Divided We Fall: How the Left and Right Can Unite by David Korten

by David Korten

posted Jun 21, 2011

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Photo by Chris Devers

A work by the street artist Banksy, in Boston's Chinatown.

From the beginning of history, Empire’s rulers have maintained their power by sowing fear, mutual suspicion, and division to prevent those who bear the burdens of their rule from uniting against them. Currently, on the political right, anger is directed against government. On the political left, it is directed against Wall Street corporations.

Each blames the other for America’s decline and the economic distress of working families, thus diverting attention from the deeper truth. Corporate money, perks, and the revolving door between Congress and lobbying firms have corrupted the political process. As a consequence, Wall Street and Washington are both running out of control and united in the pursuit of agendas that grow the power and privilege of the few at the expense of the many.

Whether the blame lies more with Wall Street or with Washington is largely beside the point. The bottom line is a Wall Street–Washington axis that has stolen our money and country, denies us our rights, undermines national security, and threatens the future of all our children, irrespective of political orientation.

Wall Street and Washington are both running out of control, united in the pursuit of agendas that grow the power and privilege of the few at the expense of the many.

Two events following the 2008 financial meltdown so focused attention on the power and dysfunction of the Wall Street-Washington axis that the establishment propaganda machine that keeps us divided came near losing control. They demonstrate the potential for a broad popular transpartisan political alliance.

One was the government bailout of Wall Street. Virtually no one outside of Wall Street was happy about government taking money from struggling taxpayers in order to give it to Wall Street bankers so they could reward themselves bonuses for crashing the economy.

The other was the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. the Federal Election Commission that gave corporations carte blanche to buy elections. Follow-up polls reported that the Supreme Court’s decision was opposed by 80 percent of Americans, including 76, 81, and 85 percent of Republicans, Independents and Democrats, respectively—a truly extraordinary consensus in this time of political division.

No More Budget Cuts
Without Tax Fairness

I come from deeply conservative roots and distrust any concentration of unaccountable power. As the author of When Corporations Rule the World, my view of the unconscionable abuse of corporate power is on public record. I also recognize the profound truth of Paul Hawken’s observation in The Ecology of Commerce that it is big business that creates the need for big government to constrain the excesses and clean up the messes. What we now have, however, is big government aligned with big business to facilitate the excesses and reward those who create the messes. It is a disastrous arrangement against which the vast majority of conservatives and liberals should be united.

Conservatives are correct on a key point liberals tend to overlook: the federal government is too big and intrusive. The Patriot Act, which passed with a large bipartisan majority, is an abomination against democracy and foundational American ideals. We do have a public spending problem. The public debt owed to foreign nations and Wall Street bankers is unsustainable and a threat to national security.

Taxing the poor to pay for subsidies to powerful corporations and squandering our national treasure on unwinnable wars that have no point other than to fuel corporate profits is unconscionable. Health insurance programs designed to benefit insurance and pharmaceutical companies need to be restructured to reduce costs and improve services.

We spend too much on safety net programs that would not be necessary if we rolled back ill-conceived trade agreements that facilitate outsourcing and the global bidding down of wages and benefits and required corporations to pay employees a living wage with basic benefits. It is absurd to tolerate the Federal Reserve giving Wall Street banks virtually free money to loan back to U.S. taxpayers at a market interest rate.

If those on each side of America’s deep political divide could see the merit in the arguments of those on the other, we might come together as a powerful citizen alliance.

There is good reason for outrage against both big business and big government. We must respond, however, from a place of love, national unity, and sense of possibility rather than a place of fear, anger, and division. When consumed with anger, our reptilian brain takes control. Our capacity for nuanced critical thought is diminished and we easily succumb to manipulation by propagandists and advertisers. Note the ease with which Wall Street billionaires feed and manipulate the anger of Tea Party members to mobilize them in support of campaigns that support Wall Street interests at the expense of their own.

If those on each side of America’s deep political divide could see the merit in the arguments of those on the other, we might come together as a powerful citizen alliance. We could break up concentrations of corporate power, get money out of politics, end senseless wars, achieve an equitable distribution of wealth, downsize government, and hold politicians accountable to an authentic popular will. That is an agenda that principled conservatives and liberals should all be able to get behind.

via yesmagazine.org

States That Cut The Most Spending Have Lost The Most Jobs | ThinkProgress

By Adam Hersh on Jun 27, 2011 at 2:15 pm

Our guest blogger is Adam Hersh, an economist at the Center for American Progress Action Fund.

Govs. John Kasich (R-OH), Rick Snyder (R-MI), and Scott Walker (R-WI)

There’s a new cult of economic thought sweeping the nation — or at least many Republican (and even some Democratic) political circles. Its adherents cling to the erroneous belief that sharp government spending cuts will revitalize economic growth and create much needed new jobs

Speaker of the House John Boehner (R-OH) is an ardent follower of this Cut-Grow cult, as are a number of high profile governors. For instance, Gov. John Kasich (R-OH) declared, “We’re going to have to reduce spending…to create a platform for economic growth.” When Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ) delivered his budget to the state Legislature he argued, “We must continue to cut government spending” to create jobs and prosperity for New Jersey families. Gov. Scott Walker (R-WI) vowed his budget “lays [the] foundation to create jobs.”

Now these Republicans want the American public to drink a giant glass of their Cut-Grow Kool-Aid. But the data actually show the opposite of their claims to be true: steep spending cuts are hampering economic recovery in some states, while other states that resisted cuts or increased spending are now seeing declining unemployment rates, faster private-sector job creation, and stronger economic growth.

From the start of the Great Recession in December 2007 through the end of 2010, 24 states have cut government spending by an average of 7.5 percent after adjusting for inflation. Another 25 states have expanded government outlays by an average of 11 percent. (The analysis excludes Alabama due to data problems reported by the National Association of State Budget Offices). And the differences in these states’ economic performance could not be more self-evident. Relative to national economic trends, states that increased spending enjoyed on average:

• 0.2 percentage point decrease in the unemployment rate

• 1.4 percent increase in private employment

• 0.5 percent real economic growth since the start of the recession

In contrast, states that cut spending saw on average

• 1 percentage point increase in the unemployment rate

• 2.1 percent loss of private employment

• 2.9 percent real economic contraction relative to the national economic trend

Steep state spending cuts have gone hand-in-hand with rising unemployment rates, falling private-sector payroll employment, and lower growth in state’s gross domestic product, or GDP — the sum of all goods and services produced by labor and equipment in each state, less imports.

Take private sector jobs, for example. This graph shows that state spending is not just about jobs for public service workers, but also has far reaching consequences for private businesses and their workers. The downward sloping red line shows the relationship between cuts to state spending and changes in private sector employment relative to the national average since the start of the Great Recession. States that cut spending are seeing significantly more job losses in the private sector than states maintaining or increasing spending levels. For every 10 percent cut in state spending, state economies lost 1.6 percent of their private-sector jobs.

Certainly policymakers should seize every opportunity to eliminate waste and improve the efficiency of delivering government functions. But spending cuts achieved or championed by conservatives are aiming much deeper at public services and public investments critical to economic recovery now as well as the future of U.S. economic growth and competitiveness.

via thinkprogress.org

FACT CHECK: Bachmann bomblets raising eyebrows - Yahoo! News

BY CALVIN WOODWARD - Associated Press,JIM DRINKARD - Associated Press | AP – 1 hr 35 mins ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — Michele Bachmann's claim that she has "never gotten a penny" from a family farm that's been subsidized by the government is at odds with her financial disclosure statements. They show tens of thousands in personal income from the operation.

And, on a less substantive note, she flubbed her hometown history when declaring "John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa," and "that's the kind of spirit that I have, too," in running for president.

The actor was born nearly 150 miles away. It was the serial killer John Wayne Gacy Jr. who lived, for a time, in Waterloo.

