Fun and games

by chanchan222
Video game Everquest 2 provides new way to study human behavior, says U of Minnesota researcher:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

Can researchers study the populations of online video games, like Everquest 2, just as they study traditional communities like Miami, Pittsburgh or Minneapolis? A research study by a University of Minnesota computer scientist and colleagues from across the country shows that online, interactive gaming communities are now so massive that they mirror traditional communities. These findings are creating a new evolution of social science research where researchers are able to study human behavior using the game.

[More]

I wanted to hear this presentation at the AAAS meeting but there were too many other things going on. These games make the tacit relationships of a social network explicit, allowing us to gain a greater understanding. Hope I can read some of the papers they publish on this.

Technorati Tags: Science, Social media

The other terrorist

by kaibara87

The anthrax attacks: the FBI’s incurable disease:
[Via Effect Measure]

When the FBI said that they had conclusive scientific evidence that biodefense scientists Bruce Ivins of the US Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) was the 2001 anthrax attacker, many people asked to see the evidence. Don’t worry, we were told. It will be published for all to see in the peer reviewed scientific literature and then everyone will be convinced that the organisms used in the attacks came from a flask in the laboratory of Dr. Ivins. We’re still waiting for the scientific papers, but some of the evidence is now being presented at scientific meetings. This week papers were presented at the American Society for Microbiology’s Biodefense and Emerging Diseases Research Meeting in Baltimore, and surprise:

[More]

Just a reminder that there were other terrorist attacks that killed Americans. And the evidence that the FBI is allowing us to see is so far not very convincing. Luckily for them, their perpetrator is no longer alive.

Technorati Tags: Politics, Science

Truth will out

Ombudsman: Flaw in Will’s Ice Assertions:
[Via Dot Earth]

Post ombudsman agrees with sea-ice experts on flaw in George Will’s climate claims.

[More]

It is always nice to have an ombudsman who does their job and does not act as a shill for the management. George was misleading but that is generally what columnists do. There really is very little fact-checking done on much of what they write.

But for the management to try and defend this sort of writing by saying he is correct undermines the entire content of the paper. Again, not surprising and part of the reason that man papers are losing readers.

So it is quite nice to see an ombudsman do something that is probably going to make the management unhappy.

Technorati Tags: Environment

Telling stories

This anecdote bothered me at the time but now it appears to be redounding on Governor Jindal. You know, if you have an opportunity to introduce yourself to the nation, it might not be a good idea to tell a story that is misleading at best. It sure sounds like this was all happening right then, not a week later. Here is a transcript:

During Katrina, I visited Sheriff Harry Lee, a Democrat and a good friend of mine. When I walked into his makeshift office I’d never seen him so angry. He was literally yelling into the phone: ‘Well, I’m the Sheriff and if you don’t like it you can come and arrest me!’ I asked him: ‘Sheriff, what’s got you so mad?’ He told me that he had put out a call for volunteers to come with their boats to rescue people who were trapped on their rooftops by the floodwaters. The boats were all lined up ready to go – when some bureaucrat showed up and told them they couldn’t go out on the water unless they had proof of insurance and registration. I told him, ‘Sheriff, that’s ridiculous.’ And before I knew it, he was yelling into the phone: ‘Congressman Jindal is here, and he says you can come and arrest him too!’ Harry just told the boaters to ignore the bureaucrats and start rescuing people.

There is a lesson in this experience: The strength of America is not found in our government. It is found in the compassionate hearts and enterprising spirit of our citizens

It is easy to see how someone might think this was happening concurrently with the emergency. Instead of a week after the incident. But that is not my main concern. It is using this emergency as an example of how bad the Feds are. It i, instead, an example of a tautology.

FEMA acted like an incompetent Federal organization run by a bunch of idiots because it was an incompetent Federal organization run by a bunch of idiots. That is the choice made by the people in charge who believed that there was nothing useful the Federal government could do so why did it matter who was in charge.

FEMA was at one time a very good organization run by people with experience and which was recognized by everyone as one of the big pluses of the Federal government.

Then we got a government led by people who saw no use for anything good coming from the Federal government and they put an incompetent with no experience in charge. Was that a good decision? This is an example that it DOES matter who is in charge.

