Modern university

Harry Clarke's post on what it's like at a modern university teaching economics is pretty interesting.  I am a bit puzzled about the ability to skip tutorials, though.  Can't attendance at them at least be made more compulsory?  (Not that I recall them being particularly useful, though, to be honest.  I just don't like the idea of attendance at the university being more or less optional unless you actually are doing an on line course.)

Audience shrugged

In news to quicken the heart of, oh, about 6 Australians who post or comment at Catallaxy, I see that the third instalment of Atlas Shrugged has opened in America.  The reviews are not positive. Here's Variety:

That must be the fault of those damn freedom-hating socialists, or perhaps it’s due to the fact that so few of the Tea Party types the series’ producers once hoped would queue up are, er, the literate sort. Or maybe it’s just that the prior installments weren’t very good movies, and it should surprise few that this last one is the worst of the lot.

Amusingly, I see it features a couple of cameos:

(Prominent conservative pundit types including Grover Norquist and Sean Hannity duly make cameo appearances as themselves here to further the cause.)

 And someone gives us a synopsis of the story:

For the blessedly uninitiated, Rand’s 1,168-page novel is the favorite book of many young sociopaths you meet in business schools. Published in 1957, Atlas Shrugged posits a hysterically overwrought nightmare dystopia in which government regulation has crippled the economy. Shadowy politicians conspire with corrupt union leaders to bleed corporations of their precious profits, with “parasites,” “looters,” and “moochers” living off the hard-earned wealth of the noble 1%. In this time of crisis, America’s captains of industry have had it up to here with poisonous concepts like “charity” and “altruism.” Inspired by a mysterious figure named John Galt, they sabotage their companies, trashing the country’s infrastructure before disappearing altogether. Basically, it’s all about a bunch of rich crybabies who don’t want to share their toys so they break them and go home.

Rugby mates a bit too matey

Rugby players risk infectious skin condition by swapping bacteria on shared razors and towels 

In England, an investigation into how 4 men at a rugby club got a serious skin infection resulted in this:

 Almost 20 per cent of players said that they regularly share towels,
while 10 per cent said they share razors and five per cent swap clothes.

Really?  Razor and smelly towel sharing?  Sport needs to be banned, I say, as a public health measure. 

GM not so great in one respect, at least

Cross-bred crops get fit faster 


As reported in Nature:

Old-fashioned breeding techniques seem to be leading genetic modification in a race to develop crops that can withstand drought and poor soils.

As the climate warms and rainfall becomes more erratic, farmers worldwide will increasingly need crops that can thrive in drought conditions. And the high costs of fertilizers — along with the environmental damage they can cause — are also pushing farmers to look for crop varieties that can do more with less.

The need for tougher crops is especially acute in Africa, where drought can reduce maize (corn) yields by up to 25%. The Drought Tolerant Maize for Africa project, which launched in 2006 with US$33 million, has developed 153 new varieties to improve yields in 13 countries. In field trials, these varieties match or exceed the yields from commercial seeds under good rainfall conditions, and yield up to 30% more under drought conditions.

An analysis published earlier this year reported that by the project’s end in 2016, the extra yields fromdrought-tolerant maize could help to reduce the number of people living
in poverty in the 13 countries by up to 9% (R. La Rovere et al. J. Dev. Areas 48(1), 199–225; 2014). In Zimbabwe alone, that effect would reach more than half a million people.

And here's the bit about GM:

Drought tolerance is a complex trait that involves multiple genes.Transgenic techniques, which target one gene at a time, have not been as quick to manipulate it. But CIMMYT and six other research organizations are also developing genetically modified (GM) varieties of
drought-resistant maize, in collaboration with agricultural biotechnology giant Monsanto in St Louis, Missouri. Coordinated by the African Agricultural Technology Foundation in Nairobi, the Water Efficient Maize for Africa project aims to have a transgenic variety ready for African farmers by 2016 at the earliest.

A look at economic optimism

New Scientist reports this:

Is it too good to be true? Top economists this week lay out an audacious argument for transforming the world's economy into a low-carbon one. Even if you forget climate change, they say, it is worth doing on its own. That's because a low-carbon economy is an efficient economy that will deliver faster economic growth, better lives and a greener environment. Forget the costs, feel the benefits.

The report is published today, a week before world leaders gather at the United Nations in New York City for the UN Climate Summit 2014, which will discuss how to share out the cost of fighting climate change. But its optimistic message is that there is no cost to share. Nations should be cutting their carbon emissions out of self-interest.