Those were among the latest examples of how the Minnesota congresswoman has become one to watch — for inaccuracies as well as rising support — in the Republican presidential race.

Bachmann's wildly off-base assertion last month that a NATO airstrike might have killed as many as 30,000 Libyan civilians, her misrepresentations of the health care law, misfires on other aspects of President Barack Obama's record and historical inaccuracies have saddled her with a reputation for uttering populist jibes that don't hold up. On Tuesday, she erred in describing John Quincy Adams as a Founding Father.

She announced her candidacy Monday in Iowa with a speech typical for someone joining the campaign. It laid out the broad themes of her candidacy and mostly avoided the Bachmann bomblets that have grabbed attention — and often fizzled under scrutiny — in the long lead-up.

The more the political season heats up, the more that exaggerations and sound-bite oversimplifications emanate from the Republicans going after Obama — and from the Democrats playing defense. Still, Bachmann's record on this score is distinct.

Examining 24 of her statements, Politifact.com, the Pulitzer Prize-winning fact-checking service of the St. Petersburg (Fla.) Times, found just one to be fully true and 17 to be false (seven of them "pants on fire" false). No other Republican candidate whose statements have been vigorously vetted matched that record of inaccuracy.

A look at some of her recent statements and how they compare with the facts:

BACHMANN: "The farm is my father-in-law's farm. It's not my husband and my farm. It's my father-in-law's farm. And my husband and I have never gotten a penny of money from the farm." — On "Fox News Sunday."

THE FACTS: In personal financial disclosure reports required annually from members of Congress, Bachmann reported that she holds an interest in a family farm in Independence, Wis., with her share worth between $100,000 and $250,000.

The farm, which was owned by her father-in-law, produced income for Bachmann of at least $32,500 and as much as $105,000 from 2006 through 2009, according to the reports she filed for that period. The farm also received federal crop and disaster subsidies, according to a database maintained by the Environmental Working Group. From 1995 through 2010, the farm got $259,332 in federal payments.

When asked about the subsidies and her income from the farm late last year, a spokesman for Bachmann said only that she wasn't involved in decisions about the running of the farm.

Bachmann told The Associated Press on Monday that her husband became a trustee of the farm because his father had dementia before he died two years ago, and "oversees the legal entity."

"Everything we do with those forms is in an abundance of caution," she said, insisting she and her husband receive no farm income despite the forms reporting it.

___

BACHMANN: "If you look at one of our Founding Fathers, John Quincy Adams, that's absolutely true. He was a very young boy when he was with his father serving essentially as his father's secretary. He tirelessly worked throughout his life to make sure that we did in fact one day eradicate slavery." — On ABC's "Good Morning America."

THE FACTS: John Quincy Adams was not a Founding Father. He was 9 when the Declaration of Independence was made and 20 when the Constitution was adopted. His father, John Adams, was the Revolutionary War figure and an architect of the declaration — and therefore a Founding Father. Both father and son became president. Bachmann was defending her earlier, inaccurate remark that the Founding Fathers had devoted themselves to ending slavery.

John Quincy Adams, president from 1825 to 1829, privately called slavery a "great and foul stain" but largely sidestepped the issue in office, according to "The Reader's Companion to the American Presidency." He tried to avoid antagonizing the South while reasoning that his push for a stronger central government would hasten slavery's end over time.

___

BACHMANN: "Well what I want them to know is, just like John Wayne was from Waterloo, Iowa, that's the kind of spirit that I have, too." — Speaking to Fox News on Sunday.

Wayne was born in Winterset, Iowa, nearly three hours away, and moved to California in his childhood. John Wayne Gacy, convicted of killing 33 men and boys, was born in Chicago, moved to Waterloo to work in his father-in-law's chicken restaurants and first ran afoul of the law there, sentenced to 10 years for sodomy. He began his killing spree after his release, and his return to Illinois.

Bachmann told CNN on Tuesday her comments "were just misspeaking" and that her main intent was to show she identified with Wayne's patriotism.

___

BACHMANN: "Overnight we are hearing that potentially 10 to 30,000 people could have been killed in the strike." — Criticizing Obama in May for the "foolish" U.S. intervention in Libya, and citing what she said were reports of a civilian death toll from a NATO strike as high as 30,000.

THE FACTS: The U.S. ambassador to Libya, Gene Cretz, said in late April that U.S. officials have seen reports that 10,000 to 30,000 people may have died in Moammar Gadhafi's crackdown on protesters and the fighting between rebels and pro-government forces, but it is hard to know if that is true. He was speaking about all casualties of the conflict; no one has attributed such a death toll to NATO bombing alone, much less to a single strike.

___

BACHMANN: "It's ironic and sad that the president released all of the oil from the strategic oil reserve. ... There's only a limited amount of oil that we have in the strategic oil reserve. It's there for emergencies." — On CBS' "Face the Nation" on Sunday.

THE FACTS: Obama did not empty all the oil from the strategic reserve, as Bachmann said. He approved the release of 30 million barrels, about 4 percent of the 727 million barrels stored in salt caverns along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. It's true that the U.S. normally taps the reserve for more dire emergencies than exist today, and that exposes Obama to criticism that he acted for political gain. But the reserve has never been fuller; it held 707 million barrels when last tapped, after 2008 hurricanes.

___

BACHMANN: "One. That's the number of new drilling permits under the Obama administration since they came into office." — Comment to a conservative conference in Iowa in March.

THE FACTS: The Obama administration issued more than 200 new drilling permits before the Gulf oil spill alone. Over the past year, since new safety standards were imposed, the administration has issued more than 60 shallow-water drilling permits. Since the deep water moratorium was lifted in October, nine new wells have been approved.

___

Associated Press writers Brian Bakst in Waterloo, Iowa, and Dina Cappiello in Washington contributed to this report.

via news.yahoo.com

Eric Cantor's glaring conflict of interest - War Room - Salon.com

By Jonathan Easley

AP/J. Scott Applewhite

Eric Cantor

When Eric Cantor shut down debt ceiling negotiations last week, it did more than just rekindle fears that the U.S. government might soon default on its debt obligations -- it also brought him closer to reaping a small financial windfall from his investment in a mutual fund whose performance is directly affected by debt ceiling brinkmanship.

Last year the Wall Street Journal reported that Cantor, the No. 2 Republican in the House, had between $1,000 and $15,000 invested in ProShares Trust Ultrashort 20+ Year Treasury EFT. The fund aggressively "shorts" long-term U.S. Treasury bonds, meaning that it performs well when U.S. debt is undesirable. (A short is when the trader hopes to profit from the decline in the value of an asset.)

According to his latest financial disclosure statement, which covers the year 2010 and has been publicly available since this spring, Cantor still has up to $15,000 in the same fund. Contacted by Salon this week, Cantor's office gave no indication that the Virginia Republican, who has played a leading role in the debt ceiling negotiations, has divested himself of these holdings since his last filing. Unless an agreement can be reached, the U.S. could begin defaulting on its debt payments on Aug. 2. If that happens and Cantor is still invested in the fund, the value of his holdings would skyrocket.

"If the debt ceiling isn’t raised, investors would start fleeing U.S. Treasuries," said Matt Koppenheffer, who writes for the investment website the Motley Fool. "Yields would rise, prices would fall, and the Proshares ETF should do very well. It would spike."

The fund hasn't significantly spiked yet because many investors believe Congress will eventually raise the debt ceiling. However, since Cantor abruptly called off debt ceiling negotiations last Thursday, the fund is up 3.3 percent. Even if an agreement is ultimately reached before Aug. 2, the fund could continue to benefit between now and then from the uncertainty. (One tactic some speculators are using is to "trade the debt ceiling debate" -- that is, to place short-term bets on prices as they fluctuate with the news out of Washington.)

Salon's Andrew Leonard calls the debt ceiling negotiations "Washington’s titanic game of chicken," and the longer the game goes on, the more skittish the bond markets will become.

