Kruse Kronicle

Carpe Datum! Paragraphs from "Galileo's Middle Finger"

Alice Dreger's "Galileo's Middle Finger: Heretics, Activists, and the Search for Justice in Science," is one of the most refreshing books I have read recently. Dreger is a clinical medical humanities and bioethics professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine. Nearly twenty years ago, Dreger became an activist for the rights of intersex persons. She fought to change the prevailing practice of surgically altering babies to "rectify" ambiguous genitalia, which science suggested was too risky relative to the outcomes, raising many ethical questions. Motivated by varying convictions, surgeons were ignoring science. But before long, Dreger found herself advocating for scientists against activists on another intersex issue. The activists ignored science and attacked scientists when research potentially contradicted activists' strongly held convictions. This book is Dreger's reflections on what she learned from these experiences. I expect to publish a review of the book shortly. For now, I want to post three power sections from the book. (All emphases in the original.)

This quote comes as she is reflecting on her experience talking with researchers at the University of Missouri who had been targeted because of controversial research findings.

The story I had been told about Mike Bailey and Craig Palmer and so many other white straight male scientists accused of producing bad and dangerous findings, the story I had willingly heard as an academic feminist in the humanities, was that these guys were just soldiers of the oppressive establishment against which we good guys had come to fight. They came from old dogma about human nature; we came from progress and social justice, and we had to win. But here I was faced with the fact that not only were these scientists politically progressive when it came to things like the rights of transgender people and rape victims, they were also willing to look for facts that might get them in hot water. They very much cared about progress in social justice, but they cared first about know what was true.

That didn't mean that these scientists (or I, or anyone else) existed without bias. It didn't mean their work wasn't shaped and sometimes tainted by politics, ideologies, and loyalties. But it did mean they tried to adhere to an intellectual agenda that wasn't first and only political. They believed that good science couldn't be done by just Ouija-boarding your answers. Good scholarship had to put the search for truth first and the quest for social justice second.

In Missouri [University of Missouri, Columbia], I realized that there's a practical reason for this order: Sustainable justice couldn't be achieved if we didn't know what's true about the world. (You can't effectively prosecute and prevent rape if you don't understand why, where, and how rape happens.) But there was also a more essential reason for putting the quest for truth first: it was who we scholars were supposed to be. As the little prop plane flew from Columbia, Missouri, toward the sunrise, of this I was sure: We scholars had to put the search for evidence before everything else, even when the evidence pointed to facts we did not want to see. The world needed that from us, to maintain – by our example, by our very existence – a world that would keep learning and questioning, that would remain free in thought, inquiry, and word.

Nevertheless I knew many of my colleagues in the humanities would disagree. I could practically hear them arguing against me, as if they were seated all around me in those cramped fake-leather seats, yelling to be heard above the churning propellers. We have to use our privilege to advance the rights of the marginalized. We can't let people like Bailey and Palmer say what is true about the world. We have to give voice and power to the oppressed and let them say what is true. Science is as biased as all human endeavors, and so we have to empower the disempowered, and speak always with them.

Involuntarily shaking my head, I argued back: "Justice cannot be determined merely by social position. Justice cannot be advanced by letting 'truth' be determined by political goals. Only people like us, with insane amounts of privilege, could ever think it was a good idea to decide what is right before we even know what it true. Only insanely privileged people like us, who never fear the knock of a corrupt police, could think guilt or innocence should be determined by identity rather than facts. It isn't perfect, but look what it has gotten us: antibiotics, an explanation and a treatment for AIDS, reliable histories of the Holocaust, DNA-based exonerations of those falsely accused of crimes, spaceships on the surface of Mars – hell, the plane we're flying in now.

Where would we be, I wondered, if the pope had ultimately won out over Galileo, if he succeeded in using his self-serving Catholic identity politics to forever quash Galileo's evidence that the ancients and the Bible were wrong about the Earth? Power plays as morality plays, whether by popes or feminists, are just that – plays. I longed for the real world, longed to pick apart each history to know what's true, to have my work judged by others, to find evidence that an idea is right or wrong. (136-138)

This passage comes from the end of the last chapter.

I want to say to activists: If you want justice, support the search for truth. Engage in searches for the truth. If you really want meaningful progress and not just temporary self-righteousness, carpe datum. You can begin with principles, yes, but to pursue a principle effectively, you have to know if your route will lead to your destination. If you must criticize scholars whose work challenges yours, do so on the evidence, not by poisoning the land on which we all live.

To scholars I want to say more: Our fellow human beings can't afford to have us act like cattle in an industrial farming system. If we take seriously the importance of truth to justice and recognize the many forces now acting against the pursuit of knowledge – if we really get why our role in democracy is like no other – then we really ought to feel that we must do more to protect each other and the public from misinformation and disinformation. Doing so means taking on more responsibility to police ourselves and everybody else for accuracy and great objectivity – taking on with renewed vigor the pursuit of accurate knowledge and putting ourselves second to that pursuit.

I know that a lot of people who met me along the way in this work thought I'd end up on one side of the war between activists and scholars. The deeper I went, however, the more obvious it became that the best activists and the best scholars actually long for the same kind of world – a free one.

Here's the one thing I now know for sure after this every long trip: Evidence really is an ethical issue, the most important ethical issue in a modern democracy. If you want justice, you must work for truth. And if you want to work for truth, you must do a little more than wish for justice. (261-262)

These two paragraphs are near the end of the epilogue.

The problem is an old one: People don't really get that good intentions can't save you from hell. So long as we believe that bad acts are committed only by evil people and that good people do only good, we will fail to see, believe, or prevent these kinds of travesties. Nowadays I feel as though 90 percent of my time talking to academics and activists is spent trying to convince them of this: The people who are against you are not necessarily evil, and your own acts are not necessarily good. That's why we still need scholars and activists. It's not easy to see what's what in the heat of the moment, and we need people pushing for the truth and justice if we're going to get both right.

But most people I run into aren't like us humans. Most people I meet seem convinced that the goodness of their souls will keep them from committing bad acts. When they look back at history, they don't see what we historians see – dumb tragedies. They see simple moral dramas, with predictable characters enacting easy stories of good and evil. They don't understand that the Nazis probably didn't think they were "Nazis." (275-276)

Powerful food for thought.

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Anti-GMO: The Lethal Implications

Anthropogenic-driven climate change is a fact. As the climate changes, the poorest of humanity will suffer the greatest. The most ardent climate activists tell us this is settled science. So settled that questioning these conclusions puts you in league with people who deny the Jewish Holocaust ever happened. It is science!

Well, there is another issue around which there is even more scientific consensus. Megan Molteni, writing for UnDark:

According to a recent survey by the Pew Research Center in collaboration with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 88 percent of scientists believe these foods are safe to eat. Only 37 percent of the general public agrees. Republicans and Democrats are just as likely to be opposed to transgenic foods, as are people across different age groups. So why is it that we trust the National Academy of Sciences and the WHO when they say climate change is likely caused by humans, but not when they say these foods are safe?

Molteni highlights the recent development of goats modified to include an antimicrobial enzyme that helps humans fight off bacterial cells that cause diarrhea and other infections. The milk from these goats aids children in fighting off these diseases.

According to the World Health Organization, 525,000 children under five died last year from diarrheal diseases, mostly in poor communities in developing nations where waterborne diseases are rampant and vaccines and antibiotic treatments are difficult to acquire and distribute.

The modified goats could reduce millions of children's suffering, even death. A public university developed them and has had nearly two decades of testing and review. The goats could be distributed via whatever strategy seems most effective, even free. There is no sinister corporate entity lurking in the shadows. So why are the goats not in use?

First, regulation. Clearly, GMOs must be evaluated and regulated, but the present regulatory system is such a mishmash of regulation and entities that it is very costly and time-consuming to get approval. Consequently, the process is skewed toward large corporate entities who can work the system, provoking many anti-GMOers to make the regulatory process even more difficult.

Second, anti-GMOers have organized to oppose all GMO usage in developing nations, sometimes pitting well-funded European and American activists against poor agricultural workers who could benefit greatly from the technology.

But as scientists will tell you, "GMO" tells you zero about the merits of any particular product. What tells you about the merits is looking at the actual merits of the product!

Last month, the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine released a report assessing all the science available on genetically engineered crops. It concluded that we shouldn't be making generalizations about GMOs, but rather asking if a particular crop or GE product makes the world a better place or a more dangerous one, on a case-by-case basis. This was not exactly what people wanted to hear, the authors wrote: "We received impassioned requests to give the public a simple, general, authoritative answer about GE crops. Given the complexity of GE issues, we did not see that as appropriate."

The goats are not the only product caught up in this controversy. The linked article suggests others. In addition to nutrition and health, GMOs also have a role to play in adapting to warmer temperatures, with crops that grow more food with less water and fewer nutrients, for example.

… improving food security and public health without harming the environment will require the concerted use of many methods, from traditional breeding to organic farming. Genetic modification can't hold back rising sea levels or fill aquifers drained by years of drought. But there are important contributions to be made with problems that have been unsolvable by other means, the researchers say — if only regulations would allow it.

Climate activists routinely moralize about people who will not get on board with their initiatives, saying deniers are accountable for countless lives that will one day be diminished or lost due to our inaction on climate change. The poorest folks will suffer the most. This is their scientific conclusion. Yet when the same scientific community says GMO technology is safe, with the potential to save millions of lives in the here and now, while enhancing the welfare of countless others, the activists rise in opposition to the technology. This tells me that while some people are genuinely knowledgeable about the science of climate change and are alarmed about the consequences, the concern by multitudes is less about science and far more to do with subjective narratives with which science (happily for them) agrees. When the "naturalist" narrative is not supported, they disregard science instead of modifying their narrative.

I'd invite you to read Molteni's Spilled Milk article. In the meantime, my climate activist friends, unless you are willing to give full-throated support of GMOs here and now, do not let me ever again here, you decry the "anti-science" climate deniers. You are no different. Subjective considerations drive you every bit as much as climate deniers. Right now, people suffer and die because of your "anti-science" behavior.

Confronting Liberal and Conservative Biases on Science

New York Times reporter Eduardo Porter has an excellent piece about how ideology shapes our embrace/rejection of science. The left loves to rant about the "anti-science" right when the left participates just as much in the same anti-science behavior, and the left's anti-science behavior is every bit as destructive.

"The left is turning anti-science," Marc Andreessen, the creator of Netscape who as a venture capitalist has become one of the most prominent thinkers of Silicon Valley, told me not long ago.

He was reflecting broadly about science and technology. His concerns ranged from liberals' fear of genetically modified organisms to their mistrust of technology's displacement of workers in some industries. "San Francisco is an interesting case," he noted. "The left has become reactionary."

Still, liberal biases may be most dangerous in the context of climate change, the most significant scientific and technological challenge of our time. For starters, they stand against the only technology with an established track record of generating electricity at scale while emitting virtually no greenhouse gases: nuclear power.

Only 35 percent of Democrats, compared with 60 percent of Republicans, favor building more nuclear power plants, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

It is the G.O.P. that is closer to the scientific consensus. According to a separate Pew poll of members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 65 percent of scientists want more nuclear power too.

He goes on to note:

Research suggests that better scientific knowledge will not be sufficient, on its own, to overcome our biases. Neither will it be mostly about improving education in STEM fields. To defeat our scientific phobias and taboos will require understanding how the findings of science and their consequences fit into the cultural makeup of both liberals and conservatives.

Explaining in more detail:

It is not hard to figure out the biases. People on the right tend to like private businesses, which they see as productive job creators. They mistrust government. It's not surprising they will play down climate change when it seems to imply a package of policies that curb the actions of the former and give a bigger role to the latter.

On the left, by contrast, people tend to mistrust corporations — especially big ones — as corrupt and destructive. These are the institutions bringing us both nuclear power and genetically modified agriculture.

"When science is aligned with big corporations the left immediately, intuitively perceives the technology as not benefiting the greater good but only benefiting the corporation," said Matthew Nisbet, an expert on the communication of science at Northeastern University.

So when assessing the risks of different technological options, the left finds the risk of nuclear energy looming the highest, regardless of contrary evidence.

This doesn't affect only beliefs about climate change and energy policy. The research identified similar distortions in people's beliefs about the scientific consensus on the consequences of allowing concealed handguns. Biases also color beliefs in what science says and means across a range of other issues.

In the context of climate change, this heuristic presents an odd problem. It suggests that attitudes about climate change have little to do with education and people's understanding of science.

Fixing it won't require just better science. Eliminating the roadblocks against taking substantive action against climate change may require somehow dissociating the scientific facts from deeply rooted preferences about the world we want to live in, on both sides of the ideological divide.

And it is the last sentence that is key. How do we do that? We must create spaces for productive conversations. No matter how emotionally satisfying it may be to engage in tribal disdain for those of another tribe for being "anti-science," this behavior entrenches those we may wish to persuade. And the glaring truth is that very very few of us are pro-science. We are pro-ideology and pro-heuristics and happy to embrace science when it meets these prior concerns. The reality is that there are multiple ways to frame an agenda. So another piece of the puzzle is to enter the mind of opponents and to figure out how to frame concerns in a way that resonates with things they value. But research shows, unsurprisingly, that we nearly always attempt persuasion from the most persuasive angle for us, projecting our values onto others. It usually has the effect of driving the opponent further away.

I think the answer lies in these considerations. I didn't say it was an easy answer. What thoughts do you have?

Why People Oppose GMOs Even Though Science Says They Are Safe

Scientific American: Why People Oppose GMOs Even Though Science Says They Are Safe

... In the paper, we identify several intuitions that may affect people's perception of GMOs.Psychological essentialism, for instance, makes us think of DNA as an organism's "essence" - an unobservable and immutable core that causes the organism's behaviour and development and determines its identity. As such, when a gene is transferred between two distantly related species, people are likely to believe that this process will cause characteristics typical of the source organism to emerge in the recipient. For example, in an opinion survey in the United States, more than half of respondents said that a tomato modified with fish DNA would taste like fish (of course, it would not).

Essentialism clearly plays a role in public attitudes towards GMOs. People are typically more opposed to GM applications that involve the transfer of DNA between two different species ("transgenic") than within the same species ("cisgenic"). Anti-GMO organizations, such as NGOs, exploit these intuitions by publishing images of tomatoes with fish tails or by telling the public that companies modify corn with scorpion DNA to make crispier cereals.      

Intuitions about purposes and intentions also have an impact on people's thinking about GMOs. They render us vulnerable to the idea that purely natural phenomena exist or happen for a purpose that is intended by some agent. These assumptions are part and parcel of religious beliefs, but in secular environments they lead people to regard nature as a beneficial process or entity that secures our wellbeing and that humans shouldn't meddle with. In the context of opposition to GMOs, genetic modification is deemed "unnatural" and biotechnologists are accused of "playing God". The popular term "Frankenfood" captures what is at stake: by going against the will of nature in an act of hubris, we are bound to bring enormous disaster upon ourselves.

Disgust also affects people's attitudes towards GMOs. The emotion probably evolved, at least in part, as a pathogen avoidance mechanism, preventing the body from consuming or touching harmful substances. We feel repelled by things that possibly contain or indicate the presence of pathogens such as bodily fluids, rotten meat, and maggots. This would explain why disgust operates on a hair trigger: it is better to forego an edible meal under the misguided assumption that it is contaminated, than to consume sickening, or even lethal, food that is erroneously thought to be safe. Hence, disgust can be elicited by completely innocuous food. ...

... The impact of intuitions and emotions on people's understanding of, and attitudes towards, GMOs has important implications for science education and communication. Because the mind is prone to distorting or rejecting scientific information in favour of more intuitive beliefs, simply transmitting the facts will not necessarily persuade people of the safety, or benefits, of GMOs, especially if people have been subjected to emotive, anti-GMO propaganda.

In the long run, education starting from a young age and specifically targeted at tackling common misconceptions might immunize the population against unsubstantiated anti-GMO messages. Other concerns can be addressed and discussed in the wider context of agricultural practices and the place of science and technology in society. However, for now, the best way to turn the tide and generate a more positive public response to GMOs is to play into people's intuitions as well. For instance, emphasizing the benefits of current and future GM applications — improved soil structures because herbicide resistant crops require less or no tilling, higher income for farmers in developing countries, reduced vitamin A deficiency, virus and drought resistance, to name a few — might constitute the most effective approach to changing people's minds. Given the benefits and promises of GM technology, such a change is much needed.

This is one of the most insightful articles I've read. I think his advice in the last paragraph is particularly important and needs to be heeded when dealing with any number of unjustified oppositions to factual realities - from climate change to vaccinations to nuclear power. Yet our propensity is to shout the facts louder and use opposition to the facts as a rallying cry for our tribe versus the "anti-science" dolts from the other tribe.

Groups Aim to Lure Conservatives Out of the Closet on Climate Change

Forbes: Groups Aim to Lure Conservatives Out of the Closet on Climate Change

This is an excellent article! Climate change and the left-wing narrative of "capitalism-is-exploitation" have been closely intertwined. Scientists tend to lean left-wing already, but when Al Gore became the official face of climate change, that relationship between science and ideology became cemented. The problem is that whenever you wed a scientific challenge to an ideology in a deeply partisan culture, you guarantee rejection by half the populous. The challenge is to find ways to build coalitions across multiple political "tribes."

"A new Republican-led group, the ClearPath Foundation, is angling to breach those prison walls [captivity to climate change skeptics] — not just for members of U.S. Congress, but for moderates and conservatives everywhere who yearn for a meaningful role in the climate conversation. ...

... [Low engagement is] not for lack of understanding, Powell noted. The problem, rather, is that messages on global warming tend to come from groups associated with the far left, and to a lesser extent, the far right of the political spectrum. In between sits a vast audience comprised of political moderates and conservatives who understand the science and, when asked, support many economic and entrepreneurial initiatives that would help curb planet-warming emissions. And yet, no one is speaking directly to them, Powell said — a realization that has provided ClearPath with its mission. ...

And this is key:

... Evidence emerging from the social sciences suggests that the strategy makes some sense — not least because scientific literacy has been shown to be a poor predictor of whether or not most people consider climate change to be an issue of concern. Much more telling are the shared value systems and general world-views that act as both the glue for intellectual tribes within the larger community, and the filter by which those tribes ignore or discount messages emanating from the outside.

Virtually everyone is susceptible to this sort of motivated reasoning, according to one 2012 study published in the journal Nature Climate Change, such that conservatives tend to hear undertones of "government overreach" in the words "climate change," while liberals tend to hear "insatiable corporate greed" when the discussion turns to economic and market-driven solutions to the problem.

From that 2012 study:

"[P]eople who subscribe to a hierarchical, individualistic world-view — one that ties authority to conspicuous social rankings and eschews collective interference with the decisions of individuals possessing such authority — tend to be skeptical of environmental risks. Such people intuitively perceive that widespread acceptance of such risks would license restrictions on commerce and industry, forms of behavior that hierarchical individualists value. In contrast, people who hold an egalitarian, communitarian world-view — one favoring less regimented forms of social organization and greater collective attention to individual needs — tend to be morally suspicious of commerce and industry, to which they attribute social inequity. They therefore find it congenial to believe those forms of behavior are dangerous and worthy of restriction."...

YES! YES! A thousand times YES! Thus these attempts to frame climate issues in a way that energizes conservative and moderate involvement.

... That's not to suggest, of course, that Republicans and Democrats won't continue to disagree on the best strategies for addressing global warming. It's a safe bet, after all, that many on the left will find GOP-sponsored solutions to be too slow, too shortsighted, or too mindful of industry interests — just as those on the right will view left-leaning initiatives as economically fraught, scientifically unwarranted and alarmist. Such is the cacophony of competing tribal values.

But for those seeking to bring Republicans more fully into the climate discussion, the efforts of ClearPath and other groups to nurture a conversation somewhere between the poles must be a welcome development. ...

I know my progressive and liberal friends don't want to hear it, and it irritates them every time I say this, but I am more convinced than ever that the more you insist on exclusively using capitalism-is-exploitation narratives to solicit support for climate change action, the narrower will be the support. Many progressives are either so insulated that they cannot see how their ideology bleeds through, or they are aware of their science/ideology linkage and climate change as a tool for promoting an ideological agenda is a higher priority than developing broad support for action. Good to see some activists trying to broaden the discussion.

Science and Political Hijacking

Wall Street Journal: Vaccines and Politicized Science

The people doing basic science should learn a well-proven truth about basic politics: Any cause taken up by politicians today by definition will be doubted or opposed by nearly half the population. When an Al Gore, John Kerry or Europe’s Green parties become spokesmen for your ideas, and are willing to accuse fellow scientists of bad faith or willful ignorance, then science has made a Faustian bargain. The price paid, inevitably, will be the institutional credibility of all scientists.

Bingo! Two groups have been central to the climate debate. Some scientists study climate, and then a portion of society views the modern economic order primarily as an exercise in exploitation and destruction. They are not one in the same group, but considerable overlap exists.

Scientific evidence that our system is destroying the planet is an irresistible tool for this political community to advance its political narrative of the future. Science has seemed willing to partner with those who embrace this narrative to address the real challenge of climate change; I suspect not in small part because many scientists already share a similar political narrative. Yet the challenge of climate change does not dictate one particular narrative. Consequently, people who do not share the political narrative do not see climate science as valid science with a problematic superimposed narrative. They see climate science as junk science manufactured by people with the political narrative.

Science will play a critical role in a host of challenges in the future. We have to find a way to tap down the political hijacking.

"Anti-Science" and Social Identity

Tom Jacobs has an excellent piece at Pacific Standard, Threaten My Group, and I'll Belittle Your Science. He writes:

Newly published research provides at least a partial answer. It finds scientific findings that challenge the assumptions of a group you strongly identify with motivate people to derogate the research in online comments.

When informal membership in a group—say, the anti-vaccine movement, or those opposed to genetically modified foods—informs your sense of self, and/or provides a feeling of pride and belonging, a perceived attack on its basic beliefs is grounds for a counterattack. Today, that often means writing nasty, dismissive comments online. ...

... While conceding that there are a number of reasons why gamers would choose to angrily argue with the science rather than seriously consider its implications, the researchers focus on one particularly interesting psychological framework: Social identity theory.

This school of thought contends that group membership (be it political, religious, or something as innocuous as being a fan of a particular sports team) is a significant source of our self-esteem. It follows logically that members have an interest in boosting the group's status (and degrading the status of competing groups), since its prominence, or lack thereof, rubs off on ourselves. ...

... Perhaps this discovery can provide an opening for educators and policymakers as they attempt to get around this frustrating psychological block. If scientific findings are to be accepted and acted upon, they have to somehow be presented in a way that does not trigger a defensive reaction. 

We remain, in many ways, a tribal species, and if you challenge my "tribe," don't be surprised if the response is a metaphorical poke in the eye.

To this, I would add that the reason a great majority of people hold a scientifically sanctioned position is not because of science but also because of social identity. Science affirms my narrative and my tribe. "Science" becomes a weapon to deploy against other tribes. It lets me beat my chest in defiant superiority. It becomes a club with which to bludgeon those who threaten my tribe. Advocacy of the "scientific" position frequently has precious little to do with a concern for science. I don't care if it is climate change, vaccinations, evolution, GMOs, nuclear safety, or other topics. It is far more about affirmation than information.

I'll also add this - if you think you are not affected by this dynamic, you are likely either Commander Data from Star Trek or delusional. ;-) It is inescapable. We are communal creatures, and tribalism is always a factor. The realistic response is to continually strive to be self-aware of our tribal issues and be more accepting of the tribal buttons we push in others. Only then can we move toward genuine dialog.

Pew: Major Gaps Between the Public, Scientists on Key Issues

From Pew Research: Major Gaps Between the Public, Scientists on Key Issues

An enlightening interactive chart showing major discrepancies between what scientists believe and what the public believes, segmented by various demographics. It drives home that being pro or anti-science is highly selective across demographic groups. The divergence on genetically modified organisms (GMOs) is particularly striking.

The Illusion of 'Natural'

Atlantic: The Illusion of 'Natural'

... The definition of toxin can be somewhat surprising if you have grown accustomed to hearing the word in the context of flame retardants and parabens. Though toxin is now often used to refer to man-made chemicals, the most precise meaning of the term is still reserved for biologically produced poisons. The pertussis toxin, for example, is responsible for damage to the lungs that can cause whooping cough to linger for months after the bacteria that produce it have been killed by antibiotics. The diphtheria toxin is a poison potent enough to cause massive organ failure, and tetanus produces a deadly neurotoxin. Vaccination now protects us against all these toxins.

Toxoid is the term for a toxin that has been rendered no longer toxic, but the existence of a class of vaccines called toxoids probably does not help quell widespread concerns that vaccination is a source of toxicity. The consumer advocate Barbara Loe Fisher routinely supports these fears, referring to vaccines as “biologicals of unknown toxicity” and calling for nontoxic preservatives and more studies on the “toxicity of all other vaccine additives” and their potential “cumulative toxic effects.” The toxicity she speaks of is elusive, shirting from the biological components of the vaccines to their preservatives, then to an issue of accumulation that implicates not just vaccines, but also toxicity from the environment at large.

