“The average energy efficiency of the top supercomputers in the world increased by 10 percent,” said Wu Feng (http://people.cs.vt.edu/~feng), an associate professor within the College of Engineering’s computer science and the electrical and computer engineering departments at Virginia Tech, of the latest rankings (http://www.green500.org/lists/2009/06/list.php).

The 10 percent increase in energy efficiency translates to a 10 megaflops/watt improvement, rising to 108 megaflops/watt from 98 megaflops/watt recorded in November 2008. (Megaflops stand for millions of floating-point operations per second.) Also, aggregate power of the list increased by 15 percent, to 230 megawatts from 200 megawatts. “While the supercomputers on the Green500 are collectively consuming more power, they are using the power more efficiently than before,” Feng added.

The Green500 List (http://www.green500.org) serves as a ranking of environmentally friendly, low-energy supercomputers and a complement to the TOP500 List. The Green500 debuted in November 2007 at the 2007 Supercomputing conference to provide a foundation for tracking trends in green supercomputing.

For the first time, the rankings show maximum energy efficiency remaining the same, but three 500-megaflops/watt supercomputers fell out of the Green500. “The three supercomputers that occupied the No. 2 spot on the November 2008 Green500 are no longer computationally powerful enough to be considered among the TOP500 supercomputers in the world, and hence, they dropped off the Green500 List. This occurrence thus provides further fuel to the argument for a ‘more inclusive’ Green500,” Feng said. “If the trend of performance doubling continues, the No. 1 machine on this Green500 is unlikely to make the November 2009 Green500 List.”

Topping the list is the BladeCenter QS22 Cluster, PowerXCell 8i 4.0 Gigahertz, Infiniband, operated by the Interdisciplinary Centre for Mathematical and Computational Modeling at the University of Warsaw.

Also significant: More machines range more than 200 megaflops/watt, while fewer machines are less than 50 megaflops/watt. “As more powerful supercomputers supplant the less powerful, these new machines are performing their computations more energy efficiently,” Feng said.

Meanwhile, a self-made accelerator-based supercomputer from the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan catapulted into fifth spot. The self-made GRAPE-DR could be the first Green500 supercomputer with more than a million processing elements at 2.097 million, Feng said.

Of the $3.25 billion in subsidy costs from the stimulus act, $500 million is specifically for biofuel projects, and $750 million is for large transmission projects that begin construction before Sept. 30, 2011.

Applicants have 45 days to apply for the new guarantee authority, DOE said.

The government-backed authority should help boost lending capital for renewable and other clean-energy technology projects, which has dried up with the financial recession. The stimulus act also included an extension of tax credits for renewable energy and added flexibility where companies can apply for grants instead of using tax credits that the Treasury Department also made available this month (E&ENews PM, July 9).

“This administration has set a goal of doubling renewable electricity generation over the next three years,” Energy Secretary Steven Chu said in a statement. “To achieve that goal, we need to accelerate renewable project development by ensuring access to capital for advanced technology projects. We also need a grid that can move clean energy from the places it can be produced to the places where it can be used and that can integrate variable sources of power, like wind and solar,” he said.

The loan guarantee authority should decrease the cost of the investments, making a “smart grid” investment a lower investment risk and thus less costly for consumers. DOE also announced the availability of almost $4 billion for demonstration and grants for smart grid projects last month (E&ENews PM, June 25).

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) is the first “satellite for our satellite” to have a resolution high enough to capture the Apollo sites, reportedly able to photograph things as small as 4 feet across or four feet per pixel.

The pictures show the Apollo missions’ lunar module descent stages sitting on the moon’s surface, as long shadows from a low sun angle make the modules’ locations evident.

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera, or LROC, was able to image five of the six Apollo sites, with the remaining Apollo 12 site expected to be photographed in the coming weeks.

NASA reports “The satellite reached lunar orbit June 23 and captured the Apollo sites between July 11 and 15. Though it had been expected that LRO would be able to resolve the remnants of the Apollo mission, these first images came before the spacecraft reached its final mapping orbit. Future LROC images from these sites will have two to three times greater resolution.

The spacecraft’s current elliptical orbit resulted in image resolutions that were slightly different for each site but were all around four feet per pixel. Because the deck of the descent stage is about 12 feet in diameter, the Apollo relics themselves fill an area of about nine pixels. However, because the sun was low to the horizon when the images were made, even subtle variations in topography create long shadows. Standing slightly more than ten feet above the surface, each Apollo descent stage creates a distinct shadow that fills roughly 20 pixels.”

See all the photos here!

The Honorable Barack H. Obama
President of the United States
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

You have repeatedly and appropriately called for a Clean Energy Technology Fund of $150 billion over ten years that could be funded from receipts collected from a greenhouse gas cap and trade program. The stable support this Fund would provide is essential to pay for the research and development needed if the U.S., as well as the developing world, are to achieve their goals in reducing greenhouse gases at an affordable cost.

This stable R&D spending is not a luxury. It is in fact necessary because rapid scientific and technical progress is crucial to achieving these goals, and to making the cost affordable.

We are concerned that “The American Clean Energy and Security Act” (H.R. 2454) that recently passed the House provides less than one fifteenth of the amount you proposed for federal energy research, development, and demonstration programs. The legislation provides no stable, specific funding for sustained research in the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Office of Science, or for the energy research and associated technology development programs of DOE (at the Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Electricity Deliverability, Fossil, and Nuclear offices).

Given the expected growing federal budget deficits, and the corresponding pressure on the government’s discretionary budget, this is a serious deficiency.

We hope that you will urge the Congress to send you a bill that will invest in energy research, development, and demonstration at an amount approaching the stable $15 billion annual support that you have proposed.

We stand ready to assist you in any way we can.

Signed,

Paul Berg, Physics 1980
Stanley Cohen, Physiology or Medicine 1986
Robert F. Curl, Jr., Chemistry 1996
Johann Deisenhofer, Chemistry 1988
Val L. Fitch, Physics 1980
Jerome Friedman, Physics 1990
Sheldon Glashow, Physics 1979
Roy Glauber, Physics 2005
Dudley R. Herschbach, Chemistry 1986
Wolfgang Ketterle, Physics 2001
Roger D. Kornberg, Chemistry 2006
Herbert Kroemer, Physics 2000
Robert B. Laughlin, Physics 1998
Leon Lederman, Physics 1988
Anthony Leggett, Physics 2003
John Mather, Physics 2006
Marshall Nirenberg, Medicine 1968
George A. Olah, Chemistry 1994
Douglas Osheroff, Physics 1996
Arno Penzias, Physics 1978
Martin L. Perl, Physics 1995
William D. Phillips, Physics 1997
David Politzer, Physics 2004
Robert C. Richardson, Physics 1996
Burton Richter, Physics 1976
F. Sherwood Rowland, Chemistry 1995
Phillip A. Sharp, Physiology or Medicine 1993
George Smoot, Physics 2006
Horst Stormer, Physics 1998
Richard Taylor, Physics 1990
Daniel Tsui, Physics 1998
Steven Weinberg, Physics 1979
Frank Wilczek, Physics 2004
Robert W. Wilson, Physics 1978

“Mardi Gras has been going topless for some years with no end in sight,” says Farley, a former president of the American Psychological Association. “Is this reflecting a growing acceptance of such behavior in America? I think so.”

Liberal views on many fronts are gaining ground, from a healthy decline in racism, sexism, and ageism on one hand to a more questionable tolerance of such public nudity displays on the other, he says.

“Censorship of such displays is becoming increasingly difficult in this media saturated century and the Mardi Gras is helping to fuel the trend,” adds Farley. “Self-exposure of all types, including the now accepted ‘flashing breasts-for-beads’ at Mardi Gras, is beginning to define the Internet.”

“A major reason explaining why women are underrepresented not only in math-intensive fields but also in senior leadership positions in most fields is that many women choose to have children, and the timing of child rearing coincides with the most demanding periods of their career, such as trying to get tenure or working exorbitant hours to get promoted,” said lead author Stephen J. Ceci, professor of human development at Cornell.

Women with advanced math abilities choose non-math fields more often than men with similar abilities, he added.

Women also tend to drop out of scientific fields — especially math and physical sciences — at higher rates than do men, particularly as they advance, because of their need for greater flexibility and the demands of parenting and caregiving, said co-author Wendy M. Williams, Cornell professor of human development.

“These are choices that all women, but almost no men, are forced to make,” she said.

The study, published in the March issue of the American Psychological Association’s Psychological Bulletin (135:2), is an integrative analysis of 35 years of research on sex differences in math. Ceci and his Cornell co-authors reviewed more than 400 articles and book chapters to better understand why women are underrepresented in such math-intensive science careers as computer science, physics, technology, engineering, chemistry and higher mathematics.

Women today comprise about 50 percent of medical school classes; yet women who enter academic medicine are less likely than men to be promoted or serve in leadership posts, the authors report. As of 2005, only 15 percent of full professors and 11 percent of department chairs were women. Non-math fields are also affected: For example, only 19 percent of the tenure-track faculty members in the top 20 philosophy departments are women.

The authors concluded that hormonal, brain and other biological sex differences were not primary factors in explaining why women were underrepresented in science careers, and that studies on social and cultural effects were inconsistent and inconclusive. They also reported that although “institutional barriers and discrimination exist, these influences still cannot explain why women are not entering or staying in STEM careers,” said Ceci. “The evidence did not show that removal of these barriers would equalize the sexes in these fields, especially given that women’s career preferences and lifestyle choices tilt them toward other careers such as medicine and biology over mathematics, computer science, physics and engineering.”

The analysis, which also was conducted with Susan Barnett, Ph.D. ‘04, a visiting scholar at Cornell, also found that “Women would comprise 33 percent of the professorships in math-intensive fields if it was based solely on being in the top 1 percent of math ability, but they currently comprise less than 10 percent,” Ceci said.

Science, technology, engineering and math are not the only professions affected by women’s career choices, said the authors. Women are still underrepresented in the top positions of such fields as medicine, law, biology, psychology, dentistry and veterinary science.

The authors recommended that universities and companies create options for women with math talents who want to pursue math-intensive careers. These could include deferred start-up of tenure-track positions and part-time work that segues to full-time tenure-track work for women who are raising children, and courtesy appointments for women unable to work full time but who would benefit from use of university resources (e-mail, library resources, grant support) to continue their research from home.

Astrobiology: Life in Space

By Linda Buzzell, AlterNet.

Not so very long ago, humans — like the rest of the animals and plants on earth — moved through our natural cycles at nature’s pace. Time was marked by the passing of the seasons, the life cycles of human, animal and plant life and the yet grander cycles of the moon and the other celestial bodies.

