appeasement not.....,

NYTimes | I continued to be conflicted — believing that when it comes to salutes (and one or two other matters), presidents deserved to be cut some slack, but also feeling a little uneasy about the whole thing.

My ambivalence came to an end last week, when I saw a videotape of the president’s midnight trip to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where he had participated, very early that morning, in the “dignified transfer” of 15 Army soldiers and three Drug Enforcement Administration agents killed that week in Afghanistan. Mr. Obama stood ramrod straight and saluted as six soldiers carried the coffin bearing the body of Sgt. Dale Griffin of Indiana off a C-17 transport aircraft and into a waiting van. His salute, it struck me, was impeccable in every way.

warsocialism's full spectrum redux...,

Seems like it may be time to do a memory refresh on the institutional expanse and behemoth totality of what Pres. Obama and SecDef Gates are wrestling with. It took me longer than I thought it would to find instances of the Joint Vision 2020 Report and its predecessor Joint Vision 2010. Though getting a sweeping strategic interpretation of what these doctrinal realignments portend was fairly easy to do.

commander in chief bidnis....,

Fist tap Submariner

in congress, a call to review internal cybersecurity policies

Washington Post | House leaders on Friday called for an "immediate and comprehensive assessment" of congressional cybersecurity policies, a day after an embarrassing data breach that led to the disclosure of details of confidential ethics investigations.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Minority Leader John A. Boehner (R-Ohio) said they had asked the chief administrative officer of the House to report back to them on the policies and procedures for handling sensitive data as a result of the breach. The inadvertent disclosure of a House ethics committee document, obtained by The Washington Post, summarized the status of investigations into lawmakers' activities on subjects such as influence peddling and defense lobbying.

"We are working diligently to provide the highest level of data security for the House in order to ensure that the operations of House offices are secure from unauthorized access," Pelosi and Boehner said in a statement.

The breach angered lawmakers who were the subject of the previously undisclosed investigations, and it raised questions about the security of other sensitive documents.

cracking the whip...,

Washington Post | House ethics investigators have been scrutinizing the activities of more than 30 lawmakers and several aides in inquiries about issues including defense lobbying and corporate influence peddling, according to a confidential House ethics committee report prepared in July.

7 on defense panel scrutinized

Sanchez sisters eyed by House ethics panel for alleged collusion

Rep. Shuler's land swap deal eyed by ethics committee

The report appears to have been inadvertently placed on a publicly accessible computer network, and it was provided to The Washington Post by a source not connected to the congressional investigations. The committee said Thursday night that the document was released by a low-level staffer.

The ethics committee is one of the most secretive panels in Congress, and its members and staff members sign oaths not to disclose any activities related to its past or present investigations. Watchdog groups have accused the committee of not actively pursuing inquiries; the newly disclosed document indicates the panel is conducting far more investigations than it had revealed.

Shortly after 6 p.m. Thursday, the committee chairman, Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), interrupted a series of House votes to alert lawmakers about the breach. She cautioned that some of the panel's activities are preliminary and not a conclusive sign of inappropriate behavior.

the big don bottleneck...,

once again on the upswing...,

Washington Post | A worldwide upsurge in a crime that officials say could stop trains, flood basements and darken homes has come to the Washington area, where this week's examples include the theft of a bus shelter roof.

The crime involves stealing copper, whether pipes, fittings or wiring. Authorities said the incidence of the thefts often rises with copper's price per pound, which has rebounded sharply in the past year to nearly $3.

In Fairfax City three major copper thefts were reported this week. On Thursday, police were told that a thief had filched the copper roof of a bus shelter at Jermantown Road and Carol Street. The same day, they said, "a large quantity" of wire was reported stolen from a Dominion Virginia Power storage yard in the 11100 block of Fairfax Boulevard. A similar theft was reported at the utility's substation in the 10500 block of Main Street.

In June 2008, with copper prices close to $4 per pound, theft soared around the world, and the consequences rippled through daily life.

As prices fell to about $1.30 in late December, pilferage appeared to decline. Now, in accounts from Australia to Atlanta and Canada to Cape Town, South Africa, officials say copper thieves appear increasingly active.

the victory of the commons

Yesmagazine | The biggest roadblock standing in the way of many people’s recognition of the importance of the commons came tumbling down when Indiana University professor Elinor Ostrom won the Nobel Prize for Economics.

