Making Your Own Survival Rations 1: Puffed Grain Cakes

Video courtesy of Popular Science
If you buy a machine to make your own puffed-grain cakes, you can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars and more. But you can make a machine to do the job with spare junk around the shop. In these days of tighter budgets, it helps to know smart ways to trim the fat.

The science behind puffing is simple. Heating the moisture inside of a grain creates pressure and builds up steam, which is trapped by the grain’s hull or shell. When that hull suddenly fails, everything inside it expands in a blast, transforming the grains into a crispy, porous mass; the best example of this is popcorn. Some grains can fuse together, making a cake.

... We built a metal shell using a pipe, a rod and a plate to mount the pipe on, forming a bottom to clamp against, like a piston in a cylinder. Using vise grips, we put the shell over a butane burner, clamped it tightly, and then unclamped it to make it puff. At high temperatures, you have 10 to 20 seconds when the grains puff before they start to burn. We puffed millet, wild rice, sorghum, barley, and white and brown rice. We called the results “vise cakes.”

Our equation for the process looks roughly like this: 150 psi (pressure) and 480ºF (heat) x 12 seconds (time) + sudden release back to atmosphere = 1 vise cake.
Last year we built a rig to make mini vise cakes, which worked well, but it took a long time to produce a large quantity. So this time we increased the scale, creating a design that could make the cakes with a 2.5-inch diameter. All told, it cost us only $57. Our design requires at least four hands to operate, though why puff solo when you can puff in a group? Besides, you‘re saving a good million bucks or so off the price of a commercial machine. _PopSci

Al Fin survival nutritionists are working on something far more sophisticated which they are not allowed to talk about right now, but you can get the germ of an idea about the project here. No more about that, for now.

U Cinci Don't Do No Computer Science, Man!

But U Cinci does do Africana, Queers y Women, Political Correctness, and all the really cool stuff!

U. Cincinnati Ohio
As university budgets grow ever tighter, institutions of higher learning must make very difficult choices about what to cut, and what to keep. It is unthinkable for a university to cut its administrative staff -- no matter how bloated and unsightly. But academics is another matter, since teaching has always been secondary for politically correct universities. So, what is the University of Cincinnati in Ohio cutting out? Computer Science, man!

The University of Cincinnati will stop accepting undergraduate majors in computer science starting in fall 2012.

About 125 current students in the program will be able to complete their programs.

The move by the College of Engineering and Applied Science is one step toward reducing the college's academic programs to 11 from the current 17, Dean Carlo Montemagno said.

It's driven by impending budget cuts that could slice $4.9 million off this year's $24 million budget, he said. _news.cincinnati.com

Dwindling resources must be focused upon what is central to the currents' flow. Science and engineering are not nearly so important in the age of Obama as are queer ethnic women's studies, and the crucial indoctrination of students by administrative staffing. Consequently, the money must be spent on administration and departments which provide the type of student considered desirable in this age.

H/T Instapundit.com

Why Big Wind Power Won't Work

WUWT
Obama's regime and faux environmentalists around the globe have been gung ho over big wind power farms for years now. And every time anyone takes a close look at the economics and the details of wind energy, they come back to the same fact -- wind doesn't work.

The operating characteristics of turbine and generator mean that only a small part of wind energy can be captured.

Wind power is also intermittent, unreliable and hard to predict. Therefore large backup or storage systems are required. This adds to the capital and operating costs and increases the instability of the network. Wind farms are uniformly hated by neighbours and will not be willingly accepted without heavy compensation payments. Their noise, flicker, fire risk and disturbing effect on domestic and wild animals are well documented.

The wind is free but wind power is far from it. Its cost is far above all conventional methods of generating electricity. Either taxpayers or consumers will pay this bill.

...Electric generators achieve maximum efficiency at their design capacity. This is planned to suit the "average" wind speed, and the generator produces maximum safe output at this speed. If the wind drops, so does the power generated. If the wind rises, the energy generated is limited to the design capacity of the generator (by varying the pitch of the blades) and at some point the generator is shut down to prevent burnout. So the generator cuts off all the high-energy infrequent wind, in order to capture the maximum energy from the winds expected by the turbine designers at that location. These unavoidable operating characteristics of the turbine also reduce the power generated.

...Wind energy promoters usually quote the maximum attainable output as the capacity of the wind farm. This is the maximum power that could be produced if ideal winds blew all the time at all turbines (the 100% level in the figure above). However, this needs to be multiplied by the "capacity factor" to get the actual power likely to be generated. Because of the variable winds and the energy unable to be captured by the generator, the capacity factor lies in the range 25% - 35%. However it can be much lower. UK offshore wind rarely exceeds 20%.

In summary, wind power is very dilute and it takes a huge area of land to collect significant quantities of energy. Then vagaries of the wind mean that only a small proportion of the wind energy can be captured by the blades. Then only a proportion of this energy is converted by the electrical generator into electrical energy.

...In the recent frigid snap in Britain end 2011, when power demand was at a record high, the average power generation from Britain’s wind developments – the majority of which are in Scotland – was just about 11% of the total possible of 2,430 MW. On 30 Dec 2010 UK's 3,000 operational wind turbines produced only 0.04% of the country’s power. There were days when the contribution from Scotland's forests of wind turbines was precisely nothing. At times it was even worse than that. As the temperature fell to record lows, the wind turbines had to be heated to prevent them seizing up. So, at a time when all Britain needed every bit of power, the wind industry was using more electricity than it generated.

...Depending on the vagaries of the weather, wind power produces anything from zero to 100% of design capacity. This change can come in a short time and affect large areas of land. Therefore, to maintain grid stability and the ability to supply customer demand for continuous electricity, every wind farm has to have a backup generating facility for 100% of the wind capacity, and this backup must be able to swing into production immediately.

It is even worse than that. Suppose a wind farm is producing an average of 50 MW, but varying from zero to 100 MW. The backup has to be able to handle both changes, namely a drop of 50 MW and an increase of 50 MW. So basically, you have to have 100 MW capacity on spinning reserve, but running at 50% so that you can increase or decrease power by 50 MW. So the backup facility has to have TWICE the real rated capacity of the wind farm. Imagine what this does to the capital, operating and maintenance costs if the power company is forced to include wind power in its inventory.

Only hydro power and gas have the ability to sit idle until needed and then swing into production swiftly. Coal and nuclear could do it but at great cost – all fired up, idling, using fuel, but not producing saleable electricity. Even for gas or hydro, a backup facility incurs the full additional capital cost which has to be recovered from a lower output of electricity. Any sensible person would say "If we have to spend all that capital to build a gas/hydro power plant, why not use the reliable plant full time and forget about the costly, intermittent and un-predictable power from wind towers?"

The unreliable Danish wind farms only survive because they call on hydro power from Norway and Sweden to step in at short notice when wind fails. Then they sell excess wind power produced at times of low demand back into the Scandinavian grid.

...A wind tower is a massive industrial plant. Each turbine requires a foundation of almost 1,500 tonnes of concrete and a base of about 5 acres. Each structure stands nearly 200 metres tall and they could be as close as 140 metres apart. UK has a plan to generate 30% of its electricity from renewables by 2020. For wind power to do this would require about 15,700 wind towers. At 140 metres apart, they would stretch from the north of Scotland to the south of Spain.

