quivering as a
result of ground-shaking changes in American culture. Strategies that
served evangelicals well just 15 years ago are now self- destructive.
The more that evangelicals attempt to correct course, the more they
splinter their movement. In coming years we will see the old
evangelicalism whimper and wane."
He speaks of an Evangelical "collapse" having happened. That may be a bit premature but I think his articulation of trends is right.
The
horrific massacre in Newton, Connecticut, is to sparking debate about
guns and violence, as well it should. As the discussion gets underway, I
think it is helpful to get a sense of where we stand in the flow of history as
it relates to violence in the United States. Here are a few
things to consider.
Below is data
from the most recent FBI Uniform Crime Report (UCR). The annual report compiles
reported crimes. It strength is the use of hard data. Its biggest weakness is the
absence of unreported crime. The willingness of people to report crime varies
by type of crime and their willingness to report may change over time. Also, law enforcement’s diligence with
different types of crime may change over time. Tougher enforcement can lead to fewer
incidents of actual crime, even as incidents
of reported crime rise. Nevertheless,
the UCR is an important measure.
Crimes
are grouped in two categories:
Violent - murder and non-negligent manslaughter,
forcible rape, robbery, and aggravated assault.
Property - burglary,
larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, and arson.
Violent
crime is at a forty year low.
A second
measure is the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). Twice a year, surveys ask members of households if they have been victims of particular crimes, reported or
not. The strength of the survey is that it captures unreported crime. A
weakness may be that some crimes, like domestic violence, are underreported.
The NCVS
is also broken into two categories:
Violent - rape, robbery, and assault.
Property
- burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft.
(A
different methodology was used in 2006 that makes it incomparable with other
years. Also, 2011 data has been published and shows an uptick in crime.
However, the 2002 and 2010 data in the recent report, used as comparison points, do
not match earlier publications and I have yet to determine why. I chose not to
include it here until I have a better understanding.)
An
interesting question: Was there truly less crime fifty years ago or were people
simply less likely to report crimes? I doubt there is a definitive answer. Murder
is sometimes used as a proxy for overall violence in society. Here is the United States murder
rate per 100,000 population:
Additionally,
there is this estimation of the murder rate over the last 300 years. (Source: The Public
Intellectual)
The
lowest murder rate ever was 4.6 in 1963. It was 4.7 in 2011.
It can conclusively
be said that that violence in American society is not spiraling out of control.
We are living in one of the least violent eras in
American history. But this is not the
whole story.
(Go to
the source linked above for info about individual countries.)
The 4.7
homicide rate for the United States is a near record low but it is still two or
three times the rate of other Organization for Economic Co-operation and
Development nations. Guns are a big part of this difference. The good news is
the precipitous decline in aggravated deaths. The bad news is how much more violence there is in
the United States compared to other nations, even at all-time lows.
… And
yet those who study mass shootings say they are not becoming more common.
"There
is no pattern, there is no increase," says criminologist James Allen Fox
of Boston's Northeastern University, who has been studying the subject since
the 1980s, spurred by a rash of mass shootings in post offices.
The
random mass shootings that get the most media attention are the rarest, Fox
says. Most people who die of bullet wounds knew the identity of their killer. …
… Grant
Duwe, a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections who has
written a history of mass murders in America, said that while mass shootings
rose between the 1960s and the 1990s, they actually dropped in the 2000s. And
mass killings actually reached their peak in 1929, according to his data. He
estimates that there were 32 in the 1980s, 42 in the 1990s and 26 in the first
decade of the century.
Chances
of being killed in a mass shooting, he says, are probably no greater than being
struck by lightning.
Still,
he understands the public perception - and extensive media coverage - when mass
shootings occur in places like malls and schools. "There is this feeling
that could have been me. It makes it so much more frightening." …
(I realize
that does not seem to square with the statement about mass shootings peaking in 1929. I suspect a typo and "1999" was what was intended.)
This
data was reported in March of 2010. According to a recent Los Angeles Times
article, Deadliest
U.S. mass shootings, there have been nine mass shootings in the United
States in the first three years of this decade. That projects out to thirty for this decade. But there have been five mass shootings in the last five months.
There clearly has been an uptick in mass shootings over the past year.
On
a final note, the Sandy Hook massacre involved young children at school. Over
the past twenty years, the number of children 5-18 years old murdered at school
has ranged from a low of 14 (school years ending in 2000 and in 2001) and a
high of 34 (schools years ending 1993 and in 1998.) (Source: Indicators of School Safety: 2011) According to an article in the Guardian, Mass
shootings at schools and universities in the US – timeline, over the last fifty years there have been
six school mass shootings (including Sandy Hook) that have taken the lives of
children 5-18. Three of the mass shootings were at primary schools (Stockton, CA,
in 1989; Nickel Mines, PA, 2006; and now Sandy Hook.)
So
here are a few observations and comments:
The United States has an excessively violent culture.
Violence has lessened significantly in recent years. We are not spiraling into
chaos.
Guns are an important factor in the excessive homicide rates. I don't know why citizens need to own semi-automatic weapons. But there is more
than access to these guns that needs to be addressed here.
While a case can be made that mass murders have been declining in the long run,
the sudden frequency of them in recent months is alarming (five in five months).
Nothing that is said above should take away from our outrage at the senseless
death of innocent children and their teachers. But Friday’s shooting should not
send us into despair that things are spiraling out of control. Friday’s
shooting should motivate us to ask anew how we can accelerate our march toward
becoming a less violent society.
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1. Pray for Egypt Today!
More than 50 million Egyptians are voting today on a constitution that would be a giant step backward for Egypt and much of the Middle East, marginalizing women and religious minorities. A nation that has historically been a voice of moderation, the largest Muslim nation in the region, will likely move toward becoming an Islamist state. Remember to pray for Egypt. (See the Economist'sThe Founding Brothers)
2. Our prayers are with families of the victims at the Sandy Hook elementary school. Grace and peace to the entire community.
Traffic deaths in the USA continued their historic decline last year,
falling to the lowest level since 1949, the government announced
Monday.
A total of 32,367 motorists, bicyclists and pedestrians died in 2011,
a 1.9% decrease from 2010. Last year’s toll represents a 26% decline
from 2005, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA)
said. ...
... The trend has emerged in big cities like New York and Los Angeles, as
well as smaller places like Anchorage, Alaska, and Kearney, Neb. The
state of Mississippi has also registered a drop, but only among white
students.
“It’s been nothing but bad news for 30 years, so the fact that we have
any good news is a big story,” said Dr. Thomas Farley, the health
commissioner in New York City, which reported a 5.5 percent decline in
the number of obese schoolchildren from 2007 to 2011....
....The experiment, in April, used a disabled form of the virus that causes AIDS to reprogram Emma’s immune system genetically to kill cancer cells. ...
... The research is still in its early stages, and many questions remain.
The researchers are not entirely sure why the treatment works, or why it
sometimes fails. One patient had a remission after being treated only
twice, and even then the reaction was so delayed that it took the
researchers by surprise. For the patients who had no response
whatsoever, the team suspects a flawed batch of T-cells. The child who
had a temporary remission apparently relapsed because not all of her
leukemic cells had the marker that was targeted by the altered T-cells. ...
....In 2011, 1.4 million chlamydia infections were reported to the CDC.
The rate of cases per 100,000 people increased 8%, to 457.6 in 2011 from
423.6 in 2010.
The CDC reported 321,849 gonorrhea infections. The
rate increased 4% to 104.2 cases per 100,000 in 2011 from 100.2 in
2010. Like chlamydia, gonorrhea can lead to pelvic inflammatory disease,
a major cause of infertility in women.
Last year, 13,970 primary and secondary syphilis cases were reported. The rate of 4.5 cases per 100,000 was unchanged from 2010. ...
7. You may be bilingual but can you write in two languages, one with each hand, at the same time?!
10. Kevin Drum of Mother Jones speculates on why liberals have more exaggerated perceptions of political differences. We Are More Alike Than We Think
11. A surprising "right to work" bill was signed into law in Michigan, of all places. That has spurred a lot of debate about unions and the right to work. Michael Kinsley wrote a thoughtful piece opposing RTW, The Liberal Case Against Right-to-Work Laws. David Henderson has piece in support of RTW, The Economics of "Right to Work".
