Jatropha-fuelled flight

From Jatropha-fuelled plane touches down after successful test flight :
"An Air New Zealand jumbo jet left Auckland just before midnight GMT with a 50-50 mix of jet fuel and oil from jatropha trees in one of its four engines. The two-hour test flight, which took the Boeing 747 over the Hauraki Gulf, showed that the jatropha biofuel was suitable for use in airplanes without the need for any modifications of the engines. It forms part of the airline's plan to source 10% of its fuel from sustainable sources by 2013.
....
Air New Zealand's biofuel was made from jatropha nuts, which are up to 40% oil, harvested from trees grown on marginal land in India, Mozambique, Malawi and Tanzania. The fuel was pre-tested to show that it was suitable for airplanes, freezing at -47C and burning at 38C.
....
"One of the reasons we chose algae and jatropha is that both are not food sources and can be grown in arid regions and virtually anywhere," said Leah Rayne, managing director of global affairs at Continental. "So they do not compete with food crops for water.""

After seeing Gaza pictures

of children, I am reminded of these lines from Arudra
"చిట్టీ పొట్టీ వరాల మూట గుమ్మడిపండు గో గి పూవు
నీకూ నాకూ ఏవేళైనా ఎడబాటే లేదమ్మా
ఏమంటావే బొమ్మా
..........
ఊసులన్నీ నీతోనే ఆశలన్నీ నీ మీదే
నీవే దగ్గర లేకపొతే ఏమోతానోనమ్మా
నే నేమౌతానే బొమ్మా "

Native Place

Mark Tully in Rooting for Home from the series My Native Placein Outlook:
"But from my earliest childhood, although I was living in Calcutta, I was left under no illusions about where I ought to locate my native place. I was consistently reminded by my European nanny that I was a little English boy. She had been employed to ensure I didn’t come under the influence of "the servants".
.....
But when I returned to India at the age of 30, more by chance than by intention, I soon discovered that my native place was in doubt. India came back from my subconscious with a bang. The very first day I returned, after being away for 20 of the most influential years of my life, I had a startling experience. When I smelt the smoke from malis cooking their lunch in the garden of my Delhi hotel, the whole of my childhood charged through my mind like a train rushing through a station at full speed. From that day I felt, like Hardy and Nehru, that my native place, the place I was born, was at least as important as any place I might have lived thereafter."
For me, it is also the sounds of Telugu which bring a rush of such memories.

Start growing your own food

From Food needs 'fundamental rethink' :
"Mr Blanc warned that food prices were likely to continue to rise in the future, which was likely to prompt more people to start growing their own food."
I have been haphazardly trying to do this more out of enthusiam for gardening than anything else. One problem is by the time you grow them, they seem cheaper in the market. Other is lack of expertise; the crops seem to depend more on the weather than any thing I do. Thirdly they need constant attention and water. Water is getting scarce and because they need almost daily attention, one cannot leave home for extended periods. But there are some successes so far. I have several varieties of chillies and they seem to go on for a few years. Some of the leafy vegetables loke silverbeet, spinach are easy to grow and do not need much attention. Many can be grown in the pots too and one can keep changing the position of the pots to suit their growth. One problem is glut. Possibly one has to make arrangements with neighbours or friends to share. Otherwise, it seems to be silverbeet every day for the present, the birds are getting the tomatoes.

Do policies matter?

From the summary of a recent paper in the post It's the policies that matter?:
"Since their property rights and legal systems are virtually identical, recent theories of development cannot explain the divergence between Barbados and Jamaica. Differences in macroeconomic policy choices, not differences in institutions, account for the heterogeneous growth experiences of these two Caribbean nations."

Favourite Story of 2008?

Yves Smith has an open thread Favorite Story of 2008.
3quarksdaily links to 50 Things We Know Now (We Didn't Know This Time Last Year): 2008 Edition.
One of the comments in the first post links to Top 100 Stories of 2008 from Discover magazine.
An interesting remark that I came across today. From an economist's response to CAN SCIENCE HELP SOLVE THE ECONOMIC CRISIS?:
"Imagine that fires were devastating the world's forests and you came across this manifesto:

The forest crisis has to be stabilized immediately. This has to be carried out pragmatically, without undue ideology, and without reliance on the failed ideas and assumptions that led to the crisis. Complexity science can help here. For example, it is wrong to speak of "restoring the forests to equilibrium," because forests have never been in equilibrium. We are way ahead if we speak of "restoring forests to a stable, self-organizing critical state."