Homo sapiens, a late-appearing species in the long history of our unimaginably ancient planet and universe, evolved during the recent (as the universe views these things!) Pleistocene era, adapted for a life intimately connected with and expressive of our natural surroundings on the African savannah and beyond.

And this is how we lived for millennia.

In the last 150 years, however, the human relationship with time has radically changed. Some say the problems started earlier, with the development of agriculture or writing, but it was really the Industrial Revolution — the rise of the Machine — that put humans in thrall to mechanical processes and machine time. And the recent exponential speeding up into Cybertime has accelerated the process still further. Industrial time was bad enough (Charlie Chaplin did a wonderful job of visualizing that “cog in the wheel” feeling in his film “Modern Times”) but Cybertime can be dizzyingly discombobulating for a Pleistocene primate.

And that’s how many modern people feel — completely frazzled and out of synch with our deepest selves.

The results of this disconnection from nature and nature’s pace show up in therapists’ and doctors’ offices every day. Living under unnatural time pressures causes a myriad of psychological, social and physical ailments. Delinked from the natural rhythms of our bodies and the rest of the planet, we struggle with diminishing success to adapt to the strange mechanical and disembodied world we have created.

As a practicing psychotherapist and ecotherapist, when I see patients who are suffering from depression or anxiety I ask them to keep a time-journal in which they record the hours and minutes spent each day outside, as well as the hours spent inside in front of a screen. My clients are often shocked to realize how disassociated they have become from nature and our species’ natural ways of living, and the effect this disconnection is having on their psyche. In fact, a 2007 study from the University of Essex shows that a daily “dose” of walking outside in nature can be as effective at treating mild to moderate depression as expensive antidepressant medications that can sometimes have negative side-effects.

Time poverty is now a recognized psychological and social stressor. In a speeded-up, highly complex society, there just isn’t enough time for everything: our demanding jobs, our interlocking bureaucratic responsibilities (taxes, insurance, legal issues), our loved one, kids, our community (including the rest of nature), plus commuting and keeping up with traditional media and endless 24/7 online communications. Constantly rushing to keep up as we inevitably fall further behind, we find ourselves destroying not only our own health, but our habitat and the habitat of the people, plants and animals with whom we share the planet.

Click here to read the rest at Alternet.

We’ve seen reference to the dangers plastic poses to marine life, garbage that we humans directly and indirectly deposit in the oceans, but how clearly have we received the message? Not well enough according to a recent article in the journal Marine Pollution Bulletin entitled “Leatherback turtles: The menace of plastic,” co-authored by Dalhousie University’s Mike James.

“We wanted to see if plastics ingestion in leatherbacks was hype or reality,” says Dr. James, senior species at risk biologist for Fisheries and Oceans Canada and adjunct professor with Dalhousie’s Department of Biology.

“It was a monumental effort that looked back at necropsies over the last century from all over the world,” he explains. (Necropsies are post-mortem examinations performed on animals.) “After reviewing the results of 371 necropsies since 1968, we discovered over one third of the turtles had ingested plastic.”

Since leatherbacks prefer eating jellyfish, it’s widely believed they mistake bags or other plastics for their meals. Since jellyfish and marine debris concentrate where ocean water masses meet, leatherbacks feeding in these areas are vulnerable to ingesting plastic.

Once leatherbacks ingest plastic, thousands of spines lining the throat and esophagus make it nearly impossible to regurgitate. The plastic can lead to partial or even complete obstruction of the gastrointestinal tract, resulting in decreased digestive efficiency, energetic and reproductive costs and, for some, starvation.

“Plastics ingestion doesn’t always cause death, but there are clearly health risks to the turtles,” says Dr.James.

Fascinated by reptiles as a child, Dr. James developed a lifelong interest in turtles, from raising them as a kid, to his PhD research and now as a biologist and conservationist. He says there are simple ways to stop these ongoing threats.

“The frustrating, yet hopeful aspect is that humans can easily begin addressing the solution, without major lifestyle changes,” says Dr. James. “It’s as simple as reducing packaging and moving towards alternative, biodegradable materials and recycling.”

Leatherback turtles are classified as critically endangered world-wide. The true population size is not precisely known, as only adult females come ashore for nesting in remote tropical locations. During the summer and fall, Canadian waters support the highest density of foraging leatherbacks in the North Atlantic.

Heon Joo Jung, assistant professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and a native of South Korea, pointed to strong statements issued in late June by North Korea’s Committee for Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland about South Korea’s attempts to join Cyber Storm, a full-scale cybersecurity exercise led by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.

“South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) considered joining the Cyber Storm program this year,” Jung said. “North Korea on June 27 heavily criticized their efforts and (said) that was one of the provocative actions by South Korea.

“South Korea is one of the most wired countries in the world,” Jung said, adding that a cyber attack eventually had been expected by intelligence agencies and lawmakers as a result. “The South Korean government and the ruling party have been suspicious, but this kind of massive attack is unprecedented.”

Broadband access to the Internet is available in more than 90 percent of homes in South Korea.

Citing Pyongyang’s recent actions to test nuclear weapons and launch missile tests, the cyber attacks could be a further attempt by North Korea to get the United States’ attention. “North Korea has not been a top priority of the Obama administration so far. They’re trying to be a focus of the Obama foreign policy, because they have been feeling neglected,” he said.

While it is logical to believe reports coming out of the NIS, Jung said it would not be implausible that the Internet attack could have been launched by anti-conservative forces within South Korea to oppose the current administration’s policies, including tightening of Internet restrictions.

“The tension in the cyberspace in South Korea is growing,” he said. “That’s where many of the progressive people are really active. The ruling conservative forces in South Korea tried to pass a law called a ‘cyber terrorism law’ to strengthen censorship and strengthen the monitoring of the Internet, because they think the cyberspace is dominated by the progressive forces.”

Among the targets in the attacks were the ruling party’s official Web site and another site belonging to the country’s most influential conservative newspaper. Tensions between the two sides have been especially heightened since the suicide of former South Korean President Roh Moo-hyun in late May.

“The key is that regardless of who launched the attack, implications might be very similar in the domestic politics of South Korea,” Jung said. “Already the major conservative newspaper has published editorials that call for strengthening of anti-terrorism efforts in cyberspace that has been regarded as anti-democratic by progressive forces.”

While doing research this summer in South Korea, Jung was able to interview some recent defectors from North Korea a few weeks ago. They told him that few North Koreans were aware of Kim Jong-il’s health condition and the possible anointing of his youngest son as Kim’s successor.

“Having said that, I think that the leadership change (in North Korea) will be very secretive,” Jung said. “If the Obama administration is still waiting for the leadership change and adopting a ‘wait and see’ strategy, I think North Korea may keep initiating provocative actions. There might be further danger to regional security and stability in East Asia as well.”

Symans is among the team of researchers who will converge in the Japanese city of Miki to perform the largest earthquake simulation ever attempted on a wooden structure. The multi-university team, led by Colorado State University, has placed a seven-story building – loaded with sensing equipment and video cameras – on a massive shake table, and will expose the building to the force of an earthquake that hits once every 2,500 years.

The experiment will be Webcast live on Tuesday, July 14 at 11 a.m. EDT at www.nsf.gov/neeswood, and should yield critical data and insight on how to make wooden structures stronger and better able to withstand major earthquakes.

“Right now, wood can’t compete with steel and concrete as building materials for mid-rise buildings, partly because we don’t have a good understanding of how taller wood-framed structures will perform in a strong earthquake,” said Symans, associate professor in Rensselaer’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “With this shaking table test, we’ll be collecting data that will help us to further the development of design approaches for such structures, which is one of the major goals of the project.”

The 1994 magnitude 6.7 earthquake in Northridge, Calif., and 1995 magnitude 6.9 earthquake in Kobe, Japan, clearly demonstrate the seismic vulnerability of wood-framed construction, Symans said. The shake table experiment will offer researchers a chance to better understand how wood reacts in an earthquake, he said, and the resulting data could lead to the advancement of engineering techniques for mitigating earthquake damage.

As the ground shakes, the energy that goes into a building needs to flow somewhere, Symans said. Typically, a large portion of this energy is spent moving – and damaging – the building. There are proven engineering techniques for absorbing or displacing some of this energy in order to minimize damage, but the technology for doing so has not yet been thoroughly evaluated for wooden structures. Next week’s shake should produce sufficient data to allow the research team to develop accurate computer models of mid-rise wood buildings, which can subsequently be used to advance and validate some of these seismic protection techniques.

As one example, Symans is working on the application of seismic damping systems for wooden buildings. These systems, which can be installed inside the walls of most wooden buildings, include metal bracing and dampers filled with viscous fluid. A portion of the energy generated by the earthquake is spent shaking the fluid back and forth in the dampers, which in turn reduces the energy available to damage the wall or building structure. Recently completed shaking table tests at Rensselaer on wooden walls outfitted with such a damping system have demonstrated the viability of such an approach to mitigating damage in wooden buildings.

“The system allows a significant portion of the wood-frame displacement to be transferred to the dampers where the energy can be harmlessly dissipated,” Symans said. “With dampers in place, we have a better ability to predict how a structure will react to and perform during an earthquake.”

In the 1994 Northridge earthquake, all but one of the 25 fatalities caused by building damage occurred in wooden buildings, and at least half of the $40 billion in property damage was attributed to wood buildings. The quake resulted in nearly 50,000 housing units rendered uninhabitable, most of them wood-framed buildings. The advancement of seismic protection systems could help to save lives and prevent or limit damage in similar future earthquakes, Symans said. This is particularly important considering that most residential structures in the United States, even in seismically active areas, have wooden frames.

The Miki shake is the capstone experiment of the four-year NEESWood project, which receives its primary support from the U.S. National Science Foundation Network for Earthquake Engineering Simulation (NEES) Program. NEESWood is led by Colorado State University, in collaboration with Rensselaer, the University at Buffalo, the University of Delaware, and Texas A&M University. One intended end result of NEESWood is the development of new tools, software, and best practices that result in building code revisions and allow engineers and architects to design wooden structures which can better withstand earthquakes.

The seven-story structure has been built with new seismic design methods informed by NEESWood research for mid-rise wood frame construction. The tests in Miki, to be performed at the Hyogo Earthquake Engineering Research Center, home of the world’s largest seismic shaking table, will be used to evaluate the performance of the building and, in turn, the new design methods.

David Rosowsky, who will join Rensselaer in August as the new dean of engineering, is also a co-investigator of the NEESWood project and will attend the shake in Miki next week.

