From the world of science fiction

Brain scans predict which criminals are more likely to reoffend 

In a twist that evokes the dystopian science fiction of writer Philip K. Dick, neuroscientists have found a way to predict whether convicted felons are likely to commit crimes again from looking at their brain scans. Convicts showing low activity in a brain region associated with decision-making and action are more likely to be arrested again, and sooner.

Kent Kiehl, a neuroscientist at the non-profit Mind Research Network in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and his collaborators studied a group of 96 male prisoners just before their release. The researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan the prisoners’ brains during computer tasks in which subjects had to make quick decisions and inhibit impulsive reactions.

The scans focused on activity in a section of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a small region in the front of the brain involved in motor control and executive functioning. The researchers then followed the ex-convicts for four years to see how they fared.

Among the subjects of the study, men who had lower ACC activity during the quick-decision tasks were more likely to be arrested again after getting out of prison, even after the researchers accounted for other risk factors such as age, drug and alcohol abuse and psychopathic traits. Men who were in the lower half of the ACC activity ranking had a 2.6-fold higher rate of rearrest for all crimes and a 4.3-fold higher rate for nonviolent crimes. The results are published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences¹.

 Pretty amazing.  

White people's fears

The Roots of Anti-Government Gun Culture in America - The Daily Beast

David Frum has a look here at an interesting sounding book about how American attitudes to gun ownership have evolved.    The paranoid basis run by the NRA (Americans need to be allowed to be armed so as to defend themselves against their own tyrannical government) has its basis, the books argues, in the Black Panther movement in the late 60's.  The big change, of course, is that it is now the white and the (relatively) rich who say they fear their own government, not the poor blacks.

Quite a weird turnaround, isn't it?

Hello all you Gillard haters out there, part 2

The days of relying on natural resources are over

Ken Davidson summarises an important recent story:

Nathan Fabian is chief executive of the Investor Group on Climate Change, which advises 65 major institutional investors who are responsible for funds with a market valuation of about $1 trillion.

Fabian told a recent business Climate Alliance conference in Melbourne: ''A positive trend in the evidence of climate change impacts, from actual recent events, is becoming clearer. This is an important development … As you would expect with these developments in the science, the notable additional scrutiny is coming not so much from civil society, but from the elite economic institutions around the world and the investment community as well.''

The science now suggests that 2 degrees of warming is no longer safe. The International Energy Agency says that the world has a 50/50 chance of keeping warming to less than 2 degrees, if only one-third of the known reserves of fossil fuels are exploited. The International Panel on Climate Change says that to reduce the risk of breaking the 2 degree barrier to one-in-five would require leaving 80 per cent of the known reserves in the ground. (More risky than Russian roulette!)

Fabian quoted a recent report by Jun Mao, chief economist for Deutsche Bank, which shows that China will switch from being a net coal importer to net exporter by 2017; that the price of seaborne coal will fall to $70 a tonne; that even at $87 a tonne, 43 million tonnes of production from Australia would be forced off line; and that new developments planned in the Galilee Basin would not be profitable and couldn't attract finance.

The respected Carbon Tracker says that companies reliant on coal revenues are in an asset bubble. This might help explain why the market price of equities of mining companies such as BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto and Anglo American have continued to fall, despite the recent recovery in the share market generally.

The writing is on the wall for the lucky country. Unless we can manage risk - impossible without incorporating the environmental damage of burning fossil fuel in the price - the chance of dodging the bullet of catastrophic climate change is remote.

Hello to all you Gillard haters out there...

You probably don't even understand the policy you hate the most:

Study finds widespread ignorance about carbon tax

Nine months after its introduction 54 per cent of people believed the tax, which specifically excludes motor fuel, had pushed up prices at service stations. Most people surveyed also estimated that their cost of living had risen by $20 or more a week, while 5 per cent put the increase at more than $100 a week.  The government's modelling came up with $9.90 a week.

Asked about compensation, 49 per cent said they had received nothing at all, whereas the compensation package introduced with the tax applies to 90 per cent of the population.

For all of you Julia Gillard fans out there.......(hello?)

Well, at least Harry Clarke likes her too...

Meanwhile, John Quiggin, who (despite otherwise sounding a sensible enough chap) has been a Rudd booster for a long time, has made no comment on Thursday's events.  He'll probably blame Julia for not resigning for the good of the Party. 

When Julia plays DayZ

OK, so it was a rush job...