Over many decades, Ostrom has documented how various communities manage common resources – grazing lands, forests, irrigation waters, fisheries— equitably and sustainably over the long term. The Nobel Committee’s recognition of her work effectively debunks popular theories about the Tragedy of the Commons, which hold that private property is the only effective method to prevent finite resources from being ruined or depleted.

Awarding the world’s most prestigious economics prize to a scholar who champions cooperative behavior greatly boosts the legitimacy of the commons as a framework for solving our social and environmental problems. Ostrom’s work also challenges the current economic orthodoxy that there are few, if any, alternatives to privatization and markets in generating wealth and human well being.

The Tragedy of the Commons refers to a scenario in which commonly held land is inevitably degraded because everyone in a community is allowed to graze livestock there. This parable was popularized by wildlife biologist Garrett Hardin in the late 1960s, and was embraced as a principle by the emerging environmental movement. But Ostrom’s research refutes this abstract concept with the real life experience from places like Nepal, Kenya and Guatemala.

“When local users of a forest have a long-term perspective, they are more likely to monitor each other’s use of the land, developing rules for behavior,” she cites as an example. “It is an area that standard market theory does not touch.”

Garrett Hardin himself later revised his own view, noting that what he described was actually the Tragedy of the Unmanaged Commons. Columbia University economist Joseph Stiglitz, also a Nobel winner, commented, “Conservatives used the Tragedy of the Commons to argue for property rights, and that efficiency was achieved as people were thrown off the commons…What Ostrom has demonstrated is the existence of social control mechanisms that regulate the use of the commons without having to resort to property rights.”

culture of "we" buffers genetic tendency toward depression

Physorg | A genetic tendency to depression is much less likely to be realized in a culture centered on collectivistic rather than individualistic values, according to a new Northwestern University study.

In other words, a genetic vulnerability to depression is much more likely to be realized in a Western culture than an East Asian culture that is more about we than me-me-me.

The study coming out of the growing field of cultural neuroscience takes a global look at mental health across social groups and nations.

Depression, research overwhelmingly shows, results from genes, environment and the interplay between the two. One of the most profound ways that people across cultural groups differ markedly, cultural psychology demonstrates, is in how they think of themselves.

"People from highly individualistic cultures like the United States and Western Europe are more likely to value uniqueness over harmony, expression over agreement, and to define themselves as unique or different from the group," said Joan Chiao, the lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychology in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern.

In contrast, people from collectivist cultures are more likely to value social harmony over individuality. "Relative to people in an individualistic culture, they are more likely to endorse behaviors that increase group cohesion and interdependence," Chiao said.

Collectivist cultures may give individuals who are genetically susceptible to depression a tacit or explicit expectation of social support. "Such support seems to buffer vulnerable individuals from the environmental risks or stressors that serve as triggers to depressive episodes," Chiao said.

The study by Chiao and Northwestern graduate student Katherine Blizinsky, "Culture-gene coevolution of individualism-collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene," will be published online in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences.

The study compared genetic frequency information and cultural value data across 29 countries (major European countries as well as South Africa, Eastern Europe, South Asia, East Asia and South America). The serotonin transporter gene (STG) that the researchers studied has two variants - a short allele and a long allele. In Western populations, the short allele leads to a phenotype of major depressive episodes when people who carry it experience multiple life stressors.

long-term anti-depressant drug use

Science Daily | A dramatic rise in antidepressant prescriptions issued by GPs has been caused by a year on year increase in the number of people taking antidepressant drugs on a long-term basis, according to researchers from the University of Southampton.

In a paper, published in the printed edition of British Medical Journal (BMJ), scientists found that despite a drop in the number of new patients diagnosed with depression over 11 years, the number of prescriptions doubled.

"We estimate that more than 2 million people are now taking antidepressants long-term over several years, in particular women aged between 18 and 30," comments Tony Kendrick, a professor in Primary Medical Care of the University's School of Medicine, who led the study.

The number of prescriptions issued per patient rose from 2.8 in 1993 to 5.6 in 2004.

Prescription Pricing Authority data shows that more than 30 million prescriptions for SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors) such as Prozac and Seroxat, are now issued per year, twice as many as the early 1990s. Researchers at the University of Southampton found 90 per cent of people diagnosed with depression are now taking SSRIs either continuously or as repeated courses over several years.

skewering warsocialist stupidity

the case for legalization

AlterNet | By any objective standard, marijuana prohibition is an abject failure.

Nationwide, U.S. law enforcement have arrested over 20 million American citizens for marijuana offenses since 1965, yet today marijuana is more prevalent than ever before, adolescents have easier access to marijuana than ever before, the drug is more potent than ever before, and there is more violence associated with the illegal marijuana trade than ever before.