The study – authored by the World Resources Institute, a think tank in Washington DC, the Stockholm Environment Institute and others – is published by the Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, an independent body chaired by Felipe Calderón, former president of Mexico, and Nicholas Stern of the London School of Economics. (The Stern Report in 2006 first opened up a global debate about the economics of tackling climate change). A copy of the latest report, Better Growth, Better Climate: The New Climate Economy Report, is available here.

"We can combine economic growth and climate responsibility," Stern said at a pre-publication press briefing. "The key is fostering the right investment, making it profitable to the private sector."

 They also link to another (pretty wildly) optimistic sounding report:

"You can go green and continue to prosper and develop," said Ed Davey, the UK secretary for energy and climate, yesterday. And the evidence is on his side. Economists say that, despite the expense, drastic cuts in the UK's carbon dioxide emissions will boost the country's economy.

The finding should encourage action to reduce CO₂ levels, which reached a new high in 2013, according to a report by the World Meteorological Organization. The growth from 2012 was the biggest jump since 1984, and may be partly down to plants and other organisms taking in less CO₂.

If climate change isn't incentive enough to cut emissions, try this: if the UK cut its carbon emissions by 60 per cent from 1990 levels by 2030, as it has promised, its GDP would be 1.1 per cent bigger than if it stuck with fossil fuels, says a study by consultants at Cambridge Econometrics.

About half the gain would come from cheap running costs for fuel-efficient cars, with 190,000 new green jobs and higher wages also helping. The average household would be £565 a year better off.

Maybe it's just me, but I do feel that even things like China deciding to be pickier about what coal it burns, and the Abbott government discovering that the Australian public actually loves renewable energy does make it seem that what Greenies have been saying for a long time may turn out right - the world is going to go cleaner and it's stupid to not take steps to encourage that in Australia too.

A look back at economic pessimism

In comments in a post here yesterday, I was arguing that those economists who are optimistic on the cost of taking serious action on CO2 emissions probably have history on their side, in that there are clear examples of where government mandated changes for environmental reasons did not have the terrible economic costs that the industry initially claimed.   The examples I gave were the introduction of unleaded petrol, removing CFCs, and catalytic converters in cars.

Now, I was  really just going by memory on these, but I've looked up what was said about catalytic converters in the 1970's, and it's very interesting to read in retrospect.  These extracts are from a Thomas Friedman book:

From one extreme to another

Hello, Kurdistan :: Daniel Pipes

Gawd.  Daniel Pipes in this column notes that he used to oppose an independent Kurdistan in Iraq; now he thinks it would be a good idea for a transnational independent Kurdistan to be created in the region, looking something like this:

That'll go over well with Turkey and Iran.   Talk about your one extreme to another.

So which Australian politician is quoting this column with implicit approval?   Senator Blofeld Leyonhjelm.  (See his twitter feed.)   Along with his (apparent) view that cannabis should be sold from the supermarket, the government take over supply of ecstasy, gun laws be relaxed, and fixing the budget by a slash in both welfare and the top tax rate, he's a "big ideas" man with the luxury of not having to deal with the practicalities of ever putting them into effect.

An optimistic take on China and renewable energy

Economics: Manufacture renewables to build energy security

Quite a lot of surprisingly optimistic news on China and its rapid growth in renewable energy to be found in this article.  For example:

China generates more than 5 trillion kilowatt-hours (kWh) of electricity, about 1 trillion kWh more than the United States. China's rapid economic expansion since it joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001 has been based on fossil fuels: it consumes around 23% of the world's coal production for electricity. But fossil fuels alone cannot power the industrial growth the country needs to keep up with the West.

Since the mid-2000s, China has also pursued a low-carbon energy strategy. Investment in hydroelectric, wind, solar and nuclear-power generating facilities increased by 40% between 2008 and 2012 — from 138 billion renminbi (US$22 billion) to about 200 billion renminbi. The share of investment in fossil-fuel power facilities in China, meanwhile, fell from around 50% to 25% over the same period.

And for the big, big picture:

Our critics will counter that technology-based solutions raise concerns over the availability of industrial materials and land for building solar and wind devices and farms. But our calculations suggest⁶ that a global renewables push for an extra 10 terawatts of power-generation capacity could be achieved on current industrial scales over the next 20 years, by which time the world energy system would be well on the way to total conversion. Producing the extra 10 terawatts from renewables needed to transform global electric power would require more than 5 million square kilometres (about twice the size of Kazakhstan) filled with around 3 million wind turbines, 14,000 concentrated solar-power installations and 12,500 solar-photovoltaic farms. These technologies could perhaps be accommodated in the world's desert and semi-desert regions. The targets are large — but they are manageable compared with current world production levels of 1.75 billion mobile phones per year or 84 million vehicles per year⁶.