12. Slate has a piece about The Great Schism in the Environmental Movement.
Keith Kloor opines on the division between mondernist environmentalists
(or eco-pragmatists) and conservation traditionalists.
...
Modernist greens don't dispute the ecological tumult associated with the
Anthropocene. But this is the world as it is, they say, so we might as
well reconcile the needs of people with the needs of nature. To this
end, Kareiva advises conservationists to craft "a new vision of a planet
in which nature—forests, wetlands, diverse species, and other ancient
ecosystems—exists amid a wide variety of modern, human landscapes."
This
shift in thinking is already under way. For example, ecologists
increasingly appreciate (and study) the diversity of species and
importance of ecosystem services in cities, giving rise to the
discipline of urban ecology. That was unthinkable at the dawn of the
modern environmental movement 50 years ago, when greens loathed cities
as the antithesis of wilderness. ...
13. One of the creepiest Twilight Zone episodes I remember from my
childhood was when this woman ends up trapped in a department store at
night. The mannequins begin calling to her. She discovers she is actually a mannequin who
has over stayed her time out in the world and it is time for the next
mannequin to spend some time outside the store. This story confirms my worst nightmares: In Some Stores, the Mannequins Are Watching You
15. One of the biggest concerns about fracking technology is the enormous amount of water it uses. A company has figured out how to recycle water so that far less water is used in the fracking process. Solving fracking's biggest problem
... 3D printing represents the latest version of what industry experts call
"additive manufacturing" — a way to turn practically any computer
designs into real objects by building them up layer-by-layer using
plastics, metals or other materials. The technology could end up
affecting every major industry — aerospace, defense, medicine, transportation, food, fashion — and have an even bigger impact on U.S. manufacturing than the robot revolution. ...
20. Michael Cheshire has a great piece in Leadership Journal on "What I learned about grace and redemption through my friendship with a Christian pariah." Going To Hell with Ted Haggard
".... A while back I was having a business lunch at a sports bar in the
Denver area with a close atheist friend. He's a great guy and a very
deep thinker. During lunch, he pointed at the large TV screen on the
wall. It was set to a channel recapping Ted's fall. He pointed his
finger at the HD and said, "That is the reason I will not become a
Christian. Many of the things you say make sense, Mike, but that's what
keeps me away."
It was well after the story had died down, so I had to study the screen
to see what my friend was talking about. I assumed he was referring to
Ted's hypocrisy. "Hey man, not all of us do things like that," I
responded. He laughed and said, "Michael, you just proved my point. See,
that guy said sorry a long time ago. Even his wife and kids stayed and
forgave him, but all you Christians still seem to hate him. You guys
can't forgive him and let him back into your good graces. Every time you
talk to me about God, you explain that he will take me as I am. You say
he forgives all my failures and will restore my hope, and as long as I
stay outside the church, you say God wants to forgive me. But that guy
failed while he was one of you, and most of you are still vicious to
him." Then he uttered words that left me reeling: "You Christians eat
your own. Always have. Always will."
He was running late for a meeting and had to take off. I, however, could
barely move. I studied the TV and read the caption as a well-known
religious leader kept shoveling dirt on a man who had admitted he was
unclean. And at that moment, my heart started to change. I began to
distance myself from my previously harsh statements and tried to
understand what Ted and his family must have been through. When I
brought up the topic to other men and women I love and respect, the very
mention of Haggard's name made our conversations toxic. Their reactions
were visceral."
21. Leonardo Bonucci got a yellow card for faking collision during a
soccer game. It should have been a red card. No one deserves to be a professional soccer player with acting skills
this bad!
A sharp decline in deaths from malnutrition and diseases like measles and tuberculosis has caused a shift in global mortality patterns over the past 20 years, according to a new report, with far more of the world’s population now living into old age and dying from diseases more associated with rich countries, like cancer and heart disease.
The shift reflects improvements in sanitation, medical services and access to food throughout the developing world, as well as the success of broad public health efforts like vaccine programs. The results are dramatic: infant mortality has declined by more than half between 1990 and 2010, and malnutrition, the No. 1 risk factor for death and years of life lost in 1990, has fallen to No. 8.
At the same time, chronic diseases like cancer now account for about two out of every three deaths worldwide, up from just over half in 1990. Eight million people died of cancer in 2010, 38 percent more than in 1990. Diabetes claimed 1.3 million lives in 2010, double the number in 1990.
But while developing countries made big strides – the average age of death in Brazil and Paraguay, for example, jumped to 63 in 2010, up from 28 in 1970 – the United States stagnated. American women registered the smallest gains in life expectancy of all high-income countries between 1990 and 2010. The two years of life they gained was less than in Cyprus, where women gained 2.3 years of life, and Canada, where women gained 2.4 years. The slow increase caused American women to fall to 36th place in the report’s global ranking of life expectancy, down from 22nd in 1990. ...
... The World Health Organization issued a statement Thursday saying that some of the estimates in the report differ substantially from those done by United Nations agencies, though others are similar. All comprehensive estimates of global mortality rely heavily on statistical modeling because only 34 countries – representing about 15 percent of the world’s population – produce quality cause-of-death data. ...
Infant mortality and life expectancy at birth are probably the two best indicators of human well-being. So many interconnected factors must be present for improvement in these numbers to be realized. The reality is that human flourishing is getting better. Better does not mean utopia or the consummated Kingdom of God. Better means better. The challenge is to learn from what is going right and strengthen it.
"... Drawing on data from the [Harvard] university's library collections, the animation
below maps the number and location of printed works by year. Watch it
full screen in HD to see cities light up as the years scroll by in the
lower left corner. ..."
4. There is a U-shaped happiness curve, consistent across cultures, that shows happiness declines from childhood until about our mid-forties and then begins to improve as me grow old. It appears it may hold true in primates as well. Our ability to discount bad news, even when we shouldn't, follows the same U-shaped curve. Our brains and experience are optimal for discerning bad news in middle-age. Turns out that ignorance (or maybe denial) truly is bliss. Viewpoint: How happiness changes with age. On a related note, it appears that Elderly Brains Have Trouble Recognizing Untrustworthy Faces.
5. The holiday season is in full swing and many people falsely believe this a time of elevated suicide rates. Actually, spring and summer have the highest rates and Nov - Jan have the lowest. In 2010, July was highest and December was lowest. Holiday suicide myth persists, research says
"Michael" was in the top 3 names for boys from 1953-2010. It dropped to sixth last year. Want to know how your name ranks for each year since 1880? Go to the Social Security Online's Popular Baby Names. The Baby Name Wizard is also pretty cool.
"For the first time in Barbie’s more than 50-year history, Mattel
is introducing a Barbie construction set that underscores a huge shift
in the marketplace. Fathers are doing more of the family shopping just
as girls are being encouraged more than ever by hypervigilant parents to
play with toys (as boys already do) that develop math and science
skills early on.
It’s a combination that not only has Barbie building luxury mansions —
they are pink, of course — but Lego promoting a line of pastel
construction toys called Friends that is an early Christmas season hit.
The Mega Bloks Barbie Build ’n Style line, available next week, has both
girls — and their fathers — in mind.
“Once it’s in the home, dads would very much be able to join in this
play that otherwise they might feel is not their territory,” said Dr.
Maureen O’Brien, a psychologist who consulted on the new Barbie set...."
And this reminds me of last year, or the year before, when cooking sets were becoming big with boys. They've been watching Emeril Lagasse on the Food Network. "Bam!" New merchandising angle.
11. Love them or hate them, the Koch brothers are intriguing. Many political junkies know of them but few others seem to know about them. Forbes has an interesting feature article in the most recent issue on the Koch empire and its influence: Inside The Koch Empire: How The Brothers Plan To Reshape America
14. "Data-driven healthcare won't replace physicians entirely, but it will help those receptive to technology perform their jobs better." Technology will replace 80% of what doctors do
"Scientists have designed an energy-efficient light of plastic packed with nanomaterials that glow. The shatterproof FIPEL technology can be molded into almost any shape, but still needs to prove it's commercially viable."