Would this convince you that only complexity science can prevent forest fires?

With one tweak, this is the first paragraph from the pull-quote for this piece. All I've done is change "market" to "forest." "

My favourite story (which developed over several years but I came to know about it this year)Can kids teach themselves?

Lekhini

Interview with Veeven of Lekhini fame తెలుగురత్నం వీవెన్‌ తో ముఖాముఖి (via Vizag Daily). It is a Telugu script generator which is making it possible to write in Telugu even for people like me who did not write Telugu for nearly forty years. Instructions on YouTube Telugu Lekhini. This may be more useful for the development of Telugu than many of the govt. commisions.

David Brin on net effects

One of the smarter guys out there in Is the Web helping us evolve?:
"So, is the Google era empowering us to be better, smarter, more agile thinkers? Or devolving us into distracted, manic scatterbrains? Is technology-improved discourse going to turn us all into avid, participatory problem solvers? Or will the Web's centrifugal effects spin us all into little islands of shared conviction -- midget Nuremberg rallies -- where facts become irrelevant and any opinion can be a memic god?

Alas, both sides are right."
As they say, read the whole piece.

Some articles on microfinance

India Development Blog has links and discussion about several articles on microfinance and has a post about CMF E-library and recommended articles. There are a couple of posts on a readable overall view by Tim HarfodThe battle for the soul of microfinance. One excerpt from Tim Harford's article:
"Microfinance is a way of harnessing market forces to bring basic financial services to the poor, but many microfinance institutions do much more than that. Using donor funds or reinvested profits, coupled with their reach into remote villages, they provide subsidised education, healthcare and business advice. There is a risk that commercial logic could threaten these subsidised services by repelling donors or poaching the best customers. There is also the risk that competition misfires, leaving the poor paying higher interest rates, rather than lower ones."
He also that there is lack of serious research in to what works and lack of tranparency about interest rates. However even APRs (annual percentage rates) as high as 200 perecent proved successful with some classes of customers. There is much more in the article. In another post Microfinance Must Reads there is link to a surveyHow Do Microfinance Clients Understand Their Loans?. Finally, the postOne Argument Against Microfinance discusses a follow up to Tim Harford's article by another economics professor Milford BatemanMicrofinance’s ‘iron law’ – local economies reduced to poverty which concludes "Economics 101 shows conclusively how critical savings are to development, but only if intermediated into growth- and productivity-enhancing projects. If it all goes into rickshaws, kiosks, 30 chicken farms, traders, and so on, then that country simply will not develop and sustainably reduce poverty." The post in 'India Development Blog' has also a response from Prfessor Bateman.
P.S. More discussion of bateman's remarks in The Problem With Microfinanceby Niranjan Rajadhyaksha and Lessons from Micro-finance II by Glulzar Natarajan.

A terrific project

says Jo about Inventor's 2020 vision: to help 1bn of the world's poorest see better:
"Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device's tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.

The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.
....
For the Indian project he has joined forces with Mehmood Khan, a businessman whose family trust runs a humanitarian programme based in 500 villages in the northern state of Haryana, from where he originates.

There will be no shortage of takers in the region, Khan says. "One million in one year is straightaway peanuts for me. In the districts where we are working, one district alone will have half a million people [who need the technology]." Khan's day job is as Global Leader of Innovation for Unilever, and though his employer will have no direct connection with the scheme, having contact with 150m consumers a day, as he points out, means he is used to dealing with large numbers.

But surely finding funding on this scale will be impossible? "I share a vision with Josh," says Khan. "A thing like this, once it works, you create awareness, you enrol governments and the UN, and the model becomes scaleable. People begin to believe." And from a business point of view, he notes wryly, when poor people become more economically developed they also become potential customers."
Wikipedia article on Joshua Silverandadaptive-eyecare site/.