“NEESWood aims to develop a new seismic design philosophy that will provide the necessary mechanisms to safely increase the height of wood-frame structures in active seismic zones of the United States, as well as mitigate earthquake damage to low-rise wood-frame structures. When this challenge is successfully met, mid-rise wood-frame construction will be an economic option in seismic regions in the United States and around the world,” said Rosowsky, currently the head of the Department of Civil Engineering at Texas A&M.

“It’s exciting for Rensselaer to be a part of the international team participating in the NEESWood project. This project has already brought tremendous visibility to the School of Engineering at Rensselaer which, with its geotechnical centrifuge facility, already is a part of the NEES network of world-class laboratories for earthquake engineering,” Rosowsky said.

For more information on earthquake research and simulation at Rensselaer visit: http://www.nees.rpi.edu/.

The U.S., European Union and 12 of the world’s largest nations plan to embrace “an aspirational goal” of reducing emissions of global-warming gases by 50% by 2050, according to a draft declaration by world leaders set for release next week in Italy.

The draft, seen by The Wall Street Journal, sets up a framework for detailed negotiations on the issue ahead of a United Nations climate conference in December. But it leaves key areas in the climate-change debate in dispute. The draft is subject to change ahead of a meeting of global leaders starting Wednesday.

The declaration recognizes a “broad scientific view” that global temperatures shouldn’t rise more than two degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels, but doesn’t lock in the “two-degree ceiling” that some nations and environmentalists want. Global temperatures currently are about 0.8 degree Celsius above those levels.

“Sometimes it is hard for people to admit that there are good, ordinary, sane Muslims living in Iran, because it feels as though they are supporting the actions of the government,” said Fatemeh Keshavarz, Ph.D., chair of the Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages and Literatures in Arts & Sciences.

“But I think we have to overcome that. There are good Muslims — ordinary, peace-loving people — out there, and we have to let them come into the picture.”

Keshavarz, professor of Persian and of comparative literature and the author of a recent book on women in Iranian society, has been posting daily updates on election-related turmoil in Iran as part of her long-running electronic newsletter on cultural, political and social issues in Iran.

Her postings, filled with cell phone videos and firsthand anecdotes from friends and academic contacts within Iran, are available at the Windows on Iran Web site: http://windowsoniran.wordpress.com.

In her most recent posting about what she has referred to as “a peaceful movement that is seeking a repeat of the election in Iran,” she writes on June 22: “There seems to have been relative calm in Iran today. If there were clashes, they have remained unreported. All my personal attempts to dial numbers in Iran remained unsuccessful. The general mood seems to be that of waiting and reevaluating the situation among the people.”

However, the scene was quite different the night before when she wrote:

“Dear All, ?If you believe in praying, it is time to pray for Iran. Things are getting worse and worse.

* Riot police has blocked all the streets to the Azadi Square. People are being arrested in large numbers.

* After dark, shotguns and cries of Allaho Akbar from the rooftops are heard.

* On the streets, the chants have now changed to ‘Down with Khamenei.’”

Keshavarz is available for media interviews on the day-to-day news reports she’s receiving from contacts within Iran and for broader discussions of the cultural context of these events, including the role of women, art and literature in modern Iranian society and the unique ways that this protest is being shaped by the use of cell phones, instant messaging and other online social media.

Countering negative images

Raised in Shiraz, Iran, Keshavarz earned a bachelor’s in Persian language and literature and a master’s in library, archive and information studies from Shiraz University and a master of arts and a doctorate in Near Eastern studies from the University of London.

She also takes interest in the broader implications of cultural education for world peace, and in May 2007, she spoke on this topic to the United Nations General Assembly.

Keshavarz has not resided in Iran since leaving for college abroad just prior to the Iranian Revolution of 1979, but she returns to her homeland for long visits almost every summer.

Although she continues to wear a headscarf on these annual trips, she strongly favors freedom of choice for women in the way they dress.

Her most recent book, “Jasmine and Stars: Reading More Than Lolita in Tehran,” offers warm stories about ordinary, peace-loving Iranians who share the hopes and aspirations of us all, a perspective intended to counter the negative image of Iranian society that is so often portrayed in Western news coverage and in popular books, such as Azar Nafisi’s “Reading Lolita in Tehran.”

Americans don’t know this side of Iran, she says — and don’t realize that it still exists today.

“China has become a safe haven for Web site operators that use spam to promote their products because of the willingness of some Chinese Web-hosting companies to ignore spam complaints about those sites, which are hosted on their servers for a fee,” Warner said. “The hosting companies don’t create the spam, but rather declare themselves bullet-proof hosting sites – meaning that regardless of the illegal activities being reported, they will not terminate their customer’s spam-related Web sites or domains.”

Computer spam refers to unsolicited commercial advertisements distributed online via e-mail, which can sometimes carry viruses and other programs that harm computers. For the year to date, the UAB Spam Data Mine has reviewed millions of spam e-mails and successfully connected the hundreds of thousands of advertised Web sites in the spam to 69,117 unique hosting domains, Warner said. Of the total reviewed domains, 48,552, 70 percent, had Internet domains – or addresses – that ended in the Chinese country code “.cn”. Additionally, 48,331, 70 percent, of the sites were hosted on Chinese computers.

Further encouraging the Chinese spam epidemic is the widespread availability of cheap domain names. Domain names based in China can cost as little as one yuan, or 15 cents in U.S. currency. In contrast, U.S. domain names can costs as much as $35 a year, with a portion of the fees going toward efforts to detect fraud and abuse like spam. The low domain rates in China encourage Web page operators to buy numerous domains, leading to a continuous stream of spam promoting those various sites.

“Not only is it cheap to operate spam-promoted Web sites through the Chinese technology infrastructure, there is not enough revenue being generated to pay for the creation of programs or entities that could prevent such abuses from taking place,” Warner said.

Warner said that while only a very few companies in China are responsible for perpetuating the illegal spam activity, they risk the reputation of their entire nation’s Internet presence. Warner believes the solution lies in a renewed effort by the country’s government to target companies acting as a haven for cyber-criminals rather than a complete block of all Internet flow coming from China. He said China must develop mechanisms to accept and respond to spam abuse complaints. Read more on Warner’s blog at http://garwarner.blogspot.com/.

About UAB
The UAB computer forensics program is on the front lines of cyber crime and takes a three-part approach in its response to battling the problem. The first focus is on academic training to prepare the next generation cyber-crime investigators. The program also seeks to build a public awareness of cyber crime while conducting research to develop cutting edge options for taking on cyber criminals. For more, log on to http://www.cis.uab.edu/forensics/.

That’s the focus of research by Kansas State University’s Eduardo Alvarado, sophomore in pre-law, who is looking at the behaviors elicited from the musical lyrics of common songs.

Alvarado is working with Donald Saucier, associate professor of psychology at K-State to study the effects priming can have on behavior by looking at the positive and negative responses stimulated from music lyrics from a variety of song categories, including patriotic and Christmas songs. Priming, he said, is when someone is exposed to a certain environment and their subconscious is activated, and then they tend to act in accordance with that environment without deliberate intent. Priming can manipulate behavior; if someone witnesses violent behavior, they would likely behave more violently.

“One of the key implications is that behaviors may be malleable in the sense that many individuals have the capacity for similar reactions in social situations,” Saucier said. “Relatively small-scale primes may activate certain reactions, and these may be pro-social or anti-social depending on the context.”

Alvarado said the researchers wanted to see if certain musical lyrics activated a pro-social response, which is a positive feeling like empathy, or an anti-social response, which is a negative feeling like aggression. Study participants had to complete a survey and do a lyrics exercise. For the lyrics exercise, participants had to fill in missing lyrics for different songs.

The songs involved in the study were patriotic songs, such as “The Star-Spangled Banner”; secular Christmas songs, such as “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer”; religious Christmas songs, such as “O Holy Night”; and neutral songs, such as “Itsy Bitsy Spider.”

Participants filled out a survey that asked questions about their religion and their attitudes toward other cultures and diversity. Half of the participants were asked to complete the survey before the lyric exercise, and the other half completed the survey after the exercise.

Alvarado said the researchers assume people act similarly to primes, and they looked overall at the surveys to see if there was a change in the responses before and after completing the lyrics exercise. They wanted to see if the songs created a pro-social or an anti-social response. He said the preliminary findings showed that the patriotic songs had a negative effect on the participants, as shown through their responses to the survey’s questions about other cultures and diversity. The patriotic songs made the participants close-minded and prejudiced.

“Once they were in a patriotic point of view, they were less empathetic,” Alvarado said. “They didn’t put themselves in other people’s perspective.”

Though songs like “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” were meant to be neutral primes, the researchers found that they stimulated a pro-social response.

“You wouldn’t think that those songs were going to put people in a certain mind frame, but they do activate a certain attitude,” Alvarado said. “We found it made people more accepting and more empathetic. The reason for this we think is because we used to listen to these songs when we were little and they kind of activate childhood happiness.”

Saucier said follow-up research will focus on using stronger and more salient primes to influence pro-social and anti-social behavior. Jessica McManus, graduate student in psychology, has been collaborating on the project.

The research, forthcoming in the August 2009 issue of the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization, expands our understanding of the correlation between happiness and democracy — and whether economic concerns outweigh political reforms in their impact on subjective well-being.

“Although one might suppose these questions are of interest — some might even say fundamental interest, considering that they involve comparing capitalism and socialism — they have received little attention in the voluminous literature on transition economies,” says Richard Easterlin, USC University Professor and professor of economics in the USC College of Letters, Arts & Sciences.

Easterlin examines life satisfaction in thirteen countries in the so-called communist-bloc using self-reported data from a range of sources, particularly the World Values Survey. Communist-bloc countries first appeared in the large-scale Survey in 1989, when a representative population in each country was asked to rate “life these days, as a whole” on a scale of 1 (dissatisfied) to 10 (satisfied).

Other surveys before and after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 asked similar questions about specific aspects of life — such as work, health, and standard of living — and about “the way democracy works in (your country).”

“The dissolution of the police states and increase in political and civil rights in many of the transition countries might have been expected to increase life satisfaction,” Easterlin says. “The sharp decline that initially occurred suggests that adverse economic and social conditions trumped the political in their impact on subjective well-being.”

Indeed, the study finds that the trend in overall satisfaction with democracy is actually slightly negatively correlated to the trend in reported happiness after the fall of the Iron Curtain. This correlation is not statistically significant, according to Easterlin, but undermines the assertion by some scholars that democratization in these countries significantly increased happiness.