"... Last month, at the first ever conference of the Sustainable
Nanotechnology Organization in Washington DC, Michail Roco of the
National Science Foundation, and architect of the U.S. National
Nanotechnology Initiative provided a response. He said, “every
industrial sector is unsustainable…and nanotechnology holds the promise
of making every one of them sustainable.”
It’s my belief that that is true: nanotechnology, or the ability to
manipulate matter at a scale of one billionth of a meter, has
far-reaching implications for the improvement of sustainable technology,
industry and society.
Already, it is being used widely to enable more sustainable
practices. Safer manufacturing, less waste generation, reusable
materials, more efficient energy technologies, better water
purification, lower toxicity and environmental impacts from chemotherapy
agents to marine paints are all current applications of nanotechnology.
There is no reason for this technology to develop in an unsustainable
manner.
In the past, a lack of foresight has resulted in costs to society – people, businesses, and governments, and—
that could have been avoided by proactive efforts to manage risks.
Today, the tools to develop safer technologies and less harmful products
exist. Let us not miss this opportunity. ..."
"It used be that news of death spread through phone calls, and before
that, letters and house calls. The departed were publicly remembered via
memorials on street corners, newspaper obituaries and flowers at grave
sites. To some degree, this is still the case. But increasingly, the
announcements and subsequent mourning occur on social media. Facebook,
with 1 billion detailed, self-submitted user profiles, was created to
connect the living. But it has become the world's largest site of
memorials for the dead."
20. From the "That's just not right!" file. Harvard Economics Department does their version of "Call me maybe."
This [United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization] report, Innovations in Sustainable Agriculture: Supporting Climate-Friendly Food Production,
discusses six sustainable approaches to land and water use, in both
rural and urban areas, that are helping farmers and other food producers
mitigate or adapt to climate change—and often both. They are:
Building Soil Fertility: Alternatives to
heavy chemical use in agriculture, such as avoiding unnecessary tilling
or raising both crops and livestock on the same land, can help to
drastically reduce the total amount of energy expended to produce a crop
or animal, reducing overall emissions.
Agroforestry: Because trees remove carbon
dioxide from the atmosphere, keeping them on farms whenever possible can
help mitigate climate change. Agroforestry also keeps the soil
healthier and more resilient by maximizing the amount of organic matter,
microorganisms, and moisture held within it. Agroforestry also provides
shade for livestock and certain crops, and creates habitats for animals
and insects, such as bees, that pollinate many crops.
Urban Farming:Growing food in
cities can mitigate the greenhouse gas emissions released from the
transport, processing, and storage of food destined for urban
populations. Urban agriculture also increases the total area of
non-paved land in cities, making urban landscapes more resilient to
flooding and other weather shocks, while improving the aesthetic value
of these landscapes.
Cover Cropping/Green Manure:Cover
cropping, also known as green manure, is the practice of strategically
planting crops that will deliver a range of benefits to a farming
system, and often plowing these crops into the soil instead of
harvesting their organic matter. Planting cover crops improves soil
fertility and moisture by making soil less vulnerable to drought or heat
waves. Cover crops also serve as a critical deterrent against pests and
diseases that affect crops or livestock, such as corn root worm or Rift
Valley fever, particularly as warmer temperatures enable these
organisms to survive in environments that were previously too cold for
them.
Improving Water Conservation and Recycling:
Innovations in water conservation, including recycling wastewater in
cities, using precise watering techniques such as drip irrigation rather
than sprinklers, and catching and storing rainwater, all help to reduce
the global strain on already-scarce water resources.
Preserving Biodiversity and Indigenous Breeds:Growing
diverse and locally adapted indigenous crops, such as yams, quinoa, and
cassava, can provide a source of income and improve farmers’ chances of
withstanding the effects of climate change, such as heat stress,
drought, and the expansion of disease and pest populations. Preserving
plant and animal biodiversity also reduces farmers’ overreliance on a
small number of commodity crops that make them vulnerable to shifts in
global markets.
By tapping into the multitude of climate-friendly farming practices
that already exist, agriculture can continue to provide food for the
world’s population, as well as be a source of livelihood for the 1.3
billion people who rely on farming for income and sustenance. If
agriculture is to play a positive role in the global fight against
climate change, however, agricultural practices that mitigate or adapt
to climate change will need to receive increased research, attention,
and investment in the coming years.
Here are the links. BTW, if you haven't already, you can "like" the Kruse Kronicle Facebook page and see daily links in your Facebook feed.
1. When I was a kid, I used to watch Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom on Saturdays. That was the beginning of my life-long appreciation for big cats. One of the organizations we support is the Turperntine Creek Wildlife Refuge for big cats in Arkansas. Check out this Nat Geo super slo-mo video of a running cheetah. Be sure to go to minute 5:00, and see him from the front. His head barely moves. Just amazing!
7. If you are a man, getting along with the in-laws means you have 20% higher chance of not getting divorced. If you are a woman, getting along well the in-laws makes you 20% more likely to get divorced. Getting Along With The In-Laws Makes Women More Likely To Divorce
"The Supreme Court announced Friday it would review a case testing whether human genes may be patented, in a dispute weighing patents associated with human genes known to detect early signs of breast and ovarian cancer. A 2009 lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union claimed among other things the First Amendment is at stake because the patents are so broad they bar scientists from examining and comparing the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes at the center of the dispute. In short, the patents issued more than a decade ago cover any new scientific methods of looking at these human genes that might be developed by others."
I am guessing there are some bioethics questions to consider here as well. ;-)
15. 4.5 billion years of the earth's evolution in as if it happened in 24 hours.
"The Pew Research Center announced Nov. 29 that the U.S.
birth rate fell to its lowest level since at least 1920, when reliable
record-keeping began. That was true—but not news. The National Center
for Health Statistics reported that way back on Oct. 3.
What was
news was Pew’s analysis of the government data, which showed that the
birth rate decline was greatest among immigrant women. “We were the
first to point that out,” Gretchen Livingston, the lead author of Pew’s
report, said in an interview. ..."
... New research shows that Catholics now report the lowest proportion of
"strongly affiliated" followers among major American religious
traditions, while the data indicates that evangelicals are increasingly
devout and committed to their faith.
According to Philip Schwadel, a sociologist at the University of
Nebraska-Lincoln, in the 1970s there was only a five-point difference
between how strongly Catholics and evangelicals felt about their
religion.
By 2010, he said, that "intensity gap" had grown to around 20 points,
with some 56 percent of evangelicals describing themselves as "strongly
affiliated" with their religion compared with 35 percent of Catholics.
Even mainline Protestants reported a higher level of religious intensity
than Catholics, at 39 percent. ..."
"Indeed, for America’s Amish, much is changing. The Amish are, by one measure, the fastest-growing faith community in the US. Yet as their numbers grow, the land available to support the agrarian lifestyle that underpins their faith is shrinking, gobbled up by the encroachment of exurban mansions and their multidoor garages.
The result is, in some ways, a gradual redefinition of what it means to be Amish. Some in the younger generation are looking for new ways to make a living on smaller and smaller slices of land. Others are looking beyond the Amish heartland of Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Indiana, seeking more space in states such as Texas, Maine, and Montana."
21. Finally, one of the things I found interesting about the presidential election was Team Romney's seeming confidence they were winning. I think every candidate who is losing often tries to spin things positively until the very end but I had the sense that Team Romney wasn't faking it. They believed they were winning. I think post-election analysis is revealing that was true. From The New RepbulicThe Internal Polls That Made Mitt Romney Think He'd Win
"What if all objects were interconnected and started to sense their
surroundings and communicate with each other? The Internet of Things
(IoT) will have that sort of ubiquitous machine-to-machine (M2M)
connectivity. Since there are estimates that between 50 billion to 500 billion devices will have a mobile connection to the cloud by 2020, here’s a glimpse of our possible future.
