O Programa Espacial Brasileiro pode ser afetado por Pontes – é o temor de alguns deputados da Comissão de C&T da Câmara


Herton Escobar e Lígia Formenti escrevem para “O Estado de SP”:

A decisão do primeiro astronauta brasileiro, o tenente-coronel Marcos
Pontes, de entrar para a reserva um mês depois de voltar da viagem à
Estação Espacial Internacional (ISS) provocou entre parlamentares uma
reação que variou do lamento à indignação.

Deputados ouvidos por “O Estado de SP” disseram que são poucos os
brasileiros que receberam um investimento público tão grande em sua formação
quanto Pontes e temem que a atitude do astronauta acabe respingando no
Programa Espacial Brasileiro.

"Foi um dinheiro e tanto. E agora, quando ele poderia partilhar esse
aprendizado com colegas, pede o afastamento", observou o deputado Walter
Pinheiro (PT-BA).

Membro da Comissão de C&T da Câmara, Pinheiro disse esperar que a
frustração com o episódio de Pontes não afete o investimento no programa
espacial.

"É preciso que o governo crie mecanismos de proteção, peça
contrapartidas para evitar que o investimento acabe desperdiçado.”

"Foi uma esfriada de ânimo. Ele aprendeu bastante com dinheiro público
e agora vai dividir experiências com o setor privado. É claro que isso
frustra", disse Orlando Fantazzini (PSOL-SP).

O deputado Alberto Goldman (PSDB-SP) destacou o fato de que Pontes
tenha entrado para a reserva aos 43 anos. "Muitos imaginaram que o
astronauta permaneceria na carreira por patriotismo. Mas, no caso, o que mais
importou foram os interesses pessoais."

Para Goldman, que também integra a Comissão de C&T, é indispensável
criar regras para garantir a permanência de futuros astronautas no serviço
público.

Investimento alto

Pelas contas da Agência Espacial Brasileira (AEB), o investimento feito
pelo governo na formação, treinamento e carreira de Pontes, que se
aposentou em 17 de maio no posto de tenente-coronel, ficou entre US$ 25
milhões e US$ 30 milhões.

O cálculo foi apresentado, nesta quarta-feira, pelo presidente da
(AEB), Sérgio Gaudenzi, em entrevista a “O Estado de SP”.

Apenas a missão de dez dias no espaço - oito a bordo da ISS - custou
US$ 10 milhões, pagos à Agência Espacial Russa.

O valor sobe tanto se for levado ainda em consideração o custo de oito
anos de treinamento pela Nasa, em Houston (EUA), onde ele se formou
como astronauta.

"Se você somar tudo, vai chegar seguramente a esse valor, fácil",
calcula Gaudenzi.

O presidente Lula evitou alimentar a polêmica sobre o assunto. "É uma
coisa muito particular, que tem a ver com a carreira", disse em
entrevista à imprensa no final desta quarta-feira. Ele afirmou que não pode
julgar a atitude de Pontes.

Pontes, no momento, está em Houston com a família. O porta-voz da
Aeronáutica, brigadeiro Teles Ribeiro, afirmou que foi instaurado um
processo administrativo para investigar denúncias de que Pontes teria cobrado
por palestras, o que é proibido pelo Código Militar.

Segundo o brigadeiro, nada foi provado. "Ele jamais cobrou pelas
palestras", garantiu.
(O Estado de SP, 25/5)

tenha medo, muito medo...

Enfim, uma iniciativa esclarecida
OTTAVIANO DE FIORE

EM BOA hora, atendendo a um desejo do mercado e dos profissionais da área, o Ministério da Saúde decidiu incluir alguns tratamentos alternativos no Sistema Único de Saúde. Na China, aliás, as técnicas da medicina tradicional são ensinadas nas próprias faculdades de medicina. Entretanto, apesar de várias missões de médicos ocidentais terem voltado de lá confirmando a eficácia dessas terapias, isso pouco influiu nas políticas públicas do Ocidente.