Oportunidades

Gulzar Natarajan summarizes in Oportunidades and the role of CCTs Tina Rosenberg's NYT article A Payoff Out of Poverty?. From Natarajan's summary:
"The program gives the poor cash, but unlike traditional welfare programs, it conditions the receipt of that cash on activities designed to break the culture of poverty and keep the poor from transmitting that culture to their children. Its success has catapulted Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) schemes to the forefront of poverty fighting strategies throughout the world.

Oportunidades focuses on providing cash grant to parents for sending children to school (and maintaining good attendance); basic food grant if children and ante-natal women attend regular health checkups, take nutrition supplements, besides attending a monthly workshop on a health topic, like purifying drinking water. The cash payments are made to the women, ... It forces the poor to imbibe many of the structural and behavioural traits that the middle class takes for granted. It seeks to offer the "new paternalism" of the State in the form of "tough love", instead of unconditional love of the old nanny state. It enforces outcomes and dispenses off with targets and impersonal subsidies. "
The original article says that "At least 30 countries have now adopted Oportunidades, most of them in Latin America, but not all: countries now using or experimenting with some form of conditional payments include Turkey, Cambodia and Bangladesh. Last year, officials from Indonesia, South Africa, Ethiopia and China contacted or visited Mexico to investigate. Perhaps the most startling iteration is in New York City. Opportunity NYC, a pilot program begun last year after Mayor Michael Bloomberg visited Mexico, will test whether the Oportunidades model can help the New York neighborhoods where poverty is passed down from parent to child."

Pedda cheruvu

A while ago, I posted about Dr. Prakasam Tata's efforts of water purification with Pedda cheruvu near Vizianagaram. The link to his article 'Dreaming in color' is no longer working but the article can be found in found in other places, for example,
here, on pages 6 onwards and and a few other places by googling 'Dreaming in Color- Dr. Prakasam Tata'.A felicitation for Dr. Tatarao and views of pedda cheruvu here.

Popularity of Bollywood outside India

I have not seen many Bollywood movies after the fifties. Around 1988, I went to buy a second hand sofa from an old Greek lady who migrated to Melbourne and she started talking about Nargis and Raj Kapoor. Slowly, it became clear that Bollywood movies have been popular in many countries ouside India. It was not clear to me why since I did not like the few I saw that were made after the fifties. Amitav Ghosh met many Egptians who were familiar with Hindi movies and songs around 1980 and wonders whether this is due to non aligned movement.In Confessions Of A Xenophile he says "But it needs to be acknowledged here that neither I nor any of the other elements of India that were present in rural Beheira – the pumps and the Hindi film songs – would have been able to find a place there if not for the existence of the Non-aligned Movement." While not taking any thing away from the general thrust of Ghosh's essay, popularity of Bollywood films and songs in many countries seem to be due to other reasons. Brian Larkin says in Bollywood Comes To Nigeria "Ever since Lebanese distributors began importing Indian movies in the 1950s, though, Hausa viewers have recognized the strong visual, social and even political similarities between the two cultures. By the early 1960s, when television was first introduced, Hausa fans were already demanding (over British objections) that Indian movies be shown on TV." Apparently, this medium was first introduced by the British in Nigeria for 'propoganda' purposes : to show the supriority of their various projects for progress and thus partly justifying their rule. The introduction by Lebanese traders was a commercial move and Larkin sees the popularity of Bollywood as an unintended consequence which opened up space for many younger Husa. The corresponding transformations are described in much detail and depth in his recent book 'Signal and Noise'. Some pages of the book are available here. In Itineraries of Indian Cinema: African Videos,Bollywood and Global Media Larkin discusses the popularity of Bollywood in other countries (but mainly in Nigeria), but the paper was written in 2003 and the picture might have changed. I wonder whether one approach toPakistan is through films, cricket and more contacts.

