Pope Francis blames 'human selfishness' for global warming

The Pope calls for a radical change in behaviour to save the planet for future generations

Pope Francis has blamed human selfishness for global warming in his long-awaited encyclical calling for action on climate change.

In the letter, he urges the rich to change their lifestyles to avert the destruction of the ecosystem.

Environmentalists hope the message will spur on nations ahead of the UN climate conference in Paris in December.

But parts of the document, leaked earlier this week, have already been criticised by some US conservatives.

It has been dismissed by two Republican presidential candidates.

Humans to blameThe encyclical, named "Laudato Si (Be Praised), On the Care of Our Common Home", aims to inspire everyone - not just Roman Catholics - to protect the Earth.

The 192-page letter, which is the highest level teaching document a pope can issue, lays much of the blame for global warming on human activities.

Pope Francis writes that: "We have come to see ourselves as her lords and masters, entitled to plunder her at will.

"The violence present in our hearts, wounded by sin, is also reflected in the symptoms of sickness evident in the soil, in the water, in the air and in all forms of life." 

The letter highlights the loss of biodiversity in Amazonian rainforests and the melting of polar glaciers

 He criticises what he calls a "collective selfishness", but says that there is still time to stop the damage, calling for an end to consumerism and greed.

'Moral approach'
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi launched the pontiff's second encyclical at a news conference on Thursday.

The teaching is more evidence of a pontiff determined to act as a catalyst for change, and a powerful diplomatic player on the world stage, says the BBC's religious affairs correspondent Caroline Wyatt.

The release comes six months before international leaders gather in Paris to try to seal a deal to reduce carbon emissions.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon welcomed the document, saying climate change was a "moral issue requiring respectful dialogue with all parts of society". 

Metropolitan of Pergamon Joannis Zizioulas (left) became the first high-ranking Orthodox Church official to present a papal document

It has also been widely praised by environmental groups, with WWF president Yolanda Kakabadse saying it "adds a much-needed moral approach'' to the debate on climate change.

Greenpeace leader Kumi Naidoo highlighted passages calling for policies that reduce carbon emissions, including by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.

But a leak of the document, published by Italy's L'Espresso magazine on Tuesday, had a frosty response from sceptical conservatives in America, including two Roman Catholic presidential candidates.

Jeb Bush said he did not get his economic policy from his bishops, cardinals or pope - so why his policy on the environment?

Meanwhile Rick Santorum questioned whether the Pope was credible on the issue of climate science.

US Senator, Jim Inhofe, chairman of the US Senate Environment Committee, said he disagreed with the Pope's "philosophy" on global warming.

"I am concerned that his encyclical will be used by global warming alarmists to advocate for policies that will equate to the largest, most regressive tax increase in our nation's history."

However, many academics have welcomed the pontiff's input.

Prof Myles Allen, Professor of Geosystem Science at the University of Oxford in the UK, said: "If Pope Francis can't speak up for our unborn grandchildren, then God help us all."

Will Pope sway Americans? - Roger Harrabin, BBC News environment analyst 

Jeb Bush dismissed a leaked draft of the encyclical

 The UN's climate change chief Christiana Figueres says the Pope's message will influence talks in Paris this year on a deal to tackle global warming.

Developing countries are demanding firmer promises of financial help from rich countries so they can adapt to inevitable changes in the climate and get clean energy to avoid contributing to further warming.
Ms Figueres said their position would be strengthened by the Pope's insistence that this was the clear moral responsibility of the rich.

The encyclical will be welcomed by poor countries in Africa and Latin America.

The big question is how it will play in the USA, where it has already been dismissed by a Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush, who is a Catholic.

Leading Republicans have warned the UN that they will undo President Barack Obama's climate policies - so if the encyclical sways any of the conservative Catholics in Congress that could prove significant.

ORIGINAL: BBC

June 18, 2015

How Academia and Publishing are Destroying Scientific Innovation: A Conversation with Sydney Brenner

The LMB Governing Board, October 1967. Left to right: Hugh Huxley, John Kendrew, Max Perutz, Francis Crick, Fred Sanger, Sydney Brenner. (From the website of the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology)


I recently had the privilege of speaking with Professor Sydney Brenner, a professor of Genetic medicine at the University of Cambridge and Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine in 2002. I had originally intended to ask him about Professor Frederick Sanger, the two-time Nobel Prize winner famous for his discovery of the structure of proteins and his development of DNA sequencing methods, who passed away in November. I wanted to do the classic tribute by exploring his scientific contributions and getting a first hand account of what it was like to work with him at Cambridge’s Medical Research Council’s (MRC) Laboratory for Molecular Biology (LMB) and at King’s College where they were both fellows. What transpired instead was a fascinating account of the LMB’s quest to unlock the genetic code and a critical commentary on why our current scientific research environment makes this kind of breakthrough unlikely today.

LMB at Cambridge. Original LMB

It is difficult to exaggerate the significance of Professor Brenner and his colleagues’ contributions to biology. Brenner won the Nobel Prize for establishing Caenorhabditis elegans, a type of roundworm, as the model organism for cellular and developmental biological research, which led to discoveries in organ development and programmed cell death. He made his breakthroughs at the LMB, where beginning in the 1950s, an extraordinary number of successive innovations elucidated our understanding of the genetic code. This code is the process by which cells in our body translate information stored in our DNA into proteins, vital molecules important to the structure and functioning of cells. It was here that James Watson and Francis Crick discovered the double-helical structure of DNA. Brenner was one of the first scientists to see this ground-breaking model, driving from Oxford, where he was working at the time in the Department of Chemistry, to Cambridge to witness this breakthrough. This young group of scientists, considered renegades at the time, made a series of successive revolutionary discoveries that ultimately led to the creation of a new field called molecular biology.