Over 100 million Americans nationally have used marijuana despite prohibition, and 1 in 10 -- according to current government survey data -- use it regularly.

The criminal prohibition of marijuana has not dissuaded anyone from using marijuana or reduced its availability; however, the strict enforcement of this policy has adversely impacted the lives and careers of millions of people who simply elected to use a substance to relax that is objectively safer than alcohol.

NORML believes that the state of California ought to amend criminal prohibition and replace it with a system of legalization, taxation, regulation and education.

cali gwan legalize it....,

NYTimes | These are heady times for advocates of legalized marijuana in California — and only in small part because of the newly relaxed approach of the federal government toward medical marijuana.

State lawmakers are holding a hearing on Wednesday on the effects of a bill that would legalize, tax and regulate the drug — in what would be the first such law in the United States. Tax officials estimate the legislation could bring the struggling state about $1.4 billion a year, and though the bill’s fate in the Legislature is uncertain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, a Republican, has indicated he would be open to a “robust debate” on the issue.

California voters are also taking up legalization. Three separate initiatives are being circulated for signatures to appear on the ballot next year, all of which would permit adults to possess marijuana for personal use and allow local governments to tax it. Even opponents of legalization suggest that an initiative is likely to qualify for a statewide vote.

“All of us in the movement have had the feeling that we’ve been running into the wind for years,” said James P. Gray, a retired judge in Orange County who has been outspoken in support of legalization. “Now we sense we are running with the wind.”

spitting into the food superpower wind...,

NYTimes | The “cautiously optimistic” authors of the United Nations food report believe that humanity will somehow be able to produce more food while still honoring the value of other species by protecting their habitat. And it’s true that this is not a zero-sum game. A 70 percent increase in food production doesn’t necessarily mean a 70 percent reduction in habitat.

But the Food and Agriculture Organization also warns that agricultural acreage will have to grow by some 297 million acres, a little less than three times the size of California. Add to this the ongoing rate of habitat destruction — including deforestation, often for fuel but usually for producing more food — and other threats like the growing production of biofuels, and it is hard to argue that there isn’t a profound conflict between what our species will need to survive by 2050 and the needs of nearly every other species on this planet.

The question isn’t whether we can feed 9.1 billion people in 2050 — they must be fed — or whether we can find the energy they will surely need. The question is whether we can find a way to make food and energy production sustainable in the broadest possible sense — and whether we can act on the principle that our interest includes that of every other species on the planet.

insight for IQ fetishists..,

Nature | An anatomical signature for literacy.

Language is a uniquely human ability that evolved at some point in the roughly 6,000,000 years since human and chimpanzee lines diverged1, 2. Even in the most linguistically impoverished environments, children naturally develop sophisticated language systems3. In contrast, reading is a learnt skill that does not develop without intensive tuition and practice. Learning to read is likely to involve ontogenic structural brain changes4, 5, 6, but these are nearly impossible to isolate in children owing to concurrent biological, environmental and social maturational changes. In Colombia, guerrillas are re-integrating into mainstream society and learning to read for the first time as adults. This presents a unique opportunity to investigate how literacy changes the brain, without the maturational complications present in children. Here we compare structural brain scans from those who learnt to read as adults (late-literates) with those from a carefully matched set of illiterates. Late-literates had more white matter in the splenium of the corpus callosum and more grey matter in bilateral angular, dorsal occipital, middle temporal, left supramarginal and superior temporal gyri. The importance of these brain regions for skilled reading was investigated in early literates, who learnt to read as children. We found anatomical connections linking the left and right angular and dorsal occipital gyri through the area of the corpus callosum where white matter was higher in late-literates than in illiterates; that reading, relative to object naming, increased the interhemispheric functional connectivity between the left and right angular gyri; and that activation in the left angular gyrus exerts top-down modulation on information flow from the left dorsal occipital gyrus to the left supramarginal gyrus. These findings demonstrate how the regions identified in late-literates interact during reading, relative to object naming, in early literates.

genomics richard stallman?

The Scientist | In the future, Hubbard says that gene-prediction programs need to get good enough that they can find genes without the aid of experimental data or comparative genome analyses to guide them. “Because that’s cheating,” he says. “For example, an RNA polymerase does not go and look at the mouse genome when it’s working out whether to transcribe a particular stretch of human sequence. But that’s what many of our algorithms do now.” Instead, he says that annotation programs should take an RNA polymerase–eye-view of the sequence, modeling the biology closely enough to accurately locate and assess the activity of genes. As we move into an era of personal genomics, such an approach will be necessary for predicting the effect that a certain SNP variant might have on gene function. He and his team have had some early success, producing a transcription start-site predictor that nails about half the genes in a genome sequence with very few false positives.