"Cantor's involvement in the fund and negotiations is not ideal," Koppenheffer said. "I don’t think someone negotiating the debt ceiling should be invested in this kind of an ultra-short. We can only guess how much he understands what’s in his portfolio, but you’d think a politician would know better. It looks pretty bad."

Cantor spokesman Brad Dayspring noted that U.S. Treasury bonds make up a large portion of the congressman’s pension, and said investment in ProShares ETF serves to balance that investment and to diversify his portfolio. Disclosure forms indicate that Cantor has considerable personal assets, including real estate in Virginia worth up to $1 million, and a number of six- and seven-figure loans to private entities and limited liability companies. So his investment in ProShares ETF represents only a small portion of his overall portfolio -- but that share could grow a little larger just over a month from now.

• Jonathan Easley is an editorial fellow at Salon. Follow him on Twitter @joneasley. More: Jonathan Easley

via salon.com

Cranky

via gocomics.com

Shareable: Afghans Build Open-Source Internet From Trash

Image Credit: FabFi

In light of events that occured in the Middle East earlier this year, many worry that in the future, rogue governments could cut off access to the internet as a way to control political "threats."

Douglas Rushkoff has championed the idea that the current corporate-controlled internet is far from the open commons we pretend it is.

"If we have a dream of how social media could restore peer-to-peer commerce, culture, and government, and if the current Internet is too tightly controlled to allow for it, why not build the kind of network and mechanisms to realize it?" Rushkoff asks.

Sounds daunting. And expensive, right? Wrong.

Funded primarily by the personal savings of group members and a grant from the National Science Foundation, residents of Jalalabad have built the FabFi network: an open-source system that uses common building materials and off-the-shelf electronics to transmit wireless ethernet signals across distances of up to several miles.

Jalalabad's longest link is currently 2.41 miles, between the FabLab and the water tower at the public hospital in Jalalabad, transmitting with a real throughput of 11.5Mbps (compared to 22Mbps ideal-case for a standards compliant off-the-shelf 802.11g router transitting at a distance of only a few feet). The system works consistently through heavy rain, smog and a couple of good sized trees.

With FabFi, communities can build their own wireless networks to gain high-speed internet connectivity---thus enabling them to access online educational, medical, and other resources.

In FabLabs, technology brings people and ideas together. FabFi embraces this same principle. The public hospital, which houses the endpoint of FabFi Afghanistan's longest link, has become a shared community resource, providing downlinks to a growing number of locations in the city center.

The shared infrastructure facilitates communication between FabFi users all over the city as they collaboratively grow and maintain the network. The FabFi user group is learning valuable skills that will soon allow them to generate revenue for themselves and the Lab by building, installing and maintaining FabFi links as part of a "FabFi Club" at the FabLab.

Fast Company reports that residents can build a FabFi node out of approximately $60 worth of everyday items such as boards, wires, plastic tubs, and cans that will serve a whole community at once. While it sounds like science fiction, FabFi could have important ramifications for entire swaths of the world (including rural America) that lack conventional broadband.

Although the Netherlands recently became the first country in the EU to pass a comprehensive Net Neutrality law, the United States and other Western countries are dragging their feet. But why wait?

If they create their own internet in a war torn country, what's our excuse? 

via shareable.net

The Debt Limit Option President Obama Can Use | The Fiscal Times

Photo: TFT

Type Size:

By BRUCE BARTLETT, The Fiscal Times

April 29, 2011

Debt Ceiling: Complete Coverage

The vast majority of those commenting on raising the federal debt limit are certain that Congress will act in time to forestall a debt default, which would occur if the Treasury lacked sufficient cash to pay interest due that day or to redeem maturing securities. The smart money says that Congress could not possibly be so stupid as to permit a default and will raise the debt limit just in time. Americans would likely agree, however, that some members of Congress really are that stupid. But here’s the good news: An arcane provision in the U.S. Constitution gives the president the edge. 

Over the last several weeks, a number of Republican congressmen have said that they will not vote to raise the debt limit unless massive cuts are guaranteed in advance. Some Republican senators have promised a filibuster against a debt limit increase should it pass the House. And Tea Party spokesmen have promised strenuous primary opposition for any Republican voting for a debt limit increase. A Republican running against a Tea Party member for the party nomination could be accused of supporting President Obama to increase the national debt — a charge that would assure an election loss

The Republican leadership is looking for a way to get just enough members to join with Democrats to raise the debt limit by attaching some sort of budget-cutting package or mechanism, such as a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution that would get the necessary votes. These negotiations will be protracted and any measure that attracted Republican votes would likely lose Democratic votes. It’s not clear to me that there is any way under current political circumstances of devising a budget package that could be appended to the debt limit that would get sufficient votes for passage before a default occurs.

Some Wall Street types are predicting a financial apocalypse in the event of default. But there is no evidence that this has moved Republican hardliners one inch. They heard similar warnings about financial apocalypse in the fall of 2008, leading to passage of TARP, the Troubled Asset Relief Program, which rescued many banks and prevented a meltdown in the banking system. Although most economists believe that TARP was essential and that the economy would be far worse off had it not been enacted, there’s not a single Republican who will defend it because they universally believe TARP was an unjustified bailout for fat-cat bankers-- a horrible mistake and set a dreadful precedent.

Only a trivial amount of spending was
actually cut by the [shutdown] deal,
leaving many Republicans to believe
they were sold out by their leaders.

More recently, Republicans and Democrats cut a deal to avoid a government shutdown and voted for the fiscal 2011 appropriation because it contained $38 billion in spending cuts and because their leaders predicted political doom if the government were forced to shut down. Subsequent analysis, however, showed that only a trivial amount of spending was actually cut by the deal, leaving many in the GOP to believe they were sold out by their leaders. They are determined to make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Given this experience, Republicans are disinclined to believe apocalyptic rhetoric about the consequences of defaulting on the debt. Indeed, some say they welcome it. Whatever pain is caused will be temporary, but the benefits of using such a crisis to slash government spending will be worth it, they say.

Republicans are playing not just with fire, but the financial equivalent of nuclear weapons. Perhaps at one time when the federal debt was owned entirely by Americans we could afford to take a chance on debt default because the consequences would only be internal. But today, more than half of the privately held public debt is owed to foreigners; the Chinese alone own more than $1.1 trillion of Treasury securities. Moreover, many countries use Treasury securities as backing for their own currencies. Thus the impact of default would be felt internationally, disrupting finances and economic policies throughout Asia, Europe and Latin America.

Therefore, a potential debt default is far more than a domestic consideration; it is a matter of foreign policy. This is why Secretary of State Clinton and Navy Adm. Mike Mullen have warned that the public debt represents an important threat to national security. As attorney Thomas Geoghegan recently put it, “Where the validity of the debt is concerned, our national security is at stake.”

Preventing default is no less justified
than using American military power
to protect against an armed invasion
without a congressional declaration of war.

The president would be justified in taking extreme actions to protect against a debt default. In the event that congressional irresponsibility makes default impossible to avoid, he should order the secretary of the Treasury to simply disregard the debt limit and sell whatever securities are necessary to raise cash to pay the nation’s debts. They are protected by the full faith and credit of the United States and preventing default is no less justified than using American military power to protect against an armed invasion without a congressional declaration of war.

Furthermore, it’s worth remembering that the debt limit is statutory law, which is trumped by the Constitution which has a little known provision that relates to this issue. Section 4 of the 14th Amendment says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States…shall not be questioned.” This could easily justify the sort of extraordinary presidential action to avoid default that I am suggesting.

Some will raise a concern that potential buyers of Treasury securities may be scared off by a fear that bonds sold over the debt limit may not be backed by the full faith and credit of the United States. However, given that the vast bulk of Treasury securities are 3-month bills that will turn over many, many times before this issue ever reaches the Supreme Court, it is doubtful than anyone will be concerned about that. And the Federal Reserve could assure investors that it will always be a buyer for such securities.

