The Large Hadron Rap -- Without Comment

The New Web Tactics of Politics: Cookies for Targeting and Retargeting

Source: "Candidates' Web Sites Get to Know the Voters: Presidential Campaigns Tailor, Target Ads Based on Visitors' Online Habits," Peter Whoriskey, The Washington Post Staff, August 30, 2008.

Recent visitors to the online sports pages of the Boston Herald who had visited Barack Obama's Web site received as many as three Obama ads alongside the news. Readers who hadn't visited his site didn't see a single Obama add.

Both presidential campaigns are reluctant to discuss the details of their abilities to identify sympathetic voters based on their Internet habits, and then to target them with ads as they move across the Web. However, this emerging capability is one of the defining aspects of the 2008 U.S. presidential campaign.

Digital advertising networks and large Web companies such as Yahoo and Microsoft are using Web behavior -- which news articles people read, which blogs they visit or what search terms they enter -- to target voters who may be sympathetic to a certain cause. Using a method known as "sentiment detection," some companies even boast that they can tell whether the blog you go to is for or against the Iraq war.

"During a get-out-the-vote drive, you don't want to get out the wrong vote," said Diane Rinaldo, political advertising director at Yahoo, which has worked with both campaigns. With these techniques, the candidates "can reach who they want to reach without wasting their incredibly valuable media dollars, and reach them with the right message."

Comment: Unfortunately, the campaigns will probably be more effective than ever in getting us to vote our prejudices, and mine our unconscious for feeli;ngs about candidates, rather than study the issues and vote rationally. JAD
Source of graph: "Reshaping Attitudes: Mass Media Changes Along with the News," The Hoover Institution, April 2, 2008.

The Growth of Agricultural Productivity

Source: Pardey, Philip G., Julian Alston, Jenni James, Paul Glewwe, Eran Binenbaum, Terry Hurley, and Stanley Wood
Science, Technology and Skills
InSTePP Report, St. Paul: International Science & Technology Practice & Policy, University of Minnesota, October 2007.
Prepared as a background paper for the "World Development Report 2008: Agriculture for Development," of which the full report and all associated background papers are available at this website.

Social Psychology Illuminates Decision Making

Karin Olah, 'Little Blue Confabulation'
Fabric, Gouache, Graphite on Paper-
13.0 x 10.0"- 2007
Source: MyArtSpace

Science has an article ("PSYCHOLOGY: The Unseen Mind" by Timothy D. Wilson and Yoav Bar-Anan, 22 August 2008) which begins:

Social psychologists have discovered an adaptive unconscious that allows people to size up the world extremely quickly, make decisions, and set goals--all while their conscious minds are otherwise occupied. The human mind operates largely out of view of its owners, possibly because that's the way it evolved to work initially, and because that's the way it works best, under many circumstances. Without such an efficient, powerful, and fast means of understanding and acting on the world, it would be difficult to survive. We would be stuck pondering every little decision, such as whether to put our left or right foot forward first, as the world sped by. But as a result, we are often strangers to ourselves, unable to observe directly the workings of our own minds.

The article goes on to stress that "people freely give reasons for their preferences, even when it is clear that these reasons are confabulations and not accurate reports." They will even give convincing reasons why they made a decision that was diametrically opposed to their actual decisions, if they can be fooled into defending the counterfactual choice.

If the issue is why you had the hot dog rather than the hamburger, the psychological phenomenon is not important. For important decisions, however, we should be careful to analyze options and not jump to conclusions. Using formal decision making proceedures, or even paper and pencil with pros and cons, fault tree analysis, SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) or something of the like, is probably useful. Most important is to avoid being defensive about initial feelings in order to consider alternatives fairly.

confabulation - (psychiatry) a plausible but imagined memory that fills in gaps in what is remembered

Oliver Sacks described a patient's experience in this way:

Another profoundly amnesic patient I knew some years ago dealt with his abysses of amnesia by fluent confabulations. He was wholly immersed in his quick-fire inventions and had no insight into what was happening; so far as he was concerned, there was nothing the matter. He would confidently identify or misidentify me as a friend of his, a customer in his delicatessen, a kosher butcher, another doctor—as a dozen different people in the course of a few minutes. This sort of confabulation was not one of conscious fabrication. It was, rather, a strategy, a desperate attempt—unconscious and almost automatic—to provide a sort of continuity, a narrative continuity, when memory, and thus experience, was being snatched away every instant.

Climate Models underfunded

Source: "CLIMATE SCIENCE: Turbulent Times for Climate Model," Eli Kintisch
Science 22 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5892, pp. 1032 - 1034

Researchers are running out of time to finish updating an important U.S. climate change model that has been hamstrung by the budget woes of its home institution, the National Center for Atmospheric Research

The article states:

Some climate scientists say that CCSM should have been better protected from the budget turmoil. "This hub of the nation's climate strategy has apparently not received the priority it deserves and needs," wrote members of the model's independent scientific advisory board on 8 July in an unsolicited letter to Eric Barron, who last month succeeded Killeen. Although computers are critical for climate simulation, they say, in the end it's NCAR's staff who must incorporate thousands of complex elements into a code that simulates everything from hurricanes to droughts to ocean currents.

Any erosion of CCSM's projected capabilities threatens what modeler David Randall of Colorado State University in Fort Collins calls "the closest thing we have to a national model." What sets CCSM apart from rival U.S. models at NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is its widespread use by academic researchers, who also build it in partnership with NCAR. So whereas the other models rely on the expertise of teams of federal experts, CCSM's health reflects the state of overall U.S. climate research.

Comment: The Bush administration stalled for seven years (until leaving the heavy lifting on steps to reduce global warming) saying that there needed to be more scientific evidence to justify what they suggested would be heavy economic costs. (For the oil industry?)

Now I find out they have been underfunding a key area of research on climate change! JAD
Getting the picture. An early version of NCAR's updated global climate model (lower right) does a better job of simulating actual ocean temperatures during an El Niño event (top) than an earlier model (lower left).

From IFPRI on Agricultural Research

The International Food Policy Research Institute is a global resource--a consistent source of information and analysis of agriculture in the developing world. Here are a few of its publications on agricultural research.

"Shifting Ground:Agricultural R&D Worldwide"
Philip G. Pardey, Julian M. Alston, and Roley R. Piggott
IFPRI Issue Brief No. 46, June 2006 (PDF, 6 pages)

'Today, a slower growing, stagnant, or shrinking public agricultural research pot is increasingly being diverted away from the traditional agenda toward environmental objectives, food quality and safety, and so on. Who, then, will do the research required to generate sustenance for a growing world population when—at least for another quarter century—virtually all the population growth will occur in the poorer parts of the world? These questions and others are raised in a new book, Agricultural R&D in the Developing World: Too Little, Too Late?, edited by Philip G. Pardey, Julian M. Alston, and Roley R. Piggott.'

Agricultural R&D in the Developing World: Too Little, Too Late?
Philip G. Pardey, Julian M. Alston, and Roley R. Piggott, eds.
IFPRI, 2006 (PDF 1.5M)

This book was conceived as a companion to the 1999 volume Paying for Agricultural Productivity, published by Johns Hopkins University Press in conjunction with IFPRI. That volume dealt with investments, institutions, and policy processes regarding agricultural R&D in developed countries. This book addresses the same set of issues for the developing countries, and the relationship of those countries to the richer parts of the world where the preponderance of agricultural innovation still takes place. It also reviews developments within the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), along with the changing roles of international research generally, in light of the substantial shifts in science funding and policy (as well as in the science itself ) that are taking place throughout the world.

The book combines new evidence with economic theory and an economic way of thinking about science policy--highlighting the developing-country aspects--as well as a set of in-depth, comparative country studies. These country studies take us well beyond generalities, providing insights into the important changes taking place within these countries and others they represent. The countries covered include the largest developing countries--China and India--as well as a range of richer and poorer, and more- and less-developed countries, representing most parts of the globe.

"Agricultural Research: A Growing Global Divide?"
Philip G. Pardey, Nienke Beintema, Steven Dehmer, and Stanley Wood
IFPRI Food Policy Report No. 17, August 2006 (PDF, 358K)

Sustained, well-targeted, and effectively used investments in R&D have reaped handsome rewards from improved agricultural productivity and cheaper, higher quality foods and fibers. As we begin a new millennium, the global patterns of investments in agricultural R&D are changing in ways that may have profound consequences for the structure of agriculture worldwide and the ability of poor people in poor counties to feed themselves.

This report documents and discusses these changing investment patterns, highlighting developments in the public and private sectors. It revises and carries forward to 2000 data that were previously reported in the 2001 IFPRI Food Policy Report Slow Magic: Agricultural R&D a Century After Mendel (PDF 300K). Some past trends are continuing or have come into sharper focus, while others are moving in new directions not apparent in the previous series. In addition, this report illustrates the use of spatial data to analyze spillover prospects among countries or agroecologies and the targeting of R&D to address specific production problems like drought-induced production risks. More detailed data on the agricultural research investment trends summarized here can be accessed at www.asti.cgiar.org.

If you want still more statistics on agricultural science and technology, try the Agricultural Science and Technology Indicators (ASTI) online database provided by the CGIAR.

Agricultural aid fails to keep up ag research

Source: "The Food Chain: World’s Poor Pay Price as Crop Research Is Cut," KEITH BRADSHER and ANDREW MARTIN, The New York Times, May 18, 2008.

The article states:

nowadays at the International Rice Research Institute, greenhouses have peeling paint and holes in their screens and walls. Hallways are dotted with empty offices. In the 1980s, the institute employed five entomologists, or insect experts, overseeing a staff of 200. Now it has one entomologist with a staff of eight.

“We’ve had an exodus here,” said Yvette Naredo, an assistant geneticist.

Similar troubles plague other centers in Asia, Africa and Latin America that work on crop productivity in poor countries. Agricultural experts have complained about the flagging efforts for years and warned of the risks.......

The United States is in the midst of slashing, by as much as 75 percent, its $59.5 million annual support for a global research network that focuses on improving crops vital to agriculture in poor countries. That network includes the rice institute.

Comment: This posting is a partial response to a comment/request from Glenn for information on the funding of international agricultural research.

The International Agricultural Research Centers of the CGIAR network are the keystones in a worldwide system of agricultural research, doing the heavy lifting. They maintain huge repositories of germplasm for our major crop species, and have historically done the breeding of the most important new crop varieties which then have been adapted by national agricultural research agencies to local conditions. As plant breeding has been increasingly done by the private sector, financed by the sale of hybrid seeds and chemicals, the IARCs have expanded into a wide variety of crop protection and cropping systems research.

As I understand it, the reasons that African yields have stayed so low are complex. Governments have favored low prices for consumers over higher incomes for food producers. There has not been the investment in irrigation needed to provide the abundant and predictable water supply that the high-yielding grain varieties require. The very poor, often subsistence farms in Africa don't have the money to buy modern inputs, and so the systems to supply such inputs are rudimentary there, and as a further result there is little economic incentive for the private sector to provide innovations for those farms. African governments are often financially and administratively weak with a fair number of "failed states", and the efforts of African governments to fund agricultural research and extension service consequently have been inadequate to fill the gap.

Unfortunately, people are going hungry as a result of the lack of agricultural productivity in poor nations, and that in turn can be traced back in part to decades of neglect for the improvement of their agricultural technology and infrastructure. JAD

Were U.S. Troops in Georgia?

Russia's Prime Minister Putin charged that the were Americans in Georgia. According to the New York Times:

On Thursday, Mr. Putin, now prime minister, also said Russian defense officials believed that United States citizens were in the conflict area supporting the Georgian military when it attacked the separatist region of South Ossetia.

“Even during the cold war, during the time of tough confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States, we have always avoided direct clashes between our civilians, let alone our servicemen,” Mr. Putin said. “We have serious reasons to believe that directly, in the combat zone, citizens of the United States were present.”

“If the facts are confirmed,” he added, “that United States citizens were present in the combat zone, that means only one thing — that they could be there only on the direct instruction of their leadership. And if this is so, then it means that American citizens are in the combat zone, performing their duties, and they can only do that following a direct order from their leader, and not on their own initiative.”

The same article reported on the White House response to Putin's charges:

In Washington, the White House spokeswoman, Dana M. Perino, dismissed Mr. Putin’s remarks. “To suggest that the United States orchestrated this on behalf of a political candidate just sounds not rational,” she said.

She added, “It also sounds like his defense officials who said they believe this to be true are giving him really bad advice.”

GlobalSecurity.Org has this (undated) on its website:

Immediate Response 08 (IR08) was an annual bilateral security-cooperation exercise conducted between the U.S. and NATO and coalition partners. The annual, bilateral security cooperation exercise is conducted between US, NATO and coalition partners, to focus on interoperability training and theater security cooperation. This year, IR08 is being conducted in the Republic of Georgia. The participants are the United States, the Republic of Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Ukraine. The purpose of the exercise is to increase the cooperation and partnership between U.S. and Georgian forces while preparing the Georgian military for operations in Iraq.

Approximately 1,000 personnel from U.S. Army Europe’s Southern European Task Force, the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, the state of Georgia Army National Guard, Army Reserve, U.S. Marine Reserve, Sailors and Airmen trained alongside 600 Soldiers from Georgia and other European nations. IR08 builds on lessons learned from previous training and operations by giving commanders and their staffs a practical exercise in organizing, controlling, and supporting coalition stability and security operations. The two/three-week exercise included a command post exercise, situational training lanes and a live-fire exercise.

Officers, senior enlisted and Navy corpsman from 3rd Battalion, 25th Marine Regiment, 4th Marine Division, had an opportunity to meet and greet their Georgian counterparts July 13, 2008. This began the cultural exchange before the subsequent training for Operation Immediate Response 2008, a joint operation between Georgian Armed Forces and United States Armed Forces.

About 300 Georgia National Guard Soldiers arrived in Tiblisi, Georgia, on 15 July 2008 for Immediate Response 2008, an international exercise to help build relationships with coaliton partners from several Eastern European nations. Soldiers and Marines from the United States, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Ukraine conducted this joint training exercise at Vaziani Military Base and the surrounding area.

I found the following on a blog, The Pentagon Brief:

Over 1,000 US servicemembers, DoD civilian employees and contractors are in the Republic of Georgia even as Russian attack aircraft and tanks continue their assault.

About 130 Americans are stationed in Georgia to train the Georgian armed forces for peacekeeping and anti-terrorist operations, including preparing units for deployment to Iraq.

Approximately 1,000 additional personnel from U.S. Army Europe’s Southern European Task Force, the 21st Theater Sustainment Command, the state of Georgia Army National Guard, Army Reserve, U.S. Marine Reserve, Sailors and Airmen are in Georgia for the Immediate Response 2008 multinational training exercise. Soldiers from other European nations participated in Immediate Response 08 as well.

Googling "Operation Immediate Response", I got a hit from a U.S. Marines website that was down, but the cached story was confirmatory that U.S. troops were in Georgia in July.

Stars and Stripes, the U.S. military's newspaper, reported on Tuesday, August 12, 2008;

U.S. personnel responsible for training members of the Georgian military remain stationed inside the volatile country, where fighting erupted Friday between Russia and Georgia over the breakaway province of South Ossetia.

The U.S. European Command said on Monday that there were no plans at this time to withdraw the U.S. military trainers from the country. There are still 127 U.S. trainers in Georgia, where the American forces had been preparing the Georgian army for operations in Iraq......

Regarding the military personnel, EUCOM stated that they are not engaged in the conflict and are removed from where the fighting is happening.

In addition to the trainers, 1,000 soldiers from the Vicenza, Italy-based Southern European Task Force (Airborne) and the Kaiserslautern-based 21st Theater Sustainment Command, along with Marine reservists with the 3rd Battalion, 25th Marines out of Ohio, and the state of Georgia’s Army National Guard’s 1st Battalion, 121st Infantry recently participated in "Immediate Response 2008."

That exercise, which had the U.S. troops operating from Vaziani, concluded on Thursday. That base, near the capital of Tbilisi, was bombed by Russian aircraft over the weekend, Georgian officials said.

There seems to be little controversy over this history, as reported by China View:

In June of 1992, Russia, Georgia and South Ossetia established peacekeeping forces, which were responsible of implementing peacekeeping mission in the conflict region.

On August 8 of this year, Georgia troops marched into South Ossetia and bombed the capital city of South Ossetia, which worsened the situation there immediately.

Comment: The New York Times might well have reported that there were U.S. forces in Georgia at the time of the Georgian incursion into South Ossetia.

I suppose it is possible that the Russians mistook the purposes of the American troops in Georgia, or that they are taking advantage of their presence for a disinformation campaign.

The situation illustrates the dangers in use of military maneuvers in this region. It is easy to see how they could have been misinterpreted by the Georgians or the Russians, or indeed how they could be used as a pretext by either of those parties.

On the other hand, I recall the stories, stories that seem well founded, that during the 1980 Reagan-Carter election campaign the Republicans held secret discussions with the Iranians encouraging them to keep the hostages that were taken from our Embassy; Carter certainly lost that election due to the hostage crisis. JAD

The Election Should Be About Who We Are, Not What We Want

We want a strong economy with lots of good jobs, a life secure from terrorist attacks, a just peace in Iraq and Afghanistan, a good reputation with our allies, and a program that responsibly deals with climate change. These are all important, and there are differences between the candidates and parties in the success they are likely to have in fulfilling these desires.

We are, however, not in a crisis situation. Compare the situation now with that of the situation Roosevelt faced in 1940, with the Great Depression continuing and a World War soon to engulf the United States. Think of the situation faced by Lincoln in 1860, with a nation divided between slave and free states, about to embark on a Civil War of unprecedented violence. Think of Washington assuming the presidency after the Articles of Confederation had proven inadequate, needing to create a national government that could bring together a bunch of sparsely populated colonies into a strong nation that could stand up against the European powers.

Our nation is economically sound, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are limited and likely to wind down. Terrorism against the United States was overestimated, and can be controlled by good police work. We have lived for years with the other problems we face, and can continue to do so if we must. Either party would, if elected, put good men into office and they would work hard at their jobs. We could live with even limited success in meeting our wants over the next four years.

The Bush administration, however, has challenged fundamentally who we are as a people. Are we a people who torture prisoners, or who ship them off to be tortured by others? Do we impression people without recourse to legal process? Do we accept a government that spies on our own citizens and abrogates protections of their rights built over centuries? Are we a people that respects the individual's rights, or do we allow a religious minority to restrict the choice of others and to limit the search for and dissemination of scientific knowledge. Is the United States a nation of immigrants, a melting pot that offers opportunities to others, or is it a mean spirited closed society rejecting immigrants seeking a better life? Is the United States a bully in international affairs, pushing smaller weaker countries around, or are we good neighbors and a responsible member of the community of nations. Is our foreign policy responsive to the concerns of our allies and willing to discuss our differences with others, or are we too arrogant to listen? Are we still the people who have striven for centuries to grant human rights and dignity to all our citizens, or will we use code words to hide our unwillingness to grant real power to women and minorities? Are we a nation that honors and supports our veterans, or are we a people willing to deny our returning soldiers, wounded in body or mind, the medical care to which they are entitled; are we still the people who gave our veterans educational opportunities after the wars of the 20th century or are we now a people too mean to do so? Are we a people who bends our national efforts to the defense of the weak and needy among us, or are we rather a nation that seeks to further enrich the already rich without regard to either our poor or our middle class. Are we a people, inheritors of a land of huge beauty and resource riches, who seek to conserve that heritage for our children and grandchildren, or shall we destroy the environment in a rush for short term profits? Are we still a people willing to sacrifice for our country and pay for our government, or are we now selfish borrowers satisfied to leave a crippling debt for our children. Are we the world's most innovative people, or will we now be satisfied to continue to beggar ourselves and our children by depending on foreign oil while watching other nations out compete us in a global economy? Will we accept Hurricane Katrina as the first in a series of disasters for our poor and dispossessed, or will we demand that it be a wakeup call to prevent such suffering in the aftermaths of future disasters? Are we a people who will now accept an imperial presidency, or are we the people who rejected monarchy and built the most elaborate checks and balances into our constitution to prevent an excess of power in the presidency.