Your alarm clock signals the lights to come on in your bedroom; the
lights tell the heated tiles in your bathroom to kick on so your feet
are not cold when you go to shower. The shower tells your coffee pot to
start brewing. Your smartphone checks the weather and tells you to wear
your gray suit since RFID tags on your clothes confirm that your
favorite black suit is not in your closet but at the dry cleaners. After
you pour a cup of java, the mug alerts your medication that you have a
drink in-hand and your pill bottle begins to glow and beep as a reminder.
Your pill bottle confirms that you took your medicine and wirelessly
adds this info to your medical file at the doctor’s office; it will also
text the pharmacy for a refill if you are running low.
Your smart TV
automatically comes on with your favorite news channel while you eat
breakfast and browse your tablet for online news. After you’ve eaten,
while you are brushing your teeth, your dishwasher texts your smartphone
to fire up your vehicle via the remote start. Because your “smart” car can talk to other cars and the road, it knows what streets to avoid due to early morning traffic jams. Your phone notifies you
that your route to work has been changed to save you time. And you no
longer need to look for a place to park, since your smartphone reserved
one of the RFID parking spaces marked as "open" and available in the cloud.
Don’t worry about your smart house because as you exited it, the doors
locked, the lights went off, and the temperature was adjusted to save
energy and money.
Does it sound too farfetched for 2020? It shouldn’t since a good part of that is in the works now. ..."
4. Speaking of computers, technology lovers will appreciate that the World’s Oldest Computer Gets a Reboot.
"The Congressional Budget Office has a new study
of effective federal marginal tax rates for low and moderate income
workers (those below 450 percent of the poverty line). The study looks
at the effects of income taxes, payroll taxes, and SNAP (the program
formerly known as Food Stamps). The bottom line is that the
average household now faces an effective marginal tax rate of 30
percent. In 2014, after various temporary tax provisions have expired
and the newly passed health insurance subsidies go into effect,
the average effective marginal tax rate will rise to 35 percent.
What struck me is how close these marginal tax rates are to the marginal
tax rates at the top of the income distribution. This means that we
could repeal all these taxes and transfer programs, replace them with a
flat tax along with a universal lump-sum grant, and achieve
approximately the same overall degree of progressivity."
7. What are the conservative streams and thinkers that are likely to influence the evolving future of conservatism in the United States. David Brooks has some interesting insights into The Conservative Future.
The International Agency for Research on Cancer is renowned for producing assessments of carcinogens. But it appears that some of the agency’s evaluations may overstate the risks, for reasons that tell us a great deal about the science and politics of risk assessment.
It is a paradox that, in spite of dramatic increases in life
expectancy and improvements in health in the developed world over recent
decades, as a society we are obsessively preoccupied with the specter
of hazards lurking in our environment and consumer products.
Many factors have contributed to this ever-increasing climate of
fear, including the success of the environmental movement; a deep-seated
distrust of industry; the public’s insatiable appetite for stories
related to health, which the media duly cater to; and – not least – the
striking expansion of the fields of epidemiology and environmental
health sciences and their burgeoning literature. ...
... One has to ask what “possibly carcinogenic” means, if extensive
evidence in humans and animals points to no threat. A major problem with
the IARC process is that it makes it almost impossible to assign an
agent to category 4 – probably not carcinogenic. Of the roughly one
thousand agents evaluated by the agency exactly one is in this category.
A second problem with the IARC process — one that reinforces the
classification problem — is that some of the working groups convened to
assess a particular agent have included scientists who have carried out
studies on the agent under evaluation. It is fanciful to think that
scientists who have a vital stake in a particular question can evaluate
the evidence, including their own studies, dispassionately.
Finally, IARC reaches its assessments by consensus. But this can mean
that those who are more forceful and persuasive may influence the group
decision-making process. In addition, consensus implies a philosophic
stance which has nothing to do with science.
All three of these flaws came together in IARC’s assessment of cell phones:
undue emphasis on a small number of positive epidemiologic studies from
a single group, when the much larger body of studies indicated no
elevated risk; the improper influence of an activist researcher (the
lead author of the anomalous positive studies) on the deliberations of
the working group; and, finally, a tilt toward the “precautionary
principle.”
The precautionary principle states that, if there is uncertainty
regarding the effects of exposure to an agent, the burden of proof that
exposure does not cause harm falls on those who utilize the agent. While
this formulation may sound reasonable, in actuality it has nothing to
contribute to the assessment of risks. First, there are always
uncertainties, and it is not possible to prove the absence of risk.
Furthermore, in practice invocation of the precautionary principle
focuses attention solely on the possibility of harm, often ignoring
information about the dose to which people are exposed, avoiding
consideration of benefits of the agent in question and whether safer
substitutes are available, and giving greater weight to studies that
appear to indicate a hazard, even when these studies may be of poorer
quality.
For all its self-justifying claims, the precautionary principle seeks to
deny a central fact – there is no way to avoid risk in life – all we
can do is to try to use available knowledge to distinguish between
large, well-established risks; those that are probable; and those that
available evidence suggests are trivial or non-existent. ...
Geoffrey C. Kabat is a cancer epidemiologist at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and the author of Hyping Health Risks: Environmental Hazards in Daily Life and the Science of Epidemiology.
Some Oklahoma doctors are trying to reform the health care industry by offering cutting waste from surgical services and making costs transparent. They founded Surgery Center of Oklahoma. Reason.tv has produced a video about it. Here is what they have to say at their YouTube page.
Three years ago, Dr. Keith Smith, co-founder and managing partner of the
Surgery Center of Oklahoma, took an initiative that would only be
considered radical in the health care industry: He posted online a list
of prices for 112 common surgical procedures. The 51-year-old Smith, a
self-described libertarian, and his business partner, Dr. Steve Lantier,
founded the Surgery Center 15 years ago, after they became
disillusioned with the way patients were treated at St. Anthony Hospital
in Oklahoma City, where the two men worked as anesthesiologists. In
1997, Smith and Lantier bought the shell of a former surgical center
with the aim of creating a for-profit facility that could deliver
first-rate care at a fraction of what traditional hospitals charge.
The
major cause of exploding U.S. heath care costs is the third-party payer
system, a text-book concept in which A buys goods or services from B
that are paid for by C. Because private insurance companies or the
government generally pick up most of the tab for medical services,
patients don't have the normal incentive to seek out value.
The
Surgery Center's consumer-driven model could become increasingly common
as Americans look for alternatives to the traditional health care
market—an unintended consequence of Obamacare. Patients may have no
choice but to look outside the traditional health care industry in the
face of higher costs and reduced access to doctors and hospitals.
The Incidental Economist has a post with five graphs on life expectancy in the United States. (Zombie life expectancy arguments) Two stood out to me.
First, there is this chart that shows life expectancy for men in the United States at age 65. The population is split into income quartiles and then compared with other nations around the world. An even more interesting chart would have been split the population of other countries in to quartiles to see how they fare top to bottom.
The second map compares the change in average life expectancy for women, 1987-2007. The red counties are the places where life expectancy has declined.
I'm sure there are several factors at work. I saw this article today, Diabetes rates rocket in Oklahoma, South. Also, I saw a presentation by Allen Johnson of Christians for the Mountains that showed the link between mountain top mining and reduced health in counties in Kentucky and in West Virginia. I'm sure there are issues ranging from lifestyles to health care access involved. A picture really does say a thousand words.
4. Inhabitat reports on The World's First Commercial Vertical Farm Opens in Singapore. "The dense metropolis of Singapore is now home to the world’s first commercial vertical farm! Built by Sky Greens Farms, the rising steel structure will help the city grow more food locally, reducing dependence on imported produce. The new farm is able to produce 1 ton of fresh veggies every other day, which are sold in local supermarkets."
5. The New Republic has a very lengthy article The Mormon Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. It offers some interesting insights in to Mormonism's road from communalism to economic individualism, a trajectory followed by many Protestant sectarian movements. Jackson Lears writes:
"Mormons embraced economic individualism and hierarchical communalism;
they distrusted government interventions in business life but not in
moral life; they used their personal morality to underwrite their
monetary success. They celebrated endless progress through Promethean
striving. They paid little attention to introspection and much to
correct behavior. And their fundamental scripture confirmed that America
was God’s New Israel and the Mormons His Chosen People. It would be
hard to find an outlook more suited to the political culture of the
post–Reagan Republican Party."
