Monday, December 15, 2003

What is right? What is wrong? How do we know? Marc D. Hauser writes: Nothing captures human attention more than a moral dilemma. Whether we are soap opera fanatics or not, we can’t help sticking our noses in other people’s affairs, pronouncing our views on right and wrong, permissible and impermissible, justified or not. For hundreds of years, scholars have argued that our moral judgments arise from rational, conscious, voluntary, reflective deliberations about what ought to be. This perspective has generated the further belief that our moral psychology is a slowly developing capacity, founded entirely on experience and education, and subject to considerable variation across cultures. With the exception of a few trivial examples, one culture’s right is another’s wrong. We believe this hyper rational, culturally-specific view is no longer tenable. The MST has been designed to show why and offer an alternative. Most of our moral intuitions are unconscious, involuntary, and universal, developing in each child despite formal education. When humans, from the hunter-gathers of the Rift Valley to the billionaire dot-com-ers of the Silicon Valley generate moral intuitions they are like reflexes, something that happens to us without our being aware of how or even why. We call this capacity our moral faculty. Our aim is to use data from the MST, as well as other experiments, to explain what it is, how it evolved, and how it develops in our species, creating individuals with moral responsibilities and concerns about human welfare. The MST has been designed for all humans who are curious about that puzzling little word “ought” — about the principles that make one action right and another wrong, and why we feel elated about the former and guilty about the latter. (12/15/03) A Time to Reconcile Tony Blair speaks: The shadow of Saddam has finally lifted from the Iraqi people. We give thanks for that, but let this be more than a case simply for rejoicing. Let it be a moment to reach out and reconcile. To the Sunnis, whose allegiance Saddam falsely claimed, I say there is a place for you playing a full part in a new and democratic Iraq. To those formerly in Saddam's party, there by force and not by conviction, I say we can put the past behind us. Where his rule meant terror and division and brutality, let his capture bring about reconciliation and peace between all the people in Iraq. Saddam is gone from power. He will not be coming back. That the Iraqi people now know, and it is they who will decide his future. ... Our thanks go to the coalition forces and the intelligence services who brought about Saddam's capture. Once again, they have proved their professionalism, their courage, and their commitment. But let us give thanks to those brave Iraqis who helped in his capture, who in the new Iraqi administration, police and defence forces, risk their lives daily for the good of their people. They are the representatives of the new Iraq in action today. So now is a time of great opportunity. (12/15/03) Pollution is Good for Business! Common Dreams -- The Environmental Protection Agency has been as busy as Santa's elves during the fall season making, however, regulations that bring dismay instead of joy. The newest proposed regulation comes as is usual in this administration, as a gift to industry and not to the environment. It's nothing more than a coincidence that the biggest gift goes to Texas, but the rest of the country will feel the effect of this gift as well. The newest proposed regulation is only the most recent in a string that have been issued. In October we learned that the Bush administration was reversing a long-established policy on industrial emissions from power plants, oil companies and other industries. Under the Clean Air Act of 1970, industrial plants that upgraded their operations were required to install modern pollution controls. In October, the EPA announced new rules that permit facilities to call upgrades "routine maintenance" and avoid installing modern pollution controls, so long as the cost of the upgrade does not exceed 20 percent of the cost of replacing the entire production unit. An example of the benefits the new rule bestows on industry, if not on people, can be found in Monroe, Mich., where the new rule will permit the local power plant to emit 102,700 tons of sulfur dioxide annually until 2016. Under existing interpretations of the act, the emissions would only have been 10,000 tons annually. (As of this writing, New Jersey and a dozen other states are suing the EPA over the new rules, asking a federal court to block their implementation.) In December the EPA announced another startling proposal that is nothing more than an early Christmas present to industry. It announced that the mercury emissions from coal-burning power plants should not be regulated the same as other toxic air pollutants. Mercury has been identified by the EPA as the "toxic of greatest concern among all the air toxics emitted from power plants." It contributes to neurological disorders