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aamukherjee A Slice of Entropie -
alchymista Alchymista -
crownedrose Fading Like A Dead Star -
expose-the-light Quarks to Quasars -
ikenbot CWL -
abluegirl A Blue Girl -
perscientiamlibertas A Matter of the Most Pleasant Fraternal Confidence
Three Radical New Brain-Mapping Tools Obama’s Plan Could Deliver
The Obama administration wants to make a huge investment in mapping the human brain, according to The New York Times. How can they get the most bang for their buck? We have details on three future technologies that are being eyed by the scientists behind the bold proposal.
The U.S. already has one big brain-mapping effort under way, the Human Connectome Project, which aims to map the connections between regions of the human brain. The new project would go beyond this static depiction and map the activity of individual neurons in real time.
“All the really interesting features of the brain — language, perception, cognition, the mind — emerge from collections of neurons interacting with each other in ways we don’t understand,” said neuroscientist John Donoghue of Brown University, one of the architects of the proposed project. It’s those interactions, the electrochemical blips coursing through networks of interconnected neurons, that the new Brain Activity Map project aims to capture.
The Connectome project focuses mostly on static images of the brain. Although it does include some measures of brain activity, the fMRI scans it will use provide a view that’s something like that of a city seen from an airplane window. What the scientists behind the proposed Brain Activity Map want instead are detailed street maps with real-time traffic info. Ideally, they want to record every blip of every neuron in a network of thousands, or even millions.
The scientists hope they’ll get as much as $3 billion over the next decade to build a new set of dream tools for studying how the human brain works when it’s healthy and what goes wrong in disorders like epilepsy and Alzheimer’s disease. Here are three ideas they’ve discussed, all in various stages of development.
“Sure, they sound far-fetched,” Donoghue said. “But we’re on the cusp of being able to do them.”
ikenbotBill Moyers asks Yale climate scientist Anthony Leiserowitz, “What would you say to Obama about climate change?” Leiserowitz’s response is interesting. It’s clear and friendly. Hopeful and optimistic.
It’s also pure fantasy.
Why is Obama the right guy to ask? He’s skipped the last three climate conventions. He’s eliminated climate change from his agenda, except during campaign speeches.
From an environmentalist’s point of view, Obama has an abysmal track record on the environment. Countless enviro-poltical watchers are appalled by his anti-science, anti-environment policies. For a sampling, see HuffPo, LATimes, Minnesota Public Radio, Legal Planet,and even the Jewish Policy Center.
I commend Leiserowitz. But I fear Obama doesn’t have the guts, nor political pressure to act.
Thoughts?
Via Upworthy
At times it feels and looks like Obama’s sense of care for the environment is well.. non existent. Just check the policies if you doubt that. If you want to stay up to date with all things climate adaptation with a reasonable tone do check out climateadaptation for more.
Obama needs to face climate change, reject Keystone pipeline
Climate activist Bill McKibben says now is the time for the administration to stand up to the richest industry on Earth.
Open Letter to the President: Physics Education
“We should be 100% committed to the appreciation and dissemination of the awesomeness of the universe!”
Mr. President, give this man your time.
aamukherjeeThe study was released this morning and published by the National Academy of Sciences. It’s free to download, and looks at over 16,000 conflicts during 1990-2009.
Look, Obama and Romney need to discuss climate change tonight, even if it’s in the context of national security - it has to happen.
A study relating climate to conflict in East African nations finds that increased rainfall dampens conflict while unusually hot periods can cause a flare-up, reinforcing the theory that climate change will cause increased scarcity in the region. The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Politicians and many scientists have called climate change a security risk, based on the idea that unusual variations in weather are likely to put immense strain on rural societies dependent on farming and livestock for survival. But the results of studies trying to confirm such a hypothesis have been mixed.
The authors of the new study, from the University of Colorado and the National Center for Atmospheric Research, believe that problems with previous studies may have contributed to previous failures to link climate and conflict, including the use of data only at the country level rather than at the regional or local level.
Instead, the researchers used a conflict database called the Armed Conflict Location and Event Dataset, or ACLED, which provides location-specific tracking of individual events across Africa — from large-scale acts of war to local fights over farmland.
A Science Report Card
A candidate’s record and stance on “science issues” is but one head on the hydra that is the political campaign season. But for science-centered folks like us, it’s one of the most important tests of a candidate’s qualifications. Because we know how important science education and investment is to the cultural and economic health of our nation.
How has President Obama fared in his first term as a President for Science? The Scientist took a look, and scored Obama’s Science Report Card. There’s many reasons to be satisfied, and many areas left to improve. But most analysts agree that he has been leaps and bounds beyond his predecessor, and offers far better plans for science than his challengers.
So while science may be only a small part of what differentiates these candidates, I’d argue that it’s a damn important one. Visit The Scientist to see how Obama scored.
Also don’t miss ScienceDebate.org’s responses from the candidates on our biggest science issues.
Disagree with any of the grades?
Did President Barack Obama sell out to big business last week by abandoning plans for stricter limits on ozone pollution? Announced on 2 September, the decision was greeted with deep suspicion by environmental and health groups, who fear he has caved in to pressure from Republicans and industry to rid the country of what they say are burdensome regulations that could cost jobs.
The upshot is that legal ozone limits will stay at 84 parts of ozone per billion of air, the same as they were in 1997 when they were last upgraded. If the new rules had been adopted, they would have reduced the limit to 60 ppb, a tightening of standards denounced by industry as too costly.
Hardly surprisingly then, that industry was delighted with the news. “We loudly applauded President Obama today for his decision to send the Environmental Protection Agency’s voluntary reconsideration of the 2008 Ozone National Ambient Air Quality Standards back to EPA with instructions to withdraw the rule,” wrote Ross Eisenberg in a blog for the US Chamber of Commerce.
But environmental groups such as the National Resources Defense Council see it as a sell-out that will cost lives. “The stronger smog standards would have saved up to 4300 lives and as many as 2200 heart attacks every year,” wrote the NRDC’s Frances Beinecke in a blog. “They would have made breathing easier for the 24 million Americans living with asthma, and they would have created up to $37 billion in health benefits annually.”
As noted by The Washington Post, environmentalists could be forgiven for wondering whether Obama is quietly abandoning the green credentials that helped him win office.
