http://climateprogress.org/2010/08/29/climate-progress-why-i-blog/#more-32249
Humanity has only two paths forward at this point. As President Obama said in April 2009, “The choice we face is not between saving our environment and saving our economy. The choice we face is between prosperity and decline.” Either we voluntarily switch to a low-carbon, low-oil, low-net water use, low-net-material use economy over the next two decades or the post-Ponzi-scheme-collapse forces us to do so circa 2030. The only difference between the two paths is that the first one spares our children and grandchildren and countless future generations untold misery.
科学
All posts tagged 科学
A stupid program. I am more scared with these sensationalists in the program who probably did not study seriously in the past than the presumably alarming facts.
Why do not they include the number of graduate students? Obviously these number probably increased or are stable. As far as I know there are quite many people are in PhD programs in other countries. That is what matters most in the US education. No need to watch this crap. Superficial stats do not solve any things.
A very informative survey on the sequence technologies from investor’s perspective came out. In a sense this report provides colorful illustration on how people are adapting to the sequence technologies.
Next Gen Sequencing Survey What Laboratory Directors Are Saying About Next Generation Sequencing, GWAS and Stimulus: Invester’s perspective
Shlomo Sand: Challenging notions of a Jewish People:
He made a insightful and entertaining talk. He discussed about Israel but his argument goes far beyond one single state. His thesis is not new and I read about it more than years ago in other’s book. His main argument is that Israel is better off to become a more normal country.
Solving emerging problems by bio-synthetic engineering. Craig Venter tries to make synthetic organisms to make biofuel.
Craig Venter: On the verge of creating synthetic life
This will not likely solve the problem unfortunately. Something must be done fundamentally to shift the principle of economic growth. But blindly blaming and denying science and technology is equally stupid. We should try to shrive to be better and not to be illogical morons.
College instructors are living on food stamps and paid less than janitors. This cannot be good for college students, he argues.
Confessions of a Tenured Professor
May 11, 2010By Peter D.G. Brown“I must confess right off that I did not become a contingent labor activist until I turned 60, a mere six years ago. Until then, I was a fairly typical senior professor, passionately involved in teaching my students and interacting with my tenured colleagues on a variety of faculty governance committees. I have also pursued a fairly active research agenda. In addition to publishing my own scholarly articles, I have edited over a hundred books dealing with modern German literature, Jewish history and women’s studies. This year saw the publication of the third book I have written on Oskar Panizza, the 19th-century German author …
….
I’m sure my tenured colleagues would find it totally unacceptable if they could be told at the end of any semester that they should simply leave, that there was no value to their accumulated expertise, thank you, because the college wished to hire a fresh young face at a lower salary.”
It seems all the industries in developed countries are on the verge of a mass extinction. But science and engineer disciplines look more promising or do they?
ゲノム敗北—知財立国日本が危ない!
(Defeat in the human genome project)
- 出版社: ダイヤモンド社 (2004/09)
“In the 1970s, a leading Japanese scientist, Akiyoshi Wada, pioneered the idea of developing technology to allow the rapid sequencing of DNA. Yet when the human genome sequence was published in 2001, Japanese scientists had contributed just 6% of it, compared with 59% in the United States and 31% in Britain. ”
“Eventually, Watson obtained the necessary funds from the US government — the United States spent $2.7 billion on the genome project, compared with just $120 million in Japan. The reaction of the Japanese bureaucrats was, typically, “too little, too late”, which apparently infuriated Watson.”
“The status quo is maintained. The age-old power structure, involving scientific communities and bureaucrats, is retained, and those in power continue to control the distribution of funds. The personnel change, but their successors are always chosen from people who conform to this tradition. This basic structure has never really altered.
How can it be changed? Ryoji Noyori, Nobel laureate and president of RIKEN, the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research, believes that Japanese graduate education must be restructured to produce better young scientists who can work independently and who are able to interact with other scientists both in Japan and abroad.”
“He warns eloquently that Japan’s survival depends on the accumulation of intellectual property to build a nation based on science and technology.”
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v433/n7022/full/433107a.html Continue Reading
A Pillow Diary of an Expatriate Scientist 