"A number of students asked foreign policy questions, and then a young woman asked me about the responses I have received to my Atlantic cover story from this past summer, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All."
I answered, and several other young women followed up. After ten
minutes or so, I saw that the roughly 50 percent guys in the room had
gone completely silent. When I commented on the suddenly one-sided
nature of the conversation, one young man volunteered that he "had been
raised in a strong feminist household" and considered himself to be
fully supportive of male-female equality, but he was reluctant to say
anything for fear he would be misunderstood. A number of the other guys
around the table nodded in agreement."
7. French and Spanish legal documents from colonial Louisiana are being digitized, opening up a new window on colonial history in that part of the world. Colonial La. records shed new light on US history
8. People who know me personally know I tend to use sarcasm and double entendre in spoken communication. One of my biggest blogging challenges is editing most of this out of posts. Emoticons can help but some of the biggest misunderstandings I have had came from people not being able to see my wink or big grin as I write certain things. For that reason, I found this interesting: The Strange Science Of Translating Sarcasm Online
"In their new book "Religion and AIDS in Africa" (Oxford University Press), sociologists Jenny Trinitapoli and Alexander Weinreb seek to challenge the widespread view that religious beliefs and communities have unwittingly assisted in the spread of the disease through their resistance to preventative sex education. They also show that not only have religious groups had a largely positive role in AIDS prevention, but also how the epidemic has shaped religious beliefs in unexpected ways."
Man does not live by GDP alone. An introduction to the Legatum Institute's latest Prosperity Index.
It
doesn't take a degree from Oxford to understand that a nation's average income --
even after adjustments for purchasing power, to make international comparisons
more relevant -- is an inadequate measure of comparative well-being. That
reality has inspired numerous attempts to create a better measure. The latest,
most comprehensive, and arguably most insightful, is the Legatum Institute's Prosperity Index for 2012,
released just this week. I can't claim utter objectivity here: I've been a
consultant to the Legatum Institute. I suspect, though, that you won't need
much convincing to be captured by this ambitious effort.
Back to
that pesky measurement problem. For decades, the United Nations has been
brewing a straightforward improvement on income rankings on a regular basis, work
largely inspired by the passions of Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen.
The UN's Human
Development Index blends per capita income, years of schooling, and life
expectancy. And in the past few years, it's added an "inequality adjusted"
version that discounts each component according to how equally it is
distributed in the population before combining them in index form.
Obviously,
though, other elements matter to well-being -- among them human rights,
economic freedom, socioeconomic mobility, personal security, social insurance,
and social cohesion. Other indexes try to capture one or more of these
attributes. Thus the Heritage/WSJ Index of Economic Freedom
ranks countries according to ten criteria ranging from property rights to
entrepreneurship. The World Economic Forum measures
national competitiveness, writ large. The Life
Satisfaction Index simply cuts to the chase, ranking countries according to
surveys of self-reported happiness.
The
Legatum Institute's approach is truly catholic (with a small c). First,
countries are rated according to eight sub-indexes (economy,
entrepreneurship/opportunity, governance, education, health, safety/security,
personal freedom, and social capital), which are derived from 89 variables. Some
are objective (e.g. the unemployment rate) and some subjective (the percentage
who answered "yes" to the question: "Did you worry yesterday?") The raw data,
by the way, can be accessed on the website.
Scores
on each of the eight sub-indexes are given equal weight in producing the
aggregate rankings. ...
(Reuters) - Scientists have come up with a test for the virus that causes AIDS that is ten times more sensitive and a fraction of the cost of existing methods, offering the promise of better diagnosis and treatment in the developing world.
The test uses nanotechnology to give a result that can be seen with the naked eye by turning a sample red or blue, according to research from scientists at Imperial College in London published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology.
"Our approach affords for improved sensitivity,
does not require sophisticated instrumentation and it is ten times
cheaper," Molly Stevens, who led the research, told Reuters. ...
... The test could also be reconfigured to detect
other diseases, such as sepsis, Leishmaniasis, Tuberculosis and malaria,
Stevens said.
Testing is not only crucial in picking up the HIV virus early but also for monitoring the effectiveness of treatments. ...
The new sensor works by testing serum, a clear
watery fluid derived from blood samples, in a disposable container for
the presence of an HIV biomarker called p24.
If
p24 is present, even in minute concentrations, it causes the tiny gold
nanoparticles to clump together in an irregular pattern that turns the
solution blue. A negative result separates them into ball shapes that
generate a red color. ...
The New Rice for Africa variety has become part of the debate over
whether a Green Revolution is the best approach to ensure food security
in Africa. ...
JAMBUR, The Gambia—The dissemination of the high-yielding New Rice
for Africa (NERICA) seeds has sparked contention that is a microcosm for
a central debate in global agricultural development: does Africa need
its own Green Revolution, an effort that 50 years ago saw dramatic
productivity increases through the use of new crop technologies in Asia
and Latin America?
NERICA, developed by 2004 World Food Prize winner Dr. Monty Jones,
is being promoted by the Africa Rice Center mainly in West African
countries where rice is a staple food. It is a cross between an Asian
variety, responsible for the high yield, and an African variety, which
ensures its local adaptability.
West African governments have touted NERICA as a hallmark of a new
Green Revolution and as a path to boosting rice self-sufficiency,
especially after the 2008 food price spike exposed the dangers of import
dependence. On the other side, advocates of “food sovereignty”—centered
on farmers’ control over food systems—have voiced strong opposition.
The advocacy organization GRAIN has labeled NERICA a “trap for small farmers”
who will become vulnerable to expensive chemical fertilizers and seeds,
a situation widely cited by critics of the 1960s Green Revolution.
What I’ve found in Jambur, which in 2002 became the first Gambian
village to access the new crop, is a much more nuanced picture, one that
in fact incorporates elements of each side of the debate. This suggests
what a tactical misstep it would be for food sovereignty loyalists to
completely remove themselves from engaging with a new variety just
because it has become embedded in the discourse of a new Green
Revolution. ...
"Science is full of surprises. Chemist Paul Edmiston's search for a new
way to detect explosives at airports, instead, led to the creation of
what's now called "Osorb," swellable, organically-modified silica, or
glass, capable of absorbing oil and other contaminants from water. Osorb
has become the principal product of a company in Wooster called
ABSMaterials, where Edmiston is now chief scientist. With support from
the National Science Foundation (NSF), Edmiston and his colleagues at
ABSMaterials are developing water remediation technologies for cities
and industries -- everything from storm water to agricultural runoff.
Municipal water systems and companies in several U.S. states and
Canadian provinces are using Osorb. ABSMaterials is creating formulas to
address various contaminants, including hydrocarbons, pharmaceuticals,
pesticides, herbicides, chlorinated solvents and endocrine disruptors."
Various groups of scientists have recently created thyroid cells in the lab, grown a new ear in the skin a woman's own arm, and won a Nobel Prize for figuring out how to reprogram cells so that they can turn into a variety of cell types.
In the future, there may be no limit to the kinds of organs and body parts that can be created from scratch.
One hope is to make donor organs obsolete, or at least far less
necessary, eliminating long waiting lists for transplants. By using a
patient's own cells, the new wave of regenerative medicine also
circumvents ethical arguments and reduces the chance that recipients
will reject their new parts.
"We now have the ability for the first time to create a virtually
unlimited supply of all the cell types and building blocks we need to
make what we want to make," said stem cell researcher Robert Lanza,
chief scientific officer at Advanced Cell Technology, a biotechnology
company in Marlborough, Mass. "Now we just have to put it all together." ...
PRAGUE – Campaigners on important but complex issues, annoyed by the
length of time required for public deliberations, often react by
exaggerating their claims, hoping to force a single solution to the
forefront of public debate. But, however well intentioned, scaring the
public into a predetermined solution often backfires: when people
eventually realize that they have been misled, they lose confidence and
interest.
