Wednesday, January 21, 2004

Creative Class War: Reverse Brain Drain in US?. AlterNet is carrying an interesting article by CMU's Richard Florida called the Creative Class War. The article details the decline of what the author terms the "creative class" in the US and how these people are now both not immigrating to the US and how US policies are resulting in a reverse brain drain of educated people fleeing the US. Among examples cited are how Peter Jackson's (LOTR) new movie facilities in New Zealand contributes to the decline of Hollywood, IT outsourcing trends, how MIT had to cancel a large AI project "because the university couldn't find enough graduate students who weren't foreigners and who could thus clear new security regulations," down to individual examples such as stem cell researcher Roger Pederson leaving California to do research in the UK because "they haven't made such a political football out of stem cells." Overall, a fascinating and thought-provoking article. [kuro5hin.org] 6:03:33 AM    comment [] Science Fiction and Religion. I was reading an interview with Ted Chiang, and the first lines struck me: All science fiction is fundamentally post-religious literature. For those whose minds are shaped by science and technology, the universe is fundamentally knowable. Faith dissolves, replaced by a sense of wonder at the complexity of creation.What do you think of this? [kuro5hin.org] 6:02:51 AM    comment [] My Sons Are Actually My Nephews?. A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine showed that a woman who conceived three sons with her husband was biologically unrelated to two of them. Doctors posited that the woman herself was part of an nonidentical-twin pair that fused at an early stage of her mother's pregnancy and that only her blood cells are hers, alone, while cells from her eggs and other tissues may have come from her sister's fetus. Wrap your noodle around this - That means that the boys are actually cousins. Two of her the mother's sons are her nephews. The father has 3 children by two women. [Father Dan] 6:02:05 AM    comment [] Progress on Alzheimer's. InfoAging (an excellent general resource for information on aging and aging research, by the way) is reporting on progress in fighting Alzheimer's. The immense amount of research funding is starting to pay off: scientists have prevented memory and learning loss in the mouse version of the disease. In addition, other interesting results on the possible root causes of Alzheimer's are noted at the site. It's worth remembering that Alzheimer's symptoms were once considered a part of aging; not a disease and not curable. That should make you pause for thought whenever you hear people claiming that all the currently unspecified degenerative effects of aging are not worth research time and money. [Longevity Meme News and Commentary] 6:01:40 AM    comment [] Drug Team May Stem Alzheimer's Effects. Two drugs that act differently on the brain's chemistry worked in tandem to help stave off the brain-robbing symptoms of Alzheimer's disease, researchers said Tuesday. By Reuters. [New York Times: Health] 5:59:19 AM    comment []

© Copyright 2004 Gail Marsella. Last update: 6/27/2004; 7:40:01 PM. This theme is based on the SoundWaves (blue) Manila theme.