In this context, fear of toxicity strikes me as an old anxiety with a new name. Where the word filth once suggested, with its moralist air, the evils of the flesh, the word toxic now condemns the chemical evils of our industrial world. This is not to say that concerns over environmental pollution are not justified—like filth theory, toxicity theory is anchored in legitimate dangers—but that the way we think about toxicity bears some resemblance to the way we once thought about filth. Both theories allow their subscribers to maintain a sense of control over their own health by pursuing personal purity. For the filth theorist, this means a retreat into the home, where heavy curtains and shutters might seal out the smell of the poor and their problems. Our version of this shuttering is now achieved through the purchase of purified water, air purifiers, and food produced with the promise of purity.

Purity, especially bodily purity, is the seemingly innocent concept behind a number of the most sinister social actions of the past century. A passion for bodily purity drove the eugenics movement that led to the sterilization of women who were blind, black, or poor. Concerns for bodily purity were behind miscegenation laws that persisted for more than a century after the abolition of slavery, and behind sodomy laws that were only recently declared unconstitutional. Quite a bit of human solidarity has been sacrificed in pursuit of preserving some kind of imagined purity.

If we do not yet know exactly what the presence of a vast range of chemicals in umbilical cord blood and breast milk might mean for the future of our children’s health, we do at least know that we are no cleaner, even at birth, than our environment at large. We are all already polluted. We have more microorganisms in our guts than we have cells in our bodies—we are crawling with bacteria and we are full of chemicals. We are, in other words, continuous with everything here on Earth. Including, and especially, each other. ...

... Most of the pharmaceuticals available to us are at least as bad as they are good. My father has a habit of saying, “There are very few perfect therapies in medicine.” True as it may be, the idea that our medicine is as flawed as we are is not comforting. And when comfort is what we want, one of the most powerful tonics alternative medicine offers is the word natural. This word implies a medicine untroubled by human limitations, contrived wholly by nature or God or perhaps intelligent design. What natural has come to mean to us in the context of medicine is pure and safe and benign. But the use of natural as a synonym for good is almost certainly a product of our profound alienation from the natural world.

“Obviously,” the naturalist Wendell Berry writes, “the more artificial a human environment becomes, the more the word ‘natural’ becomes a term of value.” If, he argues, “we see the human and the natural economies as necessarily opposite or opposed, we subscribe to the very opposition that threatens to destroy them both. The wild and the domestic now often seem isolated values, estranged from one another. And yet these are not exclusive polarities like good and evil. There can be continuity between them, and there must be.”

Allowing children to develop immunity to contagious diseases “naturally,” without vaccination, is appealing to some of us. Much of that appeal depends on the belief that vaccines are inherently unnatural. But vaccines are of that liminal place between humans and nature—a mowed field, Berry might suggest, edged by woods. Vaccination is a kind of domestication of a wild thing, in that it involves our ability to harness a virus and break it like a horse, but its action depends on the natural response of the body to the effects of that once-wild thing. ...

... All of us who have been vaccinated are cyborgs, the cyborg scholar Chris Hables Gray suggests. Our bodies have been programmed to respond to disease, and modified by technologically altered viruses. As a cyborg and a nursing mother, I join my modified body to a breast pump, a modern mechanism to provide my child with the most primitive food. On my bicycle, I am part human and part machine, a collaboration that exposes me to injury. Our technology both extends and endangers us. Good or bad, it is part of us, and this is no more unnatural than it is natural. ...

Science and Technology Links

1.The Drinkable Book - Water is Life. An innovative approach to create more drinkable water.

2. TED: Are insects the future of food?: Megan Miller at TEDxManhattan

3. Eco-Business: In future, clothes could be made from sugar

Researchers at the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) have discovered a new chemical process that can convert adipic acid directly from sugar.

Adipic acid is an important chemical used to produce nylon for apparel and other everyday products like carpets, ropes and toothbrush bristles.

Commercially, adipic acid is produced from petroleum-based chemicals through the nitric acid oxidation process, which emits large amounts of nitrous oxides, a major greenhouse gas that causes global warming. ...

4. Business Insider: Want To Make $1 Billion? Just Solve One Of These Huge Tech Problems

5. Huffington Post: 11 Ways Technology Has Changed Since We Were Kids

6. Pew Internet: U.S. Views of Technology and the Future

7. Real Clear Technology: We Say We're Optimistic About the Future, But Don't Want Anything to Do With Future Innovations

... What's interesting about the Pew poll is that while the survey reported a general optimism about the trajectory of technological development over the next 50 years (59 percent said it would be positive vs. just 30 percent who felt it would be negative) very few specific technological breakthroughs seemed either possible to the general public, or desirable. In fact, just lab-grown organs and computer-generated art seemed both possible and desirable.

By contrast, here are the technologies we don't think are likely or aren't interested in if they do come to pass: ...

8. Huffington Post: Disrupting the World Now: Technology That Will Change Your Life

Can you imagine life without the Internet?

There are equally revolutionary technologies that are emerging today. When we look back 20 years from now, what things will be impossible to imagine living without?

Here are a few technologies to follow as our advancement continues to accelerate: ...

9. Business Insider: How A Chinese Company 3-D Printed 10 Houses In A Day

10. Real Clear Technology: 3D Printing Possibilities Are Beautiful but Not Limitless

... There’s no doubting that these technologies are exciting but the hype is leading us to think our future homes will all feature machines suspiciously similar to the Replicator in Star Trek, probably alongside a robotic housemaid and hoverboard.

The use of 3D printers in industry will definitely continue to grow, and will have a major (if often unnoticed) impact on our consumer choice but those of us who don’t make things for a living will not suddenly become digital artisans. ...

11. Wired: A 3-D Printing Startup’s Plan to Bring Manufacturing Back to Cities

"... But according to founder and CEO Peter Weijmarshausen, the longterm goal for the New York City-based outfit is to bring manufacturing back to America’s cities.

“We believe manufacturing should be local,” Weijmarshausen said on stage at the TechCrunch Disrupt conference in New York on Wednesday. “Our view is, over time, more and more Shapeway factories will appear in places all over the world, and in those places, not only will we get products to you faster and at a lower cost, but we’ll have lower impact on the environment for transportation. ...”

12. Conversable Economist: When Technology Spreads Slowly

...But in the real world, new technologies often take time to diffuse. They note that surveys of dozens of new technologies often find that it takes 15-30 years for a new technology to go from 10% to 90% of the potential market. But some major inventions take longer.

Here's how the tractor slowly displaced horses and mules in the U.S. agricultural sector from 1910 to 1960. Horses and mules, shown by the black dashed line and measured on the right-hand axis, declined from about 26 million in 1920 to about 3 million by 1960. Conversely, the number of tractors, shown by the blue solid line, rose from essentially zero in 1910 to 4.5 million by 1960. ...

Also this ...

13. Atlantic: America's Coming Manufacturing Revolution

... But the doomsayers often fail to see the ways in which America is gaining rather than losing global influence. And nowhere is this truer than the manufacturing sector. The combination of lower energy prices, innovative information technologies, and advances in robotics and materials science are powering a manufacturing revolution that will reinvigorate the U.S. economy and make many of its industrial sectors the most competitive in the world. ...

14. Mashable: Scientists Discover Clever Trick Ancient Egyptians Used to Build Pyramids

15. Huffington Post: How Innovation and Technology Are Shaping Libraries of Today

...Technology has changed the expectations of library patrons; people today expect to be able to find and access information from wherever they are. This is why so many public library systems across the country have increased both computers for use inside the library as well as mobile and online access to e-books, audio books, research databases and archives. In 2010, nearly 300 million Americans used library services including onsite computers and onsite Wi-Fi to check out books, to attend workshops, and to consult with reference librarians.

Libraries are now hubs of technology with over 85 percent offering wireless internet services, and many offering state-of-the-art computers for use. But technology available to patrons does not stop there. Surveys show that currently 12 percent of academic libraries have pre-loaded E-reading devices in circulation that patrons can check out. Another 26 percent of academic libraries are considering adding this service. New (even book-free) libraries are popping up around the country, employing technology in ways most never envisioned:

• GPS apps that help locate material inside the library
• Mobile apps that allow patrons to access library services
• Access to 3-D printers, binding services
• Book delivery robots ...

16. Slate: What Will Become of the Library?

How it will evolve as the world goes digital. ...

17. Huffington Post: Battling Psychics and Ghosts: The Need for Scientific Skepticism

... College and university students, from freshmen to seniors, have asked me similar questions, along with queries about aliens, ghosts, and a wide variety of New Age and alternative health and psychological treatments. Through countless questions on these topics, I've realized the need to teach scientific skepticism, and that using examples of pseudoscience -- claims that appear to be scientific but are not -- can be an invaluable resource for helping students become discerning consumers of real-world claims. ...

18. AP: AP Survey On Faith And Science Reveals That Science Is Often Trumped By Religious Belief

WASHINGTON (RNS) Believers don’t buy the Big Bang, God-less evolution or a human responsibility for global warming. Actually, neither do many Americans.

But a new survey by The Associated Press found that religious identity — particularly evangelical Protestant — was one of the sharpest indicators of skepticism toward key issues in science. ...

18. The Big Think: When Evidence Backfires

Don't read this blog post. Definitely don't read it to the end. Didn't I tell you not to read this blog post? You're still doing it... We can laugh at our inherent ability to be contrary, but unfortunately something similar can happen when we give a human being scientific evidence that debunks misinformation. One of the most depressing paradoxes of science communication is that not only can misinformation often spread faster and wider than the truth (just take the ubersuccessful but often not so factual "uberfacts" or the success of the paragons of science misinformation Natural News if you need examples); but even worse, combating misinformation with evidence can often have the complete and utter opposite of the desired effect. This horrifying phenomenon known as the backfire effect was demonstrated once again recently by a study of the responses of parents to various different forms of evidence that vaccines are not dangerous. ...

19. Los Angeles Times: 'Nanobionics' aims to give plants superpowers

... Researchers at MIT have been experimenting with giving plants new powers by placing tiny carbon nanotubes in their chloroplasts — the tiny engine of the plant cell where photosynthesis takes place.

After much trial and error, their efforts have succeeded. Some of the altered plants produced in their lab have increased their photosynthetic activity by 30% compared with regular plants. Others were able to detect tiny traces of pollutants in the air.

And that's just the beginning. ...

20. BBC: Doctors implant lab-grown vagina

Four women have had new vaginas grown in the laboratory and implanted by doctors in the US. ...

21. Carpe Diem: Recommended reading for Earth Day: ‘Recycling is garbage’ from the NYTimes in 1996; it broke the record for hate mail

Science and Technology Links

1. Christian Science Monitor: In Kenya, selling human waste could revolutionize sanitation

Dealing with human waste has become a health crisis in many poor communities, but residents of a Kenyan slum have found a solution that turns poop into profit. ...

... Sanergy’s toilets are low-tech and low-cost, but they have a key feature: They come with removable waste cartridges. Local entrepreneurs buy and operate the toilets, charging users a small monthly membership fee. Sanergy then collects the waste and processes it into organic, sell-able fertilizer. Soon the company plans to process the waste into biogas, biochar and several types of plastic, as well.

Creating business relationships means that toilet operators earn steady income from their investments, and waste treatment pays for itself. It benefits people you would expect like the toilet users, who now have access to a clean and private space to go to the bathroom, and people you wouldn’t, like the farmers who pay less for the processed, organic fertilizer. ...

2. Jason Kolb: 5 Technologies That Will Change the World

... Here are five technologies that seem poised to break out on the world in the next few years, and how they will change our lives. The most interesting aspect of these to me is how they interact when used together–the intersections of these disruptive technologies are where you can start really understanding how these will change the world in concrete ways. Like layer cakes, they get even more delicious when you eat them together. ...

3. Wired: The Germans Have Figured Out How to 3-D Print Cars

The assembly line isn’t going away, but 3-D printing is going to reshape how we make cars. The EDAG Genesis points the way, with an beautifully crafted frame made from a range of materials and inspired by a turtle’s skeleton. ...

4. Business Insider: New Roles For Technology: Rise Of The Robots

... Since moving from the page and screen to real life, robots have been a mild disappointment. They do some things that humans cannot do themselves, like exploring Mars, and a host of things people do not much want to do, like dealing with unexploded bombs or vacuuming floors (there are around 10m robot vacuum cleaners wandering the carpets of the world). And they are very useful in bits of manufacturing. But reliable robots--especially ones required to work beyond the safety cages of a factory floor--have proved hard to make, and robots are still pretty stupid. So although they fascinate people, they have not yet made much of a mark on the world.

That seems about to change. The exponential growth in the power of silicon chips, digital sensors and high-bandwidth communications improves robots just as it improves all sorts of other products. And, as our special report this week explains, three other factors are at play. ...

5. City Journal: The Next Age of Invention

... Certainly, it is difficult to know exactly in which direction technological change will move and how significant it will be. Much as in evolutionary biology, all we know is history. Yet something can be learned from the past, and it tells us that such pessimism is mistaken. The future of technology is likely to be bright. ...

6. The Guardian: Fracking: the surprising new proving ground for water technologies

The energy industry's growing demand for water is spurring water-treatment innovation that could spill over into other sectors. ...

7.  Scientific American: How to Profit from CO2 Emissions

Pulling CO2 from the atmosphere to lessen global warming is prohibitively expensive, unless we can find ways to profit from it. Scientists and entrepreneurs are developing some ingenious processes for turning CO2 emissions into the raw materials for a wide range of products. A Nexus Media production for Scientific American.

8. Business Insider: CITI: 'The Age Of Renewables Is Beginning'

In a new note titled "The Age of Renewables is Beginning – A Levelized Cost of Energy (LCOE)," Perspective, Citi's alternative energy team led by Shar Pourreza, writes that we can expect across-the-board price decreases in solar and wind, which will continue to fuel the renewable energy generation boom. ...

9. Atlantic: The UN's New Focus: Surviving, Not Stopping, Climate Change

The United Nations' latest report on climate change contains plenty of dire warnings about the adverse impact "human interference with the climate system" is having on everything from sea levels to crop yields to violent conflicts. But the primary message of the study isn't, as John Kerry suggested on Sunday, for countries to collectively reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Instead, the subtext appears to be this: Climate change is happening and will continue to happen for the foreseeable future. As a result, we need to adapt to a warming planet—to minimize the risks and maximize the benefits associated with increasing temperatures—rather than focusing solely on curbing warming in the first place. And it's businesses and local governments, rather than the international community, that can lead the way.

“The really big breakthrough in this report is the new idea of thinking about managing climate change,” Chris Field, the co-chair of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) study, said this week, adding that governments, companies, and communities are already experimenting with “climate-change adaptation.” ...

10. Christian Science Monitor: Thorium: a safer nuclear power

In the same month as the Three Mile Island and Fukushima nuclear disasters, China announces it is speeding up its research into so-called molten salt reactors that can run on thorium.  If it succeeds, it would create a cheaper, more efficient, and safer form of nuclear power that produces less nuclear waste than today's uranium-based technology. ...

11. NPR: Half Of Americans Believe In Medical Conspiracy Theories

Misinformation about health remains widespread and popular.

Half of Americans subscribe to medical conspiracy theories, with more than one-third of people thinking that the Food and Drug Administration is deliberately keeping natural cures for cancer off the market because of pressure from drug companies, a survey finds.

Twenty percent of people said that cellphones cause cancer — and that large corporations are keeping health officials from doing anything about it. And another 20 percent think doctors and the government want to vaccinate children despite knowing that vaccines cause autism.

"One of the things that struck us is that people who embrace these beliefs are not less health conscious," says , a professor of political science at the University of Chicago who led the study. "They're just less likely to embrace traditional medicine." ...

12. CBS: New colon cancer test could be alternative to colonoscopy

13. Forbes: Scientists Reconstruct Faces From DNA Samples

Sometime in the future, technicians will go over the scene of the crime. They’ll uncover some DNA evidence and take it to the lab. And when the cops need to get a picture of the suspect, they won’t have to ask eyewitnesses to give descriptions to a sketch artist – they’ll just ask the technicians to get a mugshot from the DNA.

That, at least, is the potential of new research being published today in PLOS Genetics. In that paper, a team of scientists describe how they were able to produce crude 3D models of faces extrapolated from a person’s DNA. ...

14. Mashable: The Cause of Earth's Largest Mass Extinction: Microbe Sex

Around 252 million years ago, 90 percent of all species on Earth were wiped out in an extinction event commonly called The Great Dying. Now, a team of MIT researchers from the U.S. and China might have the answer for the largest mass extinction our planet has ever seen.

It wasn’t asteroids or volcanoes, but methane-producing microbes called Methanosarcina having sex — or rather, passing genetic material in a strange microbial form of sex. ...

Can This Man Feed the World? Billionaire Harry Stine's Quest to Reinvent Agriculture -- Again

Forbes: Can This Man Feed the World? Billionaire Harry Stine's Quest to Reinvent Agriculture -- Again

... Stine Seed does business with all of the heavyweights and has for more than three decades, primarily because it has something everybody else needs: the best-performing soybean seeds in the business. Through plant breeding, a roughly 10,000-year-old technique that’s not unlike creating Thoroughbred horses or show dogs, Stine has been perfecting the genetic makeup of soybean seeds–primarily used in animal feed and to produce vegetable oils–since the 1960s. The basic technology may be ancient, but an innovative, data-savvy strategy, married with shrewd leadership and a classic midwestern work ethic, has made Stine’s operation best in class. He isn’t bashful about what his small-town company has accomplished.

“Our germplasm–our genetic base here–is the best in the world,” says Stine. “We dominate genetics in the industry.” ...

... While rivals scoff, he now thinks he can double the world’s output of corn, the most popular crop on Earth. By breeding corn seeds genetically predisposed to thrive when planted in high densities, he thinks he can supercharge the engine generating animal feed, biofuels and food for the whole planet. “We’re going to be able to double corn yields very easily,” says Stine. “And apparently a lot of people working in the same industry can’t see that…. They think, ‘How can this be? And furthermore, how can this little farm kid out here be doing this?’”

After seven years of genetic tinkering he’s won plenty of converts. “It’s an insight that will revolutionize the corn industry,” says Dermot Hayes, a professor of agribusiness at Iowa State University. If it works out, it won’t be the first time this farm kid, unknown outside his industry, has changed the world. ...

... The secret to Stine’s golden corn? Efficiency. In the early 1930s, prior to the Dust Bowl, 7,000 corn plants per acre were grown in the U.S., yielding about 27 bushels per acre. Seeds were planted in rows 42 inches apart so horses could traverse the fields. Now 35,000 plants and 150 bushels per acre is common–nearly five times the yield–thanks to modern tractors, fertilizers, pesticides and seeds genetically modified to resist insects and herbicides. But while genetic modification–using biotechnology to insert a genetic trait into a seed–grabs headlines (and stokes health fears, despite overwhelming scientific evidence of safety), traditional breeding programs by seed developers have done just as much to raise yields. ...

... Stine flipped the conventional wisdom on its head. He began breeding corn to thrive at higher planting density: shorter plants with smaller tassels and more upright leaves that attract more sunlight. A leaner, more efficient plant. After breeding many descendants of the seeds with that genetic makeup, the company has developed corn that can be planted in much narrower rows–12 inches or even pairs of rows 8 inches apart–increasing the number of plants per acre to as much as 80,000. And, of ultimate importance, substantially increasing a farmer’s harvest. ...

Science and Technology Links

1. The Atlantic: What Americans Don't Know About Science

On a recent survey, just 74 percent of Americans said that the Earth revolves around the sun. ...

... As you'll see, in the words of the report, "many Americans provide multiple incorrect answers to basic questions about scientific facts." Then again, "residents of other countries, including highly developed ones, appear to perform no better."...

... Finally, the report shows us that for at least some of the questions, Americans may be answering not based on knowledge, but on belief. As shown above, only 48 percent of Americans responded "true" to the statement "Human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals." But if the question was reframed slightly, far more people responded with "true." Given the statement "according to the theory of evolution, human beings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals," 72 percent answered "true." (Emphasis mine.) A similar pattern happens with the Big Bang question. When the statement is simply "The universe began with a huge explosion," 39 percent responded "true." When it is "according to astronomers, the universe began with a huge explosion," 60 percent said "true." This seems to indicate that many Americans are familiar with the theories of evolution and the Big Bang; they simply don't believe they're true.

2. The Atlantic Cities: Pre-Fab Houses to Help the Homeless

3. Foreign Affairs: Networking Nature: How Technology Is Transforming Conservation

Conservation is for the first time beginning to operate at the pace and on the scale necessary to keep up with, and even get ahead of, the planet’s most intractable environmental challenges. New technologies have given conservationists abilities that would have seemed like super powers just a few years ago. We can now monitor entire ecosystems -- think of the Amazon rainforest -- in nearly real time, using remote sensors to map their three-dimensional structures; satellite communications to follow elusive creatures, such as the jaguar and the puma; and smartphones to report illegal logging.

Such innovations are revolutionizing conservation in two key ways: first, by revealing the state of the world in unprecedented detail and, second, by making available more data to more people in more places. Like most technologies, these carry serious, although manageable, risks: in the hands of poachers, location-tracking devices could prove devastating to the endangered animals they hunt. Yet on balance, technological innovation gives new hope for averting the planet’s environmental collapse and reversing its accelerating rates of habitat loss, animal extinction, and climate change. ...

4. Real Clear Science: Science Opinions Cross Partisan Lines

... Our results indicate that, more than political party identification, ideology or religious beliefs, an individual’s beliefs about science and society had the strongest influence on their support for stem cell research. It was also possible to identify distinct segments who differ substantially in what they thought about science’s social implications. Traditional political labels do not easily define these groups.

Based on our data we classify the US public in four categories:

Scientific optimists: These comprise about a third of the public. They believe strongly in the link between science and social progress. They are likely to support most scientific advances and three quarters of this group are in favour of embryonic stem cell research. Optimists are on average highly educated, financially well off and disproportionately white. They are split almost evenly along political lines, with slightly more Democrats among them. In terms of political ideology, they are the most moderate in their outlook.

Scientific pessimists: This group comprises just under a quarter of the public. They have strong reservations about the moral boundaries that might be crossed by scientists and believe science may lead to new problems. They are the most likely to oppose advances in biomedical research, with only 40% in favour of stem cell research. Compared to optimists, this group scores much lower on average in terms of educational attainment and income. More tend to be female and from a minority background. Pessimists split evenly along party lines, but tend to be disproportionately either moderate or conservative in their ideological outlook.

The conflicted: This group represents another quarter of the public. They view science in both optimistic and pessimistic terms. Though they are socially similar to the Pessimists in their background, they tend to be older on average than members of other segments. They appear open to accepting the arguments of scientists and advocates who emphasise the benefits of research. By 2010, more than 60% of this segment had come to favour embryonic stem cell research.

The disengaged: About 15% of the public lacks strong beliefs about how science might impact society. As a result, they are likely to be the most susceptible to shifts in opinion driven by political messages. For example, between 2008 and 2010, support for embryonic stem cell research among this group increased by 20 percentage points. ...

 5. CBR: So what is nanotechnology anyway?

Nanotechonology is one of the current buzzwords of science today, and deals with technology on the 'nano' scale. What's the nano scale!? The nano scale is small that you can't see it with a regular microscope; in fact, a nanometre is one-billionth of a metre. A regular atom is about one-tenth of a nanometre in diameter.

At this scale, scientists are able to manipulate atoms themselves, and that leads to the creation of all sorts of fascinating and interesting materials. One prime example is that of a carbon nanotube, which is made my rolling a sheet of graphite molecules into a tube. The right combination of nanotubes can create a structure that is hundred of times stronger than normal steel but only one-sixth the weight. This is just one example of the practical use of nanotechnology.

A concise actual definition for nanotechnology, found here, is: "The design, characterization, production, and application of structures, devices, and systems by controlled manipulation of size and shape at the nanometer scale (atomic, molecular, and macromolecular scale) that produces structures, devices, and systems with at least one novel/superior characteristic or property."

What is nanotechnology used for? ...

6. Nano Werk: Nanotechnology is getting closer to 3D nanoprinting

Fabrication of three-dimensional (3D) objects through direct deposition of functional materials – also called additive manufacturing – has been a subject of intense study in the area of macroscale manufacturing for several decades. These 3D printing techniques are reaching a stage where desired products and structures can be made independent of the complexity of their shapes – even bioprinting tissue is now in the realm of the possible.

Applying 3D printing concepts to nanotechnology could bring similar advantages to nanofabrication – speed, less waste, economic viability – than it is expected to bring to manufacturing technologies.

In addition, pre-patterned micro- or nanostructures could be used as substrates, allowing researchers to realize unprecedented manufacturing flexibility, functionality and complexity at the nanoscale.

Researchers in Korea have now shown that nanoscale 3D objects such as free-standing nanowalls can by constructed by an additive manufacturing scheme. Even without the motion of the substrate, nanojets are spontaneously laid down and piled to yield nanowalls. ...

7. BBC: Tiny motors controlled inside human cell

For the first time, scientists have placed tiny motors inside living human cells and steered them magnetically. ...

8. Extreme Tech: This single-atom engine breaks the laws of physics, could drive progress in quantum computing

A new invention from Germany’s University of Mainz is not only the world’s smallest engine by an enormous margin, it may have broken a theoretical limit for engine efficiency. The device, a so-called “atomic engine,” produces power thanks to the movements of just a single atom trapped and manipulated. It’s an incredible achievement that, while not particularly useful for engineering in the short term, could revolutionize our understanding of the quantum world. Plus, it’s really neat. ...

