Is the Science Glass Half Full, or Half Empty?

Chris Mooney, Science Progress,  looks at the National Science Foundation's latest Science and Engineering Indicators report. The latest figures on the relationship between science and the U.S. public can be used to support either a positive or a negative perspective.

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"Intergenerational Wealth Transmission and the Dynamics of Inequality in Small-Scale Societies"

Research conducted by Samuel Bowles, SFI Professor, and colleagues on small-scale societies, ranging from egalitarian hunter gatherers to hierarchical farmers and herders in Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America, concludes that the degree of wealth inequality in a society is based on inheritance. This variation in inequality is explained by a dynamic model in which a population’s long-run steady-state level of inequality depends on the extent to which its most important forms of wealth are transmitted within families across generations. The passing on of material things such as farms, herds and other real property, or even knowledge, skills and other valuable resources plays a large role in whether the next generation will accumulate or maintain high wealth status.

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"Rethinking What Leads the Way: Science, or New Technology?"

Consider what the state of science would be without the microscope, the telescope, or a more recent technical advance like automated DNA sequencing. There would still be science, rooted in human perception and reason. But it would be far less potent than modern science, which has technologically expanded the senses, and with computers, the intellect, to explore and decipher reality, from the universe itself to the most elusive subatomic particle. The popular view is that technology is the handmaiden of science — less pure, more commercial. But in “The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves,” W. Brian Arthur, an economist, reframes the relationship between science and technology as part of an effort to come up with a comprehensive theory of innovation. In Dr. Arthur’s view, the relationship between science and technology is more symbiotic than is generally conceded. Science and technology move forward together in a kind of co-evolution. And science does not lead.

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Online Video from Multidisciplinary Workshop on Energy and Climate Change

A trove of material from the first SFI Global Sustainability Summer School is available for free to the public online. The scientists highlighted the following conclusions on climate and energy: Scientific evidence that our release of greenhouse gases risks dangerously warming the climate is incontrovertible. The technologies needed to start solving the problem exist today and many are ready for large-scale implementation, though a full solution will require a major commitment to further research and innovation. These low-carbon technologies represent a large economic opportunity, but the ordinary course of innovation and technological diffusion is too slow to meet the challenge of addressing climate change. Large-scale government intervention is therefore needed to accelerate this process.

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"Dialing for Answers Where Web Can’t Reach"

There is a new service helping people in Uganda, who don’t have access to computers, find answers to their questions. Question Box was started and has been successful. Workers use their cell phones to call the Question Box call center to ask a question for locals. The call center then gives them the answer. The worker is then given free minutes for their cell phone usage. SFI Omidyar Fellow Nathan Eagle has been doing research on cellphones and development in Africa. Eagle also runs a cellphone-based business in Kenya. Eagle states, “We can’t sit in our offices in America and decide what is useful to people and what is meaningful in their lives. The services only add value if they are open-ended.”

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"Minority Students Needed in Math and Science to Combat ‘Brain Drain,’ Professors Say"

SFI External Professor Carlos Castillo-Chavez is one of a group of mathematics and science professors who have called on the United States government to support institutional programs that have been successful in attracting and retaining minority students. According to Castillo-Chavez, many of the Chinese and Indian scientists and mathematicians are returning to their home countries. In order to keep up with researching and learning, the US will need to step up mathematics scholarships to universities.

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"A safe operating space for humanity"

SFI External Professor Sander van der Leeuw and colleagues have released a study stating that identifying and quantifying planetary boundaries that must not be transgressed could help prevent human activities from causing unacceptable environmental change. Van der Leeuw and colleagues found that three of the Earth-system processes have already transgressed their boundaries. These include: climate change, rate of biodiversity loss and interference with the nitrogen cycle. The evidence suggests that as long as the thresholds are not crossed, humanity has the freedom to pursue long-term social and economic development.

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"Google works on a different web"

Researchers have adapted Google’s web-ranking system to help in food webs. This new system could predict which groups of species would crash their food web if they became extinct. SFI Professor Jennifer Dunne calls this a “novel, exciting contribution.” Dunne goes on to say, “The problem of how ecosystems are likely to respond to the loss of species is quite important, particularly in light of how many different ways human activities are resulting in the local extinctions of populations.”

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Leonardo Governing Body elects Jim Crutchfield, SFI External Professor

Crutchfield teaches nonlinear physics at the University of California, Davis, directs its Complexity Sciences Center, and promotes science interventions in nonscientific settings. He is mostly concerned with what patterns are, how they are created, and how intelligent agents discover them. The Leonardo/ISAST serves the international arts community by promoting and documenting work at the intersection of the arts, sciences, and technology, and by encouraging and stimulating collaboration between artists, scientists, and technologists.

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"How to Measure What We Don't Know"

In their study, James Crutchfield, SFI External Professor and Physics Professor at the University of California at Davis, and graduate students Christopher Ellison and John Mahoney, developed the analogy of scientists as cryptologists who are trying to glean hidden information from Nature. As they explain, “Nature speaks for herself only through the data she willingly gives up.”

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"Nobel laureate honored in lecture series"

SFI, now celebrating its 25th year, will offer a series of three free lectures in tribute to Nobel Prize winner Murray Gell-Mann, starting Tuesday September 15 at the James A. Little Theater.

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The Philadelphia Inquirer, "Studying ancient man to learn to prevent disease"

Scientists have found that the people living 3000 years ago were healthier and taller than people who have lived these past 300 years. The development of agriculture, farming, and industry has led to malnourishment and more deaths from infectious diseases. SFI External Professor Hillard Kaplan is one of the collaborators in the research of this comparison of different populations living in the Americas over the last 3000 years.

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Live Science, "World’s Stocks Controlled by Select Few"

A recent study of the 2007 financial markets of 48 countries reveals all the world’s finances are controlled by only a few mutual funds, banks, and corporations. SFI External Professor and economist Matthew Jackson states, “Certainly people have some understanding of how large some of these financial institutions in the world are, there’s some feeling of how intertwined they are, but there’s a big difference between having an impression and actually having more explicit numbers to put behind it.

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National Post, "Peace has a chance"

According to SIPRI (the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), 25,600 combatants and civilians were killed as a direct result of armed conflicts last year. While that may seem like a high number of lives lost, consider the nearly 500,000 people killed annually in violent crimes and the over 1 million people killed in automobile accidents every year. This actually shows a decline in the number of war casualties. Economist and SFI Resident Professor Samuel Bowles has researched hundreds of hunter-gatherer societies and concludes that 14 percent of deaths in those societies were caused by war and other violent acts. While a recent study estimates that all the wars and genocides of the 20th century account for less than 3 percent of all deaths worldwide. Perhaps this trend will continue and we may see peace around the world.

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Nature, "The HLA-B/-C haplotype block contains major determinants for host control of HIV"

SFI Resident Professor Tanmoy Bhattacharya and colleagues have published their research on HIV. Their analysis of allelic polymorphisms on host control of HIV revealed complete linkage disequilibrium between HCP5 and HLA-B*5701/HLA-Cw*06, a modest effect of 5’HLA-C on viral set point in the absence of HLA-B*5701, and no influence of the RNF39/ZNRD1 extended haplotype on HIV disease progression.

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Theme week: the future is not what it used to be

SFI Postdoctoral Fellow Béla Nagy and SFI Professor Doyne Farmer are co-organizers of a September 14-17 Business Network theme week held at SFI called “The future is not what it used to be.” During the week, nearly 20 participants will hear SFI researchers and veteran futurists review past attempts to predict the future, assess lessons learned, and, of course, consider what the future holds. 

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