...And it is unsafe anywhere near them. Lumps of ice, burning embers, and broken blades get slung off and towers collapse. In one case, a broken blade was flung through the window of a house over 5 km away.

...Danish electricity consumers pay higher prices than any other Europeans. And well before they could repay the initial capital, the wind towers are reaching the end of their life and will need to be replaced. Not one coal power plant has been replaced by wind power. It is doubtful if all this community pain and suffering has reduced carbon dioxide emissions. It has certainly caused no measurable improvement to global climate and has brought great environmental damage and human worry. The sorry story of wind power in Denmark is mirrored in Spain, Hawaii and California.

... _Why Wind Won't Work PDF_ via_ WattsupWithThat?!?!

If you want to understand the modern clusterfuck of big wind power, read the PDF document linked above, together with John Droz' presentation on wind power, Ted Rockwell's Energy Facts PDF, and David MacKay's Without Hot Air.

Such documents changed the minds of Al Fin energy analysts about big wind, as you will see if you go back far enough in the archives. Al Fin engineers particularly hate the idea of placing fine machines out in the elements to be tortured and destroyed long before their time. This has been particularly true of offshore wind installations, where fine turbines and gearboxes are exposed to salty spray, wind, and the constant inertial stresses of wind, wave, and storm.

Clearly President Obama and former Vice President Albert Gore are both world class dunces, besides both having won the Nobel Peace Prize. They are also corrupt, team-playing dunces who will end up personally benefiting in the hundreds of millions of US$, at the least, for their destructive influence on economies, energy supplies, and R&D budgets.

Sociopathology in the American Black Community: STDs

As America celebrates Black History Month, it is good to keep in mind the ongoing severe social problems which originate from within the community itself. These are the kinds of problems which cannot be solved by legislation, sermons from the pulpit, lectures in the classroom, or fine televised speeches by fuzzy-minded politicians. These problems -- of rampant violence, resentment, and dysfunction -- have to be solved within the population. But before they can be solved, they must be faced.

African Americans commit several times more violent crime, have a 70% illegitimacy rate, and suffer much higher rates of many lifestyle diseases -- including sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). From deadly HIV to Herpes to Gonorrhea to Syphilis to Chlamydia, American Blacks acquire these lifestyle diseases at far higher rates than other groups.

The human genitals are a teeming evolutionary laboratory of microbes of several kinds, from viruses, to fungi, to protozoa, to bacteria of many kinds. STDs of various types can cause anything from sterility to insanity to death, as well as congenital diseases which curse the next generation. STD microbes can learn and adapt -- often making them difficult targets for human medicine to control.

Now we are learning that at least one STD -- Gonorrhea -- can pick up human DNA and incorporate it into the bacterial genome.

Northwestern Medicine researchers have discovered the first evidence of a human DNA fragment in a bacterial genome — in this case, Neisseria gonorrhoeae, the bacterium that causes gonorrhea. Further research showed the gene transfer appears to be a recent evolutionary event.

The discovery offers insight into evolution as well as gonorrhea’s nimble ability to continually adapt and survive in its human hosts. Gonorrhea, which is transmitted through sexual contact, is one of the oldest recorded diseases and one of a few exclusive to humans.

... It’s known that gene transfer occurs between different bacteria and even between bacteria and yeast cells. “But human DNA to a bacterium is a very large jump,” said lead author Mark Anderson, a postdoctoral fellow in microbiology. “This bacterium had to overcome several obstacles in order to acquire this DNA sequence.”

The paper will be published Feb. 14 in the online journal mBio._SB

The high rates of sociopathology and consequent increased suffering among black populations in the US is not particularly unusual. In Haiti and SubSaharan Africa, similar high rates of violent crime and lifestyle diseases prevail. The tendency among the politically correct cultures is to blame all these problems on outside groups. This popular PC tendency helps prevent any genuine improvement from ever taking place.

The first step is to admit the problem(s).

Creating a Staging Base at L1 for Permanent Lunar Bases

ImageSource
The Lagrange point L1 lies between the Earth and Luna at a point where the two gravities essentially cancel. This provides a relatively stable staging point for Lunar arrivals and departures, for permanently manned moon bases. NASA engineers have designed a spacecraft -- Nautilus X -- which could provide such a staging point.

The initial mission of the Nautilus X would see its deployment at the L1 Lagrange point where the gravity of the Earth and Moon cancel out. The Nautilus X would serve as a way station for astronauts headed for the Moon. An Orion or commercial space craft such as the Dragon would take a crew from the Earth to the Nautilus X. After an initial check out, a crew would take a landing vehicle to the lunar surface either for exploration missions or extended stays at a lunar base. Crews would depart from the Moon after their missions have been completed, dock with the Nautilus X, then take the Orion or commercial space craft the rest of the way to Earth. _newsYahoo

Brian Wang presents more information on ideas for moving human spaceflight beyond LEO -- Low Earth Orbit.

If a heavy-lift launch vehicle is available this decade, an expandable 30.5 ton habitat and departure-stage propulsion system may be launched to E-M L1,2 in a single launch and will offer 575 cubic meter (roughly half the habitable volume of ISS)

If existing (or near-future) EELVs are the available launch vehicles this decade, a 16 ton, 170 cubic meter design that uses a pair of launches of Delta IV H and LEO rendezvous/fuel transfer to reach E-M L1,2. _More at NextBigFuture with graphics and links

If humans are to get serious about space, they need to design spacecraft for extended missions, and for routine long-range travel. The moon is closest of all extraterrestrial planets, and holds the promise of on-site water, nuclear fuels, valuable minerals and building materials, and a useful observation and scientific research platform.

Until humans devise better long-range space vehicles, Mars is far less practical a mission, and offers at best a "one-off" fireworks display (like Apollo) which might well leave us worse off in terms of long term space missions -- for all the money wasted on an expensive token flight.

Space activities need to learn to pay for themselves. Government-dependency thinking will only set us back many more decades.

Who Is John Galt? Who Wants to Know?

Atlas Shrugged Part 1 is coming to theatres 15 April 2011. Consider reading Atlas Shrugged, the book, between now and then, if you are unfamiliar with it.

The book was published in 1957. The governmental and societal trends it describes were well set in motion by that time. A second Jimmy Carter presidential term would have "sealed the deal," by making the trends virtually irreversible. Instead, a generation raised with the warnings from Atlas Shrugged and Orwell's 1984 helped to temporarily turn the tide in the 1980s.

A documentary about the book, Atlas Shrugged, is supposed to be available soon.

Some lessons from Atlas Shrugged:


H/T Instapundit.com

US President Obama has been compared to a second coming of Jimmy Carter. Mr. Obama's revolution of hyper-statism has been somewhat slowed by the election of a "Tea Party" congress. Like the Reagan election of 1980 and the Congressional election of 1994, the new 2010 congress can be seen as a delaying action, at best. But having more time to prepare is only helpful if persons use the time well.

Obama's Anti-Energy Bias Threatens US With New "Dark Age"

Even More, 13 Feb 2011: Is the Obama administration giving the "kiss of death" to small modular reactors (SMRs)? It looks as if the regime is pretending to support SMRs while behind the scenes it is boosting the organisations who oppose them -- and all nuclear reactors. Certainly Greg Jaczko _-- Obama's chief of the NRC -- seems to want to regulate SMRs the same way as large 1 - 1.5 GW reactors are regulated. That is total idiocy, of course, but it is the bureaucratic mindset.