Gojjangi

I finally acquired from an internet acquintance a copy of 'Saraswatalokam'( సారస్వతా లోకము) by Rallapalli Ananthakrishna Sarma, published by Triveni Publications in 1966. In the very first article 'Rayalanati rasikata'(రాయలనాటి రసికత) Rallapalli mentions 'gojjangi neeru' and 'gojjangi' on pages 6 and 12, (pages 4,5 are missing in the copy). On page 12, he says that it is not known what these flowers are and that some speculate that these may be roses. A quick google search shows that this may be 'mogali poovu' ketak:

"BOTANICAL NAME PANDANUS ODOROTISSIMUS

FAMILY PANDANACEAE
SUBSTITUTE PANDANUS TECTORIUS
OTHER NAMES
• SANSKRIT • Ketak, Suchipushp, Ketaki
• HINDI • Kevda, Kewra
• BENGALI • Ketaki, Keya
• ENGLISH • Screw pine
• MALYALAM • Kaida-taddi, Pukkaita
• KANNADA • Kaida, Katthaale, Kedage, Kedige, Ketike, Mandige, Thaale, Kadige
• MARATHI • Kaeoda, Kaeora, Kaethaki, Kaevada, Paandar kaevda
• TAMIL • Thazhai, Tazhai
• TELGU • Gaajangi, Gedaji, Gedangimogali, Gojjangi, Kaethaki, Mogli chettu, Mugali"
From Ketaki’ — a cursed but useful flower by H.C. Gera:
"The male fluorscence's are valued for the fragrance emitted by the tender white spates covering the flowers. Valuable attar is obtained from them. The flowers are also used for hair decoration. The commercial use of this plant is mainly centered mostly around Kollapali, Meghra and Agrraran in Ganjam district of Orissa. Flowers are used for extraction of "kweda attar" and "kewra water" and kewda oil. It is estimated that there are 300 to 400 thousands trees in Ganjam district.

"Kewda attar" is one of the most popular perfumes extracted and used in India since ancient times. It blends well with almost all types of fancy perfumes and is used for scenting clothes, bouquets, lotions, cosmetics, soaps, hair oils, tobacco and agarbati. Kewda water is used for flavouring various foods, sweets syrups and soft drinks. The use of kewda water is very common on festival occasion, weddings and other social functions in North India."
Brown's dictionary says that gojjangi is the female version of ketaki but whether this distinction in names is maintained is not clear.
The google search lso led to some pleasant surprises:
kshetryya padaalu and nice Hindi songs like this and thenthis. These last ones may be due to an advertisement on the pages.

Can one trust proofs by mathematicians?

"Gonthier believes that ordinary mathematicians may start formally verifying their proofs within the decade" according to Julie Rehmeyer in How to (really) trust a mathematical proof .
I have given several false proofs myself. Here is a nice article by my guru John Stallings HOW NOT TO PROVE THE POINCARE CONJECTURE . Excerpts:
"I have committed the sin of falsely proving Poincare's Conjecture. But that was in another country; and besides, until now no one has known about it. Now, in hope of deterring others from making similar mistakes, I shall describe my mistaken proof....

There are two points about this incorrect proof worthy of note.

The first is that when we try to prove Theorem 0 in dimension two, we always run up against the problem of trying to simplify, by some geometric trick, the situation. But any little homotopy that would simplify the picture always in fact, greatly complicates it. This phenomenon has characterized every attempt that I have made or heard of to prove Poincare's Conjecture. This is the place to look for flaws in any asserted "proof".
The second point is that I was unable to find flaws in my 'proof" for quite a while, even though the error is very obvious. It was a psychological problem, a blindness, an excitement, an inhibition of reasoning by an underlying fear of being wrong. Techniques leading to the abandonment of such inhibitions should be
cultivated by every honest mathematician."
The first two sentences in the quote are a take off on lines from "The Jew of Malta" by Christopher Marlowe quoted by T.S. Eliot. Stallings originally wanted to be a poet but took some aptitude tests in school which suggested that he would do well in mathematics or physics.

Contagious research

From The happiness virus :
"It’s too good an idea to resist: Happiness is contagious. A new study published online Dec. 4 in the British Medical Journal shows it.

Maybe you’d be more inclined to resist these ideas, though: Headaches are contagious. Acne is contagious. Height is contagious.

According to another study published the same day in the same journal, by Ethan Cohen-Cole of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston and Jason Fletcher of Yale University, these latter claims are nearly as likely as the first. The researchers “proved” them using the same methodology."