We have an opportunity now to reject the Bush administration's destruction of our national moral purposes that so characterized the last eight years, and to restore the ideals of our forefathers to their former central place in our public life. Will we as a people again become what we once were? If we do not do so now, then when?

The Impact of Conviction of Scientific Misconduct

There is an interesting report in Science magazine on the effect of being found guilty of scientific misconduct. The authors selected the 43 researchers with completed doctorate degrees from the 106 scientists found guilty by the Office of Scientific Integrity between 1996 and 2001 of committing scientific misconduct.

Thirty-six of these scientists were found guilty of falsification or fabrication, 10 were guilty of plagiarism, and 12 were guilty of "misrepresentation." Seventeen scientists had committed only one infraction, and the remaining 26 had committed multiple breaches.

All 43 individuals were excluded from Public Health Service (PHS) advisory boards (for a mean 3.5 years), 30 were also debarred from PHS grants and contracts (mean 3.4 years), 20 were subjected to institutional oversight (mean 3.2 years), and 14 were required to retract or correct papers. Overall, these scientists received an average of 2.5 sanctions; of 94 total sanctions levied, 58% were 3-year debarments.

So what happened to their scientific careers?

Searching PubMed, we found publication data for 37 of the 43 individuals......Mean publication rate per year before the finding of scientific misconduct (dating back to each individual's first publication) was 2.1 (SD = 1.7, range 0.2 to 5.9) and after the finding 1.0 (SD = 1.2, range 0.0 to 5.6) (dating up to late 2003). This decline was significant (t = 4.66, P < 0.0001). Twelve individuals published nothing after the misconduct finding.........

Interviews were held with seven individuals, who all reported financial and personal hardship. Six hired lawyers to defend themselves; surprisingly, three reported receiving some assistance from their institutions, one with legal help and two with nonfinancial support. Several reported that they could not appeal their cases because they lacked the resources to do so. Several became physically ill and experienced major disruptions in their personal lives.

Nonetheless, most reported that they had recovered or sustained useful scientific lives after initial shocks to their reputations. Indeed, six of the seven continued to publish in the years after the ORI determination (the exception had moved to industry).

The authors point out that the people that they interviewed were more successful after found guilty than were those not interviewed.

Comment: I find this a very appropriate situation. Being found guilty of scientific misconduct carries severe consequences. No one should take those consequences lightly.

On the other hand, a scientist once found guilty can resuscitate his/her career and again make use of his/her training and experience to participate in research and other scientific activities. Redemption is possible, as it should be! JAD

Republicans Appear Still to Oppose Stem Cell Research

According to Bloomberg news,

Like the 2004 (Republican national platform), this year's text opposes the use of embryonic stem cells for medical research. McCain supports such research and has said he would reverse Bush's ban on federal funding to develop treatments using embryonic stem cells......

The platform committee was unwilling to compromise on its abortion plank to accommodate McCain's views on the issue.

As a senator and presidential candidate, the Arizona Republican has said he opposes abortion except in cases of rape, incest and threats to the life of the mother. For more than two decades the Republican Party has taken a harder line that would ban abortion with no exceptions.

The platform has not yet been approved by the Convention, so there is still hope that a more reasonable and responsible position may be adopted.

The Increase in R&D Intensity

This graph is from a very nice Fact Sheet produced by the UNESCO Institute for Statistics titled A Global Perspective on Research & Development. It shows the changes in portion of Gross Domestic Product devoted to research and development that countries have made between 1996 and 2005. Each country is represented by a labeled point. The countries falling above the upper line in the graph have significantly increased their spending on research and development relative to their total economic product, and almost all of them also increased their GDPs. Only a few countries fall below the lower line, having significantly reduced the portion of GDP devoted to research and development. In short, the graph provides an interesting demonstration of the increasing belief in science and technology among a wide range of nations. Moreover, since richer countries tend to be those with the higher portion of GDP devoted to research and development, the graph shows an increase worldwide in research and development.

"World Bank Updates Poverty Estimates for the Developing World"

"New poverty estimates published by the World Bank reveal that 1.4 billion people in the developing world (one in four) were living on less than US$1.25 a day in 2005, down from 1.9 billion (one in two) in 1981.

"The new numbers show that poverty has been more widespread across the developing world over the past 25 years than previously estimated, but also that there has been strong—if regionally uneven—progress toward reducing overall poverty."

Ccmment: The World Bank kept the poverty line at $1/day for many years, and inflation has outmoded that standard. As a Peace Corps Volunteer, many years ago, I lived on just under three dollars a day, in 1960's dollars, and I felt poor. I really can not imagine how one would live on $1.25 a day! On the other hand, the new study summarizes a huge amount of work, and provides basic information of use to the development community.

Of course, a more meaningful definition of poverty should be in all our heads. Think of poverty in terms of sick and hungry kids, too often dying early. Think of people living without access to schools or education. Think of desperate mothers, facing sick children without access to medical care or even the simplest drugs, of mothers facing hungry children without food to give them or money to buy it. It is important for policy makers to think dispassionately about poverty, but it is also important for us all to feel viscerally the pains of poverty. JAD

"Political Science? Strengthening science–policy dialogue in developing countries"

This study by Nicola Jones, Harry Jones and Cora Walsh of the Overseas Development Institute (ODI) systematically examines the science-policy interface in developing countries and offers practical strategies and recommendations for strengthening the relationship between scientific knowledge and the policy process.It focuses on three broad questions: What is the patterning of relationships between scientific researchers, policy decision-makers and intermediaries in developing country contexts? What are the challenges and opportunities for strengthening these linkages? What types of strategies exist or could potentially be adopted to improve evidence-informed policy proceses

Representing the views of over 600 respondents from researcher, policy-maker and intermediary organisation communities from the North and South, the findings confirm the need to tackle systemic barriers to institutionalising evidence-informed policy processes in the field of science, technology and innovation for development. They also shed light on ways in which the quality of policy dialogues on science and technology could be strengthened in order to enhance their value for pro-poor sustainable development policy and practices?

More About the New Invisible College

In her book, The New Invisible College, Caroline Wagner describes the growth of global science and within that growth the more rapid growth of international collaboration among scientists. In the final chapter, Caroline considers the governance of this new invisible college of collaborating scientists building a grand edifice of knowledge.

National Governmental Policies

Quite reasonably she focuses on governments and their role in governance of the global system. Governments are major funders of fundamental science. They govern science within their borders. More importantly, they have not delegated governance responsibilities for science to international or intergovernmental bodies.

Caroline makes a very pertinent observation that all countries must now recognize that it is often not only more efficient but also more practical to obtain scientific information that they need from abroad than domestically. That information can be obtained from the public domain or by collaborations between homeland and foreign scientists. (While once the United States did half the world's science, even this country now produces only half of the science produced abroad.)

Thus all nations must build their science policies around the acquisition of scientific information from abroad and the facilitation of international collaboration by its scientists. I would add that U.S. international science policy should be seen as closely linked to our soft diplomacy and our development assistance policy.

The Private Sector

The rise of multinational companies in an increasingly global economy raises significant issues of the role of corporations in international science. They fund a great deal of science, and indeed carry out a great deal of research within their corporate structures. Increasingly the multinationals are moving their research activities from country to country, seeking lower costs, high quality, or access to national markets. There seems little alternative than to allow the corporations to make their own science strategies under the discipline of the market, although national governments can and do regulate research activities of corporations doing business within their borders, and offer incentives and sanctions intended to assure corporate science is done within their countries and in support of their economic and other needs. Perhaps more importantly, governments survey the research portfolio of the private, for profit sector to detect public goods which require public intervention.

Civil society plays a smaller role in international science, but foundations have been quite important and it may well be that it is increasingly so. U.S. experience is that foundations and non-governmental organizations provide an important complement to government funding of non-commercial science. The government's role has been to establish rules that make donations to such organizations tax deductable, and regulate to ensure that civil society organizations use their resources to promote charitable causes.

Institutions to Promote Trust

The institutionalization of systems of international collaboration require there to be trust among the collaborators. A small but significant effort that establishes that trust is the effort of organizations such as UNESCO and the European Union to establish standard setting conventions that assure that educational credentials are comparable among participating nations. Indeed, the higher education sector is in part self regulating as accreditation institutions are widely used to assure the quality asserted by university degrees.

More importantly, science is self regulating. Professional journals and peer review provide systems to prevent scientific misconduct and to warrant the quality of scientific work while disseminating scientific information in the public domain.

The UN decentralized agencies also play an important, albeit little recognized role in building trust in the scientific community. For example, the World Health Organization establishes peer review mechanisms using the results of biomedical research to establish guidelines for medical practice which are widely accepted in developing nations.

UNESCO's Intergovernmental Oceanographic Committee provides a mechanism which establishes trust among the states whose waters are traversed by research ships on their voyages; its International Hydrological program similarly provides a trusted agent for cross border hydrological studies. The Global Network of Biosphere Reserves provides a mechanism by which countries can commit to cooperation in the operation of this global network and the research to establish means for sustainable preservation of biodiversity.

In other cases bilateral or multilateral agreements are created, such as for the financing of megaprojects that are cooperatively financed by several nations, and which offer facilities to be used by multinational networks of collaborators.

Financing of science as a global public good

The International Agricultural Research Centers are perhaps a prototyical network that meets a global need, and requires funding from a consortium of donors. The network, governed by the Consortium for International Agricultural Research with its scientific advisory bodies, is essentially a club of funding bodies -- governments and foundations. The IARCs serve a global purpose in the maintenance of seed banks protecting the biodiversity of mankind's major crop species, making it available as a public good. They also are the keystone in a network of national agricultural research and extension services, providing improved varieties to be adapted to local conditions by national bodies, and increasingly interacting with global private sector seed and agricultural chemistry industries. The system in part was created in response to the fact that poor, developing nations did not have the keystone agricultural research capacity that was needed to fight hunger, promote rural development, and prevent famines. The international agricultural research system has been regarded as the most fully articulated such system, but its recent lack of funding indicate the remaining inadequacy of that form of international scientific governance.

While other initiatives involving multinational support for centers of research excellence have been introduced their success is mixed. CERN, a facility for nuclear research in Europe, financed by a club of rich nations, has been successful over decades, and counts such successes as the invention of the World Wide Web. So too, the International Center for Diarrheal Disease Research, Bangladesh (IDDRB) has been in operation for decades and can point to many accomplishments, including Oral Rehydration Therapy. But the Central American system of regional research and development centers has had continued difficulties raising support among its member states.

The ongoing humanitarian disaster of HIV/AIDS, malaria, tuberculosis, and the other diseases of poverty, so common in tropical climates, is resulting in the creation of a variety of new institutions which alternatively foster and distribute philanthopic donations (many from governments) or provide incentives (sometimes non-financial) for the private sector to invest in appropriate biomedical research and development.

The current situation with regard to the international space station may illustrate the nature of the problems. The United States is phasing out the space shuttle, and does not expect to have a maned vehicle to supply the space station for several years. It had been planned to utilize Russian manned rockets to send Americans to the space station. Now, however, with the crisis in Georgia, that thinking is being agonizingly reappraised. There seems always to be a possibility when institutionalizing a support mechanism to last for decades to see an increasing tension among the member nations or a financial crisis affecting some or all, to threaten the entire ediface.

Donor Assistance for Building Scientific Capacity

The International Financial Institutions, the United Nations programs and decentralized agencies, and bilateral donors all have programs to support the creation of scientific capacity in developing nations, and of the capacity to govern science in those nations.

The coordination of these efforts are sometimes accomplished by donor coordinating bodies, and sometimes by interlocking directorates as the governments of the bilateral donors and the major recipients govern the intergovernmental organizations.

Final Comment

As the global Invisible College is growing and evolving, so too are the institutional infrastructure providing the resources it needs to thrive, the trust among its participants needed to enable their collaboration, and the prioritization for the allocation of resources and attention, as well as the distribution of its results.

World spending on R&D is more than three-quarters of a trillion dollars a year, and if one considers other scientific and technological activities that funding must be well over a trillion dollars a year. Millions of scientists working in nearly 200 nations are involved in the system. A century ago international science was not not nearly of this scale. The change is like that of a village growing into a metropolis. Not surprisingly one counts the time for the evolution of the institutions supporting this expanded system in decades (centuries) rather than in years. Expanding the metaphor, we do not yet understand how to build an adequate institutional infrastructure for the megacities that are appearing around the world, even though there have been large cities from which to learn for centuries. There is no comparable model for the governance of a huge global network of collaborating scientists, and it should not be surprising that we are seeing institutional gaps and institutional failures.

Discussion on Caroline Wagner's Blog

Check out the discussion of her book, The New Invisible College: Science for Development, on Caroline Wagner's blog. I recently posted a review of the book.

A couple of interesting things

Toolkit: Disseminating Research Online

This toolkit from the Global Development Network provides broad tips and practical suggestions for communicating academic research using the internet. It draws on best practice for web strategies from the information and commercial worlds, especially selected to help the successful electronic dissemination of your research.

The Development Communication Sourcebook: Broadening the Boundaries of Communication

This 266-page book from the the staff of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank is intended to be a source of knowledge and practical advice for all those involved in development communication, a compendium of reference material for courses and workshops in this field, and an advocacy piece to promote the discipline to managers and decision makers who have an interest in learning why and when to adopt development communication. The two factors guiding the rationale for writing this sourcebook, according to the introduction, are: "First, despite the growing recognition enjoyed by the discipline of development communication, its nature and full range of functions are still not fully known to many decision makers and development managers who tend to identify this field merely with the art of disseminating information effectively. Second, because of the recent shift in the development paradigm (that is, from one-way to two-way communication) and the related changes in the field of development communication, many communication practitioners are not entirely aware of the discipline’s rich theoretical body of knowledge and the wealth of its practical applications—which are growing in relevance for the development context."
Paolo Mefalopulos, The World Bank, 2008

The New Invisible College: Science for Development

I have just read The New Invisible College: Science for Development by Caroline Wagner. As expected from one of the world's leading experts on international science and technology, it is very good.

I have known Caroline for years. We are now both on the faculty of George Washington University (albeit in different schools). We worked together on a White House conference on Biotechnology, and have appeared together on panels. More fundamentally, she is the author of a series of reports going back decades which quantified the nature of international scientific collaboration -- reports which informed my own beliefs and work.

The book counterposes the internationalization of science through increasingly elaborated global networks of collaboration against the concentration of activity in scientific clusters primarily located in rich countries. (There is a great map showing these clusters, based on publication counts.) Her use of social network analysis to illuminate the changing nature of the global scientific system is especially innovative and illuminating.

The book is not only dry statistics, but includes appropriate illustrative examples of research projects and interviews with key informants, making it readable and indeed a pleasant read.

The final chapter provides some thoughtful and important recommendations for science policy in developed and developing nations.

My hat is off to Caroline!

Here is the link to the book on Amazon (which offers a discount)!

Academies of Sciences and the Transition to Knowledge Societies

In 2007, Academies of Sciences from Eastern and South-Eastern Europe (ESEE) took part in a Conference on “Global Science and National Policies: the Role of Academies”. The Conference was organized by UNESCO (Venice and Moscow Offices) and the International Council for Science (ICSU) and it was hosted by the Academy of Sciences of Moldova at its headquarters in Chisinau.

Click here to read the conference report
(PDF format)

This report and the conference that it summarizes illustrate the role of UNESCO in helping build the new science policy institutions required by the transition countries. While it is almost two decades since the fall of Communism, the transition from the dysfunctional institutions created under Communism and a more effective system suited to free market economies and democratic governments will take much longer.

The effort also illustrates the partnership with the International Council of Science, the umbrella organization for the network of international scientific professional organizations--a partnership that has lasted for decades.

"Solar plane makes record flight"

The BBC has an article on a solar powered airplane which can serves as a sensor platform. It has demonstrated the ability to stay up for three days, storing power in batteries during the day to power the system at night. It should be possible for the device to stay in flight for months. While developed for the Department of Defense, the technology should also be available for civilian application.

This technology appears likely eventually to provide a great source of observation data for developing nations for a host of applications, from agriculture, to urban planning, to disaster response.

see a video on the device.

The Teaching of Evolution

The New York Times today has an article by Amy Harmon which describes the increasing inclusion of evolution in the high school curriculum in the United States. That is of course something I approve.

The article makes a very good point that a good teacher figures out ways to communicate with students, including in spite of the the students' unwillingness to learn that which is being taught, the students' preconceptions, and the students' idealogical bias. It also makes the point that the teacher's objective should be that the student comes to understand, but not that the student comes to believe.

In the teaching of evolution, it seems to me that students should understand the general structure of the scientific theory and the nature of the evidence that supports it. It seems to me that epigenetics, as it is developing, is modifying our understanding of genetics, and thus of the linkages between the theory of natural selection and genetics. These in turn are being enriched by better understanding of population dynamics and ecology. Consequently, I think evolution provides a great way to acquaint students with the way in which scientific theory can evolve, and the tentative nature of scientific knowledge, which does not undermine the support for the larger context of the structure which has been built, nor the epistemology of science.

Again, it seems to me that evolution provides a great basis to teach kids about the way in which scientists think, and about the institutions in which scientific knowledge is created and validated. Students, who learn that lesson well, should be able to apply its fruits in many ways in later life; indeed that lesson should be a part of their basic literacy, informing their later judgments on the quality of information and the credibility of assertions.

If one looks at the creation of say new breeds of animals or the improvement of crops, there is another lesson that should be made, whether or not a student ever believes that homo sapiens evolved from other species without "intelligent design". Historical observation confirms that new breeds or varieties have been developed, depending on the tendency of progeny to be like their ancestors, to exploit natural variation, through selection, to produce something new. Understanding that evolutionary processes have been observed in many circumstances to produce something new without planning is important. That understanding can be produced in classes on economics, political history, cultural history, or other venues, but often is not. Students who take a biology course should at least learn it there.

Thomas Jefferson on Knowledge

"Even in Europe a change has sensibly taken place in the mind of Man. Science had liberated the ideas of those who read and reflect, and the American example had kindled feelings of right in the people. An insurrection has consequently begun of science, talents and courage against rank and birth, which have fallen into contempt... Science is progressive, and talents and enterprise on the alert. Resort may be had to the people of the country, a more governable power from their principles and subordination; and rank and birth and tinsel-aristocracy will finally shrink into insignificance even there. This, however, we have no right to meddle with." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:402

"What a satisfaction have we in the contemplation of the benevolent effects of our efforts, compared with those of the leaders on the other side, who have discountenanced all advances in science as dangerous innovations, have endeavored to render philosophy and republicanism terms of reproach, to persuade us that man cannot be governed but by the rod, etc." --Thomas Jefferson to John Dickinson, 1801. ME 10:217

"The generation now in place... are wiser than we were, and their successors will be wiser than they, from the progressive advance of science." --Thomas Jefferson to Spencer Roane, 1819. ME 15:215

"When I contemplate the immense advances in science and discoveries in the arts which have been made within the period of my life, I look forward with confidence to equal advances by the present generation, and have no doubt they will consequently be as much wiser than we have been as we than our fathers were, and they than the burners of witches." --Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Waterhouse, 1818. ME 15:164

"The light which has been shed on the mind of man through the civilized world has given it a new direction from which no human power can divert it. The sovereigns of Europe who are wise or have wise counselors see this and bend to the breeze which blows; the unwise alone stiffen and meet its inevitable crush." --Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1820. ME 15:299

Jefferson is spinning in his grave

If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.

The main body of our citizens... remain true to their republican principles; the whole landed interest is republican, and so is a great mass of talents. Against us are... all timid men who prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty... We are likely to preserve the liberty we have obtained only by unremitting labors and perils. But we shall preserve it, and our mass of weight and wealth on the good side is so great as to leave no danger that force will ever be attempted against us.

Lethargy [is] the forerunner of death to the public liberty.

Let the eye of vigilance never be closed.

[We] should look forward to a time, and that not a distant one, when corruption in this as in the country from which we derive our origin will have seized the heads of government and be spread by them through the body of the people; when they will purchase the voices of the people and make them pay the price. Human nature is the same on every side of the Atlantic and will be alike influenced by the same causes.