“There is evidence that, when asked about their sources of well-being, people rarely mention political circumstances,” Easterlin explains. “Rather, they put foremost those concerns that principally occupy their time, most notably making a living, family life and health.”

Satisfaction with work, childcare and health all decreased significantly during the transition from socialism to capitalism, reflecting a marked rise in symptoms of social stress such as divorce rates, suicide rates, domestic violence and increased alcoholism and drug use, Easterlin finds.

However, people were much more satisfied with one particular aspect of their lives after the fall of the Soviet Union: their material circumstances, including standard of living, goods availability and the environment.

“The positive contribution of life satisfaction to improved material living was outweighed by losses in employment security, health and child care, and provision for old age,” Easterlin says.

Disparities in life satisfaction also increased after the fall of the Soviet Union, particularly along the lines of age and education. Those older than 30, who had already established careers under the socialist system, were far more likely to be dissatisfied with life under capitalism than younger adults. Older people also faced the deterioration of old-age pension support and rising unemployment rates.

Men and women had about equal declines in life satisfaction, Easterlin finds.

“The human cost of the transition was enormous, with the lives of millions turned upside down,” Easterlin says. “The impact of these changes on people’s personal lives and their well-being is almost totally missed by GDP per capita.”

While life satisfaction had rebounded somewhat by 1999, there is evidence to suggest that even by 2005 it had not yet reach pre-transition levels, according to the study. By this time, GDP in the countries studied had increased 25 percent on average since the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“The life satisfaction measure, which reflects not only material well-being, but the everyday concerns and worries of women and men about work, health and family, is more indicative of the far-reaching changes that were taking place,” Easterlin says.

He continues: “Life satisfaction is not an exhaustive measure of well-being. But if, in formulating transition policy, some consideration had been given to this measure, perhaps there would have been fewer ‘lost in transition.’”

Richard A. Easterlin. “Lost in Transition: Life Satisfaction on the Road to Capitalism,” Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization (2009: 71:2).

Online here: http://www.tampabay.com/news/science/personaltech/article1008611.ece

Bing me. Bing it. It’s time to Bing and decide. Prepare yourself as Microsoft wages its all-out advertising assault on Web-surfing lingo.

Last week, the software giant launched its new online search engine, Bing. It’s spending an estimated $80 million to $100 million on a campaign to shape Bing.com as a “decision engine” for consumers.

What will you find there?

Bing focuses on four experiences: making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition and finding a local business.

Like Google, Bing also provides tools to search videos, images, news and maps updated with real-time traffic info.

Bing enters a search engine landscape dominated by Google, which holds more than 81 percent of the global market, according to statistics by Market Share. Yahoo, in second, garners a little more than 9 percent.

Will Bing’s consumer focus win people over?

Dewey Davis-Thompson, who owns Internet Adept Inc., a St. Petersburg Web design service, said he hasn’t seen anything beyond Bing’s glossy interface to capture his attention.

“They may catch up with Google, but I don’t know about surpassing it,” he said. “Google is a word like Coke — like Kleenex or Trojan.

“People don’t use a search engine. They Google.”

Will they also Bing?

Find out more in this video.

How Our Brains Are Different

223,777 Smoking-related items (cigarettes, lighters, cigars, tobacco packaging, etc.)

116,835 Beverage containers (plastic, glass and cans)

53,712 Bags (11,336 paper and 42,376 plastic)

11,039 Large objects (refrigerators, cars, building materials, etc.)

6,078 Toys

4,404 Balloons

Read the rest of the report at the Ocean Conservancy web site.

According to Green For All, on March 16, Jones is to become Special Advisor for Green Jobs, Enterprise & Innovation at the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ). “His duties will include: helping to shape and implement job-generating climate policy; working to ensure equal protection and equal opportunity in the administration’s climate and energy proposals; and publicly advocating the administration’s environmental and energy agenda.”

The WSJ says “Obama has touted the job-creation potential of his clean-energy initiative. Now, the focus seems to be on making sure that the administration’s overall climate policy—including a cap-and-trade bill to curb greenhouse-gas emissions—will create more jobs than it endangers in Rust Belt states.”

Harvard University’s Robert Stavins says that job creation and a green agenda are non-compatible.  “Addressing the worst economic recession in generations calls for the most effective economic stimulus package that can be devised, not a stimulus package that is diminished in effectiveness through excessive bells and whistles meant to address a myriad of other (legitimate) social concerns. And, likewise, getting serious about global climate change will require the enactment and implementation of meaningful, dedicated climate policies, most likely a comprehensive national CO2 cap-and-trade system. These are two serious but different policy problems, and they call for two serious, carefully-crafted policy responses.”
Van Jones and Green For All (now to be headed by Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins) have found success in the Oakland area with small-scale green job creation.  Now we shall see what ideas he can bring to fruition nationally.

In this study, three- and four-year-old children watched as a small group of people (either three or four members) named a novel object. The majority of group members would use the same name for the object; the lone dissenter would pick a different name. The children were then asked what they thought the object was called.

The results revealed that majority rules when it comes to influencing the opinion of preschoolers. The children in the study would consistently select the name that was used by the majority of the group members. And even more interesting, in a follow-up experiment in which only two members (someone from the majority group and the dissenter) remained in the room and named a different object, the children would still go with name that was provided by the majority group member.

These results indicate that children as young as age three and four are able to recognize and trust a consensus. In addition, young children are good at remembering who was and was not a part of the majority group. The authors note that children are not always faced with agreement during interactions with people and these “findings provide initial evidence that young children navigate that social variation with the help of a simple but powerful strategy.”

The same study found men in strained marriages also are more likely to feel depressed, yet – unlike women – do not face an increased risk of metabolic syndrome, which is characterized by five symptoms: hypertension, obesity around the waistline, high blood sugar, high triglycerides and low levels of HDL, which is “good cholesterol.”

“We hypothesized that negative aspects of marriages like arguing and being angry would be associated with higher levels of metabolic syndrome,” says the study’s first author, Nancy Henry, a doctoral student in psychology. “We further anticipated that this relationship would be at least partly due to depressive symptoms.”

“In other words, those who reported experiencing more conflict, hostility and disagreement with their spouses would more depressed, which in turn would be associated with a higher risk of heart disease due to metabolic syndrome,” she adds

“We found this was true for wives in this study, but not for husbands,” says Henry, who was scheduled to present the findings Thursday, March 5 in Chicago during the American Psychosomatic Society’s annual meeting.

“The gender difference is important because heart disease is the number-one killer of women as well as men, and we are still learning a lot about how relationship factors and emotional distress are related to heart disease,” she says.

Putting Your Heart into Your Marriage

Does the study suggest women should avoid men to reduce heart disease risks?

“We know they should,” jokes Tim Smith, a psychology professor and study co-author who heads a larger University of Utah study of the role of marriage quality in heart disease. The new study is part of the larger effort.

Smith, turning serious, says: “The reason you have to be careful about ‘what does it mean?’ is that this study is a simple, preliminary test of what might be unhealthy about relationships for women.”

“There is good evidence they [women] should modify some of the things that affect metabolic syndrome – like diet and exercise – but it’s a little premature to say they would lower their risk of heart disease if they improved the tone and quality of their marriages – or dumped their husbands,” he says.

Other data from the larger study indicate “that a history of divorce is associated with coronary disease,” he adds, noting the researchers are pursuing the hypothesis that improving marriage might improve health.

“The immediate implication is that if you are interested in your cardiovascular risk – and we all should be because it is the leading killer for both genders – we should be concerned about not just traditional risk factors [such as blood pressure and cholesterol] but the quality of our emotional and family lives,” Smith says.

In addition to possible health benefits, more immediate benefits include “getting along better and enjoying each other more, improving your mood,” he says.

Some critics have questioned the concept and clinical usefulness of metabolic syndrome – also known as syndrome X or insulin resistance syndrome – and have asserted that it is nothing more than the sum of its parts, namely, a group of five risk factors for heart disease, stroke and diabetes.

“It is defined as a syndrome, but there still is controversy in the medical community – what should be included, how the different factors should be measured, whether all the factors hang together as a distinct syndrome or are they just separate things,” Henry says.

She says she chose to study metabolic syndrome because there is no question its components are risk factors for cardiovascular disease and because the syndrome was a possible explanation for how “psychosocial risk factors” in marriage are related to cardiovascular disease.

“Strained marriages can increase your risk of heart disease, and that may in part be because strained marriages increase the risk of metabolic syndrome and thus heart disease,” Smith says. “The reason strained marriages might be related to metabolic syndrome is that strained marriages can be depressing, and depression is then the link to metabolic syndrome.”

Smith says the endocrinology of depression’s psychological stress may explain why the five risk factors that comprise metabolic syndrome fit together.

He hypothesizes that perhaps “the hormonal effects of stress are why you are depositing fat [around the waist], why your insulin resistance goes up, why your lipids and blood pressure get out of whack. Part of the reason these things may be clumping together is because they are part of an unhealthy body response to stress.”

How the Study Was Performed

Henry and Smith conducted the new study with University of Utah psychologists Jonathan Butner, an associate professor; Bert Uchino, a professor; and Cynthia Berg, a professor and chair of the university’s Department of Psychology.

For their wider study, the psychologists used the Dan Jones & Associates polling firm and newspaper ads during 2001-2005 to recruit 276 couples, who were married an average of 20 years and from ages 40 to 70.

Each couple filled out several questionnaires for both the encompassing study and for Henry’s study. The questionnaires included 10 scales: three to assess positive aspects of marriage quality, such as mutual support, emotional warmth and friendliness, and confiding in each other; three scales to measure negative aspects of marital quality such as arguments, feelings of hostility and extent of disagreement over various topics such as kids, sex, money and in-laws; and four scales to gauge symptoms of depression (not necessarily full-blown clinical depression).

Each couple also went to a university clinic, where their waists and blood pressure were measured and they were given lab tests for “good” cholesterol, fasting glucose and triglycerides. Together, those data determined if a study participant had metabolic syndrome. They also underwent a screening test designed to exclude any couple that already had cardiovascular disease.

The findings:

– Women who reported more marital strain were more likely to also report depressive symptoms, Henry says.

– “Women who reported more marital strain had more metabolic syndrome symptoms, and that association can be explained by the fact they also reported more depressive symptoms,” says Smith.

– “Men in bad marriages also reported more depression, but neither marital strain nor depression was related to their levels of metabolic syndrome,” he adds.