To begin our interview, I asked Professor Brenner to speak about Professor Sanger and what led him to his Nobel Prize winning discoveries.

Sydney Brenner: Fred realized very early on that if we could sequence DNA, we would have direct contact with the genes. The problem was that you couldn’t get hold of genes in any way. You couldn’t purify what was a gene. That is why right from the start in 1954, we decided we would do this by using Fred’s method of sequencing proteins, which he had achieved [proteins are derived from the information held in DNA]. You have to realise it was only on a small scale. I think there were only forty-five amino acids [the building blocks of proteins] that were in insulin. We thought even scaling that up for proteins would be difficult. But finally DNA sequencing was invented. Then it became clear that we could directly approach the gene, and it produced a completely new period in science.

He was interested in the method and interested in getting the methods to work. I was really clear in my own mind that what he did in DNA sequencing, even at the time, would cause a revolution in the subject, which it did. And of course we immediately, as fast as possible, began to use these methods in our own research.

ED: This foundational research ushered in a new era of biological science. It has formed the basis of nearly all subsequent discoveries in the field, from understanding the mechanisms of diseases, to the development of new drugs for diseases such as cancer. Imagining the creative energy that drove these discoveries was truly inspirational. I asked Professor Brenner what it felt like to be part of this scientific adventure.

SB: I think it’s really hard to communicate that because I lived through the entire period from its very beginning, and it took on different forms as matters progressed. So it was, of course, wonderful. That’s what I tell students. The way to succeed is to get born at the right time and in the right place. If you can do that then you are bound to succeed. You have to be receptive and have some talent as well.

ED: Today, the structure of DNA and how genetic information is translated into proteins are established scientific canon. Brenner joked that he “knew that molecular biology was doomed to success when [he] heard two students speaking in a bus once and asking whether they would get the genetic code in the examination. It had become an academic subject.” But in the 1950s, the hypotheses generated at the LMB were dismissed as inconceivable nonsense.

SB: To have seen the development of a subject, which was looked upon with disdain by the establishment from the very start, actually become the basis of our whole approach to biology today. That is something that was worth living for.

I remember Francis Crick gave a lecture in 1958, in which he discussed the adapter hypothesis at the time. He proposed that there were twenty enzymes, which linked amino acids to twenty different molecules of RNA, which we call adapters. It was these adapters that lined up the amino acids. The adapter hypothesis was conceived I think as early as 1954 and of course it was to explain these two languages: 
DNA, the language of information, and 
proteins, the language of work.

Of course that was a paradox, because how did you get one without the other? That was solved by discovering that a molecule from RNA could actually have function. So this information on RNA, which happened much later really, solved that problem as far as origins were concerned.

ED: (Professor Brenner was far too modest here, as it was he who discovered RNA’s critical role in this translation from gene to protein.)

SB: So he [Crick] gave the lecture and biochemists stood up in the audience and said this is completely ridiculous, because if there were twenty enzymes, we biochemists would have already discovered them. To them, the fact that they still hadn’t went to show that this was nonsense. Little did the man know that at that very moment scientists were in the process of finding the very first of these enzymes, which today we know are the enzymes that combined amino acids with transfer RNA. And so you really had to say that the message kept its purity all the way through.

What people don’t realise is that at the beginning, it was just a handful of people who saw the light, if I can put it that way. So it was like belonging to an evangelical sect, because there were so few of us, and all the others sort of thought that there was something wrong with us.

They weren’t willing to believe. Of course they just said, well, what you’re trying to do is impossible. That’s what they said about crystallography of large molecules. They just said it’s hopeless. It’s a hopeless task. And so what we were trying to do with the chemistry of proteins and nucleic acids looked hopeless for a long time. Partly because they didn’t understand how they were built, which I think we molecular biologists had the first insight into, and partly because they just thought they were amorphous blobs and would never be able to be analysed.

I remember when going to London to talk at meetings, people used to ask me what am I going to do in London, and I used to tell them I’m going to preach to the heathens. We viewed most of everybody else as not doing the right science. Like one says, the young Turks will become old Greeks. That’s the trouble with life. I think molecular biology was marvellous because every time you thought it was over and it was just going to be boring, something new happened. It was happening every day.

So I don’t know if you can ride on the crest of a wave; you can ride on it, I believe, forever. I think that being in science is the most incredible experience to have, and I now spend quite a lot of my time trying to help the younger people in science to enjoy it and not to feel that they are part of some gigantic machine, which a lot of people feel today.

ED: I asked him what inspired them to maintain their faith and pursue these revolutionary ideas in the face of such doubt and opposition.

SB: Once you saw the light you were just certain that you had to be right, that it was the right way to do it and the right answer. And of course our faith, if you like, has been borne out.

I think it would have been difficult to keep going without the strong support we had from the Medical Research Council. I think they took a big gamble when they founded that little unit in the Cavendish. I think all the early people they had were amazing. There were amazing personalities amongst them.

This was not your usual university department, but a rather flamboyant and very exceptional group that was meant to get together. An important thing for us was that with the changes in America then, from the late fifties almost to the present day, there was an enormous stream of talent and American postdoctoral fellows that came to our lab to work with us. But the important thing was that they went back. Many of them are now leaders of American molecular biology, who are alumni of the old MRC.

ED: The 1950s to 1960s at the LMB was a renaissance of biological discovery, when a group of young, intrepid scientists made fundamental advances that overturned conventional thinking. The atmosphere and camaraderie reminded me of another esteemed group of friends at King’s College – the Bloomsbury Group, whose members included Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forester, and many others. Coming from diverse intellectual backgrounds, these friends shared ideas and attitudes, which inspired their writing and research. Perhaps there was something about the nature of the Cambridge college systems that allowed for such revolutionary creativity?

SB: In most places in the world, you live your social life and your ordinary life in the lab. You don’t know anybody else. Sometimes you don’t even know other people in the same building, these things become so large.