Universal mysteries

There's a new, more detailed, map of the cosmic microwave background out.   It does not resolve some oddities:

It has also uncovered a surprise. The simplest models of inflation predict that fluctuations in the CMB should look the same all over the sky. But Planck has found asymmetries in opposite hemispheres of the sky, as well as a ‘cold spot’ that covers a large area, which were also noticed by WMAP. “It defines a preferred direction in space, which is an extremely strange result,” says Efstathiou. This rules out some models of inflation, but does not undermine the idea itself, he adds. It does, however, raise tantalizing hints that there may yet be new physics to be discovered in Planck’s data.

Today in politics

Today's spectacularly peculiar episode in the ongoing Rudd Wars just goes to show what serious damage can happen in political parties when personality based civil wars get entrenched.

Although I can't remember much of the detail now,  this all reminded me of the interminable years of the Peacock/Howard rivalry in the 1980's:  the big difference being that it all went on while their party was in Opposition, and helped keep it there.   I have trouble remembering when a party that was in government has had such a protracted internal division.

I suppose it is hard to know how active Rudd has been in encouraging the undermining of Gillard in the last month or two; it is possible that the journalistic backgrounding has been mainly initiated by his supporters off their own bat.  However, what is surely clear is that he has never got on the phone to call them off, telling them, for example, that he really did not want the job and they were only hurting the government.

Here's a suggestion for Kevin:  you are (puzzlingly) popular in Queensland.  The Labor Party here desperately needs a high profile leader in State Parliament.   Resign from Federal Parliament, take a year or two off, get some sleep, work your way into State Parliament, and you'll soon have a good crack at being a long term Queensland Premier.

An unpleasant sounding way to go

Man dies after parasitic worms invade lungs

The man died in California, but was a Vietnamese immigrant:

The 65-year-old man was apparently infected by the worms in Vietnam, one of many countries in the world where they're known to infect humans. About 80 percent to 90 percent of people die if they are infected by the worm species and then suffer from so-called "hyperinfection" as the worms travel through their bodies, said report co-author Dr. Niaz Banaei, an assistant professor of infectious diseases at Stanford University School of Medicine.

The man's case emphasizes the importance of testing patients who might be infected with the parasite before giving them drugs to dampen the immune system, said Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, who's familiar with the report findings. "You have to think twice before starting big doses of steroids," Hotez said. "The problem is that most physicians are not taught about this disease. It often does not get recognized until it's too late."

I wonder if this has ever happened here?

She makes it sound so attractive

Can you imagine Blackpool without swimming in the sea? I couldn't bear it | UK news | guardian.co.uk

Someone writing in The Guardian remembers fondly her childhood at the beach at Blackpool, with scenes like this:

As a Blackpool girl born and bred, I revel in the nostalgia of childhood summers spent dipping toes in shallow water before slowly heading deeper into the unknown, stepping carefully for fear of disturbing an angry crab with his pincers at the ready....

For as long as I can remember, Blackpool beach has never been particularly clean. I remember as a child wistfully looking at postcards of exotic destinations such as Italy and Turkey, where glittering green oceans made the yachts that sailed upon them appear brilliant white.

I remember wondering why our sea was brown, not turquoise, and why the sand was dotted with empty cans of Special Brew and the odd plastic bag.

 Heh.

Guess the Dad

BBC News - Kenya condom advert pulled after religious complaints

This is an interesting story from the BBC about an ad promoting condom use in Kenya getting pulled off air because it dealt with a real situation - a married woman having another lover.

It would seem that extra marital relationships are surprisingly common in that country:

Dr Cherutich told the BBC the advert had been launched because up to 30% of married couples had other partners.

Around 1.6 million people out of Kenya's population of 41.6 million are living with HIV, according to the UN.

In the video, the reporter says that a 2009 study also indicated that most people in these relationships do not use condoms.  Although the article doesn't mention it, this surely means there must be a lot of kids with different fathers from the presumed one.

The report says it is church and Muslim leaders who are unhappy with the advertisement, saying the government should promote faithful marriages instead.   But it also notes that 80% of the country is Christian.

As with the contraceptive mandate in the US, where the US bishops do not want increased access to a product their own congregations use against Church teaching, it seems to me that some Christians have become pretty good at blaming governments for their own failings in convincing their congregation to live differently.

More bad timing for Labor

Huge export earnings rise tipped for resources sector | The Australian

Of course, if the Coalition gets in, it's goodbye any form of mineral tax to help run the country.