So using bad decisions made by people who were hired to make bad decisions does not really reflect what can happen. Jindal’s anecdote, even granting that he embellished it a shade, only proves that people with no training, put in charge of emergencies, will screw up badly.

Instead of getting rid of the emergency organization, how about putting people in charge who have some experience and training? A socialist organization like the fire department is not disbanded because a grocery boy was put in charge resulting in downtown burning up. You get rid of the grocery boy, along with the people who put him in charge, and hire someone who knows what they are doing.

There are times that the the strengths of a Federal group, providing the unity of all the states and the power of the Republic, can accomplish things that individual states can not. So put people in charge who can utilize those strengths, not former judges of horses.

Technorati Tags: General, Politics

Is it Time to Mandate Community Service?

by wonker
Is it Time to Mandate Community Service?:
[Via HarvardBusiness.org]
I’ve not been a big fan of forced community service. I do not think a government should coerce its citizens in such a way. Top down citizenship is not a route to civility.

But having some incentives for people to do community service, and for organizations to administer them, has some intriguing possibilities.

Support for youth volunteer programs like City-Year isn’t just about good branding, or Corporate Responsibity 101. Speaking of education in his address to the nation, Barack Obama stumped for the Serve America Act, a bill that would make participants eligible for educational awards. “I know that the price of tuition is higher than ever,” the President said, “which is why, if you are willing to volunteer in your neighborhood or give back to your community or serve your country, we will make sure that you can afford a higher education.”

Frankly, I think Obama isn’t demanding nearly enough. If I were in his shoes, I’d require community service of every U.S. citizen, like a military draft. Short of that, I’d make sure that businesses that support community service organizations and hire their graduates get a gigantic tax break. In one fell swoop, we could address all kinds of problems (providing critical services for veterans, the disabled, the homeless, inner-city school kids, you name it) and teach future leaders who, like my stepson, would otherwise be spending their days updating their Facebook pages.

Giving young people something meaningful to do is a great idea but making it something more than just selfless work is a really nice idea. Finding selfish reasons for people to do the right thing is sometimes more powerful than a guilt trip.

Folks, this isn’t about sending kids to college to learn the finer points of Proust. This is about your future workforce. Companies–and everyone you know–should be stumping for the Serve America Act. If for no other reason, they should support it because service programs teach young volunteers many skills that colleges currently can’t and don’t. Here’s a short list:

1) A Work Ethic. My stepson, who could easily have earned a double Ph.D in Sleep and Responsibility Avoidance, now wakes up at 6:30 to face the music, puts on a uniform and works hard 50 or more hours per week.

2) Fundamental Skills. Today, too many kids are tracked to college programs to which they are not well suited; community services programs act as de facto apprenticeship and internship training programs.

3) Respect for Diversity. Companies cry a lot about the lack of diversity in their management pipelines, because they stay inside the same predictive box. By supporting community service programs that encourage young people from a variety of backgrounds, they can help to educate a new, multifaceted generation of leaders.

4) Empathy. Emotional intelligence is in huge demand these days. Companies need managers that can engage and motivate workers. I will wager that someone who has learned to work with the less fortunate knows more about right-brained, empathic leadership than anyone coming from the average MBA program.

5) Democracy 101. Finally, companies that support community service programs teach kids a lesson in real de Tocqueville-style democracy. As the great philosopher noted, democracy requires its citizens to be fully (mentally and physically) engaged. (For an impassioned “Amen,” read former Senator Gary Hart’s essay, “Restore the Republic”).

I would be much more encouraging of my son doing something along these lines if I really felt he would be learning good skills, etc. while also helping the community. The jobs need to be more than something that we can not afford to pay anyone else to do or are saving costs by having community service programs outsource.

Technorati Tags: Environment, General

Followup on news reporting on science

by nick_russill

In the previous posting I mentioned Eric Berger, who writes that climate change is not worth writing about because it is just so-much doom and gloom – that those scientists just keep boring everyone with the climate models, even if they are credible; that the populace is glassy-eyed reading about the end of the world.

Then why not write about how individuals can take control of their own approaches to the causes? How we do not need to wait for governments to decide for us? How a bottom-up approach can change it all? How about really educating the readers about the things that they can really have an impact on?