Hubbard also spends quite a bit of time working on issues of open access and the economics of innovation. “Governments are spending all this money for research and then not maximizing its value because they’re not investing enough in making sure people can access and reuse that data,” says Hubbard, who has discussed these issues at meetings of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the World Health Organization. Much of this work he does in his spare time. “Other people go fishing,” laughs Birney. “Tim likes to reform international patent law and go to UN conferences to discuss how open-access agreements should be arranged to maximize the way science gets translated into meaningful outcomes.”

Those outcomes, of course, include potential improvements in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, which makes the issue more urgent and more fraught. “If you look at the health implications of all the work being done in genomics, the opportunities are tremendous and the obstacles are staggering—and a lot of those are political,” says Haussler. “I just have the ultimate respect for Tim, as he’s willing to move through those political hurdles and try to get things to happen.”

“In a way, Tim’s contribution to the scientific endeavor is a very interesting one and rather different from most scientists,” says EBI director Janet Thornton. “Although he’s had a hand in producing many of the big genome publications, his unique input lies in his broad perspective, his sense of fairness, and his openness to new ideas. His diplomatic efforts have really been fundamental in making these large-scale, collaborative genomics projects work—and in making the data available so that the science can be put to good use for biology and medicine around the world.”

“A lot of things can be done by one person with a computer,” adds Flicek. “If the Internet age taught us anything, it’s taught us that.”

national institute of food and agriculture

The Scientist | Historically short-shrifted by federal funding bodies, academic agricultural research was recently promised redemption: a federal funding agency of its very own that will award competitive grants in a fashion similar to the National Institutes of Health (NIH). But will the new agency, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), be able to put public-sector agricultural science on an equal footing with biomedical research?

NIFA, to be administrated by the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), was modeled after the government's other large science funding agencies -- the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy, and especially the NIH. Its mission is to fund research addressing several pressing issues ranging from increasing sustainable food production to bioenergy, food safety, and global climate change while encouraging a renaissance in agricultural research at universities across the country.

Unlike university-based biomedical research, however, which in general has enjoyed robust funding in the recent past, academic agricultural research has withered under a USDA that has traditionally meted out small, non-competitive grants to land grant universities, often at the behest of US legislators trying to direct funds to their home districts or states. The result is an intellectual landscape where much of the knowledge surrounding plant science and agriculture resides not in universities but in industry, locked behind the walls of large agribusinesses.

"We're starting at a different point with NIFA than the one at which we find ourselves at NIH," said Keith Yamamoto, a University of California, San Francisco, molecular biologist who serves as an advisor to the NIH and led the agency's recent efforts to revamp its peer-review process. "The current tilt in the fundamental knowledge about plants, their growth, and development is on the industry side and I would say that it's precisely because of the lack of resources on the public side," he told The Scientist. "It's the basic, fundamental information that needs to be in the realm of the public sector."

The disparity between private and public agriculture research becomes apparent when one considers data from the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Lists of recent patent holders in technology classes related to biomedicine -- surgery, drugs, prosthesis, etc. -- are replete with universities, which typically hold patents generated by publicly-funded research. Agricultural patents from 2004-2008, however, are overwhelmingly held by large agribusinesses such as Monsanto, DuPont, and Syngenta. In the USPTO's "Multicellular Living Organisms and Unmodified Parts Thereof and Related Processes" technology class (which includes genetically modified organisms), six companies -- Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Monsanto Technology, Stine Seed Farm, DuPont, Syngenta, and Mertec -- were awarded a total of 255 patents in 2008, while the Regents of the University of California system, which held the most patents in that technology class out of any university or university system last year, was awarded only six. Other technology classes relating to agriculture, such as "Plant Protecting and Regulating Compositions" and "Planting," have been devoid of university-held patents over the past 4-5 years.

That balance must be corrected, experts say, and NIFA may be key. "What's been missing so long in USDA is the forcing of competitive research ideas," said Martin Apple, president of the Council of Scientific Society Presidents who has been involved with the formation of NIFA since Congress created it in the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008. "The ace in the hole at NIFA is peer-reviewed research."

a molecule of motivation

NYTimes | If you’ve ever had a problem with rodents and woken up to find that mice had chewed their way through the Cheerios, the Famous Amos, three packages of Ramen noodles, and even that carton of baker’s yeast you had bought in a fit of “Ladies of the Canyon” wistfulness, you will appreciate just how freakish is the strain of laboratory mouse that lacks all motivation to eat.