More 13 Feb 2011:

Nations such as Japan issue nuclear-power permits within six years while the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission may take at least 10 years, Upton, a Michigan Republican, said today in Washington. Lawmakers will examine the time required to approve new U.S. plants, Upton said.

“If you can shorten the time, you’re going to reduce the costs perhaps in the billions of dollars per reactor,” Upton said in an interview. “That’s a good thing.”

The House committee, which has jurisdiction for energy legislation, plans to tackle individual issues such as faster nuclear-plant licensing rather than seeking to pass “1,000-page bills” that are more comprehensive, he said. _Bloomberg

On every front, US President Obama seems to oppose all forms of reliable energy production. His EPA is trying to find ways to shut down unconventional oil & gas production, his Interior Deparment has already effectively shut down new offshore oil & gas production, his administration wants to shut down coal plants and mines, and to stop importing Canadian oil sands -- all out of carbon hysteria. Perhaps worst of all, Obama's NRC has been dragging its feed on safer, more reliable, and cheaper new nuclear reactor designs. Obama wants the US to rely on unreliable forms of energy such as solar and wind -- guaranteeing future blackouts and freeze-outs which are likely to cost lives.

Texas has already suffered rolling blackouts due to over-investment in wind [and the UK has suffered power "reductions" -- also see comment by Weekend Yachtsman. AF], and under-investment in nuclear. As Obama pushes the US into fool-hardy forms of energy dependency, expect things to only get worse. The US is long overdue for a return to more reliable forms of energy.

To say the U.S. has a lot of catching up to do in the nuclear power race doesn't come close to the reality. Consider these statistics, based on Nuclear Energy Agency data: France gets 77% of its electricity from nuclear plants; Sweden, 42%; Switzerland, 39%; South Korea, 37%; and Finland, 30%. The U.S.? A mere 20%.

...If the U.S. chooses to not reprocess nuclear waste, Nevada's Yucca Mountain (or some other storage facility at an out-of-the-way site to be named later) could be pressed into use. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a proponent of green and renewable energy, has often noted the odd U.S. stance regarding nuclear power compared to our democratic cousins in France. The U.S. is too afraid to store nuclear waste in the middle of the desert at Yucca Mountain while French mayors campaign to have nuclear reactors built in their towns to create jobs.

...One out-of-date argument against nuclear power concerns its cost, but new, refined nuclear plants based on simple modular designs have eliminated that concern, The Economist magazine reported. Further, modularity allows plant builders to incrementally add power generation if electricity demand increases. Modularity, with its smaller initial construction costs, also shortens the break-even timetable for utilities.

...it seems almost implausible -- indeed, irrational -- that technology and innovation powerhouse U.S. would pioneer a revolutionary technology like nuclear power and then walk away from it when it's refined, leaving other nations to apply it to their social, economic and environmental benefit.

France, China, and the U.K., among others, recognize that nuclear power represents a win-win on climate change and self-sufficiency grounds. It's time the U.S. realized it as well, and started making up for decades of lost time -- and energy. _DailyFinance

In reality, nuclear alone cannot prevent a new dark age. It will most definitely require clean coal, unconventional and conventional gas, offshore and unconventional oil, Canadian oil sands, Green River kerogens, plus biofuels and nuclear energy. Enhanced geothermal could provide excellent power as well.

Obama -- for all his hatred of European "imperialism" against the third world -- seems to want to ape a lot of Europe's policies. This is unfortunate, since most of the policies Obama wishes to imitate, lead only to financial and societal ruin. Go figure.

Perhaps it is time that enlightened individuals around the world began to learn how to do things for themselves -- learn to bypass corrupt governments and their autocratic, irrationally arbitrary ways of inaction in the face of critical need.

Obama is not the only president who has neglected this problem -- but his policies of "energy starvation" are particularly egregious in terms of trying to shut down and delay all reliable forms of energy, while promoting decidedly unreliable forms such as solar and wind.

For more news and perspective on global energy issues, check out the Al Fin Energy blog.

Super WiFi Can Take Broadband Virtually Anywhere

Super WiFi
A WiFi technology capable of covering an area with a 50 mile radius is likely to revolutionise broadband internet for rural and semi-rural areas. One of the early adopters of the technology is the Yurok American Indian reservation in Northern California, near the Oregon border.

For a glimpse of the wireless future, take a look at the Yurok Indian reservation, an out-of-the-way spot just south of the California-Oregon border at the mouth of the Klamath River. There, among the giant redwoods, stand three new towers built to create a new type of wireless network, known as "super Wi-Fi." If the U.S. Federal Communications Commission gets its way, super Wi-Fi will become a key part of rural America's digital infrastructure.


Most people living on the Yurok's 63,000-acre reservation lack phone service. Almost none have high-speed Internet. The new towers aim to fix both problems. Unlike regular Wi-Fi networks, which are generally limited to beaming high-speed Internet around a house, super Wi-Fi promises to blanket entire neighborhoods with high-speed access.


A Yurok tribal spokesman says the new signals will reach even into the steep-walled valleys that play havoc with most wireless signals.


...Unlike most wireless advances, super Wi-Fi's much-improved range has little to do with better technology. Instead, the dramatic jump comes from the FCC's decision to free up airwaves that have long been reserved exclusively for local TV broadcasts. Those TV airwaves are lower in frequency than standard cellular and Wi-Fi airwaves and thus better able to penetrate buildings and other objects.


...Since rural America has fewer local TV stations, it will have far more of these empty "white spaces" to fill with new wireless signals, points out Alex Besen, who runs an industry consultancy, the Besen Group. In many rural areas, super Wi-Fi will have access to well over 200 megahertz of spectrum, he estimates—more capacity than Verizon and AT&T combined. That huge injection of spectrum could revolutionize the digital infrastructure of rural America, Besen says. _TechnologyReview

Google thinks that Super WiFi will be revolutionary in impact. When you consider what go-anywhere broadband internet could do for global communications, it is hard to disagree.

In other consumer electronics technology news, the tablet computer field will receive some new entries at the 14 Feb 2011 Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The stage is set for a battle among new tablet PCs at the Mobile World Congress which will kick off in Barcelona on Feb. 14. Major companies including Samsung, LG, Motorola and HTC are expected to show off their new devices running on the Honeycomb version of Google's Android OS at the show. Honeycomb is better suited to the larger screens of tablets rather than smartphones and supports 3D Google maps and video chat.

...While the iPad will likely stick with its 9.7-inch screen, Samsung is trying to reach a more broad spectrum of customers by targeting different segments with products of different sizes, industry experts say. Samsung's new tablets are equipped with two CPUs and include a high-definition 8-megapixel camera.

LG Electronics is set to release its 8.9-inch Optimus Pad that it revealed at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas last month, while Motorola Mobility is launching its flagship 10-inch Xoom tablet, which was highly acclaimed at CES.

Meanwhile, Apple is expected to unveil the successor to the iPad in March or April in San Francisco._Chosun

Previously published at Al Fin Potpourri

France, Germany, UK Agree: Multiculturalism Has Failed

France's Sarkozy declared, just yesterday, that multiculturalism has failed.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy declared Thursday that multiculturalism had failed, joining a growing number of world leaders or ex-leaders who have condemned it.