The wonderful thing about the college system is that it’s broken up again into a whole different unit. And in these, you can meet and talk to, and be influenced by and influence people, not only from other scientific disciplines, but from other disciplines. So for me, and I think for many others as well, that was a really important part of intellectual life. That’s why I think people in the college have to work to keep that going.

Cambridge is still unique in that you can get a PhD in a field in which you have no undergraduate training. So I think that structure in Cambridge really needs to be retained, although I see so often that rules are being invented all the time. In America you’ve got to have credits from a large number of courses before you can do a PhD. That’s very good for training a very good average scientific work professional. But that training doesn’t allow people the kind of room to expand their own creativity. But expanding your own creativity doesn’t suit everybody. For the exceptional students, the ones who can and probably will make a mark, they will still need institutions free from regulation.

ED: I was excited to hear that we had a mutual appreciation of the college system, and its ability to inspire interdisciplinary work and research. Brenner himself was a biochemist also trained in medicine, and Sanger was a chemist who was more interested in chemistry than biology.

SB: I’m not sure whether Fred was really interested in the biological problems, but I think the methods he developed, he was interested in achieving the possibility of finding out the chemistry of all these important molecules from the very earliest.

ED: Professor Brenner noted that these scientific discoveries required a new way of approaching old problems, which resist traditional disciplinary thinking.

SB: The thing is to have no discipline at all. Biology got its main success by the importation of physicists that came into the field not knowing any biology and I think today that’s very important.

I strongly believe that the only way to encourage innovation is to give it to the young. The young have a great advantage in that they are ignorant. Because I think ignorance in science is very important. If you’re like me and you know too much you can’t try new things. I always work in fields of which I’m totally ignorant.

ED: But he felt that young people today face immense challenges as well, which hinder their ability to creatively innovate.

SB: Today the Americans have developed a new culture in science based on the slavery of graduate students. Now graduate students of American institutions are afraid. He just performs. He’s got to perform. The post-doc is an indentured labourer. We now have labs that don’t work in the same way as the early labs where people were independent, where they could have their own ideas and could pursue them.

The most important thing today is for young people to take responsibility, to actually know how to formulate an idea and how to work on it. Not to buy into the so-called apprenticeship. I think you can only foster that by having sort of deviant studies. That is, you go on and do something really different. Then I think you will be able to foster it.

But today there is no way to do this without money. That’s the difficulty. In order to do science you have to have it supported. The supporters now, the bureaucrats of science, do not wish to take any risks. So in order to get it supported, they want to know from the start that it will work. This means you have to have preliminary information, which means that you are bound to follow the straight and narrow.

There’s no exploration any more except in a very few places. You know like someone going off to study Neanderthal bones. Can you see this happening anywhere else? No, you see, because he would need to do something that’s important to advance the aims of the people who fund science.

I think I’ve often divided people into two classes: Catholics and Methodists. Catholics are people who sit on committees and devise huge schemes in order to try to change things, but nothing’s happened. Nothing happens because the committee is a regression to the mean, and the mean is mediocre. Now what you’ve got to do is good works in your own parish. That’s a Methodist.

ED: His faith in young, naïve (in the most positive sense) scientists is so strong that he has dedicated his later career to fostering their talent against these negative forces.

SB: I am fortunate enough to be able to do this because in Singapore I actually have started two labs and am about to start a third, which are only for young people. These are young Singaporeans who have all been sent abroad to get their PhDs at places like Cambridge, Stanford, and Berkeley. They return back and rather than work five years as a post-doc for some other person, I’ve got a lab where they can work for themselves. They’re not working for me and I’ve told them that.

But what is interesting is that very few accept that challenge, providing what I think is a good standard deviation from the mean. Exceptional people, the ones who have the initiative, have gone out and got their own funding. I think these are clearly going to be the winners. The eldest is thirty-two.

They can have some money, and of course they’ve got to accept the responsibility of execution. I help them in the sense that I oblige them and help them find things, and I can also guide them and so on. We discuss things a lot because I’ve never believed in these group meetings, which seems to be the bane of American life; the head of the lab trying to find out what’s going on in his lab. Instead, I work with people one on one, like the Cambridge tutorial. Now we just have seminars and group meetings and so on.

So I think you’ve got to try to do something like that for the young people and if you can then I think you will create. That’s the way to change the future. Because if these people are successful then they will be running science in twenty years’ time.

ED: Our discussion made me think about what we consider markers of success today. It reminded me of a paragraph in Professor Brenner’s tribute to Professor Sanger in Science:

“A Fred Sanger would not survive today’s world of science. With continuous reporting and appraisals, some committee would note that he published little of import between insulin in 1952 and his first paper on RNA sequencing in 1967 with another long gap until DNA sequencing in 1977. He would be labelled as unproductive, and his modest personal support would be denied. We no longer have a culture that allows individuals to embark on long-term—and what would be considered today extremely risky—projects.”

I found this particularly striking given that another recent Nobel prize winner, Peter Higgs, who identified the particle that bears his name, the Higgs boson, similarly remarked in an interview with the Guardian that, “he doubts a similar breakthrough could be achieved in today’s academic culture, because of the expectations on academics to collaborate and keep churning out papers. He said that: ‘it’s difficult to imagine how I would ever have enough peace and quiet in the present sort of climate to do what I did in 1964.’”

An Aspiring Scientist’s Frustration with Modern-Day Academia: A Resignation

 

Here is a mind-blowing text that was sent to all EPFL researchers (presumably) by a doctoral student during the week-end. It expresses feelings that are worth to think about.