9. Re/Code: 3-D Printing’s Next Frontier: Mass Customization

The next evolution of 3-D printing may well be what some call “mass customization,” where customers get to contribute to the design process of a product like a necklace, an orthotic footbed, headphones or a toy. By printing one piece at a time, it can fit the buyer’s identity, shape or preference, and their input becomes part of the creation process.

At a basic level, mass customization is kind of like the next level of printing a face on a mug. Now, you could make the mug from scratch with a relief of the face laid into the material like a sort of personal Mount Rushmore. Or you could dream bigger.

Unlike traditional factories, which are optimized for making large quantities of the same thing and so have minimum orders and set-up costs, 3-D printers create individual objects by painstakingly layering material on top of itself.

As Shapeways marketing director Carine Carmy put it to Re/code, “The printer doesn’t care whether it’s 1,000 of one thing or one of 1,000 things.” ...

10. Huff Post Tech: 3D Printing Has Started A Revolution

... Few companies grasp the coming upheaval. Perhaps because 3D printing, an innovation that can come across as a curiosity, is propelling this disruption. Yet, these printers, which churn out objects by laying thin layer after thin layer of metal, plastics or other materials on top of each other, won't tip the scale alone.

It's their collision with two other disruptive technologies -- intelligent robotics and open source electronics -- that will bring an end to the era of big and complex global supply chains. Together, they're going to usher in the digitalization of manufacturing, by creating flexible, fast, local supply chains underpinned by software. ...

11. Scientific American: Robotic Surgery Opens Up

If the open-source approach to building robot surgeons can cut costs and improve performance, patients will increasingly find them at the other end of the scalpel ...

12. The Skin Gun

Remarkable advancement in treating burn victims.

13. Huff Post Impact: This New Product May Drastically Change The Battlefield For The Better

U.S. combat troops may soon benefit from faster and more effective relief from gunshot wounds on the battlefield.

The U.S. Army has requested expedited approval from the FDA for XStat, a new product that has the potential to decrease troop casualties during warfare. The product acts as a modified syringe -- injecting specially coated sponges into deep tissue wounds to stop hemorrhaging, Popular Science reports. ...

14. Business Insider: Number Of Test-Tube Babies Born In US Hits Record Percentage

NEW YORK (Reuters) - More test-tube babies were born in the United States in 2012 than ever before, and they constituted a higher percentage of total births than at any time since the technology was introduced in the 1980s, according to a report released on Monday. ...

15. Huffington Post: What Percentage Of Our Brains Do We Actually Use? Popular Myth Debunked In TED-Ed Video

It's commonly said that we humans use only about 10 percent of our brains, with some people attributing Einstein's brilliance to his ability to stretch that paltry figure to 15 percent.

But in the video above, neurologist Dr. Richard Cytowic debunks these familiar notions, arguing that brain regions once believed to be "silent" are actually humming with activity.

What exactly do these "silent" regions do? According to Cytowic, they're intimately involved with our ability to plan, make decisions, adapt to evolving situations, and reason abstractly. And evidence suggests that at any moment up to 16 percent of our brain cells are active. ...

16. Associated Press: Ancient baby DNA suggests tie to Native Americans

NEW YORK (AP) -- The DNA of a baby boy who was buried in Montana 12,600 years ago has been recovered, and it provides new indications of the ancient roots of today's American Indians and other native peoples of the Americas.

It's the oldest genome ever recovered from the New World. Artifacts found with the body show the boy was part of the Clovis culture, which existed in North America from about 13,000 years ago to about 12,600 years ago and is named for an archaeological site near Clovis, N.M. ...

17. Live Science: Mother Lode' of Amazingly Preserved Fossils Discovered in Canada

A treasure trove of fossils chiseled out of a canyon in Canada's Kootenay National Park rivals the famous Burgess Shale, the best record of early life on Earth, scientists say. ...

18. Christian Science Monitor: When nearly everything on Earth died in the blink of an eye

Scientists have determined that the Permian extinction – the greatest mass die-off in the history of our planet so far – lasted just 60,000 years, an instant in geological time. ...

19. Newser: Source of Stonehenge's Rocks Pinpointed

For nine decades, it's been established that many of Stonehenge's smaller rocks hail from the Preseli Hills in Wales. Now, a newly published study says that we've been wrong about an outcrop that has been accepted as a specific source since 1923. And the new research, published in February's issue of Journal of Archaeological Science,suggests the rocks—known as bluestones, of which there are many types—may not have been transported there by humans at all. As head researcher Dr. Richard Bevins explains, in 1923, geologist H.H. Thomas identified Carn Meini as the source of spotted dolerite bluestones, but a new analysis of the rocks' chemical makeup has fingered Carn Goedog as the true home of at least 55% of those used at Stonehenge, reports Planet Earth. ...

20. USA Today: Genetically engineered crops in nearly 12% of fields

Even as some U.S. consumers reject foods containing ingredients from genetically modified plants, farmers continue to embrace the technology. In 2013, crops grown from seed engineered to withstand weed killers, kill pests or resist diseases made up 11.7% of fields planted worldwide, a report released Thursday says. ...

21: BBC News: Genetically modified potatoes 'resist late blight'

British scientists have developed genetically modified potatoes that are resistant to the vegetable's biggest threat - blight....

22. My Science Academy: Scientists resurrect extinct frog that gives birth through its mouth

Scientists have resurrected an extinct frog species, that gives birth through its mouth, by transplanting its DNA into the eggs of another frog species.

23. Scotsman: Ten myths concerning nuclear power

Civil nuclear power’s historical links with nuclear weapons (and Chernobyl, Fukushima and suchlike) colours our perceptions of this important source of energy. We don’t eschew high explosives for their many valuable uses because they can kill people when abused. We keep driving cars despite the daily death toll.

The fruits of technology always present us with the Faustian dilemma of use for good or evil. The safe application of knowledge depends on the effectiveness of democracy, regulation and governance. Civil nuclear power suffers from its unfamiliarity to the public. This needs correcting by its promoters and by those in a position to influence public attitudes; they need to engage effectively with the public and encourage nuclear opponents to adopt an objective approach to the evidence.

1. Too dangerous? Objective examination of accident statistics for all fuels for deaths per unit of energy transformed shows that civil nuclear power generation has the best safety record. That includes the consequences of Chernobyl and Fukushima.

2. Causes cancer? Risks of cancer due to exposure to radiological hazards from civil nuclear power are extremely low, much lower than the risks from granite in Aberdeen, or from the use of diagnostic and therapeutic radioactivity in medicine (risks which are still heavily outweighed by the benefits). Scientists recognise that nuclear radiation limits are actually set lower than necessary. ...

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Trouble With 'Scientific' Research Today: A Lot That's Published Is Junk

Forbes: The Trouble With 'Scientific' Research Today: A Lot That's Published Is Junk

Many non-scientists are confused and dismayed by the constantly changing advice that comes from medical and other researchers on various issues. ...

...  Some of that confusion is due to the quality of the evidence, which is dependent on a number of factors, while some is due to the nature of science itself: We form hypotheses and then perform experiments to test them; as the data accumulate and various hypotheses are rejected, we become more confident about what we think we know.

But it may also be due to current state of science.   Scientists themselves are becoming increasingly concerned about the unreliability – that is, the lack of reproducibility — of many experimental or observational results. ...

... If designed and performed correctly, lab-based experiments should be more reliable than observational studies.  However, recent evidence indicates that often they are flawed: Researchers may tinker with their experimental design until they get the result they want and then rush to publish without replicating their own work, for example....

... After a series of failed attempts to extend basic research findings (from academic labs), two large drug companies, Bayer and Amgen, carefully reviewed their own experience and found that only 25 and 11 percent, respectively, of the claims in the scientific literature could be replicated in a way that was sufficiently robust to be useful as the basis for drug development projects.  Astonishingly, even when they asked the original researchers to replicate their own work, for the most part they could not.  This may explain why scientists’ ability to translate cancer research in the laboratory to clinical success has been shockingly poor. ...

... A number of empirical studies show that 80-90% of the claims coming from supposedly scientific studies in major journals fail to replicate.  This is scandalous, and the problem is only likely to become worse with the proliferation of “predatory publishers” of many open-access journals. ...

... Another worrisome trend is the increasing publication of the results of  flawed “advocacy research” that is actually designed to give a false result that provides propaganda value for activists and can be cited long after the findings have been discredited. ...

Science and Technology Links (Environment Edition)

I'm playing catchup with a backlog of links to be posted. This list pulls together a subsection of science and technology links dealing with the environment.

1. Bloomberg: Warring Dogmas Block Climate-Change Progress

... In 1981, [Julian] Simon proposed a bet. [Paul] Ehrlich could name any five metals, and by the end of the decade, Simon wagered, their prices would decrease, thus disproving Ehrlich's claim that population growth would produce an increase in scarcity.

Ehrlich eagerly accepted. Working with like-minded scientists, he selected chromium, copper, nickel, tin and tungsten. In the 1970s, the market prices of all five had increased significantly (at least in nominal terms). Ehrlich was confident that as a result of population growth, the trend would continue.

But Simon won the bet, and it wasn't even close. By 1990, the prices of each metal had decreased by an average of 50 percent, even though the decade had seen the largest global population growth in history (with 800 million additional people). To all appearances, Simon had been vindicated. ...

... As Sabin explains, it turns out that Simon was a lucky winner. Not long ago, economists ran a series of simulations for every 10-year period from 1900 to 2008. They found that with respect to the prices of the five metals on which Ehrlich and Simon bet, Ehrlich would have won 63 percent of the time.

But this doesn't mean that Ehrlich was right. Because of macroeconomic factors, commodity prices are volatile, and they are a poor proxy for the effects of population increases. ...

... These decisions raise diverse questions, and each of them must be investigated on its own merits. For such problems, the noisy, headline-grabbing dogmas of Paul Ehrlich and Julian Simon are a serious impediment to progress. The coming decisions will require careful exploration of costs and benefits, not abstract narratives about the supposed arc of history.

2. Nature: Climate change: The case of the missing heat

Sixteen years into the mysterious 'global-warming hiatus', scientists are piecing together an explanation.

The biggest mystery in climate science today may have begun, unbeknownst to anybody at the time, with a subtle weakening of the tropical trade winds blowing across the Pacific Ocean in late 1997. These winds normally push sun-baked water towards Indonesia. When they slackened, the warm water sloshed back towards South America, resulting in a spectacular example of a phenomenon known as El Niño. Average global temperatures hit a record high in 1998 — and then the warming stalled. ...

3. L. A. Times: A climate change of heart by the European Union?

Confronted by rising energy costs and international competition, the European Union's executive body has recommended relaxing rules on renewable energy with a plan that doesn't hold specific nations responsible for specific targets. The EU's member states and Parliament should reject it. The EU has been the leader on fighting climate change; if it shies away from its commitment now, similar efforts in the U.S. and around the world will almost surely suffer.

On a positive note, the recommendations call for creating an overall target of a 40% reduction in greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, compared with what they were in 1990. It's a worthy target, though environmentalists would like it to be even higher; the 28-nation bloc has reduced such emissions by 12% so far. By 2030, the EU is supposed to get more than a quarter of its energy from renewable sources. But the plan would eliminate binding agreements under which each member nation would have to meet certain targets. So which nations would be responsible for attaining the 2030 goal and how would they be held to it? That's unclear. In addition, the plan would loosen environmental regulations on hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for natural gas.

Driving the changes are concerns about the struggling European economy. With energy costs higher because of reduced reliance on cheaper fossil fuels, European businesses are in a weak position to compete with those in nations without strong environmental rules. ...

4. The American Interest: End Result of Germany's Green Energy Policy: More Coal

Germany produced more energy by coal last year than it has in nearly a quarter century. King Coal's return comes courtesy of the energiewende—the policy put in place following the Fukushima nuclear disaster. The plan was to phase out the country's numerous nuclear reactors and jumpstart its fledgling renewable energy industry, but coal has been forced to fill the gap. ...

5. The American Interest: Why Europe's Greens Are Wrong, in Two Charts

Europe has so far snubbed shale gas and has been rewarded with rising electricity prices and a greater reliance on coal. The end result: America is reducing emissions faster than Europe:

If you go anti-science on nuclear safety, this is what you get. ;-)

6. Scientific American: New York City Greenhouse Gas Emissions Drop 19% Since 2005

New York City's greenhouse gas emissions have dropped by 19 percent since 2005, outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg said on Monday, putting the city nearly two-thirds of the way to meeting the goal that Bloomberg set five years ago.

7. BBC: Ethiopia's renewable energy revolution (Video)

In Ethiopia the government has recently announced major deals that should massively increase the amount of electricity generated from renewable resources.

The BBC's Emmanuel Igunza has been finding out how Ethiopia is leading Africa in the drive to exploit sustainable energy supplies.

8. USA Today: How fast is the Earth's climate actually changing?

How quickly parts of the Earth's climate are changing in response to added greenhouse gases and what's forecast for decades ahead is a mixed bag, a federal advisory council says in a report out Tuesday. ...

... "Research has helped us begin to distinguish more imminent threats from those that are less likely to happen this century," said James W.C. White, professor of geological sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and chairman of the committee that wrote the report.

"Evaluating climate changes and impacts in terms of their potential magnitude and the likelihood they will occur will help policymakers and communities make informed decisions about how to prepare for or adapt to them," he added. ...

9. Forbes: Can Coal Feed The Global Energy Appetite In A Healthy Way?

It's the ultimate paradox: How to feed the world's energy appetite while ensuring the planet's endless survival. Reducing the use of coal and using more sustainable energy forms is the ultimate answer, the International Energy Agency says. But until then, the global community must strive to make coal cleaner.

10. BBC: Has the Sun Gone to Sleep (Video)

Scientists are saying that the Sun is in a phase of "solar lull" - meaning that it has fallen asleep - and it is baffling them.

History suggests that periods of unusual "solar lull" coincide with bitterly cold winters.

Rebecca Morelle reports for BBC Newsnight on the effect this inactivity could have on our current climate, and what the implications might be for global warming.

11. Christian Science Monitor: Antarctica warming tied to natural cycle in tropical Atlantic, study says (+video)

Rapid warming along the Antarctic Peninsula and puzzling shifts in the distribution and extent of winter sea ice at the bottom of the world appear to have their roots in a natural climate swing centered in the tropical Atlantic, according to a new study by researchers at New York University.

The warming of the region is of concern because of its implications for sea-level rise, while the shifting and slight increase in winter sea ice has become a favorite talking-point among many of global warming's political skeptics. ...

12. It has become gospel, based on the Cook study, that 97% of scientists agree with the theory of human-caused global warming. Two stories:

Forbes: Global Warming Alarmist Trashes His Own Poll Of Meteorologists Showing No Climate Crisis

... Stenhouse, a psychologist and doctoral student in communications at George Mason University, emailed all full members of the American Meteorological Society for whom he could find an email address and asked them to fill out an online survey on global warming. More than 1,800 AMS meteorologists filled out the survey.

Only 52 percent said global warming is occurring and is caused mostly by humans – which is itself a far cry from having 52 percent say humans are causing a global warming crisis. The results were a huge blow to the mythical notion that all or nearly all scientists agree that humans are causing a global warming crisis. This is especially the case considering the AMS survey reflected the views of scientists with atmospheric science expertise. This wasn't a survey of engineers or other non-atmospheric scientists with little if any atmospheric science expertise. ...

And Popular Technology.net, 97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists' Papers, according to the scientists that published them

The paper, Cook et al. (2013) 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' searched the Web of Science for the phrases "global warming" and "global climate change" then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW. These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.

To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists' papers as "endorsing AGW", apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors. ...

Science and Technology Links

I've gotten very behind on my links pages. Here is my attempt to catch up on science and technology links. Sorry for the length, but there is some good stuff here. I'll have another post with environment links shortly.

1. Ancient Origins.net: Entire Neanderthal genome finally mapped – with amazing results

This incredible research has revealed the following:

• There is now conclusive evidence that Neanderthals bred with Homo sapiens – a fact disputed for many years. Some scientists claimed the two species had never even met.
• Ancient human species, including Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens mated with each other, resulting in an incredibly complex family tree.
• The Denisovans share up to 8 percent of their genome with a "super achaic" and totally unknown species that dates back around 1 million years.
• The results conflict with the theory that modern humans arose completely from one "out of Africa" migration more than 60,000 years ago that spread worldwide without mating with other early humans.
• About 1.5 to 2.1 percent of the DNA of all people with European ancestry can be traced to Neanderthals.
• Proportions of Neanderthal DNA are higher among Asians and Native Americans, who also have small percentages of Denisovan DNA.
• 6 percent of the genome of Australian Aborigines and indigenous Papua New Guineans belong to the Denisovan species.
• The Han Chinese, native to East Asia, and the Dai people of southern China are related to both Neanderthals and Denisovans.
• Some indigenous people from Brazil, such as the Karitiana, are not only related to both Neanderthals and Denisovans, but they show relatively high genetic contributions from the Denisovans.
• Only 87 genes responsible for making proteins in cells are different between modern humans and Neanderthals. Intriguingly, some of the gene differences involve ones involved in both immune responses and the development of brain cells in people.
• Somewhere within these 87 genes may lay the answer to why Neanderthals and Denisovans became extinct.
• And least consequential of all, the Neanderthal woman's parents were related, possibly half-siblings, or an uncle and niece. As evolutionary biologist Mattias Jakobsson stated, the incest finding "is more of an anecdote". The results from one individual cannot be applied to an entire species, in the same way that the recent discovery of an incest family in Australia does not apply to the whole of the human race.

- See more at: http://www.ancient-origins.net/news-evolution-human-origins/entire-neanderthal-genome-finally-mapped-amazing-results-001138#sthash.XmA90FGI.dpuf

Here are a few of the findings:

• There is now conclusive evidence that Neanderthals bred with Homo sapiens – a fact disputed for many years. Some scientists claimed the two species had never even met.
• Ancient human species, including Neanderthals, Denisovans and Homo sapiens mated with each other, resulting in an incredibly complex family tree.
• The results conflict with the theory that modern humans arose completely from one "out of Africa" migration more than 60,000 years ago that spread worldwide without mating with other early humans.
• Proportions of Neanderthal DNA are higher among Asians and Native Americans, who also have small percentages of Denisovan DNA.

2. Science: How Farming Reshaped Our Genomes

Before farming began to spread across Europe some 8500 years ago, the continent's occupants were hunter-gatherers. They were unable to digest starch and milk, according to a new ancient DNA study of a nearly 8000-year-old human skeleton from Spain. But these original occupants did already possess immune defenses against some of the diseases that would later become the scourge of civilization, and they apparently had dark skin. The findings are helping researchers understand what genetic and biological changes humans went through as they made the transition from hunting and gathering to farming. ...

3. Atlantic: Male and Female Brains Really Are Built Differently

By analyzing the MRIs of 949 people aged 8 to 22, scientists at the University of Pennsylvania found that male brains have more connections within each hemisphere, while female brains are more interconnected between hemispheres. ...

... By analyzing the subjects' MRIs using diffusion imaging, the scientists explored the brains' fiber pathways, the bundles of axons that act as highways routing information from one part of the mind to the other. After grouping the image by sex and inspecting the differences between the two aggregate "male" and "female" pictures, the researchers found that in men, fiber pathways run back and forth within each hemisphere, while in women they tend to zig-zag between the left, or "logical," and right, or "creative," sides of the brain.

Because female brains seem to have a stronger connections between their logical and intuitive parts, "when women are asked to do particularly hard tasks, they might engage very different parts of the brain," said Ragini Verma, an associate professor of radiology at the University of Pennsylvania and one of the authors of the report. "Men might over-engage just one part of the brain."

This could mean, for example, that men tend to see issues and resolve them directly, due to the strong connections between the "perception" and "action" areas of their brains, while women might be more inclined to combine logic and intuition when solving a problem. ...

4. Atlantic Cities: How Far You Could Get From New York in One Day, From 1800 to Today

5. Huff Post Tech: Everything From This 1991 Radio Shack Ad You Can Now Do With Your Phone

6. Huff Post Tech: Isaac Asimov's Predictions For 2014 From 50 Years Ago Are Eerily Accurate

Fifty years ago, American scientist and author Isaac Asimov published a story in The New York Times that listed his predictions for what the world would be like in 2014.

Asimov wrote more than 500 books in his lifetime, including science fiction novels and nonfiction scientific books, so he was well-versed in thinking about the future.

In his article, called "Visit to the World's Fair of 2014," Asimov got a whole bunch of his guesses right -- and his other predictions are making us a little envious of his imagined future. ...

7. Huff Post Tech: This 1981 News Report About The Internet Is Adorable, But Totally Wrong

As you might have guessed, they get virtually nothing right. Memes, cat videos, Miley Cyrus, even Facebook -- all are mysteries to the people of the past. Take a look and glory in your superiority. But beware - the world of 2034 is laughing at you behind your back.

 8. New York Times: Technology Is Not Driving Us Apart After All

... Hampton found that, rather than isolating people, technology made them more connected. "It turns out the wired folk — they recognized like three times as many of their neighbors when asked," Hampton said. Not only that, he said, they spoke with neighbors on the phone five times as often and attended more community events. Altogether, they were much more successful at addressing local problems, like speeding cars and a small spate of burglaries. They also used their Listserv to coordinate offline events, even sign-ups for a bowling league. Hampton was one of the first scholars to marshal evidence that the web might make people less atomized rather than more. Not only were people not opting out of bowling leagues — Robert Putnam's famous metric for community engagement — for more screen time; they were also using their computers to opt in. ...

…this was Hampton's most surprising finding: Today there are just a lot more women in public, proportional to men. It's not just on Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. On the steps of the Met, the proportion of women increased by 33 percent, and in Bryant Park by 18 percent. The only place women decreased proportionally was in Boston's Downtown Crossing — a major shopping area. "The decline of women within this setting could be interpreted as a shift in gender roles," Hampton writes. Men seem to be "taking on an activity that was traditionally regarded as feminine."

Across the board, Hampton found that the story of public spaces in the last 30 years has not been aloneness, or digital distraction, but gender equity. "I mean, who would've thought that, in America, 30 years ago, women were not in public the same way they are now?" Hampton said. "We don't think about that."...

9. Space.com: Scale of Universe Measured with 1-Percent Accuracy

WASHINGTON — An ultraprecise new galaxy map is shedding light on the properties of dark energy, the mysterious force thought to be responsible for the universe's accelerating expansion.

A team of researchers working with the Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (BOSS) has determined the distances to galaxies more than 6 billion light-years away to within 1 percent accuracy — an unprecedented measurement. ...

10. Atlantic: Almost No Americans Die From Lightning Strikes Anymore—Why?

In the lightning-death literature, one explanation has gained prominence: urbanization. Lightning death rates have declined in step with the rural population, and rural lightning deaths make up a far smaller percent of all lightning deaths (see figure at right). Urban areas afford more protection from lightning. Ergo, urbanization has helped make people safer from lightning.

11. Huff Post Science: Creationist Beliefs Linked To Personality Type In New Survey Of Churchgoers

... A new study suggests that people who believe in creationism are more likely to prefer to take in information via their senses versus via intuition. In contrast, religious believers who see the Bible's creation story as symbolic tend to be more intuitive. ...

12. Atlantic: Why Has Republican Belief in Evolution Declined So Much?

There's been a drop of more than 10 points—to just 43 percent—in the last four years. ...

... What does that leave? Maybe the gap represents an emotional response by Republicans to being out of power. Among others, Chris Mooney has argued that beliefs on politically contentious topics are often more rooted in opposition to perceived attacks than anything else—an instance of "motivated reasoning." Given that Democrats have controlled the White House and Senate since 2009, this could be backlash to the political climate, though it will be hard to tell until Republicans control Washington again.

Of course, motivated reasoning might help explain why many Democrats also believe in evolution.

13. Business Insider: MakerBot Launches' Mini' 3D Printer For Consumers For The Same Price As A Laptop

MakerBot CEO Bre Pettis unveiled the "MakerBot Replicator Mini Compact 3D" today, a smaller, cheaper, simpler 3D printer that he believes will finally make all consumers want to start extruding corn-based plastic in their own homes, and printing objects on demand. ...

14. Mashable: The Answer to Affordable Housing Could Lie Within a 3D Printer

... The process involves a giant robot with a hanging nozzle and a flexible arm on a gantry-type crane — the whole rig is known as a "contour crafter" — above the foundation. The contour crafter then proceeds to layer concrete based on a computer-generated pattern. The layers eventually take shape into walls, embedded with all the necessary conduits and passages for electricity, plumbing and air conditioning.

The research team envisions a future where contour crafters could be used for disaster relief to build emergency housing and to create affordable housing for those who are displaced, homeless or in desperate living conditions. ...

15. Business Insider: Biotech Firm: We Will 3D Print A Human Liver In 2014

2014 could be a landmark year for an amazing medical technology: human organs built by 3D printers.

San Diego biotech firm Organovo promises that its "bioprinting" technology will successfully print a human liver by the end of 2014, the company told Computerworld's Lucas Mearian. ...

16. Conservable Economist: First Burger Grown from Stem Cells Served in London

"On August 5, 2013, the first hamburger grown from stem cells in a laboratory, and not in a cow, was served in London. ... If this technology continues to evolve and is deployed at scale, it will have significant social, cultural, environmental, and economic implications." Carolyn Mattick and Brad Allenby launch the discussion in "The Future of Meat," in the Fall 2013 Issues in Science and Technology.