People smarter than I am tell me that the Treasury has an almost infinite ability to avoid a debt crisis. I hope they are right. But I am hypothesizing a situation in which the Treasury reaches the end of its rope and a day comes when it needs $X billion to pay interest and it has less than $X billion in cash. Under those circumstances, when default is the only possible alternative, I believe that the president and the Treasury secretary would be justified in taking extraordinary action to prevent it, even if it means violating the debt limit.

Constitutional history is replete with examples where presidents justified extraordinary actions by extraordinary circumstances. During the George W. Bush administration many Republicans defended the most expansive possible reading of the president’s powers, especially concerning national security. Since default on the debt would clearly have dire consequences for our relations with China, Japan and other large holders of Treasury securities, it’s hard to see how defenders of Bush’s policies would now say the president must stand by and do nothing when a debt default poses an imminent national security threat.

Given that the Supreme Court in recent years has been unusually deferential to executive prerogatives –I feel certain President Obama would be on firm constitutional ground should he challenge the debt limit in order to prevent a debt default. Should the Court rule in his favor, the debt limit would effectively become a dead letter. Is that really the outcome Republicans want from a debt limit showdown?

Related Links: 
Debt, Default and Dysfunction (The Fiscal Times) 
Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee of SIFMA Urges Raising Debt Ceiling (SIFMA)
How the GOP Could Sell the Debt Limit Vote (Politico)

via thefiscaltimes.com

A First Step Toward a Prosthesis for Memory - Technology Review

A neural implant helps rats with short-term recall.

By Lauren Gravitz

Researchers have developed the first memory prosthetic device—a neural implant that, in rats, restored lost brain function and improved short-term memory retention. While human testing is still a distant goal, the implant provides evidence that the brain's complex neural code can be interpreted and reproduced to enhance cognitive function.

The device, which consists of a tiny chip and a set of 32 electrodes, marries math and neuroscience. At its heart is an algorithm that deciphers and replicates the neural code that one layer of the brain sends to another. The function restored by the implant is limited—rats were able to remember which of two levers they had pressed. But its creators believe that a device on the same principle could one day be used to improve recall in people suffering from stroke, dementia, or other brain damage.

Wake Forest University neurophysiologist Samuel Deadwyler first trained the rats to press two different levers in succession. The animals learned to press one lever as it was presented to them and then, after a delay, remember which they'd pressed and choose the other one the second time around. While the rats performed the task, two sets of minute electrodes recorded the activity of individual neurons on the right and left sides of the hippocampus, an area of the brain that consolidates short-term memory by processing information as it passes through multiple layers. A set of 16 electrodes—eight on the right, eight on the left—monitored signals being sent from neurons in an area of the hippocampus called the CA3 layer, and another 16 monitored the processed signals received by neurons in the CA1 layer.

Together with Theodore Berger, a biomedical engineer and neuroscientist at the University of Southern California, Deadwyler characterized the pattern of neural activity associated with a correct response—the pattern indicating the formation of a solid short-term memory. The researchers stimulated the nerves in the same pattern and retested the rats. This time, the animals made fewer mistakes and could remember which lever to press even after longer delays. When the researchers took it a step further, preventing memory formation with a nerve-blocking drug, they found that the rats could still "remember" which lever to press if they were stimulated with the neural impulse pattern.

"It's an exciting demonstration of the capabilities that we have now, not of only reading neuronal activity of the brain but also manipulating it," says Charles Wilson, a neuroscientist and emeritus professor at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the research. "Hopefully, this could be clinically useful in the future."

Part of the challenge in creating the prosthesis was to develop a device that would ultimately be able to assist in the recall of many types of memories. That required learning to replicate the activities of the hippocampus. Rather than storing specific memories, the hippocampus passes them along to the brain's long-term memory, translating them into a form that the long-term memory is able to store. Similarly, the algorithm does not store specific examples—how to brush your teeth, how to find your way home—but instead creates a set of rules much like the ones a voice-recognition program might use to translate one language into another. "We're not trying to understand the language," says Berger. "Rather, on the basis of what we hear, can we translate something from Russian to Chinese without knowing either one?"

Berger and Deadwyler are now working to increase the number of neurons they can monitor and to move their research into nonhuman primates—next steps on the long journey toward developing a human implant. "We already have the technology and capability to record and stimulate a single neuron in humans; the ingredients are already there," Wilson says. "And the fact that it could be done in animals suggests to me that a similar thing could be done in humans."

Copyright Technology Review 2011.

via technologyreview.com

Policing the Police: The Apps That Let You Spy on the Cops - Atlantic Mobile

Policing the Police: The Apps That Let You Spy on the Cops

Alexis Madrigal | Jun 23, 2011

Something like OpenWatch could help solve a major problem for investigative reporting in an age when newsrooms are shrinking

After the recent Vancouver riots, it became clear that the world is surveiling itself at an unprecedented scale. Angry citizens gave police one million photos and 1,000 hours of video footage to help them track down the rioters. If we aren't living in a surveillance state run by the government, we're certainly conducting a huge surveillance experiment on each other. 

Which is what makes two new apps, CopRecorder and OpenWatch, and their Web component, OpenWatch.net, so interesting. They are the brainchildren of Rich Jones, a 23-year-old Boston University graduate who describes himself as "pretty much a hacker to the core." Flush with cash and time from a few successful forays into the app market, nine months ago Jones decided to devote some of his time to developing what he calls "a global participatory counter-surveillance project which uses cellular phones as a way of monitoring authority figures."

CopRecorder can record audio without indicating that it's doing so like the Voice Memos app does. It comes with a built-in uploader to OpenWatch, so that Jones can do "analysis" of the recording and scrub any personally identifying data before posting the audio. He said he receives between 50 and 100 submissions per day, with a really interesting encounter with an authority figure coming in about every day and a half.

To me, something like OpenWatch could help solve a major problem for investigative reporting in an age when newsrooms are shrinking. We've still got plenty of people who can bulldog an issue once it's been flagged, but there are fewer and fewer reporters with deep sourcing in a community, fewer and fewer reporters who have the time to look into a bunch of different things knowing that only one out of a hundred might turn into a big investigation. Perhaps providing better conduits for citizens to flag their own problems can drive down the cost of hard-hitting journalism and be part of the solution for keeping governments honest.

At first, the app did not have grand aspirations. Jones built it for some friends who'd gotten into some trouble with the law and who could have been aided by a recording of their interaction with law enforcement. But Jones' worldview began to seep into the project. Informed by Julian Assange's conception of "scientific journalism," Jones wanted to start collecting datapoints at the interface of citizens and authority figures.

"It's a new kind of journalism. When people think citizen media, right now they think amateur journalism ... I don't think that's revolutionary," Jones told me. "I don't think that's what the '90s cyberutopianists were dreaming of. I think the real value of citizen media will be collecting data."

Already, CopRecorder is in the hands of 50,000 users, who've just happened to stumble on the app one way or another. Jones hopes that they'll upload their encounters with authority figures so that he can start to build a database of what citizens' encounters are like in different places. Then, he figures, patterns will emerge and he'll be able to point out to the world exactly where the powerful are abusing their authority.

* * *

One night earlier this year, Hieu Vu and his fiancee left Oggi's Pizza and Brewing Company in Garden Grove, California, near Anaheim. After they got into their Camry, Vu saw he was headed into a DUI checkpoint at the intersection of Harbor and Chapman, one of dozens that southern California police set up each weekend night.

As they waited in the line of cars, Vu pulled out his cell phone and began recording. From that recording, we know that a police officer approached the car and asked Vu to roll down his window.