Just to be crystal-clear:

• I am not the author of this text.
• I don’t publish the name of his/her author, since I have no proof that his/her e-mail address was not spoofed. (NOTE: Gene Bunin acknowledges being the author of the letter in his website)

• I don’t think that the exposed facts are a problematic unique to EPFL, nor to any other Swiss university: to the contrary, this is probably a worldwide phenomenon.
• Finally, I would like to make very clear that I did not experience the same feelings at all during my (very happy) PhD times at EPFL. So, don’t try to make any parallel with my own experience.
• Like the author, I don’t have any good idea how to change the system towards a better one.

Still, if you are or have been in the academic world, I think it is worth to invest 10 minutes to read this text.

Dear EPFL,

I am writing to state that, after four years of hard but enjoyable PhD work at this school, I am planning to quit my thesis in January, just a few months shy of completion. Originally, this was a letter that was intended only for my advisors. However, as I prepared to write it I realized that the message here may be pertinent to anyone involved in research across the entire EPFL, and so have extended its range just a bit. Specifically, this is intended for graduate students, postdocs, senior researchers, and professors, as well as for the people at the highest tiers of the school’s management. To those who have gotten this and are not in those groups, I apologize for the spam.

While I could give a multitude of reasons for leaving my studies – some more concrete, others more abstract – the essential motivation stems from my personal conclusion that I’ve lost faith in today’s academia as being something that brings a positive benefit to the world/societies we live in. Rather, I’m starting to think of it as a big money vacuum that takes in grants and spits out nebulous results, fueled by people whose main concerns are not to advance knowledge and to effect positive change, though they may talk of such things, but to build their CVs and to propel/maintain their careers. But more on that later.

Before continuing, I want to be very clear about two things: 

First, not everything that I will say here is from my personal firsthand experience. Much is also based on conversations I’ve had with my peers, outside the EPFL and in, and reflects their experiences in addition to my own.  
Second, any negative statements that I make in this letter should not be taken to heart by all of its readers. It is not my intention to demonize anyone, nor to target specific individuals. I will add that, both here and elsewhere, I have met some excellent people and would not – not in a hundred years – dare accuse them of what I wrote in the previous paragraph. However, my fear and suspicion is that these people are few, and that all but the most successful ones are being marginalized by a system that, feeding on our innate human weaknesses, is quickly getting out of control.

I don’t know how many of the PhD students reading this entered their PhD programs with the desire to actually *learn* and to somehow contribute to science in a positive manner. Personally, I did. If you did, too, then you’ve probably shared at least some of the frustrations that I’m going to describe next.

(1) Academia: It’s Not Science, It’s Business
I’m going to start with the supposition that the goal of “science” is

• to search for truth, 
• to improve our understanding of the universe around us, and 
• to somehow use this understanding to move the world towards a better tomorrow. 

At least, this is the propaganda that we’ve often been fed while still young, and this is generally the propaganda that universities that do research use to put themselves on lofty moral ground, to decorate their websites, and to recruit naïve youngsters like myself.
I’m also going to suppose that in order to find truth, the basic prerequisite is that you, as a researcher, have to be brutally honest – first and foremost, with yourself and about the quality of your own work. Here one immediately encounters a contradiction, as such honesty appears to have a very minor role in many people’s agendas. Very quickly after your initiation in the academic world, you learn that being “too honest” about your work is a bad thing and that stating your research’s shortcomings “too openly” is a big faux pas. Instead, you are taught to “sell” your work, to worry about your “image”, and to be strategic in your vocabulary and where you use it. Preference is given to good presentation over good content – a priority that, though understandable at times, has now gone overboard. The “evil” kind of networking (see, e.g.,http://thoughtcatalog.com/2011/networking-good-vs-evil/) seems to be openly encouraged. With so many business-esque things to worry about, it’s actually surprising that *any* scientific research still gets done these days. Or perhaps not, since it’s precisely the naïve PhDs, still new to the ropes, who do almost all of it.

Artificial-intelligence research revives its old ambitions

ORIGINAL: MIT
Larry Hardesty, MIT News Office
September 9, 2013

A new interdisciplinary research center at MIT, funded by the National Science Foundation, aims at nothing less than unraveling the mystery of intelligence.

Illustration: Christine Daniloff/MIT

The birth of artificial-intelligence research as an autonomous discipline is generally thought to have been the monthlong Dartmouth Summer Research Project on Artificial Intelligence in 1956, which convened 10 leading electrical engineers — including MIT’s Marvin Minsky and Claude Shannon — to discuss “how to make machines use language” and “form abstractions and concepts.” A decade later, impressed by rapid advances in the design of digital computers, Minsky was emboldened to declare that “within a generation ... the problem of creating ‘artificial intelligence’ will substantially be solved.”

The problem, of course, turned out to be much more difficult than AI’s pioneers had imagined. In recent years, by exploiting machine learning — in which computers learn to perform tasks from sets of training examples — artificial-intelligence researchers have built special-purpose systems that can do things like interpret spoken language or play Jeopardy with great success. But according to Tomaso Poggio, the Eugene McDermott Professor of Brain Sciences and Human Behavior at MIT, “These recent achievements have, ironically, underscored the limitations of computer science and artificial intelligence. We do not yet understand how the brain gives rise to intelligence, nor do we know how to build machines that are as broadly intelligent as we are.”

Poggio thinks that AI research needs to revive its early ambitions. “It’s time to try again,” he says. “We know much more than we did before about biological brains and how they produce intelligent behavior. We’re now at the point where we can start applying that understanding from neuroscience, cognitive science and computer science to the design of intelligent machines.”

The National Science Foundation (NSF) appears to agree: Today, it announced that one of three new research centers funded through its Science and Technology Centers Integrative Partnerships program will be the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM), based at MIT and headed by Poggio. Like all the centers funded through the program, CBMM will initially receive $25 million over five years.

Homegrown initiative
CBMM grew out of the MIT Intelligence Initiative, an interdisciplinary program aimed at understanding how intelligence arises in the human brain and how it could be replicated in machines.