The spirit of 1776 is not dead. It has only been slumbering. The body of the American people is substantially republican. But their virtuous feelings have been played on by some fact with more fiction; they have been the dupes of artful maneuvers, and made for a moment to be willing instruments in forging chains for themselves. But times and truth dissipated the delusion, and opened their eyes.

Thomas Jefferson

Ignorance is a comparative concept. Jefferson's United States was inhabited by a frontier people -- a few million people living on the land, with a few scattered small towns, separated by weeks' voyages from the powers of their time. Unschooled, untroubled by the limited suffrage of their time, they were sufficiently informed to successfully begin to build a democracy.

Today, we are schooled, but with great gaps in popular knowledge. We are at war in Iraq and Afghanistan, but most people could not find that country on a map. We depend on science and technology for our future economic security, but the public knows little of science and often prefers superstition to scientific knowledge; we depend on immigrants to utilize our great university system and man our technological industries.

We have given suffrage to most adults, but only half our people register to vote, and only half of them actually vote in the major elections.

Today, with more than 300 million people, the United States is the most powerful nation in the world, not only linked to all other nations but deeply influencing their economic, political and cultural systems. In this context we are far more ignorant than were the citizens of the United States in 1800, and our passivity in the management of our government unforgivable.

Cuts in store for the Peace Corps

Peace Corps Numbers

Source: "Peace Corps to Pare Ranks of Volunteers: Despite Bush's Goal of Doubling Program's Size, Tight Budget Forces Cuts," by Christopher Lee, The Washington Post, August 22, 2008.

The Peace Corps is facing both a cut in appropriations and a loss in buying power of the dollar abroad, problems which it proposes to meet by cutting down the numbers of Volunteers in the field by 400, as well as reducing the Peace Corps bureaucracy.

The 8,079 volunteers today number the most in 37 years but are far fewer than the goal of 14,000 by fiscal 2007 that Bush set in his 2002 State of the Union speech.

The Peace Corps costs the texpayer about $40,000 per Volunteer in the field per year. As a former Volunteer, I would guess that local NGO's could do a lot more good with $80,000 in cash than with a Volunteer for two years. On the other hand, the United States is buying a lot of good will in the communities in which these volunteers are serving, and we really need to spend on public diplomacy. Moreover, this is a great educational investment, as the Volunteers not only learn languages and cultures, but a great deal about the world and the people who inhabit it. All in all, I think the Peace Corps is a great investment for the nation!

The failure of the Bush administration to live up to the promise made in his first State of the Union message is a shame. It is, of course, only one of many ways in which the administration has disappointed us and the world.

Appropriate Technology and the Commons

This is the fifth in a series of postings giving examples of different kinds of Appropriate Technologies according to the typology above. The prior postings were:

• Appropriate Technology as a Public Good
• High Technology as Appropriate Technology
• Private Goods Forms of Appropriate Technology
• Appropriate Technology: Club or Toll Good
  

In this posting I want to think about goods or services that are both non-excludable and rivalrous. This is the quadrant of the square above that Garrett Hardin was concerned about when he wrote "The Tragedy of the Commons". He was concerned that in these situations in which each user of a commons could obtain temporary advantage by exploiting more than his/her fair share, then the commons will not be used sustainably.

Hardin later recognized that often people have institutionalized methods to assure that each uses only his/her fair share. Think about an oil field, or an underground aquifer. To maximize the production from such a resource, it is both important to have the proper technology to understand and monitor the resource base, and to use appropriate extraction technologies. Thus the nature of the common resource base and of the institutions for its management would seem to determine the technology appropriate for its exploitation.

In addition to such common tangible assets, David Bollier writes of an intangible asset commons:

The commons also consists of intangible assets that are not as readily identified as belonging to the public. Such commons include the creative works and public knowledge not privatized under copyright law. This large expanse of cultural resources is sometimes known as the public domain or—as electronic networking increases its scope and intensity—"the information commons." In addition, our society has dozens of "cultural spaces" provided by communications media, public education, and nonprofit institutions. Another large realm of intangible assets consists of scientific and academic research, much of which is supported by the public through government funding. The character of these spaces changes dramatically when they are governed as markets rather than as commons.

Are then areas of appropriate technology that are both non-excludable and subtractable? Certainly, there are lots of technologies that can be used by anyone who knows that they exist, with perhaps only the observation of someone also using the technology. The question is whether there are technologies within this set which become less useful for others because they are used by some, or overused by some. An example might be a productive technology which should be used in moderation lest the amount produced results in an excess supply in the market, and reduces total income to the producers. It has been suggested that the training of physicians in diagnostic and prescriptive skills has been limited in just such an effort to maximize the incomes of individual physicians and of the medical profession. So too, we have programs to pay farmers not to use the commonly available technology to grow common crops, lest the total production exceeds that which can profitably be sold on the market.

Technological knowledge depreciates with time. The appropriate technology to be used with a given resource base and specific factor prices, within a given technological system, need no longer be appropriate when those conditions change. We can think of buggy whips and trolley cars as illustrating technologies that were once important, but which are no longer. It seems likely that there are circumstances in which overuse of a technology, even intangible technological knowledge, would result in too rapid a depreciation of that technology. If you can think of an example, describe it in a comment, please!

Perhaps one might be the overproduction of free and open source software. On the one hand, there are economies of having software products that interconnect and which are interchangeable from the point of view of the users. On the other hand, there is a limited number of software programmers, and spreading their efforts over too large a set of open source projects may be detrimental to the quality and maintenance of the best of the resulting products, and thus to the user community.

Terrorism is getting worse

Source: The Human Security Brief 2007.

So much for the success of the "War on Terrorism." I think we should have used a different metaphor.

On the one hand, it seems to me, and I admit I am no expert, that to reduce terrorism we should have focused more in the short term on the use of police powers and in the long term on education and promoting a culture of peace, not to mention the soft diplomacy of being a good neighbor. The metaphor might better have been "policing terrorists".

On the other hand, it does seem to me that military power should have been used in Afghanistan if economic and other diplomacy had not sufficed to eliminate that country as a sanctuary for Al Qaeda. But that might better have been described as "a war against a sovereign government" that allowed the training and support of international terrorists.

We can improve health status by improving social policy!

This graph from Gapminder is usually interpreted to show the dependence of health on wealth. It also shows, however, that for a given income level, there are wide disparities in child mortality.

Countries with a higher portion of children dying before age five that other countries with comparable per capita income include the United States, Mexico, Brazil, Turkey, South Africa and Nigeria.

Countries with a lower portion of children dying than economically comparably countries include Japan and the Scandanavian countries, Malaysia, Cuba, Sri Lanka and Viet Nam.

The reasons why countries underperform or overperform in terms of buying improved health must differ from country to country. Still, it would seem that governments with more emphasis on social policy do better. The South African anomaly might suggest that radical inequality within a country leads to poor health indicators.

In any case, it is an indictment of the United States health system and more generally our political and social system that we are willing to continue to have lower health status indicators than other countries, including less wealthy countries.

Play with Gapminder World and learn more!

Gapminder Demonstrated

Hans Rosling made another great presentation at TED last year, explaining a lot about the way the world has changed in the last half century while making the points that we should use data to understand the world, and that great presentations can communicate knowledge faster than most people believe possible.

Center for Science Diplomacy

The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) has launched a science diplomacy center, aiming to use science and scientific cooperation to promote international understanding. The Center is based in Washington D.C. Vaughan Turekian, the AAAS chief international officer and director of the center, says its major objective is to raise the profile of science as an important element of relationship-building between countries and societies.

• Read the AAAS News Release.
• Read about the center in SciDev.Net.

How should we organize information.

I find newspapers increasingly annoying, as they not only contain the core information I seek, but also embed that information in longer prose that instantiates the information with personalized stories; the overall organization is not to facilitate the efficiency of the readers perusal or mastery of the story, but (I assume) to sell more advertising and newspapers.

I like better the organization of scientific papers, which seek an informative title, include an abstract which conveys the gist of the article, and then provides further information in a stylized manner such that readers with different degrees of interest in the article can choose their own skimming or reading tactics to obtain what they want efficiently. Of course we know that scientific articles leave much to be desired. There will usually be tacit knowledge that another must obtain to replicate the research results noted in an article. Moreover, scientific articles seldom explain how the research hypothesis came to be formulated, nor what the real process of the research actually was.

Still, it would seem to me that the Internet, digital information formats, hypertext, and other capabilities inherent in modern technology should make it possible to present scientific information in much more efficient, useful and effective ways than has been possible in the past. Think about the use of streaming videos and audios as well as graphics that add a time dimension as examples of what can be done to strengthen the conveyance of the information in a report. Indeed, a report might be interactive, diagnosing potential misunderstandings of the material by the reader. Moreover, computer presentation of information might be more effective in motivating reader behavior, and might adjust the presentation in accord with reader characteristics.

What information do we want and need?

It seems obvious that sources of information should be tailored to their intended audiences. Everyone recognizes that children and adults have different styles and needs for the obtaining information, but so too are the optimum presentations different for experts versus highly educated and motivated lay people, versus the general public. There are lots of other differences.

Still, it would seem generally useful to layer information. Think about online news sites which have clearly distinguished headlines, lead paragraphs that are rapidly visible, links to more complete articles, and from those articles links to still more detailed sources.

In some sense, hypertext rich sites also provide this kind of layering, allowing the visitor to diverge from the linear flow of a discussion to go into more depth on especially interesting items, then to return to the linear treatment of the original topic.

I wonder, however, whether we have taken sufficient advantage of improved understanding of the psychological research results on learning in the design of online resources. Do we have alternative sites for people with different styles of processing information and learning. Do we know how to differentially to design websites for use by experts or lay people?

A good source

In this respect, here is a good lecture by Alvin Trusty on good practice for preparing power point presentations, filled with useful information on U.S. copyright law.

Here are the links used by Professor Trusty in that presentation.

Musing on the Value of Science

Scientific research may be considered to be oriented toward the development of knowledge, while technological development to be oriented toward the development of practical products and processes. Scientific research in turn may be divided into that which is intended to provide knowledge for application, and that which is simply intended to provide knowledge and understanding of the world as an end in itself. Applied scientific research might be intended to inform the development of technology or to provide other knowledge for immediate use, such as knowledge about weather or climate, natural resources, possible problems (e.g. diseases, pests), etc.

Scientific knowledge may be and often is used for purposes other than those for which it was intended either by the researchers who uncovered it or by those who supported their research. Thus the distinctions among fundamental and applied scientific research and technology development are distinctions among intentions, and not that useful for the classification of the knowledge and understanding emerging from research and development.

We may alternatively distinguish among knowledge:

• In the public domain;
• In the private domain, which is shared but which may not be used by others without permission (e.g. that which is protected by intellectual property rights such as patents);
• In the private domain, and kept secret (e.g. trade secrets).

In keeping with this division, we may classify research and development as that which is intended for the production of knowledge and understanding to be put immediately in the public domain, and that which is intended to produce knowledge which is intended to be kept at least initially in the private domain.

It is possible, for example to consider two people working side by side involved in methodologically similar projects for the development of an appropriate pharmaceutical for the treatment of similar diseases. One might be funded by a commercial pharmaceutical company which plans to commercialize the product for the profit of its investors; the other might be funded by a foundation which plans to put the product in the public domain to be produced by generic drug manufacturers. In the first case the price would be determined by the willingness of patients to pay while in the latter case the price would be determined by the competition and thus the cost to produce the drug. For example, a foundation might fund research to find new drugs to be used for treatment of diseases of the poor, where the intended users would not have the financial resources to create a market attractive to commercial firms. The research activities would be relatively unaffected by the intentions of the organizations providing funding for their work. But the results emerging from the research might be expected to have very different social applications.

The way knowledge created by research and development scientists may of course not be used in the ways intended by those supporting its creation. Thus, for example, pharmaceutical firms sometimes find that knowledge that they have created with commercial intentions is not commercializable, but would provide substantial health benefits if applied for the benefit of the poor, and put that knowledge in the public domain or produce drugs and make them available at cost for public health programs as a matter of social responsibility. Alternatively, knowledge created in a university with the original intent of being placed in the public domain might, when developed, be judged to be better put to use by patenting and licensing to a commercial firm.

Knowledge produced explicitly to be immediately placed in the public domain is considered a prototypical public good. It is not rivalrous, in that one person’s use of the knowledge does not interfere with the use of the knowledge by another. Since it is placed in the public domain, it is available to all to obtain and utilize without payment, and thus no one is excluded from its use.

Intentionality is something which we attribute to people, and is not an attribute of the information per se. Not only can the information resulting from a research and development project be used for different purposes, the researchers themselves may describe the purposes of the R&D differently for different audiences, and their purposes in doing the project may not only be different than those of the organizations supporting the project, but may never be fully articulated by the researchers themselves nor need they be stable over time. Indeed, one may have to go to court to establish whether information is in the public domain or in the private domain.

The values of knowledge produced for the public domain

I think we often assume that the value of knowledge is determined by the stream of profits that can be generated attributed to its use. This is obvious for technological knowledge. We might extend the concept of “profits” to include values generated by non commercialized applied research. For example, there is a value to epidemiological or climatological data resulting from the social benefit stream that it generates, albeit a stream that would be difficult to quantify. Certainly we can attribute an instrumental value to knowledge in these ways. I would suggest, however, that such instrumental value is only part of the story, and that there are other sources of value which should be considered, especially for knowledge in the public domain.

There is what we might consider a “consumer value” in the creation of knowledge. People like to generate knowledge, and some people like to do so very much. I recall a friend who was a research epidemiologist who told me, probably accurately, that his expected lifetime earnings went down when he got his Masters of Public Health after his MD degree, and went down further after he got his second doctorate. In the distant past, science was a gentleman’s occupation to be conducted without financial reward, and indeed with considerable expense to the scientists involved in the creation of facilities and the purchase of supplies to conduct research. Indeed, there are means to mobilize the volunteer efforts of people who an not professional researchers to help in the conduct of formalized research and development (e.g. scientific tourism, mobilizing bird watchers to do avian population censuses, amateur astronomers contributing to astronomical information bases).

There is also a consumer value for knowledge based on our curiosity. People like to obtain information for the simple pleasure of collecting facts and understanding more of the world. They like to be seen by their friends and associates as knowledgeable. Indeed, people are willing to pay for information to be available which they do not internalize in case they may need it in the future, or simply want to learn it in the future. Think of the families that buy encyclopedias in case someone may wish to look up a fact? Think of how much you are willing to pay for a home computer and Internet access for the privilege of being able to search the web at any future time for information you might want or need.

The willingness to pay for access to information of course depends on the ability to pay. Rich people are not only able to pay more for information that they may want, they are generally willing to pay more of their available resources for information than are the poor. That is, there is a positive elasticity of demand for information.

There are also cultural and individual differences in the willingness to pay for information, and indeed information is not a homogeneous good. As a simple example, different nations allocate their basic research funds differently among the sciences.

There is also a willingness of people to pay for information to be used by others. Thus our charitable feelings lead us to pay for research on tropical agriculture and tropical diseases that we do not expect to benefit from directly, but which will benefit the poor. Indeed, we may see it our responsibility to fund the development of information that it needed if poor people in poor countries are to be granted that which we recognize as their basic human rights to live healthy lives free of hunger.

This kind of analysis suggests that the differences in funding for research and development among different countries are functions of the different abilities to finance the work, the different abilities to utilize the results of R&D for utilitarian purposes, and the different willingness to pay for knowledge and understanding as ends in themselves.

I think it clear that we have not developed the institutions necessary to mobilize all of our willingness to pay for information in the public domain for the enterprise needed to generate and disseminate that information and to prepare people to obtain the information and convert it to knowledge and understanding.

If one accepts that the world is in the process of moving towards a “knowledge society” or an “information society”, then it seems likely that the values assigned to knowledge and information in the future will be different than those of today. If present value is calculated as the sum of discounted future values, it becomes doubly hard to estimate present value, both since so much of value is implicit rather than explicit, and since even those explicit values will change over time.

The institutional systems for appropriating value to pay for research and development are more fully developed in advanced developed nations, and less developed in poor nations (which have less need of them). Those systems are especially poorly developed to fund international scientific and technological collaborations in the public and non-profit sectors.

Cognitive Taxonomy Circle

Source: "Using the New Bloom's Taxonomy to Design Meaningful Learning Assessments" by Kevin Smythe & Jane Halonen
Based on: Clark, B. (2002). Growing up gifted:
Developing the potential of children at home and at school.
Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill Prentice Hall.

Two from RAND

A couple of articles in the Summer 2005 issue of the Rand Review caught my attention.

• Innovative Infrastructure

This article suggests a significant upgrade of the technology in our transportation and other physical infrastructure is both possible and desirable.

• The Future of Diplomacy: Real Time or Real Estate?

The author says, and I agree, that the State Department could do a better job with fewer people in overseas embassies if it took better advantage of the potential in modern technology.

Online Sources Making Science Available in LDCs Word Well

Source: Elsevier Press Release,17 July 2008.

HINARI, AGORA and OARE, three unique public-private partnerships, are working with the UN’s millennium goals to provide the developing world with access to critical research. 'Over the past five years, 6000 journals with a subscription value of £3m per year have been made available to researchers in 4,000 developing world institutions, via these three programs.

Image source: Elsevier website

A recent impact analysis conducted by Elsevier, has shown that over the five-year period from 2002-2006, 105 HINARI countries saw a 63 percent growth in the number of authors publishing in peer-reviewed journals, compared to 38 percent in 102 non-HINARI countries – indicating that HINARI has had a significant impact on the participant countries’ ability to engage with the global scientific community.'

Check out more online sources of scientific information.

"US voucher system to boost tropical disease drugs"

Source: Intellectual Property Watch via SciDev.Net, 14 August 2008

Excerpt:

"The United States is set to launch a prize system to encourage pharmaceutical companies to develop drugs for tropical diseases.

Sixteen tropical diseases, including sleeping sickness, leprosy and malaria are listed as eligible for the scheme.

Under the system, companies producing a drug or vaccine for a tropical disease can apply for a Priority Review voucher, which allows them a shorter approval time for another drug at a later date.

The shorter approval process would take approximately six months instead of ten, meaning that drugs could hit the market sooner and potentially be more lucrative. Thus, the vouchers are estimated to be worth around US$300 million.

Companies can also take advantage of the Orphan Drugs Act, under which drug developers receive tax credits, a waiver of the US Food and Drug Administration's user fee and seven years market exclusivity on drugs that have no economic viability."

Comment: This looks like a very good idea. The article describes subsidies for the development of drugs for diseases of poverty which are basically invisible to the Government budget process, but potentially important to the pharmaceutical industry.

Some caution should be used in estimating the value of the subsidy. Speeding the review of a drug provides economic value to the company primarily if the drug is approved, and proves to be profitable. Very few drugs are in the blockbuster category where the profits from a few months head start will be really large. Of course, firms may save up the vouchers until they have candidates in which they have lots of confidence. JAD

Why don't we hear more about Central Africa

As I understand the situation, the United Nations force in the Congo may not be able to hold the peace, such as it is. So too, the peace in Southern Sudan is fragile, and the Darfur crisis continues to fester. The Lords Resistance Army which is originally Ugandan is threatening to break off peace negotiations, and is not only in the Sudan and threatening the Congo but is also threatening another weakly governed state--the Central African Republic. This seems a humanitarian crisis of very large magnitude over a huge geographic area. Why do we not hear more about it?

This is an area that is hard to reach, and is likely to be further victimized by hunger due to the world food crisis, and by disease due to the failure of its states, the desperate poverty of its people, especially refugees, and the failure of its health services. Why do we not do more to help?

Health Serive Delivery is becoming internationally traded

Source: "Globalisation and health care: Operating profit," The Economist, August 14th 2008.

Historically, health services were prototypical of "non-traded goods and services" which had to be produced where they were consumed. With the Internet and global digital communications, a number of health services have been internationally outsourced. This article suggests that with improved global transportation networks the cost of travel for major medical interventions is now less than the cost differential between developed and developing nations even for health services of comparable quality, and people are increasingly traveling abroad for major medical interventions.