"My answer is clearly yes, it is a failure," he said in a television interview when asked about the policy which advocates that host societies welcome and foster distinct cultural and religious immigrant groups. _AFP

The UK's Cameron had asserted just this past Saturday, that multiculturalism is a failure:

Prime Minister David Cameron, in a speech attended by world leaders, on Saturday criticized his country’s longstanding policy of multiculturalism, saying it was an outright failure and partly to blame for fostering Islamist extremism. He said the U.K. needs a stronger national identity to prevent people turning to extremism. "If we are to defeat this threat, I believe it's time to turn the page on the failed policies of the past," he told an international conference in Munich. _MSNBC

Only this past October, Germany's Angela Merkel stated outright that multiculturalism had utterly failed:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a gathering of young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party this weekend that the "multikulti" concept – where people of different backgrounds would live together happily – does not work in Germany. _CSM_More_

For many years, lonely and persecuted writers, politicians, and speakers have attempted to convey this message -- this utter failure of multiculturalism and European self-abnegation -- to no avail. Pim Fortuyn and Theo van Gogh were assassinated for speaking this truth. Geert Wilders has been threatened with death by Muslim hate groups, and is being persecuted by his own government and by the UK Labour government which preceded Cameron's.

Europe has long been a weak-kneed patsy for an increasingly militant third world presence. In the face of decreasing birth rates among Europeans, both legal and illegal third world immigrants have flooded European schools and birthing wards with the coming waves of another Muslim youth bulge -- this time a threat from within.

Prisons of Europe are beginning to fill with newcomers and children of newcomers, as the native children of Europe find themselves in the minority on schoolgrounds and on the streets. Young girls of Europe are increasingly under threat from rape gangs and worse. Young native boys are beaten by gleeful immigrant gangs who laugh their victory over the natives -- a fading demographic.

Multiculturalism has failed? Of course it has bloody well failed, you pathetic political panderers and fools. For some of your countries it is already too late for anything meaningful to be done, even if your men had it in them to stand up. Sadly, your police forces themselves have been so overrun and subdued by multiculturalists, that any European with the temerity to stand up for himself or his family against outsider violence, would be treated worse by the police than the offenders themselves.

The demographic collapse of Europe was necessary in order to leave the continent helpless to assault from without, and increasingly from within. Now there is little that most European countries can do to reverse the decay and eventual overthrow.

Europe as Lebanon? Europe as Eurabia? Islam is a religion of fertility as it is a religion of hatred and violence. If Islam is involved in the particular multiculturalism that has invaded your country, then you will have a very difficult time coping -- particularly if your own birthrates are failing.

Cameron, Sarkozy, and Merkel can make all the noises against multiculturalism they wish. Unless they are willing to back those words with meaningful action -- and to be willing to go against the political correctness of their own decaying societies -- the effort will be too feeble, and ultimately futile.

A Bright Clear Knowledge Threatens the Established Order

No one comprehends the world in which he is immersed. Consider it a given starting point. There are ways to bring up a child capable of a far better understanding of his surroundings, but the established order has a vested interest in keeping things the way they are.

In Australia, scientists are working on a "thinking cap" which boosts creativity. They are at a very primitive stage, as of yet. But Allan Snyder, director of the University of Sydney's Centre for the Mind, thinks he is making progress.

Another interesting Australian innovation which may lead to improved thinking and brain development, is "Mathletics." Mathletics gives learning power to families and students themselves, leaving massive and extortionate educational systems with fewer justifications for their existence.

Scientists are learning more about how the brain is connected in networks. We are learning how young brains develop and prune themselves to become more efficient over time.

We are also becoming more interventionist when things go wrong. Brain implants are becoming smaller, more sophisticated, and more biocompatible. We are seeing a cyborg future, for many.

As we learn to grow more powerful, more imaginative, and clearer thinking brains, the massive infrastructure of inter-locking institutions grows at risk. Justification for the ruinously expensive system of institutions underlying modern societies is already vanishingly weak. As humans grow smarter and less tolerant of institutional bullshit from the power structure, a revolution will be brewing.

What's In It for China?

According to the report, the intruders used widely available attack methods known as SQL injection and spear phishing to compromise their targets. Once they gained access to computers on internal company networks, they would install remote administration software that gave them complete control of those systems. That made it possible for the intruders to search for documents as well as stage attacks on other computers connected to corporate networks.

In addition to their parallels to the Google attacks of last year, the intrusions resembled a Chinese-based electronic espionage network that was found in 2009 and named GhostNet. In that case, researchers at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto uncovered an elaborate network aimed at government computers as well as those of nongovernmental organizations like the office of the Dalai Lama. The researchers concluded that the control servers of the attack system were based on the island of Hainan, which is part of China. _NYT

It is bad enough that tin-pot oil dictatorships such as Venezuela and Russa systematically lure international oil&gas companies into partnerships -- only to nationalise all of the multinational's in-country assets. Over and over again. Now China has been caught red-handed attempting to use computer hacking tools to disrupt multinational oil & gas operations. What is in it for the Chinese?

At least five multinational oil and gas companies suffered computer network intrusions from a persistent group of computer hackers based in China, according to a report released Wednesday night by a Silicon Valley computer security firm.

...Operating from what was a base apparently in Beijing, the intruders established control servers in the United States and Netherlands to break into computers in Kazakhstan, Taiwan, Greece and the United States, according to a report, “Global Energy Cyberattacks: ‘Night Dragon.’ ”

The focus of the intrusions was on oil and gas field production systems as well as financial documents related to field exploration and bidding for new oil and gas leases, according to the report. The attackers also stole information related to industrial control systems, the researchers noted, but no efforts to tamper with these systems were observed.

McAfee executives declined to name the victim companies, citing nondisclosure agreements it signed before being hired to patch the vulnerabilities revealed by the intrusions. Last year, when Google announced that intellectual property had been stolen by Chinese intruders, it expressed frustration that while it had observed break-ins at a variety of other United States companies, virtually none of the other companies were willing to acknowledge that they had been compromised. _NYT

The opportunities for western oil&gas companies seem to be expanding almost exponentially, given new drilling and exploration techniques. Oil & gas production in the US and elsewhere around the world are set to rise as a result, with much growth in exploration and production sectors.

What can China expect to gain from disrupting western and multinational oil & gas enterprises? Is is nothing more than a show of force projection, far beyond Chinese borders? Is it a warning? Or is it rehearsal and preparation for a more integrated effort to disrupt western energy supplies and critical information systems?

China is known for its industrial sabotage, its product counterfeiting, its outright theft of technologies from partners, and its iron-fisted control over information sources and expression inside its borders. Is China experimenting with similar exertion of control over global information streamways, with a hoped-for domination over energy, financial, information, and political flow of data?

Clearly, with China one must never let down his guard.

Cross-posted to Al Fin Energy

More: Brian Wang looks at China's ambitious plans for innovative -- perhaps technologically revolutionary -- change over the next decade. According to Brian, "Special emphasis is on four key areas, namely space science, information technology, energy and health." In addition, China is looking at US$ 1.5 trillion in investments into other potentially disruptive technologies.

The western world runs on high-speed information. Were China to learn to tap into, control, or largely disrupt the massive flow of information which forms the foundation of modern western prosperity, the entire global future would be up for grabs.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging Becoming Super Brain Assessment Tool

“While particular brain regions are important for specific functions, the capacity of information flow within and between regions is also crucial,” said study leader Scientia Professor Perminder Sachdev from UNSW’s School of Psychiatry.