To be sure, the technology isn't quite ready for fast food. "From an economic perspective, cultured meat is still an experimental technology. The first in vitro burger reportedly cost about $335,000 to produce and was made by possible by financial support from Google cofounder Sergey Brin." Mattick and Allenby discuss a number of technological challenges.

But the potential for altering the environmental footprint of meet the global demand for meat is remarkable. ...

17. Project Syndicate: The GMO Stigma

... In September, an eminent group of scientists called upon the scientific community to "stand together in staunch opposition to the violent destruction of required tests on valuable advances, such as golden rice, that have the potential to save millions" of people from "needless suffering and death." But this passionate appeal fails to address the fundamental problem: the unfounded notion that there is a meaningful difference between "genetically modified organisms" and their conventional counterparts.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphThe fact is that GMOs and their derivatives do not amount to a "category" of food products. They are neither less safe nor less "natural" than other common foods. Labeling foods derived from GMOs, as some have proposed, thus implies a meaningful difference where none exists – an issue that even regulators have acknowledged.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphHumans have been engaging in "genetic modification" through selection and hybridization for millennia. Breeders routinely use radiation or chemical mutagens on seeds to scramble a plant's DNA and generate new traits.

CommentsView/Create comment on this paragraphA half-century of "wide cross" hybridizations, which involve the movement of genes from one species or genus to another, has given rise to plants – including everyday varieties of corn, oats, pumpkin, wheat, black currants, tomatoes, and potatoes – that do not and could not exist in nature. Indeed, with the exception of wild berries, wild game, wild mushrooms, and fish and shellfish, virtually everything in North American and European diets has been genetically improved in some way. ...

18. New York Times: Is Moore's Law Over? Designing the Next Wave of Computer Chips

PALO ALTO, Calif. — Not long after Gordon E. Moore proposed in 1965 that the number of transistors that could be etched on a silicon chip would continue to double approximately every 18 months, critics began predicting that the era of "Moore's Law" would draw to a close.

More than ever recently, industry pundits have been warning that the progress of the semiconductor industry is grinding to a halt — and that the theory of Dr. Moore, an Intel co-founder, has run its course.

If so, that will have a dramatic impact on the computer world. The innovation that has led to personal computers, music players and smartphones is directly related to the plunging cost of transistors, which are now braided by the billions onto fingernail slivers of silicon — computer chips — that may sell for as little as a few dollars each.

But Moore's Law is not dead; it is just evolving, according to more optimistic scientists and engineers. Their contention is that it will be possible to create circuits that are closer to the scale of individual molecules by using a new class of nanomaterials — metals, ceramics, polymeric or composite materials that can be organized from the "bottom up," rather than the top down. ...

19. Business Insider: Here's Why 'The Internet Of Things' Will Be Huge, And Drive Tremendous Value For People And Businesses

The Internet Of Things represents a major departure in the history of the Internet, as connections move beyond computing devices, and begin to power billions of everyday devices, from parking meters to home thermostats. 

Estimates for Internet of Things or IoT market value are massive, since by definition the IoT will be a diffuse layer of devices, sensors, and computing power that overlays entire consumer, business-to-business, and government industries. The IoT will account for an increasingly huge number of connections: 1.9 billion devices today, and 9 billion by 2018. That year, it will be roughly equal to the number of smartphones, smart TVs, tablets, wearable computers, and PCs combined. ...

20. Extreme Tech: Cold fusion tech picked up by major US partner, prepares for launch in the American and Chinese energy markets

... Cold fusion, also known as low-energy nuclear reaction (LENR), is a technology that promises to create huge amounts of green energy from very cheap fuel. In the case of Rossi's E-Cat (Energy Catalyser), nickel and hydrogen are fused into copper — a process that has 10,000 times the energy density of gasoline, and 1,000 times the power density. For more background information on cold fusion/LENR, and why it's safer and cleaner than normal nuclear reactors, read our previous E-Cat story. Suffice it to say, the scientific community's main contention is whether this reaction is actually possible or not. Rossi says he's found a special catalyst that makes it possible; lots of other scientists, though, claim it's hogwash. (Read: 500MW from half a gram of hydrogen: The hunt for fusion power heats up.) ...

21. Real Clear Science: Debunking Myths on Nuclear Power

... There are five declared and four other nuclear-armed countries (assuming Israel's warheads detonate). There are 31 nations with nuclear power stations (and 58 with research reactors). Only seven of the nine nuclear-armed countries have civilian power programs.

All of the technical factors can be circumvented with sufficient time and money. Uneconomic fuel cycles can be run and warheads built with high levels of radioactivity. However, no country has developed indigenous nuclear weapons after deploying civilian nuclear power stations.

Historically, if a country wants to produce a nuclear bomb, they build reactors especially for the job of making plutonium, and ignore civilian power stations.

22. Breaking Energy: Terawatt Era: Solar Technology's Next 40 Years

... Whereas the past 4 years saw an incredible halving of cost seven times, this will not continue. There may only be one halving left to achieve. The action will be in deployment, and it will be phenomenal. The next 40 years should see seven doublings of in-place capacity. In Solar 1.0, the megawatt-era has given way to today's gigawatt-era. In the next 40 years the gigawatt-era will give way to the terawatt-era. By 2054 we should see over 17 terawatts of solar capacity in place around the world, which would equate to more than 10% of global energy demand at that point. At an average installed cost of $1/watt (which we will have passed by then), this represents a $17 trillion opportunity. ...

23. Wired: Watch: How Super-Efficient Nanomaterials Could Herald a Design Revolution

The Great Pyramid of Giza is 174 meters tall and weighs 10 megatons. The Eiffel Tower is over twice that height but weighs just five and half kilotons–some 10 times lighter. The difference, according to materials scientist Julia Greer, is that "elements of architecture" were introduced into the design that allowed it to be stronger and more lightweight while using far less materials. Where the pyramids are four solid walls, the Eiffel Tower is more skeletal in structure–and vastly more efficient as a result. ...

 

The Alternative to Climate Alarmists & Deniers

Daily Tech: Climate Alarmists & Deniers: Please, Just Shut Up

Researchers at George Mason University and Yale University bring the grave news that "belief in global warming" is at a "six year low". 
 
I. Do You Believe?
 
The study [PDF] comes courtesy of principle investigator Professor Anthony Leiserowitz, an environmental scientist at Yale. Other principle investigators include Professors Edward Maibach and Connie Roser-Renouf (GMU communications professors, specializing in climate). Geoff Feinberg, a Yale university employee who lacks a Ph.D but was a private sector polling specialist on environmental issues also contributed to the work. 
 
Another odd addition was psychopathology researcher turned climatology investigator Professor Seth Rosenthal, a member of Yale's climatology team. Rounding out the team was Professor Jennifer Marlon, a PhD expert in geography who currently teaches climate science at Yale.
 
The first oddity -- which you may notice -- is that there's nary a Ph.D credentialed climatologist in the field. I think this is worth noting as critics of the more alarmist brands of "global warming" rhetoric are often attacked for not holding climatology degrees, despite the fact that many of them hold master's degrees or doctorates in related fields, such as physics or civil engineering. ...

This is a rather lengthy article but it is the conclusion that caught my eye.

IV. More Science, More Debate, Less Politics
 
There's a need for research. But surveys on public opinion asked in shrill black and white terms offer little help to a legitimate debate.
 
And as much as there's a need for research, there's an equal age to push to remove this issue from a political debate. Until someone can come up with a financially sound approach to emissions control, the government needs to step back and let the private sector handle its own affairs.
 
Mankind is changing the climate in numerous ways, many of which surpass even strong warming on a local basis. From desertification to water cycle changes due to deforestation, many serious manmade climate changes are overlooked due to global warming's chokehold on media attention.

Instead of focusing on querying public beliefs and condemning (or praising) "nonbelievers", let us instead focus the dialogue on constructive solutions to both adopt a sensible path to alternative energy (e.g. algae, nuclear power, solar), so that when fossil fuel supplies do near exhaustion, we're prepared. And let's acknowledge that climate change -- manmade or not -- has always been occurring on planet Earth.

Last, but not least, let's not blame the media for putting things in alarmist or overly skeptical terms, when researchers themselves often resort to the same extremes for funding. After all, most members of the media have at least a bachelor's degree in a technical subject. Like many who publish climate research, we lack a Ph.D in climatology. But so long as we express our opinions respectfully, keeping an open and questioning mind, I see no reason why the media's opinions are more or less valid than non-climatologist thinking heads in academia. To suggest otherwise is simply elitist "ivory tower" type thinking.

I have no doubt the climate is changing. I don't doubt that human activity plays a role. I am not sure how big that role is. Based on significantly errant predictions about climate (temps have remained stable for 15 years and are now outside the 95% confidence level of modeled scientific predictions), I don't have confidence that scientists have a good grasp on the climate yet. Some are suggesting the 15-year hiatus in warming could last another 15 years.

Furthermore, calculations about CO2 emissions all assume GDP growth and energy use are perfectly coupled. Yet, evidence is emerging that the two are decoupling and that GDP is taking less energy per dollar of GDP. That means less than predicted CO2. As with the temperature predictions, my confidence level in scientists' ability to predict specific impacts is not high, but it is not zero. In short, I'm not greatly worried ... yet.

With all that said, there is a lot in there I could be wrong about. Maybe by a little. Maybe by a lot. There are significant unknowns. And that means we are looking at a risk management question. Rather than feeling the need to cling exclusively to one pole or another ... alarm or denial ... I'm hedging my actions against the idea that the challenges are not threatening. It doesn't hurt that there are some significant advantages to nuclear and renewable energy beyond climate concerns. That makes me willing to hedge even more in that direction. What I find most disappointing is those who think total alarm or total denial is the only strategic options that may be considered. For them, it is most often about making ideology prevail versus dealing prudently with challenges.

I am articulating not a "moderate" position between two extremes or some attempt to find a "third way." I see it as realism ... decision-making in the face of uncertainty and recognizing climate change remediation is more than a one-dimensional challenge. I see what I'm advocating as an alternative way to today's default option, unwavering allegiance to exaggerated claims of certainty by alarmists and deniers.

 

The (Mostly) Improving State of the World

Washington Post: 40 charts that explain the world

Our friend and colleague Max Fisher over at Worldviews has posted another 40 maps that explain the world, building on his original classic of the genre. But this is Wonkblog. We're about charts. And one of the great things about charts is that they show not just how things are -- but how they're changing.

So we searched for charts that would tell not just the story of how the world is -- but where it's going. Some of these charts are optimistic, like the ones showing huge gains in life expectancy in poorer nations. Some are more worryisome -- wait till you see the one on endangered species. But together they tell a story of a world that's changing faster than at arguably any other time in human history. ...

As the author notes, we have challenges but hardly descend into a global dystopia. I think these charts give a pretty holistic view. Here are three examples.
It was commonly believed that primitive societies were more peaceful and that modern civilization gave rise to unprecedented violence. This chart compares death rates by war in primitive societies as calculated by anthropologists to those for Europe/USA in the 20th century.
And then there is this:

The graphs point to environmental protection and adaptation as the biggest problems in the days ahead. Those challenges are not insurmountable. Energy sources like natural gas and nuclear power can be used in the interim on the way to practical renewable technologies. Genetically modified crops can help to reduce water consumption, increase yield, and improve hardiness. Innovations in fields like biotechnology, nanotechnology, and 3-D printing promise to revolutionize the world economy into a less wasteful and more affordable human existence for everyone. There is work to do, but there is also much reason for hope of a better world.

 

A Lonely Quest for Facts on Genetically Modified Crops

New York Times: A Lonely Quest for Facts on Genetically Modified Crops

... Like some others on the nine-member Council, Greggor Ilagan was not even sure at the outset of the debate exactly what genetically modified organisms were: living things whose DNA has been altered, often with the addition of a gene from a distant species, to produce a desired trait. But he could see why almost all of his colleagues had been persuaded of the virtue of turning the island into what the bill's proponents called a "G.M.O.-free oasis."

"You just type 'G.M.O.' and everything you see is negative," he told his staff. Opposing the ban also seemed likely to ruin anyone's re-election prospects. ...

...At stake is how to grow healthful food most efficiently, at a time when a warming world and a growing population make that goal all the more urgent.

Scientists, who have come to rely on liberals in political battles over stem-cell research, climate change and the teaching of evolution, have been dismayed to find themselves at odds with their traditional allies on this issue. Some compare the hostility to G.M.O.s to the rejection of climate-change science, except with liberal opponents instead of conservative ones.

"These are my people, they're lefties, I'm with them on almost everything," said Michael Shintaku, a plant pathologist at the University of Hawaii at Hilo, who testified several times against the bill. "It hurts."...

This is a very interesting article with implications for how we wrestle with many complex issues. The scientific perspective on stem-cell research, climate change, and evolution dovetails well with the meta-narrative liberals have of the world. G.M.O.'s (and I'll add nuclear power) do not. This tells us that despite progressive pretensions of having a superior commitment to science, they don't. Emotion enters into decision-making ("You a discrediting my narrative!"). They operate not irrationally but within bounded rationality, reason based on a limited understanding consistent with how they generally understand the world to operate. They rely on heuristics to make sense of complex issues. They are not driven by science to their positions, but rather the science conveniently corresponds with a previously held narrative on some issues (and they are quite happy to appropriate that science in furtherance of their narrative.) But when science runs counter to the narrative, it is the narrative, not science, which is determinative. In short, liberals are just like the rest of us: humans.

Over the years, I've become increasingly aware of how hard it is to move past my initial emotional reactions when my metanarratives are challenges and press deeper to get at the truth. Personal disorientation is often stressful. But I also realized early in life that the search for truth is often socially disruptive. The truth of these complex issues is frequently unfriendly to all metanarratives in one way or another, and as soon as you step on someone's metanarrative, you risk relationships. While I'm not intimidated by dealing with conflict, perpetual battles certainly bring no joy. And that is precisely where the pursuit of truth often leads.

I have a lot of admiration for Greggor Ilagan in this story. I'm sure I'm more right of center than he is, and we would likely disagree on any number of policy matters. Still, I strongly identify with Ilagan and the personal costs he experienced for being authentic in his discernment. He is an inspiration to me. May God grant that each of us would learn better to discern with warm hearts and cool heads.

Science and Technology Links

1. Scientific American: Scientific American's Top 10 Science Stories of 2013

A carbon threshold breached, commitments to brain science made, mystery neutrinos found and human evolution revised—these and other events highlight the year in science and technology as picked by the editors of Scientific American

2. Reuters: "Peak farmland" is here, crop area to diminish: study

(Reuters) - The amount of land needed to grow crops worldwide is at a peak, and a geographical area more than twice the size of France will be able to return to its natural state by 2060 as a result of rising yields and slower population growth, a group of experts said on Monday.

Their report, conflicting with United Nations studies that say more cropland will be needed in coming decades to avert hunger and price spikes as the world population rises above 7 billion, said humanity had reached what it called "Peak Farmland". ...

... "We believe that humanity has reached Peak Farmland, and that a large net global restoration of land to nature is ready to begin," said Jesse Ausubel, director of the Program for the Human Environment at the Rockefeller University in New York.

"Happily, the cause is not exhaustion of arable land, as many had feared, but rather moderation of population and tastes and ingenuity of farmers," he wrote in a speech about the study he led in the journal Population and Development Review. ...

3. Mashable: The Universal Translator Is Real and Its Name Is Sigmo

Ever since Star Trek explained away how all alien races could speak English through a piece of future tech called the Universal Translator, technology companies have worked to create just such a device. One may have succeeded in developing a 1.0 version with the Sigmo.

The Sigmo is a small, pillbox-sized device equipped with a microphone and speaker, but with a cloud-connected twist. Select the language you'd like to translate into, then hold the Sigmo up and speak to it. The Sigmo records your voice, then sends the recording to the cloud for translation via Bluetooth connection with your smartphone.

4. Inhabit: Africa's First Plastic Bottle House Rises in Nigeria

... the nearly-complete home is bullet and fireproof, earthquake resistant, and maintains a comfortable interior temperature of 64 degrees fahrenheit year round!

5. Wired: The World’s Largest Mega-Ship Launches for the First Time

... At 600,000 tons and 243 feet wide, when the Prelude left its dry dock in South Korea after a year-long build, it unseated the Emma Maersk (1,302 feet) as the world’s largest ship. But calling it a ship is almost a misnomer. The Prelude is a floating liquefied natural gas (FLNG) facility that will be posted off the coast of Western Australia and will stay there for the next quarter-century.

As an FLNG plant, the Prelude handles everything involved in capturing, processing, and storing liquid natural gas, sucking the stuff from deep within the Earth and refining 3.9 million tons each year before it’s offloaded onto smaller ships that bring it back to the mainland. ...

6. Business Insider: The Number Of Smartphones In Use Is About To Pass The Number Of PCs

7. Scientific American: China Moon Rover Landing Marks a Space Program on the Rise

China cemented its reputation as the fastest rising star on the space scene this weekend by landing a rover on the moon—a challenging feat pulled off by only two nations before: the U.S. and the Soviet Union. “This is a very big deal indeed,” says lunar scientist Paul Spudis of the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston. “Landing on the moon is not something easily attained—it requires precision maneuvering, tracking, computation and engineering. It is a delicate task and the Chinese success reflects a mature, evolving and capable program.” ...

8. Scientific American: Study Linking Genetically Modified Corn to Rat Tumors Is Retracted

Bowing to scientists' near-universal scorn, the journal Food and Chemical Toxicology today fulfilled its threat to retract a controversial paper claiming that a genetically modified (GM) maize causes serious disease in rats, after the authors refused to withdraw it.

The paper, from a research group led by Gilles-Eric Séralini, a molecular biologist at the University of Caen, France, and published in 2012,  showed “no evidence of fraud or intentional misrepresentation of the data,” said a statement from Elsevier, which publishes the journal. But the small number and type of animals used in the study mean that “no definitive conclusions can be reached.” The known high incidence of tumors in the Sprague–Dawley strain of rat ”cannot be excluded as the cause of the higher mortality and incidence observed in the treated groups,” it added. ...

9. Forbes: Scientists Make More Eye Cells - With An Inkjet Printer

British researchers have used an inkjet printer to successfully print retinal cells for the first time, in what could be a breakthrough for the treatment of optic nerve injury and diseases like glaucoma. ...

10. Berkley Earth (via Watts Up With That): Explaining and Understanding Declines in U.S. CO2 Emissions

11. Carpe Diem: Fossil fuels will continue to supply > 80% of US energy through 2040, while renewables will play only a minor role

12. Slate: $7 Trillion to Fight Climate Change? Bjorn Lomborg

The EU proposes spending that much on projects that will barely reduce temperatures or lower sea levels. ...

... This does not mean that climate change is not important; it means only that the EU’s climate policy is not smart. Over the course of this century, the ideal EU policy would cost more than $7 trillion, yet it would reduce the temperature rise by just 0.05^o Celsius and lower sea levels by a trivial 9 millimeters. After spending all that money, we would not even be able to tell the difference. ...

... We need a smarter approach to tackling climate change. Rather than relying on cutting a few tons of incredibly overpriced CO₂ now, we need to invest in research and development aimed at innovating down the cost of green energy in the long run, so that everyone will switch. ...

13. New York Times: The Poor Need Cheap Fossil Fuels

... About 3.5 million of them die prematurely each year as a result of breathing the polluted air inside their homes — about 200,000 more than the number who die prematurely each year from breathing polluted air outside, according to a study by the World Health Organization.

There’s no question that burning fossil fuels is leading to a warmer climate and that addressing this problem is important. But doing so is a question of timing and priority. For many parts of the world, fossil fuels are still vital and will be for the next few decades, because they are the only means to lift people out of the smoke and darkness of energy poverty. ...

... The developed world needs a smarter approach toward cleaner fuels. The United States has been showing the way. Hydraulic fracturing has produced an abundance of inexpensive natural gas, leading to a shift away from coal in electricity production. Because burning natural gas emits half the carbon dioxide of coal, this technology has helped the United States reduce carbon dioxide emissions to the lowest level since the mid-1990s, even as emissions rise globally. We need to export this technology and help other nations exploit it.

At the same time, wealthy Western nations must step up investments into research and development in green energy technologies to ensure that cleaner energy eventually becomes so cheap that everyone will want it.

But until then they should not stand in the way of poorer nations as they turn to coal and other fossil fuels. This approach will get our priorities right. And perhaps then, people will be able to cook in their own homes without slowly killing themselves.

14. NPR: Environmentalists Split Over Need For Nuclear Power

15. BBC: Nuclear fusion milestone passed at US lab

Harnessing fusion - the process that powers the Sun - could provide an unlimited and cheap source of energy.

But to be viable, fusion power plants would have to produce more energy than they consume, which has proven elusive.

Now, a breakthrough by scientists at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) could boost hopes of scaling up fusion. ...

 16. Popular Technology.net: 97% Study Falsely Classifies Scientists' Papers, according to the scientists that published them

The paper, Cook et al. (2013) 'Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature' searched the Web of Science for the phrases "global warming" and "global climate change" then categorizing these results to their alleged level of endorsement of AGW. These results were then used to allege a 97% consensus on human-caused global warming.

To get to the truth, I emailed a sample of scientists whose papers were used in the study and asked them if the categorization by Cook et al. (2013) is an accurate representation of their paper. Their responses are eye opening and evidence that the Cook et al. (2013) team falsely classified scientists' papers as "endorsing AGW", apparently believing to know more about the papers than their authors. ...

Fields of beaten gold (GMOs)

Economist: Fields of beaten gold

Greens say climate-change deniers are unscientific and dangerous. So are greens who oppose GM crops. ...

... There is plenty of evidence, though, that they benefit the health of the planet. One of the biggest challenges facing mankind is to feed the 9 billion-10 billion people who will be alive and (hopefully) richer in 2050. This will require doubling food production on roughly the same area of land, using less water and fewer chemicals. It will also mean making food crops more resistant to the droughts and floods that seem likely if climate change is a bad as scientists fear.

Organic farming—the kind beloved of greens—cannot meet this challenge. It uses far too much land. If the Green revolution had never happened, and yields had stayed at 1960 levels, the world could not produce its current food output even if it ploughed up every last acre of cultivable land.

In contrast, GM crops boost yields, protecting wild habitat from the plough. They are more resistant to the vagaries of climate change, and to diseases and pests, reducing the need for agrochemicals. Genetic research holds out the possibility of breakthroughs that could vastly increase the productivity of farming, such as grains that fix their own nitrogen. Vandalising GM field trials is a bit like the campaign of some religious leaders to prevent smallpox inoculations: it causes misery, even death, in the name of obscurantism and unscientific belief. ...

Science and Technology Links

1. The Cultural Cognition Project

The Cultural Cognition Project is a group of scholars interested in studying how cultural values shape public risk perceptions and related policy beliefs. Cultural cognition refers to the tendency of individuals to conform their beliefs about disputed matters of fact (e.g., whether global warming is a serious threat; whether the death penalty deters murder; whether gun control makes society more safe or less) to values that define their cultural identities. Project members are using the methods of various disciplines -- including social psychology, anthropology, communications, and political science -- to chart the impact of this phenomenon and to identify the mechanisms through which it operates. The Project also has an explicit normative objective: to identify processes of democratic decisionmaking by which society can resolve culturally grounded differences in belief in a manner that is both congenial to persons of diverse cultural outlooks and consistent with sound public policymaking.

Below are examples of CCP studies and research projects. ...

2. The Myth of Organic Agriculture

STANFORD – Organic products – from food to skin-care nostrums to cigarettes – are very much in vogue, with the global market for organic food alone now reportedly exceeding $60 billion annually. The views of organic devotees seem to be shared by the European Commission, whose official view of organic farming and foods is, “Good for nature, good for you.” But there is no persuasive evidence of either.

A 2012 meta-analysis of data from 240 studies concluded that organic fruits and vegetables were, on average, no more nutritious than their cheaper conventional counterparts; nor were they less likely to be contaminated by pathogenic bacteria like E. coli or salmonella – a finding that surprised even the researchers. “When we began this project,” said Dena Bravata, one of the researchers, “we thought that there would likely be some findings that would support the superiority of organics over conventional food.”

Many people purchase organic foods in order to avoid exposure to harmful levels of pesticides. But that is a poor rationale. While non-organic fruits and vegetables had more pesticide residue, the levels in more than 99% of cases did not cross the conservative safety thresholds set by regulators.

Moreover, the vast majority of the pesticidal substances found on produce occur “naturally” in people’s diets, through organic and conventional foods. ...

3. The Safety of Bioengineered Crops - Timothy Taylor

... I support all sorts of rules and regulations and follow-up studies to make sure that genetically engineered crops continue to be safe for the environment and for consumers. After all, the first-generation genetically engineered field crops were all about pest resistance and herbicide-tolerance, and as new types of genetic engineering are proposed, they should be scrutinized. But for me, the purpose of these regulations is to create a clear pathway so that the technology can be more widely used in a safe way, not to create a set of paperwork hurdles to block the future use of the technology.

Farmers have been breeding plants and animals for desired characteristics for centuries. Genetic engineering holds the possibility of speeding up that process of agricultural innovation, so that agriculture can better meet a variety of human needs. Most obviously, genetically engineered crops are likely to be important as world population expands and world incomes continue to rise (so that meat consumption rises as well). In addition, remember that plants serve functions other than calorie consumption. Plant that were more effective at fixing carbon in place might be a useful tool in limiting the rise of carbon in the atmosphere. Genetically modified plants are one of the possible paths to making plant-based ethanol economically viable. Plants that can thrive with less water or fewer chemicals can be hugely helpful to the environment, and to the health of farmworkers around the world. The opportunity cost of slowing the progress of agricultural biotechnology is potentially very high.

