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Tuesday, July 29, 2003
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 L. W. Nicholson writes: At this time in our history, the human species is finding it ever more difficult to maintain some degree of synchronization between the two worlds in which we are trying to live -- the world of physical reality and the world of economic rationalization. On the one hand, humankind lives in, and is dependent on, life support systems in their real physical world, while on the other hand, insisting on controlling a lifestyle and physical operations within the limits and restrictions of a man-made world of economic superstition. In that real world of matter and energy, a world governed by natural law, people have lived for a million years, or more. They have discovered methods to grow their food and produce the products they need more efficiently, first by hand, then far more efficiently with technology. This is a dependable world in which the sun rises each morning and the earth makes one trip around the sun in one year. It's a world in which technology is designed to operate in accordance with natural law, and to be operated according to its design. This method worked so well that by the year 1920, the United States had the ability to produce enough to supply every North American citizen with everything they needed for a comfortable life. Since 1920, the U.S. population has increased from 106 million to 281 million, or by 2.6 times. At the same time, energy to power the technology has increased from 453 million horsepower to more than 34 billion, an increase of 75 times, or 29 time more than the population increase. If there is any excuse for 38 million Americans, including one-fifth of all children, to be living in poverty during the past 80 years, it can only be the result of human stupidity. It is certainly not the fault of our technology or the real world in which we live. (07/29/03)
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 Joël de Rosnay writes: The fundamental concepts that recur most often in the biological, ecological, and economic models of reality can easily be grouped into several major categories: energy and its use; flows, cycles, and stocks, communication networks; catalysts and transforming agents; the readjustment of equilibriums; stability, growth, and evolution. And, above all, the concept of the system —living system, economic system, ecosystem— that binds together all the others. Each of these concepts applies to the cell as it does to the economy, to an industrial company as it does to ecology. Beyond the vocabulary, the analogies, and the metaphors there appears to exist a common approach that makes it possible to understand better and describe better the organized complexity. This unifying approach does indeed exist. It was born in the course of the last thirty years from the cross-fertilization of several disciplines- biology, information theory, cybernetics, and systems theory. It is not a new concept, what is new is the integration of the disciplines that has come about around it. This transdisciplinary approach is called the systemic approach, and this is the approach that I present here in the concept of the macroscope. It is not to be considered a "science," a "theory," or a "discipline," but a new methodology that makes possible the collection and organization of accumulated knowledge in order to increase the efficiency of our actions. The systemic approach, as opposed to the analytical approach, includes the totality of the elements in the system under study, as well as their interaction and interdependence. The systemic approach rests on the conception of system. While often vague and ambiguous, this conception is nevertheless being used today in an increased number of disciplines because of its ability to unify and integrate. According to the most widely used definition, "a system is a set of interacting elements that form an integrated whole". A city, a cell, and a body, then, are systems. And so are an automobile, a computer, and a washing machine! Such a definition can be too general. Yet no definition of the word system can be entirely satisfying; it is the conception of system that is fertile-if one measures its extent and its limits. (07/29/03) (07/29/03)
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 New York Times: Science -- Where the fire came through Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest last September, the ground is ash and the trees are charcoal. Black and gray are the colors, lightened only by small mounds of red dust at the base of some of the charred trunks — the leavings of bark beetles — and flecks of green where new growth pokes above the ash. Through the tall, ravaged columns, however, a living pine forest is visible. And as visitors inspecting the fire damage walk toward the living forest, they come to an abrupt transition. September's blaze was named the Cone Fire, for the hill where it was first thought to have begun. It burned 2,000 acres of Lassen National Forest, and 1,600 of those were in Blacks Mountain Experimental Forest, a 10,000-acre area within Lassen set up in 1934 for ecological study by the Forest Service. When the Cone Fire swept through these woods it came to a patch of forest that was different from the rest, and stopped dead, like a mime at an invisible wall. What stopped the fire was an experimental plot that had been selectively logged to thin it, and had been burned in controlled fashion. The result was an open forest, much the way it might have been 500 years ago when regular forest fires swept through the high dry country and no one tried to stop them. "It just stopped," Carl N. Skinner said, looking satisfied but almost surprised. Mr. Skinner, a geographer with the Forest Service at the Redding Silviculture Laboratory in Redding, Calif., and Dr. Steve Zack, a conservation scientist with the North American Program of the Wildlife Conservation Society, along with other Forest Service colleagues, are showing a reporter the results of an accidental experiment that still impresses them each time they visit it. "Night and day," Dr. Zack said. "If we hadn't treated this it would have just blown right through this area," Mr. Skinner said. The members of the group are part of a cooperative research project involving different parts of the Forest Service and the Wildlife Conservation Society. The researchers have been trying different forest management plans on 12 250-acre research plots for about seven years. The point was never to find out how best to stop fires. Instead the research was meant to develop a general picture of how different management techniques affect forest ecosystems. (07/29/03)