“We all know what happens when road or phone networks get clogged or interrupted. It’s much the same in the brain.

“With age, the brain network deteriorates and this leads to slowing of the speed of information processing, which has the potential to impact on other cognitive functions.” _Science Alert

University of New South Wales researchers have utilised advanced diffusion tensor imaging (PDF research article) along with powerful computational tools to assess the efficiency of the total brain network of white matter, and watched overall brain processing speeds as they slow due to ageing.

The research team, led by Scientia Professor Perminder Sachdev from the UNSW School of Psychiatry, has mapped the network of fibres or ‘white matter’ for the first time, allowing them to examine the strength of connections between different cortical regions, or ‘grey matter’, which are responsible for specific functions. In the past, most research has focused on the more complicated grey matter without looking at how information flows between separate regions.

A new type of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) combined with powerful computers allowed the team to create the map and see the whole network in great detail.

“Using a mathematical theory you can see how strongly the different regions are connected to each other,” Professor Sachdev said. “You can basically look at the efficiency of the network and with ageing, we can see a reduction in the efficiency of these networks.”

“What we wanted to see is how this relates to cognitive function, and we found that the best relationship was with processing speed, which makes sense because we’re talking about strength of information connections.”

Other areas strongly affected by the efficiency of neural networks were executive functions that manage other brain processes and the ability to navigate in space, known as visuospatial function.

Sachdev said the findings could help to some extent with dementia research, by offering another way of looking at the condition, but had already helped explain what happens in the brain when physical reaction time slows down in older people.

“It’s not that they can’t do the task, it just takes longer, and we have shown that this is related to structural changes in the brain, in terms of its neural networks.”

“The next step is looking at what determines the efficiency of these networks. We want to see if they are flexible or plastic, and whether maybe we can intervene.”

...The results of the study, which was based on a sample of 342 healthy people aged between 72 and 92, have been published in the January edition of the Journal of Neuroscience. _AustralianAgeingAgenda

Here is more from science alert Australia:

In the study, the researchers performed magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans on 342 healthy individuals aged 72 to 92, using a new imaging technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI).

Using a mathematical technique called graph theory, they plotted and measured the properties of the neural connectivity they observed.

“We found that the efficiency of the whole brain network of cortical fibre connections had an influence on processing speed, visuospatial function – the ability to navigate in space – and executive function,” said study first author Dr Wei Wen.

“In particular greater processing speed was significantly correlated with better connectivity of nearly all the cortical regions of the brain.”

Professor Sachdev said the findings help explain how cognitive functions are organised in the brain, and the more highly distributed nature of some functions over others. _Science Alert

It is important to stress the difference between speed of nerve transmission and speed of information processing for the brain. The two are related, and both are measurable (or calculable) using the DTI computational techniques, but information processing is a much higher order process than mere nerve conduction velocities. Knowing processing speeds -- particularly being able to compare whole brain processing and subsystem processing speeds and efficiencies -- provides more information.

Diffusion Tensor Imaging (DTI) can be used to assess several aspects of brain functioning, including general intelligence and executive function. It can also be used to assess multiple types of brain pathology, including schizophrenia.

Better brain imaging techniques provide clinicians and researchers with better information with which to form theories and plan therapies. As brain ageing comes to be seen more as a reversible pathology, more advanced diagnostic tools and therapeutic methods will be made available more widely.

Cross-posted from an earlier Al Fin Longevity posting

Have You Considered Living in a Fortress?

Martello towers were built, at great cost, along the coasts of Kent, Sussex, Essex and Suffolk at the time of the Napoleonic wars. Originally, there were 103 of these 30ft-high towers, with walls 13ft thick and roof-mounted cannons capable of shooting lead balls a mile out to sea. _Guardian

Guardian
These coastal towers still stand guard along the English coast, watching against the risk of Napoleon re-born. If you imagine yourself as a modern-day watchman, protector against the invading destroyer, one of these towers may be reserved just for you.

The overall effect is magical: brick fort on the outside, palatial home within. The main space, approached from the entrance lobby, is breathtaking, with the climb up the spiral stairs enjoyably spooky, and the top floor a revelation: all light, space and comfort, with little hint of ostentation. But then you don't need decoration when you have the sea and all its moods just beyond the parapet, with ships hoving in and out of view, and sunlight playing over that lichen-encrusted brickwork throughout the day. _Guardian

Some refurbishment will be required, however. Back in the day of Napoleon, they lacked such modern amenities as satellite television, the internet, electricity, and . . . flush toilets. Interior designs and standards of interior thermal control may have changed a bit as well.

Think it over. If Europe and the UK experience half the tumult that seems to be headed that way, you may be happy to be living in a fortress by the time the storm passes over.

Previously published at Al Fin Potpourri

A Novel Approach to Nuclear Fusion

HyperV Technologies Corp. is taking a novel approach to small fusion, using mini-railguns to accelerate multiple supersonic plasma beams into a central target of deuterium or deuterium-tritium.

According to the FocusFusionSociety website:

... the approach is geared towards deuterium and/or deuterium-tritium fusion, as opposed to advanced fusion fuels, but success there would of course remain a huge accomplishment. Some of the links on HyperV’s site are under construction, but the technical materials show a well-credentialed academic/industry team, a talk at the 2009 International Conference on Plasma Science, and a publication calculating gain from their design published in Physics of Plasmas. The work has also received funding from the DOE Office of Fusion Energy Science. _FocusFusionSociety

A spherical array of minirailgun plasma accelerators is a potential driver for forming imploding spherical plasma liners that can reach HEDP-relevant ( about 0.1 Mbar) pressures upon stagnation. The liners would be formed via merging of 30 or more dense, high Mach number plasma jets (n about 10^16−17 cm−3, M about 10–35, v about 50–70 km/s, rjet about 5 cm) in a spherically convergent geometry. The small (typically 1-2 cm square bore x 15-50 cm length) parallel-plate railguns with ceramic insulators would use pulsed injection of high-Z gas at the breech via fast opening valves to produce high density plasma jets with velocity in the 50-100 km/s range. Recent tests at HyperV using a single pulsed capillary discharge injecting into the minirailgun breech have achieved plasma densities in the bore approaching 10^18 cm−3, with densities in the jet plume exceeding 1017 cm−3 at velocities above 50 km/s. Total plasma jet mass in these 1 cm square bore tests has not yet been determined, but similar tests of an earlier 6 mm square bore 13 cm long device, with a roughly 3 μs, 100 kA current pulse using an aluminized mylar fuse starting from rest, yielded 90 μg of plasma at 50 km/s, and about 40 μg at 63 km/s. A modest scaleup of the railgun to a 2 cm square bore operating at longer pulse widths of 200-300 kA should be capable of accelerating a few thousand micrograms of high-Z gas (e.g. xenon) to above 50 km/s. This performance should be sufficient for reaching HEDP-relevant pressures. _HyperV Presentation_quoted at NextBigFututre

HyperV Technologies is a US Virginia-based research group that aims to achieve "tunable" nuclear fusion power on the 100 MW and up scale. Its approach is to utilise a spherical array of magnetic railgun supersonic plasma jet injectors aimed at a central "magnetic fuel" target.

NextBigFuture HyperV

Brian Wang has more at NextBigFuture including graphics.