Last month, there were two examples of this in a single week. On
September 19, the French researcher Gilles-Eric Séralini attempted to
fuel public opposition to genetically modified foods by showing the public
how GM corn, with and without the pesticide Roundup, caused huge tumors
and early death in 200 rats that had consumed it over two years. ...
Lomborg highlights the throughly bogus nature of the study and it funding and notes:
Moreover, Séralini’s results contradict the latest meta-study
of 24 long-term studies (up to two years and five generations), which
found that the data do “not suggest any health hazards” and display “no
statistically significant differences” between GM and conventional food.
Why is this important?
This debacle matters because many GM crops provide tangible benefits for
people and the environment. They enable farmers to produce higher
yields with fewer inputs (such as pesticides), so that more food can be
produced from existing farmland. That, in turn, implies less human encroachment into natural ecosystems,
enabling greater biodiversity. But, of course, Séralini’s pictures of
cancer-addled rats munching GM corn have instead been burned into the
public imagination.
Then there was a climate change report:
The Séralini fiasco was only a
week old when, on September 26, the Climate Vulnerability Forum, a
group of countries led by Bangladesh, launched the second edition of its
Global Vulnerability Monitor.
Headlines about the launch were truly alarming: Over the next 18 years,
global warming would kill 100 million people and cost the economy
upwards of $6.7 trillion annually.
These
public messages were highly misleading – and clearly intended to shock
and disturb. The vast majority of deaths discussed in the report did not
actually result from global warming. Outdoor air pollution – caused by
fossil-fuel combustion, not by global warming – contributed to 30% of
all deaths cited in the study. And 60% of the total deaths reflect the
burning of biomass (such as animal dung and crop residues) for cooking
and heating, which has no relation to either fossil fuels or global
warming.
In
total, the study exaggerated more than 12-fold the number of deaths
that could possibly be attributed to climate change, and it more than
quadrupled the potential economic costs, simply to grab attention. ...
He goes on:
Likewise, overcoming the
burden of indoor air pollution will happen only when people can use
kerosene, propane, and grid-based electricity. If the Global Vulnerability Monitor’s
recommendation to cut back on fossil fuels were taken seriously, the
result would be slower economic growth and continued reliance on dung,
cardboard, and other low-grade fuels, thereby prolonging the suffering
that results from indoor air pollution.
Global grain production is expected to reach a record high of 2.4
billion tons in 2012, an increase of 1 percent from 2011 levels,
according to new research conducted by the Nourishing the Planet project for our Vital Signs Online service. According to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO), the production of grain for animal feed is growing the fastest—a
2.1 percent increase from 2011. Grain for direct human consumption grew
1.1 percent from 2011. ...
... Further highlights from the report:
The FAO expects global maize production to increase 4.1 percent from 2011, reaching an estimated 916 million tons in 2012.
Global rice production achieved an all-time high of 480 million tons in 2011, a 2.6 percent increase from 2010.
World wheat production is projected to drop to 675.1 million tons in
2012, down 3.6 percent from 2011, with the largest declines in feed and
biofuel utilization.
Since 1961, grain production has increased 269 percent and grain
yield has increased 157 percent, while the grain harvest area has
increased only 25 percent. This is due largely to the Green Revolution
and the introduction of high-yielding grain varieties.
To purchase your own copy of State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet, please click HERE.
... Researchers have long documented that the most educated Americans were
making the biggest gains in life expectancy, but now they say mortality
data show that life spans for some of the least educated Americans are
actually contracting. Four studies in recent years identified modest
declines, but a new one that looks separately at Americans lacking a
high school diploma found disturbingly sharp drops in life expectancy
for whites in this group. Experts not involved in the new research said
its findings were persuasive.
The reasons for the decline remain unclear, but researchers offered
possible explanations, including a spike in prescription drug overdoses
among young whites, higher rates of smoking among less educated white women, rising obesity, and a steady increase in the number of the least educated Americans who lack health insurance.
The steepest declines were for white women without a high school
diploma, who lost five years of life between 1990 and 2008, said S. Jay
Olshansky, a public health professor at the University of Illinois at
Chicago and the lead investigator on the study, published last month
in Health Affairs. By 2008, life expectancy for black women without a
high school diploma had surpassed that of white women of the same
education level, the study found.
White men lacking a high school diploma lost three years of life. Life expectancy for both blacks and Hispanics of the same education level rose, the data showed. But blacks over all do not live as long as whites, while Hispanics live longer than both whites and blacks. ...
Here is a chart that shows the differences: Click here
... Sanergy, for example, is a company launched by a group of students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Sloan School of Management.
The group has designed low-profile sanitation centers that can be
constructed anywhere to provide hot showers and clean toilets. These
facilities can be built quickly and easily with affordable materials.
Waste from the centers is deposited into airtight containers that are
collected daily. Then it’s brought to processing facilities that can
convert it into biogas. The biogas generates electricity, while the
leftover material is made into fertilizer.
The company won a USD $100,000 grant from MIT and has been building
its first units in Nairobi. It charges a low pay-per-use fee and hopes
to grow by franchising the operation of its units, creating an income
opportunity for enterprising residents. As the number of toilets
proliferates, so too will the amount of energy the company is able to
generate from its processing facilities. It hopes to eventually generate
enough energy that it can sell its power to the national grid.
The company’s unique and innovative approach is notable for the way
it combines the decentralization of waste collection with the
centralization of waste processing. Retrofitting the slums with proper
sewage drains is a near impossibility and can be an expensive and
potentially politically volatile effort in areas where landownership is
at best ambiguous. The self-contained units grant access to sanitary
facilities to even those far off the grid. But by centralizing the
processing of waste, Sanergy’s facilities will take advantage of the
economies of scale present in the waste conversion process. ...
... The latest advance comes from University of California, San Diego
Nanoengineering Professor Shaochen Chen, whose group has demonstrated
the ability to print three-dimensional blood vessels in seconds.
If the technique proves scalable, it could revolutionize regenerative
medicine. Imagine being able to recover from a heart attack by
replacing your faulty aortic valve with a brand new one, made of your
own cells. No more pig valves, no more mechanical solutions, no more
waiting for a donor. The donor is you.
How does it work? All printers require feedstock. For 2D printers,
that’s ink. For 3D, it can be plastic, some metals – or in this case,
biocompatible hydrogels. What’s new here is the adaptation of techniques
ideal for printing large objects – such as car parts or tools for the
home – to a micro and nano scale, in order to print the tiny veins
responsible for shipping oxygen and nutrients around the body.
The new approach, reported in Advanced Materials, is called dynamic optical projection stereolithography (DOPsL). ...
That doesn't mean it's not healthier. How our obsession with organics' "healthiness" led us away from the term's roots.
But from Stanford University comes new research suggesting what we
should have known all along: organic food isn't actually more nutritious
than
traditionally-farmed goods.
In a widelypublicized and discussed analysis of more than 200 studies comparing organic to regular food products, researchers have found
that organics don't have more vitamins or minerals (with the lone
exception of phosphorus, which we all get in sufficient amounts
anyway). Nor do they have an appreciable effect when it comes to heading
off food-borne
illness, although the germs found in conventional meat do have a
higher chance of being drug-resistant (more on that in a bit)....
... It's worth keeping in mind that organic refers only to a
particular method of production; while switching to organic foods
can be good for you insofar as doing so helps you avoid nasty things
like chemicals and additives, there's nothing in the organic foods
themselves that gives them an
inherent nutritional advantage over non-organics. In other
words, it's not wrong to say organic food is "healthier" than
non-organics. It's just unrealistic to think that your organic diet is
slowly turning you into Clark Kent. ...
... For all the attention devoted to the ways organic is better for you, we should remember that organic
began chiefly as an argument about the
environment. From the agency's perspective, to buy organic is to
respect the land your food came from. It means taking pains to ensure
that your farms
remain bountiful and productive, even decades from now. The case is
one part self-interest over the long term, and one part a statement of
ethics. Not
really what you'd expect from a mechanical bureaucratic institution.