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É preciso livrar a universidade de suas superstições científicas. E eu, que pensei em abrir uma igreja, vou abrir um consultório
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As causas do nosso atraso em relação à China são duas. A primeira é o obstinado espírito cientificista das faculdades ocidentais, dominadas por um pensamento cartesiano que privilegia a matéria esquecendo o espírito. A segunda, é óbvio, são os interesses das grandes multinacionais farmacêuticas, mais voltadas para seus resultados nas Bolsas de Valores do que para os sofrimentos da humanidade. Essas companhias produtoras de pílulas industrializadas opõem-se aos tratamentos alternativos porque estes são essencialmente artesanais. Não dependem de drogas sofisticadas nem necessitam de enormes investimentos em pesquisa, porque já constituem o resultado de uma imensa pesquisa realizada ao longo da história da humanidade pelos xamãs e curadores de todos os povos. Falta, agora, o Estado brasileiro implementar mais três medidas: A primeira é ampliar a lista de terapias tradicionais utilizáveis no SUS. Por que não incluir o do-in, a herborística yorubá, as pajelanças dos povos da floresta, a medicina ortomolecular, a quiroprática, a iridiologia, a cromoterapia, os florais de Bach e, sobretudo, a mais antiga e comprovada delas -a cura pelas mãos, chamada cura prânica na Índia e cura magnética no Ocidente? A segunda é introduzir o ensino das terapias alternativas no currículo das nossas universidades. Uma pesquisa recente mostrou que mais da metade dos médicos paulistanos recomendam medicinas tradicionais, e 12% as praticam. Os tempos estão, portanto, maduros para a inclusão das curas alternativas no currículo oficial. A terceira é equiparar definitivamente a profissão de médico à de curador alternativo. Comparado ao custo absurdo das faculdades de medicina, formar um curador alternativo custa pouco. Aliás, como o Conselho Nacional de Saúde decretou que o exercício da acupuntura não é uma exclusividade dos médicos, agora eu e você, depois de estagiarmos com um instrutor cadastrado pelo governo, poderemos nos dedicar à clínica. Uma profunda revolução cultural está derrotando a estreiteza racionalista nas universidades ocidentais. Nós, intelectuais e professores, devemos cumprir nossa parte difundindo na mídia e nas salas de aula a visão de mundo que está permitindo a universalização do humanismo terapêutico. A astrologia e a alquimia, por exemplo, expulsas da universidade pelo cientificismo, tiveram sua verdadeira profundidade reconhecida por Carl Gustav Jung e, hoje, interessam muito a psicólogos, terapeutas e antropólogos. Entretanto, elas ainda são esnobadas pelos astrônomos, químicos e biólogos, cegos em sua arrogância cartesiana. Por que a Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência não patrocina o estudo sem preconceitos da astrologia e da alquimia? Por que a Associação Paulista de Astronomia não reconhece a astrologia, assim como o Conselho Federal de Medicina reconheceu a homeopatia? Por que a Academia de Ciências recusa-se a discutir a força vital? Por que nossas faculdades de medicina ignoram as cirurgias espirituais, quando nosso país (ao lado da Indonésia) é um dos maiores centros mundiais dessa terapia, cujos sucessos são atestados em tantos jornais e televisões e pelo testemunho pessoal de tantos amigos? Quem não conhece alguém que tenha sido salvo por uma cirurgia espiritual? Temos vergonha do que dirão os gringos? A China, por acaso, teve vergonha de assumir orgulhosamente suas tradições populares e obrigar as universidades a ensiná-las? Chega de querermos parecer "ocidentais" e "civilizados". Melhor sermos autênticos e nacionais, como os chineses e alguns governos africanos, que não se pejam em descartar a medicina das multinacionais e recuperar a sabedoria de seus antepassados. Por enquanto, o Conselho Nacional de Saúde apenas ampliou o mercado da homeopatia, da acupuntura, do turismo termal e das fitoterapias, em cuja pesquisa tanto têm contribuído antropólogos, arquitetos, pais-de-santo, populares e feirantes de ervas. Mas a tarefa decisiva será livrar a universidade das suas superstições científicas, encaminhando-a para um espírito livre de preconceitos, mais aberto à tão desprezada sabedoria popular, que a arrogância das elites ocidentais sempre descartou como coisa de ignorantes. O povo venceu. E eu, que andei pensando seriamente em abrir uma igreja, em vez disso, vou abrir um consultório.


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OTTAVIANO DE FIORE , 74, sociólogo, é professor de teoria política. Foi secretário nacional do Livro e da Leitura durante o governo Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Alquimia e astrologia!?!?! Pqp...


Vai ser ótimo o SUS atender com boborística e pajelanças. Vai que diminuem as filas. Imagino já a cena seguinte...