 4. How nanotechnology could revolutionise food storage

... According to a 2013 report from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 30-50% of food is lost to spoilage before it is eaten. In developed nations, most of the waste comes from two sources: consumers who buy too much and let it rot in their fridges, and farmers, who leave less-than-beautiful food to rot in their fields.

In the developing world, consumers are less picky about the appearance of their food, and are less likely to let it rot in their homes. But inadequate storage means that up to half of the food that gets harvested spoils before it gets to the market. Ghana, for example, loses up to half of its maize crop to spoilage. Consumers in the developed world have been understandably wary of nanotechnology products in their food, but nanoparticles can be used in food packaging in a number of ways to prevent food from spoiling. That could change the amount of useable food for billions of people. ...

5.  Israeli Startup Is Finding a Way to Speed Crop Growth by Thousands of Years

Doron Gal has an ambitious goal: to help feed the world and to make money in the process.

Located in Moshav Sharona in Israel's Galilee, his startup Kaiima Bio-Agritech's goal is to use genome multiplication to increase yield potential, improve water-use efficiency and fortify plants against harsh environments. ...

6. Metastisizing Misinformation About GMOs And RNA: Ugly Glare On Union Of Concerned Scientists, Consumers Union

Can science self-correct, in effect protect against sloppy or politicized research? Scientists can try—but the success of those efforts depends in large measure upon the integrity of journalists and advocates to address their own reporting mistakes.

A great illustration of the challenge of controlling ‘metastasizing misinformation’ has emerged with the publication of a fascinating and important article in Nature Biotechnologythat sharply challenges a study that had made controversial claims that dramatically raised the fear factor about GMOs.

The backstory provides an intriguing look at how the anti-GMO industry and sycophant journalists work—and the consequences of flogging single studies to score ideological points. ...

7. The Future of Water Sustainability

... In 2014 the world will see even more companies increase water-related investments. This is not only for immediate business purposes, but because water sustains life and is intimately connected to all aspects of economic development. Business leaders understand this and will increase their focus on their own use of water as well as on water and sanitation access in the communities where they operate. In the year ahead cross-sector collaboration will also grow as the economic value of water climbs steeply.

Traditional charity models are becoming outmoded. What began as investments in digging wells have evolved into far more dynamic, market-oriented approaches like targeted grants intended to optimise social returns per philanthropic dollar. ...

The PepsiCo Foundation has pledged $35m to water programs in developing countries (including $12.1m to Water.org). Most of this has gone to Water.org's WaterCredit model, a microfinance initiative which links access to finance with access to water and sanitation. The Caterpillar Foundation is investing $11.3m in this market-based approach over the next five years. The IKEA Foundation has stepped in with a $5m grant and companies such as Levi Strauss & Co, and organizations like the Swiss Re Foundation, the Mastercard Foundation and Bank of America Foundation have also joined the effort. Their thinking and action have evolved because they recognize that straight charity is extremely limited as a means to long-term impact. ...

8. Main Street, Not Wall Street, is Growing Solar Energy

In a report from the Center for American Progress, data was analyzed from the three states with the most solar systems: Arizona, California, and New Jersey.  It was found that installations are overwhelmingly occurring in middle-class neighborhoods that have median incomes ranging from $40,000 to $90,000. According to the report, “the areas that experienced the most growth from 2011 to 2012 had median incomes ranging from $40,000 to $50,000 in both Arizona and California and $30,000 to $40,000 in New Jersey.”

9. Nuke Huggers? Why Some Climate Scientists Are Warming To Nuclear Power

Some of the world’s most distinguished climate scientists are becoming nuclear reactor huggers? They say that we should embrace nuclear power—if we serious about slowing global warming, that is. ...

... The flip side of Fukushima [and consequent retreat from nuclear], though, is Japan’s recent announcement that it is backing off its previous commitments to reduce carbon emissions—a decision that has made many environmentalists unhappy. ...

... The scientists hail from the Carnegie Institution, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Columbia University Earth Institute, and the National Center for Atmospheric Research. They acknowledge that nuclear power is not perfect, in that “no energy source is without downsides,” but that “quantitative analyses show that the risks associated with the expanded use of nuclear energy are order of magnitude smaller than the risks associated with fossil fuels.” Click here to see my Energy Trends Watch blog post about the climate scientists’ letter.

What gives? These climate scientists have studied the numbers—as did I, when I ran Pennsylvania’s Department of Environmental Protection and thereafter. The more scientists, environmentalists, business people and policymakers look at the numbers, the more senseless nuclear plant shutdowns seem, and the more losses we will incur in the efforts to curb climate change. ...

Related: Unavoidable Answer for the Problem of Climate Change

10. The World in 50 Years - An Energy Perspective

... Energy supply and use is determined by three primary factors: demographics, economics and technology. A few basic features of the future of these three factors are fairly likely, and we can therefore pragmatically use these to set a bedrock for the trajectory our energy system is likely to take. ...

...  History demonstrates that people generally choose economic growth and improvements in living standards over other factors. Therefore energy sources must win on a balance of economic as well as environmental considerations. Shell's "Mountains" primary energy scenario for 2060 suggest the fossil fuels will account for about 62% of demand, down from current level of 80%. The estimated energy mix pie in 50 years under these forecasts is therefore likely to consist of coal (25%), natural gas (24%), oil (13%), nuclear (11%) and renewables and others constituting the remainder. Evidently, the lack of economic alternatives unfortunately leaves cheap fuels such as coal still contributing to a significant part of the energy mix.

If we are to succeed in seeing a less polluted, yet still prosperous, future, governments and societies alike must focus policy on promoting the fuels which strike the right balance between cost, scalability, efficiency, and environmental impact. Today, and for the next 50 years, the fuel that evidently satisfies these parameters is natural gas. ...

11. The trend in violent tornadoes? (Source)

12. The Average Driver Travels 1,200 Fewer Miles Each Year

13. Smithsonian makes push in 3D imaging of artifacts

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With most of its 137 million objects kept behind the scenes or in a faraway museum, the Smithsonian Institution is launching a new 3D scanning and printing initiative to make more of its massive collection accessible to schools, researchers and the public worldwide.

A small team has begun creating 3D models of some key objects representing the breadth of the collection at the world's largest museum complex. Some of the first 3D scans include the Wright brothers' first airplane, Amelia Earhart's flight suit, casts of President Abraham Lincoln's face during the Civil War and a Revolutionary War gunboat. Less familiar objects include a former slave's horn, a missionary's gun from the 1800s and a woolly mammoth fossil from the Ice Age. They are pieces of history some people may hear about but rarely see or touch.

Now the Smithsonian is launching a new 3D viewer online Wednesday with technology from 3D design firm AutoDesk to give people a closer look at artifacts in their own homes. The data can also be downloaded, recreated with a 3D printer and used to help illustrate lessons in history, art and science in schools. While some schools might acquire 3D printers for about $1,000, other users may examine the models on their computers. ...

14. Robots Allow Doctors To Remotely Advise, Diagnose Patients

Remote presence robots are allowing physicians to "beam" themselves into hospitals to diagnose patients and offer medical advice during emergencies. ...

 15. 'I'm Not A Math Person' Is No Longer A Valid Excuse

 Contrary to popular opinion, a natural ability in math will only get you so far in studies of the subject.

Research published in Child Development found that hard work and good study habits were the most important factor in improving math ability over time.

But bad attitudes about math are holding us back. ...

Science and Technology Links

1. 10 common scientific misconceptions

Did you grow up believing in any of these science myths? From baby birds to flushing toilets, we debunk common 'facts' that are often just a form of misconstrued science.

2. Inventions that were going to change the world – but didn’t

Every new invention is supposed to be the "next big thing" – and some are. The cellphone, the PC, the plane: all inventions that revolutionized the way we live our lives and far surpassed their initial hype. But some inventions don't quite measure up to the fanfare that precedes their release. These end up in the scrap bin of history. Check out what inventions we all thought would revolutionize our world... but only ended up on this website list. ...

3. The Top 7 Technology Trends That Will Dominate 2014

4. What is 4-D Printing?

An M.I.T. lab is tweaking the idea of 3-D printing with the help of smart materials that continue to change even after they leave the printer.

 5. Nano Energy Storage Could Make Conventional Batteries Obsolete

 ...Components are molded from a material consisting of carbon fiber in a polymer resin, nano-structured batteries and super capacitors. The result, says Volvo, is an eco-friendly and cost-effective structure that stands to substantially cut vehicle weight and volume.

Volvo is already at work with an S80 that uses components made form the material that serve structural functions and replace a conventional battery at the same time. The company says that by completely substituting an electric car’s existing components with the new material, overall vehicle weight could be reduced by more than 15 percent.

“The way it works is reinforced carbon fibers sandwich the new battery and are molded and formed to fit around the car’s frame such as door panels, the trunk lid and wheel bowl,” said the company in a statement. ...

6. This Radioactive Element Could Power the Planet

7. Green energy rethink: 'Paying huge amounts of money to do nothing'

Bjorn Lomborg: Very clearly we do want to fix global warming, but you aren’t fixing it if you end up paying an enormous amount of money to do very, very little good.  Now let’s remember that most of the subsidies that Europe gets go to wind and solar panels, but we already control that because we have an ETS (European Trading System) already in place. So whenever you buy an extra solar panel or whenever you subsidize an extra wind turbine you don’t actually cut carbon emissions, you simply make it cheaper for someone else to use more coal fire power. So the reality is that we just pay huge amounts of money to do virtually nothing.

8. New Scientist: First sign that humanity is slowing its carbon surge

2012 may go down in history as a remarkable year. For the first time, the maddening pace of humanity's greenhouse gas emissions showed signs of a global slowdown.

Importantly – and unlike the drop in emissions triggered by the 2008 recession – the let-off is happening at the same time as global wealth continues to swell. ...

9. The Grid: Wal-Mart Now Draws More Solar Power Than 38 U.S. States

Solar power and keg stands have one thing in common: Wal-Mart wants to profit from them.

In the race for commercial solar power, Wal-Mart is killing it. The company now has almost twice as much capacity as second-place Costco. A better comparison: Wal-Mart is converting more sun into energy than 38 U.S. states. ...

And a related story: Walmart, Safeway, Others Unplugging From Unreliable Power Grid

More large corporations have decided that the electric power grid is unreliable and are planning to unplug from it and generate their own electricity.

The Wall Street Journal has confirmed a story that Off the Grid News previously reported – and the newspaper found the practice is even more widespread than previously thought.

Off The Grid News had reported that several large corporations, including Walmart, Safeway, Google, Bank of America and Coca-Cola, are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on systems to generate their own electricity. A Journal article indicates that many other large companies, too, are taking steps to generate their own electricity. ...

10. Nuclear Power Needed To Slow Climate Change, Experts Say

... Some of the world's top climate scientists say wind and solar energy won't be enough to head off extreme global warming, and they're asking environmentalists to support the development of safer nuclear power as one way to cut fossil fuel pollution. ...

11. UN highlights role of farming in closing emissions gap

Changing the way farmers plough their lands could have a big impact on global emissions of greenhouse gases. ...

12. Can LED Bulbs Make Nuclear Plants Obsolete?

... By a sheer coincidence, LED lights and nuclear power provide an intriguing way to study the issue. Nuclear power plants generate approximately 19% of the electric power in the U.S. Lighting accounts for approximately 19% of the power used.  Thus, you can argue the fleet of 104 commercial nuclear reactors exists to keep the lights on. If you want to increase functional capacity by 20 percent, you can build 21 nuclear reactors or reduce light power by 20 percent. ...

... So what’s the logical thing to do? Spoiler alert—bulbs win hands down. The Department of Energy estimates that solid-state lighting is already on track to cut lighting power by 46%. ...

13. WAPO: Israel knows water technology, and it wants to cash in

... Israel recycles more than 80 percent of its effluents, compared with about 1 percent in the United States, the governor said. ...

... Israel is a world leader in desalination of seawater. By next year, more than a third of Israel’s tap water will come from the Mediterranean Sea and a few briny wells. Israel’s total water consumption remains nearly at 1964 levels — even though its population has quadrupled to 8 million people, according to the economic ministry. ...

... Distel said that water used to be a kind of “dumb industry” dominated by low-tech and cheap water, distributed by centuries-old pipes and canals, employing irrigation technologies that dated to the ancient Egyptians. Municipal water systems such as those in Los Angles, London and New Delhi traditionally lost 20 percent or more of their water to leaks and evaporation.

But in a world dominated by scarcity, climate change and population growth, water is no longer being taken for granted. ...

14. Scientific American: Forget What You've Heard: Humans Are Not Using More Than 1 Planet

On a global level, the popular "footprint" metric used to measure people’s ecological impact may not be very a useful after all. ...

15. This 'Genome Hacker' Is Building Family Trees With Millions of Branches

Thanks to computer-aided genealogical analysis, your family may have 43,000,000 members. ...

16. A Cure for the Allergy Epidemic?

... My guide was Mark Holbreich, an allergist in Indianapolis. He’d recently discovered that the Amish people who lived in the northern part of the state were remarkably free of allergies and asthma. ...

... That yawning difference positions the Indiana Amish among the least allergic populations ever described in the developed world. This invulnerability isn’t likely to be genetic. ...

... Farming, Dr. Holbreich thinks, is the Amish secret. This idea has some history. Since the late 1990s, European scientists have investigated what they call the “farm effect.” The working hypothesis is that innocuous cowshed microbes, plant material and raw milk protect farming children by favorably stimulating their immune systems throughout life, particularly early on. ...

17. Economist: Trouble at the lab

Scientists like to think of science as self-correcting. To an alarming degree, it is not.

18. Zeer Pots: A Simple Way to Reduce Post-Harvest Food Waste

... In Zambia, storage containers are commonly built out of twigs, poles, or plastic bags. Unsealed, unrefrigerated containers such as these can allow contamination from pests, rodents, and fungi. In hot climates, perishable foods such as berries and tomatoes typically do not last longer than two days without refrigeration. Without proper storage facilities, rural farmers have to watch their ripened crops succumb to rot, infestation, and mold.

Practical Action, a nongovernmental organization that works with farmers in Southern Africa, Latin America, and South Asia, encourages the use of earthenware refrigerators called zeer pots to help prevent post-harvest food waste. The pot-in-pot refrigerator design keeps fruits and vegetables cool by harnessing the principle of evaporative cooling. These pots can extend the shelf life of harvested crops by up to 20 days by reducing storage temperature. ...

19. How Did English Get To Be The International Language Of Science?

More than 98 percent of all scientific articles published today are in English, but that hasn’t always been the case. ...

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/10/17/4560193/science-fiction-is-becoming-science.html#storylink=cpy

Science and Technology Links

1. Scientists Should Engage in Policy, Carefully

... There is a helpful way of looking at how scientists give advice to policymakers. In Roger Pielke’s book, The Honest Broker, he suggests that there are four ways scientists can choose to engage in the policy process. First, they can act as a “pure scientist” who publishes papers, and even if their work has relevance to a policy issue, they leave it for others to find and use the results. Second, they can act as “science arbiters”, who answer specific factual questions posed by decision-makers. Third, they can become an “issue advocate”, who decide for themselves on the “right” policy decision and become advocates for the “solution”, sometimes closing down the scope of choices available to policymakers. Finally, they can act as “honest brokers”, who aim to expand and clarify the scope of options and choices available to decision-makers, stepping back, leaving it to the policymaker to use this evidence to decide what to do.

On the matter of these four ways, scientists might reflect on where they sit on particular issues when speaking with policy-makers, journalists and even friends. Do they make up their minds about what should happen and advocate their version? Are they even aware when they, as Martin Rees puts it, are “acting as citizens”, or do they slip into territories that involve aspects beyond science and speak about them with the kind of authority they use when speaking about science?

Scientists get excellent training in how to be scientific – in logic, rational thinking and how to aim for objectivity. They don’t however get much training in reflecting on their behaviour or language, or really thinking through the boundaries of where scientific evidence comes up against other, murkier areas such as ethics and economics. Scientists rarely get training in how to give advice to policymakers. They may just be thrown into doing it, having observed how other scientists behave. ...

2. Colorized American Civil War Photos Beautifully Bring Past To Life

Two professional colorists have combined their skills with photographs and fascination with the American Civil War to create a remarkable series of color photographs from the era. ...

Brought to life: Lewis Powell (pictured) conspired with John Wilkes Booth to kill President Lincoln - Powell's job was to kill Secretary of State William H. Seward, a job at which he failed.

3. On Climate Change, Economics Trumps Science

... Look, for instance, at the cases of China and India.

These two countries have resolutely rejected all demands that they adopt binding limits on their emissions. Yet Beijing is fully aware of the threat posed by climate change; in fact, it has plans for massive public-works projects to adapt to it. New Delhi, even if it has less capacity for large-scale public works, is also fully aware of the threat posed by climate change.

These countries' assessments of climate science do not conflict with those of the IPCC. But Beijing and New Delhi apparently prefer to adapt to climate change instead of investing in high-cost efforts to prevent it. Moreover, in making this choice, the politicians may have a better grasp of the big picture than the scientists do. ...

4. Death in the digital age: Are you prepared?

When 15-year-old Eric Rash committed suicide in 2011, his family and friends wanted to know why.

In a bid to find answers, they went to Eric's Facebook account, and after failing to guess his password, appealed to the social media giant to grant them access.

Facebook refused.

Giving unauthorised access to someone other than the account holder, the company said, was against its privacy policy.

The Rashes, who live in Virginia, tried to fight their case in court, but soon found there just wasn't any legislation that covered the management of "digital assets".

The family's tragic battle is just one of many examples in which the internet has been shown to be woefully unprepared for dealing with death. ...

5. New Disney technology can add texture to completely smooth touch screens

6. New App Lets You Settle Check Before Sitting Down

If you’ve ever had a great dinner ruined by the awkwardness of splitting (or not splitting) a check, you might want to check out Cover, a new app launching today in New York City.

Here’s how Cover works: you enter your credit card information into the app, walk into a participating restaurant, check in, set the tip percentage, the number of diners and then let your server know you’re using it.

When you’re done eating, you just walk out and Cover processes the bill. Simple as that. ...

To change anti-science activists' minds, go beyond science

The Conversation: To change anti-science activists' minds, go beyond science

... The proponents of GM rice and its benefits clearly have positive intentions, and they are understandably upset. Some of the pieces decrying the acts of the crop vandals explicitly refer to these activists as being “anti-science”.

But to dismiss this, and similar, disagreements as ipso facto reflecting an anti-science mentality is not only simplistic, it’s actively misguided. ...

... Rejection of some science and the relevant supporting evidence is not, on its own, a rejection of all science. ...

...I do, however, work with the sciences. And for scientists I have four suggestions.

1. Change your language, change your mindset. When people oppose something you see as science-based, it does not necessarily mean they oppose science. To approach the world this way is unlikely to be productive (and is probably also just plain incorrect).

2. Science practice is not immune from bias and self-interest, nor is scientific research free from cultural influence (consider halal vaccines, for example) .

3. Some people have very good reasons to be suspicious of scientists and science. In the last week, for example, a researcher from Tufts University was barred from doing research with humans after feeding GM golden rice to Chinese study participants without informing them it had been genetically modified. I’d be peeved.

4. Explore, understand and accept that science doesn’t know everything. Take your time if this is difficult, but try to accept this broadly, and come to terms with it deeply. There are complexities inherent in human interactions that invoking “science” doesn’t magically nullify. This is not some vague, post-modernist, anti-science position: it’s just true. If it weren’t, then problems such as this golden rice brawl would not occur.

If scientists genuinely want to take the highest possible moral position (and I believe we should), a broad view of humanity is essential. If we want people to change a position, view or practice, scorching them with righteous fire is not the best way.

That’s being as naïve about human nature as your opponents appear to be about science.

Excellent! Climate action activists could learn from this as well.

Science and Technology Links

1. The ten most important innovations of all time

1. Paper (105AD – Europe 10th century – Germany 1400)
2. Printing Press (1450)
3. Telegraph (1837) ...

What would you remove/add to the list?

2. Natural Gas May Be Easier On Climate Than Coal, Despite Methane Leaks

3. Internet Archaeologists Reconstruct Lost Web Pages

The Internet is disappearing. And with it goes an important part of our recorded history. That was the conclusion of a study Technology Review looked at last year, which measured the rate at which links shared over social media platforms, such as Twitter, were disappearing.

The conclusion was that this data is being lost at the rate of 11% within a year and 27% within two years.

Today, the researchers behind this work reveal that all is not lost. Hany SalahEldeen and Michael Nelson at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Va., have found a way to reconstruct deleted material, and they say it works reasonably well. ...

4. 5 Huge Industries That Are Already Feeling The Effects Of 3-D Printing

Earlier this week we presented the thesis from Credit Suisse that not only is 3-D printing not a flash in the pan, existing market research reports have actually understated its potential market. 3-D printing is exactly what it sounds like: making 3-D objects from a device that's conceptually more like a printer than from a typical manufacturing process.

But we wanted to get a little bit more specific about where exactly this is going to happen.

So with the help of an excellent report from consulting firm CSC, we now present five industries that are already feeling the effects of 3-D printing's imminent dominance — for better or worse. ...

5. Innovation of the Week: A Low-Cost Composting Toilet

... The WAND Foundation has developed several dry composting toilet models, some of which were recognized at the 2011 Tech Awards at Santa Clara University. At the conference, Cora Zayas-Sayre, executive director of the WAND Foundation, explained that by using local materials, the organization has been able to build 275 toilets at a cost of US$30 per toilet. She added that this innovation has already impacted the lives of 3,000 people.

This innovation simultaneously addresses two challenges that prevail in developing countries: the unsustainable and costly use of water-sealed toilets, and the hygienic management of human waste. Water-sealed toilets require pumping mechanisms to transport water and sewage between 300 and 500 meters away from the home, a method that is economically and environmentally unsustainable. Inadequate management of human waste can lead to a host of health problems in developing areas, and dramatically impact quality of life. ...

6. World continues 'enormous progress' against AIDS

New infections each year are down 33% since 2001.

7. Rooftop Farming Is Getting Off The Ground

... The green-roof movement has slowly been gaining momentum in recent years, and some cities have made them central to their sustainability plans. The city of Chicago, for instance, that 359 roofs are now partially or fully covered with vegetation, which provides all kinds of environmental benefits — from reducing the buildings' energy costs to cleaning the air to mitigating the

Late this summer, Chicago turned a green roof into its first major rooftop farm. At 20,000 square feet, it's the largest soil-based rooftop farm in the Midwest, according to the Chicago Botanic Garden, which maintains the farm through its program. ...

8. Interesting piece using driverless cars as an example and the inability of some people to see the potential innovations: The third industrial revolution

... In fact, these possibilities are only the tip of the iceberg. Autonomous vehicles' most transformative contribution might be what they get up to when people aren't in the vehicles. One suddenly has access to cheap, fast, ultra-reliable, on-demand courier service. Imagine never having to run out for milk or a missing ingredient again. Imagine dropping a malfunctioning computer into a freight AV to be ferried off to a repair shop and returned, all without you having to do anything. Imagine inventories at offices, shops and so on refilling constantly and as needed: assuming "shops" is still a meaningful concept in a world where things all come to you.

The really remarkable thing about such possibilities is that the technology is basically available today. It isn't cheap today, but that may change very quickly. If the public lets it, of course. When it comes to AVs stagnation, if it occurs, will be the fault of regulatory rather than technological obstacles.

Saturday Links

1. A College Kid, A Single Mom, And The Problem With The Poverty Line

Rico Saccoccio is a junior at Fordham University in the Bronx. He's from a middle-class family in Connecticut and he spent the summer living at home with his parents, who cover about $15,000 a year in his college costs. ...

...There's broad agreement that the way the U.S. measures poverty has some fundamental flaws — a topic that's likely to come up next month, when the new poverty numbers are released. Here are three key problems, as explained to me by Christopher Wimer, a researcher at Columbia.

1. It doesn't account for geographic differences. The poverty line is the same, no matter where you live — whether it's in New York City or rural South Dakota.

2. It's based on a 50-year-old formula that assumes Americans spend about a third of their income on food. But, after adjusting for inflation, the price of food has fallen significantly in the past 50 years. Today, people spend only about a sixth of their income on food. But they spend a bigger chunk of their income on other items, like child care and medical expenses.

3. It doesn't consider the value of of government benefits, such as food stamps and tax credits. ...

2. There are better anti-poverty tools than the minimum wage

... But raising the minimum wage may not be a policy idea deserving of the passion it generates. It’s not a well-targeted, poverty-fighting weapon. Only 3% of workers age 25 and over earn the minimum wage or less. About half of all minimum wage (or less) workers are age 24 or younger, many of whom presumably live at home with their parents. The 2010 study “Will a $9.50 Federal Minimum Wage Really Help the Working Poor?” by researchers Joseph Sabia and Richard Burkhauser found that a federal minimum wage increase from $7.25 to $9.50 per hour — higher than the $9 that President Obama has proposed — would raise incomes of only 11% of workers who live in poor households.