"I don't have to roll it down, do I?" Vu asked.
"Yes, you do have to roll it down!" the cop responded. "All the way. All the way. Thank you. What are you guys up to tonight?"
"I'm going home," Vu said.
"From where?" the cop shot back.
"Oggi's."
"Oggi's. Been drinking?"
"I don't have to say anything," Vu said.
"Ok, well, we're going to send you in there [the next level of the checkpoint] and they're going to talk to you," the police officer responded. "I smell alcohol."
"You smell alcohol on me? You really smell alcohol?" Vu retorted incredulously.
"I do," the cop said.

Vu sounds guilty, right? Why else wouldn't he want to roll down the window or talk to the police, we find ourselves asking. But we know that Vu hadn't had a drop of alcohol that night -- and a subsequent breathalyzer test found his blood alcohol content was 0.0 percent.

Rather, Vu is a criminal lawyer in southern California who has dealt with dozens of DUI cases and when he saw the opportunity to go through the checkpoint, he figured he could learn why all of his clients "consented" to various tests. It never made sense to him precisely how the cops got his clients to do things that were clearly against their own interests.

"Why is it that every client consents to doing a field sobriety test?" Vu said. "Every single report has them consenting to it. I wanted to find out for myself."

For Jones, this is precisely the kind of data point that he's looking for. Vu's story alone wouldn't persuade anyone that cops were doing something systematically wrong at DUI checkpoints, but imagine hundreds of encounters in which some set of police procedures are ignored or contravened. That would be the kind of dataset that could change the way the police in southern California conducted themselves.

There are a few barriers standing in the way of the success of the experiment. First, it takes a leap of faith in Jones to upload something to OpenWatch.net. Most simply, you're giving your recording of a confrontation with an authority figure to a 23-year old self-described hacker. Second, you need many, many people to use the app and upload their audio. Third, on the OpenWatch end, they've got to be able to sift through all that audio and find patterns. Fourth, in some states -- Massachusetts and Illinois among them -- it is illegal to use a recording device to document a police action.

But, Jones adds a bit mischievously, "I will absolutely take submissions from those states."

via m.theatlantic.com

Top 20 Motivation Hacks – An Overview | zen habits

For the last two weeks I’ve been posting the Top 20 Motivation Hacks, one by one. These are the tips and tricks that, if used in combination, are a nearly sure way to achieve your goals.

Achieving goals is not a matter of having “discipline”. It’s a matter of motivating yourself, and keeping your focus on your goal. Follow these hacks, or any combination of them that works for you, and you should have the motivation and focus you need.

Here they are, in reverse order (links take you to more on each):

#20: Chart Your Progress. Recently I posted about how I created a chart to track my progress with each of my goals. This chart is not just for information purposes, for me to look back and see how I’m doing. It’s to motivate me to keep up with my goals. If I’m diligent about checking my chart every day, and marking dots or “x”s, then I will want to make sure I fill it with dots. I will think to myself, “I better do this today if I want to mark a dot.” Well, that’s a small motivation, but it helps, trust me. Some people prefer to use gold stars. Others have a training log, which works just as well. Or try Joe’s Goals. However you do it, track your progress, and allow yourself a bit of pride each time you give yourself a good mark.

Now, you will have some bad marks on your chart. That’s OK. Don’t let a few bad marks stop you from continuing. Strive instead to get the good marks next time.

#19: Hold Yourself Back. When I start with a new exercise program, or any new goal really, I am rarin’ to go. I am full of excitement, and my enthusiasm knows no boundaries. Nor does my sense of self-limitation. I think I can do anything. It’s not long before I learn that I do have limitations, and my enthusiasm begins to wane.

Well, a great motivator that I’ve learned is that when you have so much energy at the beginning of a program, and want to go all out — HOLD BACK. Don’t let yourself do everything you want to do. Only let yourself do 50-75 percent of what you want to do. And plan out a course of action where you slowly increase over time. For example, if I want to go running, I might think I can run 3 miles at first. But instead of letting myself do that, I start by only running a mile. When I’m doing that mile, I’ll be telling myself that I can do more! But I don’t let myself. After that workout, I’ll be looking forward to the next workout, when I’ll let myself do 1.5 miles. I keep that energy reined in, harness it, so that I can ride it even further.

#18: Join an online (or off-line) group to help keep you focused and motivated. When I started to run, more than a year ago, I joined a few different forums, at different times, on different sites, such as Men’s Health (the Belly-Off Runner’s Club), Runner’s World, Cool Running, and the running group at About.com. I did the same when I was quitting smoking.

Each time I joined a forum, it helped keep me on track. Not only did I meet a bunch of other people who were either going through what I was going through or who had already been through it, I would report my progress (and failures) as I went along. They were there for great advice, for moral support, to help keep me going when I wanted to stop.

#17: Post a picture of your goal someplace visible — near your desk or on your refrigerator, for example. Visualizing your goal, exactly how you think it will be when you’ve achieved it, whether it’s financial goals like traveling to Rome or building a dream house, or physical goals like finishing a marathon or getting a flat stomach, is a great motivator and one of the best ways of actualizing your goals.

Find a magazine photo or a picture online and post it somewhere where you can see it not only daily, but hourly if possible. Put it as your desktop photo, or your home page. Use the power of your visual sense to keep you focused on your goal. Because that focus is what will keep you motivated over the long term — once you lose focus, you lose motivation, so having something to keep bringing your focus back to your goal will help keep that motivation.

#16: Get a workout partner or goal buddy. Staying motivated on your own is tough. But if you find someone with similar goals (running, dieting, finances, etc.), see if they’d like to partner with you. Or partner with your spouse, sibling or best friend on whatever goals they’re trying to achieve. You don’t have to be going after the same goals — as long as you are both pushing and encouraging each other to succeed.

#15: Just get started. There are some days when you don’t feel like heading out the door for a run, or figuring out your budget, or whatever it is you’re supposed to do that day for your goal. Well, instead of thinking about how hard it is, and how long it will take, tell yourself that you just have to start.

I have a rule (not an original one) that I just have to put on my running shoes and close the door behind me. After that, it all flows naturally. It’s when you’re sitting in your house, thinking about running and feeling tired, that it seems hard. Once you start, it is never as hard as you thought it would be. This tip works for me every time.

#14: Make it a pleasure. One reason we might put off something that will help us achieve our goal, such as exercise for example, is because it seems like hard work. Well, this might be true, but the key is to find a way to make it fun or pleasurable. If your goal activity becomes a treat, you actually look forward to it. And that’s a good thing.

#13: Give it time, be patient. I know, this is easier said than done. But the problem with many of us is that we expect quick results. When you think about your goals, think long term. If you want to lose weight, you may see some quick initial losses, but it will take a long time to lose the rest. If you want to run a marathon, you won’t be able to do it overnight. If you don’t see the results you want soon, don’t give up … give it time. In the meantime, be happy with your progress so far, and with your ability to stick with your goals. The results will come if you give it time.

#12: Break it into smaller, mini goals. Sometimes large or longer-term goals can be overwhelming. After a couple weeks, we may lose motivation, because we still have several months or a year or more left to accomplish the goal. It’s hard to maintain motivation for a single goal for such a long time. Solution: have smaller goals along the way.

#11: Reward yourself. Often. And not just for longer-term goals, either. In Hack #12, I talked about breaking larger goals into smaller, mini goals. Well, each of those mini goals should have a reward attached to it. Make a list of your goals, with mini goals, and next to each, write down an appropriate reward. By appropriate, I mean 1) it’s proportionate to the size of the goal (don’t reward going on a 1-mile run with a luxury cruise in the Bahamas); and 2) it doesn’t ruin your goal — if you are trying to lose weight, don’t reward a day of healthy eating with a dessert binge. It’s self-defeating.

#10: Find inspiration, on a daily basis. Inspiration is one of the best motivators, and it can be found everywhere. Every day, seek inspiration, and it will help sustain motivation over the long term. Sources of inspiration can include: blogs, online success stories, forums, friends and family, magazines, books, quotes, music, photos, people you meet.

