From http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=3751&language=1
"The practice of intercropping — which Chinese farmers have practised for thousands of years — involves growing two or more crops in alternate rows in the same place and at same time, and can greatly increase grain yields.
In many intercropping practices, legumes are planted with crops. The legumes fix nitrogen in the soils, which then fertilises the crops grown with them.
But other benefits of legumes in intercropping are not clearly understood.
..........
They carried out field trials in the western Chinese province of Gansu over four years, and showed that intercropping with faba bean increased the maize yield by an average of 43 per cent.
"The benefits are obvious when they grow together. The underground biological processes play an important role in yield increase," Li told SciDev.Net.
The researchers found that the roots of the faba bean plant released organic acids into the soil, which increases the solubility of inorganic phosphorus, a plant nutrient. Plants take up soluble phosphorus more readily, which explains the increase in the crops' yields.
Enzymes released by the faba bean plant into the soil also decomposed organic phosphorus into an inorganic form, which could then be used by both plants.
Faba bean yield increased by 26 per cent due to more available phosphorous, its roots being a different length to those of maize, and the crops having different growth seasons."
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Links: July 15, 2007
1) The software used by Hans Rosling in "http://roslingsblogger.blogspot.com/2007/06/debunking-myths-about-world.html
is freely available at http://www.gapminder.org/
More about Hans Rosling here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling
2) Mark Thirwell of Lowry Insitute discusses the rise of China, India and developing protectionism in the west:
http://www.lowyinstitute.com/Publication.asp?pid=614
and an earlier artcle "Roaring Tiger or Lumbering Elephant" about India here:
http://svc168.wic006v.server-web.com/Publication.asp?pid=452
Another optimistic post here: http://bayesianheresy.blogspot.com/2007/07/it-makes-sense-to-invest-in-india.html
3) Indranil Dasgupta and Ravi Kanbur say that 'Philonthropic acts do not necessarily reduce inequality':
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/342
Preprint here: http://www.arts.cornell.edu/poverty/kanbur/EgalExpropPhil.pdf
See http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/critics/2000/kanbur2.htm about 'Ravi Kanbur's Resignation as World Development Report Lead Author'.
is freely available at http://www.gapminder.org/
More about Hans Rosling here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Rosling
2) Mark Thirwell of Lowry Insitute discusses the rise of China, India and developing protectionism in the west:
http://www.lowyinstitute.com/Publication.asp?pid=614
and an earlier artcle "Roaring Tiger or Lumbering Elephant" about India here:
http://svc168.wic006v.server-web.com/Publication.asp?pid=452
Another optimistic post here: http://bayesianheresy.blogspot.com/2007/07/it-makes-sense-to-invest-in-india.html
3) Indranil Dasgupta and Ravi Kanbur say that 'Philonthropic acts do not necessarily reduce inequality':
http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/342
Preprint here: http://www.arts.cornell.edu/poverty/kanbur/EgalExpropPhil.pdf
See http://www.globalpolicy.org/socecon/bwi-wto/critics/2000/kanbur2.htm about 'Ravi Kanbur's Resignation as World Development Report Lead Author'.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Dr. Mohammed Haneef charged
From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/14/1978526.htm:
"He has been charged with recklessly supplying a mobile phone sim card to a terrorist organisation.
.....
Commissioner Keelty says the AFP has had more than 300 lawyers and police working on the investigation, who had to examine a considerable amount of material.
"The allegation is that Dr Haneef provided support to a terrorist group, the specific allegation involves recklessness rather than intention, the allegation being that he was reckless about some of the support he provided to that group in particular the provision of his sim card for the use of the group," he ( Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty) said."
Some updates here:http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070723&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29&sid=1
Update (17 July, 07). From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/17/1980469.htm
"Decision 'politically popular'
Meanwhile, a former Liberal politician says the Government's decision to revoke the visa of Haneef will be politically popular.
Former New South Wales attorney-general John Dowd, who is now with the International Committee of Jurists, says the decision will appeal to sections of the public.
"This is a vote-winner for the Government," he said.
"There's no doubt that the people, a lot of the people out there - they say 'yes, well he ought to be kept away', and how the Government's got to protect us and so on - this is politically astute.""
A current news poll says that 60% people support the Aust. Gov. decision.
Update 27th July: Hanef to be released http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/haneef-will-be-released/2007/07/27/1185339232877.html
"He has been charged with recklessly supplying a mobile phone sim card to a terrorist organisation.
.....
Commissioner Keelty says the AFP has had more than 300 lawyers and police working on the investigation, who had to examine a considerable amount of material.
"The allegation is that Dr Haneef provided support to a terrorist group, the specific allegation involves recklessness rather than intention, the allegation being that he was reckless about some of the support he provided to that group in particular the provision of his sim card for the use of the group," he ( Australian Federal Police Commissioner Mick Keelty) said."
Some updates here:http://www.outlookindia.com/full.asp?fodname=20070723&fname=Cover+Story+%28F%29&sid=1
Update (17 July, 07). From http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2007/07/17/1980469.htm
"Decision 'politically popular'
Meanwhile, a former Liberal politician says the Government's decision to revoke the visa of Haneef will be politically popular.
Former New South Wales attorney-general John Dowd, who is now with the International Committee of Jurists, says the decision will appeal to sections of the public.
"This is a vote-winner for the Government," he said.
"There's no doubt that the people, a lot of the people out there - they say 'yes, well he ought to be kept away', and how the Government's got to protect us and so on - this is politically astute.""
A current news poll says that 60% people support the Aust. Gov. decision.
Update 27th July: Hanef to be released http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/haneef-will-be-released/2007/07/27/1185339232877.html
Friday, July 13, 2007
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Competition in science
Bill Hooker starts with a quote from a political blog about corporate America and discusses competition in science:
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/07/competition-in-.html
The post has several links to misconduct in science including a special issue of Nature this year. The article ends with a quote from Brian Martinson "Competition and privatization are the great American way, but we've not stopped to ask ourselves whether we may have engendered a level of competition in science that has some dysfunctional consequences."
Seed magazine discusses Ioannidis' essay entitled "Why most published research findings are false":
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/05/dirty_little_secret.php
For those with statistics background the aricle 'The most dangerous equation in the world" by Howard Wainer may be of interest: http://stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~hwainer/2007-05Wainer_rev.pdf
http://3quarksdaily.blogs.com/3quarksdaily/2007/07/competition-in-.html
The post has several links to misconduct in science including a special issue of Nature this year. The article ends with a quote from Brian Martinson "Competition and privatization are the great American way, but we've not stopped to ask ourselves whether we may have engendered a level of competition in science that has some dysfunctional consequences."
Seed magazine discusses Ioannidis' essay entitled "Why most published research findings are false":
http://www.seedmagazine.com/news/2007/05/dirty_little_secret.php
For those with statistics background the aricle 'The most dangerous equation in the world" by Howard Wainer may be of interest: http://stat.wharton.upenn.edu/~hwainer/2007-05Wainer_rev.pdf
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Locating some science blogs
There seems to be a tagging game going on:
http://evilutionarybiologist.blogspot.com/2007/06/8-random-facts.html
This seems to be one way to locate some interesting science blogs. One of the blogs that I occasionally visit is "This week in Evolution" and it was tagged in the above post.
http://evilutionarybiologist.blogspot.com/2007/06/8-random-facts.html
This seems to be one way to locate some interesting science blogs. One of the blogs that I occasionally visit is "This week in Evolution" and it was tagged in the above post.
Neckties in summertime
From http://www.samefacts.com/archives/_/2007/07/la_cravate_a_la_lanterne.php (via Ezra Klein):
"Today's FT reports that the European Commission is proposing to ban the wearing of neckties by Eurocrats in the summertime. The excuse is energy conservation; men with open collars (and no jackets) presumably can tolerate warmer offices, saving on air-conditioning."
I am pleased since I do not have a jacket or a necktie.
"Today's FT reports that the European Commission is proposing to ban the wearing of neckties by Eurocrats in the summertime. The excuse is energy conservation; men with open collars (and no jackets) presumably can tolerate warmer offices, saving on air-conditioning."
I am pleased since I do not have a jacket or a necktie.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Desalination in Karavatti
From scidev.net http://www.scidev.net/Features/index.cfm?fuseaction=readFeatures&itemid=625&language=1:
"The Karavatti plant, built by India's National Institute of Ocean Technology, uses a process akin to rain formation. Warm surface water is pumped into an onshore vacuum chamber, where some of the water vaporises.
Cold water drawn from 350 metres below the sea's surface then condenses the vapour in an adjoining chamber.
Using this process, called low-temperature thermal desalination, the plant produces 100,000 litres of fresh water a day. Although the process consumes 30 per cent more energy than its rival technologies, installing more chambers should make it more efficient and — at US$1 per 1,000 litres — cheaper."
P.S. The usual name is "KAVARATTI"
"The Karavatti plant, built by India's National Institute of Ocean Technology, uses a process akin to rain formation. Warm surface water is pumped into an onshore vacuum chamber, where some of the water vaporises.
Cold water drawn from 350 metres below the sea's surface then condenses the vapour in an adjoining chamber.
Using this process, called low-temperature thermal desalination, the plant produces 100,000 litres of fresh water a day. Although the process consumes 30 per cent more energy than its rival technologies, installing more chambers should make it more efficient and — at US$1 per 1,000 litres — cheaper."
P.S. The usual name is "KAVARATTI"
Chagossians still waiting to go home
From http://www.flonnet.com/stories/20070713001205000.htm:
"Between 1845 and 1965, Diego Garcia and the surrounding islands were the territory of Mauritius. In 1965, when the Mauritians were negotiating for independence, the British made it clear that Diego Garcia would have to be ceded in perpetuity. The British and United States governments secretly made the decision in the early 1960s to convert it into a military base. Just before granting Mauritius independence in 1968, the British government unilaterally handed over Diego Garcia to the US. After that, they went ahead with their plans to depopulate the islands. More than 2,000 Chagossians, as the islanders are called, were evicted between 1967 and 1971. They were packed off to Mauritius, with only one item of baggage each. The British government claimed that the Chagossians were actually migrant workers from Mauritius, more than 2,000 km away.
"It was an act of late colonial arrogance, breathtaking in its execution," a British commentator observed. The Chagossians are the descendants of the African and Indian indentured labourers who worked on French plantations. According to colonial records, the first inhabitants settled in Diego Garcia in the early 18th century.
Diego Garcia today hosts one of the US's biggest military bases and a satellite spy station. The base played a key role in US military actions in both Gulf Wars and in Afghanistan. If hostilities again break out in the Gulf region, planes and ships based in Diego Garcia will play a pivotal role. More than 2,000 US troops and 30 warships are stationed there. Chagossians, in the course of their long fight for justice, gave up their claims to being resettled on the island on which the base exists. They are willing to set up home on other islands, which are more than 200 km away from it. US and British officials have objected to this, arguing that their presence would be inimical to the security of the base and that secrecy about the movement of ships and planes would be endangered. A US State Department official said last year that allowing civilians on the archipelago could "potentially lead to terrorists infiltrating the islands".
Seven years ago, the British High Court ruled that the expulsions were illegal, but the British government continues with its stonewalling tactics. In 2004, the government resorted to an archaic law, "the Order of Council", to prevent the islanders from ever returning home. The centuries-old royal prerogative allowed the government to overrule court judgments. In May 2006, the High Court described the government's conduct in the case as "outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards".
The government is still playing for time in the hope that there will be very few Chagossians left to return to their homeland. Many of them have died; the survivors are over 50. But there is a young generation, of more than 4,000, that is keen to return to the land of its forefathers. The bench that ruled in the petitioners' favour ordered the British government to pay their legal costs. The government has already announced its intention to appeal to the House of Lords to thwart the refugees' return. It could take some more time for the islanders' dreams to be fulfilled. They may never be able to see Diego Garcia, but they could be resettled on other nearby islands."
"Between 1845 and 1965, Diego Garcia and the surrounding islands were the territory of Mauritius. In 1965, when the Mauritians were negotiating for independence, the British made it clear that Diego Garcia would have to be ceded in perpetuity. The British and United States governments secretly made the decision in the early 1960s to convert it into a military base. Just before granting Mauritius independence in 1968, the British government unilaterally handed over Diego Garcia to the US. After that, they went ahead with their plans to depopulate the islands. More than 2,000 Chagossians, as the islanders are called, were evicted between 1967 and 1971. They were packed off to Mauritius, with only one item of baggage each. The British government claimed that the Chagossians were actually migrant workers from Mauritius, more than 2,000 km away.
"It was an act of late colonial arrogance, breathtaking in its execution," a British commentator observed. The Chagossians are the descendants of the African and Indian indentured labourers who worked on French plantations. According to colonial records, the first inhabitants settled in Diego Garcia in the early 18th century.
Diego Garcia today hosts one of the US's biggest military bases and a satellite spy station. The base played a key role in US military actions in both Gulf Wars and in Afghanistan. If hostilities again break out in the Gulf region, planes and ships based in Diego Garcia will play a pivotal role. More than 2,000 US troops and 30 warships are stationed there. Chagossians, in the course of their long fight for justice, gave up their claims to being resettled on the island on which the base exists. They are willing to set up home on other islands, which are more than 200 km away from it. US and British officials have objected to this, arguing that their presence would be inimical to the security of the base and that secrecy about the movement of ships and planes would be endangered. A US State Department official said last year that allowing civilians on the archipelago could "potentially lead to terrorists infiltrating the islands".
Seven years ago, the British High Court ruled that the expulsions were illegal, but the British government continues with its stonewalling tactics. In 2004, the government resorted to an archaic law, "the Order of Council", to prevent the islanders from ever returning home. The centuries-old royal prerogative allowed the government to overrule court judgments. In May 2006, the High Court described the government's conduct in the case as "outrageous, unlawful and a breach of accepted moral standards".
The government is still playing for time in the hope that there will be very few Chagossians left to return to their homeland. Many of them have died; the survivors are over 50. But there is a young generation, of more than 4,000, that is keen to return to the land of its forefathers. The bench that ruled in the petitioners' favour ordered the British government to pay their legal costs. The government has already announced its intention to appeal to the House of Lords to thwart the refugees' return. It could take some more time for the islanders' dreams to be fulfilled. They may never be able to see Diego Garcia, but they could be resettled on other nearby islands."
Monday, July 09, 2007
Publicity as a deterrent to corruption
From http://www.voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/345:
"The authors study a newspaper campaign in Uganda, which aimed at reducing capture of public funds by providing schools with information to monitor local officials’ handling of a large education program. Survey evidence showed that on average only 20% of the funds for primary schools’ expenditure reached the schools in the mid-1990s, most schools received nothing and the bulk of the grants was captured by local government officials in charge of the distribution. Traditionally, anticorruption programs target the problem through building legal and financial institution for control, however in poor countries these prove to be weak and among the most corrupt. For this reason, the Ugandan government decided to begin publicizing information on amount and timing of disbursement of the school grants.
The authors find that public access to information can indeed be a powerful deterrent to capture of funds at the local level. Head teachers in schools closer to a newspaper outlet were found to be more knowledgeable of the rules governing the grant program and the timing of releases by the central government. These schools also managed to claim a significantly larger part of their entitlement after the newspaper campaign was initiated. Furthermore, the reduction in capture had a positive effect on both enrolment and student learning."
The authors are Ritva Reinikka Jakob Svensson and a non-gated version of their paper "The Returns from Reducing Corruption: Evidence from Education in Uganda" is available here:
http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/rburgess/eea/svenssonjeea.pdf
"The authors study a newspaper campaign in Uganda, which aimed at reducing capture of public funds by providing schools with information to monitor local officials’ handling of a large education program. Survey evidence showed that on average only 20% of the funds for primary schools’ expenditure reached the schools in the mid-1990s, most schools received nothing and the bulk of the grants was captured by local government officials in charge of the distribution. Traditionally, anticorruption programs target the problem through building legal and financial institution for control, however in poor countries these prove to be weak and among the most corrupt. For this reason, the Ugandan government decided to begin publicizing information on amount and timing of disbursement of the school grants.
The authors find that public access to information can indeed be a powerful deterrent to capture of funds at the local level. Head teachers in schools closer to a newspaper outlet were found to be more knowledgeable of the rules governing the grant program and the timing of releases by the central government. These schools also managed to claim a significantly larger part of their entitlement after the newspaper campaign was initiated. Furthermore, the reduction in capture had a positive effect on both enrolment and student learning."
The authors are Ritva Reinikka Jakob Svensson and a non-gated version of their paper "The Returns from Reducing Corruption: Evidence from Education in Uganda" is available here:
http://econ.lse.ac.uk/staff/rburgess/eea/svenssonjeea.pdf
Will Gordon Brown change Iraq policy?
From Jhttp://observer.guardian.co.uk/politics/story/0,,1702674,00.html:
"Gordon Brown has personally endorsed a new book on faith in politics which lambasts the 'unjust' Iraq war - and portrays the Chancellor as a great spiritual thinker."