“[MIT President] Rafael Reif, when he was provost, came to speak to the faculty and challenged us to come up with new visions, new ideas,” Poggio says. He and MIT’s Joshua Tenenbaum, also a professor in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS) and a principal investigator in the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, responded by proposing a program that would integrate research at BCS and the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science. “With a system as complicated as the brain, there is a point where you need to get people to work together across different disciplines and techniques,” Poggio says. Funded by MIT’s School of Science, the initiative was formally launched, in 2011, at a symposium during MIT’s 150th anniversary.

Headquartered at MIT, CBMM will be, like all the NSF centers, a multi-institution collaboration. Of the 20 faculty members currently affiliated with the center,

• 10 are from MIT, 
• five are from Harvard University, and the rest are from  
• Cornell University,  
• Rockefeller University, 
• the University of California at Los Angeles, 
• Stanford University and the  
• Allen Institute for Brain Science. 

The center’s international partners are the  

• Italian Institute of Technology; 
• the Max Planck Institute in Germany; 
• City University of Hong Kong; 
• the National Centre for Biological Sciences in India; and 
• Israel’s Weizmann Institute and Hebrew University. 

Its industrial partners are  

• Google,  
• Microsoft,  
• IBM,  
• Mobileye, 
• Orcam,  
• Boston Dynamics, 
• Willow Garage,  
• Deep Minds and  
• Rethink Robotics. 

Also affiliated with center are  

• Howard University; 
• Hunter College; 
• Universidad Central del Caribe, Puerto Rico; 
• the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras; and  
• Wellesley College.

CBMM aims to foster collaboration not just between institutions but also across disciplinary boundaries. Graduate students and postdocs funded through the center will have joint advisors, preferably drawn from different research areas.

Research themes
The center’s four main research themes are also intrinsically interdisciplinary. They are 

• the integration of intelligence, including vision, language and motor skills; 
• circuits for intelligence, which will span research in neurobiology and electrical engineering; 
• the development of intelligence in children; and 
• social intelligence. 

Poggio will also lead the development of a theoretical platform intended to undergird the work in all four areas.

“Those four thrusts really do fit together, in the sense that they cover what we think are the biggest challenges facing us when we try to develop a computational understanding of what intelligence is all about,” says Patrick Winston, the Ford Foundation Professor of Engineering at MIT and research coordinator for CBMM.

For instance, he explains, in human cognition, vision, language and motor skills are inextricably linked, even though they’ve been treated as separate problems in most recent AI research. One of Winston’s favorite examples is that of image labeling: A human subject will identify an image of a man holding a glass to his lips as that of a man drinking. If the man is holding the glass a few inches further forward, it’s an instance of a different activity — toasting. But a human will also identify an image of a cat turning its head up to catch a few drops of water from a faucet as an instance of drinking. “You have to be thinking about what you see there as a story,” Winston says. “They get the same label because it’s the same story, not because it looks the same.”

Similarly, Winston explains, development is its own research thrust because intelligence is fundamentally shaped through interaction with the environment. There’s evidence, Winston says, that mammals that receive inadequate visual stimulation in the first few weeks of life never develop functional eyesight, even though their eyes are otherwise unimpaired. “You need to stimulate the neural mechanisms in order for them to assemble themselves into a functioning system,” Winston says. “We think that that’s true generally, of our entire spectrum of capabilities. You need to have language, you need to see things, you need to have language and vision work together from the beginning to ensure that the parts develop properly to form a working whole.”

Heat-resistant corals provide clues to climate change survival, Stanford researchers say

ORIGINAL: Stanford

BY ROB JORDAN Stanford Report

January 9, 2013

Some corals are tougher than others when it comes to standing up to the warming ocean temperatures brought on by climate change. Stanford researchers have found a genomic basis for this coral resilience, helping make it possible to save the toughest breeds as temperatures continue to rise.

Photo: Dan Griffin

Shallow-reef corals off Ofu Island in American Samoa. 'If we can find populations most likely to resist climate change and map them, then we can protect them,' Stanford researcher Stephen Palumbi said.

In a future shaped by climate change, only the strong – or heat-resistant – will survive. A study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences opens a window into a genetic process that allows some corals to withstand unusually high temperatures and may hold a key to species survival for organisms around the world.

"If we can find populations most likely to resist climate change and map them, then we can protect them," said study co-author Stephen Palumbi, a senior fellow at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and director of theHopkins Marine Station. "It's of paramount importance because climate change is coming."

Coral reefs are crucial sources of fisheries, aquaculture and storm protection for about a billion people worldwide. These highly productive ecosystems are constructed by reef-building corals, but overfishing and pollution plus rising temperatures and acidity have destroyed half of the world's reef-building corals during the past 20 years. The onslaught of climate change makes it imperative to understand how corals respond to extreme temperatures and other environmental stresses.

Although researchers have observed that certain corals withstand stresses better than others, the molecular mechanisms behind this enhanced resilience remain unclear. For their study, Palumbi, Stanford postdoctoral scholar Daniel Barshis and other researchers looked at shallow-reef corals off Ofu Island in American Samoa to determine how they survive waters that often get hotter than 90 degrees Fahrenheit during summer-time low tides.

Utilizing cutting-edge DNA sequencing technology, the scientists examined the corals' gene expression when subjected to water temperatures up to 95 degrees. "These technologies are usually applied to human genome screens and medical diagnoses, but we're now able to apply them to the most pressing questions in coral biology, like which genes might help corals survive extreme heat," Barshis said.

Heat-resistant and heat-sensitive corals had a similar reaction to experimental heat: hundreds of genes "changed expression," turning on to reduce and repair damage. However, the heat-resistant corals showed an unexpected pattern: 60 heat stress genes were already turned on even before the experiment began. These genes are "frontloaded" in heat resistant corals – already turned on and ready to work even before the heat stress begins.