#9: Get a coach or take a class. These will motivate you to at least show up, and to take action. It can be applied to any goal. This might be one of the more expensive ways of motivating yourself, but it works. And if you do some research, you might find some cheap classes in your area, or you might know a friend who will provide coaching or counseling for free.

#8: Have powerful reasons. Write them down. Know your reasons. Give them some thought … and write them down. If you have loved ones, and you are doing it for them, that is more powerful than just doing it for self-interest. Doing it for yourself is good too, but you should do it for something that you REALLY REALLY want to happen, for really good reasons.

#7: Become aware of your urges to quit, and be prepared for them. We all have urges to stop, but they are mostly unconscious. One of the most powerful things you can do is to start being more conscious of those urges. A good exercise is to go through the day with a little piece of paper and put a tally mark for each time you get an urge. It simply makes you aware of the urges. Then have a plan for when those urges hit, and plan for it beforehand, and write down your plan, because once those urges hit, you will not feel like coming up with a plan.

#6: Make it a rule never to skip two days in a row.This rule takes into account our natural tendency to miss days now and then. We are not perfect. So, you missed one day … now the second day is upon you and you are feeling lazy … tell yourself NO! You will not miss two days in a row! Zen Habits says so! And just get started. You’ll thank yourself later.

#5: Visualize your goal clearly, on a daily basis, for at least 5-10 minutes. Visualize your successful outcome in great detail. Close your eyes, and think about exactly how your successful outcome will look, will feel, will smell and taste and sound like. Where are you when you become successful? How do you look? What are you wearing? Form as clear a mental picture as possible. Now here’s the next key: do it every day. For at least a few minutes each day. This is the only way to keep that motivation going over a long period of time.

#4: Keep a daily journal of your goal. If you are consistent about keeping a journal, it can be a great motivator. A journal should have not only what you did for the day, but your thoughts about how it went, how you felt, what mistakes you made, what you could do to improve. To be consistent about keeping a journal, do it right after you do your goal task each day. Make keeping a journal a sensory pleasure.

#3: Create a friendly, mutually-supportive competition.We are all competitive in nature, at least a little. Some more than others. Take advantage of this part of our human nature by using it to fuel your goals. If you have a workout partner or goal buddy, you’ve got all you need for a friendly competition. See who can log more miles, or save more dollars, each week or month. See who can do more pushups or pullups. See who can lose the most weight or have the best abs or lose the most inches on their waist. Make sure the goals are weighted so that the competition is fairly equal. And mutually support each other in your goals.

#2: Make a big public commitment. Be fully committed. This will do the trick every time. Create a blog and announce to the world that you are going to achieve a certain goal by a certain date. Commit yourself to the hilt.

#1: Always think positive. Squash all negative thoughts. Monitor your thoughts. Be aware of your self-talk. We all talk to ourselves, a lot, but we are not always aware of these thoughts. Start listening. If you hear negative thoughts, stop them, push them out, and replace them with positive thoughts. Positive thinking can be amazingly powerful.

via zenhabits.net

BankSimple: A Bank That Doesn't Suck | Fast Company

Inside BankSimple's quest to put user experience above all else.

"LET'S START a retail bank." That was the email subject line that greeted Jerry Neumann, a venture capitalist, one morning in 2009. The sender: his former employee Josh Reich, a Wall Street denizen so fed up with his personal-banking experience -- the hidden fees, the confusing jargon, the poor customer service -- that he vowed to build a better one.

Alas, regulatory roadblocks prevent most people from bootstrapping a bank. So Reich and partner Shamir Karkal created BankSimple instead.

The New York tech startup, which in May launched a closed-beta version of its web app, aims to streamline the U.S. banking experience by decoupling it from actual banks. Services such as Mint and LearnVest have toyed with this notion for years, launching sleek personal-finance tools that source stats from existing accounts. BankSimple plans to one-up them all by offering checking accounts, debit cards, and more. The twist: Rather than handling cash, it partners with "back-end" banks, so employees can prioritize user satisfaction. "Our core brand value is 'Don't suck,' " Reich says.

At first glance, BankSimple's sparse, elegant platform looks more like a Tumblr than, say, a Chase.com. That's because creative director Bill DeRouchey designed for mobile from the get-go, which, he says, "forced us to make the flow as simple as possible." The site also nods to Twitter and Google, offering a scrollable stream of recent transactions and a search feature that understands commands like "show me every transaction greater than $50." To give users a real-time snapshot of their financial health, a "safe to spend" balance figures in pending bills and savings goals.

BankSimple's operations are even bolder than its design. Because it's tethered to multiple banks (via special software), the startup can shift users' money between them to secure the best interest rates. The FDIC-backed firms, in turn, get additional customers without paying for marketing, meaning "there's enough revenue for both of us to be happy," says Pete Chiccino of Bancorp, which is slated to join CBW Bank as a BankSimple partner. Reich also promises his company won't charge the kinds of extraneous fees that netted U.S. banks some $36.5 billion last year. In fact, BankSimple touts 30,000 fee-free ATMs in its network and plans to extend credit to prevent users' overdrafts. To offset those costs, it relies on retailer fees from its debit card, and soon, interest from loans -- much the way banks operated before deregulation in the late '90s.

To be sure, BankSimple has plenty of obstacles to overcome. Among them: servicing 12,000 beta testers by year's end; opening its platform to developers; launching to the general public in 2012; and luring customers away from brand-name banks with physical branches. "I'm not saying it can't be done," says Brad Strothkamp, a VP at the research firm Forrester. "But the answer is not as simple as, 'We've got better technology.' "

"People are going to raise an eyebrow," counters CTO (and Twitter vet) Alex Payne. "Then, hopefully, they'll realize we're building something better than a bank."

A version of this article appears in the July/August 2011 issue of Fast Company.

via fastcompany.com

Study: Sea level rising at "unprecedented" pace - CBS News

A tugboat moves across New York Harbor Oct. 19, 2009, in New York City. (Getty Images)

(AP) 

WASHINGTON - Sea level has been rising significantly over the past century of global warming, according to a study that offers the most detailed look yet at the changes in ocean levels during the last 2,100 years.

The researchers found that since the late 19th century — as the world became industrialized — sea level has risen more than 2 millimeters per year, on average. That's a bit less than one-tenth of an inch, but it adds up over time.

Report confirms Arctic melt accelerating
If this glacier keeps melting, watch out
Global warming seen dire by 3000

It will lead to land loss, more flooding and saltwater invading bodies of fresh water, said lead researcher Benjamin Horton whose team examined sediment from North Carolina's Outer Banks. He directs the Sea Level Research Laboratory at the University of Pennsylvania.

The predicted effects he cites aren't new and are predicted by many climate scientists. But outside experts say the research verifies increasing sea level rise compared to previous centuries.

Kenneth Miller, chairman of the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Rutgers University, called the new report significant.

"This is a very important contribution because it firmly establishes that the rise in sea level in the 20th century is unprecedented for the recent geologic past," said Miller, who was not part of the research team. Miller said he recently advised New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie that the state needs to plan for a sea level rise of about 3 feet by the end of the century.

Horton said rising temperatures are the reason behind the higher sea level.

Looking back in history, the researchers found that sea level was relatively stable from 100 B.C. to A.D. 950. Then, during a warm climate period beginning in the 11th century, sea level rose by about half a millimeter per year for 400 years. That was followed by a second period of stable sea level associated with a cooler period, known as the Little Ice Age, which persisted until the late 19th century.

Rising sea levels are among the hazards that concern environmentalists and governments with increasing global temperatures caused by "greenhouse" gases like carbon dioxide from burning fossil fuels like coal and oil over the last century or so.

Although melting icebergs floating on the sea won't change sea level, there are millions of tons of ice piled up on land in Greenland, Antarctica and elsewhere. Melting that ice would have a major impact by raising ocean levels.