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 New York Times: Science -- Since it was launched in 1990 with a flawed mirror and then repaired by spacewalking astronauts, the Hubble, floating above the murky atmosphere, has been a matchless time machine, providing astronomers with views of unprecedented clarity deep into space and time. "The Hubble is the single most important instrument ever made in astronomy," said Dr. Sandra Faber, an astronomer at the University of California at Santa Cruz. But its days (and nights) have always been numbered. NASA has long planned to end Hubble's spectacular run and bring it down in 2010 to make way in the budget for the James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to be launched in 2011. Still, some astronomers are urging that Hubble's life be extended. They argue that the telescope has grown even more productive in its years in orbit, thanks to periodic service calls by astronauts. These astronomers say that killing Hubble in its prime makes little sense, either scientifically or from the standpoint of public relations. "Hubble is by far the best news NASA has now," a senior astronomer said. An extension of Hubble's life, they say, will ensure that there is no gap in coverage before the Webb telescope goes into operation, but it would require an extra shuttle visit to Hubble late in the decade. That would cost at least $600 million, said Dr. Anne L. Kinney, director of astronomy and physics in NASA's Office of Space Science, and the money would have to come at the expense of the Webb telescope or some other project. (07/29/03)
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 The New Scientist -- Happy people are three times less likely to get a cold, according to researchers who squirted cold virus up the noses of volunteers. Psychologist Sheldon Cohen and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University, Pennsylvania, also found that the positive thinkers who do develop symptoms complain about them less. The team studied over 300 initially healthy volunteers. First, each person was interviewed over two weeks to gauge his or her emotional state. This involved being scored in both positive categories - happy, pleased, relaxed - and negative categories -anxious, hostile and depressed. Next the researchers squirted rhinovirus, the germ that causes colds, into each subject's nose. Follow-up interviews questioned them daily for five days about any developing symptoms. The people scoring in the bottom third for positive emotions were three times more likely to catch a cold that those scoring in the top third. ''People who express more positive emotions are less susceptible to upper respiratory tract infections than people with a negative emotional style,'' says Cohen. Intriguingly, the scores for negative emotions showed no correlation with infections. One possible explanation for the protective effect of positive emotions is that happy people may lead healthier lifestyles than unhappy people, says Cohen. Happier volunteers were found to have lower blood levels of stress-related hormones such as cortisol, which influences high blood pressure. (07/29/03)
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 BBC Science -- The mysteries of how the brain controls everything from language to movement could be explained by a "map" created by scientists. The international team behind the atlas used thousands of images of the brains of people of all ages, and with a range of conditions. They hope to create the most comprehensive picture yet of the brain's structures and functions. They have carried out brain scans on 7,000 people to obtain the data needed to create the map, and they say they will continue to add to the atlas as more research is carried out. Scientists from six countries have been involved in putting the atlas together. They hope the data will tell them more about which areas of the brain control specific functions in the body. They also hope to be able to find out more about how the brains of people with particular conditions such as Alzheimer's disease or schizophrenia differ from healthy brains. The brain map could help them spot the early signs of disease, they say. (07/29/03)
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 BBC Science -- The hours spent mastering the violin or piano are worthwhile - music lessons boost children's memories. Researchers from Hong Kong have found children who are given musical training have better verbal memories than those who have not had lessons. They say their findings could help people recovering from a brain injury as well as healthy children. Psychologists from the Chinese University of Hong Kong studied 90 boys between the ages of six and 15. Half had been given musical training as members of their school's string orchestra and had received lessons in playing classical music on Western instruments, for up to five years. The rest, all students at the same school, had received no musical training. All the children were given verbal memory tests, to see how many words they recalled from a list, and a visual memory test for images. Those students who had been given music lessons recalled significantly more words than the untrained students, and generally learned more words with each subsequent test. They were also able to retain more words than the other group when tested 30 minutes later. And the longer the boys had been receiving music lessons, the better their verbal memory. (07/29/03)
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 CNN National -- America's prison population grew again in 2002 despite a declining crime rate, costing the federal government and states an estimated $40 billion a year at a time of rampant budget shortfalls. The inmate population in 2002 of more than 2.1 million represented a 2.6 percent increase over 2001, according to a report released Sunday by the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Preliminary FBI statistics showed a 0.2 percent drop in overall crime during the same span. Experts say mandatory sentences, especially for nonviolent drug offenders, are a major reason inmate populations have risen for 30 years. About one of every 143 U.S. residents was in the federal, state or local custody at year's end. "The nation needs to break the chains of our addiction to prison, and find less costly and more effective policies like treatment," said Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas American Civil Liberties Union. "We need to break the cycle." (07/29/03)
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5:52:58 AM 
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2003
Timothy Wilken.
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8/3/2003; 11:27:26 PM.
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