“We know from previous research that women are more sensitive and responsive to relationship problems than men,” Henry says. “The results of this study suggest those problems could harm their health. Understanding the emotional and relationship health of couples can be an important overall factor in understanding physical health. Improving aspects of intimate relationships might help your emotional and physical well-being.”

Contacts:
– Tim Smith, professor of psychology – office (801) 581-5087, cellular (801) 949-2181, tim.smith@psych.utah.edu (Smith available only by cell phone Feb. 26-March 1 and March 4-8.)
– Nancy Henry, doctoral student in psychology – office (801) 582-1565 ext. 4384, cellular (801) 573-2218, nancy.henry@psych.utah.edu (Henry available only by cell phone March 4-8.)

Born in Russia, Spektor’s playful use of language, music and video is like Lori Anderson with occasional odd sounds and intentional grating feelings but mixed in with a sweet ranging vocal essence that is compared to Tori Amos and Fiona Apple and the lyrical work of Joni Mitchell, Ani DiFranco and Bjork.  But comparisons are better made in one’s own head, so cruise on over to reginaspektor.com and enjoy a few minutes of respite from the crazy world – in the crazy offworld of Regina.

Right away you will become enshrined with her – “they made a statue of us, our noses have begun to rust. They’ll name a city after us, and later say it’s all our fault. Then they’ll give us a talking to!” Rummaging for answers in the pages, Spektor warns we are “living in a den of theives and it’s contageous!”

Wikipedia reports “Spektor learned how to play piano by practicing on a Petrof upright that was given to her mother by her grandfather. She was also exposed to the music of rock and roll bands such as The Beatles, Queen, and The Moody Blues by her father, who obtained such recordings in Eastern Europe and traded cassettes with friends in the Soviet Union. The family left the Soviet Union in 1989, when Regina was nine, during the period of Perestroika,

“Now tourists come and stare at us
Blow bubbles with their gum
Take photographs for fun, for fun”

Spektor has said that she works hard to ensure that each of her songs has its own musical style, rather than trying to develop a distinctive style for her music as a whole.  Surely “Poor Little Rich Boy” goes along with “Better” but the latter sounds fit for a post-party dance floor and the former fitter for a rap-poetry open mike.

Her features favor the camera as well.  Heavily drooping eyelushes, naked of shadow surmount full lips that shape “lovesongs just to break my fall.”

See the spektacle for yourself at ReginaSpektor.com

A global leader in his field, Garde works to shed new light on the hidden world of atoms and molecules. Equipped with state-of-the-art advanced imaging, molecular modeling, and computer simulation tools, he is a high-tech archeologist who scrutinizes nanoscale landscapes in search of clues, patterns, and systems that could lead to a better understanding of the most basic building blocks of life.

In the next few months Garde will unveil his latest simulations to the public and his fellow researchers. But instead of the more familiar setting of a classroom or academic conference, his molecules will come to life on silver screens in darkened IMAX movie theaters across the country.

Garde’s simulations are at the heart of Molecules to the MAX, the new animated IMAX film set for release in early 2009. Carefully engineered to both entertain and educate, the movie follows the exploits of Oxy, Hydro, Hydra, and other characters who populate the world of Molecularium.

The atomic environment of nearly every shot in Molecules to the MAX is derived from simulations provided by Garde and his research team. Some are among the most ambitious and intricate simulations ever undertaken.

“When you watch a modern animated movie like Shrek, and you see the fabric of the princess’ dress move, it looks quite natural because animators have taken great pains to make those movements as physically realistic as possible,” said Garde, head of the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. “In Molecules to the MAX, we’ve tried to push that accuracy all the way down to the level of atoms and molecules.”

The first Molecularium movie, Riding Snowflakes, released in 2004, relied heavily on Garde’s simulations. He said the longer 42-minute running time of the new IMAX film, along with emboldened animators and entertainers looking to push the boundaries of art and science, resulted in the need for larger, more involved simulations to flush out the atomic environments of Molecules to the MAX.

“The artists didn’t want to fake anything,” Garde said. “They wanted as many simulations as possible. I’ve had at least 10 to 15 students over the past few years contribute to this project.”

Along with the challenge of running the simulations, and working with animators to find a middle ground between their respective languages of art and science, Garde said seeing his work on the large screen added new facets to his own understanding and appreciation of the molecular world.

“When you watch a molecular trajectory rendered on a large screen, you begin to notice intricacies and patterns that aren’t necessarily obvious when you’re looking at it on a small computer screen,” he said.

Garde submits that many of the animations that provide the basis for Molecules to the MAX were packed with “more information and detail than was probably necessary to make a given point.” But it’s these little details that will allow his colleagues around the world – mainly chemical engineers, chemists, and physicists – to appreciate the movie on yet another level.

“It’s almost like an inside joke,” Garde said. “Like the lines in Shrek or Toy Story that go over the heads of many young people, but make the adults laugh.”

Massive computational power was required to bring Garde’s simulations and the animators’ vision to life on the big screen. Many of the complex scientific molecular simulations required hours, days, or even months of computer processing time to complete. Converting the raw data from those simulations into visual images for Molecules to the MAX was also time intensive. It took anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours to render a single frame the movie – with 24 frames per second, the new 42-minute IMAX movie is made up of nearly 60,000 frames. The render time will jump even higher when the film is re-formatted, later this year, to 3-D IMAX.

An early digital version of Molecules to the MAX was screened last autumn in New York at an industry convention, and the full IMAX version will be shown to theater owners and potential film buyers in California next month at the Giant Screen Cinema Association 2009 Film Expo. The Molecularium team and giant-screen movie distributor SK Films are working to build up a buzz and land deals to show the film in IMAX theaters across the country and around the world. Planning for a national public premiere later in the year is still under way.

Garde credits his research team of talented graduate and undergraduate Rensselaer students, collaborator and Rensselaer colleague Professor Angel E. Garcia, along with Molecules to the MAX production company Nanotoon Entertainment, and fellow Molecules to the MAX executive producers and Rensselaer faculty colleagues Linda Schadler and Richard Siegel for making the Molecularium project such an enjoyable endeavor. Their goal with the IMAX movie is to entertain audiences while tangibly raising national and international science literacy with an important educational message.

Though he works closely with graduate and undergraduate students at Rensselaer, he knows it can be quite challenging to reach younger children. “If someone like me stands up to tell kids about molecules and atoms, it won’t be long before they fall asleep,” Garde said. “But Molecularium is different. It is an exciting place where molecular modeling, art, and entertainment meet education in a meaningful way. It’s a unique vehicle to tell the kind of story we’re trying to tell.”

Molecules to the MAX and Molecularium are owned and managed by Rensselaer, with additional support from the U.S. National Science Foundation. The new IMAX movie was made possible by a generous gift from Rensselaer Trustee Curtis Priem ’82, co-founder of NVIDIA, a world leader in visual computing technologies. Since Schadler first developed the idea for Molecularium in 2001, the program has become the flagship educational outreach project of Rensselaer’s NSF-funded Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures.

The first Molecularium movie, Riding Snowflakes, was created to be projected in planetarium domes. The dome movie has won several awards, is still in distribution worldwide, and is in the process of being translated into several different languages. The Riding Snowflakes team returned to work on Molecules to the MAX. Garde, Schadler, and Siegel worked closely with the Nanotoon team, led by writer/director V. Owen Bush and writer/producer Kurt Przybilla.

The Molecularium team is also looking to bring Oxy, Hydra, and Hydro to the small screen. The group is in discussions to move the project forward and reach out to more people by bringing the new movie to television, creating new Molecularium shows for television, and also making the new Molecularium content available on DVD.

As far as Garde is concerned, the more Molecularium content produced and available to the public, the better.

“My daughter is 2 years old, and right now she’d hooked on the cartoon Jungle Book,” he said. “But I hope it won’t be too long before she’s hooked on Oxy, Hydro, and Hydra in the Molecularium.”

For more information on Molecules to the MAX and the Molecularium project, visit: www.molecularium.com.

For more information on Rensselaer’s NSF Nanoscale Science and Engineering Center for Directed Assembly of Nanostructures, visit: www.nano.rpi.edu.

“Mardi Gras has been going topless for some years with no end in sight,” says Farley, a former president of the American Psychological Association. “Is this reflecting a growing acceptance of such behavior in America? I think so.”

Liberal views on many fronts are gaining ground, from a healthy decline in racism, sexism, and ageism on one hand to a more questionable tolerance of such public nudity displays on the other, he says.

“Censorship of such displays is becoming increasingly difficult in this media saturated century and the Mardi Gras is helping to fuel the trend,” adds Farley. “Self-exposure of all types, including the now accepted ‘flashing breasts-for-beads’ at Mardi Gras, is beginning to define the Internet.”

The researcher pointed out that emotions (such as fear, joy or surprise) are almost instantaneous mood alterations, in contrast to emotional states (such as boredom or anxiety) which are more long-lasting, or personality, which normally lasts someone’s entire life. The designers have followed the theories of Albert Mehrabian to draw up the model, based on the five personality traits established by this American psychologist: extraversion, neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness.

“Every personality can be considered an emotional state by default”, indicated Arellano. An introverted and neurotic personality is therefore related to an anxious emotional state. The points of the face that define these emotions can be determined mathematically, and the algorithms developed by computer experts can be used to obtain different facial expressions “quickly and easily”. The system, which uses the MPEG-4 video coding standard for creating images, makes it possible to display basic emotions (anger, disgust, fear, joy, sadness, surprise) and intermediate situations.

The results of the method have been assessed objectively (through an automatic recognizer which identified 82% of the expressions generated) and subjectively, through a survey carried out among a group of 75 university students. The students successfully recognised 86% of the emotions and 73% of the emotional states shown on the computer.

Even so, the researchers have detected that some emotions, such as fear and surprise, are difficult to tell apart, with context helping to differentiate between the two. The team is already working in this line and prepared a virtual storyteller which enriches the narration, using its face to express the emotions generated by the story told.

A team of researchers from the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB) has developed a computer model that enables the generation of faces which for the first time display emotions and moods according to personality traits.

Arellano also points out that the display of emotions not only depends on the facial expression, but also the existence of various other factors such as gestures, voice or head movements which also help to correctly interpret an emotion, since personality has an obvious effect on them.

The researchers believe that this model could be applied in both educational environments (virtual tutors and presenters with personality traits) and in video game characters or interactive stories that have their own emotional motor. “Our next step is to leave the MPEG-4 standard aside and concentrate on a high-quality generic network which will enable the inclusion of both wrinkles and eye, eyelid and head movements, as well as synthesize the voice”, the researcher concluded.

Read the rest here.