The result could include flooding in highly populated coastal cities and greater storm damage in oceanfront communities.

While the new study does not predict the future, Horton pointed out that it does show "there is a very close link between sea level and temperature. So for the 21st century when temperatures will rise, so will sea level."

Two of his co-authors calculated in an earlier paper that sea level could rise by between 30 and 75 inches by the end of this century. And it might even rise faster than that, Martin Vermeer of Aalto University in Finland and Stefan Rahmstorf of Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact reported in 2009.

"Accurate estimates of past sea-level variability provide a context for such projections," co-author Andrew Kemp of Yale University's Climate and Energy Institute said in a statement.

Horton's team studied sediment cores from salt marshes at Sand Point and Tump Point on the North Carolina coast to develop their calculations of sea-level change over the two millennia. They analyzed microfossils in the cores and the age of the cores was estimated using radiocarbon dating and other methods.

For the years since tide gauges have been installed, those findings closely track the results from the study, the researchers noted.

While Horton's report is the first to produce a continuous record of the past 2,000 years "other studies show similar changes, especially concerning the acceleration in sea level rise in the 20th century," Miller sai

via cbsnews.com

As the sun awakens, the power grid stands vulnerable - The Washington Post

As the sun awakens, the power grid stands vulnerable

By Brian Vastag, Published: June 20

The sun is waking up.

And on June 7, it woke up Michael Hesse. At 5:49 a.m., the solar scientist received an alert on his smartphone. NASA spacecraft had seen a burst of X-rays spinning out from a sunspot. The burst was a solar flare — and a “notably large one” at that, Hesse said later.

The sun has been quiet for years, at the nadir of its activity cycle. But since February, our star has been spitting out flares and plasma like an angry dragon. It’s Hesse’s job to watch these eruptions.

If a big one were headed our way, Hesse needed to know, and fast, so he could alert the electric power industry to brace for a geomagnetic storm that could knock some of the North American power grid offline.

Hesse gathered his team at the Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, where he is chief of the Space Weather Laboratory, and fed the latest data from four sun-staring satellites into powerful computers.

At 7:49 Hesse got his answer. An animated chart traced the predicted path of a huge arc of plasma — hot gas — hurtling through the inner solar system. But only the tail of the plume would lick Earth, arriving June 9 and driving a dazzling display of the northern lights from Alaska through Maine.

While a video of the eruption captured by NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory showed an enormous plume spraying from the sun, this solar tantrum would not be the big one — it would not be the 1859 event all over again.

Sept. 1 of that year saw the largest solar flare on record, witnessed by British astronomer Richard Carrington. While tracing features of the sun’s surface, which Carrington had projected via telescope onto paper, he saw a sudden flash emerge from a dark spot. Although such sunspots had sparked curiosity for centuries — Galileo famously drew them, too, in the early 1600s — Carrington had no idea what the flash could mean.

Within hours, telegraph operators found out. Their long strands of wire acted as antennas for this huge wave of solar energy. As this tsunami sped by, transmitters heated up, and several burst into flames. Observers in Miami and Havana gaped skyward at eerie green and yellow displays, the northern lights pushed far south.

A knockout punch

Such a “Carrington event” will happen again someday, but our wired civilization will suffer losses far greater than a few telegraph shacks.

Communications satellites will be knocked offline. Financial transactions, timed and transmitted via those satellite, will fail, causing millions or billions in losses. The GPS system will go wonky. Astronauts on the space station will huddle in a shielded module, as they have done three times in the past decade due to “space weather,” the scientific term for all of the sun’s freaky activity. Flights between North America and Asia, over the North Pole, will have to be rerouted, as they were in April during a weak solar storm at a cost to the airlines of $100,000 a flight. And oil pipelines, particularly in Alaska and Canada, will suffer corrosion as they, like power lines, conduct electricity from the solar storm.

But the biggest impact will be on the modern marvel known as the power grid. And experts warn that the grid is not ready. In 2008, the National Academy of Sciences stated that an 1859-level storm could knock out power in parts of the northeastern and northwestern United States for months, even years. Report co-author John Kappenmann estimated that about 135 million Americans would be forced to revert to a pre-electric lifestyle or relocate. Water systems would fail. Food would spoil. Thousands could die. The financial cost: Up to $2 trillion, one-seventh the annual U.S. gross domestic product.

Utilities say they’re studying the issue, with an eye toward understanding how to protect the grid by powering down sections of it during an hours-long solar storm.

Their efforts are motivated, in part, by the sun’s increasingly frequent outbursts. Every 11 to 12 years, solar activity ramps up. After a quiet season, the sun is now spitting out flares again, with activity expected to peak in 2013 and 2014, said Dean Pesnell, a solar scientist at Goddard.

“The sun is not partisan, it doesn’t listen to diplomacy, and sanctions don’t work,” said Peter Huessy, president of GeoStrategic Analysis. Huessy wants Congress to enact rules that would force power companies to better protect the power grid. “The sun has its own clock. And we don’t know what that clock is, except for once every hundred years or so, it has a coronary.”

Running out of time

Predicting flares is still a nascent science. They typically spring from sunspots, which appear when tangled magnetic fields well up from deep within the sun. A burst of X-rays, flares travel at the speed of light, reaching Earth in about eight minutes. While they can interfere with the electronics in satellites, they pose no direct threat to people on the ground because Earth’s magnetic field acts as a shield against this type of solar weather. This shield is weakest at the North Pole and South Pole, which is why space weather affects high latitudes the most.

Within hours of a flare, the sun often tosses in an encore: a huge plume of plasma known as a coronal mass ejection. During each solar cycle, the sun throws off hundreds of these. But only a few are large. The fastest, most damaging of these waves of charged particles can reach the Earth in about 20 hours. On arrival, these storms deform the Earth’s magnetic field, charge the atmosphere and induce electric currents in power lines for several hours.

But estimating the arrival time and damage potential of such storms is tricky business. The simulations that Hesse runs at Goddard provide only a rough estimate, bracketing the arrival time of a solar storm in a 12- to 14-hour window.

More-precise alerts are sent to power companies just 20 to 30 minutes before a solar storm hits Earth. In May, 29 such alerts went out, triggered by a NASA satellite called the Advanced Composition Explorer, or ACE.

But if ACE fails, the space weather warning system will be crippled, said Tom Bogdan, who heads the Space Weather Prediction Center at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Bogdan wants Congress to fund other satellites to replace ACE before it runs out of fuel in 2021.

An uncertain fate

One possible replacement, a satellite called DSCOVR, sits nearly finished in a hangar at Goddard, where it has languished since 2001. The vision of Al Gore, sidelined when congressional Republicans defunded its launch vehicle, DSCOVR would provide longer warning times for solar storms. Its fate is uncertain, although President Obama is expected to ask for funds to launch the probe in his 2012 budget. Bogdan said the earliest it could get off the ground is 2014.

Representatives of the power industry take issue with the worst-case scenarios.

Leaders do acknowledge that huge solar flares are a serious issue, one the industry is addressing. But “the idea of 130 million people out of power for 10 years is an overstatement,” said Gerry Cauley, president of the North American Electric Reliability Corp., or NERC.

In 2007, Congress gave NERC the power to make rules for electric utilities to prevent blackouts like the one that left an estimated 50 million people in the Midwest, the Northeast and Ontario without power for up to four days in August 2003. (That outage was caused not by a solar flare but by high demand and a tree that fell on a power line; a cascading failure knocked some 100 power plants offline.) “The potential is there for damage to equipment and possibly even outages,” Cauley added. “But the grid itself is very resilient.”

The grid’s weak spots

In 1989, the grid got its most severe solar test, and sections did not fare well. A solar storm one-tenth the strength of the 1859 event triggered a cascade of failures in Quebec in just 90 seconds. Several million people went without power for nine to 12 hours, causing hundreds of millions of dollars in damage. In South Africa, the storm destroyed huge transformers.