From http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101704A.shtml
" A few months later, on Feb. 1, 2002, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners stood in the Roosevelt Room for the introduction of Jim Towey as head of the president's faith-based and community initiative. John DiIulio, the original head, had left the job feeling that the initiative was not about "compassionate conservatism," as originally promised, but rather a political giveaway to the Christian right, a way to consolidate and energize that part of the base.
Moments after the ceremony, Bush saw Wallis. He bounded over and grabbed the cheeks of his face, one in each hand, and squeezed. "Jim, how ya doin', how ya doin'!" he exclaimed. Wallis was taken aback. Bush excitedly said that his massage therapist had given him Wallis's book, "Faith Works." His joy at seeing Wallis, as Wallis and others remember it, was palpable - a president, wrestling with faith and its role at a time of peril, seeing that rare bird: an independent counselor. Wallis recalls telling Bush he was doing fine, "'but in the State of the Union address a few days before, you said that unless we devote all our energies, our focus, our resources on this war on terrorism, we're going to lose.' I said, 'Mr. President, if we don't devote our energy, our focus and our time on also overcoming global poverty and desperation, we will lose not only the war on poverty, but we'll lose the war on terrorism."'
Bush replied that that was why America needed the leadership of Wallis and other members of the clergy.
"No, Mr. President," Wallis says he told Bush, "We need your leadership on this question, and all of us will then commit to support you. Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which the mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we'll never defeat the threat of terrorism."
Bush looked quizzically at the minister, Wallis recalls. They never spoke again after that."
But that was another book and another leader.
"Gordon Brown has personally endorsed a new book on faith in politics which lambasts the 'unjust' Iraq war - and portrays the Chancellor as a great spiritual thinker."
From http://www.truthout.org/docs_04/101704A.shtml
" A few months later, on Feb. 1, 2002, Jim Wallis of the Sojourners stood in the Roosevelt Room for the introduction of Jim Towey as head of the president's faith-based and community initiative. John DiIulio, the original head, had left the job feeling that the initiative was not about "compassionate conservatism," as originally promised, but rather a political giveaway to the Christian right, a way to consolidate and energize that part of the base.
Moments after the ceremony, Bush saw Wallis. He bounded over and grabbed the cheeks of his face, one in each hand, and squeezed. "Jim, how ya doin', how ya doin'!" he exclaimed. Wallis was taken aback. Bush excitedly said that his massage therapist had given him Wallis's book, "Faith Works." His joy at seeing Wallis, as Wallis and others remember it, was palpable - a president, wrestling with faith and its role at a time of peril, seeing that rare bird: an independent counselor. Wallis recalls telling Bush he was doing fine, "'but in the State of the Union address a few days before, you said that unless we devote all our energies, our focus, our resources on this war on terrorism, we're going to lose.' I said, 'Mr. President, if we don't devote our energy, our focus and our time on also overcoming global poverty and desperation, we will lose not only the war on poverty, but we'll lose the war on terrorism."'
Bush replied that that was why America needed the leadership of Wallis and other members of the clergy.
"No, Mr. President," Wallis says he told Bush, "We need your leadership on this question, and all of us will then commit to support you. Unless we drain the swamp of injustice in which the mosquitoes of terrorism breed, we'll never defeat the threat of terrorism."
Bush looked quizzically at the minister, Wallis recalls. They never spoke again after that."
But that was another book and another leader.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Growth of Music in Tamil South India
From link in http://www.tamilnation.org/culture/drama/index.htm (check also http://eprints.soas.ac.uk/3596/1/MusicIntheAgeofMechanicalReproduction.pdf) about the article "Music in the age of mechanical reproduction: Drama, gramophone and the beginnings of Tamil cinema" by Stephen Putnam Hughes":
"This paper takes on the issues of why and how film songs became such an important and persistent feature of Tamil cinema. The specific focus is on how the relationship between Tamil musical drama and the south Indian gramophone business preceded, mediated and was, eventually, transformed by the emergence of Tamil cinema as a dominant commercial entertainment during the 1930s. This is, in part, an attempt to reconsider conventional explanations for why the first Indian talkies featured songs as the main, if not defining appeal of their entertainment. "
The paper does not seem to be freely accessible now. I have downloaded a copy when it was free and it is an interesting article.
"This paper takes on the issues of why and how film songs became such an important and persistent feature of Tamil cinema. The specific focus is on how the relationship between Tamil musical drama and the south Indian gramophone business preceded, mediated and was, eventually, transformed by the emergence of Tamil cinema as a dominant commercial entertainment during the 1930s. This is, in part, an attempt to reconsider conventional explanations for why the first Indian talkies featured songs as the main, if not defining appeal of their entertainment. "
The paper does not seem to be freely accessible now. I have downloaded a copy when it was free and it is an interesting article.
Managing waste
Video from vkas Kendra (courtesy of Rahul Banerjee):
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8600337152533335705&pr=goog-sl
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-8600337152533335705&pr=goog-sl
Friday, July 06, 2007
A site for Indian topics
http://www.ignca.nic.in/new_main.htm
(Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts). The section http://www.ignca.nic.in/ebk_0001.htm
contains some downloadable books.
The book "Life Style and Ecology" (http://www.ignca.nic.in/cd_08.htm) has a paper "Sacred Groves and Sacred Trees of Uttara Kannada" by M.D. Subash Chandran and Madhav Gadgil discusses in passing the origins of temples but it is not an exhaustive discussion.
(Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts). The section http://www.ignca.nic.in/ebk_0001.htm
contains some downloadable books.
The book "Life Style and Ecology" (http://www.ignca.nic.in/cd_08.htm) has a paper "Sacred Groves and Sacred Trees of Uttara Kannada" by M.D. Subash Chandran and Madhav Gadgil discusses in passing the origins of temples but it is not an exhaustive discussion.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Oil news from Australia
From http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,22021450-601,00.html
“THE government has admitted the need to secure oil supplies is a factor in Australia's continued military involvement in Iraq.
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said today oil was a factor in Australia's contribution to the unpopular war, as "energy security" and stability in the Middle East would be crucial to the nation's future.
Speaking ahead of a key foreign policy speech today by Prime Minister John Howard, Dr Nelson said defence was about protecting the economy as well as physical security, and it was important to support the "prestige" of the US and UK.”
From http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/mideast-crucial-to-our-future/2007/07/05/1183351341853.html
“In an address to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra today, Mr Howard highlighted the fight against terrorism and the need to secure a major oil supply as reasons to stay the course in Iraq.”
Updare: From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6272168.stm
"In comments to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Nelson admitted that the supply of oil had influenced Australia's strategic planning in the region.
"Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire region, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world," he said.
"Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq.
"It's in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security."
This is thought to be the first time the Australian government has admitted any link between troop deployment in Iraq and securing energy resources.
But Prime Minister John Howard was quick to play down the significance of his defence minister's comments."
Meanwhile a poll by Sky News said that at one stage 47 perecent of the people polled supported the idea of linking energy security with withdrawal from Iraq.
“THE government has admitted the need to secure oil supplies is a factor in Australia's continued military involvement in Iraq.
Defence Minister Brendan Nelson said today oil was a factor in Australia's contribution to the unpopular war, as "energy security" and stability in the Middle East would be crucial to the nation's future.
Speaking ahead of a key foreign policy speech today by Prime Minister John Howard, Dr Nelson said defence was about protecting the economy as well as physical security, and it was important to support the "prestige" of the US and UK.”
From http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/mideast-crucial-to-our-future/2007/07/05/1183351341853.html
“In an address to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute in Canberra today, Mr Howard highlighted the fight against terrorism and the need to secure a major oil supply as reasons to stay the course in Iraq.”
Updare: From http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6272168.stm
"In comments to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, Mr Nelson admitted that the supply of oil had influenced Australia's strategic planning in the region.
"Obviously the Middle East itself, not only Iraq but the entire region, is an important supplier of energy, oil in particular, to the rest of the world," he said.
"Australians and all of us need to think what would happen if there were a premature withdrawal from Iraq.
"It's in our interests, our security interests, to make sure that we leave the Middle East, and leave Iraq in particular, in a position of sustainable security."
This is thought to be the first time the Australian government has admitted any link between troop deployment in Iraq and securing energy resources.
But Prime Minister John Howard was quick to play down the significance of his defence minister's comments."
Meanwhile a poll by Sky News said that at one stage 47 perecent of the people polled supported the idea of linking energy security with withdrawal from Iraq.
Could you pass 8th grade science?
See http://mingle2.com/science-quiz. I passed but did not do too well. More links at the same site.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
More on blogging economists
Andrew Leonard in http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/07/03/net_economists/index.html:
"The econo-blogosphere is more than a collegial coffee-room discussion. It's closer to an internationally-distributed graduate seminar, in which the lucky students get to watch -- and participate in -- a round-robin debate featuring scores of professors duking it out. It is also an early-warning system for new academic papers of note and an instant provider of context and analysis for each new blip of economic data. It is, to put it most simply, an education.
Does that mean it has an impact on policy? That's where it gets tricky. Politics, especially as practiced in the United States, appears to care little for the consensus opinion of economists, especially when that runs counter to polling data and focus group results. But maybe it's just too early in the history of the Internet to make a definitive call. We need more data."
More links before I loose them. Jared Bernstein Responds in The Coffee House to "Why are Economists’ Predictions So Often Wrong?" http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jul/02/predicting_with_a_handicap_why_are_economists_predictions_so_often_wrong
An excerpt "There are other things economists do well. Our empirical methods, in the right hands, can be highly informative and useful. But, like Yogi said, prediction is hard, especially when it comes to the future. When you’re carrying all this baggage along with you, it’s even harder."
More links at http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-on-old-joke-about-why-economists.html
But economics is more than weather prediction and economists and bankers seem to be getting better at preventing big disasters. See the views of Brad De long and Mark Thoma in http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/brad-delong-hat.html
Another interesting post on morality and economics http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/morality-and-ec.html goes back to Adam Smith. P.J.O'Rourke says in http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/401ngehx.asp "It's a mistake to read The Wealth of Nations as a justification of amoral greed. Wealth was Smith's further attempt to make life better. In Moral Sentiments he wrote, "To love our neighbor as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity." But note the simile that Christ used and Smith cited. The Theory of Moral Sentiments was about the neighbor. The Wealth of Nations was about the other half of the equation: us.
It is assumed, apparently at the highest level of moral arbitration, that we should care about ourselves. And logically we need to. In Moral Sentiments Smith insisted, paraphrasing Zeno, that each of us "is first and principally recommended to his own care." A broke, naked, starving self is of no use to anyone in the neighborhood. In Wealth Smith insisted that in order to take care of ourselves we must be free to do so. The Theory of Moral Sentiments showed us how the imagination can make us care about other people. The Wealth of Nations showed us how the imagination can make us dinner and a pair of pants."
Apparently 'the invisible hand' already appears in "The Theory of Moral sentiments":
"[The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species."
"The econo-blogosphere is more than a collegial coffee-room discussion. It's closer to an internationally-distributed graduate seminar, in which the lucky students get to watch -- and participate in -- a round-robin debate featuring scores of professors duking it out. It is also an early-warning system for new academic papers of note and an instant provider of context and analysis for each new blip of economic data. It is, to put it most simply, an education.
Does that mean it has an impact on policy? That's where it gets tricky. Politics, especially as practiced in the United States, appears to care little for the consensus opinion of economists, especially when that runs counter to polling data and focus group results. But maybe it's just too early in the history of the Internet to make a definitive call. We need more data."
More links before I loose them. Jared Bernstein Responds in The Coffee House to "Why are Economists’ Predictions So Often Wrong?" http://www.tpmcafe.com/blog/coffeehouse/2007/jul/02/predicting_with_a_handicap_why_are_economists_predictions_so_often_wrong
An excerpt "There are other things economists do well. Our empirical methods, in the right hands, can be highly informative and useful. But, like Yogi said, prediction is hard, especially when it comes to the future. When you’re carrying all this baggage along with you, it’s even harder."
More links at http://angrybear.blogspot.com/2007/07/more-on-old-joke-about-why-economists.html
But economics is more than weather prediction and economists and bankers seem to be getting better at preventing big disasters. See the views of Brad De long and Mark Thoma in http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/brad-delong-hat.html
Another interesting post on morality and economics http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/07/morality-and-ec.html goes back to Adam Smith. P.J.O'Rourke says in http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/012/401ngehx.asp "It's a mistake to read The Wealth of Nations as a justification of amoral greed. Wealth was Smith's further attempt to make life better. In Moral Sentiments he wrote, "To love our neighbor as we love ourselves is the great law of Christianity." But note the simile that Christ used and Smith cited. The Theory of Moral Sentiments was about the neighbor. The Wealth of Nations was about the other half of the equation: us.
It is assumed, apparently at the highest level of moral arbitration, that we should care about ourselves. And logically we need to. In Moral Sentiments Smith insisted, paraphrasing Zeno, that each of us "is first and principally recommended to his own care." A broke, naked, starving self is of no use to anyone in the neighborhood. In Wealth Smith insisted that in order to take care of ourselves we must be free to do so. The Theory of Moral Sentiments showed us how the imagination can make us care about other people. The Wealth of Nations showed us how the imagination can make us dinner and a pair of pants."
Apparently 'the invisible hand' already appears in "The Theory of Moral sentiments":
"[The rich] consume little more than the poor, and in spite of their natural selfishness and rapacity…they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are led by an invisible hand to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants, and thus without intending it, without knowing it, advance the interest of the society, and afford means to the multiplication of the species."
Scott Bayman about his 14 years in India
Excerpts from a speech delivered by Scott Bayman, the outgoing chief of GE India, after 14 years in the country http://www.ciionline.org/events/3087/sb.pdf:
"Some argue that India's path has distinct advantages. MIT'sYasheng Huang points out that India's companies use their
capital far more efficiently than China's; they benchmark to global standards and are better managed than Chinese firms are.
Despite being much poorer than China, India has produced dozens of privately owned excellent companies like Infosys,
Ranbaxy, Tata Steel, Bharat Forge and Reliance. Huang attributes this difference to the fact that India has a real and deep
private sector (unlike China's many state-owned and statefunded companies.) India has a well-developed, well-regulated
financial system and a rule of law. Jeff Immelt explains, “China got the infrastructure right. Its government is superb at
developing infrastructure. However, China has not developed a banking system, rule of law or private enterprise to the extent
India has. India’s government, on the other hand, has failed to deliver the infrastructure that governments typically are required to supply in developing countries. But, its executives are proving to be world class. Their abilities to build and lead businesses far exceed what we see in China.
Another example: every year Japan awards the coveted Deming Prizes for managerial innovation. Over the last four years, 12
Indian companies won the award… more than any other country, including Japan.
......
I don’t dispute the fact that the country must tackle huge social issues as pointed out in the Mishra article. I also don’t dispute that more could have been done and more needs to be done. However, there is progress. The incidence of
poverty has declined from 44% in the 1980s to 36% in the 1990s to 26% in 2000. Literacy rates improved from 44% in the 1980s to 52% in the 1990s to 65% in 2000. In addition, over this same period, life expectancy increased from 56 years
to 60 to 69.
In India, we have a woman born a Catholic / leading the most popular party /stepping aside so a Muslim president / could swear in a Sikh as Prime Minister / to lead a nation that is 82% Hindu / but has the second largest Muslim population
in the world. And by the way, some of the wealthier Indians residing in the country are Muslim. I defy anyone to cite another country with such diversity and tolerance."
P.S. The article was sent to me by an economist Grama Sitaram. A list Deming Application prizes:
http://www.juse.or.jp/e/deming/10_prizelist.html#02
More about Deming prizes at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deming_Prize
"Some argue that India's path has distinct advantages. MIT'sYasheng Huang points out that India's companies use their
capital far more efficiently than China's; they benchmark to global standards and are better managed than Chinese firms are.
Despite being much poorer than China, India has produced dozens of privately owned excellent companies like Infosys,
Ranbaxy, Tata Steel, Bharat Forge and Reliance. Huang attributes this difference to the fact that India has a real and deep
private sector (unlike China's many state-owned and statefunded companies.) India has a well-developed, well-regulated
financial system and a rule of law. Jeff Immelt explains, “China got the infrastructure right. Its government is superb at
developing infrastructure. However, China has not developed a banking system, rule of law or private enterprise to the extent
India has. India’s government, on the other hand, has failed to deliver the infrastructure that governments typically are required to supply in developing countries. But, its executives are proving to be world class. Their abilities to build and lead businesses far exceed what we see in China.
Another example: every year Japan awards the coveted Deming Prizes for managerial innovation. Over the last four years, 12
Indian companies won the award… more than any other country, including Japan.
......
I don’t dispute the fact that the country must tackle huge social issues as pointed out in the Mishra article. I also don’t dispute that more could have been done and more needs to be done. However, there is progress. The incidence of
poverty has declined from 44% in the 1980s to 36% in the 1990s to 26% in 2000. Literacy rates improved from 44% in the 1980s to 52% in the 1990s to 65% in 2000. In addition, over this same period, life expectancy increased from 56 years
to 60 to 69.
