Rising oil prices, believes Ali al-Naimi, Saudi Arabia’s oil minister, may soon ‘take the wheels off an already derailed world economy. On the face of things, this concern is absurd. The plunge of $115 in the price of oil from its peak last July to its nadir in December was the most precipitous the world has ever seen. Demand for oil is still falling, as the world economy atrophies. Rumours abound of traders hiring tankers to store their excess oil. Rich countries’ stocks cover 62 days’ consumption, the most since 1993 (see chart 1). The average over the past five years has been 52 days’ worth. Nor are oil firms pumping nearly as much as they could. OPEC has announced three separate rounds of production cuts since September in a bid to steady prices. In all, it has vowed to trim its output by 4.2m barrels a day (b/d). That leaves them with as much as 6m b/d of spare capacity. Despite this growing glut, however, the price of oil has been rising steadily in recent weeks (see chart 2). On Wednesday May 20th it closed above $60 a barrel for the first time in more than six months. […]
Today’s children are coming of age immersed in video gaming, Web browsing, and instant messaging. Many have cell phones, laptops, and hand-held video games. Others have created avatars of themselves, and some are raising robot pets in virtual worlds. What impact does this technology have on children? A new journal issue co-edited by a human-computer interaction (HCI) professor from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a developmental psychology professor from the University of Washington explores the promises and perils ahead for children in technological environments. The journal Children, Youth and Environments (CYE) this month published a special issue titled ‘Children in Technological Environments. The issue examines the increasing prevalence of technology from various perspectives, including knowledge and education, social and moral development, culture and community, access and equity, relationship to nature, therapy and health, art and expression, and future scenarios. ‘Today, technology is part of everyday life, and it can easily mediate or even replace other types of experiences, said Nathan G. Freier, assistant professor of HCI in the Department of Language, Literature, and Communication, with a joint appointment in Information Technology, at Rensselaer. ‘This journal issue provides us with a forum to address this ongoing dialogue regarding the impact […]
Perfectionism, as a way of life, tends to be self-defeating. New research suggests it may also be deadly. That’s the conclusion of a Canadian study of senior citizens just published in the Journal of Health Psychology. Researchers conducted psychological tests on 450 elderly residents of southern Alberta, and then kept tabs on them for 6½ years. During that period, just over 30 percent of the subjects, who ranged in age from 65 to 87, died. Perfectionists – that is, those who expressed ‘a strong motivation to be perfect’ and revealed a tendency toward ‘all or nothing thinking’ – were approximately 51 percent more likely to have died during the life of the study than those with more reasonable self-expectations. Those who were rated high on neuroticism – for instance, those who reported often feeling tense – did even worse: Their risk of death nearly doubled compared with those with a more relaxed disposition. In contrast, ‘risk of death was significantly lower for high scorers in conscientiousness, extraversion and optimism,’ reports lead author Prem S. Fry, a research psychologist at British Columbia’s Trinity Western University. She notes that previous research has found that ‘perfectionism exerts a great deal […]
As we age, our eyes inevitably take on a baggy look. Now scientists think they know why. Fat in the eye socket expands. The finding could prove useful to the growing number of people not satisfied with the natural look. Eyelids are not just extraneous flaps of skin. They are crucial for protecting the eye from debris and damage. The eye and eyelid are so connected that the pressure of the eyelid on the eyeball may cause one of the most common vision problems, researchers learned in 2006. Not something you want to muck around with. Yet eyelid surgery, top or bottom, is more common than you might think. Nearly 241,000 U.S. residents had it performed last year, putting it in the top four among surgical cosmetic procedures performed. Most of these surgeries don’t remove any fat, however. They just move it around or, in a more invasive move, tighten the muscle that surrounds the eye or tighten the ligament that holds the eyeball in place. No data indicated this was the right approach, the researchers point out in the September 2008 issue of the Journal of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery. ‘A common treatment […]
WASHINGTON — Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson today announced the agency is reversing controversial changes to how science is used to set air pollution standards. The Clean Air Act requires the EPA to establish National Ambient Air Quality Standards (NAAQS) for harmful pollutants using the best available science. For decades, EPA staff scientists worked with the independent Clean Air Science Advisory Committee to review the latest studies and recommend appropriate standards. The Bush administration changed this process, eliminating the independent assessment by scientific experts and injecting political determinations much earlier in the decision-making process. Under the Bush rules, high-level political appointees were involved from the start, working with staff scientists to draft a document containing ‘policy-relevant science’ that ‘reflects the agency’s views’ that replaced the independent ‘staff paper’ agency scientists had previously produced. The Clean Air Science Advisory Committee strongly criticized the Bush rules. The following is a statement from Francesca Grifo, senior scientist and director of UCS’s Scientific Integrity Program: ‘Restoring science as a foundation for setting air pollution standards is a return to reason. While policy decisions are based on a variety of factors, public health suffers when politics are allowed to […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