Each the size of a house and costing several million dollars, transformers are the grid’s weak spots. They boost the voltage of electricity for transmission along high-voltage lines, but they also absorb extra loads coming down those lines. During the 1989 event, two of South Africa’s transformers overheated and fried during the storm, while nine more failed within a year, said Mark Lauby, a vice president at NERC.

Legislation under consideration in the House would force utility companies to protect 350 critical transformers from a massive solar storm. Under the bill, called the SHIELD Act, the one-time cost of $100 million to $300 million would be passed on to customers. Last year the bill passed in the House unanimously, only to stall in the Senate.

But the SHIELD Act is not dead. In May, the subcommittee on energy and power held a hearing on the bill, where military officials and government regulators warned of the dangers of space weather. Advocates expect the legislation to be reintroduced.

In the meantime, Bogdan will be losing sleep over losing ACE, the sun storm sentinel.

“It’s the extreme solar events I’m worried about,” he said. “It might not happen this solar cycle. But sometime in my lifetime or my children’s, that storm will be here. The question is ‘Will we be prepared for it?’ ”

via washingtonpost.com

Public release date: 20-Jun-2011

Contact: APA Public Affairs
public.affairs@apa.org
202-336-5700
American Psychological Association

Fat substitutes linked to weight gain

Rats on high-fat diet gained more weight after eating low-calorie potato chips made with fat substitutes

WASHINGTON — Synthetic fat substitutes used in low-calorie potato chips and other foods could backfire and contribute to weight gain and obesity, according to a study published by the American Psychological Association.

The study, by researchers at Purdue University, challenges the conventional wisdom that foods made with fat substitutes help with weight loss. "Our research showed that fat substitutes can interfere with the body's ability to regulate food intake, which can lead to inefficient use of calories and weight gain," said Susan E. Swithers, PhD, the lead researcher and a Purdue psychology professor. The study was published online in the APA journal Behavioral Neuroscience.

The study used laboratory rats that were fed either a high-fat or low-fat diet of chow. Half of the rats in each group also were fed Pringles potato chips that are high in fat and calories. The remaining rats in each group were fed high-calorie Pringles chips on some days and low-calorie Pringles Light chips on other days. The Pringles Light chips are made with olestra, a synthetic fat substitute that has zero calories and passes through the body undigested.

For rats on the high-fat diet, the group that ate both types of potato chips consumed more food, gained more weight and developed more fatty tissue than the rats that ate only the high-calorie chips. The fat rats also didn't lose the extra weight even after the potato chips were removed from their diet. "Based on this data, a diet that is low in fat and calories might be a better strategy for weight loss than using fat substitutes," Swithers said. However, she warned that it can be difficult to extrapolate laboratory findings about rats to people, even though their biological responses to food are similar. The study was conducted by Swithers along with Purdue psychology professor Terry L. Davidson, PhD, and former Purdue undergraduate student Sean Ogden.

Why would a fat substitute confuse the body? Food with a sweet or fatty taste usually indicates a large number of calories, and the taste triggers various responses by the body, including salivation, hormonal secretions and metabolic reactions. Fat substitutes can interfere with that relationship when the body expects to receive a large burst of calories but is fooled by a fat substitute.

There is some good news if a diet is naturally low in fat. The rats that were fed a low-fat diet didn't experience significant weight gain from either type of potato chips. However, when those same rats were switched to a high-fat diet, the rats that had eaten both types of potato chips ate more food and gained more weight and body fat than the rats that had eaten only the high-calorie chips.

Swithers and Davidson have reported similar findings in previous rat studies that showed saccharin and other artificial sweeteners also can promote weight gain and increased body fat. The use of artificial sweeteners and fat substitutes has increased dramatically over the past 30 years, mirroring the increase in obesity in America. Dieters have turned to these artificial means to lower calories while still eating foods that taste sweet or fatty. So what is a dieter supposed to do to drop a size?

"Unfortunately, there is no silver bullet," Swithers said. "Eating food which is naturally low in fat and calories may be a better route than relying on fat substitutes or artificial sweeteners."

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via eurekalert.org

Nanoparticles disguised as red blood cells will deliver cancer-fighting drugs

Public release date: 20-Jun-2011

Contact: Catherine Hockmuth
chockmuth@ucsd.edu
858-822-1359
University of California - San Diego

Nanoparticles disguised as red blood cells will deliver cancer-fighting drugs

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego have developed a novel method of disguising nanoparticles as red blood cells, which will enable them to evade the body's immune system and deliver cancer-fighting drugs straight to a tumor. Their research will be published next week in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The method involves collecting the membrane from a red blood cell and wrapping it like a powerful camouflaging cloak around a biodegradable polymer nanoparticle stuffed with a cocktail of small molecule drugs. Nanoparticles are less than 100 nanometers in size, about the same size as a virus.

"This is the first work that combines the natural cell membrane with a synthetic nanoparticle for drug delivery applications." said Liangfang Zhang, a nanoeningeering professor at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering and Moores UCSD Cancer Center. "This nanoparticle platform will have little risk of immune response".

Researchers have been working for years on developing drug delivery systems that mimic the body's natural behavior for more effective drug delivery. That means creating vehicles such as nanoparticles that can live and circulate in the body for extended periods without being attacked by the immune system. Red blood cells live in the body for up to 180 days and, as such, are "nature's long-circulation delivery vehicle," said Zhang's student Che-Ming Hu, a UCSD Ph.D. candidate in bioengineering, and first author on the paper.

Stealth nanoparticles are already used successfully in clinical cancer treatment to deliver chemotherapy drugs. They are coated in a synthetic material such as polyethylene glycol that creates a protection layer to suppress the immune system so that the nanoparticle has time to deliver its payload. Zhang said today's stealth nanoparticle drug delivery vehicles can circulate in the body for hours compared to the minutes a nanoparticle might survive without this special coating.

But in Zhang's study, nanoparticles coated in the membranes of red blood cells circulated in the bodies of lab mice for nearly two days. The study was funded through a grant from the National Institute of Health.

A shift towards personalized medicine

Using the body's own red blood cells marks a significant shift in focus and a major breakthrough in the field of personalized drug delivery research. Trying to mimic the most important properties of a red blood cell in a synthetic coating requires an in-depth biological understanding of how all the proteins and lipids function on the surface of a cell so that you know you are mimicking the right properties. Instead, Zhang's team is just taking the whole surface membrane from an actual red blood cell.

"We approached this problem from an engineering point of view and bypassed all of this fundamental biology," said Zhang. "If the red blood cell has such a feature and we know that it has something to do with the membrane -- although we don't fully understand exactly what is going on at the protein level -- we just take the whole membrane. You put the cloak on the nanoparticle, and the nanoparticle looks like a red blood cell."

Using nanoparticles to deliver drugs also reduces the hours it takes to slowly drip chemotherapy drug solutions through an intravenous line to just a few minutes for a single injection of nanoparticle drugs. This significantly improves the patient's experience and compliance with the therapeutic plan. The breakthrough could lead to more personalized drug delivery wherein a small sample of a patient's own blood could produce enough of the essential membrane to disguise the nanoparticle, reducing the risk of immune response to almost nothing.

Zhang said one of the next steps is to develop an approach for large-scale manufacturing of these biomimetic nanoparticles for clinical use, which will be done through funding from the National Science Foundation. Researchers will also add a targeting molecule to the membrane that will enable the particle to seek and bind to cancer cells, and integrate the team's technology for loading drugs into the nanoparticle core so that multiple drugs can be delivered at the same time.

Zhang said being able to deliver multiple drugs in a single nanoparticle is important because cancer cells can develop a resistance to drugs delivered individually. By combining them, and giving the nanoparticle the ability to target cancer cells, the whole cocktail can be dropped like a bomb from within the cancer cell.

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via eurekalert.org