During the Carter administration I worked on International Health Policy for the White House, and we published a prediction that this would eventually occur and that the United States should prepare policies for this eventuality. I repeat that warning. Especially, there should be international means to compare health service quality, perhaps produced by the World Health Organization, comparable to the international conventions produced by UNESCO and the European Union to compare educational quality and higher education degrees.

The article also notes:

When Bumrungrad looked for information technology to run its operations a decade ago, it found that vendors were so wrapped up in the arcane and fragmented ways in which rich-country firms do business that they could not manage to design a complete computer system from scratch.

Undaunted, the firm set about the job itself, using best practice from other industries. This was possible, says Mr Schroeder, because his firm’s edge is not only based on cheap labour, though labour costs make up 18% of his total, compared with perhaps 55% at American counterparts. He says, “the bigger difference is the way health care is delivered.”

The firm’s IT proved so much better than that from American or European specialist firms that Microsoft last year took over Bumrungrad’s Global Care Solutions division. Peter Neupert, who heads the American software giant’s efforts in this area, was so impressed that he has decided to put the headquarters of his international health efforts in Bangkok. This leapfrogging is an example, he says, of how “innovation will come from many places as the health-care market goes global and flat very fast.”

Comment: We better get to work modernizing and improving our health care delivery system in order not to miss on the future world market in health services and the world market for the technology supporting health services. JAD
Source: "Global trade and health: key linkages and future challenges," Douglas W. Bettcher, Derek Yach and G. Emmanuel Guindon, Bulletin of the World Health Organization, v.78 n.4 Genebra 2000

Urban competitiveness: without comment

Source: The Global Urban Competitiveness Project
via The Economist

Is the Rice pot calling the Russian Kettle Black?

"Russia overreached, used disproportionate force against a small neighbor and is now paying the price for that because Russia's reputation as a potential partner in international institutions, diplomatic, political, security, economic, is frankly, in tatters," Rice told NBC's Meet the Press
Yahoo!News, August 17, 2008

Surely the United States is now paying more than the Russians in terms of our reputation because the Bush administration has used disproportionate force against a smaller nation and has eschewed its international partnerships in favor of unilateral actions.

The United States built enormous strength during the 20th century. Of course, the U.S.military power was built during the century, but even more important was the coalition of allies that it constructed and the trust it built within the community of nations. The people of the United States are anti-imperialistic, and during the 20th century the United States led the community of nations in its support for self determination of peoples, democracy, and human rights, and catalyzed an unprecedented global effort to reduce poverty.

The United States Government overcame popular antiwar sentiment to participate in World War I and World War II on the sides of the winning coalitions, doing so without goals of acquisition of land or wealth. President Wilson, unsuccessfully, in the aftermath of World War I and various U.S. leaders, more successfully, after World War II sought to develop international institutions that would prevent future wars among nations. Especially in the aftermath of World War II, the United States not only helped our allies to recover, the nation also went to the aid of the defeated enemies building strong and enduring alliances with them.

In the wars in Korea, Viet Nam and Desert Storm in Iraq the people of the United States and our allies believed that we entered on the parts of peoples attacked by other countries, and without imperial goals. In the latter part of the century the United States played a key role in building regional treaty organizations for mutual security. It also sought and achieved a series of landmark agreements for the control and reduction of weapons of mass destruction. In other situations, such as when Americans were held hostages in Iran or in terrorist attacks in the 20th century, the United States showed restraint, seeking always to make the response proportional to the attack, negotiating when possible. While mistakes were made, I believe that there was a justifiable global belief in American exceptionalism in international affairs.

Over the 20th century the United States built what Thomas Madden has termed an empire of trust. The result was an extraordinary national security, built not only and I would say not principally on America's considerable military might, but also on the trust of a global alliance of nations and peoples, linked through institutions built during the 20th century to meet the needs of security in the global system built in our newly small world.

The Bush administration has done great damage to that trust which so enhanced our national security. It has done so by refusing to participate in international negotiations such as those on climate change, and by an explicit policy of unilateralism. Most especially it has done so by using disproportionate force against Iraq, which it falsely accused of building weapons of mass destruction and negotiating with Al Qaeda. In six years of occupation of Iraq, the people of Iraq have suffered immeasurably more than have the people of Georgia during the current Russian incursion. That is by no means to minimize the pain and suffering of the people of Georgia, but simply to wonder about Secretary Rice's understanding of the international actions of the Government of the United States during the administration which she has served as National Security Advisor to the President and Secretary of State.

O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
An’ foolish notion:
What airs in dress an’ gait wad lea’e us,
An’ ev’n devotion!

Robert Burns: To a louse

Bias and the disclosure of interest

New Kid on the Hall has this posting on bias. (I found it via this comment from Info-fetishist, one of my favorite blogs.) Kid points out that all authors are biased, and that the student must not simply note that a specific author is biased, but seek to describe that bias, describe how it is expressed, and then go further to consider its import. Of course, this is good guidance for any kind of critical thinking. It would seem to me that expertise is developed considering sources with different, ideally complementary biases and weighing their approaches and judgments.

Of course, sometimes we don't want to be bothered by thinking critically, and simply want to enjoy a good rant. (Check out Keith Olbermann's Anti-Bush Rant.)

In order to understand an author's bias, or at least the likely bias in an authors work, it is often useful to understand the author's interests. (Where you stand is often determined by where you sit.) Thus it is important to understand that John McCain's top foreign policy adviser works for a firm that has a contract to advise the government of Georgia (and to realize that often a candidates statements are scripted by staff in the heat of a campaign), in order to properly understand the direction of the bias in his statements relevant to the Georgia-Russia conflict.

Sometimes people rise above their financial interests in expressing opinions, and sometimes politicians rise above their interests in maximizing the votes they receive, but often it is interest that determines content of their public pronouncements.

Years ago I was on the editorial advisory panel for a journal when we faced the question of whether or not to publish a piece by an author with a clear financial interest affected by the position he was advocating. We decided that indeed all our authors had interests affected by the subjects that they addressed in their papers. Why else would they go to the trouble to research and write a series article? We decided that the editor's job was not to keep a journal interest-free, but rather to present articles reflecting the legitimate span of interests, and to disclose to the extent possible the specific interests of the specific authors. That is why one should read the author's blurb on an article of concern. Would that more publications would use those blurbs to inform the reader of author interests.

Left-to-right: anti-market bias, anti-foreign bias, make-work bias, and pessimistic bias. Source: EconLog

How much money have we wasted on biodefense based on four deaths?

Science (8 August 2008) has an article about the scientist who committed suicide recently having been suspected of the anthrax attacks in 2001. It points out that there remain doubts as to whether he was the perpetrator of the crime, especially since the U.S. Government just paid a $5.8 million damage assessment to another scientist that they had implicated publicly in the crime.

The article notes:

Many believe that the case is bound to have wider ramifications for the biodefense field. Before 2001, such research was largely confined to USAMRIID and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia. The anthrax letters, which plunged a nation reeling from 9/11 into further anxiety, helped spur a massive increase in the biodefense budget--now some $5.4 billion a year--and a construction boom in biosafety labs. "The entire rationale for that expansion was fraudulent," says Richard Ebright, a prominent biodefense critic at Rutgers University in Piscataway, New Jersey, because it assumed a threat from outside the country. The boom has made the country less safe, Ebright maintains: "The spigot needs to be closed."

Comment: Of course there are some very good people working on the biodefense program and of course there will be some spin offs that will prove of benefit to the world, even if the Bush administration did waste a lot of money in politically motivated over reaction to the threat of bioterrorism. Still, I wonder how many lives would have been saved if the money had been devoted to health care for those who don't enjoy health insurance, or to high payoff public health campaigns. Even more lives would have been saved and more suffering averted if the funds had gone to dealing with the diseases of poverty in developing nations. Still, I guess we waste a lot more money in dozens of ways. Still, this is another example of the Bush administration's incompetence. JAD

Civilian Biodefense Funding
by Fiscal Year, FY2001–FY2007 (in $millions)

Source: Center for Biosecurity

Science in Muslim Countries

Source: "Science in Muslim Countries," Ismail Serageldin
Science 8 August 2008: Vol. 321. no. 5890, p. 745

"With more than a trillion dollars in cash and a population of over a billion people, the Muslim world should be poised for a remarkable scientific explosion. Yet despite some very high-profile projects in the Gulf, including the building of massive state-of-the-art facilities for research across all disciplines (and serious efforts elsewhere), the reality is that Muslim countries tend to spend less on scientific research itself, as distinct from buildings and equipment, as compared to other countries at the same income scale. Furthermore, even where funding for science has been available, the results in terms of output--research papers, citations, and patents--are disappointingly low. Why?"

Comment: Very good question!

Too bad Serageldin is not the Egyptian candidate for Director General of UNESCO! JAD

Reforming U.S. Aid to Developing Countries

Here are some recent reports on the topic:

Brookings-CSIS Task Force for Transforming Foreign Assistance for the 21st Century

With hard power assets stretched thin and confronting unprecedented global challenges of transnational threats, poverty, and pandemics, America must reform its weak aid infrastructure to leverage its soft power more effectively. While foreign assistance funding has seen the greatest increase in four decades, this has brought a proliferation of programs, policy incoherence and organizational fragmentation. Moving around the organizational boxes or increasing aid will do little to boost impact, unless there is broad agreement around a unified framework designed for 21st century challenges. This requires integrating the national security perspective of foreign assistance as a “soft power” tool intended to achieve diplomatic and strategic ends with that of a “development tool” allocated according to policy effectiveness and human needs.

U.S. Foreign Assistance: Reform to Lead in the 21st Century

Editor’s summary: In a recent op-ed, Lael Brainard and Noam Unger explore how the current global food crisis showcases America’s weakened foreign aid capacity and argue that the U.S. must modernize and reform its foreign aid system in order to lead effectively and offer real solutions to global poverty. The article was published in a recent Los Angeles Times online forum on food diplomacy.

Oxfam Applauds Congressional Resolution Making US Foreign Aid Reform a National Priority

International development and relief agency Oxfam America recently welcomed a bipartisan resolution introduced by Representatives Betty McCollum (D-MN), Christopher Shays (R-CT) and John Tierney (D-MA). The agency said the resolution, which would commit the House of Representatives to fundamental US foreign aid reform, is an important step to strengthen America’s efforts to fight global poverty.

Why the Next U.S. President Should Create a Cabinet-Level Department of Global Development

The extraordinary challenges and opportunities of today require a new vision of American global leadership based on the strength of our core values, ideas and ingenuity. They call for an integrated foreign policy that promotes our values, enhances our security, helps create economic and political opportunities for people around the world, and restores America's faltering image abroad. We cannot rely exclusively or even primarily on military might to meet these goals. Instead, we must make greater use of all the tools of statecraft through "smart power," including diplomacy, trade, investment, intelligence, and a strong and effective foreign assistance strategy.
Nancy Birdsall and Steve Radelet, Center for Global Development, January 28, 2008

On the Brink, Weak States and US National Security

"Weak and failed states pose a 21st century threat that requires institutions and engagement renewed for the 21st century.But, the security challenge they present cannot be met through security means alone. The roots of this challenge—and long-term hope for its resolution—lie in development, broadly understood as progress toward stable, accountable national institutions that can meet citizens’ needs and take full part in the workings of the international community."
Jeremy M. Weinstein, John Edward Porter and Stuart E. Eizenstat, Center for Global Development, 2004

Smart Power: Building a Better, Safer World

The extraordinary global challenges and opportunities of the 21st century require a new vision of American leadership. Advances in technology, communications and transportation allow ideas, goods, finance and people to cross international borders at unprecedented speeds. While these changes create significant new opportunities to enhance global cooperation, they also make Americans more vulnerable to threats that arise from potentially destabilizing forces. Our increasingly inter-connected world requires strong U.S. leadership to enhance global security, strengthen democratic governance, create global economic opportunities, fight poverty and disease and restore America’s image abroad. To achieve these goals, we must use smart power – the integration and appropriate application of all the tools of statecraft, including diplomacy, development, and economic policies together with defense and intelligence activities.
Center for U.S. Global Engagement, July 2007

One has a campaign to generate letters to the directors of development assistance agencies to encourage better, more transparent aid processes.

Go to the One website to participate.

How was the creation of the modern world possible?

The Renaissance can be divided into an early period in the 12th century and the more widely known cultural flowering during the 14th to the 17th centuries. A part of the cultural change may be attributed to the flow of Islamic knowledge into Europe from Muslim Spain and cosmopolitan Sicily as well as the movement of Byzantine savants into the West after the fall of Constantinople to the Turks in the 15th century. What other factors enabled the Renaissance to take place?

England, France and Spain all went through processes by which the monarchies were strengthened and extended central power especially during the 14th and 15th centuries. Eugen Weber suggests that this was due in part to the introduction of firearms into Europe in the 13th century. He suggests that the availability of artillary and other firearm technology triggered mutually reinforcing processes in which the increasing power of central government to tax financed increasingly powerful weaponry and military capabilities, and the military power enforced the increasing ability of those in control to appropriate revenues.

Without disagreeing with Weber, I want to explore other processes that were going on during this period.

Trade

According to the Encarta Encyclopedia:

By the 11th century.......population growth and contact with other cultures through military efforts such as the Crusades helped revive commercial activity. Trade slowly increased with the exchange of luxury goods in the Mediterranean region and various commodities such as fish, furs, and metals across the North and Baltic seas. Commerce soon moved inland, bringing new prosperity to the citizens of towns along major trade routes. As traffic along these routes increased, existing settlements grew and new ones were established.

Transportation

While merchant shipping in the Mediterranean goes back to ancient times, there was a significant advance in the Middle Ages, leading to the large Venetian fleet at the time of the renaissance. There were also advances in shipbuilding, and the caravel was widely used from the 12th through the 16th century, improving the efficiency of marine commerce.

Roads had deteriorated after the fall of the Roman empire. In feudal times their maintenance was typically the responsibility of each feudal lord within his domain. One assumes that the expansion of national power led also to the improvement of the national system of roads. Apparently the same technological advances that led to the creation of Gothic cathedrals in the late Middle Ages also led to the construction of systems of bridges, financed by local monastaries. The first known road map of Britain dates to the 14th century. Thus it seems likely that the growth of trade in the late Middle Ages and thereafter was accompanied not only be improved shipping, but also be improved road systems. These in turn would have facilitated transport by the increasingly used wheeled vehicles pulled by draft animals.

Agriculture

The Eurasian land mass allows for east-west transfer of crops in ways that are in some ways simpler than would be north-south transfers. The Muslim expansion facilitated those transfers, providing a realm of cultural exchange that ranged from India to Spain. Note too that there was an Islamic Golden Age which culturally contributed to the process of agricultural innovation and the transfers of agricultural technologies and practices. As a result, new crops and agricultural practices were introduced into Southern Europe from Muslim lands.

Moreover, according to A History of World Agriculture by Marcel Mazoyer, Laurence Roudart and James H. Membrez, during the late Middle Ages there was an agricultural revolution. In Northern parts of Europe it was based on fallowing and animal drawn plows increased agricultural productivity, and other methods were used in Mediterranean regions.

The increase in agricultural productivity made possible the growth of urban populations (that did not grow food but imported it from their rural supply bases) as well as the feed increases that allowed for greater use of animal power for transportation as well as agriculture, and of course the campaigns of larger military units during the growing season, allowing the broader exercise of power.

Climate

The Medieval Climate Optimum was a time of unusually warm climate in the North Atlantic region, lasting from about the tenth century to about the fourteenth century. It followed the Migration Period Pessimum or Dark Ages Cold Period. The MWP was followed by the Little Ice Age. It would seem that the climate of the period was conducive to increased agricultural productivity, longer periods in which transportation was possible, and population growth.

Epidemiology

The plague reached Europe in the 1340's and is estimated to have killed 30 to 60 percent of Europe's population. New epidemics swept Europe relatively frequently until the 1700s. According to Wikipedia:

The 14th century eruption of the Black Death had a drastic effect on Europe's population, irrevocably changing the social structure. It was a serious blow to the Roman Catholic Church, and resulted in widespread persecution of minorities such as Jews, foreigners, beggars, and lepers.

It has been noted that the sudden depopulation of Europe due to the plague resulted in more land and capital available per person for the survivors. That in turn lead to increased per capita production, and allowed more diversification in productive activity, which (as Adam Smith has pointed out) led to still further increases in per capita production.

Final Comment

The foregoing is an exploration in keeping with theories of historical determinism. I guess I do believe that the creation of modern culture and institutions is at least enabled by changes in the underlying technology and economic productivity. There is certainly a case to be made that the direction of the Renaissance was influenced by the genius of a sequence of great men. So too, the delay of nation building in Germany and Italy as compared with Spain, France and England testifies that the outcomes are historically contingent on factors other than those mentioned above.

"Candidates Vow To Keep Politics Out Of Science"

Source: Joe Palca, All Things Considered, August 12, 2008.

Excerpt:

The past eight years have brought multiple charges that the White House has politicized science — from muzzling federal climate scientists to ignoring advice on clear air and endangered species.

Both Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama say that if they are elected, things will be different. And although the two differ on how much money should be promised to basic research, they say they will restore integrity to federal science agencies.

Comment: The White House has never admitted that it substituted politics for science during the Bush administration. McCain will be beholding to the same interests which oppose environmental regulation, the teaching of evolution, and aspects of reproductive biology research and technologies. I wish he had not lied in the past about his beliefs in order to buy votes, so that I could believe him now that he would abandon the Bush administration policies that so angered the scientific community. JAD

Some Energy Policy Resources

The Coming Oil Supply Crunch
Chatham House Report
Paul Stevens, August 2008

This report argues that unless there is a collapse in oil demand within the next five to ten years, there will be a serious oil 'supply crunch' - not because of below-ground resource constraints but because of inadequate investment by international oil companies (IOCs) and national oil companies (NOCs).

An oil supply crunch is where excess crude producing capacity falls to low levels and is followed by a crude 'outage' leading to a price spike. If this happens then the resulting price spike will carry serious policy implications with long-lasting effects on the global energy picture.

The International Energy Agency

The International Energy Agency (IEA) acts as energy policy advisor to 27 member countries (which are essentially the world's richest nations) in their effort to ensure reliable, affordable and clean energy for their citizens. Founded during the oil crisis of 1973-74, the IEA’s initial role was to co-ordinate measures in times of oil supply emergencies. As energy markets have changed, so has the IEA. Its mandate has broadened to incorporate the “Three E’s” of balanced energy policy making: energy security, economic development and environmental protection.

"American Exception: In U.S., Expert Witnesses Are Partisan"

Source: ADAM LIPTAK, The New York Times, August 11, 2008.

Excerpt:

In most of the rest of the world, expert witnesses are selected by judges and are meant to be neutral and independent. Many foreign lawyers have long questioned the American practice of allowing the parties to present testimony from experts they have chosen and paid.

The European judge who visits the United States experiences “something bordering on disbelief when he discovers that we extend the sphere of partisan control to the selection and preparation of experts,” John H. Langbein, a law professor at Yale, wrote in a classic article in The University of Chicago Law Review more than 20 years ago.

Partisan experts do appear in court in other common-law nations, including Canada, Singapore and New Zealand. But the United States amplifies their power by using juries in civil cases, a practice most of the common-law world has rejected.

Comment: I don't really object to advocates using expert testimony to support their cases. On the other hand, it seems to me that courts and juries should have access to disinterested scientific advice on the science of forensic evidence. There are means by which judges can obtain such advice, but I suspect juries are passive in this respect and that there should be much more financing for the provision of disinterested scientific advice to judges and juries.

Of course, the advocates should be given advance warning of the testimony of the courts experts and the chance to present expert witnesses to refute that testimony. JAD

A Leading Indicator of Plans for War?

According to the New York Times,

Weeks before bombs started falling on Georgia, a security researcher in suburban Massachusetts was watching an attack against the country in cyberspace.....

Other Internet experts in the United States said the attacks against Georgia’s Internet infrastructure began as early as July 20, with coordinated barrages of millions of requests — known as distributed denial of service, or D.D.O.S., attacks — that overloaded and effectively shut down Georgian servers.

Comment: I can not help but believe that the U.S. National Security Agency and other intelligence agencies monitor this kind of attack, were aware of what was happening, and are more able than I to project the meaning and implications of the attack.