The green component of the much larger stimulus plan would cost at least $15 billion a year, and perhaps considerably more, depending on how the projects were defined, aides working on the package said.

During the campaign, Mr. Obama supported a measure to address global warming by capping carbon emissions while allowing companies to buy and trade pollution permits. He said he would devote $150 billion of the revenue from the sale of those permits over 10 years to energy efficiency and alternative energy projects to wean the nation from fuels that are the main causes of the heating the atmosphere.

But the Obama adviser who discussed the green energy project said Mr. Obama would not await passage of a global warming bill before embarking on the new energy and infrastructure spending. House and Senate supporters of a climate bill said they would continue working on legislative language but did not expect quick action on a cap-and-trade law because of the economic emergency.

That means that the green-jobs program would not be financed with pollution credits bought by power generators and other carbon emitters, but instead would be added to the budget deficit.

Congressional officials working with the Obama administration said the stimulus program was also likely to involve tax breaks or direct government subsidies for a variety of clean energy projects, including solar arrays, wind farms, advanced biofuels and technology to capture carbon dioxide emissions from coal-burning power plants.

Read the rest here.

Lord Ganesha is often depicted as coming from the forest; therefore, pine boughs (or banana leaves) may be used. Flashing lights, tinsel and colorful hanging ornaments may also be added. Each morning the children dress or decorate Ganesha anew in a different color: golden yellow on December 21, then royal blue, ruby red, emerald green and finally brilliant orange–the colors of His five powers, or shaktis. Each day a tray of sweets, fruits and incense is offered to Lord Ganapati, often prepared and presented by the children. Chants, songs and bhajanas are sung in His praise. After puja, the abundant, diverse sweets are shared by one and all as prasada. Each day gifts are given to the children, who place them before Pancha Ganapati to open only on the fifth day.
December 21, yellow: The family sadhana for the first day of Pancha Ganapati is to create a vibration of love and harmony among immediate family members. The day begins early, and the entire family works together to design and decorate the shrine with traditional symbols, rangoli, lamps and more. Then a grand puja is performed invoking the spirit of Pancha Ganapati in the home. The sadhana of the day now begins. The family sits together for the purpose of easing any strained relationships that have arisen during the year by making amends one with another. When forgiveness is offered to all by one and all, they speak of each other’s good qualities and resolve that in the days ahead they will remember the futility of trying to change others. Gifts are then exchanged and placed unopened before Pancha Ganapati.

December 22, blue: Day two is devoted to creating a vibration of love and harmony among neighbors, relatives and close friends and presenting them with heartfelt gifts. The sadhana of the day is to offer apologies and clear up any misunderstandings that exist. Relatives and friends in far-off places are written to or called, forgiveness is sought, apologies made and tensions released. Each day, gifts received are placed unopened before Pancha Ganapati.

December 23, red: The sadhana for the third day is to create a vibration of love and harmony among business associates, the casual merchant and the public at large. This is the day for presenting gifts to fellow workers and customers and to honor employers and employees with gifts and appreciation. The sadhana today is the settling of all debts and disputes.

December 24, green: The sadhana of day four is to draw forth the vibration of joy and harmony that comes from music, art, drama and the dance. Family, relatives and friends gather for satsang to share and enjoy their artistic gifts. Then all sit together before Ganesha, Patron of Arts and Guardian of Culture, discussing Hindu Dharma and making plans to bring more cultural refinements into the home.

December 25, orange: The family sadhana for the final day is to bring forth love and harmony within all three worlds. Because of sadhanas well performed during the first four days, the family is now more open and aware of Ganesha’s grace, and their love for Him is now overflowing. On this day the entire family experiences an outpouring of love and tranquility from the great God Himself. His blessings fill the home and the hearts of everyone within it, inspiring them anew for the coming year. Jai Ganapati!

Read the rest of the article here.

RELATED LINKS Green for All Original Article Daily Revolution Archives

A new publication outlines strategies for developing green-collar job initiatives and pathways out of poverty at the local level. Co-authored by Green For All, this report describes a 4-step approach for local initiatives and highlights a dozen great efforts already underway around the country. Green-Collar Jobs in America?s Cities

Publication outlines strategies for developing green-collar job initiatives and pathways out of poverty at the local level.

Green For All, in partnership with the Apollo Alliance, Center for American Progress, and the Center on Wisconsin Strategy, recently released this guide to help cities across America develop strategies to spur the creation of green-collar jobs and opportunity in their communities.

The new guide, Green-Collar Jobs in America?s Cities: Building Pathways out of Poverty and Careers in the Clean Energy Economy, is a first-of-its-kind publication that addresses the demand for this information and outlines a strategic framework in which local policymakers and advocates can develop a green-collar job initiative that responds to the realities of their local economies and communities.

?Our green future will be invented at the local level,? said Van Jones, founder and president of Green For All. ?This report offers those leaders some of the best thinking and models currently available for building green-collar jobs and the training pipelines necessary for city residents to fill those jobs and claim the promise of living wage careers.?

The guide encourages cities to take a four-step approach.

1. First, set a baseline to start from. Identify your environmental and economic goals, and assess local and regional opportunities for achieving those goals.
2. Second, develop a green economic development plan. Enact policies and programs to drive investment into targeted green economic activity and increase demand for local green-collar workers.
3. Third, ready your workforce. Prepare your green-collar workforce by building green-collar job training partnerships to identify and meet workforce training needs, and by creating green pathways out of poverty that focus on recruitment, job readiness, job training, and job placement for low-income residents.
4. And fourth, build on your successes. Leverage your program?s success to build political support for new and bolder policies and initiatives.

Green-Collar Jobs in America’s Cities also includes 14 case studies of successful green-collar job training or policy in 11 communities on both coasts, the Midwest, and the South.

We are on the cusp of incredible change. People everywhere are now talking about the promise of green-collar jobs to serve both the planet and the people. We hope that this publication helps people in cities across the country realize their own dreams of a strong green economy that provides pathways to prosperity for people in need.

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RELATED LINKS multimedia version NewsWise.com Daily Revolution Archives

Letting your imagination run away with you may actually influence how you see the world. New research from Vanderbilt University has found that mental imagery–what we see with the “mind’s eye”–directly impacts our visual perception.

The research was published online June 26 by the journal Current Biology.

“We found that imagery leads to a short-term memory trace that can bias future perception,” Joel Pearson, research associate in the Vanderbilt Department of Psychology. and lead author of the study, said. “This is the first research to definitively show that imagining something changes vision both while you are imagining it and later on.”

“These findings are important because they suggest a potential mechanism by which top-down expectations or recollections of previous experiences might shape perception itself,” Pearson and his co-authors wrote.

It is well known that a powerful perceptual experience can change the way a person sees things later. Just think of what can happen if you discover an unwanted pest in your kitchen, such as a mouse. Suddenly you see mice in every dust ball and dark corner–or think you do. Is it possible that imagining something, just once, might also change how you perceive things?

“You might think you need to imagine something 10 times or 100 times before it has an impact,” Frank Tong, associate professor of psychology and co-author of the study, said. “Our results show that even a single instance of imagery can tilt how you see the world one way or another, dramatically, if the conditions are right.”

To test how imagery affects perception, Pearson, Tong and co-author Colin Clifford of the University of Sydney had subjects imagine simple patterns of vertical or horizontal stripes, which are strongly represented in the primary visual areas of the brain. They then presented a green horizontal grated pattern to one eye and a red vertical grated pattern to the other to induce what is called binocular rivalry. During binocular rivalry, an individual will often alternately perceive each stimulus, with the images appearing to switch back and forth before their eyes. The subjects generally reported they had seen the image they had been imagining, proving the researcher’s hypothesis that imagery would influence the binocular rivalry battle.

Additional experiments found that the effect of imagery on perception was approximately the same as showing the research subject a faint representation of one of the patterns between trials. Stronger shifts in perception were found if subjects either viewed or imagined a particular pattern for longer periods of time. They found that both imagery and perception can lead to a build-up of a “perceptual trace” that influences subsequent perception.

Pearson, Clifford and Tong also discovered that changing the orientation of the image from what had been imagined greatly reduced the impact of imagery on perception. Because orientation is processed in early visual areas, this suggests that imagery’s interaction with perception may occur at early stages of visual processing.

The new findings offer an objective tool to assess the often-slippery concept of imagination.

“It has been very hard to pin down in the laboratory what exactly someone is experiencing when it comes to imagery, because it is so subjective,” Tong said. “We found that the imagery effect, while found in all of our subjects, could differ a lot in strength across subjects. So this might give us a metric to measure the strength of mental imagery in individuals and how that imagery may influence perception.”

The findings may also help settle a longstanding debate in the research community over whether mental imagery is visual?that one imagines something just as one sees it?or more abstract.

“More recently, with advances in human brain imaging, we now know that when you imagine something parts of the visual brain do light up and you see activity there,” Pearson said. “So there’s more and more evidence suggesting that there is a huge overlap between mental imagery and seeing the same thing. Our work shows that not only are imagery and vision related, but imagery directly influences what we see.”

The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health, an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant and an Australia National Health and Mental Research Council Martin Fellowship. Pearson is a member of the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center. Tong is a member of the Vanderbilt Vision Research Center and the Vanderbilt Center for Integrative and Cognitive Neuroscience.

A multimedia version of this story is available on Exploration, Vanderbilt’s online research magazine.

© Daily Revolution™ – Web Site by Internet Adept

RELATED LINKS Everglades Restoration Daily Revolution Archives

The Everglades Restoration Project has repaved many waterways of southern Florida, making unstraight the path. Mankind steps back and the untamed borders of nature have returned. A flock of ibis peck in the grass for morning niblets and a raccoon family snugs high up into a palm tree to sleep out the stifling afternoon heat and drenching storms. Most important of all, the shoreline is ragged and rough, and flourishing mangroves buffer the wake of man-made craft, still buzzing up the canal.

If we go “backwards,” how far should we go? The crabs have safe homes again, no longer pummeled by rough waves at odd intervals. But oil soils the water, and trash still meanders the lee. There is more to saving the Everglades, it seems, than just fixing the water flow.

In Taking the Risk Out of Democracy, Alex Carey asserts that the moneyed interests in the world have steered public debate in a direction that suits their business. “The question is no longer whether or not pollution should be allowed, but how much pollution is OK.” Of course, one might say, some pollution is inevitable in the course of human industry. So the question, they say is “how green should we be?”

At sunrise a friend insists “God said ‘Go forth and trash the place.’” And we have. Now it is time to pull back. Mankind must restore balance with nature, goes the mantra. What would that balance actually be? Perhaps we need to look at the world before humans existed as a major species. Only then can we balance with the rest of creation. Otherwise it is just a matter of “how much nature” will we allow.