Buying organic is also a statement about public health. Nowhere is
this clearer than in the case of antibiotics. Conventional farms have
been putting the
stuff in animal feed for decades -- even though we've known since the 1970s
about the health hazards that the animal use of antibiotics poses
for humans. Reducing society's chances of inadvertently creating a
superbug is a good
reason to purchase organic foods.
There are the more immediate health benefits of buying organic:
you'll avoid the chemicals, preservatives, and hormones that
conventional farms often use
to treat their foods. ...
... And then there's the reason many people find most compelling of all: the
health of workers in the field. For some consumers, buying organic is a
human-rights issue. ...
"Just cleared by the FDA late last month, this new ingestible sensor from
California-based Proteus Digital Health is about the size of a grain of
sand and can be integrated into an inert pill or medicine. Once in the
stomach, it is powered solely by contact with stomach fluid and
communicates a unique signal that identifies the timing of ingestion.
This information is transferred through the user’s body tissue to a
battery-operated patch worn on the skin that detects the signal along
with physiological and behavioral metrics such as heart rate, body
position and activity. That data, in turn, gets relayed by the patch to a
mobile application, where it can be made accessible by caregivers and
clinicians."
... The United States' Bureau of Labor Statistics breaks down the number of injuries and illnesses by industry, with some surprising results [PDF]. Nursing and residential care facilities rank in the top ten most dangerous (14.7 injuries per 100 full-time workers for state industries and 10.9 for local industries). In comparison, petroleum refinery incidences barely register (at 0.7 cases per 100 full-time workers), according to another table [PDF]. ...
Recent discussions about health care delivery have focused on value, defined as health outcomes achieved per dollar spent. One unique window into value over the past two centuries is afforded by mortality and cost data from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), which celebrated its 200th anniversary in 2011. These data complement the chronicles of MGH care that the Journal has been publishing since 1924 in the form of “Case Records of the Massachusetts General Hospital.” The story these sources tell has implications beyond MGH, reflecting national trends in acute care. ...
The article's conclusion:
... We thus seem to have identified four eras of value in U.S. medicine, as chronicled at one academic medical center. The first was characterized by relatively high inpatient mortality but relatively low costs, with year-to-year variation probably determined by secular events and epidemics more than by the quality of care. During the second era, value increased modestly with the introduction of novel high-impact therapies, from salvarsan in 1910 to penicillin and other antibiotics; medical breakthroughs were being applied in hospitals that were caring for a wider spectrum of patients. In the third era, value increased further, as a growing research–industrial complex introduced diagnostics and therapeutics to address an expanding array of diseases. In each of these eras, challenges were encountered and gradually addressed in a manner that improved value.
The post-2000 era, however, seems to be characterized by diminishing returns, with growth in costs far outpacing reductions in inpatient mortality. Treatment of severely ill patients with increasingly complex conditions contributes to this phenomenon, but that fact does little to mitigate the reality that for the first time, improvements in inpatient mortality may be coming at unsustainable increases in cost. Close examination of our past clarifies just how daunting is the challenge we face today.
This article reminded me of seminar I attended last summer. A doctor from John Hopkins gave the example of a low-income middle-aged single man who weighed 380 pounds, had diabetes, mental disabilities, no support network, no transportation, and a number of other challenges brought on by his weight and diabetes. How is care to be efficiently and effectively delivered to such a person? All the pieces need to be addressed simultaneously but we have segmented uncoordinated services. Any one segment trying to do its part uncoordinated from the others is largely useless, yet we spend vast sums of money doing just that. These cases are by far some of the biggest drains on private practice physcians.
There is a great article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review that I think has some good insights: Collective Impact
... The decline in African child mortality is speeding up. In most countries it now falling about twice as fast as during the early 2000s and 1990s. More striking, the average fall is faster than it was in China in the early 1980s, when child mortality was declining around 3% a year, admittedly from a lower base.
The only recent fall comparable to the largest of those in Africa occurred in Vietnam between 1985-90 and 1990-95, when child mortality fell by 37%—and even that was slower than in Senegal and Rwanda. Rwanda’s child-mortality rate more than halved between 2005-06 and 2010-11. Senegal cut its rate from 121 to 72 in five years (2005-10). It took India a quarter of century to make that reduction. The top rates of decline in African child mortality are the fastest seen in the world for at least 30 years.
The striking thing about the falls is how widespread they have been. They have happened in countries large and small, Muslim and Christian, and in every corner of the continent. The three biggest successes are in east, west and central Africa. The success stories come from Africa’s two most populous countries, Nigeria and Ethiopia, and from tiddlers such as Benin (population: 9m). ...
(CBS News) The rate of teenagers becoming mothers is declining rapidly, according to a new report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The average teen birth rate decreased 9 percent from 2009 to 2010, reaching an all time low of 34.3 births per 1,000 women aged 15 to 19.
That's a 44 percent drop from 1991 to 2010. There were less teenage mothers in 2010 than any year since 1946.
The effect is being seen across most groups. Hispanic teens, who normally have a higher birth rate than the rest of the population, reported less young birth mothers than ever before in 2010. While there are still 55.7 teen births in the Hispanic community for every 1,000 births, numbers declined 12 percent for Hispanic and American Indian or Alaskan Native teens. Rates dropped 13 percent for Asian and Pacific Islander mothers. Non-Hispanic white and non-Hispanic black teenage mother saw their rates drop of 9 percent.
What's behind the reduced rates? The CDC claims that the effective use at prevention messages has helped stop teenage pregnancy. Both increased use of contraception and use of two methods of birth control (usually birth control polls and condoms) at once have been observed. ...
Emma Edwards, 26, has no control over the fine motor muscles in her hands, which stay tightly and awkwardly clenched. She also can’t talk, walk or move her arms more than 20 inches at a time.
Edwards, who suffered a traumatic brain injury in 2001, can write e-mails, though, and she’s revisiting a favorite pastime, sketching, for the first time in a decade, thanks to her iPad and software applications that can cost as little as $7.
That’s a switch from the $15,000 communication device she had tried, a 9-pound machine approved by her insurer that tracks eye movement on a special grid corresponding to the alphabet. That device kept her tied to those in the room around her. The iPad, along with several other consumer-driven apps, has reopened the world to her.
“You see the joy on her face” when she’s using it, said her mother, Jill. “It represents freedom for her.”
Edwards, of Rochester, Minnesota, is part of a grassroots movement sweeping the $1 billion-a-year assistive-technology market. While Pittsburgh-based DynaVox Inc. (DVOX), closely held Tobii Technology from Stockholm and Prentke Romich GmbH of Kassel, Germany, dominate the field, the advent of Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPad and an open operating system that enables anyone to create software is changing the way thousands of disabled people communicate and take care of their daily lives. ...
Combining gemcitabine with MRK003, an experimental drug, triggers a chain of events leading to pancreatic cancer cell death, researchers from Cambridge reported in the Journal of Experimental Medicine. The researchers explained that when the two drugs are combined, the effect of each one is multiplied, thus intensifying the destruction of pancreatic cancer cells.
Professor David Tuveson, from the Cambridge Research Institute, UK, and team demonstrated in animal studies that MRK003, an experimental medication, when combined with chemotherapy medication gemcitabine, set off a domino effect which ultimately destroyed the malignant cells.
The drug combo is being used in a human study, a clinical trial, which is being managed by Cambridge University Hospitals Foundation Trust, together with Cancer Research UK's Drug Development Office. ...
MRK003 is a gamma secretase inhibitor. It inhibits, or blocks a crucial cell signaling pathway in both pancreatic cancer cells and the cells in the lining of blood vessels that supply the tumor with vital nourishment (endothelial cells).
The researchers found that when MRK003 is added to gemcitabine, the chemotherapy drug's ability to destroy tumors was significantly enhanced. Gemcitabine is a nucleoside analog, which is marketed as Gemzar by Eli Lilly. Gemcitabine is commonly used in pancreatic cancer therapy, as well as non-small cell lung cancer, bladder cancer and breast cancer. ...
... Pancreatic cancer is the 5th most deadly cancer in the UK, with about 8,000 people being diagnosed with the cancer each year. Only 1 in 5 pancreatic cancer patients usually survive a year after their diagnosis, however, the numbers have more than doubled in survivors since the 1970's. ...