HyperV PDF Presentation on Mini-Railgun Plasma Injectors

More Technical Papers about HyperV's research

Several fusion approaches have studied the "colliding beam" approach, without success. The conventional laser inertial technique used at Livermore is another type of targeted energy approach, which has mainly succeeded in eating up many billions in research grants so far. General Fusion's approach to target-focused fusion involves a hybrid combination of magnetic confinement and pneumatic compression.

HyperV attempts to focus multiple plasma jets onto a magnetically confined central target, in a switched-pulse fashion. At this time -- like most of the other small fusion projects -- it appears to be purely in the research proof of concept stage.

Taken from an earlier article at Al Fin Energy

Social Sciences in US a Hotbed of Politically Correct Bias?

“If a group circles around sacred values, they will evolve into a tribal-moral community,” he said. “They’ll embrace science whenever it supports their sacred values, but they’ll ditch it or distort it as soon as it threatens a sacred value.” _NYT

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt spoke at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology’s conference last month. Professor Haidt mad a lot of waves when he came right out and called the US social sciences bigoted and quasi-religious in its biases and dogmatisms. Will Haidt become the next target of hate for having spoken his mind honestly? More about Haidt's talk:

He polled his audience at the San Antonio Convention Center, starting by asking how many considered themselves politically liberal. A sea of hands appeared, and Dr. Haidt estimated that liberals made up 80 percent of the 1,000 psychologists in the ballroom. When he asked for centrists and libertarians, he spotted fewer than three dozen hands. And then, when he asked for conservatives, he counted a grand total of three.

“This is a statistically impossible lack of diversity,” Dr. Haidt concluded, noting polls showing that 40 percent of Americans are conservative and 20 percent are liberal. In his speech and in an interview, Dr. Haidt argued that social psychologists are a “tribal-moral community” united by “sacred values” that hinder research and damage their credibility — and blind them to the hostile climate they’ve created for non-liberals.

“Anywhere in the world that social psychologists see women or minorities underrepresented by a factor of two or three, our minds jump to discrimination as the explanation,” said Dr. Haidt, who called himself a longtime liberal turned centrist. “But when we find out that conservatives are underrepresented among us by a factor of more than 100, suddenly everyone finds it quite easy to generate alternate explanations.”

Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) told the audience that he had been corresponding with a couple of non-liberal graduate students in social psychology whose experiences reminded him of closeted gay students in the 1980s. He quoted — anonymously — from their e-mails describing how they hid their feelings when colleagues made political small talk and jokes predicated on the assumption that everyone was a liberal.

“I consider myself very middle-of-the-road politically: a social liberal but fiscal conservative. Nonetheless, I avoid the topic of politics around work,” one student wrote. “Given what I’ve read of the literature, I am certain any research I conducted in political psychology would provide contrary findings and, therefore, go unpublished. Although I think I could make a substantial contribution to the knowledge base, and would be excited to do so, I will not.”

The politics of the professoriate has been studied by the economists Christopher Cardiff and Daniel Klein and the sociologists Neil Gross and Solon Simmons. They’ve independently found that Democrats typically outnumber Republicans at elite universities by at least six to one among the general faculty, and by higher ratios in the humanities and social sciences. In a 2007 study of both elite and non-elite universities, Dr. Gross and Dr. Simmons reported that nearly 80 percent of psychology professors are Democrats, outnumbering Republicans by nearly 12 to 1.

The fields of psychology, sociology and anthropology have long attracted liberals, but they became more exclusive after the 1960s, according to Dr. Haidt. “The fight for civil rights and against racism became the sacred cause unifying the left throughout American society, and within the academy,” he said, arguing that this shared morality both “binds and blinds.” _NYT

Unfortunately this is a widespread phenomenon in the humanities and social sciences faculties, and in administrative staffing at universities. To the victor go the spoils. In this case what is being spoiled are the futures of students and entire societies.

Higher education in the US is overpriced and of decreasing quality. As faulty assumptions get incorporated into mainstream academic thought -- and into the thinking of research funding institutions -- the outcome of multi-billions of dollars worth of scholarship and research comes into question.

Affirmative action for libertarians, conservatives, and white males is not the answer. The answer is a complete housecleaning in higher education staffing and research funding to get rid of the ideologues and riff-raff who have managed to clog the system. Such a housecleaning of personnel is necessary at all levels, from K-12 to the highest levels of education. The stink of bigotry, indoctrination, and dogma throughout the educational system is too great to ignore any longer.

Jonathan Haidt's TED Talks page

More: The same phenomenon has been observed among economics professors as well
H/T Powerline

Do Junk Food Be Makin Kids Stupid?

ImageSource
A study recently published in the BMJ's Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found a small but significant IQ difference between 8 year olds who had been raised largely on "junk food" diets, and those who had been fed a "health conscious" diet most of their lives.

The conclusion, published on Monday, comes from a long-term investigation into 14,000 people born in western England in 1991 and 1992 whose health and well-being were monitored at the ages of three, four, seven and eight and a half.

Parents of the children were asked to fill out questionnaires that, among other things, detailed the kind of food and drink their children consumed.

Three dietary patterns emerged: one was high in processed fats and sugar; then there was a "traditional" diet high in meat and vegetables; and finally a "health-conscious" diet with lots of salad, fruit and vegetables, pasta and rice.

When the children were eight and a half, their IQ was measured using a standard tool called the Wechsler Intelligence Scale.

Of the 4,000 children for which there were complete data, there was a significant difference in IQ among those who had had the "processed" as opposed to the "health-conscious" diets in early childhood.

The 20 percent of children who ate the most processed food had an average IQ of 101 points, compared with 106 for the 20 percent of children who ate the most "health-conscious" food.

"It's a very small difference, it's not a vast difference," said one of the authors, Pauline Emmett of the School of Social and Community Medicine at the University of Bristol.

"But it does make them less able to cope with education, less able to cope with some of the things in life." _France24_via_DiversityIsChaos

In this type of population study, it is important that as many potential "confounders" be identified and corrected for, as possible. Ethnicity and socioeconomic status are particular confounders for IQ. Without adequate adjustments and corrections for confounding at all stages of the study, the results will not be particularly reliable -- even with such a large number of subjects included.

The current study, based on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, uses data on children's diet reported by parents in food-frequency questionnaires at 3, 4, 7 and 8.5 years of age. Dietary patterns were identified using principal-components analysis and scores computed at each age. IQ was assessed using the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children at 8.5 years. Data on a number of confounders were collected, and complete data were available for 3966 children. _PaperAbstract

Are the results of this study meaningful? Correlation is not causation, particularly when so many factors come together to form a child's IQ score on any given testing day. Multiple IQ scores would be more helpful than a single score, and naturally every little detail of the study's methodology would need to be dissected. Still, 4,000 subjects can provide a study with a lot of "power." If the scores were adjusted and corrected for SES and ethnicity, the findings may be important.

As always, it should be noted that childhood IQ is likely to change as a person grows to adulthood. And in terms of life success, sound executive function (EF) of the frontal lobes is more important overall, than high IQ -- although both sound EF and high IQ together work better than either one singly. A pity that there is no single easy way to test for the many parameters of a sound EF.