I wonder why the Georgian government seemed to be unaware of the import of the cyber attacks? JAD

Hope from the gut of the termite

The Atlantic also has an article noting that scientists have identified some 500 enzymes from the gut of the termite that help in the transformation of cellulose into sugars. If researchers can find a way to utilize these or similar enzymes in the production of biofuels it could make a real contribution to the solution of the fuel supply problems.

Africa: Whipped by the Oil and Food Crises

Remember the way a whip works. You start a wave at the handle, and as it travels down the whip it moves faster and faster until at the end it snaps. Well, an article in The Atlantic suggests that something of the kind is working in the current food crisis, and that Africa is getting whipped.

The oil crisis by increasing the price of gasoline is making the production and distribution of food more expensive. It has also stimulated policies that promote the use of biofuels, especially in the countries that use fuel most intensively -- subsidies for their production or mandates that they be used. That is resulting in diversion of agricultural activity from food production to biofuel feedstock production. As, for example, corn prices are driven up by the reduction in corn supplies, demand is shifted to ther food and feed grains, which in turn drives up their prices.

A few countries have responded by putting export limitations on the food that they produce. By doing so they seek to assure adequate supplies within their borders, and thus also to keep price increases smaller than they would otherwise be. That of course has secondary impacts. Not only does it tend to decrease the income of farmers within the country, but it tends to further exacerbate the price rises in other countries. The countries that have put up these export limitations, including China, India and Indonesia, have huge populations and so can have an impact on world food prices.

African nations, which have inefficient agriculture, are prone to weather caused falls in food production, and low per capita incomes are disproportionately affected by the food price increases. The Atlantic cites a figure of 100 million people who might be driven below the poverty line by the ultimate whiplash of this process, with the effect being felt in much of East Africa.

The impact has been exacerbated by years of neglect for agricultural research. It will be more years, even if international funding for such research is increased now, before the benefits reach the poor consumer (or farmer) in the worst affected areas.

IPR for Biologicals -- the legislative battle

Source: "Biotech Campaigns for Easier Access to Generic Drug Market: Richmond Firm Wants Congress to Revamp FDA Approval Process." by Kendra Marr, The Washington Post, August 13, 2008.

Chemical drugs are relatively simple molecules manufactured by chemical processes; if they are identical by standard chemical tests they can be assumed to have identical biological action. Biological drugs are relatively complex molecules manufactured in cell cultures by biological processes; even if indistinguishable by standard chemical tests, biologicals produced in different cell lines and different culture conditions may have different biological activities.

Intellectual property rights protection is used by the pharmaceutical industry to generate high levels of profits from new drugs, which can be used to fund future research and to repay investors for the relatively risky investments they have made in pharmaceutical R&D. When that protection is exhausted, new firms can market generic drugs and the competition drives the price of drugs down from the value to the patient towards their manufacturing costs.

There are all sorts of intellectual property rights used, including patents on products and manufacturing processes and on cell lines, as well as trade secrets protecting aspects of the manufacturing process, and trade mark protection to protect established brand names. Perhaps less well understood is "test data exclusivity" used for protection of clinical test data required to be submitted to a regulatory agency to prove safety and efficacy of a new drug.

Two decades ago.....Congress passed the Hatch-Waxman Act, which opened the doors for generic competition after patent expiration. Once a company demonstrates that its generic is chemically identical to a brand-name drug, it can use the approval of the brand-name drug as evidence that its copycat works just as well without additional human trials.

When the Hatch-Waxman Act passed.....lawmakers didn't think to give the Food and Drug Administration an abbreviated review process to swiftly approve biosimilars. Now, escalating health-care expenditures have prompted Congress to consider one. Last year, two bills were introduced into the House and are still pending. Then, in March, representatives drafted yet another.

A recent Congressional Budget Office analysis of a Senate bill, which passed unanimously last year in committee, found that biosimilar competition would reduce expenditures on biologics by about $200 million by 2013 and about $25 billion by 2018. These savings would represent about 0.5 percent of national spending on prescription drugs, at wholesale prices, over the next decade.

The main point of contention among these bills: the length of an innovator company's "data exclusivity."

Generic manufacturers and consumer groups are lobbying for five years data exclusivity for biologicals, the same length as chemical drug data exclusivity.

Because biosimilars aren't exact duplicates of the original drugs, they don't violate the original drug's patent, enabling legal distribution before patent expiration. As a result, the Biotechnology Industry Organization, as well as the handful of biotechs that control most of the market, supports a 14-year period to allow companies to recoup their investment and conduct further clinical trials to improve the product.....

And because biosimilars aren't perfect copies, patients rights groups and biotechs are asserting that patients should not be forced to take them. It is up the discretion of individual physicians, not insurance companies or pharmacies, to substitute a branded biologic for a biosimilar, they said.....

Global prescription sales of biotech drugs increased 12.5 percent in 2007 -- nearly double the rate of the overall pharmaceutical market, which includes the biotech sector -- to more than $75 billion, according to a June report by IMS Health, a health-care information company.

A diagnotic implication of Bayes Rule

A doctor diagnoses illness based on symptoms. Bayes rule is the statistical basis of that kind of diagnosis. It states that the probability of a disease given a symptom is equal to the a priori probability of the disease in the population times a ratio. The ratio is the probability of the symptom given the disease versus the general probability of the symptom in the population.

I remember an older physician in Cali, Colombia who remembered that early in his career he would diagnose malaria simply on the basis of a patient presenting with fever. Prior to effective anti-malarial campaigns malaria was so common in the city that even a symptom common to many diseases sufficed to allow a diagnosis of malaria that would very probably be right. (Of course, he may also have had so much experience with the disease that he unconsciously recognized other symptoms of the condition, and lacking any of those might have gone more into detail in his diagnostic procedure.)

In a contrasting example, there was a case described in a recent newspaper article of a physician who suffered from scabies (a skin problem caused by a microscopic mite) who suffered for a year and was misdiagnosed not only by himself but also be a couple of dermatologists. While scabies was once common, the incidence is now very low in the United States. The symptoms would have had to be very strongly indicative of scabies to justify that diagnosis, and many skin problems like itching and rashes are often not specific to a single disease. Once a dermatologist thought to check for mites with a microscope the diagnosis was made quickly and accurately, but that test was not made quickly because it was so unlikely to prove informative for the average presenting dermatological patient.

Of course, it is also the case that physicians, even dermatologists, don't see many cases of scabies and thus may not be that familiar with their symptoms. In the past, when scabies was common, the case would almost certainly have been quickly diagnosed and successfully treated. Indeed, the treatment was quickly efficacious once the correct diagnosis was made. Still, the underlying epidemiological situation made the mis-diagnosis not unreasonable.

I remember being surprised when I first learned how small a portion of patients presenting with acute problems for primary care actually received a specific diagnosis of their disease. In retrospect that situation is understandable. First, as a physician friend used to say often, the right prescription for simple health problems is often "the tender elixir of time". Bodies often heal themselves, and doing nothing does not bring side effects. Moreover, placebos work, in that many patients receiving treatments that should not be efficacious seem to cure themselves more rapidly simple due to their belief in the cure. In addition, many efficacious treatments are broad spectrum; many bacterial infections may be cured by the same antibiotic.

The physician is faced with a huge number of possible presenting diseases, each with a variety of possible presenting symptoms. Bayes theorem provides a basis for intuitive understanding as to why they occasionally make the mistake of missing a rare disease, even one with quite specific symptoms. It also helps to intuit why they are so often effective in treating the common conditions that come before them. While the physician does not actually calculate the probabilities using Bayes theorem, even now that he is using a computer with each patient, it is likely that his intuitive grasp of the likelihood of diseases implements Bayes approach.

Can we guard against the kind of diagnostic failure that made the physicians life a misery for a year? Perhaps it is useful to stop and consider whether we are jumping to conclusions to fast, and where the consequences justify that approach add additional diagnostic steps to check for unlikely causes.

Musing about the epistemology of prediction

Prediction: Foretelling of a future event. Predictions are probabilistic estimates of future occurrences based upon many different estimation methods, including past patterns of occurrence and statistical projections of current data.

Predictions can be made simply as a projection of past trends, under the assumption that the causes of those trends are stable, and the trends will continue. On the one hand, that process saves having to understand the basic causality of the trends, but on the other hand is vulnerable to inaccurate predictions when causal factors change.

An alternate process is to infer causation from history, and to make predictions based on the continuity or modification of the causative factors of the past. There are various problems with this approach. Perhaps most important is that "correlation is not causality", and history does not allow experimental hypothesis testing.

Some factors are ideosyncratic, and sometimes new factors pop up that were not influential in the past.

An example

Francis Fukuyama famously wrote a book titled The End of History at the fall of the Soviet Union. I heard someone say that the Russian incursion into George marked the rebirth of history. Fukuyama apparently believed that it was adherence to Communism as a political ideology that resulted in the division between East and West that formed so much of the matter of history in the late 20th century. The recent comment may suggest that he was wrong.

Russia and China are huge countries, both in terms of geographic area and population, with large supplies of natural resources, and millions of highly educated people. When their centrally planned economic institutions were demonstrated by decades of experience to be less successful than alternatives in the West, both deconstructed those economic institutions. It took longer in Russia than in China, and China started poorer than Russia when Communism fell, but both have now revised economic institutions which are allowing rapid economic growth.

Both countries had not only decades of experience under coercive governments, but long prior histories of coercive central governments. Neither culture responded to the failure of its economic systems by a permanent, radical restructuring of political institutions that created participatory governance systems fully respecting rule of law and individual human rights, as had been hoped by the West.

So the inference that the divide between East and West was a divide between Communism and democratic, market economies may have been wrong, and the divide may have been more due to a divide based on economic competition between different political cultures.

It might have been well to consider some of the broader lessons of history. Regions that had advanced civilizations in the past tended to remain such, in spite of changes in forms of government and economic activity. When you had large adjacent powers, their rivalry tended to remain through changes in regime.

A different example - globalization

Technological knowledge is cumulative. Thus communications and transportation technology have been on a long term path of improvements. Indeed, there seem to be clear indications that steam locomotion technology drove the transportation technology improvement until internal combustion technology. Comparably, there have been generational changes of communication technologies, moving from telegraph, to telephone, from wire to fiber optics and satellite, from electromechanical to vacuum tube to transistor; however, the ultimate impact has been to allow increases in communication speed and reductions in cost.

The improvements in transportation and communications technology have been accompanied by major investments and improvements in transportation and communications infrastructure. As a result, the unit costs of transportation of goods and people have been reduced and the distances over which goods can be transported successfully have increased. So too the improved communications have made it possible to trade in what were once non-tradable services, and to coordinate transactions at a distance more quickly and at more affordable costs.

The economics of comparative advantage informs us that profits are to be made in exchanging goods and services where there are differences in the relative efficiency of their production, and as long as the transaction costs do not overwhelm the advantage of the the trades. Thus profits will be expected to drive wider and wider trading arrangements as transportation and communications infrastructures improve and transaction costs come down.

In fact there was a process of globalization that took place at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century, reversed during World Wars I and II and the Depression, and a process of globalization that took place since World War II. Indeed, rather than two processes of globalization as usually conceived, there may have been only one that was temporarily interrupted for several decades.

We can see globalization then as a trend that is causally dependent on trends in technology and infrastructure, as well as in political factors that determine policies and institutions that militate for or against further globalization.

It is of course difficult to forecast the rate and nature of the improvements of technology and thus the rates and extent in improvement of infrastructure. I would hold, perhaps due to my technological bias, that it is still more difficult to predict political trends, such as those which led to the world wars and the Great Depression. Still, it should be possible to improve over the simple projection of trends by adding technological forecasting and political risk assessment to the mix.

Still another example

The fall of Constantinople to the Turks which interrupted the trade between Europe and Asia led predictably to efforts to find a sea route between Asia and Europe, although one would have to recognize the differences between European and Asian societies that resulted in the Europeans seeking those routes more actively and more successfully than the Asians. Indeed, one might seek to find social and political explanations as to why the Turks preferred to cut the silk route rather than tax the trade along it and benefit economically.

Still, it seems to me that the fact that the Spanish found America and the Portuguese found the route around Africa was fundamentally unpredictable, contingent on personal factors that appear all but random. Moreover, that difference in the exploration patterns affected global patterns in a large number of ways for centuries.

Christopher Columbus sought money for the voyage which ultimately discovered America for years, and sought it from Portugal, France and England as well as Spain. In fact he began his search in with the King of Portugal. When the Spanish monarch finally financed the journey, Spain gained an advantage in the race for American domination and American wealth. Of course, the fact that there was a Spanish Pope who would arbitrate the controversy over priority for domination of newly discovered lands also helped the Spanish. The result, however, of Columbus' success with Queen Isabel was that Spain gained an empire in South and Central America, together with a huge transfer of wealth in the form of silver and gold.

It appears that most people of the time, even expert mariners, thought Columbus was probably wrong, and of course there was no accurate way for them to predict the existence of the American continents.

Even in retrospect it does not seem easy to explain why Spain stepped up first with the resources. This might simply by one of the almost random events which form the contingency of history.

Thinking about predictions from history

Population predictions, such as projections of total population or the urban-rural population distribution seems, at least for a decade or two, to be possible through the projection of recent trends. There are of course refinements, such as use of more or less complex population prediction models, or the use of multiple scenarios to consider the sensitivity of the prediction to important potential variables.

In other situations, such as the prediction of power politics or global economic systems, understanding of underlying trends may improve the results, and even political risk assessment, while perhaps less accurate, may further improve the prediction accuracy.

Still, the third example above suggests that some events are radically determinative of future trends and are themselves quite difficult to predict.

In all cases, the inference of the underlying causal factors from historical evidence will be at best an unproven hypothesis. Those hypotheses are strengthened by theoretical constructs in their support, and by the existence of multiple historical examples of the correlations between factors. Still, correlation is not necessarily causation.

The argument about "the end of history" was intuitive as the result of a century of anti-communist rhetoric, but in retrospect may have been too facile, and one that might have been avoided by a more fundamental examination of the situation,

The impact of Columbus' voyage should lead to some salubrious modesty about our ability to predict the future. Who could or would have predicted the impact of the Columbian Exchange when the existence of the New World had not been suspected.

Musing: How Can Democracies Choose to Go to War Against Each Other?

I was watching a presentation by Hew Strachan, the historian best known for his work on World War I, who suggested that that war, which killed more English, more French, and more Italian soldiers than World War II did not seem to him to have been avoidable. In each of the major powers there was a sufficiently developed democracy that the war had to be sold to the population, not simply ordered by a ruling elite. Strachan felt that in each country, even when the full horror of the war was recognized, the majority of the population believed that war had to be prosecuted to its ultimate conclusion. President Wilson's offer to broker a peace agreement was refused because the major participants felt that they were fighting for fundamental principles. Strachan also feels that many of the participants felt that the war had indeed achieved their objectives when it was finished, making the efforts of the leaders of the winning powers to achieve a lasting peace ultimately unsuccessful. It was only after the butchery of World War II that the nations were able to work out a longer lasting liberal system to promote peace.

In retrospect it seems hard to understand how educated populations would fail to recognize that the current situation was attainable and better than the pre war situation, and not only fail in that realization but feel that millions of deaths and the destruction of economies was justified to protect the ex anti situation. I think Strachan was arguing that different nations felt that they had irreconcilable differences not because they reasoned differently from the same basic postulates, but rather that they reasoned similarly from different basic values.

Perhaps it would have been better had the nations been willing to challenge their various basic values. Strachan points out that we can barely understand why these countries felt they had to go to war ninety years later, because our values are so different than those at the end of the Victorian era.

Call to Action: Keep Bush from Gutting the Endangered Species Act

According to a new posting in Talking Points Memo, the Bush administration is about to propose changes in the regulations that implement the Endangered Species Act.

New regulations, which don't require the approval of Congress, would reduce the mandatory, independent reviews government scientists have been performing for 35 years, according to a draft obtained by The Associated Press.

The draft rules also would bar federal agencies from assessing the emissions from projects that contribute to global warming and its effect on species and habitats.

If approved, the changes would represent the biggest overhaul of the Endangered Species Act since 1988. They would accomplish through regulations what conservative Republicans have been unable to achieve in Congress: ending some environmental reviews that developers and other federal agencies blame for delays and cost increases on many projects.

Comment: The Bush administration has tried to gut environmental legislation for almost eight years. This proposal would seem to be a last gap effort in its final days to do by executive fiat that which it has been unable to convince the courts nor the Congress to do.

Please watch for the opportunity to comment on the proposed regulatory change, and stand up for the environment. JAD

" Israel mulls new settler enclave in West Bank"

Source: Allyn Fisher-Ilan, Reuters via Yahoo! News, August 11, 2008.

"Israel has proposed building a new Jewish settlement in the occupied West Bank near Jerusalem, a spokesman for the main settlers organization said on Monday.

"The Defence Ministry, which oversees the issue, made no comment on a move that would be seen by Palestinians and by Israel's U.S. and European allies as a breach of commitments to halt settlement activity on land Palestinians want for a state.

"The Palestinians have already accused Israel of bad faith during the nine-month-old, U.S.-sponsored Annapolis peace process for approving the expansion of other settlements, mostly near Jerusalem, and for last month giving the go-ahead for an entirely new settlement in the Jordan Valley."

Comment: It would be totally unacceptable for the Israelis to build still another settlement and thereby further undermine hopes for an honorable peace with the Palestinians and for the region.

One of the problems of having a lame duck president who has two wars under way at the moment is that any government that might be deterred from adventurism by American influence is going to undertake adventures prior to Bush's departure. JAD

An Interesting Book on Human Rights

Source: “Our Rights, Our Information -- Empowering People to Demand Rights through Knowledge,” Maja Daruwala and Venkatesh Nayak (Editors), Cecelia Burgman, Carrie Gage, Claire Cronin and Reshmi Mitra (Research and Compilation), The Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, 2007.


Excerpt from the Foreward:

The right to information has long been recognised as a ‘Fundamental Right’ of a free citizenry. It is from this right that other basic human rights can flow. No society can claim to be truly free unless it has both the instruments and the practice of providing its people with access to information.....

Although, the exercise of the freedom of information has now matured in several societies, it is relatively nascent in most developing countries. These countries moreover are in many cases those which are only now emerging from the incubus of a colonial hierarchy, structured to exploit the skills of its people at the least cost to the colonial masters and the economic ruin of the colonised populace.......

(This book) show cases how the right has been used by ordinary people to change systems, redress grievances and realise other rights. It places these experiences in the historical context of the evolution of this right from an esoteric freedom of a highly enlightened society aloof from the humdrum of the prosaic world, to its recognition through the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, as a fundamental right for all. It highlights with detailed discussions the bearing the right to information will have not only on social development through promoting gender equality but also on economic development while protecting the essential requirements of humankind like the need for food and water.

Appropriate Technology: Club or Toll Goods

Source of table: Legal Theory Lexicon

This is the fourth in a series of postings giving examples of different kinds of Appropriate Technologies according to the typology above. The prior postings were:

• Appropriate Technology as a Public Good
• High Technology as Appropriate Technology
• Private Goods Forms of Appropriate Technology

Toll roads are examples of "toll goods" since, until traffic becomes very heavy, one vehicles use of a road does not interfere with the use by other vehicles, but those who do not pay tolls may be excluded from use of the road. Golf clubs are examples of "club goods" since one member's use of the links does not interfere with their use by another member, but only club members may use the club course.

Toll roads are a means of using private finance to support the investment needed to provide an expensive nonrivalrous good. Consider a rural community dependent on unprotected surface water that upgrades to a community water supply and uses water fees to pay for the costs of the installation of the system. This could be regarded as an example of a toll system to pay for a technological innovation, and one that simply was a installation of an established, appropriate technology in place of a less appropriate technology. In general such a system is not meant to ration a scarce resource -- water. Here I am separating the charges involved in defraying operating costs from those required by the investors to defray the investment needed to install the new, more technologically advanced system.

The medieval guilds might be considered as institutions which membership in the guild was used to control access to or use of technology, including technologies that we would now see at appropriate. Thus many guild members were using similar techniques that were neither newly invented nor beyond the abilities of people with relatively little special training. However, guilds provided a means of training new craftsmen, and of certifying the quality of crafts products improving the market information available to consumers.