"It's like already having your driver's license and boarding pass out when you get close to the TSA screener at the airport, rather than starting to fumble through your wallet once you get to the front of the line," Palumbi said.

The findings show that DNA sequencing can offer broad insights into the differences that may allow some organisms to persist longer amid future changes to global climate. "We're going to put a lot of effort into protecting coral reefs, but what happens if we wake up in 30 years and all our efforts are in vain because those corals have succumbed to climate change?" Palumbi said.

As with strong corals, finding species most likely to endure climate change – "resilience mapping" – is the first step toward protecting them, Palumbi said. "The solutions that we're looking for must, at least partially, be out there in the world."

Rob Jordan is the communications writer for the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment.

Media Contact

Stephen Palumbi, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: cell, (831) 601-7002; office, (831) 655-6210; spalumbi@stanford.edu

Dan Barshis, National Marine Fisheries Service: office, (831) 420-3957; daniel.barshis@noaa.gov

Rob Jordan, Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment: (650) 721-1881; rjordan@stanford.edu

Career Trends Industry or Academia: Where do I fit in?

ORIGINAL: ScienceCareers (PDF Complete)

 Based on my career goals and my skills, am I better off in academia or in industry?

If this is a question you have grappled with, rest assured, you are not alone.  Trying to decide which career path to pursue is one of the most frequently discussed topics on ScienceCareers.org. With the increasing limited availability of academic positions, scientists must evaluate their options more critically than ever before and consider options beyond the typical academic path.

This collection of Science Careers articles presents scenarios from both industry and academia—offering advice from advancing in one’s academic career to preparing for a career in pharmaceuticals to investigating the benefits of a biotech training program. We invite you to read about opportunities that you may not have previously considered.

Ultimately, only you can decide what path will best suit you, but we want to offer as much information and advice as possible so you can make an informed decision that leads to a fulfilling scientific career.

Science Careers, published by Science and AAAS, offers the key resources you need to advance your career. Thousands of searchable jobs from industry, academia, and government are available in print and online. The free website also offers scientists Job Alert e-mails, Career Advice, a Resume/CV Database, and more. Visit ScienceCareers.org today. Your future awaits.

El legado de Río+20: Brasil y PNUD establecen el Centro Mundial para el Desarrollo Sostenible

ORIGINAL: UNDP

22 junio 2012

Río de Janeiro, Brasil — El Gobierno del Brasil anunció la creación del Centro Rio+, el Centro Mundial para el Desarrollo Sostenible, un importante legado que deja la Conferencia Río+20, en una ceremonia celebrada esta mañana a la que asistieron Izabella Teixeira, Ministra de Medio Ambiente del Brasil y Helen Clark, Administradora del Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Desarrollo (PNUD).

El Centro Rio+ facilitará las investigaciones y el intercambio de conocimientos y promoverá el debate internacional sobre el desarrollo sostenible. Reunirá a un amplio consorcio internacional de asociados, integrado por órganos gubernamentales, agencias de las Naciones Unidas, gobiernos locales (incluidos el gobierno del estado y el municipio de Río de Janeiro), organizaciones no gubernamentales, universidades, centros de estudio y el sector privado.

“Para nosotros es realmente importante que quede aquí, en la ciudad de Río de Janeiro, un legado de Río+20. Nuestras universidades, distintos sectores de la sociedad, la comunidad empresarial y todos los que están aquí desean trabajar arduamente en pos de este legado’’, anunció la Ministra Teixeira, y agregó que ya se habían obtenido 5 millones de dólares de los EE.UU. como capital inicial para las actividades del Centro.

La Administradora del PNUD Helen Clark celebró la asociación: “La Presidenta del Brasil Dilma Rousseff ha dicho que no solo es posible crecer e incluir, proteger y conservar al mismo tiempo, sino también que el desarrollo auténticamente sostenible exige que lo hagamos , y en el PNUD también estamos convencidos de ello”.

“Los gobiernos, el sector privado y los agentes de la sociedad civil podrán usar este Centro para aprender de las experiencias de los demás, identificar a las personas y los asociados que tienen conocimientos técnicos decisivos, planificar para el futuro y formular programas y políticas. El PNUD puede aportar sus redes de experiencia y conocimientos especializados amplios a este nuevo Centro. Tenemos una larga trayectoria de apoyo a la creación de capacidad y un papel establecido como intermediario imparcial que puede vincular las iniciativas de desarrollo sostenible que deben ampliarse”, observó Helen Clark.

Al momento de su puesta en marcha, el Centro Rio+ cuenta con el apoyo de unas 25 instituciones brasileñas e internacionales, lo que ilustra el éxito alcanzado por la iniciativa, así como la naturaleza inclusiva y participativa de su concepción.

Luciano Coutinho, Presidente del banco de desarrollo del Brasil, Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES), afirmó: “El BNDES se suma al apoyo brindado por el Gobierno del Brasil al Centro Rio+ y celebra la participación del PNUD y otras instituciones asociadas a esta importante iniciativa que surgió en Río+20. El Centro será un espacio único para el examen de ideas y actividades innovadoras para la creación de un mundo sostenible”.

De conformidad con el anuncio oficial del Ministerio de Relaciones Exteriores del Brasil, el Centro Rio+ “se ha establecido con la misión de constituirse en un importante centro de referencia para la promoción de uno de los debates definitorios de este siglo: la integración entre las dimensiones económica, social y ambiental del desarrollo sostenible”.

El objetivo al que apunta la creación del Centro Rio+ es el establecimiento de mecanismos nuevos e innovadores para impulsar la participación de los gobiernos locales, la sociedad civil, las empresas y el sector académico en el intercambio de conocimientos y los debates en torno a este tema.

