SAN DIEGO — Public trust in science as a whole has suffered from recent attacks on climate research, the head of the senior US scientific body admitted at the weekend. ‘There is evidence that the corrosion in the public attitude to climate science has spread over to other areas of science, said Ralph Cicerone, president of the National Academy of Sciences, citing public opinion surveys in the US and elsewhere. Speaking at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in San Diego, Prof Cicerone and other research leaders said scientists must work to regain public trust by being more open about their findings. ‘We need to be more transparent and provide more access to our research data, he said. In the ‘climategate scandal at University of East Anglia in the UK, emails showed researchers at the Climatic Research Unit refusing to release data to sceptics who were critical of their conclusions. But access requests need to be reasonable, Prof Cicerone said: ‘Some scientists are receiving requests bordering on harassment. Jerry North, a senior climate change scientist at Texas A&M University, agreed. ‘It seems that vilifying a scientist has become […]
You arrive for work and someone informs you that you have until five o’clock to clean out your office. You have been laid off. At first, your family is brave and supportive, and although you’re in shock, you convince yourself that you were ready for something new. Then you start waking up at 3 A.M., apparently in order to stare at the ceiling. You can’t stop picturing the face of the employee who was deputized to give you the bad news. He does not look like George Clooney. You have fantasies of terrible things happening to him, to your boss, to George Clooney. You find-a novel recognition-not only that you have no sex drive but that you don’t care. You react irritably when friends advise you to let go and move on. After a week, you have a hard time getting out of bed in the morning. After two weeks, you have a hard time getting out of the house. You go see a doctor. The doctor hears your story and prescribes an antidepressant. Do you take it? However you go about making this decision, do not read the psychiatric literature. Everything in it, from the science (do the […]
The printing of body parts (see Sunday’s SR) will probably remain a bespoke industry for ever. Printed lighting, though, might be mass produced. That, at least, is the promise of a technology being developed in Sweden by Ludvig Edman of Umea University and Nathaniel Robinson of Linkoping. Dr Edman and Dr Robinson have taken a promising technique called the organic light-emitting diode, or OLED, and tweaked it in an ingenious way. The result is a sheet similar to wallpaper that can illuminate itself at the flick of a switch. An OLED is a layer of semiconducting polymer sandwiched between two conductive layers that act as electrodes. When a current is passed between these electrodes, the polymer gives off light. The light is created by electrons released from one electrode layer falling into positively charged ‘holes that have been generated by the polymer’s interaction with the other layer. These holes are gaps in the polymer’s electronic structure where an electron ought to be, but isn’t. Semiconductors are strange materials. Both holes and electrons can move around within them. (The holes move in a manner analogous to the gap in a sliding-tile puzzle.) They are also finicky. Only some sorts […]
Treasuries fell, pushing yields to the highest levels in at least five weeks, amid concern the Federal Reserve’s increase in the discount rate signaled policy makers are moving closer to lifting benchmark borrowing costs. The difference in yield between 2- and 10-year notes, known as the yield curve, touched a record high before the Fed raised the rate for direct loans to banks for the first time in more than three years. Several policy makers said the move doesn’t portend changes in the outlook for monetary policy. The U.S. will auction $126 billion in notes and bonds next week. ‘The fact is that we are past the banking crisis, said Thomas Tucci, head of U.S. government bond trading in New York at the Royal Bank of Canada, one of the 18 primary dealers required to bid at Treasury auctions. ‘Now it’s really about where people feel things are going where the Fed is concerned. The 10-year note yield rose for a second week, increasing eight basis points, or 0.08 percentage point, to 3.77 percent in New York, according to BGCantor Market Data. It touched 3.82 percent yesterday, the highest level since Jan. 11. The 3.625 percent security […]
The great hope of transplant surgeons is that they will, one day, be able to order replacement body parts on demand. At the moment, a patient may wait months, sometimes years, for an organ from a suitable donor. During that time his condition may worsen. He may even die. The ability to make organs as they are needed would not only relieve suffering but also save lives. And that possibility may be closer with the arrival of the first commercial 3D bio-printer for manufacturing human tissue and organs. The new machine, which costs around $200,000, has been developed by Organovo, a company in San Diego that specialises in regenerative medicine, and Invetech, an engineering and automation firm in Melbourne, Australia. One of Organovo’s founders, Gabor Forgacs of the University of Missouri, developed the prototype on which the new 3D bio-printer is based. The first production models will soon be delivered to research groups which, like Dr Forgacs’s, are studying ways to produce tissue and organs for repair and replacement. At present much of this work is done by hand or by adapting existing instruments and devices. To start with, only simple tissues, such as skin, muscle and short […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