The point is that the institutionalization of means to exclude people from the use of a nonrivalrous technology may provide the means to finance the investments needed to introduce the technology or to maintain it. Indeed, I see no reason why that approach might not be used to develop the technology. I suspect, for example, that some agricultural cooperatives use member dues to pay for the development of improved crop varieties or other technologies in service of the cooperatives products.

The concept of a club good or a toll good might be of use in creating the social innovation needed to institutionalize means to access an appropriate technology.

Scientific Knowledge and HIV/AIDS

This week's edition of The Economist has an article on HIV/AIDS on the occasion of the AIDS conference in Mexico City. I was struck by the recognition that "careful science—starting with a scientific hypothesis, following it up with observations in the field and ending with clinical trials—" has been very productive in the search for means to control and eventually end the HIV/AIDS epidemic. It also recognizes that sometimes it is important to bring in people with tacit knowledge and skills and simply go ahead and do what they suggest to improve the efficacy and effectiveness of programs. Thus advertizing professionals have helped to design effective educational campaigns to advance the knowledge, attitudes and practices of the public with respect to the disease.

Private Goods Forms of Appropriate Technology

Source of table: Legal Theory Lexicon

This is the third in a series on Appropriate Technology. The prior postings were:

• Appropriate Technology as a Public Good
• High Technology as Appropriate Technology

In this posting I will recognize that some appropriate technologies are embodied in commercial goods and services, and can be provided via market mechanisms.

There are a couple of good examples from communications technology.

1. The Transistor Radio: the battery operated transistor radio was widely disseminated to poor people in poor nations soon after it was introduced in developed nations. It was inexpensive and battery operated, as well as rugged and attractive. It met a need for information and a desire for entertainment at an affordable price.
2. Cell phones are being rapidly disseminated in poor nations, and means are being found to utilize the mobile phone technology to make telephone service available to the very poor.

In both cases the technology was invented and first commercialized for more affluent consumers in developed nations, and then transferred to developing nations. In both cases it is important to see the actual device as part of a technological system, and thus to recognize that other innovations complementary to the original device are increasing its value or cost effectiveness.

Comparably, consider antibiotics. Again, from the development of penicillin production technology for military application in World War II, antibiotics quickly entered into the commercial market, and with a lag was disseminated very widely in developing nations. The technological knowledge, from the point of view of the patient, was embodied in the drugs themselves, and the pharmaceutical industry was able to market them widely in developing nations.

Some Statistics

The total fertility rates are quite low in a number of high income countries. They are even lower in former Communist countries which are not shown, but my point is with regards to the leading developed countries. These low fertility rates, unless they change, or unless the country has a high level of immigration will eventually lead to decreases in total population. Note however, that many of these countries already have quite high population density as compared with the United States, not to mention Australia and Canada. Of course, much of the land in these latter two nations is not very attractive for urban development.

These countries all are still experiencing more births than deaths each year, and actual reductions of population are only future potentialities.

It has been believed that lowering the birth rate can contribute to increasing the rate of increase of per capita GDP, since capital accumulations can be put to increasing the capital investment per worker rather than investment in human capital of workers yet to come and creating new employment.

In the future, however, these countries will face an increased in the ratio of retired people per worker, and that ratio may become very worrisome.

Rockville City Profile

The World Bank has published a primer on reducing vulnerabilities to climate change impacts and to strengthening disaster risk management intended for East Asian cities titled Climate Resilient Cities. The city of Rockville, Maryland, my local town of about 60,000 people, is profiled as a prototypical small city with an effective set of policies.

Read the Profile (PDF, 10 pages)

Comment: Congratulations to the folk who manage Rockville! JAD

Wikipedia as a knowledge system

Source: "Word War III," by Tom Dunkel, The Washington Post Magazine, August 10, 2008;

Launched in 2001, Wikipedia now ranks among the most frequented sites on the Web. In December 2007, English Wikipedia became the largest compendium of knowledge in history with some 2.4 million articles. There are spinoffs in more than 250 other languages accounting for some 8 million additional articles.

Wikipedia is based on two principles:

1. No original research or hearsay is allowed in Wikipedia entries. All facts must be derived from reliable outside sources, primarily old-media magazines, newspapers and books.
   
2. Objectivity rules. Articles must adhere to a neutral point of view, or "NPOV" in Wiki shorthand.

An army of several hundred thousand volunteers collectively produce Wikipedia. The organization has only 18 salaried employees; "the rest are all unpaid volunteers, who, on English Wikipedia, come from the ranks of 7 million registered users." There are of course many millions more of unregistered users.

There are about 1,500 Wikipedia administrators or "admins." These unpaid uber-editors are selected by their fellow admins, who entrust them with shepherding online discussions and with enforcing the rules of polite engagement. Admins, however, are supposed to tread softly. Wikipedia is a stubbornly egalitarian enterprise that depends on the magic of mass consensus.....

Wikipedia has a two-track system for handling intractable disputes.

1. Complaints about member misconduct go to arbitration;
2. disagreements over article content qualify for mediation.

(There are about a dozen volunteer arbitrators and mediators. Periodic Wiki elections are held to fill arbitration posts. Mediators are subject to approval by the mediation committee.) In either procedure, civility is usually an early casualty.

Wiki-Scanner is a free, easily searchable Web site based on 34 million Wikipedia edits made between February 2002 and August 2007, and cross-referenced with the IP (internet protocol) addresses of the computers from which the edits originated and the organizations assigned to those IPs. It allows users to track down the authors of edits in order to ferret out biases or interests of those doing the posting.

Attached to each entry in Wikipedia there is a discussion archive and a history archive capturing the changes that have occurred during the development of that entry and the reasons for those changes.

Ahmadinejad on Wikipedia

As soon as he became president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad touched off a boisterous debate on Wikipedia--a conflict as unruly and entertaining as the online encyclopedia itself

The history of the creation of the Ahmadinejad entry illustrates some of its characteristics of Wikipedia as a knowledge system. The entry was created on June 8, 2005 by a 26-year-old computer software engineer in Tehran as a 73 word "stub". Amadinejad was then the only one of seven candidates for president of Iran for whom there was no entry.

THE AHMADINEJAD ENTRY ATTRACTED LITTLE ATTENTION during its first week on English Wikipedia. Only two users materialized, making minor tweaks to Pournader's biographical sketch. By June 19, 2005, about a dozen people had weighed in. The text grew to 850 words. Readers now knew Ahmadinejad was the son of a blacksmith, objected to the veto power of the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, and joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard during the Iran-Iraq war. The last paragraph declared he "possibly had a hand in international assassinations" and "covert operations in Iraq" -- juicy but unsubstantiated tidbits that later would be dropped. The introduction noted that he was "considered by some to be an ultra-conservative hardliner." All those cumulative details led to the removal of the stub designation by an anonymous Wiki administrator

As Amadinejad became more important and more famous, his entry was further elaborated and controversy over its contant increased. When he was elected thirty-four comments were posted on the discussion page by nine different users over two days.

Wikipedia's in-house statistics show that from June 2005 through December 2007, the Ahmadinejad profile was edited 5,742 times. A WikiScanner check reveals that the users were far-flung: Barcelona, Budapest, Dublin, Dubai, Hamburg, Haifa, Paris, Stockholm, multiple locations inside Iran, and one from within the CIA.

The entry has gone to mediation at least twice, in which various participants in the drafting of the entry called for assistance in coming to an acceptable compromise. The entry now contains about 5,800 words and 151 footnotes. Gary Sick, a well known U.S. foreign policy guru criticizes some aspects of the entry, but finds it to be the best Amadinejad primer around.

Comment: Wikipedia is not unique, and indeed the WP article identifies Citizendium as another similar effort with slightly different knowledge processes. Wikipedia is, however, the prototypical example of a knowledge system with high standards of epistemological quality that is produced by an army of volunteers networked via the Internet. It is interesting to know that its quality assurance process too is based on volunteers selected by democratic practices. This may be an example of something that works in practice if not in theory. Of course, there has been less than a decade to develop the theory needed to explain why it works. JAD

High Technology as Appropriate Technology

There are two alternative concepts of high technology:

1. technology recently emergent from cutting-edge science,
2. "lumpy, cutting-edge technology" that involves heavy capital investment to be used at all as well as recently developments in technology.
   

Contrary to popular belief, both kinds of high technology can have important applications in poverty alleviation in poor countries, and thus be considered as Appropriate Technology. To meet that definition the applications have to have low cost per person served, as well as be sustainable.

In terms of technology emergent from science, consider these examples of vaccine development;

• HIV/AIDS vaccines are the subject of active research and development efforts, both to prevent the disease and to ameliorate its course if a person becomes ill. The science of the disease is difficult because it attacks the immune system itself, because the understanding of retroviruses has had to be created from a very modest basis, and because the retrovirus population evolves very quickly under selection pressure. Because of the importance of AIDS, support for HIV science has been substantial, and many efforts have been funded to create HIV vaccines; substantially more progress has been made in a couple of decades than might have been thought possible. If and when vaccines are developed, it is expected that they will be very cost effective in application. It may be expected that they will be widely used to immunize or treat people, including and especially the very poor in developin nations.
• Malaria vaccine research has been funded, albeit at lower levels, for some four decades. The problem of development of the vaccine is scientifically complicated because the plasmodium is a relatively complex organism, more complex that the viruses or bacteria for which earlier vaccines were developed, and because the plasmodium goes through several forms with very different antigenic properties in each. However, there is a huge population at risk of malaria, a high level of mortality, and if even reasonably efficacious and affordable vaccines can be developed they should be very widely used in tropical developing nations.

The Plasmodium life cycle

Thus technologies that very intensively utilize cutting-edge science may be affordable means of benefiting the lives of very poor people, and these vaccines when developed should be not only affordable but very cost effective means of public health interventions.

As an example of capital-intensive, cutting-edge technology might be the use of computers for the analysis of satellite remote sensing data. Two applications of this technology might illustrate my contention that it is appropriate to the alleviation of poverty in poor nations.

1. The monsoon rains are very important to agriculture on the Indian subcontinent. It is important to predict the exact time of their onset (which is variable) in order schedule the best time to plant crops. That accuracy has economic importance for huge numbers of farmers. Meteorological predictions depend on lots of data and computationally complex model-based extrapolations of current conditions. More complete data and more intensive computation can produce forecasts that are longer range and more accurate. For some decades work has been under way to apply supercomputer modeling to the prediction of the monsoon onset, and these models are based on satellite remote sensing data. The cost of this effort, when amortized over the vast numbers of farmers involved and the average benefit that they can expect, is thought to be quite affordable.



The Indian Monsoon


2. Famine is a local phenomenon, based on a local shortage of (affordable) food that is not met by the timely import of foods. There has never been a famine that was so severe that global food supplies could not have met the global need for food. Accurately forecasting food shortages allows arrangements to be made to import food to prevent famine, and the longer and more accurate the advance warning, the lower the cost that can be negotiated for the necessary food imports. Again, for some decades computers modeling has been used, based on remote sensing data as well as survey and other information, to provide early warning of possible famines in Africa. Again, the approach by benefiting so many people in so large a geographic area is quite cost effective, albeit with a very significant cost involved in the creation of the satellite network and computer capacity it requires.


Fewsnet map of food security for July Sept 2008


On the economics of high, appropriate technology

Source of table: Legal Theory Lexicon


In a previous posting I considered the nature of appropriate technologies as public or private goods. In that posting I focused on the technologies that are widely used such as agricultural technologies used by large numbers of small farmers or techniques of hygiene for use by poor households.

The high technologies discussed in this posting too should be considered in terms of economic theory and its suggestions as to how to finance the development and dissemination of the technology.

Vaccines have the property that they tend to have high levels of externality when used. If a sufficiently large portion of the population can be immunized against a communicable disease, the entire population is protected. Thus it makes sense that means be found to reflect the benefits to those not inoculated in the costs to those who do recieve the inocultations. It is also the case that there is a relatively small number of very adverse side effects from a nation wide immunization campaign, and it is considered important to have an insurance policy that draws from the benefits to the whole population to defray the costs incurred by those who have the adverse reactions. I would also note that people are generally unwilling to pay as much to prevent acquiring a disease as to cure a disease once acquired. Moreover, the cost of disease includes but is not limited to the cost of its medical treatment. For these reasons, immunizations are usually seen as public goods. In the case of AIDS and Malaria, the victims are often poor, but rights and other arguments are made that more affluent people be taxed to assure the public health and the rights to adequate medical assistance of the very poor.

Vaccines are a rivalrous technology, in that a dose given to one person can not be given to another. Moreover, the immunized patient has more protection against the disease than the non-immunized unless a disease is eradicated, and if herd immunity is low, a great deal more protection. Thus a portion of the cost of immunization campaigns can be born by fees for immunization.

The examples of monsoon prediction and famine early warning seem clearly to be "public goods" requiring government financing.

All four of the examples above have resulted in new scientific knowledge. The vaccine development is related to new knowledge of the disease agents and the immune response. The monsoon research and indeed the famine early warning system research have lead to meteorological knowledge, as well as to understanding of the geographic regions involved.

The distinction between science, as the search for knowledge per se, and technology, as the search for practical tools that can be applied in the service of man, is an important and useful one. However, a specific research and development project can and often does contribute both scientific and technological knowledge. In theory, science is a public good, while technology need not be. Thus in theory, the development of the science that underlies the technology in each of the four examples should be publicly funded.

It might be argued that knowledge of parasitic disease is disproportionately of value to those in tropical countries where parasitic diseases are prevalent, but I have seen biomedical researchers state publicly that the understanding of these tropical diseases greatly advanced medical knowledge in general.

Ultimately, the distinction between science and technology is not all that useful in determining the appropriate sources of funding for a specific research and development effort, and those involved in such efforts are often adept at arguing the relevance of their proposed work to any potential funding agency.

Update on William Steiger

I have been interested in Steiger in part because several decades ago I used to work in the office which he now heads, and because he is so controversial an appointee of the Bush administration. The son of a former Republican Congressman, and himself a former education adviser to Tommy Thompson in the Wisconsin government, he was given a political appointment as the director of the Office of Global Health Affairs in HHS when Thompson was made Secretary of the Department. He was nominated to be Ambassador to Mozambique in January 2007, but the Senate has never confirmed that appointment.

I have posted the following concerning his activities over the years:

• The Next Hurrah: Even CDC Not Immune from Political Minders


• Steiger Said to Have Blocked Surgeon General's Global Health Report on Political Grounds


• Do You See a Pattern in Bush Appointments?


• Intellectual Property Watch ? US Seeks Review Of WHO Publication Policy After Report On US Trade Deals


• Daniel S. Greenberg on The Republican War on Science

• Lessons learned from the 1976 Swine Flu Program


• William R. Steiger


• Nations to Discuss Potential Flu Pandemic


• "Democrats Protest Limits on WHO Advisory Panels"


• Chief of HHS Office of Global Health Affairs


• A Very Bad Idea!

Last year the Washington Post reported:

A surgeon general's report in 2006 that called on Americans to help tackle global health problems has been kept from the public by a Bush political appointee without any background or expertise in medicine or public health, chiefly because the report did not promote the administration's policy accomplishments, according to current and former public health officials.

The report described the link between poverty and poor health, urged the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign policy, and called on corporations to help improve health conditions in the countries where they operate. A copy of the report was obtained by The Washington Post.

Three people directly involved in its preparation said its publication was blocked by William R. Steiger, a specialist in education and a scholar of Latin American history whose family has long ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney.

Steiger apparently drafted his own proposal for the report, which the WP has made available on the web. It appears to be OK for a politically motivated defense of U.S. programs. In terms of its public health balance, it would seem to focus too heavily on the Bush administration's bioterrorism initiatives, and too little on the preventable diseases that still cause unacceptably high levels of mortality and morbidity in developing nations.

The Wikipedia entry on William R. Steiger includes the following:

• May 22, 2008 - NRC Handelsblad (a Dutch newspaper) reports that the director of the United States Department of Health and Human Services's Office of Global Affairs, is blocking the acceptance of a resolution condemning the practice of female circumcision during this year's General Assembly of the WHO. The article states that, when it comes to international policy, Steiger has the power to overrule the Secretary, and that, rather remarkably, the United States are the only country in the WHO unwilling to accept this legally non-binding resolution, even though the official U.S. position is that it also strongly condemns the practice. When asked, Adrien Germain (member of the NYC-based lobby group IWHC) states that 'Steiger wants to change a clause mentioning 'reproductive health', an umbrella term supposedly implicitly referencing the condonation of practices such as abortion'.
• Steiger severely criticized a World Health Organization (WHO) report on nutrition as scientifically flawed. The report was also opposed by many industry groups, making Steiger's criticism appear politically motivated. The WHO was further upset because the Department of Health and Human Services said it would choose which U.S. scientists WHO could invite as expert advisers.

Steiger is now one of the members of the Board of Directors of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Culture and Development

Mapping Authority and Survival or Well Being.
Source: R. Inglehart, Modernization and Postmodernization

Culture: The totality of socially transmitted behavior patterns, arts, beliefs, institutions, and all other products of human work and thought.

According to this definition, culture is the primary determinant of social and economic development, and cultural change is the inescapable outcome of development. I suspect that this is true, but it is perhaps not a very useful fact.

It is important, however, to realize that social, political and economic institutions and policies are aspects culture and outcomes of historical processes that occured within a cultural contex. Note too that the actual operation of nominal aspects of such institutions and policies are also culture dependent.

Culture and Development Objectives

In some cases, the objectives of social and economic development seem to be common across cultures, and relatively culture free. Thus, one assumes that people wish to live long and healthy lives; those societies in which large numbers of children live in hunger and sickness and die young are not happy societies. Yet development that increases child survival rates and improves the health of children will bring with it other cultural impacts on the nature of the family, the community, and other institutions.

It seems likely that a nation's culture will influence the objectives that its people seek from social and economic development. Consider cultural attitudes toward democratic self governance. Democracy for Americans is not only an instrumental value, leading to better governance and more equitable and faster development, but an intrinsic value. For theocratic cultures, the institutionalization of theocratic governance is apparently of greater value than democratic expression of individual preferences.

Yet we know that with social and economic development, values change. Indeed, the death of an infant in the modern, healthy Western world is a greater tragedy to the family than was the death of an infant several hundred years ago when such deaths were common and indeed expected. So should development respond to the current cultural values of the nation's people, to their future values, or to some values conceived of as universal by donor agencies from abroad (which are often naively assumed to approximate the future values of the nation)?

Our notions of sovereignty have dominated, suggesting that such questions should be settled within a country itself by the processes nominally authorized by the people in the acceptance of their governance. Yet as we consider Darfur, or Rwanda, or Nazi Germany, there is an increasing global opinion that in some circumstances human rights trump states rights. What is not clear is how severe the human rights violations must be to warrant foreign intervention, nor what institutions may intervene.

Cultural Diversity and Cultural Heritage

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights suggests that human rights at least are a universally recognized, if intangible, aspect of mankind's cultural heritage. However, the more obvious aspect of cultural heritage is cultural diversity. Mankind is divided into thousands of ethnic groups, and it appears that each ethnic group has aspects of culture inherited from its specific historical evolution that are valued at least within the group.

One result of this situation is that nations with multicultural populations must deal with a diversity of values in selecting national objectives and in choosing means to achieve its chosen objectives. Even in America, which proudly proclaims it has been a melting pot accepting the cultural diversity of its nation of immigrants, there continue to be serious problems of ethnic conflict. In other societies those conflicts can reach the level of genocide.

I value the diversity of cultural expression -- the chance to chose between Mexican and Chinese food, or to listen to salsa, jazz or classical music according to my mood and taste at the time. But I could live happily in a simpler, more uniform society. In that sense, I don't find cultural diversity a dominant value.

Much more important, I value the basic human right of the members of all ethnic groups to keep alive and evolving those aspects of their narrow cultural heritage which they themselves value and chose. Thus the promotion of cultural diversity and the diversity of cultural expression is instrumental in protecting a value which I do find fundamental.