This is a very lengthy article that is well worth reading. I'm just presenting the opening and the conclusion here. In short, to quote a former US President from eighty years ago, "... let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance." FDR
Whether or not you agree with all the author's analysis, I do think it is wise for us to reflect from time to time on our own characterization of things, on our tendency to manufacture bogeyman on to which we can project our fear, on our temptation to use fear as a means of political gain.
In this moment of economic challenge, it can be difficult to keep our problems in perspective. The scale of the financial crisis and the subsequent recession, the weakness of the recovery, the persistence of high unemployment, and the possibility of yet another shock — this time originating in Europe — have left Americans feeling deeply insecure about their economic prospects.
Unfortunately, too many politicians, activists, analysts, and journalists (largely, but not exclusively, on the left) seem determined to feed that insecurity in order to advance an economic agenda badly suited to our actual circumstances. They argue not that a financial crisis pulled the rug out from under our enviably comfortable lives, but rather that our lives were not all that comfortable to begin with. A signal feature of our economy in recent decades, they contend, has been pervasive economic risk — a function not of the ups and downs of the business cycle, but of the very structure of our economic system. According to this view, no American is immune to dreadful economic calamities like income loss, chronic joblessness, unaffordable medical bills, inadequate retirement savings, or crippling debt. Most of us — "the 99%," to borrow the slogan of the Occupy Wall Street protestors — cannot escape the insecurity fomented by an economy geared to the needs of the wealthy few. Misery is not a marginal risk on the horizon: It is an ever-present danger, and was even before the recession.
But compelling though this narrative may be to headline writers, it is fundamentally wrong as a description of America's economy both before and after the recession. When analyzed correctly, the available data belie the notions that this degree of economic risk pervades American life and that our circumstances today are significantly more precarious than they were in the past. Even as we slog through what are likely to be years of lower-than-normal growth and higher-than-normal unemployment, most Americans will be only marginally worse off than they were in past downturns.
The story of pervasive and overwhelming risk is not just inaccurate, it is dangerous to our actual economic prospects. This systematic exaggeration of our economic insecurity saps the confidence of consumers, businesses, and investors — hindering an already sluggish recovery from the Great Recession. It also leads to misdirected policies that are too zealous and too broad, overextending our political and economic systems. The result is that it has become much more difficult to solve the specific problems that do cry out for resolution, and to help those Americans who really have fallen behind.
Only by moving beyond this misleading exaggeration, carefully reviewing the realities of economic risk in America, and restoring a sense of calm and perspective to our approach to economic policymaking can we find constructive solutions to our real economic problems. ...
And the conclusion:
POLITICS BY HORROR STORY
Because we have yet to crawl out of the worst downturn since the Great Depression, many Americans are willing to believe every negative description of our economic circumstances, no matter how inflated. But it is important to remember that the economic doomsayers did not originate with the recession. They were active in the 1980s, claiming that de-industrialization would be the death knell of the middle class and that Germany and Japan were destined to leave us in the dust. Their claims were prevalent through most of the 1990s, when outsourcing was said to foreshadow disaster for American workers in the midst of a "white-collar recession" (which subsequent research showed had not hit professionals nearly as hard as popular accounts suggested). And the gloom was apparent in the pre-recession 2000s, in all the talk of jobless recoveries, "stagnating" living standards, and families running to stand still.
The unfortunate irony is that, in proclaiming economic doom, these Cassandras may do more to harm the truly disadvantaged than to help them. Economist Benjamin Friedman and sociologist William Julius Wilson have independently argued that societies are more generous to those in need when economic times are good. It is not clear why convincing the broad middle class that it is teetering on the brink should be more likely to inspire solidarity than to inspire tight-fistedness and hoarding.
The horror stories harm workers in other ways as well. In good times, scaring workers may make them less willing to demand more from their employers in the way of compensation or better working conditions. Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan famously cited job insecurity as a primary reason for low inflation (and therefore low wage growth) in the late 1990s; on the left, former labor secretary and American Prospect co-founder Robert Reich concurred.
In bad times, meanwhile, scaring workers (as well as consumers, investors, and entrepreneurs) only delays recovery. Digging out of our current hole will require businesses to create jobs, which will happen only when consumers start feeling comfortable enough to spend money again and when investors start feeling comfortable enough to take risks again. We do not have to whitewash the seriousness of economic conditions to talk more hopefully (and accurately) about the enduring strengths of our economy.
Exaggerating economic problems has political costs, too. It is hard to read Confidence Men, journalist Ron Suskind's recent account of the first two years of economic policymaking in the Obama administration, without concluding that health-care reform distracted the president and his advisors from thinking about how to shore up the flagging economy. Even now, the huge political lift — and fiscal cost — of the Affordable Care Act has made it vastly more difficult to enact policies truly capable of fostering economic growth.
Such effective economic policies and reforms will need to build on our economy's strengths in order to address its weaknesses. By badly distorting our understanding of both, the bogeyman narrative adopted by too many analysts, activists, and politicians makes it more difficult to help those Americans who do face very real hardships and dangers. If we are to effectively confront the fiscal and economic challenges of the 21st century, we will need to begin by seeing things as they really are.
ATLANTA (AP) — For the first time in almost half a century, homicide has fallen off the list of the nation's top 15 causes of death, bumped by a lung illness that often develops in elderly people who have choked on their food. ...
The CDC's latest annual report on deaths contained several nuggets of good news:
—The infant mortality rate dropped to an all-time low of 6.14 deaths per 1,000 births in 2010. It was 6.39 the year before.
—U.S. life expectancy for a child born in 2010 was about 78 years and 8 months, up about a little more than one month from life expectancy for 2009.
—Heart disease and cancer remain the top killers, accounting for nearly half the nation's more than 2.4 million deaths in 2010. But the death rates from them continued to decline.
— Death rates for five other leading causes of death also dropped in 2010, including stroke, chronic lower respiratory diseases, accidents, flu/pneumonia and blood infections.
But death rates increased for Alzheimer's disease, which is the nation's sixth-leading killer, kidney disease (No. 8), chronic liver disease and cirrhosis (No. 12), Parkinson's disease (No. 14) and pneumonitis.
The report is drawn from a review of at least 98 percent of the death certificates filed in the U.S. in 2010.
Of 108 COUNTRIES where malaria is endemic, ten are on track to eliminate the disease in the near future, according to a report by Roll Back Malaria published on October 18th. For many others getting to zero deaths from the parasite is a distant dream. But that should not stop a celebration of the progress that has been made over the past decade, during which time deaths from malaria have fallen by 20% (see chart). The correlation between reduced deaths and money spent is fairly strong, much more so than the correlation between conventional aid and economic development. Given that improved health often comes before advances in GDP per capita, spending on malaria may eventually show an even greater return than it already has to date.
My second book has been released. It’s entitled Upside: Surprising Good News about the State of Our World, and it’s available on Amazon, Christian bookstores, and various other places… if there are any left ;-)
The guiding question for this book is whether the world is getting better or worse. Now, I realize that you’re probably thinking right now that that’s too narrow of a topic, but bear with me, it’s a question worth asking. ...
... My book develops two paradoxes. One, many, many things in the world are getting better, but most people are convinced that things are getting worse. Two, most people think that their lives are getting better, but their community and nation is getting worse. In my book I explore the reasons for these paradoxes.
After that—since I’m a data-driven guy—I present information about what’s happening in the world. I cover areas that most people take as important, such as income and poverty, health, education, happiness, crime, freedom, faith, marriage, families, and the environment.
In each of these areas, I present the best available data about how things are changing. The data come from sources such as the US Census Bureau, the World Bank, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Environmental Protection Agency, and various sociological surveys.
I finish with examining various explanations for why so many things are getting better, and what we should do in response. ...
I can't wait to read this book! As long time Kronicle readers know, I've visited this topic over and over again at my blog. I did a World Social Indicators - 2008 series that details some of these issues. The incredible amount of pessimism in the face of the greatest expansion of global prosperity and physical well-being in the history of the world is just astounding.
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