and is a particular threat to pregnant women. One has to applaud the EPA's straightforward description of the effects of mercury. Its proposal to ease the rules on its emission into the atmosphere is another matter. (12/15/03) Sinking in E-Waste BBC Environment -- Mountains of e-waste - discarded parts of computers, mobile phones and other consumer electronics equipment - are quietly creating a new environmental problem in India. Thirty million computers are thrown out every year in the US alone, and many are dumped in India and China. Some 70% of the heavy metals in landfills come from electrical equipment waste. Now concerns are being raised on the impact the dumping - particularly evident in India's computer heartland, Delhi - is having on both the country's environment, and its people. "The problem is that these computers, which are quite old, have a lot of toxic material in them," Ravi Agraval, leader of campaign group Toxic Links, told BBC World Service's One Planet programme. "They have things like mercury, lead, flame retardants, and PVC-coated copper wire. "When you try and extract or recondition these computers you release these heavy metals and these chemicals. These are disasters for the environment." E-waste heads to India, China and Bangladesh because computer "recycling" is a good business, with much money to be made. Computer recycling involves employing people to strip down the computers and extract parts that can be used again in machines to be sold on the high street. The rest is then burned or dumped, both of which are potentially highly hazardous to the environment. "The process of extraction uses all kinds of chemicals, like acids - which then get dumped into the soil and go into the groundwater," Mr Agraval said. "When you burn things like PVC-covered copper wire, you have emissions of very toxic chemicals like dioxins, which get released into the local environment." (12/15/03) Stopping Light in its Tracks! BBC Science -- Physicists say they have brought light to a complete halt for a fraction of a second and then sent it on its way. Harvard University staff held a light pulse still without taking away all of its energy, the journal Nature reports. Controlling the movement of light particles - so-called photons - to store and process data could lead to the development of quantum computers. In a 2001 experiment, light pulses were briefly stored when particles of light were taken up by atoms in a gas. The Harvard experiment tops that achievement by holding light and its energy at a standstill. Light normally travels at about 299,000 kilometres per second (186,000 miles per second), but it slows down when passing through some materials, such as glass. The team fired a light beam called a signal pulse through a sealed glass cylinder containing a hot gas containing atoms of the element rubidium, illuminated by a strong ray of light known as a control beam. While the pulse was travelling through the rubidium gas, the researchers switched off the control beam, creating a holographic imprint of the signal pulse on the rubidium atoms. Earlier experimental methods had then switched on a single control beam to recreate the signal pulse, which then continued on its way. However, in this latest study, researchers switched on two control beams which created an interference pattern that behaves like a stack of mirrors. As the regenerated signal pulse tries to continue on its way through the glass cylinder, the photons bounce back and forth, but the overall signal pulse remains stationary. The light beam was essentially frozen. The researchers were able to keep the photons trapped like this for about 10-20 microseconds. The research was conducted by Mikhail Lukin, Michal Bajcsy and Alexander Zibrov of the department of physics at Harvard University, Cambridge, US. (12/15/03) Antibiotic Resistant Bacteria Now Common BBC Health -- Pets across the UK are carrying the antibiotic-resistant Methicillin Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus (MRSA) hospital "superbug", say experts. A dozen animals were found to be positive for the deadly bacteria, the Health Protection Agency confirmed. The discovery could mean it will be harder to control the spread of MRSA, which kills 5,000 patients a year. But vets warned people not to be alarmed about the findings, pointing out that one in three people carry MRSA harmlessly anyway. The disease can, however, prove fatal in babies, the elderly, those recovering from surgery or with a weakened immune system. Cats, dogs and rabbits were found to be infected over the past year by HPA experts, The Observer says. Spokeswoman Angela Kearns told the paper: "We have observed MRSA in some domestic animals. We confirmed this in our laboratories. "The cases came from across Britain so we know it's not one particular cluster. We need to know if there is a lot of it out there, what are the risks? We don't know yet whether animals have acquired infection from humans or vice versa." (12/15/03) 6:34:19 AM

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