Você chega no hospital com o suspeita de ter quebrado o pé. Dão duas opções: ou cromoterapia ou pajelança. Você vai de cromoterapia que a fila é menor. Ao final da consulta você solta, depois de enfaixar o pé com ataduras azuis e verdes, você pede 'mas não tem nenhuma chapinha de raio X, sabe como é... tenho essa uma velha superstição minha acreditar na ciência cartesiana'. Ele te olha com uma cara estranha, e escreve na sua ficha que deve passar no astrólogo dali 3 dias.

Science Journals Artfully Try
To Boost Their Rankings

By SHARON BEGLEY
June 5, 2006; Page B1

John B. West has had his share of requests, suggestions and demands from the scientific journals where he submits his research papers, but this one stopped him cold.

Dr. West, the Distinguished Professor of Medicine and Physiology at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, is one of the world's leading authorities on respiratory physiology and was a member of Sir Edmund Hillary's 1960 expedition to the Himalayas. After he submitted a paper on the design of the human lung to the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, an editor emailed him that the paper was basically fine. There was just one thing: Dr. West should cite more studies that had appeared in the respiratory journal.

If that seems like a surprising request, in the world of scientific publishing it no longer is. Scientists and editors say scientific journals increasingly are manipulating rankings -- called "impact factors" -- that are based on how often papers they publish are cited by other researchers.

"I was appalled," says Dr. West of the request. "This was a clear abuse of the system because they were trying to rig their impact factor."

Just as television shows have Nielsen ratings and colleges have the U.S. News rankings, science journals have impact factors. Now there is mounting concern that attempts to manipulate impact factors are harming scientific research.

Conceived 40 years ago, impact factors are essentially a grading system of how important the papers a journal publishes are. "Importance" is measured by how many other papers cite it, indicating that the discoveries, methodologies or insights it describes are advancing science.

Impact factors are calculated annually for some 5,900 science journals by Thomson Scientific, part of the Thomson Corp., of Stamford, Conn. Numbers less than 2 are considered low. Top journals, such as the Journal of the American Medical Association, score in the double digits. Researchers and editors say manipulating the score is more common among smaller, newer journals, which struggle for visibility against more established rivals.

Thomson Scientific is set to release the latest impact factors this month. Thomson has long advocated that journal editors respect the integrity of the rankings. "The energy that's put into efforts to game the system would be better spent publishing excellent papers," says Jim Testa, director of editorial development at the company.

Impact factors matter to publishers' bottom lines because librarians rely on them to make purchasing decisions. Annual subscriptions to some journals can cost upwards of $10,000.

The result, says Martin Frank, executive director of the American Physiological Society, which publishes 14 journals, is that "we have become whores to the impact factor." He adds that his society doesn't engage in these practices.

Journals can manipulate impact factors with legitimate editorial decisions. One strategy is to publish many review articles, says Vicki Cohn, managing editor of Mary Ann Liebert Inc., a closely held New Rochelle, N.Y., company that publishes 59 journals. Reviews don't report new results but instead summarize recent findings in a field. Since it is easier for scientists to cite one review than the dozens of studies that it summarizes, reviews get a lot of citations, raising a journal's impact score.

"Journal editors know how to increase their impact factor legitimately," says Ms. Cohn. "But there is growing suspicion that journals are using nefarious means to pump it up."

One questionable tactic is to ask authors to cite papers the journal already has published, as happened to UCSD's Dr. West, who says that he has great respect for the journal and its editors despite this episode. He declined the request, and the journal published his paper anyway, in March.

Richard Albert, the deputy editor of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, says that the request goes out to every scientist who submits a paper. "It's boilerplate, a form letter," he says. The letter has been in use for many years, according to Dr. Albert, who says he has always opposed the inclusion of the passage but was overruled by the journal's former editor.

Journals also can resort to "best-of" features, such as running annual summaries of their most notable papers. When Artificial Organs did this in 2005, all 145 citations were to other Artificial Organs papers. Editor Paul Malchesky says the feature was conceived "as a service to the readership. It was not my intention to affect our impact factor. In terms of how we run our operation, I don't base that on impact factor."

Self-citation can go too far. In 2005, Thomson Scientific dropped the World Journal of Gastroenterology from its rankings because 85% of the citations it published were to its own papers and because few other journals cited it. Editors of the journal, which is based in Beijing, did not answer emails requesting comment.