Yet more illustrations for the Right

Boy, isn't the increase in Antarctic sea ice getting a run for the money from the Right wing ignorance machine?

Looking around the web, here's a couple of comparisons for illustration:

The Arctic, today, at the end of summer, showing the extent of ice compared to a longer term average, compared to Antarctica with a similar comparison.

 

I'm not sure why even the likes of Andrew Bolt can't understand the point that loss of sea ice in summer in the Arctic is a much more significant issue for warming compared to an increase in sea ice in Antarctica in winter (because there is little sun in winter to have any effect anyway), but insist on adding up total sea ice and saying "Ha!" is what they do.

This recent paper also illustrates the complexity of the Antarctic situation, where there is the issue of the ozone hole and its contribution to circulating winds.   It appears that increasing winds have led to a decreasing or flat lining of sea surface temperatures much around the continent; and interestingly, a significant change in trend happened around 1980.

Climate change isn't simple, and not every effect at every part of the globe has been perfectly foreseen.

But it is clear to anyone who reads on the topic that the current Antarctic sea ice situation does not mean that global warming is not happening.

Even shorter version: they all hate each other?

The Christian Science Monitor has a short-ish guide to why the Islamic nations around Iraq and Syria are reluctant to be seen to be too involved in attacking ISIL, or whatever we're supposed to call it today.

Actually, I'm a bit worried that I found myself nearly agreeing with Rand Paul on something this morning, when I heard him on the radio saying this:

“I think the first 10,000 soldiers marching into battle need to be from Iraq, live in Iraq and need to be fighting for their homeland. The second 10,000 need to be from Saudi Arabia,” Paul said on Monday in explaining his support for the president’s plan. 

I feel rather ambivalent about  Australia's involvement.  Certainly, Abbott has had a "pick me! pick me!" enthusiasm about it that smells of seeking political advantage here.   On the other hand, actually using our Hornets for something useful is something that we probably should do every 15 years or so.  But overall, it still has an unpleasant feeling of an attempt to fix up what is essentially someone else's mess because we accidentally made it worse.

The big picture missing from The Australian

Doesn't the Australian today have yet another article promoting the Jennifer Marohasy screams of "Fraud!" against the entire Bureau of Meteorology?  Oh yes, it does, again smearing the Bureau on the basis of the claims of a biologist funded by a climate change denying fund.

I'm a little puzzled why the BOM doesn't come out and simply put these graphs more prominently on its website:

Here's the Bureau's explanation of the above graph:

Both adjusted and unadjusted temperatures show that Australia's climate has warmed. Since 1955 adjusted and unadjusted data are virtually identical. It is during this time that most of the warming has occurred in Australia.

The graph below shows temperature trends since 1910 from the unadjusted temperatures (AWAP), together with those that have been carefully curated, quality controlled and corrected for artificially induced biases (ACORN-SAT). Carefully curating and correcting records is global best practice for analysing temperature data.

 And the ocean temperature record around Australia follows a similar pattern:

 Again, why has the Right become so insistently dumb and gullible on matters of science?

Andrew Bolt, nuclear expert

Interesting to note that in Japan, some investigation statements relating to the Fukushima nuclear disaster have been released by the government, from which we learn this:

Plant manager Masao Yoshida envisioned catastrophe for eastern Japan in the days following the outbreak of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, according to his testimony, one of 19 released by the government on Sept. 11....

In his testimony, Yoshida described the condition of the No. 2 reactor at the Fukushima plant between the evening of March 14, 2011, and the next morning: “Despite the nuclear fuel being completely exposed, we’re unable to reduce pressure. Water can’t get in either.”

Yoshida recalled the severity of the situation. “If we continue to be unable to get water in, all of the nuclear fuel will melt and escape from the containment vessel, and radioactive substances from the fuel will spread to the outside,” he said.

Fearing a worst-case scenario at the time, Yoshida said, “What we envisioned was that the entire eastern part of Japan would be annihilated.”

In Australia, local nuclear expert Andrew Bolt was writing this:

No, there won’t be a nuclear explosion, “China syndrome” or “another Chernobyl”. The situation today is better than yesterday, and as each day goes by the chances of a big accident lesson. The nuclear fuel remains contained.

This scaremongering over the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex is extraordinary. 

So while the actual plant manager was freaking out about rendering a huge slab of his country uninhabitable, Andrew Bolt was writing "stop your stupid panicking, environmentalists." I think I know which person to trust more in terms of the seriousness of what was going on.