In India, we have a woman born a Catholic / leading the most popular party /stepping aside so a Muslim president / could swear in a Sikh as Prime Minister / to lead a nation that is 82% Hindu / but has the second largest Muslim population
in the world. And by the way, some of the wealthier Indians residing in the country are Muslim. I defy anyone to cite another country with such diversity and tolerance."
P.S. The article was sent to me by an economist Grama Sitaram. A list Deming Application prizes:
http://www.juse.or.jp/e/deming/10_prizelist.html#02
More about Deming prizes at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deming_Prize
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Mahe Jabeen is coming to Australia
This may be of interest only to Telugus living in Australia. Mahe Jabeen is the author of Akuralu Kalam; some of her poems in Telugu are here http://www.bhaavana.net/chaitanya/mahejabeen.html and in tranlation here http://www.geocities.com/kavitayan/mahejabeen.html. She is also a trained social worker and runs an organization 'Phoenix organization for woman and child'. She is visiting Australia to attend a feminist meeting in Townsville from July 17 to July 20:
http://www.feministagenda.org.au/Summit/summitIndex.html
Mahe Jabeen has kindly agred to stop in Melbourne after the conference and hold discussions with some of her well wishers. On the way to Townsville, she has a day's wait in Sydney for the connecting flight. If anybody in Sydney is interested in meeting her, they can contact her at hyd2_jabeen@sancharnet.in
http://www.feministagenda.org.au/Summit/summitIndex.html
Mahe Jabeen has kindly agred to stop in Melbourne after the conference and hold discussions with some of her well wishers. On the way to Townsville, she has a day's wait in Sydney for the connecting flight. If anybody in Sydney is interested in meeting her, they can contact her at hyd2_jabeen@sancharnet.in
Dani Rodrik's 'Impossibility Theorem"
Dani Rodrik has an interesting post:
http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html
Excerpt: " I have an "impossibility theorem" for the global economy that is like that. It says that democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full."
Perhaps, more open borders may lessen the incompatibility.
http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/06/the-inescapable.html
Excerpt: " I have an "impossibility theorem" for the global economy that is like that. It says that democracy, national sovereignty and global economic integration are mutually incompatible: we can combine any two of the three, but never have all three simultaneously and in full."
Perhaps, more open borders may lessen the incompatibility.
Tuesday, June 26, 2007
Altruism in chimps
There is a nice site for discussion of recent research on science topics http://notexactlyrocketscience.wordpress.com/. The post on June 25, 2007 discusses some recent research on altruism in chimps:
"Many scientists have argued that only humans show true altruistic behaviour. But a group of Ugandan chimps is set to change all that by showing clear signs of true selflessness, helping other unrelated chimps with no desire for reward.
.....
Now, Felix Warneken and colleagues form the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have found compelling evidence that we are not alone. Contrary to previous studies, they have found that chimps also behave altruistically in a very human way. They help out unrelated strangers without expectation of reward, and even go to great lengths to do so.
......
It’s particularly fascinating that rewards in the first two tests didn’t affect the chimps’ behaviour. This suggests that chimps don’t continually analyse the pros and cons of helping their fellow – if they did, the reward would have motivated them to help even more often.
Instead, de Waal believes that the chimps have evolved psychological systems that steer them towards selflessness. In essence, natural selection has done the analysis for them and decided that altruistic behaviour works to its advantage in the long run. Selfless behaviour then, can evolve for selfish reasons, and that strikes to the very core of the debate on altruism."
See also the June 23 post on "Resistance to an extinct virus makes us more vulnerable to HIV" which is also discussed by Carl Zimmer in "The Loom" on June 21:http://scienceblogs.com/loom/
"Many scientists have argued that only humans show true altruistic behaviour. But a group of Ugandan chimps is set to change all that by showing clear signs of true selflessness, helping other unrelated chimps with no desire for reward.
.....
Now, Felix Warneken and colleagues form the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology have found compelling evidence that we are not alone. Contrary to previous studies, they have found that chimps also behave altruistically in a very human way. They help out unrelated strangers without expectation of reward, and even go to great lengths to do so.
......
It’s particularly fascinating that rewards in the first two tests didn’t affect the chimps’ behaviour. This suggests that chimps don’t continually analyse the pros and cons of helping their fellow – if they did, the reward would have motivated them to help even more often.
Instead, de Waal believes that the chimps have evolved psychological systems that steer them towards selflessness. In essence, natural selection has done the analysis for them and decided that altruistic behaviour works to its advantage in the long run. Selfless behaviour then, can evolve for selfish reasons, and that strikes to the very core of the debate on altruism."
See also the June 23 post on "Resistance to an extinct virus makes us more vulnerable to HIV" which is also discussed by Carl Zimmer in "The Loom" on June 21:http://scienceblogs.com/loom/
District Gazatteers of India
While reading Robert Putnam's article on diversity, I was reminded of Nasik Gazatteer which I browsed through long ago:
http://www.maharashtra.gov.in/english/gazetteer/nasik/
It was first published in 1883 and various sections have been revised since. The section "The People" contains descriptions of communities which migrated from times immemorial to few decades ago (before 1883) from various parts of India and abroad and retained some sort of identities through out. I wonder whether this section has been updated and how these communities are adopting in the information age. More information about other districts can be found by google search under " District Gazatteers of India" or some such heading. Wikipedia does not have much on this topic though it links to some gazatteers when seaching for specific districts. There is a link to an interesting article http://www.boloji.com/environment/21.htm by Kumud Biswas.
Recently I visited a small town Foster in South Gippsland where a couple of Telugu dentists decided to treat their uncle. The conversations shifted seemelessly from technical to family matters in coastal village Telugu.
http://www.maharashtra.gov.in/english/gazetteer/nasik/
It was first published in 1883 and various sections have been revised since. The section "The People" contains descriptions of communities which migrated from times immemorial to few decades ago (before 1883) from various parts of India and abroad and retained some sort of identities through out. I wonder whether this section has been updated and how these communities are adopting in the information age. More information about other districts can be found by google search under " District Gazatteers of India" or some such heading. Wikipedia does not have much on this topic though it links to some gazatteers when seaching for specific districts. There is a link to an interesting article http://www.boloji.com/environment/21.htm by Kumud Biswas.
Recently I visited a small town Foster in South Gippsland where a couple of Telugu dentists decided to treat their uncle. The conversations shifted seemelessly from technical to family matters in coastal village Telugu.
Some sustainable energy news from scidev.net
From http://www.scidev.net/News/index.cfm?fuseaction=readNews&itemid=3694&language=1:
"The first commercial batch of biofuel from the stalks of a new sweet sorghum hybrid has been produced this month (13 June) at a distillery in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India.
Ethanol is produced from the sweet juice in the stalk of the sweet sorghum. The researchers responsible for the hybrid say by using sorghum, resource-poor farmers will still be able to use the sorghum grain and protect food security, while earning an additional income from selling the stalks."
From http://www.ashdenawards.org/finalists_2007:
"Winner of Outstanding Achievement Award 2007
SELCO-India. Making solar energy affordable yet commercially viable
SELCO is a private business, based in Bangalore, which provides solar-home-systems (SHS) and other solar services to low-income households and institutions. Its network of local sales and service centres are set up where micro-finance organisations can provide loans to customers. All systems are sold on a commercial basis, but SELCO is committed to providing the highest quality services to poor people on financial terms they can afford.
SELCO used the 2005 Ashden Award to create an innovation department, establish new partnership arrangements with microfinance organisations, develop a five-year business plan with the aim of reaching an additional 200,000 customers by 2010, and set up a pilot fund to guarantee the deposits on solar systems for very poor households."
Check the above link for more winners from India and other developing countries.
"The first commercial batch of biofuel from the stalks of a new sweet sorghum hybrid has been produced this month (13 June) at a distillery in the state of Andhra Pradesh in India.
Ethanol is produced from the sweet juice in the stalk of the sweet sorghum. The researchers responsible for the hybrid say by using sorghum, resource-poor farmers will still be able to use the sorghum grain and protect food security, while earning an additional income from selling the stalks."
From http://www.ashdenawards.org/finalists_2007:
"Winner of Outstanding Achievement Award 2007
SELCO-India. Making solar energy affordable yet commercially viable
SELCO is a private business, based in Bangalore, which provides solar-home-systems (SHS) and other solar services to low-income households and institutions. Its network of local sales and service centres are set up where micro-finance organisations can provide loans to customers. All systems are sold on a commercial basis, but SELCO is committed to providing the highest quality services to poor people on financial terms they can afford.
SELCO used the 2005 Ashden Award to create an innovation department, establish new partnership arrangements with microfinance organisations, develop a five-year business plan with the aim of reaching an additional 200,000 customers by 2010, and set up a pilot fund to guarantee the deposits on solar systems for very poor households."
Check the above link for more winners from India and other developing countries.
Tuesday, June 19, 2007
Robert Putnam on diversity and 'Social Capital'
Robert Putnam's recent article is bound to generate a lot of discussion among academics as well as politicians. Abstract:
"Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration."
A nice summary of the article by Madeleine Bunting and interesting comments in The Guardian.
I came across Putnam's article through a post of Andrew Leigh in his blog. Andrew Leigh also links to asimilar study by himself. Another summary of Putnam's study here.
"Ethnic diversity is increasing in most advanced countries, driven mostly by sharp increases in immigration. In the long run immigration and diversity are likely to have important cultural, economic, fiscal, and developmental benefits. In the short run, however, immigration and ethnic diversity tend to reduce social solidarity and social capital. New evidence from the US suggests that in ethnically diverse neighbourhoods residents of all races tend to ‘hunker down’. Trust (even of one's own race) is lower, altruism and community cooperation rarer, friends fewer. In the long run, however, successful immigrant societies have overcome such fragmentation by creating new, cross-cutting forms of social solidarity and more encompassing identities. Illustrations of becoming comfortable with diversity are drawn from the US military, religious institutions, and earlier waves of American immigration."
A nice summary of the article by Madeleine Bunting and interesting comments in The Guardian.
I came across Putnam's article through a post of Andrew Leigh in his blog. Andrew Leigh also links to asimilar study by himself. Another summary of Putnam's study here.
Monday, June 18, 2007
Vacuum-packed food
is not that safe according to http://www.livescience.com/health/070614_mean_bacteria.html. Excerpt:"Vacuum-packed foods are deprived of oxygen to keep them fresh and boost their shelf life, but the same strategy is a boon for Listeria monocytogenes, a bacterium responsible for a kind of food poisoning that kills 25 percent of the people it infects. "
See also about a new form of synesthesia in http://www.livescience.com/health/070617_touching_faces.html:
"A brain anomaly can make the saying "I know how you feel" literally true in hyper-empathetic people who actually sense that they are being touched when they witness others being touched.
The condition, known as mirror-touch synesthesia, is related to the activity of mirror neurons, cells recently discovered to fire not only when some animals perform some behavior, such as climbing a tree, but also when they watch another animal do the behavior. For "synesthetes," it's as if their mirror neurons are on overdrive. "
See also about a new form of synesthesia in http://www.livescience.com/health/070617_touching_faces.html:
"A brain anomaly can make the saying "I know how you feel" literally true in hyper-empathetic people who actually sense that they are being touched when they witness others being touched.
The condition, known as mirror-touch synesthesia, is related to the activity of mirror neurons, cells recently discovered to fire not only when some animals perform some behavior, such as climbing a tree, but also when they watch another animal do the behavior. For "synesthetes," it's as if their mirror neurons are on overdrive. "
Friday, June 15, 2007
Discover interviews David Brin
I have read some of David Brin's articles and visited his web site off and on but never read his books. Apparently, his 1998 book "The transparent Society" contains the following passage:
“Suppose at some point we take a major hit and, for example, terrorists ever brought down both World Trade Center Towers. What would the Attorney General ask for?”
In the Discover interview http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/the-discover-interview-david-brin, he goes on to say: "Then I went through what basically was a mild and more reasonable version of the Patriot Act, because I never pictured John Ashcroft. I suppose I could say, “I told you so.” But by now I would have expected some of the other aspects I predicted to be a little stronger, like vigorous activity by whistle-blowers."
Some more excerpts:
"That’s my main theme—it’s not about fast-paced changes in how small or big or penetrating we can see individually. What’s very fast-paced is the spreading of seeing in parallel. It’s happening in biochemistry. It’s happening in astronomy. It’s happening in almost every source of perception."
For somebody like me who is pessimistic about a lot of universitiy research, this next quotation offers some hope: "This will be the age of amateurs."
"It may seem ironic, but for privacy and freedom to survive, we’ll need a civilization that is mostly open and transparent, so that each of us may catch the would-be voyeurs and Big Brothers. "
"Jonas Salk said our top job is to be “good ancestors.” If we in this era meet the challenges of our time, then our heirs may have powers that would seem godlike to us—the way we take for granted miracles like flying through the sky or witnessing events far across the globe. If those descendants do turn out to be better, wiser people than us, will they marvel that primitive beings managed so well, the same way we’re awed by the best of our ancestors? I hope so. It’s poignant consolation for not getting to be a demigod. "
Read the whole interview again.
“Suppose at some point we take a major hit and, for example, terrorists ever brought down both World Trade Center Towers. What would the Attorney General ask for?”
In the Discover interview http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jun/the-discover-interview-david-brin, he goes on to say: "Then I went through what basically was a mild and more reasonable version of the Patriot Act, because I never pictured John Ashcroft. I suppose I could say, “I told you so.” But by now I would have expected some of the other aspects I predicted to be a little stronger, like vigorous activity by whistle-blowers."
Some more excerpts:
"That’s my main theme—it’s not about fast-paced changes in how small or big or penetrating we can see individually. What’s very fast-paced is the spreading of seeing in parallel. It’s happening in biochemistry. It’s happening in astronomy. It’s happening in almost every source of perception."
For somebody like me who is pessimistic about a lot of universitiy research, this next quotation offers some hope: "This will be the age of amateurs."
"It may seem ironic, but for privacy and freedom to survive, we’ll need a civilization that is mostly open and transparent, so that each of us may catch the would-be voyeurs and Big Brothers. "
"Jonas Salk said our top job is to be “good ancestors.” If we in this era meet the challenges of our time, then our heirs may have powers that would seem godlike to us—the way we take for granted miracles like flying through the sky or witnessing events far across the globe. If those descendants do turn out to be better, wiser people than us, will they marvel that primitive beings managed so well, the same way we’re awed by the best of our ancestors? I hope so. It’s poignant consolation for not getting to be a demigod. "
Read the whole interview again.
Thursday, June 14, 2007
Links June 13,2007
1) Yegor Gaidor's article on Soviet collapse is discussed by Felix Salmon and Tyler Cowen, the later has several interesting comments.
2) Roderick MacFarquhar reviews "Nixon and Mao; The Week that Changed the World" by Margaret MacMillan in The New York Review of Books. Andrew Leonard wonders whether Taiwan screwed up China's chances of democracy.
3) Pankaj Mishra reviews Martha Nussbaum's"The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future".
4) Tyler Cowen and his readers recommend some books that may help learn economics in spare time. Pardha Dasgupta's "Economics, A very short introduction' is not mentioned but looks promising. Some of these I have read and it did not help. Perhaps not surprising in view of the recent discussions. For the latest round, see Mark Thoma and Steve Waldman.
Studies by sociologists Mike Reay and Marion Fourcade of economists are also worth remembering.
5) Andrew Leonard has twopostson microfinance. The best that I have read so far on this topic is Rajshekhar's postin fracturedearth.
6) Guru and Tabula Rasahave posts on 're-reading books'.
2) Roderick MacFarquhar reviews "Nixon and Mao; The Week that Changed the World" by Margaret MacMillan in The New York Review of Books. Andrew Leonard wonders whether Taiwan screwed up China's chances of democracy.
3) Pankaj Mishra reviews Martha Nussbaum's"The Clash Within: Democracy, Religious Violence, and India's Future".
4) Tyler Cowen and his readers recommend some books that may help learn economics in spare time. Pardha Dasgupta's "Economics, A very short introduction' is not mentioned but looks promising. Some of these I have read and it did not help. Perhaps not surprising in view of the recent discussions. For the latest round, see Mark Thoma and Steve Waldman.
Studies by sociologists Mike Reay and Marion Fourcade of economists are also worth remembering.
5) Andrew Leonard has twopostson microfinance. The best that I have read so far on this topic is Rajshekhar's postin fracturedearth.
6) Guru and Tabula Rasahave posts on 're-reading books'.
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
Spotlight on Agri-biotech
in sub-Saharan Africa from scidev.net. Check: www.scidev.net/agribiotech/sub-saharan_africa
More general information at: www.scidev.net/agribiotech
More general information at: www.scidev.net/agribiotech
Sunday, June 10, 2007
Remembering my father
This may be my last trip to USA and I have been meeting more relatives and friends than usual. I have been hearing some stories about my father that I did not know. Very early in my life our interests and tastes diverged and though I kept in touch with my father, I never got to know him well. I knew that many of his students liked him; they even erected a statue in his honour after his death. Some came from distant villages to study in his school, some stayed in our house and many spoke of his help in studies and jobs. He could be charming and was sometimes an engaging speaker quoting from Chalam to Shakespeare but for me he was silly, weak and insufferable. I was always irritated by the way he rubbed shoulders with the rich and famous. One group of very rich relatives were only related by his first marriage and I was always surprised by the regard and affection they showed him.