I have written about just a few of the scientists who are talking about this, who are not doom and gloom. There is a lot of really interesting science being done to help find solutions to this problem, to reduce our use of fossil fuels, to keep the doom from happening.

They remain excited and confidant that we can find a solution.

How about Daniel Nocera, whose lab has discovered a new catalyst for splitting water into oxygen and hydrogen, perhaps making it possible for each of us to not only produce all the electricity to run our homes but also to power our cars? All without having to get any power at all from the grids.

How about Amory Lovins, who is working on an approach that could use market-driven approaches to solving our dependency on oil, without the need for any government action?

How about devices to remove water from the air? How about new approaches to carbon sequestration? How about dropping prices of photovoltaics? How about individual wind turbines on each house? How about geoengineering?

A creative writer could find all sorts of things to write about that would engage their readers on this topic. Compare the comments on Eric’s post with these from Andrew Revkin’s at the NYT.

It seems to me that even though Andy may have stepped in something with his false comparison of Gore and Will, the conversation is at a much more informed level. Andy engages with his readers and really works to explain things in a way that is not divisive. He actually adds his own comments to help the conversation along.

He provides context so that a reader con actually understand. To my mind, a science reporter is more than just a reporter that writes about science. It is more than the standard he said-they said form of journalism.

They have to have a keen understanding of the scientific method and how science is done. They have to be able to add some interpretation to the story, to act as a guide for the reader. They have to write about the scientist as much as the science.

It has been my experience that most people really enjoy a good science story. People are really curious about the world around them. So if the readers get glassy-eyed about some science, it is more a reflection on the writer than on the topic.

Andy is an example of someone who can write about a topic like climate change, all the while engaging both scientists and lay people in a conversation on the topic.

Read his article about the current Will article and its obfuscations. Andy may not always get everything ‘right’ but he is busily educating his audience with facts, helping them become informed so that they can be part of a solution, rather than just feeling helpless. They can be part of the conversation that works to find solutions to problems, rather than just complain.

Or for a more relevant post to Eric’s writings, Andy discusses the hype of climate change in a very engaging way which leads to a much more informed conversation in his comments.

In this case, there is a conversation that actually educates as it informs. That is why I read him even when I might disagree with his viewpoint.

Technorati Tags: Education, Science

Why Eric Berger writes about climate change

by Hamed Saber
The media underplays climate change:
[Via SciGuy]

So says a British communications professor: Dr Neil Gavin, from the School of Politics and Communication Studies, believes the way the media handles issues like climate change shapes the public’s perception of its importance. Limited coverage is unlikely to convince…

[More]

My mother sent me a heads-up about this post by Eric. I usually like what Eric writes but this particular post reveals something that I have suspected for a long time.

The original quotes are from a British study indicating that the news media is not writing about climate change, not giving it the high profile it needs to effect changes in public perception.

Another organization, KSJ, then is quoted as saying that it is not news when another research group comes out with another study showing once again that climate change is bad. Readers just get glassy-eyed reading the same thing over and over.

Eric then follows that quote with this:

I agree with the KSJ, new dire warnings of climate change are not news. That ground has already been mined by Jim Hansen, Al Gore, Kevin Trenberth, Jim Lovelock and others who have described the planet in high peril. When you’ve already said the world is doomed, it’s hard to trump that.

In other words, it is no longer “news” that the planet is in serious jeopardy because of climate change, especially when that information comes from computer models.

It is very difficult for me to envision the science of climate change rising back up the media agenda unless something really dramatic happens, like the Arctic sea ice disappearing altogether this summer; or definitive evidence that Antarctica is rapidly melting.

What is news, from this reporter’s point of view, is credible information about the regional impacts of climate change (still largely an unknown), the DC/international policy debate that’s really heating up in advance of the Copenhagen meeting, and contrarian stories that suggest the IPCC’s conclusions might, in some senses, be wrong.

Interestingly, the original British quote mentions nothing about doom and gloom. It simply says that the total number of articles written about climate change in 3 years is not as much as is written in a single month on health issues. Apparently to writers like Eric, ANY article about climate change is depressing.

Eric gave us the reasons he writes about climate change – all the previous articles have only been doom and gloom; the only articles worth writing in the future will be ones that deal with local effects not global (even though local effects, weather, are a totally different thing than climate, which is global.) big fisted governmental debates (clash of the giants) or contrarian views.