Yet respect for the right to preserve cultural diversity can conflict with other rights and with the need to make changes in practice to achieve developmental objectives. In some cases the choice is clear. Thus most people will accept changes in personal and family hygiene practice, abandoning long established cultural norms, if they can be shown to have health benefits.

At the other extreme, efforts to preserve expression of cultural heritage can be very controversial. The United States Government, influenced by the American creative industries, was strongly opposed to the UNESCO Convention on the Diversity of Cultural Expression -- a Convention that was strongly backed by the French and Canadian governments (apparently seeking to protect their indigenous cultures, especially the Francophone cultural expression) from a globalizing media industry dominated by American firms.

Culture and the Means of Development

We normally consider the key means of social and economic development to be investment in human resources (education and health especially), strengthening key institutions, and making and implmenting appropriate policies.

Schooling and other educational services are obviously not culturally neutral, even in the specific factual content they seek to impart. The American "culture wars" over such things as the teaching of evolution or creationism illustrate the fact. However, the impact is much broader than simply a few questions of factual content; changing the skills with which people face the world, changing their understanding of cause and effect in many areas, and indeed motivating changes in behavior may have profound cultural consequences.

Development agencies seek to do cultural analysis (often called social, political and/or institutional analysis) to determine which modifications of institutions and policies are feasible and which not, and estimating the practicality of alternative means of effecting policy and institutional change.

Increasingly, development agencies seek to use participatory planning processes in which the stakeholders of development efforts themselves are involved in their planning, affectively involving them in value decisions, tapping their understanding of their own culture, and enlisting their perception of their own ownership of the projects.

How then are development agencies to combine the expertise of professional knowledge workers (including social scientists, public health officials, educators, etc.) with the inputs of legitimate authorities such as government officials and donor bureaucrats and with the inputs of local communities of regular citizens? (Remember the old saying about how porcupines make love -- very, very carefully.)

It is also increasingly recognized that efforts to strengthen the production of local cultural expression -- including crafts, theater, music, and art -- can be effective elements in social and economic development strategy. The efforts include promotion of cultural tourism and development of exports based on craft industries.

Allowing ethnic groups to share expressions of their cultures with each other may help to bridge ethnic divides. Encouraging authentic cultural expression satisfies psychological and cultural needs. And I would accept that exposing people to great art, music, drama and design not only enriches their lives, but is likely to contribute to the formation of attitudes conducive to social and economic development.

Concluding Comment

"Culture and Development" is often used as a synecdoche. Indeed, quite limited efforts relating to commercialization or to the promotion of sport are termed "culture and development projects." If thinking about culture in a development context leads to successful projects of those kinds, well and good.

The more important approach to "Culture and Development" is to recognize that a broad understanding of culture is critical for success in development, and that development itself must be seen as a cultural activity, rooted in the culture which it seeks to change in order to achieve culturally defined objectives.

A respect for universal human rights, in this context, leads one to emphasize the rights of the development stakeholders to participate in the planning of those development efforts as well as in their implementation.

Some links that might be of interest are:

• The Development Gateway Culture and Development Community
• The UNESCO Culture Program
• UNESCO: Culture and Development
  

And a couple of my previous postings:

• Questioning UNESCO's Efforts on Culture and Development
• Editorial: Nine Wonders of Intangible Heritage

Attention

My friend Julianne suggested Wray Herbert's recent posting on psychological research on attention on his blog, We're Only Human.

The topic is interesting, but I fear it may be another of those situations in which different things are lumped under the same name. Is the attention paid by a cat to motion within a mouse hole the same as the attention paid by a chess grand master to a championship chess game, or the attention paid by a consulting physician to the signs that potential discriminate among different diseases that present with similar syndromes? Are Attention Deficit Disorder and "flow" poles on the same continuum?

Still, the ability of an Einstein to intuit which problems are potentially fruitful and then to attend to them with the depth and doggedness that he apparently excelled are prototypical examples of abilities that would help all those who seek to apply knowledge to development.

In any case, We're Only Human seems a worthwhile blog, and I will return there.

Foreign Aid in the Election

Both candidates have said that they want to continue the Bush administration initiative on AIDS and Malaria, and that they want to increase foreign aid to reduce poverty. That is good news. Soft diplomacy must be increased, and U.S. diplomacy should more fully implement the altruism of the American people as well as their assumption of the responsibility incumbent upon us due to our wealth and power. We will regain the respect of the world by acting responsibly.

It is recommended that there be a major reorganization of the foreign aid bureaucracy. I think that is a good idea. The responsibility is spread over too many agencies, and there is no single critical mass of expertise to program and manage the portfolio well. I would also like to see less implemented by the military. And perhaps it is time to elevate the director of foreign aid to the level that it held during the Marshall Plan or the Kennedy administration.

Montgomery Campus Innovation Center to Open

According to the Washington Post Montgomery County Extra today:

The Germantown Innovation Center, on the upper county campus of Montgomery College, is to take in its first tenants in the coming weeks, with a grand opening for the 32,000-square-foot business incubator set for Oct. 20

The $6.65 million county project, funded with state assistance, is intended to host 25 to 35 start-up companies, with county economic development officials providing business and technical support. About one-third of the companies should be biotechnology based, and half should be technology firms.

Also planned are an $85 million Bioscience Education Center, with classrooms and state-of-the-art laboratories for students, and a 40-acre Science and Technology Business Park, intended to create a hub of biotech businesses in a place where students can learn from them.....

The county approached the college about the business park in 2001. A previous county-sponsored project, the Shady Grove Life Science Park, was thriving, and officials said they thought Montgomery would benefit from another bioscience and technology park.

The business park is expected ultimately to create nearly 4,000 full-time jobs.

About 100 students a year go through the Montgomery College biotechnology program, and enrollment is expected to more than triple as the program expands to meet the growing demand for biotech expertise in our workforce.

The Germantown campus also has partnered with the University of Maryland at College Park, which has agreed to relocate its Montgomery-based biosciences degree program from the Universities at Shady Grove to the proposed education center in Germantown. Students who completed an associate's degree in biotechnology at Germantown would be able to complete a University of Maryland at College Park bachelor's degree on the Germantown campus......

The college is working with five Montgomery high schools to develop biotech academies, and with the help of a $600,000 National Science Foundation grant, it is also working with middle school teachers to promote bioscience education and careers.

Comment: This is so good an approach that it should serve as a model for other regions and other countries. It ties education from junior high school, high school, two-year college, and university to serve the complete manpower needs of an evolving and expanding high technology industry.

In the case of Montgomery County, bioscience industries are already well under way, and there are nearby government research centers such as the National Institutes of Health and the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

There is an active industrial development office of local government, and hundreds of Post Docs working in the local area. Indeed, the county runs an annual program to encourage these scientists to stay and work locally when their training ends. There are already a number of technology incubators.

Congratulations to all involved! JAD

Human Rights in China

Beijing, 06 Aug 2008
Source: James Fallows' Blog

On the occasion of the Olympics, it is important to review China's human rights record:

China Human Rights Report 2007

This paper argues that ever since the Chinese communist regime was established, China’s record has shown that it is one of the most notorious countries violating human rights. China is burdened with more human rights violations and civilian deaths than any other country in history. In spite of this it has so far been able to escape international punishment. This is in large part because many countries, such as several Western powers, choose to ignore China’s human rights issue for the consideration of their own national interests.

Is China’s Human Rights agenda making progress ahead of the Olympics?

( Amnesty International , 2008)
In the run-up to the 2008 Olympics, this paper assesses progress made by the Chinese authorities to improve human rights in line with their own commitments made in 2001 when the International Olympic,,,,

Comment: As I understand the history, Avery Brundage who was the President of the U.S. Olympic Committee at the time of the 1936 Olympics in Nazi Germany not only refused to support a boycott of the games, but was an apologist for the Nazi regime. That should prove a warning.

The news is full now of Chinese restrictions on the freedom of the press to cover events around the Olympics and to access the Internet, restrictions on those who might protest Chinese foreign policy with respect to Sudan and Darfur, problems caused by Chinese international economic and trade policies, Chinese mistreatment of poor people who got in the way of preparations for the games, and air pollution in Beijing.

I will not watch the Olympics. If the media don't get the audience that they expect for these games, perhaps they will put pressure on the International Olympic Committee to choose better locales for future games. JAD

Appropriate Technology as a Public Good

I begin with a summary of the ideas of various kinds of goods derived from the concepts of rivalry and excludability.

Source of table: Legal Theory Lexicon

According to the online Concise Encyclopedia of Economics:

Public goods have two distinct aspects—"nonexcludability" and "nonrivalrous consumption." Nonexcludability means that nonpayers cannot be excluded from the benefits of the good or service. If an entrepreneur stages a fireworks show, for example, people can watch the show from their windows or backyards. Because the entrepreneur cannot charge a fee for consumption, the fireworks show may go unproduced, even if demand for the show is strong.

The fireworks example illustrates the "free-rider" problem. Even if the fireworks show is worth ten dollars to each person, no one will pay ten dollars to the entrepreneur. Each person will seek to "free-ride" by allowing others to pay for the show, and then watch for free from his or her backyard. If the free-rider problem cannot be solved, valuable goods and services, ones that people want and otherwise would be willing to pay for, will remain unproduced.

The second aspect of public goods is what economists call nonrivalrous consumption. Assume the entrepreneur manages to exclude noncontributors from watching the show (perhaps one can see the show only from a private field). A price will be charged for entrance to the field, and people who are unwilling to pay this price will be excluded. If the field is large enough, however, exclusion is inefficient because even nonpayers could watch the show without increasing the show's cost or diminishing anyone else's enjoyment. That is nonrivalrous competition to watch the show.

Inge Kaul wrote in Le Monde diplomatique:

What is a public good? This question can best be answered by looking at the counterpart, a private good. Private goods are typically traded in markets. Buyers and sellers meet through the price mechanism. If they agree on a price, the ownership or use of the good (or service) can be transferred. Thus private goods tend to be excludable. They have clearly identified owners; and they tend to be rival. For example, others cannot enjoy a piece of cake, once consumed.

In the current edition of The Economist one finds:

It is not simply that three-quarters of those living on less than $2 a day still depend in some way on commonly held resources. The concept of the commons is also spreading to new areas. Their essential feature is that they share one characteristic with private property and one with public goods. Like public goods, they are not “excludable”: the common resource is too extensive to keep people out very easily. But they are also “subtractable” (or “rivalrous”), like private property: if one person uses them, another’s access is diminished. (With a classic public good, such as street lighting, one person’s usage does not affect anyone else.) Many things other than rainforests or drylands share these attributes.

With respect to the fourth category, Manfred W. Fischer wrote:

Engineering knowledge may be perceived and even deliberately created as a non-rivalrous, partially excludable good.

Schumacher's Small is Beautiful
the bible of the AT movement

Appropriate Technololgy

Wikipedia provides the following:

Appropriate technology (AT) is technology that is designed with special consideration to the environmental, ethical, cultural, social and economical aspects of the community it is intended for. With these goals in mind, AT typically requires fewer resources, is easier to maintain, has a lower overall cost and less of an impact on the environment compared to industrialized practices. In developing nations, the term is usually used to describe simple technologies suitable for use in developing nations or less developed rural areas of industrialized nations. This form of appropriate technology usually prefers labor-intensive solutions over capital-intensive ones, although labor-saving devices are also used where this does not mean high capital or maintenance cost.

The Appropriate Technology movement generally focused on technologies that would be widely used by poor people, such as agricultural practices, fuel efficient cook stoves, simple health technologies or pedal operated mechanical devices. Appropriate technologies in this sense are often non-rivalrous, in that they are primarily a form of knowledge which can be applied by people with simple, readily available tools and materials. The intent of the movement was that the technology would be copyable, and thus not excludable.

Thus we can see that much of the appropriate technology for poor people in developing nations is best regarded as a public good.

Implications

It occurs to me that the public goods nature of this kind of appropriate technology suggests some problems:

1. Modern society has found that invention is most efficient when institutionalized in specialized laboratories staffed by professional experts. Yet, for public goods such laboratories must be supported by governments. Unfortunately, the governments of those countries most in need of appropriate technologies to be used by and serve their poor are generally not adept at the funding of research, and have little political incentive to allocate their scarce R&D resources to the invention of technology to serve the poor.
2. The poor themselves can be a powerful source of invention and technological innovation, so that the process can be "viral". For there to be widespread invention by the poor themselves, a climate needs to be propitious for such inventions. It seems to me that few countries seek to develop such climates. Thus the poor people themselves might be educated to understand technology and to have a technologically entrepreneurial attitude toward invention. They should also be able to profit from their inventions. and perhaps to obtain social as well as economic benefits from their work. In an ideal world, there should be resources made available to those seeking to develop an innovative technology to allow them to continue on their work. Again, few governments see the creation of these conditions as within their priorities.
3. The spread of an appropriate technology is a process which also takes resources. They can be simple. For example, county fairs in the rural United States were sites in which farm inventions were displayed and the technology disseminated to others in the county. I would say American fast-food restaurant franchisers (McDonald's, Starbucks), recognizing that services for the spread of such technologies can be rivalrous and excludable, are successful in disseminating appropriate technology to large numbers of entrepreneurs, paying the costs of the dissemination using a business model that appropriates some of the benefits from the innovation for the parent firm to pay those costs. There are of course other models, but the creation of such systems for technology diffusion is as important as that for the promotion of invention, albeit one even less recognized by developing nation governments. It is also an area in which social innovators should be more active than they are, inventing new and better institutional mechanisms for the viral dissemination of technologies appropriate to the poor.

A Historical Note

Franklin's lightning rod
I am struck by the role of Benjamin Franklin (lightning rod, bifocals, Franklin stove) and Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford (Rumford fireplace, Rumford stove, wax candle, coffee percolator, double boiler) in inventing and effectively disseminating appropriate technologies. Both apparently felt a real need to advance science, but also felt that their scientific efforts should yield simple technologies of wide utility. There seems to have been something in the North American colonial culture that led to the creation and empowerment of two such men (from a total population of only three million). That inventive spirit lived on in the United States in the lives of Eli Whitney, Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers, Samuel Morse, and Henry Ford to name only the most famous. Indeed, even Abraham Lincoln held a U.S. patent; Henry David Thoreau invented a lead pencil. It would be interesting to see what historians and social scientists can tell us about the conditions in North America that were so conducive to the invention and dissemination of appropriate technologies and how those conditions might be replicated or approximated in poor countries today.

Conclusion

I strongly recommend that developing nations and donor agencies reemphasize the creation of conditions that are conducive to the creation and dissemination of simple technologies that can be used sustainablly by the poor to improve their lives. The effort should include both increased financing of research and dissemination of these technologies as public goods, and the development of policies and improvement of institutions that encourage viral processes for invention and spread of such technologies.

International Day of the World's Indigenous People

The International Day of the World's Indigenous People is celebrated by the United Nations system on August 9th.

Check out the website for the day's events.

United Nations

• International Day of the World's Indigenous People
• Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues

Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights

• Indigenous Peoples
• Voluntary Fund for Indigenous Populations

Business Push Benefits Poor

"The current issue of Development Outreach magazine showcases how forward-looking companies are reaching out to the four billion or so people who make do with incomes of less than $5 a day.

"The magazine captures the experiences of companies engaging with the poor, presenting a dozen case studies, including Unilever's Project Shakti network of women entrepreneurs, CEMEX's Patrimonio Hoy initiative, which provides housing to low-income communities in Mexico, and Nestlé’s Milk District model."

Comment: I keep suggesting to young people seeking careers that will help to alleviate poverty in the developing world that the best opportunities over the next decades might well be in the private sector. JAD

"The China trade toll: Widespread wage suppression, 2 million jobs lost in the U.S."

Source: "The China trade toll: Widespread wage suppression, 2 million jobs lost in the U.S." by Robert E. Scott, Economic Policy Institute Briefing Paper #219, July 30, 2008.

"The growth of U.S. trade with China since China entered the World Trade Organization in 2001 has had a devastating effect on U.S. workers and the domestic economy. Between 2001 and 2007 2.3 million jobs were lost or displaced, including 366,000 in 2007 alone. New demographic research shows that, even when re-employed in non-traded industries, the 2.3 million workers displaced by the increase in China trade deficits in this period have lost an average $8,146 per worker/year. In 2007, these losses totalled $19.4 billion."

The article continues to analyze the indirect effects of the trade with China on the U.S. Economy, the trade deficit, and the impact of China's entry into the World Trade Organization.

A Lesson from the Inquisition

I have been reading Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors by James Reston, Jr. Among other aspects of Spanish history at the end of the 15th century, it discusses the Spanish Inquisition. Notably, there was a manual for the inquisitors, which limited the use of torture and prohibited the spilling of blood (but not killing the condemned). The book makes clear that the inquisitors were not seeking information so much as confessions (where the right lies were more useful than the wrong truth) and implications of others as heretics. It also makes the reasonable case that the torture that was pervasive in the Inquisition was motivated largely by venal motives, such as sadism, ethnic prejudice and greed (for the worldly goods of those condemned).

Perhaps we should review that experience and reconsider the Bush administration's policies on the use of coercive means of interrogation.

"Hanny's Voorwerp" -- Success for Online Astronomy

The green object is the
newly discovered astronomical object.

Source: "Teacher finds new cosmic object" by Paul Rincon, BBC News, 5 August 2008.

"Hanny's Voorwerp" is a new celestial object discovered by Hanny Van Arkel, a 25 year old Dutch schoolteacher. Ms Van Arkel, who apparently has no background in astronomy, brought this object to the attention of the scientific community while participating in the Galexy Zoo project;

Galaxy Zoo enlists the aid of large numbers of amateurs by posting images obtained from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) which is systematically scanning a portion of the sky thought to include one million (of 100 to 1000) galaxies. The amateurs are principally asked to classify the galaxies by shape, but post truly unusual objects, such as that found by Ms. Van Ackel, to a discussion forum. Human shape recognition works faster and more accurately that any automatic device that is now possible, and without the help of the amateurs the analysis of the data would oberwhelm the community of professional astronomers. The website has already been used to collect millions of classifications, and its organizers are currently preparing the first science papers for submission to peer-reviewed journals. Thus the Internet has been used to successfully create an effective scientific instrument.

Researchers think this green blob got its energy from light emitted by a quasar (a powerful radiation source powered by a supermassive black hole) that has since gone dim.

They think the quasar was hosted in a nearby spiral galaxy called IC 2497. It was so bright that, if the quasar was still active, it would be visible from Earth with binoculars.

However, because of the distance between the galaxy and the Voorwerp, light from the quasar would have taken tens of thousands of years to reach the gaseous blob.

This is why the Voorwerp is still bright despite the quasar having now shut off.

Musing: The President Versus The Presidency

I have read that the British monarch uses the "royal we" because she speaks for herself and for the institution of the monarchy. In the United States we too can distinguish between the man who serves as President and the presidency during his term of office.

From time to time historians are polled for their opinions as to the greatest presidents. It seems to me that the question often confounds the quality of the man with the quality of the presidency during his term.

The normal answers for the best presidents -- Washington, Lincoln and FDR -- recognize men who successfully lead the nation during periods of great difficulty. That would seem to attest to the greatness of the presidency. However, each of these men overcame great difficulties during their lives prior to assuming the office of president, and each was the subject of great respect from their associates. They may also have been great men.

Think, however, about Jimmy Carter. I would hold that he is a great man, devoted and successful in doing good in the world, who rose from humble beginnings and has the world's respect. On the other hand, his one term as president does not seem to have been marked either by great accomplishments nor by great challenges; his was not a great presidency.

Bill Clinton might be an example someone whose presidency was better than his personal character. There is a supposed Chinese curse "may you live in interesting times". Fortunately, the United States enjoyed a period with few major challenges during his presidency, The Cold War was over and the new challenges of China and Russia had not yet fulminated; the United States was enjoying the peace dividend. While he left the United States in better shape than he found it, compare that with getting us through the Depression and World War II.

Science Earmarks Alive and Living in California (and Mississippi)!

A costly legacy. Congress approved $4.5 billion this year for research earmarks, continuing a 30-year upward trend that began with Tufts.
SOURCE: AAAS, 2008 APPROPRIATIONS via Science magazine.