On this trip, I learnt the story about his first marriage from two different sources. It seems that the marriage to K, who came from a rich family, was very brief and took place around 1937-38. The first night after marriage, K told my father that she was in love with a muslim boy and was married against her will. Apparently my father realized that in that society even after a divorce it would be difficult for her to marry the one she loved and took upon himself to arrange her marriage and succeeded.
The next incident happened around 1992 about two years before my father’s death and when my father was old and sick. He seems to have met K again at a common relative’s wedding. K had children but her marriage did not last long. Apparently K expressed her regrets and felt that she made a mistake. She introduced her children who started calling my father ‘nanna garu’. They gave their addresses and requested him to visit them in Hyderabad. May be my father felt that he would not be able to make it; he left the addresses with my cousin and asked him to look them up some time. My cousin says that he tried to do that on his next trip to Hyderabad, could find the street but could not locate the factory that K’s children owned.
My brother seems to have inherited my father’s helping nature and I hope that I have inherited some of his qualities.
P.S. (6/12/07) After a few days of mulling over it, I still find it difficult to believe the story above but it may be true. According to my brother, the sources were my father himself and a nephew of K who explained to my brother the high regard their family had for my father. Another cousin says that he saw some pre-independence correspondence between my father and his friends which was very different from his later letters which always started with "By the grace of Lord Venkateswara...". May be big events and youth bring out the best in some people and family and responsibilities weigh them down.
On this trip, I learnt the story about his first marriage from two different sources. It seems that the marriage to K, who came from a rich family, was very brief and took place around 1937-38. The first night after marriage, K told my father that she was in love with a muslim boy and was married against her will. Apparently my father realized that in that society even after a divorce it would be difficult for her to marry the one she loved and took upon himself to arrange her marriage and succeeded.
The next incident happened around 1992 about two years before my father’s death and when my father was old and sick. He seems to have met K again at a common relative’s wedding. K had children but her marriage did not last long. Apparently K expressed her regrets and felt that she made a mistake. She introduced her children who started calling my father ‘nanna garu’. They gave their addresses and requested him to visit them in Hyderabad. May be my father felt that he would not be able to make it; he left the addresses with my cousin and asked him to look them up some time. My cousin says that he tried to do that on his next trip to Hyderabad, could find the street but could not locate the factory that K’s children owned.
My brother seems to have inherited my father’s helping nature and I hope that I have inherited some of his qualities.
P.S. (6/12/07) After a few days of mulling over it, I still find it difficult to believe the story above but it may be true. According to my brother, the sources were my father himself and a nephew of K who explained to my brother the high regard their family had for my father. Another cousin says that he saw some pre-independence correspondence between my father and his friends which was very different from his later letters which always started with "By the grace of Lord Venkateswara...". May be big events and youth bring out the best in some people and family and responsibilities weigh them down.
Friday, June 08, 2007
Glocalization
Excerpts from http://www.ifpri.org/pubs/newsletters/ifpriforum/if200703.asp (via Yahoogroups FDRI, IFPRI stands for International Food Policy Research Institute):
“Joachim von Braun, director general of IFPRI, sees this trend toward decentralization as driven not only by democracy, but also by economic globalization. "Globalization requires local decisionmaking power that will efficiently provide the infrastructure and services demanded by investors," he says. "This economic necessity drives 'glocalisation'—the combination of globalization with localization and decentralization."
When it works properly, decentralization can help to alleviate poverty and food insecurity by providing infrastructure and services that poor people require, like drinking water, roads, schooling, and health care. "The goal is to bring government closer to the people, with the hope of giving poor people a greater voice and making government more effective and more accountable," says IFPRI senior research fellow Regina Birner. Given that most poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, out of sight of the political elites in national capitals, "decentralization can be the single most important governance reform for rural areas," she says.
But making decentralization work effectively for poor people is a challenge, and it takes time. A 2004 study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) examined the impact of decentralization on poverty in 18 developing countries and 3 states of India. Decentralization helped to reduce poverty in only one-third of the cases, and in some of the poorest countries with weak institutions and post-conflict situations decentralization worsened poverty.
……….
It is perhaps understandable that central governments become reluctant to go all the way with decentralization. Faguet points out that decentralization is not a policy prescription with predictable results, like, say, lowering tariffs. "It's a process with very uncertain outcomes," he says. "The center has to let go of power and resources and pass them to local government. You don't know what's going to happen, and you have to live with that."
……
When local governments gain power, do they actually empower poor people? Are their decisions about delivery of infrastructure and services any different from those of central governments? Research shows that in many cases local governments are indeed more responsive to the poor.
…
Where transparency is lacking, poor people have been less satisfied with the services provided by local government, a study from India shows. IFPRI's Regina Birner and others examined local governance and poverty in two Gram Panchayats (village councils) in the state of Karnataka, India. In the case of drainage, for example, village residents expressed high levels of dissatisfaction, and one-third to one-half of them did not know who was responsible for drainage service in their community.
……
"It's also possible that decentralizing government functions will decentralize corruption," explains IFPRI's Birner. Poor people may be no better off under a corrupt local government than under a corrupt centralized one. Corruption is often more visible, however, at the local level, she points out. People see, for example, who can suddenly afford a big house. Therefore, decentralization may increase the possibilities for fighting corruption. “
“Joachim von Braun, director general of IFPRI, sees this trend toward decentralization as driven not only by democracy, but also by economic globalization. "Globalization requires local decisionmaking power that will efficiently provide the infrastructure and services demanded by investors," he says. "This economic necessity drives 'glocalisation'—the combination of globalization with localization and decentralization."
When it works properly, decentralization can help to alleviate poverty and food insecurity by providing infrastructure and services that poor people require, like drinking water, roads, schooling, and health care. "The goal is to bring government closer to the people, with the hope of giving poor people a greater voice and making government more effective and more accountable," says IFPRI senior research fellow Regina Birner. Given that most poor people in developing countries live in rural areas, out of sight of the political elites in national capitals, "decentralization can be the single most important governance reform for rural areas," she says.
But making decentralization work effectively for poor people is a challenge, and it takes time. A 2004 study from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) examined the impact of decentralization on poverty in 18 developing countries and 3 states of India. Decentralization helped to reduce poverty in only one-third of the cases, and in some of the poorest countries with weak institutions and post-conflict situations decentralization worsened poverty.
……….
It is perhaps understandable that central governments become reluctant to go all the way with decentralization. Faguet points out that decentralization is not a policy prescription with predictable results, like, say, lowering tariffs. "It's a process with very uncertain outcomes," he says. "The center has to let go of power and resources and pass them to local government. You don't know what's going to happen, and you have to live with that."
……
When local governments gain power, do they actually empower poor people? Are their decisions about delivery of infrastructure and services any different from those of central governments? Research shows that in many cases local governments are indeed more responsive to the poor.
…
Where transparency is lacking, poor people have been less satisfied with the services provided by local government, a study from India shows. IFPRI's Regina Birner and others examined local governance and poverty in two Gram Panchayats (village councils) in the state of Karnataka, India. In the case of drainage, for example, village residents expressed high levels of dissatisfaction, and one-third to one-half of them did not know who was responsible for drainage service in their community.
……
"It's also possible that decentralizing government functions will decentralize corruption," explains IFPRI's Birner. Poor people may be no better off under a corrupt local government than under a corrupt centralized one. Corruption is often more visible, however, at the local level, she points out. People see, for example, who can suddenly afford a big house. Therefore, decentralization may increase the possibilities for fighting corruption. “
Monday, June 04, 2007
Red-haired family
forced to move http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/tyne/6714735.stm
Excerpt:
"A Newcastle family claim they have been forced from two homes by thugs who have targeted them over their ginger hair.
Kevin and Barbara Chapman say they and their four children, aged between 10 and 13, have endured years of taunts, smashed windows and violence.
They said they moved from Walker to Newbiggin Hall to try to escape the bullying, and then again to Kenton Bar.
Son Kevin, 11, said he was recently punched in a street attack. Newcastle Council is "discussing the situation".
Mr Chapman, 49, said his 10-year-old daughter Ryelle and sons Daniel, 10, and Jordan, 13, have also been badly affected.
He said each time the family received abuse they moved home.
The family also say they have endured their homes being daubed in graffiti."
We had similar experiences in Australia durng late 80 and early 90's; called 'black dogs' , 'go back to your country' on the streets and 'black c..ts' written in front of our house. Some academics advised how to remove the graffitti. We moved house.
Excerpt:
"A Newcastle family claim they have been forced from two homes by thugs who have targeted them over their ginger hair.
Kevin and Barbara Chapman say they and their four children, aged between 10 and 13, have endured years of taunts, smashed windows and violence.
They said they moved from Walker to Newbiggin Hall to try to escape the bullying, and then again to Kenton Bar.
Son Kevin, 11, said he was recently punched in a street attack. Newcastle Council is "discussing the situation".
Mr Chapman, 49, said his 10-year-old daughter Ryelle and sons Daniel, 10, and Jordan, 13, have also been badly affected.
He said each time the family received abuse they moved home.
The family also say they have endured their homes being daubed in graffiti."
We had similar experiences in Australia durng late 80 and early 90's; called 'black dogs' , 'go back to your country' on the streets and 'black c..ts' written in front of our house. Some academics advised how to remove the graffitti. We moved house.
Annie Zaidi
continues to write prose poems 'as lyrical as a curl of smoke'. Enjoy http://www.anniezaidi.com/
Sunday, June 03, 2007
Two dimensional political compass
instead of just left and right, recommended by Dani Rodrik is here:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
My co-ordinates are (-4.25,-4.92); they seem to be fairly close to those of Dalai Lama.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
My co-ordinates are (-4.25,-4.92); they seem to be fairly close to those of Dalai Lama.
Glenn Davis Stone's recent paper
"The birth and death of traditional knowledge: paradoxical effects of biotechnolgy in India" is now available at his site:
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/blurb/b_gds.html
Some of the paper covers the same ground as his earlier paper "Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal." Current Anthropology 48:67-103; but the new material is about the Gujarat experience in BT cotton. Both papers are discussed by Andrew Leonard in salon.com http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/02/08/gujarat/
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~anthro/blurb/b_gds.html
Some of the paper covers the same ground as his earlier paper "Agricultural Deskilling and the Spread of Genetically Modified Cotton in Warangal." Current Anthropology 48:67-103; but the new material is about the Gujarat experience in BT cotton. Both papers are discussed by Andrew Leonard in salon.com http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/02/08/gujarat/
Thursday, May 31, 2007
From June 14 NY Review of Books
http://www.nybooks.com/contents/20070614 three free articles. Lee Smolin in "The Other Einstein" reviews a bunch of new Einstein books (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20279). Excerpt:
"Why more books on Albert Einstein? Two years ago we marked the Year of Physics, celebrating the centenary of his great 1905 papers, including those on special relativity and the particle theory of light. There is already a definitive scientific biography, published by Abraham Pais in 1982. That Einstein had an interesting personal life, with many entanglements with women and at least one extramarital child, has not been news since Roger Highfield and Paul Carter's The Private Lives of Albert Einstein and Dennis Overbye's Einstein in Love, published in 1994 and 2000, respectively. His private letters continue to come to light, but do they really add anything to the portrait of Einstein's character drawn so perceptively by Overbye?
In his new book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson explains that
studying Einstein can be worthwhile [because] it helps us remain in touch with that childlike capacity for wonder...as the sagas of [science's] heroes reminds us.... These traits are...vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity....
As he elaborates in a recent interview with Thomas Friedman, "If we are going to have any advantage over China, it is because we nurture rebellious, imaginative free thinkers, rather than try to control expression." "
In "The Specter haunting your soul"(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20275), James Lardner review three books on Business America. Except:
"From their different vantage points, Uchitelle, LeRoy, and Bogle are writing about the breakdown of what some have called the postwar social contract, and about the rise of a new "money power" more daunting, in some ways, than that of the late 1800s and early 1900s. To gain their political ends, the robber barons and monopolists of the Gilded Age were content with corrupting officials and buying elections. Their modern counterparts have taken things a big step further, erecting a loose network of think tanks, corporate spokespeople, and friendly press commentators to shape the way Americans think about the economy. Much as corporate marketing directs our aspirations disproportionately toward commercial goods and services, the new communications apparatus wants us to believe that our economic wellbeing depends almost entirely on the so-called free market—a euphemism for letting the private sector set its own rules. The success of this great effort can be measured in the remarkable fact that, despite the corporate scandals and the social damage that these authors explore; despite three decades of deregulation and privatization and tax-and-benefit-slashing with, as the clearest single result, the relentless rise of economic inequality to levels so extreme that since 2001 "the economy" has racked up five straight years of impressive growth without producing any measurable income gains for most Americans—even now, discussions of solutions or alternatives can be stopped almost dead in their tracks by mention of the word government."
In"Bush's Amazing Achievement "(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20251), Jonathan Freedland reviews three books about American foreign policy. And begins:
"One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker."
"Why more books on Albert Einstein? Two years ago we marked the Year of Physics, celebrating the centenary of his great 1905 papers, including those on special relativity and the particle theory of light. There is already a definitive scientific biography, published by Abraham Pais in 1982. That Einstein had an interesting personal life, with many entanglements with women and at least one extramarital child, has not been news since Roger Highfield and Paul Carter's The Private Lives of Albert Einstein and Dennis Overbye's Einstein in Love, published in 1994 and 2000, respectively. His private letters continue to come to light, but do they really add anything to the portrait of Einstein's character drawn so perceptively by Overbye?
In his new book, Einstein: His Life and Universe, Walter Isaacson explains that
studying Einstein can be worthwhile [because] it helps us remain in touch with that childlike capacity for wonder...as the sagas of [science's] heroes reminds us.... These traits are...vital for this new century of globalization, in which our success will depend on our creativity....
As he elaborates in a recent interview with Thomas Friedman, "If we are going to have any advantage over China, it is because we nurture rebellious, imaginative free thinkers, rather than try to control expression." "
In "The Specter haunting your soul"(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20275), James Lardner review three books on Business America. Except:
"From their different vantage points, Uchitelle, LeRoy, and Bogle are writing about the breakdown of what some have called the postwar social contract, and about the rise of a new "money power" more daunting, in some ways, than that of the late 1800s and early 1900s. To gain their political ends, the robber barons and monopolists of the Gilded Age were content with corrupting officials and buying elections. Their modern counterparts have taken things a big step further, erecting a loose network of think tanks, corporate spokespeople, and friendly press commentators to shape the way Americans think about the economy. Much as corporate marketing directs our aspirations disproportionately toward commercial goods and services, the new communications apparatus wants us to believe that our economic wellbeing depends almost entirely on the so-called free market—a euphemism for letting the private sector set its own rules. The success of this great effort can be measured in the remarkable fact that, despite the corporate scandals and the social damage that these authors explore; despite three decades of deregulation and privatization and tax-and-benefit-slashing with, as the clearest single result, the relentless rise of economic inequality to levels so extreme that since 2001 "the economy" has racked up five straight years of impressive growth without producing any measurable income gains for most Americans—even now, discussions of solutions or alternatives can be stopped almost dead in their tracks by mention of the word government."
In"Bush's Amazing Achievement "(http://www.nybooks.com/articles/20251), Jonathan Freedland reviews three books about American foreign policy. And begins:
"One of the few foreign policy achievements of the Bush administration has been the creation of a near consensus among those who study international affairs, a shared view that stretches, however improbably, from Noam Chomsky to Brent Scowcroft, from the antiwar protesters on the streets of San Francisco to the well-upholstered office of former secretary of state James Baker."
Math anxiety and gender
From http://www.physorg.com/news99239898.html:
"A popular stereotype that boys are better at mathematics than girls undermines girls’ math performance because it causes worrying that erodes the mental resources needed for problem solving, new research at the University of Chicago shows.
The scholars found that the worrying undermines women’s working memory. Working memory is a short-term memory system involved in the control, regulation and active maintenance of limited information needed immediately to deal with problems at hand.
....
“Likewise, our work suggests that if a girl has a mathematics class first thing in the morning and experiences math-related worries in this class, these worries may carry implications for her performance in the class she attends next,” she added.
....
Researchers have been aware that stereotypes can undermine achievement in schools in many ways, but little research has focused on the specific mental processes that prompt this response.
In order to examine those mental processes, the team selected a group of college women who performed well in mathematics. They were then randomly assigned to two groups, with one set of women being told that they were being tested to see why men generally do better on math than women, and the other group being told simply that they were part of an experiment on mathematics performance.
The information that men do better in mathematics than women undercut performance drastically. The accuracy of women exposed to the stereotype was reduced from nearly 90 percent in a pretest to about 80 percent after being told men do better in mathematics. Among women not receiving that message, performance actually improved slightly"
"A popular stereotype that boys are better at mathematics than girls undermines girls’ math performance because it causes worrying that erodes the mental resources needed for problem solving, new research at the University of Chicago shows.