Steven Shapin on today's scientists

From a long and thoughtful essay Who are the scientists of today? Where do they work? What motivates them? As science increasingly shapes our cultural moment, the identity of its practitioners is also evolving by Steven Shapin, some excerpts:
"The transformation of science from a calling to a job happened largely during the course of the past century.
....
Science is now widely understood as an engine of economic growth, so it is remarkable that there are still many who associate the scientific life with institutions of higher education conceived on the model of the Ivory Tower. This was not the case in the early part of the previous century, nor is it the case now. Today almost two-thirds of all American science and engineering degree-holders are working either in the forprofit sector or are self-employed; only 9 percent work for colleges or universities. Even pure science has long had a significant presence outside academia.
....
The dissolution of boundaries between academia and industry has given enormous strength to modern American science: resources to do what scientists want to do, time (substantially freed from academic teaching and administration) to do it, and the reputation that comes from aligning science with the concrete goods — better communications, better health, more energy-efficient products, and enhanced national security —  so evidently valued by citizens who may have little or no concern for the pursuit of knowledge "for its own sake." But two problems seem to flow from this success story.........
The second problem concerns the integrity associated with the scientific life and the authority of scientists. The increasing alignment of science with commercial institutions carries a risk: the loss in the public mind of the idea of an independent scientific voice — not truth speaking to power but power shaping what counts as truth. Thus, we have the Bush administration's attempt to muzzle one of its leading climate scientists, reports of routine political interference in the scientific work of the Environmental Protection Agency, and Big Pharma ghostwriting papers supporting the efficacy of new drugs. Yet the enfolding of science into institutions of wealth generation and power projection makes independence that much harder to recognize and to acknowledge. And when scientific knowledge becomes patentable property, a state secret, or a plaything of political ideology, then science loses its independence from civic institutions. We're still a long way from the general "corruption" of science —  witness the moral outrage attending stories about commercial or political incursions into science. But if it came to pass that these associations count as normal, then the scientific voice would no longer sound independent. The material utility of science that is a substantial basis for its success would then undermine itself. To be a modern scientist is to be an employee, but the job must have a degree of autonomy or scientists will be of no use — to the institutions that engage their services or to the public.
..........
As we enter the 21st century, new institutional configurations for doing science emerge, together with new scientific agendas and new conceptions of what it is to be a scientist. Some participants and observers of the scene celebrate these changes; others are seriously worried about them. We can be sure of only one thing: The identity of the modern scientist is, in every possible sense, a work in progress."

From Telugu blogs-2

I just started growing a type of beans common in A.P. Just in time there is a recipe from a Telugu blog Nala Bheema Pakam సిక్కుడుకాయ కూర ఇదానంబెట్టిదనగా . The recipe may be from a different region than the one I come from; still trying to find what వెళ్లి రెబ్బలు means.

Even Sehwag needs some space

After India's remarkable cricket win over in Chennai(two of several reports:'People are enjoying cricket again' - Tendulkar and England's critics should hold their ire and hail India's triumph in a Test to celebrate ), Man of the Match, Verender Sehwag in an interview Just cannot keep Sehwag down :
"In this hour of glory, Sehwag pays glowing tribute to coach Gary Kirsten. “He is one of the best I have seen. He has supported me hugely and helped me raise my self-belief.

He helped me change my mindset. He told me he can’t teach me how to bat but can assure me my place in the side. He gave me space to shine and made sure that I did not feel insecure. Thanks Gary,” acknowledges Sehwag."
P.S. A collection of articles on the Sehwag special:Sehwag changes the course. A couple of previous posts on Sehwag :hereand here.

Population movements and inequality

Two papers in VoxEU by Louis Putterman and David N. Weil. The first Post-Columbian population movements and the roots of world inequality has abstract:
"This column introduces a five century migration matrix indicating the 1500 countries of residence of ancestors of each country’s current population. The power of regional origins is illustrated by the fact that 44% of the variance in 2000 per capita GDPs is accounted for by the share of the population’s ancestors that lived in Europe in 1500."

The second Ancestors and incomes: More on the roots of world inequality has abstract:
"Inequality within countries is explained by the past history of populations more than by ethno-linguistic differences and linguistic distance. This column suggests what matters is the history of the people who live in a country today, more than the history of the country itself."