Agriculture Technologies to Reduce Poverty

This table shows why Africa and rural India are poor, and why hunger is rampant and the current high prices of grains on world markets are going to be so dangerous for Africa and India.

The National Academy of Sciences has just published a report titled Emerging Technologies to Benefit Farmers in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. It offers ideas for 60 technologies that could help improve the situation!

Baseball as a Metaphor for Index Construction

Yesterday's TV program, 60 Minutes, had a segment on Bill James, the statistical guru for the Boston Red Sox. Baseball fans are often great fans of baseball statistics, and are able to cite batting averages of lots of players from years past and recited records and record holders. As I understand Mr. James' history, he has developed new measures that are useful in predicting individual player's contributions to team success and has introduced the use of statistics based on those measures in Front Office decision making.

For example, for decades fans have kept track of the numbers of games won and lost per season by pitchers, and considered the best pitchers to be those who were counted to have won the most games. It seems obvious that winning baseball games depends on the performance of the whole team and not just the pitcher, and the pitcher's record will also depend to some degree on the overall strength of the pitching staff and management decisions on who to play, when. Mr. James has an alternative view:

As for pitching, he has said that won-loss records do not tell how good or how bad a pitcher is. "The most accurate thing is to focus on the strikeouts, the walks, the home runs allowed. And to evaluate the pitcher on that level," James explains.

Let me suggest that the right index depends on the use of the information. For most fans it may suffice to know that a pitcher won more than 20 games in each of so many seasons to justify the opinion that that is a very good pitcher. Assuming the fan does not bet the house on the outcome of games that the pitcher starts, that relatively available and memorable statistic is enough. On the other hand, for the baseball executive seeking to allocate his financial resources to hire a team that would win the most games and have a chance to win the World Series, detailed analysis of complex data to understand the potential contribution of various pitchers to the team success is very important, and worth considerable time and money. The more complex statistics that indicate in detail how well the pitcher performs are more than justified.

In general, the more that depends on the decision to be made, the more can be spent obtaining and analyzing information on which to base the decision. Mr. James is quite right in suggesting that in modern baseball, which is big business, depending on indices because of their historical importance is costly, and it pays to figure out exactly what information is needed and then if necessary constructing new indices to better approximate that information.

The interview ended with the following exchange:

"There's something in baseball that you really can't quantify. And that is, the mix of guys at a given moment, there's some magic or whatever, that goes on. That all the James-ian theory in the world will never find the answer to," Safer says.

"It's mostly intangible," James says. "I mean, I don't understand most of it. I don't think that anybody in the Red Sox would tell you that we have that magic stuff figured out. But there are people here who understand that part of the equation a lot better than I do."

This seems to me to be a real challenge. I agree a baseball team is more than the sum of the skills of the individual players, but it seems to me that one should be able to develop indicators of "fit". If marriage bureaus can do matchmaking using quantitative techniques, then why should a baseball team not be able to develop indices to measure the compatibility of team members.

I would think one could develop quantitative information, for example from individual and organizational psychology, that would complement the performance statistics, and be used in conjunction with scouting reports and success in tryouts to improve final decisions on player selection.

Generalizing, if you can formulate the hypothesis that dimensions that you are not currently measuring influence the outcomes you seek to predict, then try to figure out whether indices can be found to measure those dimensions. As baseball executives should not limit their thinking to traditional baseball statistics, so in general analysts should not limit their search for indices and data to that which has commonly been used in the past.

Military Social Science Funding

According to today's Washington Post:

The Pentagon's $50 million Minerva Research Initiative, named after the Roman goddess of wisdom and warriors, will fund social science research deemed crucial to national security. Initial proposals were due July 25, and the first grants are expected to be awarded by year's end.

But the Network of Concerned Anthropologists, which includes professors from American and George Mason universities, said dependence on Pentagon funding could make universities an "instrument rather than a critic of war-making."

In a May 28 letter to federal officials, the American Anthropological Association said that it was of "paramount importance . . . to study the roots of terrorism and other forms of violence" but that its members are "deeply concerned that funding such research through the Pentagon may pose a potential conflict of interest."

Here is a Wired Blog post with more information.

Comment: I lived and worked in Chile in the 1960's as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Ford Foundation Consultant, and am more aware than most Americans of the disaster that was the DoD-run Camelot program (to study the sources of political unrest and revolution in developing nations). In my years 20 years in science policy and research management in USAID I was very aware of the draconian limits placed by the Congress on social science research to prevent a recurrence of the Camelot type disaster.

I agree that social science research is hugely important. I also think that the idea of having social science experts (with relevant cultural experience and knowledge) advice our forces in Iraq and Afghanistan is important, both at the strategic and at the tactical level. Certainly the military needs help to understand how to use such advice, but I would see American social science as having a responsibility to offer such advisory services.

However, I am concerned about the allocation of funds among U.S. Government funding agencies for social science research relating to foreign policy. A $50 million initiative is pretty small when compared to the DoD budget, but it is a lot compared to the total of U.S. social science research funding available for international work. I would like to see more social science funding in agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the State Department, and the U.S. Agency for International Development with this international orientation--especially NSF. I think investigator initiated research in this field is especially valuable. JAD

The HIV/AIDS Epidemic Rages Slowly!

Source: "AIDS Prevention Having an Effect: New Cases Have Stabilized Since 1998, CDC Reports in Update on Epidemic," David Brown, The Washington Post, August 3, 2008.

Citing the new incidence estimate of HIV infections (ranging between 55,000 and 58,500), the article states:

"Over 95 percent of people living with HIV are not transmitting to someone else in a given year," said David R. Holtgrave, an expert on AIDS prevention at the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. "What that says is the transmission rate has been kept very low by prevention efforts."

The CDC reports:

At the end of 2003, an estimated 1,039,000 to 1,185,000 persons in the United States were living with HIV/AIDS, with 24%-27% undiagnosed and unaware of their HIV

These figures, with the new estimates of incidence, suggest that are about five new infections per 100 people with HIV per year. We know that there is a period of eight to eleven years on the average between infection with HIV and the appearance of symptoms. It seems that the average age of infection is about 30, and there was a recent story that life expectancy for an HIV infected person is about 70 years. Thus the average person has about 40 years after infection in which to transmit the infection to others.

Combining these figures, as a rough estimate, it appears that on the average an infected person will infect two others in their lifetime. This is the picture of an epidemic out of control! It fools us for two reasons:

• We are used to communicable diseases that are short lived, with rapid transmission, and so incidence that rises very rapidly; the HIV/AIDS epidemic has people living with the infection and infecting others slowly over a long period, and thus prevalence rises slowly.
• The contagion is not evenly distributed over the whole population, but is concentrated in certain subpopulations. As we know, the epidemic is much worse among gay men and blacks than among women and whites.
  

The article also remarks:

Statistics compiled by the Kaiser Family Foundation show that 4 percent of the $23 billion the U.S. government is spending this year on all HIV-AIDS activities (including research, medical care and overseas programs) goes toward prevention.

According to a paper published last year in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, in inflation-adjusted dollars, the CDC's budget for AIDS prevention in 2006 was only 5 percent higher than it was in 1990.

Thus the prevention expenditures are about one billion dollars per year. Compare that with the $57 billion that the government has spent to guard against bioterrorism since 2001(on the basis of one attack that killed 5 and made 17 others sick).

If the Congress and the next administration don't spend more on AIDS prevention, we will see a continuing, growing problem. The prevention expenditures should be allocated where they will prevent the most disease, and not limited by false morality of our politicians.

Check out the:

• CDC website on the new incidence estimates
• CDC website on HIV/AIDS statistics

Did the U.S. Government Overreact to the Anthrax Attack?

According to the Seattle Times:

Since anthrax-laced letters were sent to members of Congress and news organizations in late 2001, almost $50 billion in federal money has been spent to build laboratories, develop vaccines and stockpile drugs.

For example, an experimental vaccine Ivins spent years working on moved from the laboratory to a proposed billion-dollar federal contract after the attacks, which killed five people.

Ivins helped invent an anthrax vaccine that was scheduled to be added to the nation's vaccine stockpile through an $877 million contract awarded in 2004, but the deal collapsed two years later.

Similarly, the Associated Press reports:

The bioterrorism attacks forced the closing of two major mail processing plants and contaminated 21 other postal facilities. The Postal Service also had to deal with more than 17,000 hoaxes that disrupted operations nationwide.

Today, more than 1,000 biological detectors are sniffing mail for dangerous contamination at postal centers and other government offices across the country......

More than a million containers of mail to Congress, the White House and other federal agencies have been irradiated to kill potential contamination at a cost of $74.7 million so far. Each container weighs 15 to 20 pounds.......

The post office deployed a fleet of biodetection systems at mail processing locations at a cost of more than $800 million. The annual operating cost has been estimated at more than $100 million.

The anthrax attack killed five people and made 17 more people sick. Compare those figures with those from a story from the New York Times:

The United States has significantly underreported the number of new H.I.V. infections occurring nationally each year, with a study released here on Saturday showing that the annual infection rate is 40 percent higher than previously estimated.

The study, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, found that 56,300 people became newly infected with H.I.V in 2006, compared with the 40,000 figure the agency has cited as the recent annual incidence of the disease.

The question is, would more people be alive and more people be healthy had the Government spent less money protecting against a hypothetical threat from bioterrorism, and more money protecting against real and present dangers from other causes such as HIV/AIDS?

Of course, some good has been done by the billions of dollars spent on research and development of preventive and curative technology for communicable disease under the auspices of the bioterrorism initiative. But government is supposed to make rational decisions on priorities, not spend billions on the basis of irrational fears.

Economics of the Commons

The Economist this week has a tutorial on the economics of the Ccmmons. Garrett Hardin several decades ago showed how unregulated commons were subject to "tragedies" of resource depletion. It has since become clear that many traditional societies have evolved cultural means of regulation of use of common resources. In some cases similar means have been enacted in law for the sustainable development and management of environmental commons.

In the past several years, observers have noted that the ideas of the commons can be applied quite widely, and there has been especially significant efforts to apply those ideas to cyberspace.

There is now a Digital Library of the Commons which makes information on such thinking widely available. How appropriate.

Do Health Problems Drive Cultural Changes Relating to Civil Society?

The Economist this week has an article that suggests that communities that live in conditions in which communicable diseases are a major threat are likely to develop cultural traits that keep people from gathering frequently in large groups.

Their hypothesis is that in places where disease is rampant, it behoves groups not to mix with one another more than is strictly necessary, in order to reduce the risk of contagion. They therefore predict that patterns of behaviour which promote group exclusivity will be stronger in disease-ridden areas. Since religious differences are certainly in that category, they specifically predict that the number of different religions in a place will vary with the disease load. Which is, as they report in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, the case.....

The two researchers also looked at anthropological data on how much people in “traditional” (ie, non-urban) societies move around in different parts of the world. They found that in more religiously diverse (and more disease-ridden) places people move shorter distances than in healthier, religiously monotonous societies. The implication is that religious diversity causes people to keep themselves to themselves, and thus makes it harder for them to catch germs from infidels.

Of course, correlation is not causation. But religion is not the only cultural phenomenon that stops groups of people from mixing. Language has the same effect, and in another, as yet unpublished study Mr Fincher and Dr Thornhill found a similar relationship there too. Moreover, their search of the literature turned up work which suggests that xenophobia is linked psychologically with fear of disease (the dirty foreigner…). Perhaps, then, the underlying reason why there is so much hostility between ethnic groups is nothing to do with the groups themselves, but instead with the diseases they may bring.

Comment: I suppose that, if the hypothesis is true, it ought to have a corollary. Over the course of history many diseases have spread from their original point of origin to other regions, most dramatically during the Columbian Exchange. So one might expect there have been cultural changes that fragmented social groups during history, and that those changes might have occurred more rapidly during periods of introduction of new diseases. On the other hand, the introduction of modern public health practices has decreased the threats of communicable diseases, and so the more fully the public health practices have penetrated a society, the less pressure there might be to keep people apart. Of course, at the same time that modern public health measures are being disseminated, so too are populations growing and so too is growing urbanization increasing contact rates. It will be interesting to see how this works out, and what implications one can draw for the growth of civil society. JAD

Offshoring Is Transforming U.S. Engineering

Another new report from the National Academies.

Summary:

Offshoring of engineering activities has increased significantly in recent years across a range of industries, and will continue to expand in scale and sophistication, according to a new workshop summary from the National Academy of Engineering. The impact of offshoring has been mixed so far, with some U.S.-based companies benefiting while some individual U.S. engineers have lost their jobs or experienced slower salary growth, says the report.

Source for the figure: "Innovators without Borders"
by Kevin Dehoff and Vikas Sehgal
Strategy + Business

U.S. Participation in International Fusion Research Needs Stable Funding

There is a new report from the National Academies.

Summary:

To date, U.S. plans for participation in the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) project have been effective and well thought out, says a new National Research Council report. However, funding uncertainties cast doubt on U.S. commitment to this international collaboration. Stable U.S. funding is needed to effectively plan for participation in ITER, to benefit from coming fusion energy research, and to take part in future international scientific collaborations.

Comment: I am not an expert on this technology, but I know enough to believe that controlled fusion is the best long-term option for really abundant electrical power, and thus a hydrogen economy and large scale water desalinization. If ITER is as important as it seems, it should be given priority by the Congress, and it should be granted reliable financing. JAD

Connectivity via Instant Messaging

The Washington Post today has an article by Peter Whoriskey based largely on a recent study done by two scientists at Microsoft Research. Here are key excerpts:

With records of 30 billion electronic conversations among 180 million people from around the world, researchers have concluded that any two people on average are distanced by just 6.6 degrees of separation, meaning that they could be linked by a string of seven or fewer acquaintances.

The database covered all of the Microsoft Messenger instant-messaging network in June 2006, or roughly half the world's instant-messaging traffic at that time, researchers said......

For the purposes of their experiment, two people were considered to be acquaintances if they had sent one another a text message. The researchers looked at the minimum chain lengths it would take to connect 180 billion different pairs of users in the database. They found that the average length was 6.6 steps and that 78 percent of the pairs could be connected in seven hops or less.

Some pairs, however, were separated by as many as 29 hops.

The study in question is "Planetary-Scale Views on a Large Instant-Messaging Network" by Jure Leskovec and Eric Horvitz. I would note that the 180 million people who used microsoft instant messaging in that one month period were self selected from a world population of more than 6 billion people. They were very disproportionately drawn from people between 15 and 35 years of age, and from relatively high income communities. They are thus likely to be the most wired people on the earth. I would assume that the average degree of separation among the six billion people not included in the study would be much higher. (Indeed the Washington Post had a recent article about a tribe in the Amazon basin that was newly discovered and which was portrayed as one of several that are totally unconnected from modern society.)

I am not criticizing the original report of the research study, and indeed the study itself is amazingly data and computation intensive, and its report provides visual aids which beautifully summarize the relations discovered in the mass of data. I learned a lot about the people who use Microsoft Instant Messaging and how they use it.

I would criticize the report in The Washington Post, which left me with an impression that is not substantiated by the research it purports to summarize.
Some of the interesting things that were not noted might include:

• Of some 240 million IM accounts about 180 million sent messages in a one month period.
• Those 180 million people had about 30 billion conversations with about seven messages per conversation on the average. That is an average of more than 165 conversations per person, or 5.5 per day.
• The distributions of number of conversation partners and number of conversations were very "long tailed", with a very few people have very large numbers of partners and conversations.
• Younger people has more but shorter conversations; older people had fewer but longer conversations on average.
• Women messaged other women about as much as men messaged other men, but cross gender messaging was much more common than either woman to woman or man to man messaging.
• The United States appears relatively strongly connected by instant messaging to other nations; conversations betweenSaudi Arabia and other Arab nations tend to be longer than those among other nations.
  

Pharmaceutical Industry Value Chain

"The academics and theoreticians have helped us by building useful value-network models in specific industries, illustrating how value is created through knowledge exchanges between stakeholders, in this case - a pharmaceutical company."

Source: Verna Allee, "Understanding Value Networks" via Ecosystema

Check out Christian Sarkar's blog with lots on innovation!

U.S. jobless rate at four-year high

According to BBC News:

The US unemployment rate climbed to 5.7% in July official figures show, its highest in more than four years.

Firms cut workers for a seventh month in a row, but the losses were fewer than analysts had been expecting.

Comment: There seems to be a widespread belief that globalization is resulting in the export of U.S. jobs. I think the whole truth is that globalization is also allowing the creation of new jobs in the United States. The United States can and should enjoy full employment even with globalization, and in fact the health of the global economy is important for the health of the U.S. economy. When, as now, unemployment is going up, it can be attributed to the slowdown in the U.S. economy, which in this case is due to the failure of various economic policies of the Bush administration.

In the coming election we have the choice between a Republican running on a platform of continuing the policies of the Bush administration who has several times stated he does not understand economics very well, and a Democrat who spent a dozen years on the faculty of a law school (Chicago) that pioneered in economic analysis of impacts of laws. The choice is clear! JAD

Improving Peer Review

An article by Valen Johnson in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences titled "Statistical analysis of the National Institutes of Health peer review system" suggests that improvements in analysis of peer reviews could improve the allocation of resources among research proposals to the NIH.

Abstract:

A statistical model is proposed for the analysis of peer-review ratings of R01 grant applications submitted to the National Institutes of Health. Innovations of this model include parameters that reflect differences in reviewer scoring patterns, a mechanism to account for the transfer of information from an application’s preliminary ratings and group discussion to final ratings provided by all panel members and posterior estimates of the uncertainty associated with proposal ratings. Application of this model to recent R01 rating data suggests that statistical adjustments to panel rating data would lead to a 25% change in the pool of funded proposals. Viewed more broadly, the methodology proposed in this article provides a general framework for the analysis of data collected interactively from expert panels through the use of the Delphi method and related procedures.

Geological Image of the Earth

This amazing of the earth shorn of all its plants, topsoil, water and man-made structures is from OneGeology - a geological mapping project - via The Daily Mail.

Big Win for Net Neutrality!

SavetheInternet.com reports "the Federal Communications Commission voted to punish Comcast for violating Net Neutrality." Good news!

Foreign students reciieving S&E doctorates in the United States

A recent National Science Foundation InfoBrief states the following:

S&E doctorate recipients from U.S. universities completed their undergraduate education at a wide variety of types of institutions in the United States and abroad. A large proportion of individuals earning S&E doctorates from U.S. universities had undergraduate degrees from foreign institutions: 37% in 2006, up from 28% in 1997.

Comment: Bringing PhD students to the U.S. for their graduate education results in enrichment of our domestic scientific and technological capabilities while they are here and by those who stay, and builds important international scientific and technological linkages to those who return to their original countries.

The detrimental impact of the post 2001 policies of the Bush administration on foreign student enrollment probably is not fully evident in the 2006 PhD numbers, since a science or engineering doctorate often takes five years or more. JAD

P.S. The following chart in interesting in showing how superior are the 50 small, private baccalaureate colleges termed the "Oberlin 50" in sending their students on to doctorates in the Social Sciences. JAD

A thought on the limitation of policy analysis

I have been reading James Reston Jr.'s book Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the Defeat of the Moors. The book begins with the joining of Castile and Aragon via the marriage of Fernando and Isabela, and continues through the conquest of Granada.

The late 15th century saw the synergistic strengthening of the monarchy and the church, and the creation of a theocratic, intolerant Spain from a collection of relatively tolerant, multicultural smaller states. The Inquisition and the Reconquest of Spain from the Moors would have been the overriding concern of those in power. The Portuguese recognized the potential of a sea route to the spice producers of the Orient via the circumnavigation of Africa.

However, only in retrospect is Columbus important. Yet I would suggest that the discovery of the Americas was an event of greater political and economic importance than the creation of the Spanish nation, and the Columbian Exchange (which moved plant and animal species between the Western and Eastern hemispheres) was of paramount ecological as well as social and economic importance.

The thought might give us some pause for reflection on the limitations of our policy analysis. The Portuguese, English and French apparently missed the opportunity to fund the Columbian expedition, and only the Spanish monarchs eventually took the time away away from their pressing military concerns and the restructuring of their society to make the modest investment in exploration. We are no smarter than were our ancestors of half a millennium in the past.