Women Choose Their Destinies in Science

Since 1970, women have made dramatic gains in science. Today, half of all MD degrees and 52% of PhDs in life sciences are awarded to women, as are 57% of PhDs in social sciences, 71% of PhDs to psychologists, and 77% of DVMs to veter-inarians.* Forty years ago, women’s presence in most of these fields was several orders of magnitude less; e.g., in 1970 only 13% of PhDs in life sciences went to women (1). In the most math intensive fields, however, women’s growth has been less pronounced (2–4). Among the top 100 US universities, only 8.8–15.8% of tenure-track positions in many math-intensive fields(combined across ranks) are held by women, and female fullprofessors number ≤10%. _PNAS Ceci, Williams

Famous Women in ScienceIs the relatively low number of women professors in math-intensive fields due to discrimination, or do women choose their destinies in their field of choice? A recent study published in PNAS suggests that the choice depends on the woman, and how she interprets her ensemble of personal and professional needs.

It's not discrimination in instances of different hiring, but rather differences in resources attributable to career and family-related choices that set women back in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields, say Stephen J. Ceci, professor of developmental psychology, and Wendy M. Williams, professor of human development and director of the Cornell Institute for Women in Science, both in Cornell's College of Human Ecology.

The "substantial resources" universities expend to sponsor gender-sensitivity training and interviewing workshops would be better spent on addressing the real causes of women's underrepresentation, Ceci and Williams say, through creative problem-solving and policy changes that respond to differing "biological and social realities" of the sexes.

The researchers analyzed the scientific literature in which women and men competed for publications, grants or jobs in these fields. They found no systematic evidence of sex discrimination in interviewing, hiring, reviewing or funding when men and women with similar resources – such as teaching loads and research support – were compared.

"We hear often that men have a better chance of getting their work accepted or funded, or of getting jobs, because they're men," Williams said. "Universities expend money and time trying to combat this rampant alleged discrimination against women in the hope that by doing so universities will see the numbers of women STEM scientists increase dramatically over coming years."

The data show that women scientists are confronted with choices, beginning at or before adolescence, that influence their career trajectories and success. Women who prioritize families and have children sometimes make "lifestyle choices" that lead to them to take positions, such as adjunct or part-time appointments or jobs at two-year colleges, offering fewer resources and chances to move up in the ranks. _WomenInScience

From the abstract to the study:

Explanations for women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields of science often focus on sex discrimination in grant and manuscript reviewing, interviewing, and hiring. Claims that women scientists suffer discrimination in these arenas rest on a set of studies undergirding policies and programs aimed at remediation. More recent and robust empiricism, however, fails to support assertions of discrimination in these domains. To better understand women's underrepresentation in math-intensive fields and its causes, we reprise claims of discrimination and their evidentiary bases. Based on a review of the past 20 y of data, we suggest that some of these claims are no longer valid and, if uncritically accepted as current causes of women's lack of progress, can delay or prevent understanding of contemporary determinants of women's underrepresentation. We conclude that differential gendered outcomes in the real world result from differences in resources attributable to choices, whether free or constrained, and that such choices could be influenced and better informed through education if resources were so directed. Thus, the ongoing focus on sex discrimination in reviewing, interviewing, and hiring represents costly, misplaced effort: Society is engaged in the present in solving problems of the past, rather than in addressing meaningful limitations deterring women's participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics careers today. Addressing today's causes of underrepresentation requires focusing on education and policy changes that will make institutions responsive to differing biological realities of the sexes. Finally, we suggest potential avenues of intervention to increase gender fairness that accord with current, as opposed to historical, findings. _PNAS

People tend to do what they are good at. A great deal of research demonstrates that at the most elite levels of math performance men outnumber women by as much as 7 to 1 or higher. Not only do math-proficient women tend to find themselves badly outnumbered by men in fields which are math intensive, but the higher testosterone levels of men in those fields tends to drive them to work harder over longer hours in order to achieve success -- even at the sacrifice of the men's personal and family lives. For men, it is a biological imperative to compete and excel.

For many women who happen to be good at math, other motivations and needs take precedence over the academic rat race. For women in fields dominated by other women -- such as psychology -- the competition is against other women who have lower testosterone levels like themselves. Stress levels are consequently not as high in terms of competitive performance anxiety -- although staff meetings may occasionally take on the ambience of a screeching cat fight. ;-)

Women who prioritize families and have children sometimes make “lifestyle choices” that lead to them to take positions, such as adjunct or part-time appointments or jobs at two-year colleges, offering fewer resources and chances to move up in the ranks. These women, however, are not held back by sex discrimination in hiring or in how their scholarly work is evaluated. Men with comparably low levels of research resources fare equivalently to their female peers. Although women disproportionately hold such low-resource positions, this is not because they had their grants and manuscripts rejected or were denied positions at research-intensive universities due to their gender.

Also, females beginning before adolescence often prefer careers focusing on people, rather than things, aspiring to be physicians, biologists and veterinarians rather than physicists, engineers and computer scientists. Efforts to interest young girls in these math-heavy fields are intended to ensure girls do not opt out of inorganic fields because of misinformation or stereotypes.

Also, fertility decisions are key because the tenure system has strong disincentives for women to have children — a factor in why more women in academia are childless than men. Implementation of “flexible options” to enhance work-family balance may help to increase the numbers of women in STEM fields, the researchers say. _SB

Women should be free to choose the nature of their careers, and not be pushed into career tracks which they feel do not suit them, by political feminists.

There is far too much denial of human biodiversity (HBD) inside politics, the media, and the academy. By denying the natural statistical diversity of human biology in the genders and other population groupings, these HBD deniers do untold amounts of damage to generation after generation of young people -- and to society at large.

Reasons for Economic Growth: Don't Forget Human Capital

NextBigFuture
MIT economists and computer modelers are attempting to answer the age old question: "Why are some countries rich and some countries poor?" (via Next Big Future) They have framed the question in terms of economic growth, and have surrounded it with sophisticated computer modeling and visual representations, but they seem to have left out a crucial, central variable: human capital.

In the MIT model, the key variables considered are the diversity of economic "inputs" and diversity of economic "outputs" for a country.

Economists think of production in terms of inputs and outputs. The outputs are the goods that a country produces. The inputs are everything that’s required to produce those goods. In 19th-century America, lumber was an example of a product with relatively few inputs. Exporting it required little more than the manpower and tools to chop down trees and haul them to shipping ports. Twentieth-century digital-signal-processing chips, on the other hand, are products that require a lot of inputs: the ability to extract and purify exotic materials like gallium arsenide, computer-aided design software to produce circuit layouts, and the chemicals and vacuum chambers required for the deposition of different layers of material, among other things.

Hidalgo and Hausmann argue that the diversity of a country’s production capacity, and thus the true strength of its economy, depends on the diversity of both its outputs and its inputs. Two countries could export the same number of products — they could have the same diversity of outputs — but if one exports only garments, it’s likely to have many fewer inputs than a country that exports a mix of garments and other light manufacturing, agricultural products, electronics and cultural goods. And the country with more inputs, the researchers claim, will adapt better to a changing world economy. _MIT

Hidalgo and Hausmann have found that GDP correlates pretty well with diversity of outputs, but it correlates much better with diversity of inputs. And the cases where the correlation breaks down could actually be more interesting than the cases where it holds, because they could indicate economies poised for growth. In 1970, for instance, the Korean economy had much greater diversity of inputs, according to Hidalgo’s measure, than the Peruvian economy; but Peru had twice Korea’s GDP per capita. Over the next 30 years, the relative diversity of inputs in the two countries’ economies stayed more or less the same, but by 2003, Korea had four times Peru’s GDP per capita. _NextBigFuture

Human capital can be represented by several different markers. Levels of educational achievement, for example, can be seen as one measure of human capital. Quality of pre-natal care, child-raising, and early education are other very crucial metrics. But one assessment of human capital which absolutely cannot be neglected in the analysis of a nation's long-term economic trajectory, is the average population IQ.