The mouse is physically capable of eating. It still likes the taste of food. Put a kibble in its mouth, and it will chew and swallow, all the while wriggling its nose in apparent rodent satisfaction.

Yet left on its own, the mouse will not rouse itself for dinner. The mere thought of walking across the cage and lifting food pellets from the bowl fills it with overwhelming apathy. What is the point, really, of all this ingesting and excreting? Why bother? Days pass, the mouse doesn’t eat, it hardly moves, and within a couple of weeks, it has starved itself to death.

Behind the rodent’s fatal case of ennui is a severe deficit of dopamine, one of the essential signaling molecules in the brain. Dopamine has lately become quite fashionable, today’s “it” neurotransmitter, just as serotonin was “it” in the Prozac-laced ’90s.

People talk of getting their “dopamine rush” from chocolate, music, the stock market, the BlackBerry buzz on the thigh — anything that imparts a small, pleasurable thrill. Familiar agents of vice like cocaine, methamphetamine, alcohol and nicotine are known to stimulate the brain’s dopamine circuits, as do increasingly popular stimulants like Adderall and Ritalin.

In the communal imagination, dopamine is about rewards, and feeling good, and wanting to feel good again, and if you don’t watch out, you’ll be hooked, a slave to the pleasure lines cruising through your brain. Hey, why do you think they call it dopamine?

Yet as new research on dopamine-deficient mice and other studies reveal, the image of dopamine as our little Bacchus in the brain is misleading, just as was the previous caricature of serotonin as a neural happy face.

yikes...,

real unemployment at ~17%

Table A-12. Alternative measures of labor underutilization

  HOUSEHOLD DATA                                                                                                            HOUSEHOLD DATA

 Table A-12.  Alternative measures of labor underutilization

 (Percent)
                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                        
                                                           Not seasonally adjusted                   Seasonally adjusted                
                                                                                                                                        
                         Measure                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                        
                                                           Sept.    Aug.     Sept.    Sept.    May      June     July     Aug.     Sept.
                                                           2008     2009     2009     2008     2009     2009     2009     2009     2009 
                                                                                                                                        
                                                                                                                                        
 U-1 Persons unemployed 15 weeks or longer, as a percent                                                                                
      of the civilian labor force.......................    2.3      4.9      5.3      2.4      4.5      5.1      5.1      5.1      5.4 
                                                                                                                                        
 U-2 Job losers and persons who completed temporary                                                                                     
      jobs, as a percent of the civilian labor force....    3.0      6.0      6.0      3.5      6.2      6.2      6.2      6.4      6.8 
                                                                                                                                        
 U-3 Total unemployed, as a percent of the civilian                                                                                     
      labor force (official unemployment rate)..........    6.0      9.6      9.5      6.2      9.4      9.5      9.4      9.7      9.8 
                                                                                                                                        
 U-4 Total unemployed plus discouraged workers, as a                                                                                    
      percent of the civilian labor force plus                                                                                          
      discouraged workers...............................    6.2     10.0      9.9      6.5      9.8     10.0      9.8     10.1     10.2 
                                                                                                                                        
 U-5 Total unemployed, plus discouraged workers, plus                                                                                   
      all other marginally attached workers, as a                                                                                       
      percent of the civilian labor force plus all                                                                                      
      marginally attached workers.......................    6.9     10.9     10.8      7.2     10.6     10.8     10.7     11.0     11.1 
                                                                                                                                        
 U-6 Total unemployed, plus all marginally attached                                                                                     
      workers, plus total employed part time for                                                                                        
      economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian                                                                                    
      labor force plus all marginally attached workers..   10.6     16.5     16.1     11.2     16.4     16.5     16.3     16.8     17.0 

    NOTE:  Marginally attached workers are persons who currently are neither working nor looking for work but indicate that they want and
 are available for a job and have looked for work sometime in the recent past.  Discouraged workers, a subset of the marginally attached,
 have given a job-market related reason for not looking currently for a job.  Persons employed part time for economic reasons are those
 who want and are available for full-time work but have had to settle for a part-time schedule.  For more information, see "BLS intro-
 duces new range of alternative unemployment measures," in the October 1995 issue of the Monthly Labor Review.  Updated population con-
 trols are introduced annually with the release of January data.