Actually educating the public is not even part of the equation. And that is made obvious by the comments, most of which indicate a lack of understanding of the subject. Many commenters use almost exactly the same sorts of tactics that creationists use – misrepresentation of facts, cherry-picking of data, continually using already debunked arguments.

Most of the science reporters that I know actually want to help educate their readers, to tell them about how science will impact their lives, to help create the sense of wonder that makes science so important. So many decisions we, and our proxy politicians, have to make today require some understanding of science. These reporters fulfill a valuable role in helping the readers understand.

I would say that Eric has not done his job of providing for an educated populace, especially on this topic. The comments reveal that. But then he does not include educating the readers as a reason for writing about climate change. It appears that his job, at least in this area, is to help foster a divisive topic to enable controversy, presumably to get lots of eyeballs and to help sell ads.

Seldom does a writer come right out and so blatantly explain the business of reporting.

Technorati Tags: Science

Never a good headline

Psoriasis Drug Linked to Deaths From Progressive Multifocal Leukoencephalopathy:
[Via Medscape Infectious Diseases Headlines]
Three deaths from progressive multifocal leukoencephalopathy (PML) and a possible fourth case have been reported in patients taking the immunosuppressant drug efalizumab (Raptiva, Genentech, Inc), according to a public health advisory issued today by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

According to the FDA, all 4 patients had been taking efalizumab for at least 3 years and had taken no other immunosuppressant drugs.

[More]

PML is like multiple sclerosis but progresses much faster. While it can happen in immuno-compromised patients, these sorts of black-box warnings could prevent the drug and others in the same class, from getting wider usage in other types of psoriasis.

It still is a small number of patients and they had been taking it for quite some time. It will be interesting to see if any other things were involved.

Technorati Tags: Health

We are number 2

Bear Market Comparisons, 1929-2009:
[Via The Big Picture]

The chart below is a comparison of the current market to all previous bear markets – including Friday’s new low on the Dow.

click for bigger chart

by JP Koning
http://www.financialgraphart.com/

One of the big changes between this horrible market and previous ones is the very rapid visualization of some very interesting data. Seeing is believing and there are so many eyes looking at the information that some really nice ways of presenting it can be seen.

Technorati Tags: Economy

Just in case you read this in a newspaper

by SuperFantastic
Vitamin D Levels May Be Inversely Linked With Recent Upper Respiratory Tract Infection:
[Via Medscape Infectious Diseases Headlines]

Serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] levels are inversely associated with recent upper respiratory tract infection (URTI), particularly in those with respiratory tract diseases, according to the results of a secondary analysis of the Third National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey reported in the February 23 issue of the Archives of Internal Medicine.

“Recent studies suggest a role for vitamin D in innate immunity, including the prevention of respiratory tract infections (RTIs),” write Adit A. Ginde, MD, MPH, from University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine in Aurora, and colleagues. “We hypothesize that serum…25(OH)D levels are inversely associated with self-reported recent…URTI.”

[More]

This looks really interesting but anyone who reads science publications realize two things in these sorts of studies – how many people were involved and what was the cause?

Small studies can allow for interesting observations but they can not usually separate cause from effect. Did these people have more upper respiratory tract infections because their vitamin D levels were low or were their vitamin D levels low because of the upper respiratory tract infection. The PR itself states:

Limitations of this study include inability to control for all potential confounders or to make causal inference, primary outcome of recent URTI based on self-report, and serum samples collected at only 1 point in time.

I really wished all PR provided this sort of information. You can bet that the major media will forget it easily and we may see articles stating that low vitamin D levels reult in infections.

Technorati Tags: Health, Science

Back to work

Well, I spent a lot of my time the last week writing up my notes on the AAAS meeting at my other blog, in preparation for Idea Club last night. Excuse all the poor grammar and misspellings. I did not do a lot of editing so I missed some.

Idea Club went very well. It was well attended and we had some great discussions. So much so that we were not able to get to some topics, including turning knowledge into action and how to create sustainable culture. We will discuss these at the next one on March 23.