In a 2012 study, Sabia and Robert Nielsen found ”no statistically significant evidence that a higher minimum wage has helped reduce financial, housing, health, or food insecurity among the poor.” Why? You have to earn a wage to benefit and 55% of poor, less-educated individuals between ages 16 and 64 don’t work. Indeed, nearly 90% of the wage earners who benefited from the 40% increase in the federal minimum wage between 2007 and 2009 were not poor. They lived in households with an income two or three times the poverty level. ...

3. Debunking Myths About Who Pays No Federal Income Tax

4. A Brief History of How Living Alone Came to Seem Totally Normal

5. Baby boomers may have no one to care for them in old age

Baby boomers may have no one to care for them in their old age.

Shifting demographics mean that aging boomers will have fewer friends and family members to take care of them as they get into their 80s, according to a new study by AARP.

In other words, even though you may be supporting your own elderly parents, the chances of someone being there for you are numerically diminished.

The ratio of potential caregivers to boomers needing care will sink from 7.2 to 1 in 2010 to 2.9 to 1 by 2050, according to the study. ...

6. World population map at Gizmodo.

7. How Our Ancestors Used to Sleep Twice a Night and Highlighting the Problem of Present Shock

8 hour sleeping is a modern invention.

Imagine you are a denizen of the 18th century. It’s just past 8:30 P.M., you’ve got your night-cap on. You blow out your candles and fall asleep to the smell of the wax and the wick, which gently fills the air around your bed. Some hours pass. 2:30 AM. You awaken, grab your coat, and visit the neighbors because they, too, are up. Doing quiet reading, prayer, or even having sex. Well, apparently before the age of electricity, sleeping twice a night was completely ubiquitous.

Back in those times, we slept twice a night, getting up for an hour or two for recreation before heading back to bed until dawn. ...

8. So you hate GMO’s because they are untested. What about feelbetteramine from the health store?

... Most opponents of GMOs don’t seem to have a problem eagerly loading up their shopping carts with all kinds of exotic stuff from the health supplement aisle in the local supermarket. How many Whole Foods (and Whole Foods is just an example here, and probably one of the more benign ones) store assistants – many of whom are far from being trained in nutrition or pharmacology – have convinced these people that feelbetteramine is right for their gout, or for their insomnia, or for the “cognitive deficit” that they feel everyday at work? What kind of evidence of long-term safety exists for feelbetteramine that allows these GMO opponents to embrace the wondrous effects of this non FDA-approved concoction with alacrity? And proponents of health supplements are often big on anecdotal evidence; why don’t they, at the very least, admit anecdotal evidence about the benefits of GMOs (especially when the evidence is concrete, as in case of VAD) into their belief system?

To me there clearly seems to be a discrepancy between the reflexive rejection of untested GMOs by the anti-GMO crowd and their rapid embrace of the equally or more untested latest health supplement. All things being equal, as a scientist I at least know what the express purpose of Golden Rice is, compared to the hazy reports on salutary effects of feelbetteramine. So it seems to me that if I am really against GMOs because they are insufficiently tested, I need to mostly steer clear of the health supplement aisle. And did I mention that feelbetteramine can also set your love life on the path to glorious bliss?

 9. Renewed Trust In Nuclear Power

Michael Golay, a nuclear engineering professor at M.I.T., has noted that many new technologies are initially slow to receive public acceptance, such as railroads and cars, in part because of fear of the unknown.  But also, early versions sometimes have serious safety issues.  The first trains, with wood burning locomotives, showered sparks on passengers and the countryside, for instance.  As the public becomes accustomed to them and the designs improve, they become accepted as part of every day life.

This is clearly the case with nuclear power, which in the 1970s faced massive public resistance in Europe and the U.S., with huge demonstrations opposing its use and lengthy legal delays that ran construction costs skyward.  The accidents at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl clearly made the public wary in most, though not all, countries.

But it would seem that the public, over the long term, is capable of understanding and then accepting even complex systems.  Predictions of massive increases in cancer rates from nuclear power failed to come true, and Three Mile Island became a tourist attraction.  Combined with rising concerns about global warming and better reactor designs, expectations of a ‘nuclear revival’ became prominent in the U.S. ...

10. The Five Best Tricks To Remember Names

 

Correlation versus causation in a single graph

The first lesson in data analysis is that correlation does not mean causation. This graph is a great illustration.

Source: Chris Blattman

Saturday Links

1. The Myth of a Stagnant Middle Class

A favorite "progressive" trope is that America's middle class has stagnated economically since the 1970s. One version of this claim, made by Robert Reich, President Clinton's labor secretary, is typical: "After three decades of flat wages during which almost all the gains of growth have gone to the very top," he wrote in 2010, "the middle class no longer has the buying power to keep the economy going."

This trope is spectacularly wrong. ...

... Americans are also much better able to enjoy their longer lives. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, spending by households on many of modern life's "basics"—food at home, automobiles, clothing and footwear, household furnishings and equipment, and housing and utilities—fell from 53% of disposable income in 1950 to 44% in 1970 to 32% today.

One underappreciated result of the dramatic fall in the cost (and rise in the quality) of modern "basics" is that, while income inequality might be rising when measured in dollars, it is falling when reckoned in what's most important—our ability to consume. Before airlines were deregulated, for example, commercial jet travel was a luxury that ordinary Americans seldom enjoyed. Today, air travel for many Americans is as routine as bus travel was during the disco era, thanks to a 50% decline in the real price of airfares since 1980. ...

2. Grow, Baby, Grow! GMOs And the Future of Industry

... We can imagine a future in which GMO agriculture is producing a whole range of things we now think of as industrial products and chemicals. Over the 21st century we seem headed for dramatic, and even mind-blowing, progress in gene technology. It's not too much to think that this revolution will be as big in the future as IT is today. This will be a much more efficient way to create a complex array of substances without the kind of environmental impact that refineries have today. Solar power's future may be much less about replacing oil as a way of producing electricity than about circumventing traditional industrial processes: the fusion of the factory and the farm may be the chief technological business of the new century.

This whole process opens the door to a huge reduction in the costs, economic and environmental, of producing the materials we need for civilized life. It will further reduce the need for human employment in the extractive, refining and processing industries. It will also represent a growing challenge to countries with extraction based economies, much as the development of synthetic rubber was a challenge for rubber tree plantations in places like Malaysia and Brazil. Like all truly powerful new technologies, this one is going to cause massive social change and upheaval in all kinds of hard-to-predict ways. ...

3. Economists Have A One-Page Solution To Climate Change

... "If you let the economists write the legislation," Jacoby says, "it could be quite simple." He says he could fit the whole bill on one page.

Basically, Jacoby would tax fossil fuels in proportion to the amount of carbon they release. That would make coal, oil and natural gas more expensive. That's it; that's the whole plan. ...

4. World GDP Change, 1998 to Present

5. 24/7 Wall St has great piece on the oldest U. S. company logos. The oldest?

6. Why Machines That Can Do Human Things Won't Replace Us Anytime Soon

I believe the answer lies in a fundamental understanding (or lack thereof) of what automated technology is supposed to do for us as a society. In a nutshell, it's like this: Automated technologies are supposed to help human beings become better human beings, not help machines become better human beings.

7. 60% Of Self-Proclaimed Vegetarians Ate Meat Yesterday

A poll conducted by CNN surveyed 10,000 Americans about their eating habits, and roughly 6% of the respondents self-identified as vegetarians. The researchers then asked individuals to describe their eating habits, and 60% of the "vegetarians" reported having eaten meat within the last 24 hours.

Okay, that could've have been a fluke (or just a really, really dumb sample group). Then the U.S. Department of Agriculture conducted a similar study. This time, they telephoned approximately 13,000 Americans, and 3% claimed to be vegetarians. When they followed up a week later, 66% of the self-proclaimed veggie-lovers had eaten meat the day before.

8. New Online Christian Magazine Offers Funding for Entrepreneurs

New Christian entrepreneur magazine goes live online with plans to offer seed funding for new startups and small businesses.

The online format of hot new Christian entrepreneur publication G-Code Magazine has gone live featuring an exclusive interview with Christian music artist and songwriter Cornell Jermaine, and a mission to provide startup capital to at least 100 new small businesses in the next 18 months.

9. Things for United Methodist laity to unlearn — from a layperson's POV

1.  While our church leaders, Pastor, church staff, are responsible to give vision, direction and guidance, they are not charged with keeping us happy. ...

2.  The church building does not belong to us; it is an asset for ministry.....

3.  Worship on Sunday is not entertainment, and we are not the audience.   Worship is a time for us to gather, hear God's word, get filled up, and go in the power of the Spirit to change the world. ...

4.  There are a lot more of us (laity) than there are of them (clergy).  Why did we ever decide sharing the Gospel was only for the 'professionals'? ...

10. Two Paths for Charitable Giving: From the Head or From the Heart

Mr. Friedman said donors who give emotionally were like people who spend money on an expensive dinner. "It's too focused on the donor so it will naturally not be focused on the most effective causes," he said. "It's being directed by some other criteria. There is nothing wrong with that. I describe it as consumption."

Mr. Tempel said that it was fine to ask organizations to be accountable, but that it could go too far. "People who follow their head looking at return on investment — they will be most disappointed if they have unrealistic expectations on what is possible," he said. "Some things are just difficult to deal with, like solving illiteracy in a community."

11. Pew Research with an interesting piece on Americans' reading habits over time

The population of e-book readers is growing. In the past year, the number of those who read an e-book in the past year increased from 16% of all Americans ages 16 and older in December 2011 to 23% in November 2012. At the same time, the percentage of Americans who read a printed book in the previous 12 months fell from 72% of the population in 2011 to 67% in 2012.

12. Just in case you have been living under a rock, the Supreme Court made same big decisions this week. One Catholic leader, Msgr. Charles Pope, has an interesting response to the decisions on gay marriage:

Msgr. Charles Pope lamented that since 1969, when it became easier to divorce, contraception became widely available and now that the legal standing of gay marriages had been put on equal footing of those of heterosexual couples, that the word 'marriage' no longer has resonance within the Catholic faith.

It is a simple fact that word “marriage” as we have traditionally known it is being redefined in our times. To many in the secular world the word no longer means what it once did and when the Church uses the word marriage we clearly do not mean what the increasing number of states mean.

The pastor of Holy Comforter-St. Cyprian then went on to suggest that the Catholic church drop the word marriage altogether and use "Holy Matrimony" in its place.

I propose that we should exclusively refer to marriage in the Church as “Holy Matrimony.” According to this proposal the word marriage would be set aside and replaced by Holy Matrimony. It should be noticed that the Catechism of the Catholic Church refers to this Sacrament formally as “The Sacrament of Matrimony.”

13. How Much Time Do Pastors Spend Preparing a Sermon? The median time spent in preparation is 13-15 hours.

14. What Happened to the Mysterious Humans of the Sahara 7,000 Years Ago?

15. DNA Buried 7,000 Centuries Is Retrieved

16. Mouse cloned from a drop of blood

Saturday Links

1. Climate change: A cooling consensus

... Mr Cohn does his best to affirm that the urgent necessity of acting to retard warming has not abated, as does Brad Plumer of the Washington Post, as does this newspaper. But there's no way around the fact that this reprieve for the planet is bad news for proponents of policies, such as carbon taxes and emissions treaties, meant to slow warming by moderating the release of greenhouse gases. The reality is that the already meagre prospects of these policies, in America at least, will be devastated if temperatures do fall outside the lower bound of the projections that environmentalists have used to create a panicked sense of emergency. Whether or not dramatic climate-policy interventions remain advisable, they will become harder, if not impossible, to sell to the public, which will feel, not unreasonably, that the scientific and media establishment has cried wolf.

Dramatic warming may exact a terrible price in terms of human welfare, especially in poorer countries. But cutting emissions enough to put a real dent in warming may also put a real dent in economic growth. This could also exact a terrible humanitarian price, especially in poorer countries. Given the so-far unfathomed complexity of global climate and the tenuousness of our grasp on the full set of relevant physical mechanisms, I have favoured waiting a decade or two in order to test and improve the empirical reliability of our climate models, while also allowing the economies of the less-developed parts of the world to grow unhindered, improving their position to adapt to whatever heavy weather may come their way. I have been told repeatedly that "we cannot afford to wait". More distressingly, my brand of sceptical empiricism has been often met with a bludgeoning dogmatism about the authority of scientific consensus. ...

2. The 40 Biggest Economies In The World

3. How the world's population has changed

4. Americans are giving less money to God

Americans donated $316 billion to charitable causes in 2012, a 3.5% increase from 2011, a new report by the Giving USA Foundation found. But while charitable donations to education increased 7% to $41 billion, religious donations dropped slightly (by 0.2%) to $101.54 billion. "Americans continue to be the most generous people in the world, despite discretionary income percentages nearing all-time lows," says Eileen Heisman, CEO of the National Philanthropic Trust. But donors are writing the checks to different recipients.

5. I'm not endorsing this analysis, but here is The Capitalist's Case for a $15 Minimum Wage.

6. Gil Press says The 'End Of Innovation' Crowd Doesn't Get IT

In one camp are economists such as Robert Gordon and Tyler Cowen that tell us that we have reached "a technological plateau." We are experiencing today the waning of the economic impact of the technological revolutions of the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The IT revolution, they argue, is different from earlier technological revolutions in its more limited impact on productivity growth and standards of living.

In the other camp are economists such as Ben Bernanke, Chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, who recently told the graduating class at Bard College:"…innovation, almost by definition, involves ideas that no one has yet had, which means that forecasts of future technological change can be, and often are, wildly wrong. A safe prediction, I think, is that human innovation and creativity will continue; it is part of our very nature. Another prediction, just as safe, is that people will nevertheless continue to forecast the end of innovation."

7. How Technology Is Changing The Future Of Capitalism From Competing To Sharing

Can't get a loan from a bank to start your business? You can create a Kickstarter and raise all the money you need from the people who'd be interested in your product in the first place.

It's amazing to see the ways people are coming up with to better take advantage of the web to collaborate on and share the things that we used to have to pay for ourselves.

8. U.S. for first time in 50+ years a net gasoline exporter

9. U.S. Sustains Support For Small Modular Nuclear Reactors

Despite the political fallout from the Fukushima crisis, the U.S. Department of Energy remains committed to commercializing small modular nuclear reactor (SMR) technologies.

10. Houses that flip and fold into place

Turns out, prefab may be the most environmentally friendly way to build a house. When a house is built in a factory there's less waste -- materials can be precision measured and cut -- plus a prefab structure can be erected within a couple of weeks -- avoiding months and months of workmen driving greenhouse gas spewing trucks to the site. One speaker at Fortune's Brainstorm Green conference earlier this year, Bill Haney -- founder and CEO of Blu Homes, cited another advantage of prefab housing: "No one can build a traditional house on time or on budget. Psychology Today cited a study that said it's more painful to build a house than it is to have a loved one die."

Haney has added a high-tech element to his prefab green houses. Applying technology developed at MIT, Blu Homes designs its modern structures using steel frames that fold on hinges much like a card table. Today, most prefab homes must be delivered at great expense on wide-load trucks that are too big to travel on many roads and have to be accompanied by escort cars. A Blue Home, by contrast, can be folded up to fit on an 18-wheeler, allowing the house to be shipped relatively cheaply and easily from the company's factory in Vallejo, Calif.

11. 71% Of Millennials Want Their Co-Workers To Be A 'Second Family'

12. Demographic Changes Impact Religious Institutions

13. A fascinating piece on Why Men Die Younger Than Women: The 'Guys Are Fragile' Thesis

14. Scientists discover why leprosy disappeared from Europe

The material they found was "a mixture of human DNA, microorganisms and contaminating DNA from other bones and surrounding soil," said Cole, but they were able to fully reconstruct a 600-year-old strain of leprosy and map its genome, only to find that it is essentially identical to living leprosy infecting people in the developing world today.

Cole told NPR, "If the explanation of the drop in leprosy cases isn't in the pathogen, then it must be in the host, that is, in us."

The scientists believe that a certain gene that makes people highly resistant to leprosy spread through the population of Europe, gradually conveying a kind of mass immunity.

15. World's last telegram to be sent next month

16. Top 10 People with Only One Known Photograph

17. Psychologist Analyzes Superheroes

18. Joel Willitts on "Storied Typology" – A possibly more biblical way of thinking about the relationship between the OT & NT

Admittedly, I'm just beginning to work this out, but if we think of Bible as Story and we read the earlier bits as indispensible building blocks in the narrative development toward its resolution than there's no need to denigrate the earlier in view of the later bits of the story. Each part has its place in the story bringing it to its final act, although even this analogy must be carefully delimited. Because "final" in this sense does not mean "The End, but a new stage of the story. So because of the earlier blocks of the story, later scenes and characters become "narratological necessities" (to quote my good friend Daniel Kirk). Furthermore, if there is something of an "incompleteness" to the earlier parts of the story, it is incomplete only as earlier scenes are incomplete without subsequent ones. It is correct then to see the Bible's story as progressive. In Stephen Wellum's words, "it is a word-act revelation that is progressively given" (Kingdom Through Covenant, 90). Instead of using the label "progressive revelation" it may be more useful in stressing the storied nature of the development to call it "storied revelation"- Scripture is a story that unfolds. All of this, of course assumes that God has generated His Story and that story is contained in the Old and New Testaments of the Christian canon.

Saturday Links

1. Loved this one: 22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From Each Other. Here is one example.

2. In print and on stage, the Bible makes surprise comeback in secular Norway

3. Japan enters the African aid game: Japan $1 billion aid earmarked for northern Africa

4. The Economist had a great editorial: Towards the end of poverty

Nearly 1 billion people have been taken out of extreme poverty in 20 years. The world should aim to do the same again.

5. Global Wealth Grew 7.8% In 2012, Driven By Developing Economies

BCG found that global private financial wealth grew at the impressive clip of 7.8% in 2012, besting the 7.3% and 3.6% expansion logged in 2010 and 2011, respectively.

And which countries are driving global growth? Tyler Cowen reports that China and India for half of the growth. He also lists these nations as the fastest growing:

South Sudan	32.1
Libya	20.2
Sierra Leone	17.1
Mongolia	14.0
Paraguay	11.0
Timor-Leste	10.0
Iraq	9.0
Panama	9.0
The Gambia	8.9
Mozambique	8.4

source: IMF

6. 5 Maps That Show How Divided America Really Is. Here is an example:

7. Toward a Self Employed Nation?

The United States labor market has been undergoing a substantial shift toward small-scale entrepreneurship. The number of proprietors – owners of businesses who are not wage and salary employees, has skyrocketed, especially in the last decade. Proprietors are self employed business owners who use Internal Revenue Service Schedule C to file their federal income tax. Wage and salary workers are all employees of any establishment (private or government), from executives to non-supervisory workers.

From 2000 to 2011, the number of non-farm proprietors grew by 10.7 million. Total wage and salary employment grew by only 105,000 between 2000 and 2011. Government employment, including federal, state and local, grew 1.36 million, while private employment declined by 1.26 million (Figure 1).

8. This looks like an interesting read: Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty. Christian Century writes:

For her award-winning book Living Faith: Everyday Religion and Mothers in Poverty, Susan Crawford Sullivan interviewed a diverse group of women who were living in poverty. She asked them about the challenges of parenting, working and surviving on little income. She discovered that many drew on strong religious beliefs as they struggled with everyday problems. Sullivan teaches sociology at the College of the Holy Cross.

 9. Business Insider reports that Millions Of Seniors Are Moving Back To Big Cities

10. Forbes explores How To Use Pinterest For Small Business

11. Atlantic explores Why the Boomers Are the Most Hated Generation. (I think part of it might be that we are obnoxious.)

12. RJS at Jesus Creed with another great post about the historicity of Adam and Eve: Jesus on Adam and Eve (RJS)

... There are ways to reconcile a literal Adam and Eve with the scientific data. I have posted on the question of Adam many times. See for example the last part of Evolution, Entropy, and Human Beings 2 or other posts on the question of Adam listed about 3/4 of the way down the Science and Faith index. Reconciling a literal Adam and Eve with the scientific data requires something of a stretch, but is not impossible if one feels that the theological teaching of the sweep of scripture requires Adam, Eve, and the Fall.

There are also ways to understand the sweep of scripture and the fallen nature of mankind without reference to a historical Adam and Eve. These do not necessarily diminish the inspiration and authority of scripture as witness to the work of God in the world.

This shouldn’t be a make or break issue. Rather, it is an issue where we need to spend more time and thought.

Saturday Links

1. I loved this map: Dialect Map Of U.S. Shows How Americans Speak By Region

2. What's Driving the Rise in Suicide Among Middle-Aged Men?

... The suicide stats from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that middle-aged men (35 to 64) living in the American West are more likely to commit suicide than men living elsewhere in the United States, and that suicide has risen fastest over the last decade in a Western state, Wyoming, as Richard Florida pointed out here last week. ...

... And over the last two decades, it's men without college degrees who have ended up most disconnected from the core institutions of work, marriage, and civil society. Guess who is most likely to kill themselves? Men without college degrees. In fact, according to recent research by sociologist Julie Phillips and her colleagues, suicide has surged in recent years (this research covers the period up to 2005) among precisely this group of less-educated middle-aged men, even as suicide remained essentially stable among middle-aged men with college degrees over this period. ...

3. America's New Manufacturing Boomtowns

Conventional wisdom for a generation has been that manufacturing in America is dying. Yet over the past five years, the country has experienced something of an industrial renaissance. We may be far from replacing the 3 million industrial jobs lost in the recession, but the economy has added over 330,000 industrial jobs since 2010, with output growing at the fastest pace since the 1990s. ...

4. I had some personal identification with this article: Michael's Still the Top Name for New York Babies, and There Are Reasons

... But about this Michael thing. Were it not for 1964, when John briefly ascended in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, Michael would have been the New York chart-topper every year since 1956, when it upended Robert.

You might think that with that kind of stranglehold on the local name rankings, Michael would dominate the top spot nationwide. During the last half of the 20th century, you would have been right. But in 1999, Jacob wrestled the title from Michael and has held it ever since. Michael has now fallen to eighth in the national baby-name rankings.

That statistic, though, does not get at how deeply disparate the results are. In a large handful of states, Michael barely cracked the top 40. In Nebraska it was No. 37, right behind Bentley. The name was 36th in Iowa, 35th in Vermont and 31st in North Dakota, well behind the very New Yorkish pairing of Henry (No. 23) and Hudson (No. 24). In Utah, where Samuel and Jackson placed 6th and 7th, Michael was 28th.

Aside from New York, only New Jersey and Delaware have maintained their enthusiasm for Michael. ...

5. A fascinating map of the world's most and least racially tolerant countries

6. WHO data shows narrowing health gap

...The number of under-fives dying fell from 12 million in 1990 to less than seven million in 2011, the data shows.

But that will not be enough to reach the 2015 Millennium Development Goal. ...

7. NPR on Stay-At-Home Dads, Breadwinner Moms And Making It All Work

... The Census Bureau finds that about , though that's doubled in a decade. But Stephanie Coontz of the Council on Contemporary Families calls the figure vastly underreported. It doesn't include who do some work yet are their children's primary caregivers, a trend that cuts across class and income. ...

8. AT&T Predicted The Future In These 1993 Ads

In 1993, AT&T released a series of commercials grouped by the theme "you will."

They were all about things people would be doing in the future.

Unlike most futuristic concepts, these turned out to be surprisingly accurate. True, there are no far-out ideas like flying cars, but there is plenty of great stuff that was mind-blowing in 1993.

Today, most of this stuff is commonplace.

Revisiting these predictions is a good reminder of how far we've come in a very short period of time. ...

... "Have you ever borrowed a book from thousands of miles away?"

"Cross the country without stopping for directions,"

"Sent someone a fax from the beach?"...

9. Sign me up! This Flying Car Concept Takes Off And Lands Like A Helicopter

10. Is Organic Food All It's Cracked Up To Be?

Bottom line: From a scientific perspective, there doesn't seem to be a clear answer on whether organic or traditionally-grown foods are "better."

Healthwise, the studies don't support the idea that in general organics contain fewer pesticides, are healthier or taste better, but this varies from crop to crop.

There are certain nasty environmental effects of factory farming — like dead zones — that could be less likely with organic and smaller-scale farming, but those farming techniques mean less productivity — and less food to feed the world.

If you have a large food budget and worry about the environmental impacts of factory farms, organic may be the way to go. But, if you have a limited budget and were just trying to ingest fewer pesticides, it might not be worth the money to go organic.

It largely comes down to an individual's values, budget, and taste buds.

11. Forbes says It's About Time Walmart Waged An Ad Campaign Like This One. I  think they are right.

12. From a Forbes commentary, Sorry Global Warmists, But Extreme Weather Events Are Becoming Less Extreme

• New Records for Lack of Tornadoes
• New Records for Lack of Hurricanes

13. Scientific American reports that Minoan Civilization Originated in Europe, Not Egypt

When the British archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans discovered the 4,000-year-old Palace of Minos on Crete in 1900, he saw the vestiges of a long-lost civilization whose artefacts set it apart from later Bronze-Age Greeks. The Minoans, as Evans named them, were refugees from Northern Egypt who had been expelled by invaders from the South about 5,000 years ago, he claimed.

Modern archaeologists have questioned that version of events, and now ancient DNA recovered from Cretan caves suggests that the Minoan civilization emerged from the early farmers who settled the island thousands of years earlier. ...

14. Why do I hear Indiana Jones theme music? A Fabled Lost City Might Be Hiding Under This Remote Honduras Jungle

New pictures claim to show the possible architectural remains of Ciudad Blanca, a mythical "White City" rumored to be buried somewhere deep in the forests of eastern Honduras.