New baby

Our fertile possum visitor and her new, squashed, offspring:

Hard to disagree

Poor planning has doomed Labor's media reform - The Drum Opinion (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

I find Bruce Hawker a dull analyst on TV, but I find it hard to disagree with his general take on how Labor seems to approach policy.

For the first time, I feel that Gillard will soon lose the leadership.  She presumably gave the go ahead to Conroy to run with the "it's all or nothing with these media reform proposals and we will not negotiate" tactic.  Conroy doesn't have a good head for politics - literally, with that haircut of his - but this is just the latest in a series of poorly judged approaches by him.

Whoever gets the leadership needs, I think, to make it clear that Labor needs to look at how it deals with processes.  No more announcing policies that have yet to be finalised (Gillard and using Timor for asylum seekers, for example).  

If Rudd does rise from the grave (groan) he at least needs not to be triumphalist.  In fact, he probably can't afford that due to the lack of people who would then work for him in the ministry.  But he should acknowledge that the haphazard approach to policy began with him, and say that he will work hard to make sure that the party's policy formulation appears, and in fact is, a result of careful and considered process, and not the results of running around at the last minute to get a policy seemingly just for the sake of having a policy.  He could also promise to slow down personally and let his staff get some sleep.  

It seems to me that Rudd is so puzzlingly popular with the public that the Coalition could not actually run for long with all of the deep personal criticism that Labor politicians came out with last year, because people would soon think the Coalition was being unfair. 

I find Crean harmless and reasonable but he doesn't have much charisma with the public.

As much as I think Rudd is not a man to be admired or liked, if it is between him and Crean I think it's hard to avoid the conclusion that the party would do better under Rudd. 

If Gillard retains leadership, I would still wish her well, and maintain my belief that she is the most unreasonably despised politician this country has ever seen.

Today's history lesson

BBC News - The African chief converted to Christianity by Dr Livingstone

Here's a short account of the missionary work in Africa by the famous Dr Livingstone.  Just one convert, but an important one.  The story has many interesting parts, including this:

This was how things stood when Sechele first met Livingstone - he ruled a half-tribe. Livingstone persuaded him to make peace with his other uncle by sending him a gift of gunpowder for his rifle.

The uncle was suspicious that the gunpowder was bewitched, tried to neutralise it with fire, and in the resulting explosion was killed. Sechele thus ruled over a reunited Bakwena.

And here's bit of bad luck:

As Sechele grew increasingly interested in Christianity, he found two huge barriers in his way. One was rain.

Tswana tribes had rainmakers, whose job was to use magic to make the rain come. Livingstone, like all missionaries, vehemently opposed rainmaking, on both religious and scientific grounds. 

Sechele happened to be his tribe's rainmaker as well as kgosi, and Livingstone's stay coincided with the worst drought ever known, so Sechele's decision to stop making rain was predictably unpopular.

Experiments best not done

CultureLab: The radioactive legacy of the search for plutopia

New Scientist talks about a new book (from Oxford University Press, so I assume it is credible) about some surprising Cold War experiments about radiation:

MAKING plutonium for nuclear bombs takes balls, but not in the way you might think. In 1965, scientists at the Hanford nuclear weapons complex in Washington state wanted to investigate the impact of radiation on fertility - and they weren't hidebound by ethics.

In a specially fortified room in the basement of Washington State Penitentiary in Walla Walla, volunteer prisoners were asked to lie face down on a trapezoid-shaped bed. They put their legs into stirrups, and let their testicles drop into a plastic box of water where they were zapped by X-rays.

The experiments, which lasted for a decade and involved 131 prisoners, came up with some unsurprising results. Even at the lowest dose - 0.1 gray - sperm was damaged, and at twice that dose the prisoners became sterile. They were paid $5 a month for their trouble, plus $25 per biopsy and $100 for a compulsory vasectomy at the end so they didn't father children with mutations.

Another idea re black holes and the LHC

It seems there is now a suggestion that the LHC could make stable quantum black hole remnants without their ever first having been black holes which radiate down to a remnant.

At least I think that's what this paper is saying.   It talks about how they may be detected.

Bugs in sinks

'Nightmare' superbug alarm

I didn't know that "superbugs"actually lived in sinks happily; even hospital ones, where they are presumably getting a rinse regularly with antibacterial soap off users' hands.  I suppose seeing mould growing up the insides of the drain of the bathroom sink where I shave daily (until I hit it with bleach every few weeks) should have given me a clue.   Anyway, I was still surprised:

An infectious disease physician at the hospital, Rhonda Stuart, said doctors had been concerned about a string of cases in the intensive care unit between 2009 and last year, but only acquired the technology last August to test surfaces for the bacteria known as CRE. Associate Professor Stuart said the tests revealed the bacteria were in the sinks where healthcare workers washed their hands. While it could not be proved, she said, this might have spread the infection to patients because the sinks' poor design caused water to splash back off the drain.