The scholars found that the worrying undermines women’s working memory. Working memory is a short-term memory system involved in the control, regulation and active maintenance of limited information needed immediately to deal with problems at hand.
....
“Likewise, our work suggests that if a girl has a mathematics class first thing in the morning and experiences math-related worries in this class, these worries may carry implications for her performance in the class she attends next,” she added.
....
Researchers have been aware that stereotypes can undermine achievement in schools in many ways, but little research has focused on the specific mental processes that prompt this response.
In order to examine those mental processes, the team selected a group of college women who performed well in mathematics. They were then randomly assigned to two groups, with one set of women being told that they were being tested to see why men generally do better on math than women, and the other group being told simply that they were part of an experiment on mathematics performance.
The information that men do better in mathematics than women undercut performance drastically. The accuracy of women exposed to the stereotype was reduced from nearly 90 percent in a pretest to about 80 percent after being told men do better in mathematics. Among women not receiving that message, performance actually improved slightly"
Wednesday, May 30, 2007
Implantable biocomputers
(via 3quarksdaily). From http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/05.24/99-biocomputer.html:
"“Each human cell already has all of the tools required to build these biocomputers on its own,” says Harvard’s Yaakov “Kobi” Benenson, a Bauer Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Center for Systems Biology. “All that must be provided is a genetic blueprint of the machine and our own biology will do the rest. Your cells will literally build these biocomputers for you.”
Evaluating Boolean logic equations inside cells, these molecular automata will detect anything from the presence of a mutated gene to the activity of genes within the cell. The biocomputers’ “input” is RNA, proteins and chemicals found in the cytoplasm; “output” molecules indicating the presence of the telltale signals are easily discernable with basic laboratory equipment."
There are also Indian names among the researchers:
"Benenson and Weiss worked in collaboration with undergraduate Keller Rinaudo, postdoctoral researcher Leonidas Bleris, and summer intern Rohan Maddamsetti, all at Harvard, and with Sairam Subramanian, a graduate student at Princeton. Their research is supported by Harvard University and a center grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences."
"“Each human cell already has all of the tools required to build these biocomputers on its own,” says Harvard’s Yaakov “Kobi” Benenson, a Bauer Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences’ Center for Systems Biology. “All that must be provided is a genetic blueprint of the machine and our own biology will do the rest. Your cells will literally build these biocomputers for you.”
Evaluating Boolean logic equations inside cells, these molecular automata will detect anything from the presence of a mutated gene to the activity of genes within the cell. The biocomputers’ “input” is RNA, proteins and chemicals found in the cytoplasm; “output” molecules indicating the presence of the telltale signals are easily discernable with basic laboratory equipment."
There are also Indian names among the researchers:
"Benenson and Weiss worked in collaboration with undergraduate Keller Rinaudo, postdoctoral researcher Leonidas Bleris, and summer intern Rohan Maddamsetti, all at Harvard, and with Sairam Subramanian, a graduate student at Princeton. Their research is supported by Harvard University and a center grant from the National Institute of General Medical Sciences."
Friday, May 25, 2007
Thurston60th
More information at http://www.math.princeton.edu/Thurston60th/
And a write up about Thurston: http://www.bookrags.com/William_Thurston
IMO William Thurston is the greatest low-dimensional topologist ever. During Thurston60th, I will be in Princeton area; may be I will go and say hello to the great man.
It seems a strange route from Gudavalli to Princeton. I grew up in villages like Gudavalli, dominated by independent farmers who treated Dalits like dirt and considered Brahmins parasites (Added 5/29/07: This is my impression of those days. I am of the opinion that caste is an abomination and must go). There was not much talk of arts or science; just a few street performances, films and some songs. Those who could afford or borrow enough for university education mainly tried engineering or medicine. Some who finished engineering did not like working ‘under’ others and came back to farm. I finished school too early and could not enter an engineering college. My father decided that I should study mathematics and try for IAS. In the second year, I was exposed to some of Cantor’s set theory and suddenly it seemed that mathematics was not just formulae and calculations but was full of exciting ideas. Then I saw Felix Hausdroff’s ‘Set Theory’. There were statements like ‘invariance of dimension’, ‘invariance of domain’ which sounded metaphysical and I wondered how anybody could prove such things. That was what I wanted to study and understand. And went on to do just that. After a few years John Stallings who was visiting TIFR in 1967 said that Papakyriakopoulos did some great stuff. After Stallings left, I started reading Papa’s papers, the first papers in three dimensional topology I studied I felt at home and never really left the subject.
Then around 1977, Thurston fresh from killing ‘Foliations’ entered the subject and showed that we were just scratching the surface and the subject was completely different from what we were looking at. It was a stunning combination of geometry, imagination, seeing limiting behaviour and sometimes quantifying it. It did not seem worthwhile working in the subject without learning his ideas and techniques and they were new, strange and hard. In 1980, there was a conference in Maine to explain his ideas. Some of us old timers were discussing a well known problem that all of us worked on and did not make any progress. Thurston came by and asked what we were discussing. When we told him the problem, he immediately told us the solution using techniques we never heard of and none of us understood. There was complete silence only broken when Hatcher started scratching something on a piece of paper. It took us years to realize that the solution was simple and beautiful.
I always wondered why Thurston did not prove the Poincare conjecture. Some like Mikhail Gromov, who has broader sweep than Thurston, were more interested in theories and scope of theories than specific problems. But Thurston did show interest in solving specific problems. In some sense, the question was too narrow for him and he generalized it to the Geometrization problem for three manifolds. Perhaps getting in to Haken manifolds in the very beginning did not help. When Hamilton’s ideas came along, perhaps Thurston did not want to follow up on somebody else’s ideas.
In a peripheral way, I had a few encounters with Thurston. Around 1979, I had some minor results on some thing called Smith conjecture, not my main area of research and also spent a few weeks thinking about the general problem. Around the same time, the problem was solved by a combination of Thurston’s work and the work of Meeks and Yau on minimal surfaces. I asked Thurston in 1980 how he handled a specific case and I described a possible (theoretical) example. Thurston said that there was no such example. I went home, checked the theory behind the possible example and asked Thurston again the next day. This time, he passed and immediately drew the knot that I had in mind. And then he exclaimed that he had been ignoring such cases in his lectures. But with his broad sweep and power, such exceptions did not matter when he saw the general picture. By 1986, I picked some bits and pieces of Thurston’s work, just about enough that kept me going. I worked on a a problem for a couple of years and finally proved result using his techniques. When I met him again, I told him of my new result. He looked surprised for two seconds, then stared in to space for ten seconds and said ” of course”. I still treasure that two seconds of surprise that I caused him.
Since my Gudavalli days, I met many mathematicians, some of them like Gromov are considered great, and I even collaborated with a few brilliant ones. May be it is my rustic background, somehow I was never in awe of any of them. But Thurston seems to be a person who could have easily carried on mathematical conversations with Reimann or Poincare. Some say that he used to work hard.
And a write up about Thurston: http://www.bookrags.com/William_Thurston
IMO William Thurston is the greatest low-dimensional topologist ever. During Thurston60th, I will be in Princeton area; may be I will go and say hello to the great man.
It seems a strange route from Gudavalli to Princeton. I grew up in villages like Gudavalli, dominated by independent farmers who treated Dalits like dirt and considered Brahmins parasites (Added 5/29/07: This is my impression of those days. I am of the opinion that caste is an abomination and must go). There was not much talk of arts or science; just a few street performances, films and some songs. Those who could afford or borrow enough for university education mainly tried engineering or medicine. Some who finished engineering did not like working ‘under’ others and came back to farm. I finished school too early and could not enter an engineering college. My father decided that I should study mathematics and try for IAS. In the second year, I was exposed to some of Cantor’s set theory and suddenly it seemed that mathematics was not just formulae and calculations but was full of exciting ideas. Then I saw Felix Hausdroff’s ‘Set Theory’. There were statements like ‘invariance of dimension’, ‘invariance of domain’ which sounded metaphysical and I wondered how anybody could prove such things. That was what I wanted to study and understand. And went on to do just that. After a few years John Stallings who was visiting TIFR in 1967 said that Papakyriakopoulos did some great stuff. After Stallings left, I started reading Papa’s papers, the first papers in three dimensional topology I studied I felt at home and never really left the subject.
Then around 1977, Thurston fresh from killing ‘Foliations’ entered the subject and showed that we were just scratching the surface and the subject was completely different from what we were looking at. It was a stunning combination of geometry, imagination, seeing limiting behaviour and sometimes quantifying it. It did not seem worthwhile working in the subject without learning his ideas and techniques and they were new, strange and hard. In 1980, there was a conference in Maine to explain his ideas. Some of us old timers were discussing a well known problem that all of us worked on and did not make any progress. Thurston came by and asked what we were discussing. When we told him the problem, he immediately told us the solution using techniques we never heard of and none of us understood. There was complete silence only broken when Hatcher started scratching something on a piece of paper. It took us years to realize that the solution was simple and beautiful.
I always wondered why Thurston did not prove the Poincare conjecture. Some like Mikhail Gromov, who has broader sweep than Thurston, were more interested in theories and scope of theories than specific problems. But Thurston did show interest in solving specific problems. In some sense, the question was too narrow for him and he generalized it to the Geometrization problem for three manifolds. Perhaps getting in to Haken manifolds in the very beginning did not help. When Hamilton’s ideas came along, perhaps Thurston did not want to follow up on somebody else’s ideas.
In a peripheral way, I had a few encounters with Thurston. Around 1979, I had some minor results on some thing called Smith conjecture, not my main area of research and also spent a few weeks thinking about the general problem. Around the same time, the problem was solved by a combination of Thurston’s work and the work of Meeks and Yau on minimal surfaces. I asked Thurston in 1980 how he handled a specific case and I described a possible (theoretical) example. Thurston said that there was no such example. I went home, checked the theory behind the possible example and asked Thurston again the next day. This time, he passed and immediately drew the knot that I had in mind. And then he exclaimed that he had been ignoring such cases in his lectures. But with his broad sweep and power, such exceptions did not matter when he saw the general picture. By 1986, I picked some bits and pieces of Thurston’s work, just about enough that kept me going. I worked on a a problem for a couple of years and finally proved result using his techniques. When I met him again, I told him of my new result. He looked surprised for two seconds, then stared in to space for ten seconds and said ” of course”. I still treasure that two seconds of surprise that I caused him.
Since my Gudavalli days, I met many mathematicians, some of them like Gromov are considered great, and I even collaborated with a few brilliant ones. May be it is my rustic background, somehow I was never in awe of any of them. But Thurston seems to be a person who could have easily carried on mathematical conversations with Reimann or Poincare. Some say that he used to work hard.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Jet lag problems
From http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/science-shots/:
" Enjoy your flight. Sildenafil--better known under its brand name Viagra--could help fight jet lag after east-bound flights, and it might prevent health problems from shift work, scientists say. Viagra triggers the release of a compound, cyclic guanine monophosphate, that helps regulate the body’s circadian rhythm. When hamsters injected with the drug were woken up 6 hours earlier than normal, they adjusted 25% to 50% more quickly than did controls, a team from Argentina report in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The doses needed in humans could be lower than those used for Viagra's most popular purpose, they add."
I do not know whether there is study of any difference between jet lag in east-bound and west-bound flights. In my case, the jet lag is worse in east-bound flights.
Another study reported at http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/05.17/99-marstime.html. Excerpts:
"People at a research hospital in Boston have been living 24-hour, 39-minute days. They were part of an experiment to show that the 24-hour human sleep-wake cycle can be adapted to other biological rhythms like the longer days on Mars.
And it appears to be a relatively easy thing to do. All that seems to be needed is two 45-minute exposures to bright light in the evening.
.......
While checking the biological clocks of young, healthy subjects, Czeisler's team made what he calls, "an amazing observation." They knew that all people don't operate on the same clocklike 24-hour cycle, but the differences they found were startling. The 12 men and women in the Mars study, who were 22 to 33 years old, showed circadian periods ranging from 23 1/2 to 24 1/2 hours.
These natural differences cause some people to jump energetically out of bed in the morning, or to enjoy staying up late. Those with less than 24-hour brain rhythms tend to go to bed earlier and get up earlier. They are morning people. Those with a 24-hour-plus rhythm tend to stay up later. They are evening people. "Such individuals would have no trouble adjusting to a Martian day," Czeisler notes.
.....
In other words, Czeisler and his team squeezed extra minutes into the subjects' biological day simply by exposing them to bright light for 90 minutes each evening. The switch seems to work by resetting the time when humans begin to release a hormone called melatonin, which gets their bodies ready for sleep."
" Enjoy your flight. Sildenafil--better known under its brand name Viagra--could help fight jet lag after east-bound flights, and it might prevent health problems from shift work, scientists say. Viagra triggers the release of a compound, cyclic guanine monophosphate, that helps regulate the body’s circadian rhythm. When hamsters injected with the drug were woken up 6 hours earlier than normal, they adjusted 25% to 50% more quickly than did controls, a team from Argentina report in this week's Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The doses needed in humans could be lower than those used for Viagra's most popular purpose, they add."
I do not know whether there is study of any difference between jet lag in east-bound and west-bound flights. In my case, the jet lag is worse in east-bound flights.
Another study reported at http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/05.17/99-marstime.html. Excerpts:
"People at a research hospital in Boston have been living 24-hour, 39-minute days. They were part of an experiment to show that the 24-hour human sleep-wake cycle can be adapted to other biological rhythms like the longer days on Mars.
And it appears to be a relatively easy thing to do. All that seems to be needed is two 45-minute exposures to bright light in the evening.
.......
While checking the biological clocks of young, healthy subjects, Czeisler's team made what he calls, "an amazing observation." They knew that all people don't operate on the same clocklike 24-hour cycle, but the differences they found were startling. The 12 men and women in the Mars study, who were 22 to 33 years old, showed circadian periods ranging from 23 1/2 to 24 1/2 hours.
These natural differences cause some people to jump energetically out of bed in the morning, or to enjoy staying up late. Those with less than 24-hour brain rhythms tend to go to bed earlier and get up earlier. They are morning people. Those with a 24-hour-plus rhythm tend to stay up later. They are evening people. "Such individuals would have no trouble adjusting to a Martian day," Czeisler notes.
.....
In other words, Czeisler and his team squeezed extra minutes into the subjects' biological day simply by exposing them to bright light for 90 minutes each evening. The switch seems to work by resetting the time when humans begin to release a hormone called melatonin, which gets their bodies ready for sleep."
Nature on Epigenetics
From http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v447/n7143/full/447395a.html:
"Epigenetics is typically defined as the study of heritable changes in gene expression that are not due to changes in DNA sequence. Diverse biological properties can be affected by epigenetic mechanisms: for example, the morphology of flowers and eye colour in fruitflies.
............
In this Insight, we take a wide view of the epigenetics field, highlighting current topics of interest — from the influence of chromatin and chromosome organization on gene expression to the roles of epigenetic mechanisms in development and disease. And under this broad umbrella, the very definition of epigenetics is scrutinized. We hope that you enjoy these exciting reviews and thank the authors for their contributions."
At the top right of the page clicking on 'next' takes to the next article. All articles are downloadable now. List of articles:
Perceptions of epigenetics p396
Adrian Bird
Transcription and RNA interference in the formation of heterochromatin p399
Shiv I. S. Grewal & Sarah C. R. Elgin
The complex language of chromatin regulation during transcription p407
Shelley L. Berger
Nuclear organization of the genome and the potential for gene regulation p413
Peter Fraser & Wendy Bickmore
Epigenetic inheritance in plants p418
Ian R. Henderson & Steven E. Jacobsen
Stability and flexibility of epigenetic gene regulation in mammalian development p425
Wolf Reik
Phenotypic plasticity and the epigenetics of human disease p433
Andrew P. Feinberg
"Epigenetics is typically defined as the study of heritable changes in gene expression that are not due to changes in DNA sequence. Diverse biological properties can be affected by epigenetic mechanisms: for example, the morphology of flowers and eye colour in fruitflies.
............
In this Insight, we take a wide view of the epigenetics field, highlighting current topics of interest — from the influence of chromatin and chromosome organization on gene expression to the roles of epigenetic mechanisms in development and disease. And under this broad umbrella, the very definition of epigenetics is scrutinized. We hope that you enjoy these exciting reviews and thank the authors for their contributions."
At the top right of the page clicking on 'next' takes to the next article. All articles are downloadable now. List of articles:
Perceptions of epigenetics p396
Adrian Bird
Transcription and RNA interference in the formation of heterochromatin p399
Shiv I. S. Grewal & Sarah C. R. Elgin
The complex language of chromatin regulation during transcription p407
Shelley L. Berger
Nuclear organization of the genome and the potential for gene regulation p413
Peter Fraser & Wendy Bickmore
Epigenetic inheritance in plants p418
Ian R. Henderson & Steven E. Jacobsen
Stability and flexibility of epigenetic gene regulation in mammalian development p425
Wolf Reik
Phenotypic plasticity and the epigenetics of human disease p433
Andrew P. Feinberg
Dani Rodrik recommends
Let Their People Come : Breaking the Gridlock of Global Labor Mobility by Lant Prichett. It is available for purchase or download online at the center for Global Development (The president Nancy Birdsall's work was mentioned before in this blog). They also have an online survey for the next World Bank President.