© Daily Revolution™ – Web Site by Internet Adept

LINKS Eugenics Connection Old-Thinker News Daily Revolution Archives

Population Control: The Eugenics Connection, a documentary from Old-Thinker News asks the following questions. Has eugenics faded away with time, or has the pseudo science morphed and cloaked itself under new auspices? Were some of the original founders of population control efforts themselves eugenicists? How and when did eugenicists shift from Galton era ideals to Malthusian population control?

Watch part one here, and catch the link to see all three parts of this conspiracy video.

© Daily Revolution™ – Web Site by Internet Adept

RELATED LINKS Politicans Rethink Ethanol Business Week Journey to Forever Food and Fuel America Food Anxiety Daily Revolution Archives

There’s a brewing conflict over the use of “food-based” ethanol. Last week, a couple dozen American senators said they wanted to ease the congressionally mandated ethanol blend of thier nation’s gasoline supply. A Wall Street Journal article noted that:

“The move by the Republican Senate group is the latest sign that Washington’s support for turning corn into motor fuel is wavering in the face of soaring food prices, despite the popularity of ethanol subsidies in farm states critical to the November election?. There are also signs of anti-ethanol backlash at the state level. The governors of Texas and Connecticut have requested that the EPA [Environmental Protection Agency] issue waivers from the mandate, arguing that the ethanol impact on food prices is too onerous.”

Such concern has become global. The World Bank has estimated that corn prices rose by more than 60 percent from 2005 to 2007, largely because of the US ethanol program, combined with market forces. The United States is the world’s biggest biofuel producer, overall.

Is current worldwide food anxiety the result of policy-makers’ lack of attention to the food system and the relationship between food, global warming and fossil fuels? A member of the national American Planning Association’s (APA) Steering Committee on Food Systems Planning, Samina Raja, Ph.D., thinks so.

“The current food shortage and rising prices of agricultural products are very serious problems and are going to get worse now that the use of agricultural land is encouraged for ethanol production,” says Raja. “Although food insecurity in the world isn’t a new phenomena, what is new is that the press and many policy makers — the very people who did not attend to the crisis as it developed and therefore contributed to it — are now alarmed by food shortages, riots and soaring prices.”

Raja notes that in the past, vegetables, flour, meat, fruits and dairy products Americans consumed came from family farms located in local rural areas outside of our cities. “Today’s conventional food system,” she says, “requires the same products to travel roughly 1,500 miles from farm to fork. The transportation of food over long distances requires enormous quantities of fossil fuels, and causes severe damage to the environment and contributes mightily to global warming.”

Raja lays blame for the international food crisis at the door of agricultural policy makers at the World Bank and international development agencies who continue to promote a deeply entrenched industrialized corporate mode of food production, processing and delivery sustained by the use of massive amounts of fossil fuel.

“In our desperation to find alternative forms of energy, we are using vast amounts of farmland for fuel production,” she says. “Land that once grew food or grazed cattle or sheep is now called upon to produce vast amounts of corn and other grains to be turned into ethanol.”

Business Week says “In the most optimistic scenarios, the world will move smoothly to biofuels through increased farm acreage, higher yields, and new crops and technologies. Farmers already plan to seed 10 million more acres of corn this spring. … llinois farmer Steve Pitstick (is) shifting most of his soybean field to corn.”

Corn is poor raw material for fuel because producing 10 gallons of ethanol consumes the energy of 7 gallons of gas, “and greenhouse gas reductions are minuscule.” But there are other options.

Georgia Tech’s Roger P. Webb sees pine groves in the south as a potential fuel sorce. Stanford University biologist Chris Somerville calculates that, with the right plants, 3.5% of the earth’s surface could supply all of humanity’s energy needs, compared with 13% now used for agriculture.

Prarie grasses have deep roots that store carbon captured from the air, improve soils, and require little water. 49 million acres could supply 139 billion gallons of ethanol a year by 2030, according to venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. “Farmers will be better off, the world will be less dangerously dependent on the Mideast, and we will take a giant step in greenhouse gas reductions,” he argues. “There is little downside.”

Journey to Forever has a Food or Fuel page and they have this take. “Food shortages and price increases in Brazil have resulted from a combination of policies which were biased towards commodity export crops and large acreage increases of such crops, hyper-inflation, currency devaluation, price control of domestic foodstuffs etc. Within this reality, any negative effects that bioethanol production might have had should be considered as part of the overall problem, not the problem.”

“The food shortages and price increases that Brazil suffered a few years ago, were blamed on the ProAlcool programme (fuel ethanol). However, a closer examination does not support the view that bioethanol production has adversely affected food production since Brazil is one of the world’s largest exporters of agricultural commodities and agricultural production has kept ahead of population growth: in 1976 the production of cereals was 416 kg per capita, and in 1987 — 418 kg per capita. Of the 55 million ha of land area devoted to primary food crops, only 4.1 million ha (7.5 per cent) was used for sugarcane, which represents only 0.6 per cent of the total area registered for economic use (or 0.3 per cent of Brazil’s total area). Of this, only 1.7 million ha was used for ethanol production, so competition between food and crops is not significant.”

JTF concludes “it is important to mention that developing countries are facing both food and fuel problems. Adoption of agricultural practices should, therefore, take into account this reality and evolve efficient methods of utilising available land and other resources to meet both food and fuel needs (besides other products), e.g., from agroforestry systems.”

But local decisions are often pushed by global interests, reminds Dr. Raja. The World Bank and international development agencies have pushed many developing countries to move from traditional food production systems, to industrialized agricultural systems like the one that is producing the problems we see today. So now farmers are more and more likely to produce cash crops like corn, soy beans and so on for export, instead of fruits, vegetables, grains and animals that can be consumed by the family.”

“To eat, these families now have to purchase what they once grew. When things go awry on the unregulated world commodities mark ets as they have, the price of that food rises so high that people with limited means, including farmers, go hungry,” she says.

© Daily Revolution™ – Web Site by Internet Adept

RELATED LINKS Grades in Cincinnati California Parents Treasure Coast Schools Daily Revolution Archives

Usually it is the kids who seem to get the upper hand with technology. They zoom online with ease, chat, blog and text – while those over 40 sometimes seem techno-challenged by a VCR. (A what, Dad? Oh, you mean like an 8 track.)

Today, however, we share a technichal triumph of parents trying to keep track of thier children’s scores in school. Online report cards, attendance records and even behavioural notes are finding thier way to the worldwide web.

Nancy Rein can see that her daughter has been turning in her homework assignments or check on her test results. Mrs. Rein simply types in a web address and with her password she can check on her Cincinnati high school student’s progress. Of course, this means that hackers and other idiots might get at them too.

Systems such as PowerSchool, the program Campbell County schools use, allows parents, teachers, and students to check grades, attendance, progress and class schedules at any time from any PC. Similar Web-based programs include LetterGrade, K12Planet, and ParentConnectxp. Indian River County public schools is using another system eSembler as their web-based gradebook.

Students beware!

© Daily Revolution™ – Web Site by Internet Adept

RELATED LINKS WeCanSolveIt.Org Daily Revolution Archives

OK. At last it seems that ranks are closing on environmental issues among the American leadership. First we see Pat Roberson and Al Sharpton sitting on a sofa on the dreariest black and white beach you can imagine. One does not imagine that the talent in these ads were convinced to shoot on location. But what they do now seem to agree upon has been to close a chasm traditionally much further apart than green screen is from black and white, namely the “climate crisis.”

On the WeCanSolveIt.org web site the copy adds “At the taping of this clip, the two joked and prayed together. If these polar opposites can come together on this important and moral issue, why can’t you?

Sharpton opines “We all need to work toghether liberals and conservatives.” “It is the right thing to do,” adds Robertson.

Watch it for yourself:

Then there is the unlikely combination of congressman and congresswoman, Newt Gingrich and Nancy Pelosi, again seated in an equally unlikly drab locale: The most obvious of objectives include advocacy, a Polar Bear Petition and general personal involvement in community groups and local efforts. There is a also a page that includes many suggestions on reducing personal imact on the environement, here they are:

At Home
• Turn down the heat and air conditioning when you aren’t home. Try using a programmable thermostat or setting your thermostat yourself to 68 degrees while you are awake and lower it to 60 degrees while you are asleep or away from home. In the summer, keep the thermostat at 78 degrees while you are at home, but give your air conditioning a rest when you are away. This will allow you to save about 10% a year on your home energy costs. If every house in America did this, our total greenhouse gas production would drop by about 35 million tons of CO2. This is about the same as taking 6 million cars off of the road.
• Choose energy efficient appliances. Because they use less energy, EnergyStar appliances like refrigerators can reduce carbon pollution, and have a big impact on your energy bill. Plus, choosing energy efficient products is easy-just look for the EnergyStar logo. EnergyStar products typically exceed the federal energy standards by at least fifteen percent. When buying appliances that use the most energy in your home, like heaters, air conditioners, water heaters and refrigerators, also use the Energy Guide card posted on the appliance to help you choose the one with the lowest annual energy consumption. To learn more about your home’s contribution to global warming, view our famous Black Balloons video (be sure to share it with your friends!).
• Warm up your home with insulation. Was your house constructed before 1980? If so, it could be one of the 80% of American homes built without enough insulation. This means your home heating costs could be going through the roof, literally. The North American Insulation Manufacturers Association has tips for both finding and getting the most out of a contractor to fix this problem and for doing it yourself.
• Change your home’s air filters. Heating and cooling uses about half of the energy in a typical home and can account for about $1,500 a year in annual costs. Click here to read about how you can conserve energy by doing some basic home maintenance like replacing air filters and insulating your heating ducts.
• Make the switch to compact florescent bulbs. According to the government’s EnergyStar program, if every American home replaced their five most-used light fixtures with EnergyStar rated compact fluorescent the savings would add up to $8 billion annually in energy costs. That’s like taking almost ten million cars off the road. CFL’s are widely available, affordable, and they last ten times longer than traditional bulbs.
• Wash your clothes with cold water. If you usually use hot water for your laundry you can cut your energy consumption in half by choosing warm water, and up to ninety percent if you choose cold. Your current liquid laundry detergent should work fine. If not, special cold water detergents are available. Your shirts and pants should be just as clean, and you’ll thank yourself when the electricity bill arrives.
• Switch to green power. It is likely that most of the electricity you use comes from non-renewable sources like coal. However, there are some utilities that will sell you climate-friendly electricity like wind, biomass, or solar if you ask for it. More than 750 utilities in 37 states offer green power products and signing up can be very easy. To find out what your options are, check out the US Department of Energy map or contact your local energy company directly. And, when you sign up for green power, ask your utility when everyone will be getting clean energy, even those who don’t request it. Read more about green power here. On the Go
• Take public transportation. One of the best ways to reduce your impact on the climate is to take a public bus, subway or train instead of driving. Since you don’t have to keep your eyes on the road, you can read, talk with friends or listen to music while you travel. If just 10% of US passenger car travel were instead on mass transit, we would save 75 million tons of CO2. Give public transit a try for one trip a week to start. You may be surprised by how convenient reducing greenhouse gas emissions can be. If your community doesn’t have many public transportation options, ask for it! Go to a city council meeting or write your city officials and tell them that good public transportation options are important to you, and good for the community.
• Find a carpool buddy at least once a week. Sharing a ride to work is one of the most efficient ways to cut down on drive-time emissions. Ask around — odds are someone else is heading in the same direction already. Click here for a step-by-step guide on finding a carpool group.
• Pump up your tires. Eager to save money at the pump? According to AAA, driving with under-inflated tires can hurt your vehicle’s gas mileage by two to three percent. Over a year, this could be like wasting an entire tank of gas. To check your tires’ pressure:
  1. Check the inside of the driver’s side door or owner’s manual and jot down the double-digit number followed by the letters “PSI,” which stands for Pounds per Square Inch. This is how much air your tires were designed to hold.
  2. Pick up a tire gauge (for about $5) and use it to measure the air in your tires.
  3. If it turns out your tires are under-inflated, visit a gas station for an air touch-up and you’ll enjoy an easier (and more energy-efficient) ride. Click here to watch Pump Your Ride — a fun video guide to proper tire inflation.
     1. Go ride a bike — or take a walk. Not only is riding a bike or walking a climate-friendly way to commute, it’s good for your health, too. Ride your bike to work, or use it for short errands. Your local bike shop is an excellent resource for information on bicycle commuting, the latest bike gadgets and safety tools, and it can even help you fix up that old three-speeder for trips around town.