Will Science Journalists Ever Confront Democrats?

Real Clear Science: Will Science Journalists Ever Confront Democrats

... He [Phil Pliat at Slate] also rattles off a list of anti-science Congressmen, all Republicans. Excluded from his list are the 53 Democratic Congressmen and Senators (compared to only two Republicans) who wrote a letter to the FDA demanding labels on genetically modified food. This policy position is in direct opposition to that held by organizations representing America’s finest scientists and doctors – the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and the American Medical Association (AMA).

Plait also failed to mention the group of Democratic Congressmen who support a resolution proposing a new hypothesis about global warming: That climate change will cause an increase in the number of hookers around the globe.

Also AWOL from Plait’s list is Tom Harkin, the quack-loving, homeopathy-pushing Senator from Iowa who is responsible for helping legitimize alternative medicine. Such pseudoscientific voodoo has done more to harm average Americans than any misguided teachings on evolution or climate change.

Plait goes on to lament how scientific reports were censored in the “Bad Old Days” of the George W. Bush administration. He conveniently leaves out that the Obama Administration purposefully withheld information from scientists during the BP oil spill and doctored documents to make it appear as if scientists agreed with the drilling moratorium they implemented. And he did not mention that the Obama administration interfered with the FDA’s approval of genetically modified salmon. ...

... Finally, at the end of the article, Plait makes something of a confession:

I know I focus a lot on these attacks coming from the far right—because that’s where the overwhelming majority originate—but in truth they’re coming from all directions, and it’s up to us to do something about it. [Emphasis added]

Wrong. Plait focuses on the far right because he is a partisan. He ignores the equally massive volume of anti-science garbage coming from the far left because he sympathizes with that side of the aisle. It is confirmation bias combined with motivated forgetting. ...

Saturday Links

1. Research Digest reports that Students motivated by wealth are just as likely as others to help in an emergency

"... Seventy-eight per cent of the business students offered some kind of help to the stranger. Sixty-six per cent went so far as refusing to leave the stranger or giving him/her their mobile phone. The degree to which the students reported being wealth-driven was not associated with their levels of helping. Neither was their self-reported willingness to accept an illegal stock trading tip off. Being in a hurry also made no difference, neither did the content of the speech they were about to give. A factor that was linked with helping behaviour was "intrinsic religiosity" - that is, pursuing religion as an end in itself, not for the sake of status or other gain. ..."

2. American progressives are fond of pointing to the Scandinavian economic model as a model for the United States. As I've noted in other posts, Sweden has been moving steadily away from the model progressives champion for years. (for example, see Free Market Sweden, Social Democratic America and Are free markets the secret to Sweden's success? Now the New York Times reports that Danes Rethink a Welfare State Ample to a Fault.

... Already the government has reduced various early-retirement plans. The unemployed used to be able to collect benefits for up to four years. Now it is two.

Students are next up for cutbacks, most intended to get them in the work force faster. Currently, students are entitled to six years of stipends, about $990 a month, to complete a five-year degree which, of course, is free. Many of them take even longer to finish, taking breaks to travel and for internships before and during their studies....

... It is proposing cuts to welfare grants for those under 30 and stricter reviews to make sure that such recipients are steered into jobs or educational programs before they get comfortable on government benefits.

Officials have also begun to question the large number of people who are receiving lifetime disability checks. About 240,000 people — roughly 9 percent of the potential work force — have lifetime disability status; about 33,500 of them are under 40. The government has proposed ending that status for those under 40, unless they have a mental or physical condition that is so severe that it keeps them from working. ...

3. Business Insider has a slide presentation of graphs highlighting 12 Popular Myths About The US Economy. Here is one about the degree of the U.S. offshoring work to low wage countries.

4. Yuval Levin makes an excellent point about how conservatives frequently respond poorly with arguments against dependency when progressives talk about "community."

... We [conservatives] reach for the idea of dependency because of the kind of arguments we often respond to from the left—arguments that seem like calls for common action instead of individual action. But we should look more carefully at those arguments. The problem with the "you didn't build that" mindset, as becomes particularly clear if you read what the president said before and after that line, is not just that it denies the significance of individual initiative (though that's an important part of the problem, and our culture of individual initiative, which is far from radical individualism, is a huge social achievement in America) but also that it denies the significance of any common efforts that are not political. The president took the pose of a critic of individualism, but in fact the position he described involves perhaps the most radical individualism of all, in which nothing but individuals and the state exists in society. ...

 ... The utopian goal of the most radical forms of liberalism has always been the complete liberation of the individual from all unchosen "relational" obligations—obligations to the people around you that are a function of the family and community in which you live. Resentment against such obligations was a central and powerful motive in the radical late-18th century thought that gave us some (though not all) forms of modern libertarianism and the modern Left, and the defense of such obligations was central to the counter-arguments that yielded modern conservatism. ...

5. Pew Research has a report on the Public's Knowledge of Science and Technology. You can take the test here. (I got a gold star, though I confess I had two lucky guesses.) And on a related note, 4th-Grade Science Test' Goes Viral: Creationism Quiz Claims Dinosaurs Lived With People. Oye!

6. Tyler Cowen looks at two reports on Why did Cuba become healthier during the economic meltdown of the 1990s? From one report:

This "abrupt downward trend" in illness does not appear to be because of Cuba's barefoot doctors and vaunted public health system, which is rated amongst the best in Latin America. The researchers say that it has more to do with simple weight loss. Cubans, who were walking and bicycling more after their public transportation system collapsed, and eating less (energy intake plunged from about 3,000 calories per day to anywhere between 1,400 and 2,400, and protein consumption dropped by 40 percent). They lost an average of 12 pounds.

It wasn't only the amount of food that Cubans ate that changed, but also what they ate. They became virtual vegans overnight, as meat and dairy products all but vanished from the marketplace.

And this report:

During the special period, expensive habits like smoking and most likely also alcohol consumption were reduced, albeit briefly. This enforced fitness regime lasted only until the Cuban economy began to recover in the second half of the 1990s. At that point, physical activity levels began to fall off, and calorie intake surged. Eventually people in Cuba were eating even more than they had before the crash. The researchers report that "by 2011, the Cuban population has regained enough weight to almost triple the obesity rates of 1995."

 7. The Coming Demographic Crisis: What to Expect When No One Is Expecting

... A strain of anti-humanism has always run through population paranoia, a notion that human beings are a problem rather than a resource. But as Jonathan Last documents in his new book What to Expect When No One's Expecting, it is not overpopulation that threatens the well-being of the human race, it is under-population. As Last writes, "Throughout recorded human history, declining populations have always been followed by Very Bad Things." Particularly for our modern, high-tech, capitalist world of consumers who buy, entrepreneurs who create wealth and jobs, and workers whose taxes fund social welfare entitlements, people are an even more critical resource. ...

8. 21 Maps Of Highly Segregated Cities In America. I remember doing a less sophisticated version of dissimilarity analysis for Kansas City back in 1988 without the benefit of a computer. Here is the map for Detroit, the most segregated city in America:

9. Christianity Today asks Who Volunteers the Most? Answer? "Graduates of Protestant high schools, apparently."

10. In 2012, America had the most energy efficient economy in US history

11. Climate change inspires a new literary genre: cli-fi. "Cli-fi, or 'climate fiction,' describes a dystopian present instead of a dystopian future. And don't call it 'science fiction.' Cli-fi is literary fiction."

12. Organic Prices: Food Label Just An Excuse To Charge More, Majority Of Consumers Say In New Poll

13. Business Insider with Ten Technologies That Will Shape the Future

14. Atlantic Cities has a great piece on the future of the payphone: The Payphone of the Future Is Calling

15. Business Insider also had a couple of very interesting retro articles: The First Email, The First Tweet, And 13 Other Famous Internet Firsts and These Huge Brands' Early Websites From The 1990s Looked Terrible.

16. Stonehenge archaeologists reveal new theory of why monument was built. "Stonehenge may have been built on a site occupied by hunters for roughly 5,000 before its construction."

17. Consciousness After Death: Strange Tales From the Frontiers of Resuscitation Medicine

Saturday Links

1. Atlantic: Could Earth's Population Peak in 2050?

"For the past two decades, demographers have generally agreed that global population growth will continue to inch steadily higher in the coming century, raising concerns about everything from pollution to housing to the world's water supply.

But a new study out of Spain suggests those estimates may be way off—we're talking several billion people off—and that the earth's population could instead peak as soon as 2050. Applying a mathematical model to global population trends, these researchers believe that there will be fewer people living on earth in 2100 than there are today. ..."

Since I started studying demography thirty years ago, low fertility estimates seem the closest to actual outcomes. People seem to be moving to lower fertility rates faster than most expected.

2. Speaking of world population, Chatham House writes about The End of Youth

"Advances in medicine and health care mean that people all over the globe are living longer, much longer. At the same time mothers in most countries are having fewer babies. The combination is a demographic timebomb. Sarah Harper looks at the challenges that lie ahead and the changes needed to cope with a grey new world."

3. Pew has published an interesting report on Demographics of Asian Americans

4. Forbes on Why China Is Finally Abandoning Its One Child Policy

"The policy was originally justified as necessary because of excess population and to promote economic development. Much has been written and can be found on the Internet about this policy and the current and long-term effects it is having and will have on China. The reluctance by China's central government to abandon the one child policy is not out of a failure to recognize its shortcomings. Rather, it is because the policy has been highly successful in achieving a principal objective, a unification of the public in support of an unelected, autocratic central government."

5. World Bank Aims To Eliminate Extreme Poverty By 2030

To reach that goal, Kim said the world need to reduce the number of people living below the poverty line of $1.25 per day to 3 percent globally by 2030, and raise the per capita incomes of the bottom 40 percent of every developing country.

The 3 percent level is a new target for the World Bank, which estimated in 2010 that 21 percent of the global population, or 1.2 billion people, lived extreme poverty.

Some World Bank estimates have put the 3 percent target at about 600 million people living below the poverty line by 2030.

6. Susan Brown writes about A 'gray divorce' boom

Until recently, it would have been fair to say that older people simply did not get divorced. Fewer than 10% of those who got divorced in 1990 were ages 50 or older. Today, 1 in 4 people getting divorced is in this age group.

7. Science reports on the prospects of One Drug to Shrink All Tumors.

8.  The Genetic Literacy Project on Monsanto Protection Act? Separating the facts from the fury

9. Dean Kalahar says Economics Is Easy, And Can Be Learned In 5 Minutes

10. Rebecca Schuman on why you shouldn't pursue that Ph.D.: Thesis Hatement

11. Facebook 'Dislike' Button Not A Good Idea, Says Product Engineer Bob Baldwin In Reddit AMA

12. Finally, we have an answer to one of the most important questions of our generation: How Many Spaces After a Period? Ending the Debate.

13. ABP News with some interesting data on the future of Mega Churches: Small is big for Millennials

14. Goal Control 4D. How referees will be automatically informed of goals in World Cup 2014.

15. For those of you who have deficiencies in your cultural education about all things Whovian, here is a primer for you: 'Doctor Who' Explained in 25 GIFs

Global warming: Apocalypse perhaps a little later

Economist: Global warming: Apocalypse perhaps a little later

Climate change may be happening more slowly than scientists thought. But the world still needs to deal with it.

IT MAY come as a surprise to a walrus wondering where all the Arctic's summer sea ice has gone. It could be news to a Staten Islander still coming to terms with what he lost to Hurricane Sandy. But some scientists are arguing that man-made climate change is not quite so bad a threat as it appeared to be a few years ago. They point to various reasons for thinking that the planet's "climate sensitivity"—the amount of warming that can be expected for a doubling in the carbon-dioxide level—may not be as high as was previously thought. The most obvious reason is that, despite a marked warming over the course of the 20th century, temperatures have not really risen over the past ten years.

It is not clear why climate change has "plateaued" (see article). It could be because of greater natural variability in the climate, because clouds dampen warming or because of some other little-understood mechanism in the almost infinitely complex climate system. But whatever the reason, some of the really ghastly scenarios—where the planet heated up by 4°C or more this century—are coming to look mercifully unlikely. Does that mean the world no longer has to worry?

No, for two reasons. ...

Here is a graph from the article:

Here is another chart from The Mail Online showing actual temps versus the forecasted temps based on computer models. The article is written in the publication's typical bombastic style, but the graph is nevertheless helpful:

I'm glad to see reputable publications like the Economist addressing this development. It is clear to even the most casual observer that a plateau is happening. To keep behaving as if it isn't there and that people drawing attention to it are sinister does not help the public discourse. In fact, embracing anomalies that are particularly problematic for a narrative you want to communicate is key to winning broad public support. As I've said before, I don't question scientific thought that human behavior has an impact on the environment. To date, I question our ability to appreciate the complexity involved or the sensitivity to human behavior. Prudence is an important value here.

Saturday Links

1. Scientific American has some interesting thoughts on How Your Language Affects Your Wealth and Health

... Different languages have different ways of talking about the future. Some languages, such as English, Korean, and Russian, require their speakers to refer to the future explicitly. Every time English-speakers talk about the future, they have to use future markers such as "will" or "going to." In other languages, such as Mandarin, Japanese, and German, future markers are not obligatory. The future is often talked about similar to the way present is talked about and the meaning is understood from the context. A Mandarin speaker who is going to go to a seminar might say "Wo qu ting jiangzuo," which translates to "I go listen seminar." Languages such as English constantly remind their speakers that future events are distant. For speakers of languages such as Mandarin future feels closer. As a consequence, resisting immediate impulses and investing for the future is easier for Mandarin speakers. ...

2. Fair Trade 2.0? Coffee's Economics, Rewritten by Farmers

3. R. J. Moeller qutoes from John Mackey's (Whole Foods CEO) new book:

"Capitalism has a purpose beyond just making money. I think the critics of capitalism have got it in this very small box. That it's all about money. It's based in being greedy, selfish and exploitative. And yet, I haven't found it to be that way. Most of the hundreds of entrepreneurs I know and have met did not start their business primarily out of a desire to make money. Not that there's anything wrong with making money. My body cannot function unless it produces red-blood cells. No red-blood cells and I'm a dead man. But that's not the purpose of my life.

Similarly, a business cannot exist unless it produces a profit . . . but that's not the only reason it exists."

4. David Henderson with thoughts on the economic impact of marriage: "Get Married and Stay Married"

When I was writing a review of Dwight Lee's and Richard McKenzie's excellent book, Getting Rich in America: 8 Simple Rules for Building a Fortune and a Satisfying Life, I called Dwight to ask a question and we got talking about Rule #5: Get Married and Stay Married. Dwight pointed out that if you follow the other 7 rules but don't get married or stay married, you have a substantial probability of building a fortune and a satisfying life. But, he said, if you don't get married and stay married, you tend not to follow at least some of the other 7 rules.

5. With more thoughts on the economic impact of marriage, Glen Reynolds reflects on The other marriage inequality

While the upscale college-educated crowd continues to marry at very high rates, marriage rates are plummeting among those further down on the socioeconomic ladder.

6. Steven Pearlstein with a thoughtful essay: Is capitalism moral?

... A useful debate about the morality of capitalism must get beyond libertarian nostrums that greed is good, what's mine is mine and whatever the market produces is fair. It should also acknowledge that there is no moral imperative to redistribute income and opportunity until everyone has secured a berth in a middle class free from economic worries. If our moral obligation is to provide everyone with a reasonable shot at economic success within a market system that, by its nature, thrives on unequal outcomes, then we ought to ask not just whether government is doing too much or too little, but whether it is doing the right things.

7. Matt Ridley with an interesting piece on how Obsidian chronicles ancient trade. This conclusion was interesting.

Instead, Dr. Butzer argues that Sargon's conquest itself caused the collapse of trade by destroying cities and disrupting what had till then been "an inter-networked world-economy, once extending from the Aegean to the Indus Valley." In other words, as with the end of the Roman empire, the collapse of trade caused the collapse of civilization more than the other way around.

8. Speaking of economic History, Rewriting Biblical history? Agriculture might be 5,000 years older than believed.

A new find suggests farmers in Bible lands built channels for irrigation long before historians thought they did, allowing for cultivated vineyards, olives, wheat and barley.

9. Americans Just Keep Driving Less And Less

10. The New York Times on New Reasons to Change Light Bulbs. (To LEDs)

11. Science 2.0 on A Biological Basis For Gender Differences In Math?

... "Educational systems could be improved by acknowledging that, in general, boys and girls are different," said University of Missouri biologist David Geary in their statement. "For example, in trying to close the sex gap in math scores, the reading gap was left behind. Now, our study has found that the difference between girls' and boys' reading scores was three times larger than the sex difference in math scores. Girls' higher scores in reading could lead to advantages in admissions to certain university programs, such as marketing, journalism or literature, and subsequently careers in those fields. Boys lower reading scores could correlate to problems in any career, since reading is essential in most jobs."

Generally, when conditions are good, the math gap increases and the reading gap decreases and when conditions are bad the math gap decreases and the reading gap increases. This pattern remained consistent within nations as well as among them, according to the work by Geary and Gijsbert Stoet of the University of Leeds that included testing performance data from 1.5 million 15-year-olds in 75 nations. ...

12. Malcolm Gladwell was half right. Professor Jonah Berger on his new book, Contagious: Why Things Catch On.

13. Scientific Explanations for Why Spoilers Are So Horrible

14. Mashable has great advice with 5 Alternatives to Unfriending Someone on Facebook

15. David Brooks with insight on How Movements Recover

... Two rival reform movements arose to restore the integrity of Catholicism. Those in the first movement, the Donatists, believed the church needed to purify itself and return to its core identity. ...

... In the fourth century, another revival movement arose, embraced by Augustine, who was Bishop of Hippo. The problem with the Donatists, Augustine argued, is that they are too static. They try to seal off an ark to ride out the storm, but they end up sealing themselves in. They cut themselves off from new circumstances and growth.

Augustine, as his magisterial biographer Peter Brown puts it, "was deeply preoccupied by the idea of the basic unity of the human race." He reacted against any effort to divide people between those within the church and those permanently outside. ....

16. A great piece by someone who considers them unaffiliated with any religion. Every Christian and congregation needs to reflect on the insignificance of the church in this writer's life. His tribe is growing: The significant insignificance of religion

Saturday Links

1. The Economist has an interesting graph showing that capitalism has led to greater happiness in member countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (former Soviet Union countries excluding the three baltic countries.)

2. AEI has an informative piece on economic mobility in the United States: How's the American Dream doing? Well, which one?

There are two ways to define economic mobility: 1) absolute mobility, whether each generation is financially better off than the one before; and 2) relative mobility, whether you can change your income rank  vs. your parents. Most Americans probably think both measures important. We want to be more prosperous than mom and dad, but also be able to change our circumstances and make our dreams come true. ...

... A San Francisco Fed study – using data tracking families since 1968 — looks at both versions of the American Dream, finding one healthier than the other. Looking at absolute mobility, researchers Leila Bengali and Mary Daly find the United States "highly mobile." Over the sample period, 67% of US adults had higher family incomes than their parents, including 83% of those in the lowest birth quintile, or bottom 20% (versus 54% for children born into the top quintile, or top 20%.) ...

3. Concerning gender income inequality, Mark Perry says 'Studies' that compare average wages by gender, without controlling for demographic factors, can't be taken seriously

4. Clive Crook thinks an ownership society may be the answer to reducing wealth inequality: Liberals Should Embrace the Ownership Society

... It's true that conservatives' standard proposals for privatizing Social Security and voucherizing Medicare would shift risk onto beneficiaries -- but this plainly isn't a necessary consequence of the basic principle. I agree with Konczal that adequate insurance against economic risk, underwritten by the government, is essential. I also agree that most conservatives aren't interested in providing that guarantee. That's exactly why liberals ought to take up the ownership society themselves.

Ownership entails risk, it's true, but insurance can minimize it. Ownership also provides control, independence and self-respect -- things it wouldn't hurt liberals to be more interested in. And when it comes to inequality and stagnating middle incomes, ownership can give wage slaves a stake in the nation's economic capital.

Done right, an equity component in government-backed saving for retirement could be the best idea liberals have had since the earned-income tax credit (oh, sorry, that started out as a conservative idea as well). ...

5. Scientific American: Massive Open Online Courses, aka MOOCs, Transform Higher Education and Science

6. Scientific American also has an interesting piece on how Brain Researchers Can Detect Who We Are Thinking About

FMRI scans of volunteers' media prefrontal cortexes revealed unique brain activity patterns associated with individual characters or personalities as subjects thought about them.

7. Gizmodo reports that Sex in Space Could Be Deadly.

Researchers already knew humans, animals and plants have evolved in response to Earth's gravity and they are able to sense it. What we are still discovering is how the processes occurring within the cells of the human and plant bodies are affected by the more intense gravity, or hypergravity, that would be found on a large planet, or the microgravity that resembles the conditions on a space craft.

8. Walgreens Building First Self-Powered Store

According to estimations, engineers expect the the store to generate around 265,000 kilowatt hours (kWh) per year. Store operation will only require 200,000 kWh, so perhaps that extra wattage could be pumped back into the grid or used to power nearby utilities.

9. CNN reports on How online ruined dating ... forever

When people can browse potential dates online like items in a catalog, geo-locate hook-ups on an exercise bike just seven feet away, arrange a spontaneous group date with the app Grouper or arrange a bevy of blind dates in succession with Crazy Blind Date, it makes me wonder if all this newfound technological convenience has, in fact, made romance that much more elusive. Now, we may be more concerned with what someone isn't rather than what they are. And as that twenty-something entrepreneur reminded me over coffee, services like OkCupid, and even Facebook, sap a lot of the mystique out of those first few dates. So, sure, it may be easier than ever to score a date, but what kind of date will it really be?

10. Interesting piece on Why Do People Use Nope Even Though No Is Shorter?

11. Is the New Pope More Liberal Than the Last Two? Why It's Hard to Tell. Emily Chertoff offers some insightful analysis.

12. Michael Bird offers this quote from Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew's "The Drama of Scripture" in his post The Importance of the Narrative of Scripture.

Many of us have read the Bible as if it were merely a mosaic of little bits – theological bits, moral bits, historical-critical bits, sermon bits, devotional bits. But when we read the Bible in such a fragmented way, we ignore it's divine author's intention to shape our lives through its story. All humanity communities live out some story that provides a context for understanding the meaning of history and gives shape and direction to their lives. If we allow the Bible to become fragmented, it is in danger of being absorbed into whatever other story is shaping our culture, and it will thus cease to shape our lives as it should. Idolatry has twisted the dominant cultural story of the secular Western world. If as believers we allow this story (rather than the Bible) to become the foundation of our thought and action, then our lives will manifest not the truths of Scripture, but the lies of an idolatrous culture. Hence the unity of Scripture is no minor matter: a fragmented Bible may actually produce theologically orthodox, morally upright, warmly pious idol worshippers! (p. 12).

13. Scot McKnight has a great piece on what constitutes legalism: Legalism: Old and New Perspectives

14. Thom S. Rainer on Ten Things Pastors Wish They Knew Before They Became Pastors

1. I wish someone had taught me basic leadership skills. "I was well grounded in theology and Bible exegesis, but seminary did not prepare me for the real world of real people. It would have been great to have someone walk alongside me before my first church."
2. I needed to know a lot more about personal financial issues. "No one ever told me about minister's housing, social security, automobile reimbursement, and the difference between a package and a salary. I got burned in my first church."
3. I wish I had been given advice on how to deal with power groups and power people in the church. "I got it all wrong in my first two churches. I was fired outright from the first one and pressured out in the second one. Someone finally and courageously pointed out how I was messing things up almost from the moment I began in a new church. I am so thankful that I am in the ninth year of a happy pastorate in my third church."...

Read the whole thing.

15. Joseph Sunde rates the 5 TV Shows That Demonstrate the Importance of Ordinary Work

Saturday Links

1. The United States had its financial bubble. Europe is having one too. Is China next? If it is, it could reshape the global economy and radically reshape the Chinese government. Here is an interesting piece about China's real estate bubble.

2. Robert Tracinski thinks we are in the midst of a Third Industrial Revolution.

... I like the idea of a breaking the Industrial Revolution into stages, but I would define them in more fundamental terms. The first Industrial Revolution was the harnessing of large-scale man-made power, which began with the steam engine. The internal combustion engine, electric power, and other sources of energy are just further refinements of this basic idea. The second Industrial Revolution would be the development of interchangeable parts and the assembly line, which made possible inexpensive mass production with relatively unskilled labor. The Third Industrial Revolution would not be computers, the Internet, or mobile phones, because up to now these have not been industrial tools; they have been used for moving information, not for making things. Instead, the rise of computers and the Internet is just a warm-up for the real Third Industrial Revolution, which is the full integration of information technology with industrial production.

The effect of the Third Industrial Revolution will be to collapse the distance between the design of a product and its physical manufacture, in much the same way that the Internet has eliminated the distance between the origination of a new idea and its communication to an audience. ...

3. Tyler Cowen has some thoughts about the impact of our technological revolution as well Are we living in the early 19th century?

... Eventually all of the creative ferment of the industrial revolution pays off in a big "whoosh," but it takes many decades, depending on where you draw the starting line of course.  A look at the early 19th century is sobering, or should be, for anyone doing fiscal budgeting today.  But it is also optimistic in terms of the larger picture facing humanity over the longer run.