Per capita GDP vs. national average IQ. The regression line is shown in red. The correlation coefficient is 0.73.
There are many ingredients which go into the economic growth and success of a society, region, or nation. But any analysis which dances around the central issue of human capital, can easily be seen as a sophisticated smokescreen or obfuscation, rather than an attempt to get at the heart of the issue.

A nation's exports and imports are certainly important indicators of its economic health. But what is cause and what is effect? Clearly the MIT researchers are wrapped in a complex dynamic computer network of circular causation -- and potential infinite regress -- unless they can clearly identify variables which are more central and causative.

Political correctness has long been associated with the death of honest research and scholarship in many departments of academia. The ascendancy of post-modern multiculturalist ideology in the humanities departments and in administrative policies of universities has trickled down and spilled over into the social sciences -- even into some of the harder sciences. There are simply some topics and phenomena which one cannot even hint at, much less mention outright -- and far less make a topic of serious study.

Imagine all the time, effort, and resources being wasted at all levels of society, devoted to "dancing around the obvious." Entire huge and expensive departments of academia, media, industry, and government are devoted to obfuscating and denying truths which are obvious to any intelligent 6 year old.

But MIT has very big computers, very good tools of visual illustration, and very intelligent professors and researchers. Best to let them show them off, and pull the wool over society's eyes, using very sophisticated tools. Lie back and enjoy it. You'll feel much better about it all that way.

A Slipping Away of Competence and Human Capital Over Time?

...in a hard place, independence and self-reliance were the most sovereign of virtues and looked upon as the elements of character that made a man or a woman “worthwhile.” _Rex Murphy

NationalPost
In the National Post article quoted here, Rex Murphy is looking back at a recent bygone era of practical competence and self-reliance. Modern people in the year 2011 perceive their advanced technologies and lives of relative ease as signs of superiority. And yet, what is lost when generations of children are raised so as to be unable to lift a finger to provide practical sustenance for themselves or those they care about?

We know what is gained in terms of productivity, when specialisation of labour is practised. But when children spend most of their formative years -- outside of their school indoctrinations into political correctness and groupthink -- playing video games, watching cartoons and movies, texting friends . . . what will they do in a large-scale catastrophe to provide for personal and group survival?

...when I look to the Newfoundland of 50 years ago, look to it as my native province really was, not as I now retrospectively would like it to have been, I see in that hardscrabble time and place certain features of character and life that present a worth and depth all too rarely encountered today. Furthermore, I think most present day Newfoundlanders would agree with me — they were a better crowd then, those Newfoundlanders on the edge of our memories from a couple of generations back. They were a modest, hardworking, uncomplaining and above all a self-reliant people...

...The people of old did not advertise their diligence, industry, their life-long persistence at the hard, hard business of getting food and shelter for their families, and of making do with what they had. This was a time before the Oprah gene of emotional incontinence and reckless, exhibitionary self-worship so tormented our species. Newfoundlanders had the grand old gift of shutting-up about what they endured, why they endured it, and how much it cost them to endure it...

...They were tough, and in addition they were incredibly, ferociously self-reliant. Self-reliance was a foundation rock of their entire character. Be careful that you never accidently cast a doubt or a slur on a man or woman’s ability — and total determination — to be utterly free of any dependence on anyone else whatsoever.

I remember one old man who after a life of being on the water decided to build a long-liner all by himself. Cut the timbers, hauled the wood, planed, hammered and sawed away for the whole of two full winters: no neighbours to help, just him and a few tools. At the end to look across the road and see the magnitude of what, solitarily, he had built, the grace and finish of it, too — was to marvel that one man had so much within his own capacity and determination. I know he was proud that he, “just a fisherman” had so much skill. He was proud of his craft. But he was more proud that he could engineer this whole project all by his own 70-year-old self. He needed no one. Had to ask help of no one. Took money nor grant from no one. This was his boat....

...That self-sufficiency and the intensity of the commitment to it was the real hallmark of the Newfoundland character. It showed itself not just in large projects — such as building a boat — but in the lesser gestures of everyday as well...For many people, especially in the outports, this meant keeping a few farm animals and growing in a back garden of potatoes, cabbage and turnip. Together with fish and game, they had their own food supply. _RexMurphy-NationalPost

Murphy talks about self-reliance in Newfoundland, but the same ethic was practised across the rural areas of North America -- from seacoasts to mountains to the great plains. People were self-reliant because they had to be, and had been required to be so for as long as they could remember.

Modern people have largely forgotten any world except one where one supplies any need -- service or substance -- through a monetary (typically credit card) purchase. It is not so hard to imagine situations where the modern infrastructure of universal supply and demand might break down. A broader competence would come in handy in such situations. Another situation requiring self-reliant and resourceful competencies will be the opening of new frontiers in space and on/beneath the oceans.

A smarter society -- smarter than the currently deepening Idiocracy -- would raise its children with such possibilities in mind.

American Superbowl A Prime Showcase for Child Prostitutes

Each year, 100,000 to 300,000 American kids, some as young as 12 years old, are exploited in the sex trade, he says. The traffickers use the Super Bowl and other large events such as the World Cup to ply their trade, Allen says. "The traffickers try to seize that opportunity to do business," he says.

...Super Bowl XLV on Sunday in Cowboys Stadium is of particular concern because of Texas' 1,200-mile border with Mexico, which makes the state a bigger target for international rings, says Abbott, the attorney general. Agents are monitoring websites for signs of underage sex offerings and launching undercover investigations in the region, he says.
"We are watching them, we will find them, and we will prosecute them," Abbott says _USAT

Image Source
Child prostitution and human trafficking is an international scourge. Large criminal rings and international human trafficking groups often zero in on huge sporting events -- such as American Football's SuperBowl. The FBI and other US law enforcement agencies are taking a special interest in the Dallas, Texas, area for the next several days:

Incidents of underage prostitution have spiked during previous Super Bowls, leading to some arrests, says Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott.

His office, working closely with the FBI, is bringing in at least a dozen extra agents from Austin and other cities to monitor and combat cases of trafficking in underage prostitutes during Super Bowl XLV in Arlington, Texas, he says.

"The Super Bowl is the greatest show on Earth, but it also has an ugly underbelly," Abbott says. "It's commonly known as the single largest human trafficking incident in the United States."
FBI agents often team up with federal, state and local law enforcement officials during Super Bowls to prevent terrorist attacks, ticket scams and other crimes, including high-priced prostitution. Law enforcement agents increasingly are linking up with child advocate groups to crack down on the trafficking and exploitation of minors during the event, says Ernie Allen, president of the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. _USAToday

Mexico is only one of several international centers of global human trafficking. Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Arab middle east are other particular trouble spots for international law enforcement. Such global gangs of human slavery tend to prey on children as young as they can find, in an effort to satisfy the perverse sexual tastes of persons in possession of more wealth than decency.

The US SuperBowl is one of many large sporting and cultural events which bring out these vultures, and compel their prey. The solution to this sad problem must be multi-faceted, and far more clever than virtually all law enforcement is capable of imagining.

Previously published at Al Fin, You Sexy Thing!