     At Work

  4. Turn off computers and monitors when not in use. These common pieces of office equipment consume a lot of electricity. The single most powerful climate change tool on these machines is the OFF switch. Forget what you’ve heard about how powering up equipment repeatedly wears it out. That’s old information, dating back decades. New equipment can be safely switched off and powered back on when it’s needed again. Also, make sure the hibernation and sleep settings are enabled (click here to find out how).
  5. Ask for motion sensors in low-traffic areas. In commercial buildings lighting accounts for more than 40% of electrical energy use, a huge cause of greenhouse gas production. Using motion and occupancy sensors can cut this use by 10%. Ask your employer to consider installing motion sensors in lesser traveled hallways, restrooms, conference rooms, and storage areas.
  6. Use a power strip. Office equipment from faxes to toaster ovens draw energy just by being plugged in. Save energy by plugging all office equipment into a power strip. When you leave the office, just flip the off switch on the power strip. You can also use a power strip at home and save even more.
  7. Call maintenance if it’s cold. If it’s too hot or too cold, call the maintenance department since this probably means that the system needs to be adjusted (and energy is being wasted).
  8. Be creative — anyone can be a climate champion at work. Don’t work in an office? There is still plenty you can do to protect the climate at your workplace. Finding ways to save energy offers an opportunity for creativity and true American out-of-the-box thinking and innovation, and the rewards can be huge. Click here to learn more about what you can do at your place of work.

© Daily Revolution™ – Web Site by Internet Adept

RELATED LINKS Archives

A dear friend on the edge of civilization wrote in this week…

Yesterday we paid $3.96 per gallon of gas for shitty 87 octane. We can only afford to go to town every 3 or 4 weeks now instead of once a week. Go Bush! That **** won’t be happy until he’s used every gallon of gasoline on the planet to bomb every third world country to smithereens, just because the people who live there are not white. I’d hate to have that guy’s karma. At least he won’t be allowed to reincarnate after all that he’s done this time around.

“He won’t?”

No. Coming back is our choice.

Souls are encouraged to come back by our Guides to learn from our past mistakes, but for some, the damage they have done to so many others is so great that it is better to not risk causing even more by even one more lifetime. The energy of those severely damaged souls is dissolved. To be fair to Bush, a lot depends on what his motivation was for this war that he caused.

Most people in positions of great power are young souls; the older ones are not willing to incur the karma that a position of power would entail. You will find many old souls living in very modest means that cause little impact, on others and the environment. I don’t know how old mine is, but I just know that I’ve always wanted to be as far away from other people and as close to the earth as I could get.

I live so differently than most of the people in our country that it was hard to relate to a lot of it, so I don’t know how pertinent my answers would be. We are saying, “Let the economy collapse! Bring it on!!! As soon as possible, so people will reevaluate what is truly important!” I am concerned for the planet in the short term, but in the long term we will destroy ourselves and the planet will recover, as it has many times before.

I truly believe that things are actually progressing as they were meant to. I know that sounds really out of touch with “reality” as most people conceive it to be. And no, I am not concerned about what other people think of me and my views. It took thirty years of reading hundreds of books about the meaning of life for me to find the information I sought, but I finally found it in two books by Michael Newton called “Journey of Souls” (the first one he wrote) and “Destiny of Souls” (the follow-up).

They are about what it is like in the spirit world between lifetimes. I greatly encourage you to get them and read them. You will have a much greater understanding of your life’s purpose and why you have such a strong connection to certain people (which includes me!). The books are based on many case studies of hypnotic regression. One thing I found out is how we get together on the other side and laugh about how seriously we took ourselves on the planet. I look forward to laughing with you about so many things! I did send a thank-you card to the dermatologist I went to with some skin-cancer humor on the front of it. Part of me is REALLY looking forward to going home, as much as I love the planet Earth.

I am OK with whatever my future holds. I love you always.

© Daily Revolution™ – Web Site by Internet Adept

RELATED LINKS Jim Hightower Archives

Swim Against the Current by Jim Hightower and swim against the current WITH Jim Hightower. His new book shows one how to live outside the norm, and reveals that so many of us do live outside the norm that it changes what normal is. With acerbic Texan wit, Hightower Reports daily topping the pundit list on the left.

Wiki says of him, “born in Denison, Texas, Hightower came from a working class background. He worked his way through college as assistant general manager of the Denton Chamber of Commerce and later landed a spot as a management trainee for the State Department. He received a bachelor of arts in government from the University of North Texas in Denton, where he served as student body president. He later did graduate work at Columbia University in New York City in international affairs.”

In the late 1960s, he worked in Washington, D.C., as legislative aide to Senator Ralph Yarborough. After managing the presidential campaign of populist former Senator Fred R. Harris of Oklahoma in 1976, he returned to Texas to become the editor of the magazine The Texas Observer. His first run for office was for the Democratic nomination for the Texas Railroad Commission (which regulates the oil industry), which he narrowly lost. Hightower was elected Agricultural Commissioner in 1982, serving in that capacity until 1991. His tenure was noted for fostering organic production, alternative crops, direct marketing by small farmers, strong pesticide regulations, and other programs. During that time, he also became a leading national spokesman for populist and progressive Democrats. He was defeated in 1990 by Republican Rick Perry, later governor and client of the political consultant and manager Karl Rove.

So you see he has been around the block and back the other way. His popular Hightower Report runs daily on local radio community radio WMNF in Tampa Bay. His upbeat banter kicks politicians in the pants and tears holes in the rumps of raw deals for the working man. You can listen live at wmnf.org and hear the DJs do a riff on his spin … or is the other way around? Of course, his own site JimHightwower.com features the daily radio rants, along with news about his new book “Swim Against the Current.”

According to his own site Hightower is “the country’s #1 populist,” and he has picked up some useful advice over the years, from “never eat at a cafe featuring ‘bargain kebobs’” to “never hit a man with glasses; hit him with something much heavier.” He and Susan DeMarco have explored grassroots America, where they found “more serious words of wisdom…namely: question authority, trust your values, seek alternatives, break away, stand up for your beliefs, and swim against the current!”

“Their book introduces readers to people across the country who have actually done this-people in business, politics, health care, farming, religion, and other areas who are taking charge, living their values, doing good, and doing well. Hightower and DeMarco show how they are doing precisely what the elites want us to believe can’t be done: changing their lives and making a difference. He tells the stories of these people and offers inspiration and information that will help readers tap into their own maverick potential in order to navigate a different, more satisfying course of their own.”

“Whether they are young and just starting out or older and searching for a different path, the commonsense folks in this book have escaped the corporate tentacles to find their own way toward a richer life and a better American future. They are creating a new, deeply democratic model for the country, edging it back onto the long road toward egalitarianism and the common good.”

Cantankerous and ready to trash any pandering politician or funny smelling policy, Jim Hightower’s opinion and point of view reveal that revolution is really nothing new.

© Daily Revolution™ – Web Site by Internet Adept

RELATED LINKS What Does It Mean? Archives

Are you paranoid yet? As if the world is not already filled enough with corporate scams, sloppy hackers and overweight stalkers, there is a web site that is sure to make you believe in imminent asteroid impacts, global economic meltdown and nuclear armageddon. Using real news stories to bolster her case, Sorcha Faal (an inherited title, not her real name) reports on the “true” goings on in the world of politics and science.

What’s great is that she links to important and overlooked news stories from around the world, with a focus on the erosion of human rights, environmental degredation and economic inequalities. There is also a good dose of natural disasters, political machinations and technology that misses the average evening news. I also like her selections of YouTube videos with great documentaries on the Federal Reserve and the 2012 “prophesies.”

Every few days Sorcha Faal comes up with an essay, riddled with links to news stories to support the “shocking truths kept hidden from the American public.” Sorcha Faal considers herself to be privvy to Russian intelligence and other sources to affirm a new North American Union, secret battles between American political factions and recently a report that the experiments with CERN may be knocking the Earth out of orbit. This is all serious(ly crazy) stuff!

This site is amazing for the plethora of links to news sources online from BBC to Al Jazeera to your local TV10. These unusual and often alarming stories are all covered by the press someplace, and it is a very useful resource for learning about the rest of the world, with most of the news links in other countries and special sections for Russia, China, England, Germany, Israel, Turkey, Brazil, the UN and the creepy “Classified Catacomb: Buried News Stories You Need To Know.” The news links are all from “reliable” sources but the way Sorcha Faal puts them together in her essays can truly send a shiver down your spine if you fall for such childish games.