Technorati Tags: Science, Sustainability

Beauty and the sexes

by Per Ola Wiberg (Powi)
Beauty and the Brain: Men and Women Process Art in Different Ways:
[Via Discover Magazine | RSS]

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and whether that beholding eye belongs to a man or a woman may determine how beauty is processed and understood in the brain, according to a small, preliminary study. Researchers asked 10 men and 10 women to decide which paintings and photographs they found beautiful, while brain scans revealed which parts of their brains were active while they examined each image. The results suggested that while both sexes use parts of the brain associated with spacial awareness to process beauty, men use an area associated with big-picture thinking, while women also use a region linked to local details.

[More]

Well, it is a small group and since the paper is not Open, I can not see just how big the differences really were. But taken at face value, they do report a difference between how men and women process art.

I am a little leery of taking this result to the lengths that the authors have. Here is how the abstract describes the conclusions:

It is known that the dorsal visual processing stream, which encompasses the superior parietal areas, has been significantly modified throughout human evolution. We posit that the observed gender-related differences are the result of evolutionary processes that occurred after the splitting of the human and chimpanzee lineages. In view of previous results on gender differences with respect to the neural correlates of coordinate and categorical spatial strategies, we infer that the different strategies used by men and women in assessing aesthetic preference may reflect differences in the strategies associated with the division of labor between our male and female hunter-gatherer hominin ancestors.

It seems like an awful small study to make conclusions all the way back to ’splitting of the human and chimpanzee lineages.’ Why does this have to be a hardwired difference? Could different cultures result in different results? Since different cultures see things differently, does ‘beauty’ cause the same results in different cultures?

I guess I’ll have to do some reading.

It is an interesting observation, but I would like to see a lot more data before I start ascribing evolutionary roles for something as behaviorally mutable as beauty.

Technorati Tags: Science

My nomination for Best Picture

US Existing House Price / Median Family Income:
[Via The Big Picture]

One last chart showing the ratio of Home Prices and Median Income:

ISI via Comstock Funds

>

Previously:
Homes: Still Too Pricey to Stabilize (February 18th 2008)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/02/homes-still-too-pricey-to-stabilize/

This is a great representation of what happened to the housing market, starting in the late 90s. Still another 20% or so to get back to normal. It is pretty obvious there was a bubble, needed because the Internet bubble had burst and those guys on Wall Street needed something else to hype.

In this case, it was all the mortgage-backed derivatives that allowed them to go wild. Credit default swaps removed any risk and they were off to the races.

Technorati Tags: Economy

Almost doubleplusgood

Major Corrections:
[Via The Big Picture]

The Dow put in its record high of 14,164.53 back on October 9, 2007, and on February 19, closed at 7,465.95 – down 47.3% from its peak made 499 calendar days ago.

For some perspective on the magnitude of the current bear market, today’s chart compares the current, 499 calendar day old Dow correction to that of all other Dow corrections, 499 calendar days after their respective peak (and that were still ongoing).

Today’s chart illustrates that, at this stage, the current correction has been by far the most severe correction in the post-World War II era and the second most severe correction since 1900. The only correction that was down more at this stage was the correction that began in 1929.

via Chart of the Day

We are number 2. It will get worse before it gets better. All one has to do is look at the continuing slide of housing prices. They still need to fall another 20% or so to even get close to historical averages.

Technorati Tags: Economy

N and P in the water

by jurvetson
Researchers call for nitrogen and phosphorus reductions to combat eutrophication in aquatic systems:
[Via Eureka! Science News - Popular science news]

An international group of scientists is renewing calls for policymakers to reduce both nitrogen and phosphorus when attempting to alleviate eutrophication – or nutrient pollution problems – in fresh and coastal waters. In the February 20 edition of Science, the researchers argue that dual-nutrient reduction strategies are likely to be more successful due to complex interactions between nitrogen and phosphorus in fresh and coastal water ecosystems.

read more

Eutrophication was discussed last week at the AAAS meeting. Jeremy Jackson called it the Rise of Slime.What is interesting is that dealing with both is better than either separately.

Reducing phosphate levels has been shown to be important because P was the limiting step in eutrophication, at least in lakes. It appears that ocean waters are different and both P and N are important.

Essentially, reducing P in lakes and rives means that more nitrogen gets to the seas where it can play a large role in algal blooms. Thus in many cases both N and P use in fertilizer run off need to be examined.

This will be a complex problem to fix.

Technorati Tags: Environment, Sustainability