Pankaj Mishra on some recent fiction
From http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,,2082858,00.html:
"What makes The Reluctant Fundamentalist and other recent novels by Kiran Desai, David Mitchell and Jeffrey Eugenides so uniquely compelling is their intimation of a new existential incoherence, their suspicion that by abolishing old boundaries and penetrating the remotest societies on earth, capitalism and technology have left no "elsewhere", exposing the human self to unprecedented risks and temptations.
In The Inheritance of Loss Desai powerfully evokes the truth of this new spiritual homelessness: "Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that narratives belonged only to herself, that she might create her own mean little happiness and live safely within it." In such recent films as Syriana, The Constant Gardener and Babel even Hollywood seems alert to the fact that the human self, inescapably plural and open-ended, increasingly finds itself in a bewilderingly enlarged and unforgiving arena.
In comparison, most of the literary fiction that self-consciously addresses 9/11 still seems underpinned by outdated assumptions of national isolation and self-sufficiency. The "reconsiderations" DeLillo promised after 9/11 don't seem to have led to a renewed historical consciousness. Composed within the narcissistic heart of the west, most 9/11 fictions seem unable to acknowledge political and ideological belief as a social and emotional reality in the world - the kind of fact that cannot be reduced to the individual experience of rage, envy, sexual frustration and constipation.
But then we haven't moved far in time from 9/11; the younger generation of American writers has yet to reckon with it. Recent novels may turn out to be only the first draft of a rich literature. Certainly, the conditions for it are already present. Writing in 1940, Rahv hoped that American literary life, which was largely determined by national forces, would be increasingly shaped by international forces. In ways still obscure to us, this has begun to happen as American power declines, and old collective assumptions of prosperity and security become unavailable. The present conservative stasis in America has its dangers. But it is unlikely to last. And, as happened after the first world war, uncertainty and confusion in the public sphere may quicken the sense of aesthetic possibility - or, at least, release literary novelists from the dominant American mood of 9/11 commemoration."
The older article by Pankaj Mishra on Indian fiction http://www.nybooks.com/articles/485 and his review of Kiran Desai's "The Inheritance of Loss" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/books/review/12mishra.html? are also very interesting.
"What makes The Reluctant Fundamentalist and other recent novels by Kiran Desai, David Mitchell and Jeffrey Eugenides so uniquely compelling is their intimation of a new existential incoherence, their suspicion that by abolishing old boundaries and penetrating the remotest societies on earth, capitalism and technology have left no "elsewhere", exposing the human self to unprecedented risks and temptations.
In The Inheritance of Loss Desai powerfully evokes the truth of this new spiritual homelessness: "Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that narratives belonged only to herself, that she might create her own mean little happiness and live safely within it." In such recent films as Syriana, The Constant Gardener and Babel even Hollywood seems alert to the fact that the human self, inescapably plural and open-ended, increasingly finds itself in a bewilderingly enlarged and unforgiving arena.
In comparison, most of the literary fiction that self-consciously addresses 9/11 still seems underpinned by outdated assumptions of national isolation and self-sufficiency. The "reconsiderations" DeLillo promised after 9/11 don't seem to have led to a renewed historical consciousness. Composed within the narcissistic heart of the west, most 9/11 fictions seem unable to acknowledge political and ideological belief as a social and emotional reality in the world - the kind of fact that cannot be reduced to the individual experience of rage, envy, sexual frustration and constipation.
But then we haven't moved far in time from 9/11; the younger generation of American writers has yet to reckon with it. Recent novels may turn out to be only the first draft of a rich literature. Certainly, the conditions for it are already present. Writing in 1940, Rahv hoped that American literary life, which was largely determined by national forces, would be increasingly shaped by international forces. In ways still obscure to us, this has begun to happen as American power declines, and old collective assumptions of prosperity and security become unavailable. The present conservative stasis in America has its dangers. But it is unlikely to last. And, as happened after the first world war, uncertainty and confusion in the public sphere may quicken the sense of aesthetic possibility - or, at least, release literary novelists from the dominant American mood of 9/11 commemoration."
The older article by Pankaj Mishra on Indian fiction http://www.nybooks.com/articles/485 and his review of Kiran Desai's "The Inheritance of Loss" http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/12/books/review/12mishra.html? are also very interesting.
Tuesday, May 22, 2007
Focus on corruption
From http://rodrik.typepad.com/dani_rodriks_weblog/2007/05/can_anyone_be_i.html:
"... I am not sure that it is good policy for the Bank to prioritize corruption--as a rule--over other problems that developing nations face. As I have stressed in my work with Ricardo Hausmann and Andres Velasco, the binding constraint on growth differs from country to country. In some cases (Zimbabwe?), governance problems are indeed the most serious binding constraint. In many others, the problems lie elsewhere--in low savings, poorly functioning financial markets, low entrepreneurship, poor infrastructure, and myriad other syndromes of underdevelopment.
Let me make a bolder claim. A development strategy that focused on anti-corruption in China would not have produced anything like the growth rate that this country has experienced since 1978, nor would it have resulted in 400 million plus fewer people in extreme poverty."
FROM http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4192:
"Somebody has to watch, and someone has to watch the watchers. But when does breathing down the workers' necks get in the way of the work? That is a problem for policy makers who want to deter corruption but don't want the remedy to be worse than the ailment. For insight into these tradeoffs, Shawn Cole of the Harvard Business School and two colleagues looked at Indian banks, which use aggressive monitoring and severe penalties to keep lending officers honest.
The research results are described in the paper, "Are the Monitors Over-Monitored? Evidence from Corruption and Lending in Indian Banks," co-authored by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, who are at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We find evidence that vigilance activities result in reduced lending. The amount of credit declines sharply at the affected bank branch, as well as neighboring branches," the researchers report. "This effect is economically and statistically significant, persisting up to two years." "
"... I am not sure that it is good policy for the Bank to prioritize corruption--as a rule--over other problems that developing nations face. As I have stressed in my work with Ricardo Hausmann and Andres Velasco, the binding constraint on growth differs from country to country. In some cases (Zimbabwe?), governance problems are indeed the most serious binding constraint. In many others, the problems lie elsewhere--in low savings, poorly functioning financial markets, low entrepreneurship, poor infrastructure, and myriad other syndromes of underdevelopment.
Let me make a bolder claim. A development strategy that focused on anti-corruption in China would not have produced anything like the growth rate that this country has experienced since 1978, nor would it have resulted in 400 million plus fewer people in extreme poverty."
FROM http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/india/article.cfm?articleid=4192:
"Somebody has to watch, and someone has to watch the watchers. But when does breathing down the workers' necks get in the way of the work? That is a problem for policy makers who want to deter corruption but don't want the remedy to be worse than the ailment. For insight into these tradeoffs, Shawn Cole of the Harvard Business School and two colleagues looked at Indian banks, which use aggressive monitoring and severe penalties to keep lending officers honest.
The research results are described in the paper, "Are the Monitors Over-Monitored? Evidence from Corruption and Lending in Indian Banks," co-authored by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo, who are at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "We find evidence that vigilance activities result in reduced lending. The amount of credit declines sharply at the affected bank branch, as well as neighboring branches," the researchers report. "This effect is economically and statistically significant, persisting up to two years." "
An application of non-positive curvature
From http://blog.sciencenews.org/mathtrek/2007/05/a_grove_of_evolutionary_trees.html:
"An oceanographer buys a piece of whale flesh at a market in Japan. The clerk assures her the meat comes from a Baird's beaked whale, which is legal to hunt under certain circumstances. The scientist takes the meat to her lab, performs a DNA analysis of it, and finds that it is in fact an endangered right whale. Killing a right whale is a crime.
When the oceanographer reports her findings to the International Whaling Commission, the commissioners ask her one question: how certain are you?
Until recently, a scientist would not have been able to give a rigorous answer. The analysis depends on the scientist's understanding of the evolutionary relationships among different species of whales, and statisticians didn't know how to analyze the tree-shaped graphs that express those relationships.
Now, mathematicians have developed a new understanding of the mathematics of tree-shaped graphs, which makes possible the statistical analysis of evolutionary trees. The development will help biologists to make sense of the flood of newly available genetic information."
A very interesting article with a number of interesting references which I have yet to read.
"An oceanographer buys a piece of whale flesh at a market in Japan. The clerk assures her the meat comes from a Baird's beaked whale, which is legal to hunt under certain circumstances. The scientist takes the meat to her lab, performs a DNA analysis of it, and finds that it is in fact an endangered right whale. Killing a right whale is a crime.
When the oceanographer reports her findings to the International Whaling Commission, the commissioners ask her one question: how certain are you?
Until recently, a scientist would not have been able to give a rigorous answer. The analysis depends on the scientist's understanding of the evolutionary relationships among different species of whales, and statisticians didn't know how to analyze the tree-shaped graphs that express those relationships.
Now, mathematicians have developed a new understanding of the mathematics of tree-shaped graphs, which makes possible the statistical analysis of evolutionary trees. The development will help biologists to make sense of the flood of newly available genetic information."
A very interesting article with a number of interesting references which I have yet to read.
Friday, May 18, 2007
My latest paper
available at http://front.math.ucdavis.edu/math.GR/0703890
One more to go. Then, I can probably really enjoy my retirement.
One more to go. Then, I can probably really enjoy my retirement.
Thursday, May 17, 2007
From scidev.net on GM crops
I am travelling now and have not read these. Here is a message from scidev.net:
"Dear colleagues
How can farmers and food traders in the developing world ensure that GM
and conventional crop systems coexist successfully?
Read SciDev.Net's peer-reviewed policy brief by Eliana Fontes, project
leader at Embrapa — the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation —
for an authoritative overview of the issues:
A healthy mix: strategies for GM & non-GM crop coexistence
http://www.scidev.net/coexistence
Successful coexistence strategies are important to address concerns
about GM crops causing health risks or environmental harm. To read more
about coexistence and why it matters in the developing world visit:
http://www.scidev.net/coexistence
Online agri-biotechnology resource
For more information on GM and non-GM advances in agricultural
biotechnology visit our online dossier: http://www.scidev.net/agribiotech
Please pass this information to friends and colleagues who will find it
a valuable resource."
"Dear colleagues
How can farmers and food traders in the developing world ensure that GM
and conventional crop systems coexist successfully?
Read SciDev.Net's peer-reviewed policy brief by Eliana Fontes, project
leader at Embrapa — the Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation —
for an authoritative overview of the issues:
A healthy mix: strategies for GM & non-GM crop coexistence
http://www.scidev.net/coexistence
Successful coexistence strategies are important to address concerns
about GM crops causing health risks or environmental harm. To read more
about coexistence and why it matters in the developing world visit:
http://www.scidev.net/coexistence
Online agri-biotechnology resource
For more information on GM and non-GM advances in agricultural
biotechnology visit our online dossier: http://www.scidev.net/agribiotech
Please pass this information to friends and colleagues who will find it
a valuable resource."
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
Exporting I.P. by James Surowiecki
at http://www.newyorker.com/talk/financial/2007/05/14/070514ta_talk_surowiecki
Excerpts:
"Free trade is supposed to be win-win situation. You sell m your televisions, I sell you m software, and we both prosper. I practice, free-trade agreements ar messier than that. Since al industries crave foreign markets t expand into but fear foreig competitors encroaching on thei home turf, they lobby thei governments to tilt the rules in thei favor. Usually, this involve manipulating tariffs and quotas But, of late, a troubling twist in th game has become more common, a countries use free-trade agreement to rewrite the laws of their tradin partners. And the country that i doing this most aggressively is th United States.
...........
Free-trade agreements that export our own restrictive I.P. laws may make the world safe for Pfizer, Microsoft, and Disney, but they don’t deserve the name free trade."
Both Dani Rodrik and Tyler Cowen seem to have liked this article. An interesting IP case here from one of the comments in MR: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39287061,00.htm
Excerpts:
"Free trade is supposed to be win-win situation. You sell m your televisions, I sell you m software, and we both prosper. I practice, free-trade agreements ar messier than that. Since al industries crave foreign markets t expand into but fear foreig competitors encroaching on thei home turf, they lobby thei governments to tilt the rules in thei favor. Usually, this involve manipulating tariffs and quotas But, of late, a troubling twist in th game has become more common, a countries use free-trade agreement to rewrite the laws of their tradin partners. And the country that i doing this most aggressively is th United States.
...........
Free-trade agreements that export our own restrictive I.P. laws may make the world safe for Pfizer, Microsoft, and Disney, but they don’t deserve the name free trade."
Both Dani Rodrik and Tyler Cowen seem to have liked this article. An interesting IP case here from one of the comments in MR: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,1000000121,39287061,00.htm
Monday, May 14, 2007
A nice site for hyperbolic geometry
by a non-mathematcian Tadao Ito. See http://www1.kcn.ne.jp/~iittoo/
Preface:
What is hyperbolic geometry? Our purpose of this webpage is to enjoy seeing the Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean World with our own eyes. Seeing is believing. Not only observation, strong imagination is necessary for our adventure. Information and knowledge are somewhat useful, but imagination is the most powerful weapon we have.
In the Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean World we can see a panoramic view of much more than 360. The area of an infinitely large triangle is only (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) and the sum of interior angles is zero. Angles and lengths are not of different natures, but they depend on each other. Many great mathematicians did not believe these facts though they themselves proved these theories.
First, we will look briefly at what is called the Elliptic Non-Euclidean World, where we will be able to draw infinity into our hands. Then, we will enter the Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean World discovered by Nicolai Ivanovitch Lobachevsky and two other men, where we will be able to see many mysterious pictures. Before long, we will be in projective geometry which is more weird. For example, a tangent to a circle passes the center and the length of an infinitely stretched straight line is zero. Last, we will observe the compliment space of the figure-eight knot. We will experience the function of hyperbolic geometry. A space is characterized by its function. We will change "impossible" into "possible". All faces of a tetrahedron are glued to another tetrahedron without changing the shape of either. You will meet your clone. Morning coffee is the universe, and we drink it up.
I, the author, am not a mathematician but a simple hobbyist. I had thought previously that Non-Euclidean geometry was old-fashioned. Indeed, Felix Klein wiped all mysterious matters from hyperbolic geometry. Later on, however, William P. Thurston dug out new mysteries. Today, hyperbolic geometry is not only an essential part of topology and knot theory, but it is applied also to physics, chemistry, biology and even the arts.
You know that we can enjoy a masterpiece of painting even though we can not paint it ourselves. Everybody has the right to enjoy true mathematics even if one is not familiar with math. It is not necessary for sightseers to know the laws or rules of the region being visited. All we have to do is to see how the mountains look and how the rivers run.
I began writing this webpage without any knowledge of hyperbolic geometry. I pursued whatever came to my mind on a given occasion. Sometimes I accepted a mathematician's idea without question. Anyway, the Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean World is very mysterious and captivating, so have fun! Let's take off on an academic sight-seeing flight, and enjoy panoramic views of infinity!
Preface:
What is hyperbolic geometry? Our purpose of this webpage is to enjoy seeing the Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean World with our own eyes. Seeing is believing. Not only observation, strong imagination is necessary for our adventure. Information and knowledge are somewhat useful, but imagination is the most powerful weapon we have.
In the Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean World we can see a panoramic view of much more than 360. The area of an infinitely large triangle is only (the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter) and the sum of interior angles is zero. Angles and lengths are not of different natures, but they depend on each other. Many great mathematicians did not believe these facts though they themselves proved these theories.
First, we will look briefly at what is called the Elliptic Non-Euclidean World, where we will be able to draw infinity into our hands. Then, we will enter the Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean World discovered by Nicolai Ivanovitch Lobachevsky and two other men, where we will be able to see many mysterious pictures. Before long, we will be in projective geometry which is more weird. For example, a tangent to a circle passes the center and the length of an infinitely stretched straight line is zero. Last, we will observe the compliment space of the figure-eight knot. We will experience the function of hyperbolic geometry. A space is characterized by its function. We will change "impossible" into "possible". All faces of a tetrahedron are glued to another tetrahedron without changing the shape of either. You will meet your clone. Morning coffee is the universe, and we drink it up.
I, the author, am not a mathematician but a simple hobbyist. I had thought previously that Non-Euclidean geometry was old-fashioned. Indeed, Felix Klein wiped all mysterious matters from hyperbolic geometry. Later on, however, William P. Thurston dug out new mysteries. Today, hyperbolic geometry is not only an essential part of topology and knot theory, but it is applied also to physics, chemistry, biology and even the arts.
You know that we can enjoy a masterpiece of painting even though we can not paint it ourselves. Everybody has the right to enjoy true mathematics even if one is not familiar with math. It is not necessary for sightseers to know the laws or rules of the region being visited. All we have to do is to see how the mountains look and how the rivers run.