4. You may have seen a deeply flawed viral video about wealth inequality this past week. I am working on my own response, but economist Mark Perry's response is here.  In response to the viral 'Wealth Inequality in America' video

5. What are the contours of income inequality in the United States? This 40-minute video by Emmanuel Saez offers some important insights.

6. Futurist Ray Kurzweil is a little too sensationalist for my taste, but this vid offers interesting food for thought about nanotechnology and the future of sports. Will we even be able to have meaningful sports competitions?

7. Atlantic takes up a frequently perpetuated myth. 'Women Own 1% of World Property': A Feminist Myth That Won't Die

8. First, there was I, Pencil. Then I Smartphone. Now "I Coke." What Coke Contains

9. U.S. household wealth regains pre-recession peak but ...

The recovered wealth - most of it from higher stock prices - has been flowing mainly to richer Americans. By contrast, middle class wealth is mostly in the form of home equity, which has risen much less.

10. When looking at decisions in your own context, Seth Godin explains why Macro trends don't matter so much

11. It's a big, fat myth that all scientists are religion-hating atheists.

Whether or not you think science is wonderful, the stereotype of all scientists being atheists is unrealistic. There is, however, a special dance.

12. I consider this good news. Old Earth, Young Minds: Evangelical Homeschoolers Embrace Evolution

More Christian parents are asking for mainstream science in their children's curricula.

13. Remember to keep Syria and Egypt in your prayers. Nearly 1 in 20 Syrians are now refugees

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/07/4106038/us-household-wealth-regains-pre.html#storylink=cpy

Are climate change models becoming more accurate and less reliable?

Scientific American: Are climate change models becoming more accurate and less reliable?

One of the perpetual challenges in my career as a modeler of biochemical systems has been the need to balance accuracy with reliability. This paradox is not as strange as it seems. Typically when you build a model you include a lot of approximations supposed to make the modeling process easier; ideally you want a model to be as simple as possible and contain as few parameters as possible. But this strategy does not work all the time since sometimes it turns out that in your drive for simplicity you have left a crucial factor out. So now you include this crucial factor, only to find that the uncertainties in your model go through the roof. What’s happening in such unfortunate cases is that along with including the signal from the previously excluded factors, you have also inevitably included a large amount of noise. This noise can typically result from an incomplete knowledge of the factor, either from calculation or from measurement. Modelers of every stripe thus have to tread a fine balance between including as much of reality as possibility as possible and making the model accurate enough for quantitative explanation and prediction.

It seems that this is exactly the problem that has started bedeviling climate change models. A recent issue of Nature had a very interesting article on what seems to be a wholly paradoxical feature of models used in climate science; as the models are becoming increasingly realistic, they are also becoming less accurate and predictive because of growing uncertainties. I can only imagine this to be an excruciatingly painful fact for climate modelers who seem to be facing the equivalent of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle for their field. It’s an especially worrisome time to deal with such issues since the modelers need to include their predictions in the next IPCC report on climate change which is due to be published this year. ...

A very interesting piece showing the challenges of forecasting the future with mathematical models. I liked this paragraph.

... But the lesson to take away from this dilemma is that crude models sometimes work better than more realistic ones. My favorite quote about models comes from the statistician George Box who said that “all models are wrong, but some are useful”. It is a worthy endeavor to try to make models more realistic, but it is even more important to make them useful.

Saturday Links

1. Christian History magazine has an entire issue devoted to Christians in the New Industrial Economy: The World Changed, the Church Responded. It is a priceless collection of essays on how various religious traditions responded to (or failed to) the challenges of the Industrial Revolution.

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.

2. Orange County Register says Don't count out mainline Protestants yet.

As flocks shrink, denominations that once defined America fight to stay relevant with new ways of reaching out.

3. The Washington Post reports that Megachurches thriving in tough economic times.

"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. ..."

4. Harvard Business Review: Steve Blank on Why Big Companies Can't Innovate

... 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

6. The rise of post-industrial China? (Economist)

7. New Geography thinks U.S. LATE TO THE PARTY ON LATIN AMERICA, AFRICA.

"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.

9. A Portrait of U.S. Immigrants

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.

10. Marketing Daily says More Latinos See Themselves As Bicultural

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."

12. Being a Republican or a Democrat may all be in your head: Republican Brains Differ From Democrats' In New FMRI Study

... 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. ...

13. Health Care Without the Doctors Coming to a Walmart Near You

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." ...

14. Is this a case of marketing going too far? Young Japanese Women Rent Out Their Bare Legs as Advertising Space

15. Nanotechnology Rebuilds the Periodic Table

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. ...

16. ExtremeTech says NASA’s cold fusion tech could put a nuclear reactor in every home, car, and plane.

17. Atlantic Cities has some great maps showing the impact of railroads on travel time in the early 19th Century, thus shrinking the nation. A Mapped History of Train Travel in the United States

18. A soccer goalie's worst nightmare.

19. You might want to think twice before a game of horse with this cheerleader.

Saturday Links

Today is the day our advanced technological culture turns to a cute furry rodent in Pennsylvania for a weather forecast. (The only thing a groundhog foretells in my yard is that I'm probably going to need some new landscaping.) Happy Groundhog Day!

1. Strategic Planning and the "Vision Thing" -- Fire, Not Fluff.

"In the course of our strategic planning work with clients, we've identified the things that make the difference between visions that fall flat and those that turn on. Here's a no-nonsense summary of those elements that you can use as a guide when you develop your strategic plan."

2. Some good thoughts on strategies we should all consider in trying to address controversial issues. Five simple lessons from Shane Windmeyer's friendship with Chick-fil-A's Dan Cathy

3. Anticipating a move? Here's Everything You Should Consider Before Moving To A New City

4. Jordan Ballor has some thoughts on subsidiarity at Political Theology. Subsidiarity 'From Below'

"In this way a conception of subsidiarity "from below" is focused on the location of sovereignty from the "bottom up" rather than on the delegation of authority from the "top down." We see these variegated approaches to subsidiarity and sovereignty work out in diverse ways in later centuries. It is with these different lenses of subsidiarity "from above" and "from below" that we can better understand the developments of the Roman Catholic principle of subsidiarity as such and the neo-Calvinist articulation of "sphere sovereignty" in the late nineteenth century and beyond."

5. Business Insider offers 21 Surprising Facts About Illegal Immigration.

6. Sarah Posner has an interesting piece. 'New Evangelical’-Progressive Alliance? Not So Fast

"Pally's essay is framed around the thesis that these evangelicals have "left the right." But left it for what? What she describes is really another vision of conservatism: church-based charity in lieu of a government safety net; exemptions from government regulation for religious groups; federal funding of religious activities; and persistent sexual puritanism. Perhaps it's more accurate to say they've left the radical right and are in the process of creating a new religious right, stripped of harsh rhetoric but still undergirded by conservative ideology. Which is a movement worth chronicling, but not, as Pally intimates, as the new saviors of civility in our religiously-inflected politics."

7. What has the iPad meant to Apple? A picture says a thousand words. A decade of Apple' computer' sales

8. Extinction of millions of species' greatly exaggerated'

"In the past scientists have warned that up to five per cent of species are at risk of dying-out as a result of climate change, deforestation and development.

But a new analysis by the University of New Zealand found that this figure was five times greater than reality because the number of animals living in the wild in the first place had been over estimated."

9. It Turns out once the culprit in species extinction may be curled up in your lap. Cats Are Ruthless Killers. Should They Be Killed?

10. I've written before that fear is not an effective motivator for long term change. This is particularly true for some climate change and environmental activism. You need to make new behaviors fun and engaging. WWF appears to have taken this strategy to heart. (Hard to go wrong with anthropomorphized critters but maybe they should consider the article immediately above.)

11. The evolutionary plot thickens. Who Was the First Human Ancestor?

From the time of Charles Darwin science has painted a picture of our earliest ancestor in the image of a chimpanzee. Scientific American editor Katherine Harmon explains how new fossil evidence is redrawing the lines of human evolution.

Actually, I think we already know who our first ancestor was.

12. For the most part (with a few exceptions), when it comes to movies, if you can't tell your story in less than two hours, then I think you didn't edit the movie well. Hollywood would apparently beg to differ. Why Movies Today Are Longer Than Ever Before

"The average of the highest-grossing films from 20 years ago is 118.4 minutes compared to this year's 141.6 minutes."

13. More interesting findings of early civilization in the Americas. Research Confirms Massive Louisiana Mound Was Built By Archaic Native Americans In Less Than 90 Days.

14. Melissa and I love history and have always loved old cemeteries. This story makes me sad. Black history dies in neglected Southern cemeteries

15. Okay, purists, Rule Change Eliminates a Fake Pickoff. Pitchers can no longer fake a throw to third before throwing to another base. Good idea or bad?

Is Scientific Materialism “Almost Certainly False”?

Scientific American: Is Scientific Materialism “Almost Certainly False”?

... Some scholars, notably philosopher Thomas Nagel, are so unimpressed with science that they are challenging its fundamental assumptions. In his new book Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, Nagel contends that current scientific theories and methods can’t account for the emergence of life in general and one bipedal, big-brained species in particular. To solve these problems, Nagel asserts, science needs “a major conceptual revolution,” as radical as those precipitated by heliocentrism, evolution and relativity.

Many pundits calling for such a revolution are peddling some sort of religious agenda, whether Christian or New Age. Nagel is an atheist, who cannot accept God as a final answer, and yet he echoes some theological critiques of science. “Physic-chemical reductionism,” he writes, cannot tell us how matter became animate on Earth more than three billion years ago; nor can it account for the emergence in our ancestors of consciousness, reason and morality. ...

... These qualms asides, I recommend Nagel’s book, which serves as a much-needed counterweight to the smug, know-it-all stance of many modern scientists. Hawking and Krauss both claim that science has rendered philosophy obsolete. Actually, now more than ever we need philosophers, especially skeptics like Socrates, Descartes, Thomas Kuhn and Nagel, who seek to prevent us from becoming trapped in the cave of our beliefs.

Saturday Links

1. Lots of news outlets picked up on this story about technology displacing humans. In The Future, Machines May Have All The Jobs. We all know where this leads.

Seriously, technological innovation always creates dislocations. Fear of machines replacing humans goes back to the beginning of the industrial revolution. The economy has always adapted, and I expect it will again.

2. Has the ideas machine broken down?

"The idea that innovation and new technology have stopped driving growth is getting increasing attention. But it is not well founded."

3. Business Insider reports that The Worldwide Demographic Cliff Is Going To Be Brutal

Alas, that won't help, as this graph compiled by statistician Simon Hedlin shows. The total dependency ratio (children and retirees, compared with those of working age) fell in all G20/OECD nations bar Germany and Sweden between 1960 and 2010. In the next fifty years, it will rise in all those nations, bar India and South Africa. In most nations, the ratio will rise by 40% or more; there are huge increases in dependency in parts of Asia (China and South Korea) and in eastern Europe. Britain and America are towards the bottom of the table, but their problems are big enough.

There are many implications. With more dependents to care for, it is very hard to imagine how we will pay down our debts. And it is also very hard to imagine how one can possibly expect government spending to shrink significantly.

4. San Antonio plans one of the nation's first bookless libraries

"... BiblioTech, a $1.5 million Bexar County paperless library will have scores of computer terminals, laptops, tablets, and e-readers – but not a dog-eared classic or dusty reference book in sight. 

"Think of an Apple store," Bexar County Judge Nelson Wolff, who led his county's bookless library project, told NPR when describing the planned library.

The 4,989-squre-foot, digital-only library, one of the first of its kind, will feature 100 e-readers available for circulation, 50 e-readers for children, 50 computer stations, 25 laptops, and 25 tablets for on-site use. Patrons can check out e-readers for two weeks or load books onto their own devices.

"A technological evolution is taking place," Wolff says. "And I think we're stepping in at the right time."..."

5. Some good thoughts on The 10 Things Entrepreneurs Waste The Most Time On

6. College freshman survey: finance worries up, liberalism down

"UCLA's survey of incoming college freshmen shows fewer identify as liberals and an increasing number saying the economy significantly affected their college choice."

7. Walter Russell Mead on The End of the Religious Right?

"In some ways, this shift isn't as dramatic as it might first appear. Even though younger evangelicals are increasingly walking away from the religious right, they are still self-identifying as Republicans (54 percent) more than Democrats (26 percent). Younger Christians still agree with the religious right on the issues but reject the movement's tactics, tone, and narrow focus on social issues."

8. Scientific American: The Liberals' War on Science. How politics distorts science on both ends of the spectrum.

"Surveys show that moderate liberals and conservatives embrace science roughly equally (varying across domains), which is why scientists like E. O. Wilson and organizations like the National Center for Science Education are reaching out to moderates in both parties to rein in the extremists on evolution and climate change. Pace Barry Goldwater, extremism in the defense of liberty may not be a vice, but it is in defense of science, where facts matter more than faith—whether it comes in a religious or secular form—and where moderation in the pursuit of truth is a virtue."

9. How did Fido become domesticated by humans? Dog evolved 'on the waste dump'

10. Any volunteers? Harvard Professor Seeks Woman Willing To Have A Neanderthal Baby

11. A fascinating history of high heels. Why did men stop wearing high heels?

That's all for this week. Like the Kruse Kronicle on Facebook.

17 Equations That Changed The Course Of Humanity

Business Insider: The 17 Equations That Changed The Course Of Humanity

Mathematician Ian Stewart's recent book "In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World" takes a close look at some of the most important equations of all time.

A great example of the human impact of math is the financial crisis. Black Scholes, number 17 on this list, is a derivative pricing equation that played a role.

"It’s actually a fairly simple equation, mathematically speaking," Professor Stewart told Business Insider. "What caused trouble was the complexity of the system the mathematics was intended to model."

Numbers have power. In this case, people depended on a theoretical equation too seriously and overreached its assumptions.

Without the equations on this list, we wouldn't have GPS, computers, passenger jets, or countless inventions in between.

You can find the book here.

The Pythagorean Theorem

What does it mean: You can multiply numbers by adding related numbers. 

History: Attributed to Pythagoras, it isn't certain that he first proved it. The first clear proof came from Euclid, and it is possible the concept was known 1000 years before Pythoragas by the Babylonians.

Importance: The equation is at the core of geometry, links it with algebra, and is the foundation of trigonometry. Without it, accurate surveying, mapmaking, and navigation would be impossible.

Modern use: Triangulation is used to this day to pinpoint relative location for GPS navigation.

Source: In Pursuit of the Unknown: 17 Equations That Changed the World

The logarithm and its identities ...

Saturday Links

1. I don't know much about Common Good RVA, but I like their vision. Christianity Today published a piece featuring them, Why the Rest of Your Week Matters to God

"In general, the church has done a fine job equipping Christians for the "private" areas of their lives: prayer, morality, family life, and so on. However, in general, the church has done a poor job equipping people for the "public" parts of their lives: namely, their work, their vocation. The reality is, most people spend the majority of their time in this latter, "public" area."

And I like this video clip:

CommonGood RVA from This Is Our City on Vimeo.

2. Can we Survive Technology? Written 57 years ago, Fortune resurrected this article by John von Neumann. The editor's note begins:

Editor's note:   Every Sunday, Fortune publishes a favorite story from our magazine archives. This week, to mark our Future Issue, we turn to a feature from June 1955 by John von Neumann tackling the profound questions wrought by radical technical advancement—in von Neumann's day the atomic bomb and climate change. von Neumann was one of the twentieth century's greatest and most influential geniuses. The polymath and patron saint of Game Theory was instrumental in developing America's nuclear superiority toward the end of World War II as well as in framing the decades-long Cold War with the Soviet Union. In his time, von Neumann was said to possess "the world's greatest mind." Here is his characteristically pessimistic look on what the future holds.

It is amazing how much of what he wrote remains true today!

3. Human beings are notoriously bad at evaluating probability and risk. I hope to do some blogging on this in the not-too-distant future. For now, Business Insider has 'The Birthday Problem' Shows How Terrible We Are At Estimating Probability.

4. The Atlantic reports on a study concluding Wanting Things Makes Us Happier Than Having Them

"CONCLUSION: Although "materialists' perceptions that acquisition brings them happiness appear to have some basis in reality," that happiness is short-lived, Richins concluded. As such, "The state of anticipating and desiring a product may be inherently more pleasurable than product ownership itself.""

5. One of the most difficult topics to understand in economics is comparative advantage, especially why outsourcing jobs to other countries often is advantageous for both countries. Forbes has a creative piece this week, Is Outsourcing American Jobs Wrong? However, as the BBC reports, American manufacturers come back home, a trend that has been true for a few years now.

6. Whole Foods Founder Says Too Many Companies Get Capitalism Wrong

"In order to fight that perception and reclaim capitalism and business as positive words, businesses have to find a purpose beyond just making money. Profit is necessary for business, Mackey said, but it's necessary in the same way that his body has to produce red blood cells. It's needed, but it's not the sole purpose."

7. Fortune has a great piece on Why innovation is so hard.

"Most business leaders don't understand what makes innovation so different from everything else they do at work -- and they haven't adjusted their behavior to accommodate these differences."

8. We've all been watching Lance Armstrong this week. Beware! Study Finds That Having Power Can Make You Stupid

9. More on the continuing evolution of the print industry in The Growing Adoption of Creative Commons Textbooks and Nation's First Bookless Public Library Could Be in Texas.

10. Paper-Thin Computer Debuts at CES

11. Scientists reveal that Star Wars And Star Trek Got Warp Speed Totally Wrong.

"The science fiction vision of stars flashing by as streaks when spaceships travel faster than light isn't what the scene would actually look like, a team of physics students says.

Instead, the view out the windows of a vehicle traveling through hyperspace would be more like a centralized bright glow, calculations show. ..."

That's all for this week. Like the Kruse Kronicle on Facebook.

Economic Incentives and Science

Science Nordic: Science has always been driven by money

There’s no way around it. Money is involved in just about everything. But just how has money affected history’s great scientific discoveries?

We may now come closer to an answer, thanks to a new Danish-led research project, which examines the background of some of the great scientific discoveries of the past 200 years.

The project is headed by Danish science historian Peter C. Kjærgaard, a professor of evolutionary studies at Aarhus University..

By digging into the archives, he aims to trace the money path from the hands of science-minded people to the final research findings.

This method has enabled him to chart the intricate web of economic, scientific and political interests that led to the discovery of the world’s first dinosaur nest in the Gobi Desert in the 1920s.

“We have taken the initial steps towards the first major systematic historical studies of how money has affected the production of scientific knowledge,” says Kjærgaard.

“Regardless of where and when in the history of science we look, we can see that researchers have always depended on money in their work and personal lives. It sounds banal, but it’s important to understand that without money we wouldn’t have the scientific data that we have today.”

The project has so far resulted in four journal articles about the role of money in science. ...

Environmentalist Mark Lynas Changes View on GMOs

Mark Lynas: Lecture to Oxford Farming Conference, 3 January 2013

I want to start with some apologies. For the record, here and upfront, I apologise for having spent several years ripping up GM crops. I am also sorry that I helped to start the anti-GM movement back in the mid 1990s, and that I thereby assisted in demonising an important technological option which can be used to benefit the environment.

As an environmentalist, and someone who believes that everyone in this world has a right to a healthy and nutritious diet of their choosing, I could not have chosen a more counter-productive path. I now regret it completely.

So I guess you’ll be wondering – what happened between 1995 and now that made me not only change my mind but come here and admit it? Well, the answer is fairly simple: I discovered science, and in the process I hope I became a better environmentalist.

When I first heard about Monsanto’s GM soya I knew exactly what I thought. Here was a big American corporation with a nasty track record, putting something new and experimental into our food without telling us. Mixing genes between species seemed to be about as unnatural as you can get – here was humankind acquiring too much technological power; something was bound to go horribly wrong. These genes would spread like some kind of living pollution. It was the stuff of nightmares.

These fears spread like wildfire, and within a few years GM was essentially banned in Europe, and our worries were exported by NGOs like Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to Africa, India and the rest of Asia, where GM is still banned today. This was the most successful campaign I have ever been involved with.

This was also explicitly an anti-science movement. We employed a lot of imagery about scientists in their labs cackling demonically as they tinkered with the very building blocks of life. Hence the Frankenstein food tag – this absolutely was about deep-seated fears of scientific powers being used secretly for unnatural ends. What we didn’t realise at the time was that the real Frankenstein’s monster was not GM technology, but our reaction against it.

For me this anti-science environmentalism became increasingly inconsistent with my pro-science environmentalism with regard to climate change. I published my first book on global warming in 2004, and I was determined to make it scientifically credible rather than just a collection of anecdotes. ...

Saturday Links

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1. Several articles I saw this week reflect on data presented in The Pew Forum's The Global Religious Landscape: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Major Religious Groups as of 2010. Here is one interesting chart from the survey showing what percentage of each religion's adherents live in minority religious status in their own country.

2. This is really fascinating. Smithsonian: Why Japan is Obsessed with Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas. “Kurisumasu ni wa kentakkii!” (Kentucky for Christmas!)

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?

4. From the Guardian, Private healthcare: the lessons from Sweden

"... 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". ..."

5. Scott Annan writes in The Future Of Business Is Morality, And The Future Is Now

"... 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. ..."

6. Scientific American asks, After 40 Years, Has Recycling Lived Up to Its Billing?

7. AOL has a short piece about the rise of small nuclear reactors. The Next Big Thing in Nuclear Power: Going Small

8. Scientific American has a list of The Top 10 Science Stories of 2012.

9. Depression Surpasses Asthma as Top Disability Problem among U.S. and Canadian Teens

"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."

10. Robotic arm controlled by the mind allows paraplegic woman to feed herself

11. Interesting piece on Why We Prefer Masculine Voices (Even in Women).

12. Atlantic Cities looks into The Mystery of Our Declining Mobility.

13. People Are Leaving California In Record Numbers

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. ...

14. The United States Has Seen A Huge Drop In Executions Since 2000.

"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 President Obama's statement at Newtown, CT. When dealing with complex topics like gun control, we always talk about tradeoffs. For instance, I know how we can save more than 30,000 lives. There 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 such statements, as politicians often do.

16. The New York Times has an opinion piece by John Dickerson, The Decline of Evangelical America

"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 his articulation of trends is right.

17. I saw two interesting posts on the sociology Facebook this week. The New York Times had a piece about announcing bad news on Facebook: On Facebook, Bad With the Good. Mashable reports that Socioeconomic Status Predicts Number of Facebook Friends.

18. Gangnam Style hits one billion views on YouTube. K pop rules!

Why the recent increase in belief in global warming isn't good news for science

Results of an Associated Press – GfK poll about climate change was reported last Thursday (AP-GfK Poll: Science doubters say world is warming):

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A growing majority of Americans think global warming is occurring, that it will become a serious problem and that the U.S. government should do something about it, a new Associated Press-GfK poll finds. …

… The poll found 4 out of every 5 Americans said climate change will be a serious problem for the United States if nothing is done about it. That's up from 73 percent when the same question was asked in 2009. …

"Good news! People are finally coming around to believing what scientists have been telling us all along!" I can just hear some folks declaring. Hold that thought for a moment. The article goes on to say:

… The biggest change in the polling is among people who trust scientists only a little or not at all. About 1 in 3 of the people surveyed fell into that category. …

… [John] Krosnick [Stanford social psychologist], who consulted with The Associated Press on the poll questions, said the changes the poll shows aren't in the hard-core "anti-warming" deniers, but in the next group, who had serious doubts.

"They don't believe what the scientists say, they believe what the thermometers say," Krosnick said. "Events are helping these people see what scientists thought they had been seeing all along."…

The rise in belief in global warming does not stem from science but inductive reasoning based on heuristics … relying on personal experience as evidence of a broader reality. It is possible this will be the warmest year on record in the United States but more moderate globally. People in the United States look at their thermometers and see warmer temperatures. The news shows super-storm Sandy. Therefore, from experience in our particular context, it is reasoned that there is a global trend.

The irony is that average global temperatures haven't changed much for over a decade. Global hurricanes and cyclones that make landfall are not as prevalent as predicted. In fact, the last four years have been relatively mild. I'm not making the case that climate change isn't happening. Climate models don't necessarily preclude plateaus in change. Rather, I'm saying that if you are a skeptic, then recent trends should bolster skeptical interpretations. Yet, because of personal experience, some science skeptics are extrapolating from their narrow context to global realities. Furthermore, another survey finds that One in three Americans see extreme weather as a sign of biblical end times. This is not good news for science.

But I want to suggest that there is more to the story than this. Many true believers in climate change insist that science is settled on this matter, and no further dissent may be tolerated. Yet, as I have written about earlier, some of these folks are staunch skeptics about the safety of genetically modified crops and nuclear power, despite what the scientific community says. (see Why Are Environmentalists Taking Anti-Science Positions? and The Anti-Science Left) The issue is not so much that they are persuaded by science as it is that claiming scientific authority for conclusions reached by other means (heuristics? ideology?) is rhetorically useful. This is not good news for science either.

Any number of futurists have written about this challenge. For our entire human history, individual lives have been consumed with challenges immediately present to us … like shelter from the elements and not becoming prey for some animal. But with the recent explosion in knowledge, technology, and economics, many of the imminent threats we face have been tamed, and our new challenges are vastly more complex. Over-reliance on heuristic models and rigid ideological sense-making strategies, once essential, can become obstacles to good decisions. The challenge for the next several generations will be learning how to develop social institutions that effectively reflect on and address complex challenges.