Desde sus comienzos, el Centro Rio+ aportará continuidad a los debates que se iniciaron con el Diálogo para el Desarrollo Sostenible de Río (www.riodialogues.com). El Diálogo fue una iniciativa del Gobierno del Brasil con el apoyo del PNUD que se puso en marcha en el período preparatorio a la celebración de Rio+20 como una forma de impulsar activamente las aportaciones de la sociedad civil y los expertos de todo el mundo.

El nuevo Centro consolidará el éxito de la asociación actual entre el Gobierno del Brasil y el PNUD: el Centro Internacional de Políticas para el Crecimiento Inclusivo, establecido en 2004 en Brasilia. Desde su fundación este Centro ha venido desempeñando un papel fundamental en el diálogo entre los países del Sur sobre las políticas de protección e inclusión social, innovación para el desarrollo, así como cuestiones de desarrollo rural y sostenible.

Inicialmente el Centro Rio+ funcionará en las instalaciones del Instituto de Estudios de Posgrado e Investigación en Ingeniería de la Universidad Federal de Río de Janeiro (COPPE/UFRJ), en el campus de Ilha do Fundão. El municipio de Río de Janeiro ha expresado su voluntad de suministrar un espacio para la futura sede del Centro Rio+.

Hasta la fecha el establecimiento del Centro Rio+ ha recibido apoyo de las siguientes instituciones:

Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente (PNUMA)

• Programa de las Naciones Unidas para el Medio Ambiente (PNUMA) 
• Centro Internacional de Políticas para el Crecimiento Inclusivo 
• Programa de las Naciones Unidas para los Asentamientos Humanos (ONU-Hábitat) 
• Organización Internacional del Trabajo (OIT) 
• Instituto de Estudios Avanzados de la Universidad de las Naciones Unidas (UNU-IAS) 
• Centro Regional de Especialización en Educación para el Desarrollo Sustentable (RCE) 
• Gobierno de la República Federativa del Brasil 
• Gobierno del estado de Río de Janeiro 
• Municipio de Río de Janeiro 
• Fondo para el Financiamiento de Estudios y Proyectos (FINEP) 
• Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES) 
• Centro de Gestión y Estudios Estratégicos (CGEE) 
• Instituto Mundial de Tecnologías y Empleo Verdes (GIGTech, COPPE / UFRJ) 
• Centro para el Desarrollo Sostenible de la Universidad de Brasilia (UNB-CDS ) 
• FGV Red de Tecnología e Innovación de Río de Janeiro (REDETEC) 
• Red de Información Tecnológica Latinoamericana (RITLA / UNESCO) 
• Confederación Nacional de Industrias del Brasil (CNI) 
• Servicio Brasileño de Apoyo a las Micro y Pequeñas Empresas (Sebrae) 
• Consejo Empresarial Brasileño para el Desarrollo Sostenible (CEBDS) 
• Fundación Brasileña para el Desarrollo Sostenible (FBDS) 
• BVRio (Bolsa Verde Río) 
• Reverurbano 
• Fundación Pro-Natura 

Recursos de regalías para CyT, en manos equivocadas

ORIGINAL: UNPeriódico

Por: Sergio Hernando Lopera Castro, Profesor asociado de la Facultad de Minas - Universidad Nacional de Colombia en Medellín

May. 12 de 2012

La idea del Gobierno de dejar en manos de Planeación Nacional el manejo de los recursos para el desarrollo de los proyectos en ciencia y tecnología es una mala señal que se le envía a la comunidad técnico-científica. Se debería crear una comisión especializada que se encargue de estructurar una agenda con rigor académico.

Desde los antiguos griegos, la explotación de un recurso natural ha dado lugar al pago de una contraprestación para el Estado. Ellos cobraban un canon de arrendamiento de una veinticuatroava (1/24) parte del producto obtenido de la explotación minera.

En Colombia está estipulado en el Artículo 360 de la Constitución Política de 1991 y en la Ley 141 de 1994, que creó el Fondo Nacional de Regalías y la Comisión Nacional de Regalías, los cuales regularon el derecho del Estado a percibir contribuciones por la explotación de recursos naturales no renovables.

La historia económica del sector minero–energético colombiano, desde la época de la conquista española, permite constatar que las actividades extractivas han tenido un papel importante en términos macroeconómicos, particularmente en dos niveles:

• en la apertura de los mercados y 
• en la consecución de empréstitos para desarrollar proyectos de infraestructura específicos que favorezcan la inversión extranjera.

Hoy, el Gobierno nacional ha expuesto explícitamente que el crecimiento económico será impulsado por este sector. La hipótesis es la necesidad de atraer inversión extranjera para apalancar el crecimiento y el desarrollo. La Gráfica 1 muestra cómo esta ha evolucionado en el sector minero–energético en Colombia desde 2002 hasta 2011.

Puede observarse que, durante la administración Uribe, la inversión externa en hidrocarburos pasó de 480 millones de dólares, en 2002, a 3.000 millones de dólares, aproximadamente, en 2009. Y en lo que va de la era Santos ha llegado alrededor de los 8.000 millones de dólares.

El actual Gobierno, para ratificar que el sector minero–energético es una de las cinco locomotoras del desarrollo, ha efectuado una reforma al Sistema General de Regalías, con el propósito de optimizar la inversión de los recursos percibidos y garantizar un mayor grado de equidad entre los diferentes municipios y departamentos. Esta apunta a organizar las inversiones a través de la creación de siete fondos (véase la Tabla 1).

De buenas intenciones…

Es evidente que esta nueva ley constituye un avance con respecto a la anterior, dado que los recursos financieros están distribuidos transparentemente por una asignación porcentual. Además, por primera vez, se contempla el tema de la financiación de la ciencia y la tecnología (CyT), así como la fiscalización de la exploración y la explotación de hidrocarburos.