I began writing this webpage without any knowledge of hyperbolic geometry. I pursued whatever came to my mind on a given occasion. Sometimes I accepted a mathematician's idea without question. Anyway, the Hyperbolic Non-Euclidean World is very mysterious and captivating, so have fun! Let's take off on an academic sight-seeing flight, and enjoy panoramic views of infinity!
Can happen in other places too
From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070513/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/brazil_missionary_killed
"Brazil has one of the world's widest gaps between rich and poor, with 3.5 percent of landowners holding 56 percent of the arable land, and the poorest 40 percent owning just 1 percent. Given that police and judges usually do the bidding of the rich and powerful, those inequalities have proven explosive."
"Brazil has one of the world's widest gaps between rich and poor, with 3.5 percent of landowners holding 56 percent of the arable land, and the poorest 40 percent owning just 1 percent. Given that police and judges usually do the bidding of the rich and powerful, those inequalities have proven explosive."
Sunday, May 13, 2007
Happy Mother's Day
Mother's Day Wish: " More workplace flexibility for mothers" and I hope that more people will read "Mother Nature" by Sarah Hrdy.
Money and norms of science
(via 3quarksdaily). A review of "How Money Affects the Norms of Science" by David B. Resnick:
http://mentalhelp.net/books/books.php?type=de&id=3616. Excerpts:
"The theme of The Price of Truth is that the ideal of science as the objective, disinterested pursuit of knowledge is just that, an ideal, and that modern science is intimately tied up with the business world, and with financial incentives of one sort or another. While there are some who would see this state of affairs as a travesty, Resnik is more pragmatic. Drawing on examples of classical scientists, and from the current practice of science, Resnik argues for a middle road, one in which there can be room for financial incentives to encourage science, but where there are adequate restraints on the excesses of money to maintain the more communitarian goals of science
......
Over almost two decades Resnik has published many books and papers on the ethics of science. The Price of Truth focuses on the potential for money to influence the practice of science, but the book does more than explore examples of potential conflicts. Over nine chapters Resnik explores the history of science and money, the nature of science and how money can undermine scientific endeavor, and some specific issues such as intellectual property, publication, and government funding of research and development. A brief concluding chapter returns to the underlying theme of truth and integrity in research."
As mentioned in earlier posts from scidev.net, some universities from South Africa and a few other places seem to be ahead in this game with established useful research and bargaining with corporations from a position of strength.
http://mentalhelp.net/books/books.php?type=de&id=3616. Excerpts:
"The theme of The Price of Truth is that the ideal of science as the objective, disinterested pursuit of knowledge is just that, an ideal, and that modern science is intimately tied up with the business world, and with financial incentives of one sort or another. While there are some who would see this state of affairs as a travesty, Resnik is more pragmatic. Drawing on examples of classical scientists, and from the current practice of science, Resnik argues for a middle road, one in which there can be room for financial incentives to encourage science, but where there are adequate restraints on the excesses of money to maintain the more communitarian goals of science
......
Over almost two decades Resnik has published many books and papers on the ethics of science. The Price of Truth focuses on the potential for money to influence the practice of science, but the book does more than explore examples of potential conflicts. Over nine chapters Resnik explores the history of science and money, the nature of science and how money can undermine scientific endeavor, and some specific issues such as intellectual property, publication, and government funding of research and development. A brief concluding chapter returns to the underlying theme of truth and integrity in research."
As mentioned in earlier posts from scidev.net, some universities from South Africa and a few other places seem to be ahead in this game with established useful research and bargaining with corporations from a position of strength.
Rodrik Effect
Andrew Leonard thinks that blog debates can be useful and describes what he believes is Dani Rodrik's contribution:
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/05/11/new_trade_deal/index.html?source=rss
Update: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/05/helping_the_los.html#comments
An excerpt one of the comments by Mark Thoma :'Now we are hearing a consistent message - there are winners and losers but net benefits overall, and the size of the losses, which are different and larger than we anticipated, make it imperative that we compensate the losers if we expect to keep the global trading system alive."
http://www.salon.com/tech/htww/2007/05/11/new_trade_deal/index.html?source=rss
Update: http://economistsview.typepad.com/economistsview/2007/05/helping_the_los.html#comments
An excerpt one of the comments by Mark Thoma :'Now we are hearing a consistent message - there are winners and losers but net benefits overall, and the size of the losses, which are different and larger than we anticipated, make it imperative that we compensate the losers if we expect to keep the global trading system alive."
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Another side of David Shulman
David Shulman is the Renee Lang Professor of Humanistic Studies in the Department of Comparative Religion at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He was born in Iowa but moved to Israel in 1967 at age eighteen. Named a MacArthur Fellow in 1987, Shulman is the author or coauthor of nineteen books, including The Hungry God: Hindu Tales of Filicide and Devotion, also published by the University of Chicago Press.
David Shulman is known to many Andhras for his tranlations of Telugu poetry (with Velcheru Narayana Rao) and his books with VNR and Sanjay Subrahmaniam : "Textures of Time", "Symbols of Substance" and others. He is also an activist and has a new book""With Dark Hope, Shulman has written a book of deep moral searching, an attempt to discover how his beloved Israel went wrong—and how, through acts of compassionate disobedience, it might still be brought back.". Excerpts can be found here:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/755748.html
David Shulman is known to many Andhras for his tranlations of Telugu poetry (with Velcheru Narayana Rao) and his books with VNR and Sanjay Subrahmaniam : "Textures of Time", "Symbols of Substance" and others. He is also an activist and has a new book""With Dark Hope, Shulman has written a book of deep moral searching, an attempt to discover how his beloved Israel went wrong—and how, through acts of compassionate disobedience, it might still be brought back.". Excerpts can be found here:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/755748.html
Quotes of the day
"The solution of course is to stop pushing free trade upon the third world and thus allow it to develop. "
"India is one obvious case of a miscalculated protectionism."
From http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/05/the_new_attack_.html
"India is one obvious case of a miscalculated protectionism."
From http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2007/05/the_new_attack_.html
Colony Collapse Disorder
Links to four reports in http://saltspringnews.com/index.php?name=News&file=article&sid=16047. Perhaps the most comprehensive is "Please Lord, not the bees" by Peter Dearman. Excerpt: "Bees seem to desert their hive or forget to return home from their foraging runs. The hive population dwindles and then collapses once there are too few bees to maintain it. Typically, no dead bee carcasses lie in or around the afflicted hive, although the queen and a few attendants may remain. The defect, whatever it is, afflicts the adult bee. Larvae continue to develop normally, even as a hive is in the midst of collapse. Stricken colonies may appear normal, as seen from the outside, but when beekeepers look inside the hive box, they find a small number of mature bees caring for a large number of younger and developing bees that remain. Normally, only the oldest bees go out foraging for nectar and pollen, while younger workers act as nurse bees caring for the larvae and cleaning the comb. A healthy hive in mid-summer has between 40,000 and 80,000 bees. Perhaps the most ominous thing about CCD, and one of its most distinguishing characteristics, is that bees and other animals living nearby refrain from raiding the honey and pollen stored away in the dead hive. In previously observed cases of hive collapse (and it is certainly not a rare occurrence) these energy stores are quickly stolen. But with CCD the invasion of hive pests such as the wax moth and small hive beetle is noticeably delayed. ...".
See also organic bee farmer Sharon Labchuk's comments on the honeycomb size linked in the same article.
See also organic bee farmer Sharon Labchuk's comments on the honeycomb size linked in the same article.
Tuesday, May 08, 2007
Some recent blog discussions by American Economists
Off on a final math. trip to complete some work started in 1994; noting the following links for future reference. There are recently interesting discussions in blogs by American Economists. and vigorous comments. I have barely followed the discussions, but felt that there was unusual candour after Dani Rodrik’s entry. I do not know the political or other allegiances of the various economists. Many seem to be well-known economists(?) and in Round one probably divided along the main American political lines.
Round 1
Prominent economists discus supply side economics (in USA) and do not seem to agree on what happened and how. Links at the end of a Mark Thoma post
Round 2
Daniel Drezner on Dani Rodrik’s entry in to the blogosphere . Continuation and links in various places including Economist’s View.
Discussion on whether free trade lowers ‘prices’.Rodrik summarizes :
Trade and prices: an attempted summary
Can we all agree on these?
1 Trade policy works through its effect on the relative prices of goods, not through the price level.
2 Depending on what side of the change in relative prices they find themselves, any specific group of consumers or producers can be made worse off by a move to free trade.
3 A corollary: there is no guarantee that free trade raises real wages.
4 The Carlos Diaz-Alejandro rule: For almost any particular conclusion you want to arrive at, there is some economic model that will take you there.
5 Throw in some scale economies (dynamic or otherwise), and then just about anything can happen (including free trade making some countries worse off).
6 The positive spin: This does not diminish the value of economic modeling; it simply means we have to be more careful with generalizations and be more explicit about the assumptions that lie behind our reasoning.
7 Bottom line: It is possible to have an illuminating (sometimes), intelligent (mostly), and entertaining (almost always) economic debate in the blogosphere.
See also the list on page 13 of
Growth Strategies. Excerpts: “A key theme in these works, as well as in the present paper, is that growth-promoting policies tend to be context specific.
…
The paper revolves around two key arguments. One is that neoclassical economic analysis is a lot more flexible than its practitioners in the policy domain have generally given it credit. In particular, first-order economic principles—protection of property rights, contract enforcement, market-based competition, appropriate incentives, sound money, debt sustainability—do not map into unique policy packages. Good institutions are those that deliver these first-order principles effectively. There is no unique correspondence between the functions that good institutions perform and the form that such institutions take. Reformers have substantial room for creatively packaging these principles into institutional designs that are sensitive to local constraints and take advantage of local opportunities. Successful countries are those that have used this room wisely.
The second argument is that igniting economic growth and sustaining it are somewhat different enterprises. The former generally requires a limited range of (often unconventional) reforms that need not overly tax the institutional capacity of the economy. The latter challenge is in many ways harder, as it requires constructing a sound institutional underpinning to maintain productive dynamism and endow the economy with resilience to shocks over the longer term.” A shorter paper by Dani Rodrik on the same theme. Round 2 blurs in to
Round 3
Mark Thoma discusses the benefits of international trade (mainly for USA) and Rodrik’s response is summarized in“ The Globalization numbers Game” . Many comments indicate skepticism about the quantity of benefits to USA now, but this may NOT apply to other countries.
Some comments from other economists so far:
Angry Bear and maxspeak
Why should we bother about the discussions in USA?
This paper by Marion Fourcade starts with “This article relies on an analysis of the institutionalization of economics worldwide during the 20th century to argue that the logic of professional development in this particular field has come to be increasingly defined in global terms. “ and concludes “Global jurisdictions, then, constitute an essential source of legitimacy and resources for “core” economists, too. Since the more peripheral places of the world economy are more vulnerable to the professional influence of economists (both local and foreign), they, in fact, constitute a fundamental space where individual experts and organizations fight key intellectual and jurisdictional battles through the ongoing economic reconstruction of societies—a process that is not, and never will be, settled.”
Round 1
Prominent economists discus supply side economics (in USA) and do not seem to agree on what happened and how. Links at the end of a Mark Thoma post
Round 2
Daniel Drezner on Dani Rodrik’s entry in to the blogosphere . Continuation and links in various places including Economist’s View.
Discussion on whether free trade lowers ‘prices’.Rodrik summarizes :
Trade and prices: an attempted summary
Can we all agree on these?
1 Trade policy works through its effect on the relative prices of goods, not through the price level.
2 Depending on what side of the change in relative prices they find themselves, any specific group of consumers or producers can be made worse off by a move to free trade.
3 A corollary: there is no guarantee that free trade raises real wages.
4 The Carlos Diaz-Alejandro rule: For almost any particular conclusion you want to arrive at, there is some economic model that will take you there.
5 Throw in some scale economies (dynamic or otherwise), and then just about anything can happen (including free trade making some countries worse off).
6 The positive spin: This does not diminish the value of economic modeling; it simply means we have to be more careful with generalizations and be more explicit about the assumptions that lie behind our reasoning.
7 Bottom line: It is possible to have an illuminating (sometimes), intelligent (mostly), and entertaining (almost always) economic debate in the blogosphere.
See also the list on page 13 of
Growth Strategies. Excerpts: “A key theme in these works, as well as in the present paper, is that growth-promoting policies tend to be context specific.
…
The paper revolves around two key arguments. One is that neoclassical economic analysis is a lot more flexible than its practitioners in the policy domain have generally given it credit. In particular, first-order economic principles—protection of property rights, contract enforcement, market-based competition, appropriate incentives, sound money, debt sustainability—do not map into unique policy packages. Good institutions are those that deliver these first-order principles effectively. There is no unique correspondence between the functions that good institutions perform and the form that such institutions take. Reformers have substantial room for creatively packaging these principles into institutional designs that are sensitive to local constraints and take advantage of local opportunities. Successful countries are those that have used this room wisely.
The second argument is that igniting economic growth and sustaining it are somewhat different enterprises. The former generally requires a limited range of (often unconventional) reforms that need not overly tax the institutional capacity of the economy. The latter challenge is in many ways harder, as it requires constructing a sound institutional underpinning to maintain productive dynamism and endow the economy with resilience to shocks over the longer term.” A shorter paper by Dani Rodrik on the same theme. Round 2 blurs in to
Round 3
Mark Thoma discusses the benefits of international trade (mainly for USA) and Rodrik’s response is summarized in“ The Globalization numbers Game” . Many comments indicate skepticism about the quantity of benefits to USA now, but this may NOT apply to other countries.
Some comments from other economists so far:
Angry Bear and maxspeak
Why should we bother about the discussions in USA?
This paper by Marion Fourcade starts with “This article relies on an analysis of the institutionalization of economics worldwide during the 20th century to argue that the logic of professional development in this particular field has come to be increasingly defined in global terms. “ and concludes “Global jurisdictions, then, constitute an essential source of legitimacy and resources for “core” economists, too. Since the more peripheral places of the world economy are more vulnerable to the professional influence of economists (both local and foreign), they, in fact, constitute a fundamental space where individual experts and organizations fight key intellectual and jurisdictional battles through the ongoing economic reconstruction of societies—a process that is not, and never will be, settled.”
Monday, May 07, 2007
The wisdom of Freud
From http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/05/06/opinion/edfreud.php (via Mark Thoma)
"But what Freud did believe was that governments - like individuals - must strive to examine and to acknowledge as clearly and unsentimentally as possible the motivations behind policy. If one acts on a delusional premise, one's actions will only coordinate with their real world object randomly, if at all.
Near the conclusion of "Civilization and Its Discontents," Freud wrote, "One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness - that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments.""
Here is a long article about wisdom: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/magazine/06Wisdom-t.html?
Excerpt: 'From the outset, it’s easier to define what wisdom isn’t. First of all, it isn’t necessarily or intrinsically a product of old age, although reaching an advanced age increases the odds of acquiring the kinds of life experiences and emotional maturity that cultivate wisdom, which is why aspects of wisdom are increasingly attracting the attention of gerontological psychologists. Second, if you think you’re wise, you’re probably not. As Gandhi (who topped the leader board a few years ago in a survey in which college students were asked to name wise people) put it, “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom.” Indeed, a general thread running through modern wisdom research is that wise people tend to be humble and “other-centered” as opposed to self-centered."
"But what Freud did believe was that governments - like individuals - must strive to examine and to acknowledge as clearly and unsentimentally as possible the motivations behind policy. If one acts on a delusional premise, one's actions will only coordinate with their real world object randomly, if at all.
Near the conclusion of "Civilization and Its Discontents," Freud wrote, "One thing only do I know for certain and that is that man's judgments of value follow directly his wishes for happiness - that, accordingly, they are an attempt to support his illusions with arguments.""
Here is a long article about wisdom: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/06/magazine/06Wisdom-t.html?
Excerpt: 'From the outset, it’s easier to define what wisdom isn’t. First of all, it isn’t necessarily or intrinsically a product of old age, although reaching an advanced age increases the odds of acquiring the kinds of life experiences and emotional maturity that cultivate wisdom, which is why aspects of wisdom are increasingly attracting the attention of gerontological psychologists. Second, if you think you’re wise, you’re probably not. As Gandhi (who topped the leader board a few years ago in a survey in which college students were asked to name wise people) put it, “It is unwise to be too sure of one’s own wisdom.” Indeed, a general thread running through modern wisdom research is that wise people tend to be humble and “other-centered” as opposed to self-centered."
Pennington Public Library in Srivilliputtur
From http://www.hindu.com/mag/2007/04/29/stories/2007042900140400.htm (via UMA of http://indianwriting.blogsome.com/):
"What, however, was a pleasant surprise is that the library has a complete, well-bound set of Government Gazettes from 1952. That's something unlikely to be found in too many other places in the State."
"What, however, was a pleasant surprise is that the library has a complete, well-bound set of Government Gazettes from 1952. That's something unlikely to be found in too many other places in the State."
Saturday, May 05, 2007
Gadgets for the poor
From http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070504/ap_on_hi_te/gadgets_for_the_poor"
"A new breed of industrial designer is confronting Third World poverty with innovative products aimed at encouraging rural entrepreneurs.