Despite this being discovered seven months ago, Associate Professor Stuart said the hospital was only now preparing to replace the sinks. When asked if cost had delayed this, she said ''there were always difficulties with trying to do things in budget-restrained times''. However, she said doctors were satisfied the intensive care unit was safe.

The sinks were being cleaned regularly with 170-degree pressurised steam, which removes the bacteria for about three days before they grow back. Staff were also being careful with infection control procedures to prevent further patient infections, she said.

''No patients have tested positive for the bacteria since we've undertaken this process, so we're happy things have been controlled with the new steam technology … There is no risk to anybody,'' said Associate Professor Stuart, who is also medical director of infection control for Monash Health. CRE (Carbapenem-resistant enterobacteriaceae) is a new class of multi-resistant bacteria alarming doctors worldwide because of their ability to spread drug resistance to other bacteria.

Reason to use the bleach at home more often, I guess...

Douthat on a change needed

What the Church Needs Now - NYTimes.com

Ross Douthat is pretty conservative on a all things Catholic, but he at least does not take the approach that I have seen often taken by Right wing Catholics in one prominent Australian blog:  denying the harm caused by the sex abuse scandals of the last few decades.  He writes:

But in a sense all of these challenges have one solution, or at least one place where any solution has to start. Francis’s reign will be a success if it begins to restore the moral credibility of the church’s hierarchy and clergy, and it will be a failure if it does not. 

Catholics believe that their church is designed to survive the lapses of its leaders. The Mass is the Mass even if the priest is a sinner. Bishops do not need to be holy to preserve the teachings of the faith. The litany of the saints includes countless figures — from Joan of Arc to the newly canonized Mary MacKillop, an Australian nun involved in the reporting of child abuse by a priest — who suffered injustices from church authorities in their lifetimes. 

But it’s one thing for Catholics in a Catholic culture, possessed of shared premises and shared moral ideals, to accept a certain amount of “do as I say, not as I do” from their pastors and preachers.

It’s quite another to ask a culture that doesn’t accept Catholic moral ideals to respect an institution whose leaders can’t seem to live out the virtues that they urge on others. 

In that culture — our culture — priestly sex abuse and corruption in the Vatican aren’t just seen as evidence that all men are sinners. They’re seen as evidence that the church has no authority to judge what is and isn’t sin, that the renunciation Catholicism preaches mostly warps and rarely fulfills, and that the world’s approach to sex (and money, and ambition) is the only sane approach there is.

Not a good advertisement for the Witnesses

Slamming the door on Jehovah

This article paints a bleak picture of what it is like to be a member of the Jehovah's Witnesses.  It is a religion with a bad enough retention problem already:

The religion's proper name is the Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society. It was founded by American draper Charles Russell in 1872. They believe in the end of the world and also the paradise beyond and have predicted five times that Christ would come again to signal it. The last time this happened was 1975. More than 1 million devotees abandoned them in the following six years. In America the Jehovah's Witness have the lowest retention rate of all religions.

They also believe Satan has ruled the earth since 1914. The only way to make things better is by creating a heavenly kingdom on earth of a small number of believers. The Jehovah's Witness' trait of being aloof and "separate" comes from this idea that Satan runs things, so the best way to survive is to avoid society.

Membership has flatlined against population growth in most developed countries. The reach of the internet has had a big impact as whistleblower groups, ex-Witness forums, websites, "leaks" sites and negative publicity abounds.

It's hard to see the appeal of the religion for a newbie:

Kingdom Halls are plainly decorated, like school classrooms, with no iconography or adornment. Congregations meet twice a week to listen to Biblical passages. The structure for disciples to live by is uniform and rigid. Moral conservatism (anti-gay, anti-abortion, no sex before marriage) is strictly enforced.

The British sociologist Andrew Holden says the church has a "quasi-totalitarian" approach in which converts "defer unquestioningly to the authority of those who are appointed to enforce its doctrine". The individual, he says, "becomes the property of the whole community"....

 Aron says new recruits are often unaware they will go without birthdays and Christmas. "It's a religion without a soul."

Even as far as cults go, it sounds like a particularly joyless one.