Podría decirse que la ley es bien intencionada porque exige un cambio de mentalidad, de manera que los Gobiernos departamentales dejen de pensar que los recursos financieros provenientes de las regalías les pertenecen únicamente a las regiones productoras.

Además, va a exigir que los políticos locales sean creativos en la preparación de proyectos. De este modo, modifica el uso que se le venía dando a estos dineros, los cuales han servido para cubrir gastos del Estado y financiar grupos políticos locales en las zonas de extracción.

Sin embargo, parece ser que el Gobierno mata al tigre y se asusta con el cuero, puesto que ha dejado la reglamentación de la ley en manos del Congreso. Y es evidente que tratará de hacer ajustes que le permitan acceder, sin mayores controles, a dichos dineros.

Por esto, se requiere avanzar hacia una nueva visión que considere el agotamiento de los recursos naturales no renovables, para garantizar la equidad intergeneracional. El porcentaje de las regalías que se propone invertir en CyT debe verse como la posibilidad de incentivar el uso de nuevas tecnologías y el fortalecimiento de las capacidades de investigación e innovación nacionales.

Aunque las generaciones futuras no cuenten con el recurso, dispondrán de capacidades para explotar otros o usar los tradicionales con mayor eficiencia. Por esta razón, esta locomotora debe destinar los recursos financieros de las regalías al fortalecimiento de la capacidad institucional del Estado en lo que respecta a la ciencia.

Y como ente de control, es vital que

• el Estado cuente con técnicos de alto nivel que comprendan no solo las tecnologías más modernas para extracción de recursos minerales y energéticos, sino también asuntos como 
• la geopolítica de recursos naturales, 
• la evaluación de impactos ambientales, sociales y económicos, así como 
• todas las disciplinas, de tal forma que la explotación se haga con los procedimientos pertinentes y se alcancen dignos niveles de desarrollo.

Idoneidad

Por estas razones, la apuesta en CyT debe asumirla un ente con vocación. La idea del Gobierno de dejar esta iniciativa en manos de Planeación Nacional, cuyo campo de acción no es el desarrollo de capacidades científicas, es una mala señal para la comunidad técnico–científica.

Sería clave crear una comisión que se encargue de estructurar una agenda de investigación nacional, la cual, con criterios de rigor académico y pertinencia, asigne dichos recursos. A Colciencias –que debería elevarse a nivel ministerial– le correspondería liderar esta comisión y, en ella, tener asiento las universidades del país y el sector gremial.

El fortalecimiento de la investigación de las áreas estratégicas del país no puede terminar en manos de políticos o de empresas privadas o públicas, que tienen el músculo financiero para sumarse a la iniciativa del Gobierno.

De no tomar decisiones a tiempo, la política de CyT se convertirá en una fuente de conflicto. Hay que buscar los mecanismos para que el sector privado también haga una apuesta del mismo orden que el Estado. Si las empresas privadas y públicas se suman, estaríamos hablando de unos 1.000 millones de dólares, que equivaldrían a una inversión en investigación, desarrollo e innovación del orden del 0,3% del PIB.

Brasil invierte 1,1% del PIB y que Estados Unidos y otros países desarrollados están por encima del 2%. Avanzar hacia este objetivo permitirá enfrentar los retos que plantean el agotamiento de los recursos no renovables, la presión sobre el medioambiente, el cambio climático, la internacionalización de la economía y la construcción de una verdadera sociedad democrática, lo que implica equidad social y desarrollo integral en el contexto de seres humanos relacionados armónicamente con la naturaleza.

Edición: UN Periodico Impreso No. 155

EmTech por primera vez en Latinoamérica

ORIGINAL: RutaN

Equipo editorial

10/04/2012 

Foto: RutaN

Los días 11 y 12 de julio del año 2012 se realizará en el Centro de Convenciones y Exposiciones Plaza Mayor de Medellín este encuentro que reunirá a investigadores, empresarios, emprendedores, inversores, científicos y académicos, para debatir el impacto que en el futuro tendrán las tecnologías emergentes más innovadoras del momento. Además, se analizará el potencial que tienen para transformar la sociedad y la manera de hacer negocios.

Dijo Pedro Moneo, director de la revista Technology Review en español, que este evento llega a la ciudad para plasmar el conocimiento en crecimiento económico, ya que, “al llegar a Medellín, se encontró una ciudad preparada y hambrienta por crecer en tecnología y por apostarle al emprendimiento de gente joven”. 

“Medellín es una ciudad que tiene una gran apuesta por la generación de capacidades competitivas”, una apuesta que, según Juan Camilo Quintero, secretario privado de la Alcaldía de Medellín, “viene construyéndose hace más de 10 años y hoy comienza a mostrar sus primeros frutos”.

Quintero resaltó la importancia de este evento para la ciudad, teniendo en cuenta que las nuevas tecnologías pueden utilizarse para mejorar aspectos planteados en el Plan de Desarrollo de Medellín, como la seguridad y la movilidad. Además, destacó el trabajo que se está desarrollando desde Ruta N para unificar esfuerzos en torno a temas de ciencia, tecnología e innovación.

“Este es un evento de ciudad, de país. Queremos ver a Medellín como una ciudad del conocimiento en América Latina y estos eventos nos ayudan a lograrlo”, dijo Juan Pablo Ortega, director ejecutivo de Ruta N. 

Durante EmTech Colombia, que reunirá a más de 20 expertos nacionales e internacionales, se realizará también la entrega de los premios TR35 Colombia, un reconocimiento a los 10 innovadores colombianos que, siendo menores de 35 años, se han destacado durante el año. Además, se celebrará el Foro de Inversión EmTech Colombia, con la presencia de inversores de empresas de base tecnológica. 

Para obtener más información pueden ingresar al sitio web www.emtechcolombia.com