......
By creating simple, efficient gadgets for poor countries, the designers aim to provide Africans, Asians and Latin Americans with the means to generate cash on local markets.
Low-cost water purifiers, crop preservers, wireless lighting, drip irrigation and load-carrying bicycles are among the simple but ingenious products being mass-produced under the humanitarian design trend.
An exhibition of more than 30 such devices opened Friday at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, turning the Fifth Avenue mansion's garden into a global village.
On view are shelters, water purifiers and monsoon storage units, solar lighting systems, a solar-dish kitchen, a pit latrine kit and two-wheeled transporters. There's even a hand-powered laptop computer, price $100, on display in one of the huts made of cardboard and plastic.
"Design for the Other 90 Percent," which closes Sept. 23, underlines designs for the needs of the 5 billion people across the globe who have little or no access to the products of wealthy countries.
.....
The designers in the show stress self-help.
"What poor people need most is a way to make money," says Martin J. Fisher of KickStart International, purveyor of a portable press that makes building blocks from soil and lightweight hand pumps to irrigate fields.
Writing in the show's catalog, he explains that KickStart insisted on selling its pumps because "no giveaway program can be sustainable. By selling our pumps, we create a sustainable supply chain."
Paul Polak, whose International Development Enterprises sells drip-irrigation systems in India and Africa, underlined keeping prices low. "Affordability isn't everything; it's the only thing," he writes.
Other products on display include the Big Boda load-carrying bicycle, which can transport 100 pounds of goods to market, a ceramic charcoal stove, a LifeStraw purifier that makes any surface water drinkable, and the Water Storage System that stores 10,000 liters of monsoon rain in a plastic bag inside a hand-dug pit."
"A new breed of industrial designer is confronting Third World poverty with innovative products aimed at encouraging rural entrepreneurs.
......
By creating simple, efficient gadgets for poor countries, the designers aim to provide Africans, Asians and Latin Americans with the means to generate cash on local markets.
Low-cost water purifiers, crop preservers, wireless lighting, drip irrigation and load-carrying bicycles are among the simple but ingenious products being mass-produced under the humanitarian design trend.
An exhibition of more than 30 such devices opened Friday at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, turning the Fifth Avenue mansion's garden into a global village.
On view are shelters, water purifiers and monsoon storage units, solar lighting systems, a solar-dish kitchen, a pit latrine kit and two-wheeled transporters. There's even a hand-powered laptop computer, price $100, on display in one of the huts made of cardboard and plastic.
"Design for the Other 90 Percent," which closes Sept. 23, underlines designs for the needs of the 5 billion people across the globe who have little or no access to the products of wealthy countries.
.....
The designers in the show stress self-help.
"What poor people need most is a way to make money," says Martin J. Fisher of KickStart International, purveyor of a portable press that makes building blocks from soil and lightweight hand pumps to irrigate fields.
Writing in the show's catalog, he explains that KickStart insisted on selling its pumps because "no giveaway program can be sustainable. By selling our pumps, we create a sustainable supply chain."
Paul Polak, whose International Development Enterprises sells drip-irrigation systems in India and Africa, underlined keeping prices low. "Affordability isn't everything; it's the only thing," he writes.
Other products on display include the Big Boda load-carrying bicycle, which can transport 100 pounds of goods to market, a ceramic charcoal stove, a LifeStraw purifier that makes any surface water drinkable, and the Water Storage System that stores 10,000 liters of monsoon rain in a plastic bag inside a hand-dug pit."
Friday, May 04, 2007
Mercury has molten core
From http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May07/margot.mercury.html:
"Chefs have long used a simple trick to differentiate between a raw and hard-boiled egg. By spinning an egg and watching how it behaves when the spin is disrupted, it's easy to tell whether its interior is solid or liquid.
Applying a similar test to the planet Mercury, astronomers have found strong evidence that the planet closest to the sun has a fluid core. The research, led by Jean-Luc Margot, assistant professor of astronomy at Cornell, appears this week on the Web site of the journal Science.
Margot and collaborators conducted a series of observations over five years using a novel technique to detect tiny twists in Mercury's spin as it orbits the sun. The twists, called longitudinal librations, occur as the sun's gravity exerts alternating torques on the planet's slightly asymmetrical shape.
They found that the magnitude of the librations was double what would be expected for a completely solid body -- but explainable for an object whose core is molten and not forced to rotate along with its shell."
"Chefs have long used a simple trick to differentiate between a raw and hard-boiled egg. By spinning an egg and watching how it behaves when the spin is disrupted, it's easy to tell whether its interior is solid or liquid.
Applying a similar test to the planet Mercury, astronomers have found strong evidence that the planet closest to the sun has a fluid core. The research, led by Jean-Luc Margot, assistant professor of astronomy at Cornell, appears this week on the Web site of the journal Science.
Margot and collaborators conducted a series of observations over five years using a novel technique to detect tiny twists in Mercury's spin as it orbits the sun. The twists, called longitudinal librations, occur as the sun's gravity exerts alternating torques on the planet's slightly asymmetrical shape.
They found that the magnitude of the librations was double what would be expected for a completely solid body -- but explainable for an object whose core is molten and not forced to rotate along with its shell."
Implicit bias
After reading items like http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/02/AR2007050202304.html?hpid=topnews and http://www.freakonomics.com/blog/2007/05/02/racial-bias-in-nba-refereeing/, I drifted to
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ and
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/india/selectatest.jsp
and took the Caste IAT. Apparently, I prefer scheduled castes to forward castes.
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/ and
https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/india/selectatest.jsp
and took the Caste IAT. Apparently, I prefer scheduled castes to forward castes.
Boston Globe on Blogging Economists
Boston Globe says:
"A blog debate on free trade between Harvard economists Dani Rodrik and Greg Mankiw attracted thousands of readers to Rodrik's newly launched site, giving non-economists a unique forum to engage some of the biggest names in the business.
.........
Rodrik acknowledged that his blog was more time-consuming than he had anticipated, and he finds himself writing at odd moments, like the middle of the night when he gets up to care for his baby son.
Drezner, who started his blog in 2002, said it helps him showcase his writing skills and gives him a chance to engage the likes of Rodrik and others in discussions that might not have happened outside of cyberspace.
Indeed, it is that sort of public debate between leading economists that seems to be attracting the Web crowds."
Links to these discussions are in the previous post "Some Economics Links 30/4/07".
"A blog debate on free trade between Harvard economists Dani Rodrik and Greg Mankiw attracted thousands of readers to Rodrik's newly launched site, giving non-economists a unique forum to engage some of the biggest names in the business.
.........
Rodrik acknowledged that his blog was more time-consuming than he had anticipated, and he finds himself writing at odd moments, like the middle of the night when he gets up to care for his baby son.
Drezner, who started his blog in 2002, said it helps him showcase his writing skills and gives him a chance to engage the likes of Rodrik and others in discussions that might not have happened outside of cyberspace.
Indeed, it is that sort of public debate between leading economists that seems to be attracting the Web crowds."
Links to these discussions are in the previous post "Some Economics Links 30/4/07".
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
A recent debate at Nanopolitan
Which I have not really followed seems to be throwing up lot of interestng links. I just srarted looking at some of the links in the post http://nanopolitan.blogspot.com/2007/05/tabula-rasa-on-teis-and-their-mission.html. The two from the first comment are very interesting. Just noting for future reference. Must look at the discussion someday.
Two reports on cannabis
Based on the same research, two reports with somewhat different emphasis:
The BBC report http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6606931.stm headlines:
Cannabis 'disrupts brain centre'
Thousands are thought to be dependent on cannabis. Scientists have shown how cannabis may trigger psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia.
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2069736,00.html headlines;
Cannabis chemical curbs psychotic symptoms, study finds.
One of the active chemicals in cannabis inhibits psychotic symptoms in people with schizophrenia, according to a study which compared it with a leading anti-psychotic drug.
More from The Guardian report:
"Most cannabis research focuses on tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient that produces the high. Recent studies have shown THC makes symptoms of schizophrenia worse and triggers the condition in a small proportion of users.
But the new research shows that another chemical, cannabidiol (CBD), has the opposite effect. "One possibility is that there are good guys and bad guys within cannabis," said Markus Leweke, of the University of Cologne. He and his team compared the effects of CBD and a leading anti-psychotic drug, Amisulpride, on 42 patients with schizophrenia. After four weeks the symptoms of both groups had improved, but those treated with CBD suffered fewer side-effects.
"Maybe the cannabidiol ameliorates some of the effects of the THC and maybe it actually might be good for you if you are psychotic," said Robin Murray, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. They reported their research at the second International Cannabis and Mental Health Conference in London.
There is anecdotal evidence that the number of patients in the UK with psychotic symptoms linked to cannabis use is increasing. Professor Murray speculated that this may be linked to the increased THC content of herbal cannabis sold on the street. Cannabis on sale today has roughly doubled in strength in the last decade."
The BBC report http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/6606931.stm headlines:
Cannabis 'disrupts brain centre'
Thousands are thought to be dependent on cannabis. Scientists have shown how cannabis may trigger psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia.
The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/story/0,,2069736,00.html headlines;
Cannabis chemical curbs psychotic symptoms, study finds.
One of the active chemicals in cannabis inhibits psychotic symptoms in people with schizophrenia, according to a study which compared it with a leading anti-psychotic drug.
More from The Guardian report:
"Most cannabis research focuses on tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient that produces the high. Recent studies have shown THC makes symptoms of schizophrenia worse and triggers the condition in a small proportion of users.
But the new research shows that another chemical, cannabidiol (CBD), has the opposite effect. "One possibility is that there are good guys and bad guys within cannabis," said Markus Leweke, of the University of Cologne. He and his team compared the effects of CBD and a leading anti-psychotic drug, Amisulpride, on 42 patients with schizophrenia. After four weeks the symptoms of both groups had improved, but those treated with CBD suffered fewer side-effects.
"Maybe the cannabidiol ameliorates some of the effects of the THC and maybe it actually might be good for you if you are psychotic," said Robin Murray, of the Institute of Psychiatry at King's College London. They reported their research at the second International Cannabis and Mental Health Conference in London.
There is anecdotal evidence that the number of patients in the UK with psychotic symptoms linked to cannabis use is increasing. Professor Murray speculated that this may be linked to the increased THC content of herbal cannabis sold on the street. Cannabis on sale today has roughly doubled in strength in the last decade."
Tuesday, May 01, 2007
What is in a name?
From the article 'Names really make a difference' in The Guardian:
“Parents are being warned to think long and hard when choosing names for their babies as research has discovered that girls who are given very feminine names, such as Anna, Emma or Elizabeth, are less likely to study maths or physics after the age of 16, a remarkable study has found.
Both subjects, which are traditionally seen as predominantly male, are far more popular among girls with names such as Abigail, Lauren and Ashley, which have been judged as less feminine in a linguistic test. The effect is so strong that parents can set twin daughters off on completely different career paths simply by calling them Isabella and Alex, names at either end of the spectrum. A study of 1,000 pairs of sisters in the US found that Alex was twice as likely as her twin to take maths or science at a higher level.”
There may be several local and 'global' reasons for gender proportions in various professions. From an earlier article about the growing gender gap in computer science:
Excerpts:
“Born in contemporary times, free of the male-dominated legacy common to other sciences and engineering, computer science could have become a model for gender equality. In the early 1980s, it had one of the highest proportions of female undergraduates in science and engineering. And yet with remarkable speed, it has become one of the least gender-balanced fields in American society.
In a year of heated debate about why there aren't more women in science, the conversation has focused largely on discrimination, the conflicts between the time demands of the scientific career track and family life, and what Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers famously dubbed ''intrinsic aptitude."
But the history of computer science demonstrates that more elusive cultural factors can have a major impact on a field's ability to attract women.
…….
A Globe review shows that the proportion of women among bachelor's degree recipients in computer science peaked at 37 percent in 1985 and then went on the decline. Women have comprised about 28 percent of computer science bachelor's degree recipients in the last few years, and in the elite confines of research universities, only 17 percent of graduates are women. (The percentage of women among PhD recipients has grown, but still languishes at around 20 percent.)
The argument of many computer scientists is that women who study science or technology, because they are defying social expectations, are in an uncomfortable position to begin with. So they are more likely to be dissuaded from pursuing computer science if they are exposed to an unpleasant environment, bad teaching, and negative stereotypes like the image of the male hacker.
When Tara Espiritu arrived at Tufts, she was the rare young woman planning to become a computer scientist. Her father is a programmer, and she took Advanced Placement computer science in high school. Because she scored well on the AP exam, she started out at Tufts in an upper-level class, in which she was one of a handful of women. The same men always spoke up, often to raise some technical point that meant nothing to Espiritu. She never raised her hand. 'I have not built my own computer, I don't know everything about all the different operating systems," she said. ''These people would just sit in the front of the class and ask these complicated questions. I had no idea what they were talking about."
Now a junior, Espiritu is majoring in engineering psychology, which examines how product design affects human use.
The classroom experience that turned off Espiritu had its roots in the early 1980s.
……..
Many computer science departments imposed GPA requirements or tried to make introductory classes more difficult in order to weed out the multitudes, said Stanford professor Eric Roberts.
Those who were driven out were not the worst students, but those who felt more marginal, Roberts argues. They could have been men or women, but studies have shown that women generally have less previous computing experience and less single-minded passion for technology.
Introductory classes zeroed in on programming and other technical aspects of the field, rather than explaining big ideas or talking about how computing can impact society, many professors say. That approach led to a misconception among students that computer science is the same thing as computer programming.”
Some remedial action:
“When Souvaine joined the Tufts faculty in 1998, she was dismayed that there were few female students in the introductory course. So she and a colleague designed a new freshman seminar focused on problem-solving and real-life applications.” Read on.
“Parents are being warned to think long and hard when choosing names for their babies as research has discovered that girls who are given very feminine names, such as Anna, Emma or Elizabeth, are less likely to study maths or physics after the age of 16, a remarkable study has found.
Both subjects, which are traditionally seen as predominantly male, are far more popular among girls with names such as Abigail, Lauren and Ashley, which have been judged as less feminine in a linguistic test. The effect is so strong that parents can set twin daughters off on completely different career paths simply by calling them Isabella and Alex, names at either end of the spectrum. A study of 1,000 pairs of sisters in the US found that Alex was twice as likely as her twin to take maths or science at a higher level.”
There may be several local and 'global' reasons for gender proportions in various professions. From an earlier article about the growing gender gap in computer science:
Excerpts:
“Born in contemporary times, free of the male-dominated legacy common to other sciences and engineering, computer science could have become a model for gender equality. In the early 1980s, it had one of the highest proportions of female undergraduates in science and engineering. And yet with remarkable speed, it has become one of the least gender-balanced fields in American society.
In a year of heated debate about why there aren't more women in science, the conversation has focused largely on discrimination, the conflicts between the time demands of the scientific career track and family life, and what Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers famously dubbed ''intrinsic aptitude."
But the history of computer science demonstrates that more elusive cultural factors can have a major impact on a field's ability to attract women.
…….
A Globe review shows that the proportion of women among bachelor's degree recipients in computer science peaked at 37 percent in 1985 and then went on the decline. Women have comprised about 28 percent of computer science bachelor's degree recipients in the last few years, and in the elite confines of research universities, only 17 percent of graduates are women. (The percentage of women among PhD recipients has grown, but still languishes at around 20 percent.)
The argument of many computer scientists is that women who study science or technology, because they are defying social expectations, are in an uncomfortable position to begin with. So they are more likely to be dissuaded from pursuing computer science if they are exposed to an unpleasant environment, bad teaching, and negative stereotypes like the image of the male hacker.
When Tara Espiritu arrived at Tufts, she was the rare young woman planning to become a computer scientist. Her father is a programmer, and she took Advanced Placement computer science in high school. Because she scored well on the AP exam, she started out at Tufts in an upper-level class, in which she was one of a handful of women. The same men always spoke up, often to raise some technical point that meant nothing to Espiritu. She never raised her hand. 'I have not built my own computer, I don't know everything about all the different operating systems," she said. ''These people would just sit in the front of the class and ask these complicated questions. I had no idea what they were talking about."
Now a junior, Espiritu is majoring in engineering psychology, which examines how product design affects human use.
The classroom experience that turned off Espiritu had its roots in the early 1980s.
……..
Many computer science departments imposed GPA requirements or tried to make introductory classes more difficult in order to weed out the multitudes, said Stanford professor Eric Roberts.
Those who were driven out were not the worst students, but those who felt more marginal, Roberts argues. They could have been men or women, but studies have shown that women generally have less previous computing experience and less single-minded passion for technology.
Introductory classes zeroed in on programming and other technical aspects of the field, rather than explaining big ideas or talking about how computing can impact society, many professors say. That approach led to a misconception among students that computer science is the same thing as computer programming.”
Some remedial action:
“When Souvaine joined the Tufts faculty in 1998, she was dismayed that there were few female students in the introductory course. So she and a colleague designed a new freshman seminar focused on problem-solving and real-life applications.” Read on.
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