Why has the Right become so insistently dumb on matters relating to science, technology and risk?

Garden fly

Drink your lithium and be happy

Should We All Take a Bit of Lithium? - NYTimes.com

Here's a fascinating article about whether or not lithium in "natural" quantities in drinking water has a significant health benefit.

The scientific story of lithium’s role in normal development and health began unfolding in the 1970s. Studies at that time foundthat animals that consumed diets with minimal lithium had highermortality rates, as well as abnormalities of reproduction and behavior.

Researchers began to ask whether low levels of lithium might correlate with poor behavioral outcomes in humans. In 1990, a study was published looking at 27 Texas counties with a variety of lithium levels in their water. The authors discovered that people whose water had the least amount of lithium had significantly greater levels of suicide, homicide and rape than the people whose water had the higher levels of lithium. The group whose water had the highest lithium level had nearly 40 percent fewer suicides than that with the lowest lithium level.

Almost 20 years later, a Japanese study that looked at 18 municipalities with more than a million inhabitants over a five-year period confirmed the earlier study’s finding: Suicide rates were inversely correlated with the lithium content in the local water supply.

More recently, there have been corroborating studies in Greece and Austria.

Not all the research has come to the same conclusion.

Even allowing for that last sentence, why haven't I heard about this before?

Or maybe I have, but just don't have enough lithium in my diet.  (The article suggests it may help prevent dementia.) 

An innovative place to go looking for a new antibiotic...

Vaginal microbe yields novel antibiotic

Late movie review

I never got around to seeing Prometheus when it was at the cinema, and wasn't especially concerned because of the so-so reviews, but it turned up on commercial television last night and I did that rare thing that used to be common place - watch a Sunday night first release to free TV (I think) movie.

Well, what a complete and utter mess of a film.

It looks impressive for about the first 15 to 20 minutes or so, but my God does it go rapidly downhill in all respects after that.   As with Sunshine, this is a science fiction film in which it seems very big space ships are crewed by people who appear to be picked out of a hat, such that no one seems to know anyone else, everyone starts making stupid decisions and ignores anyone who says it's not a good idea, and the science of just about everything is dubious if not silly.  

It's a really awful script full of improbabilities, and the "big picture" of what's going on remains rather opaque all the way through.  Yet there is a sequel being made!   Why?

The only positive thing I can say is that it seemed surprisingly low on swearing.  But apart from that....

Update:   Unbelievably, I see from checking on Rottentomatoes that Prometheus got 73% approval rating; Sunshine, which I also disliked, got 75%.   But Oblivion, which I watched at home this last weekend on DVD (after seeing it at the cinema last year) got only 54%.    What gives?   Oblivion was about twice as enjoyable as those awful films. 

Technology news

Yessss!  Two months of insisting on staring at the glowing screens of the new Samsung Tab S every time I've been with anyone from my family anywhere near a shop that stocks them paid off!

I was given one (the smaller version) for my birthday last week, and it is awesome, especially if you're upgrading from one of the early Samsung Tab models, which now appears extremely underpowered as well as having a screen that looks like sandpaper.   (It never used to be a noticeably poor screen, but after looking at the ultrafine, colourful, better-than-real-life, screen that I've been using for a few days, I laugh at its primitive resolution.  [Insert mocking laugh.])

But apart from the screen, which I'll try to not mention another 5 times, what I thought on the old tablet was a slow wi-fi connection at the far end of the house turned out to just be slow processing speed.   The Tab S works likes lightning in comparison.

So, I'm very happy, and am currently on a new Tablet honeymoon that may see me posting less frequently.  The screen, the screen, the screen....I must look at it again...

In the garden

Photos taken with the camera in the new device, more about which later....

Priorities of a pathetic government

May this year:

...this government has slashed more than $450 million from key science agencies that have all suffered substantial losses, including:

• CSIRO -- $111.4 million
• Australian Research Council -- $74.9 million
• Cooperative Research Centres program -- $80 million
• Australian Institute of Marine Science -- $7.8 million
• Defence Science and Technology Organisation -- $120 million
• Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation -- $27.6 million
• Geoscience Australia -- $36 million

Today:

A controversial tourism facility at a Cadbury factory partly funded by taxpayer dollars looks set to go ahead, with the chocolate maker announcing the "globally relevant chocolate experience" should be signed off within weeks.

Tony Abbott promised a $16 million grant to the Hobart project during last year's federal election, however questions have since been raised about the generous pledge given the Coalition government's refusal to provide taxpayer assistance to fruit cannery SPC Ardmona.

No reason