Journals can limit citations to papers published by competitors, keeping the rivals' impact factors down. An analysis of citations in the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare shows very few citations of papers in a competitor, Telemedicine and e-Health, "while we cited them liberally," says editor Rashid Bashshur, director of telemedicine at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

Richard Wootton, editor of JTT, says that he believes it's true that his journal cites its competitor less frequently than Dr. Bashshur's journal cites JTT, "but it doesn't seem to me that there is a sinister explanation." Dr. Wootton adds that "when we edit a paper...we sometimes ask authors to ensure that the relevant literature is cited." But "I can state unequivocally that we do not attempt to manipulate the JTT's impact factor. For a start, I wouldn't know how to."

Scientists and publishers worry that the cult of the impact factor is skewing the direction of research. One concern, says Mary Ann Liebert, president and chief executive of her publishing company, is that scientists may jump on research bandwagons, because journals prefer popular, mainstream topics, and eschew less-popular approaches for fear that only a lesser-tier journal will take their papers. When scientists are discouraged from pursuing unpopular ideas, finding the correct explanation of a phenomenon or a disease takes longer.

"If you look at journals that have a high impact factor, they tend to be trendy," says immunologist David Woodland of the nonprofit Trudeau Institute, of Saranac Lake, N.Y., and the incoming editor of Viral Immunology. He recalls one journal that accepted immunology papers only if they focused on the development of thymus cells, a once-hot topic. "It's hard to get into them if you're ahead of the curve."

As examples of that, Ms. Liebert cites early research on AIDS, gene therapy and psychopharmacology, all of which had trouble finding homes in established journals. "How much that relates to impact factor is hard to know," she says. "But editors and publishers both know that papers related to cutting-edge and perhaps obscure research are not going to be highly cited."

Another concern is that impact factors, since they measure only how many times other scientists cite a paper, say nothing about whether journals publish studies that lead to something useful. As a result, there is pressure to publish studies that appeal to an academic audience oriented toward basic research.

Journals' "questionable" steps to raise their impact factors "affect the public," Ms. Liebert says. "Ultimately, funding is allocated to scientists and topics perceived to be of the greatest importance. If impact factor is being manipulated, then scientists and studies that seem important will be funded perhaps at the expense of those that seem less important."

Write to Sharon Begley at sharon.begley@wsj.com

Fundamental physics
To catch a gravitational wave
Jun 22nd 2006
From The Economist print edition
Physicists hope to find a new astronomy and test some wacky ideas


SCIENTISTS trying to detect gravitational waves—ripples in the fabric of space-time—are a reticent lot. Understandably so: in the late 1960s Joseph Weber, a pioneer of the field, declared that he had found them when he had not, and mouths have been kept firmly shut ever since. Nearly 40 years on, researchers around the world are still straining to see gravitational waves, so far without success. This week scientists met to discuss plans for a more sensitive detector that could be built in space.
Gravitational waves were predicted by Einstein's general theory of relativity in 1916. This theory views gravity not as a force but as a consequence of the curved geometry of space and time. Space-time, as it is known, has four dimensions: the three familiar spatial ones of length, breadth and height, and time.

Space-time can be distorted or curved by the presence of massive objects, such as stars. Temporary ripples in space-time are caused when such objects accelerate. The ripples are gravitational waves. They are very weak but, if the accelerating object has enough mass, it should be possible to spot them. The waves that emanate from the collision of two black holes should be detectable. So should echoes from the Big Bang with which the universe is believed to have begun. And whereas microwaves, radio waves and light—all forms of electromagnetic radiation—are easily absorbed by dust and gas, leaving much of the universe hidden, gravitational waves penetrate anything in their path. Finding them could thus offer astronomers new tools for studying the universe.
Setting traps
Today's attempts to detect gravitational waves use instruments called interferometers. These exploit the fact that gravitational waves should cause space to stretch in one direction and shrink in the dimension at right angles to it. The instruments consist of two tubes arranged in an L-shape. A laser beam is split and one half is sent down each tube, bouncing off a mirror at the end. The two parts are arranged so that when they return to the beam-splitter, the peaks of one wave are in step with the troughs of the other. They therefore cancel each other out, leaving darkness. A passing gravitational wave would stretch one tube and shrink the other, disturbing the neat alignment of peaks and troughs, and creating light.
A couple of interferometer-based experiments are under way. Others are due to start within a year. The information they yield will be combined and analysed by scientists involved in all the experiments. For a gravitational wave to be unambiguously identified, it must be detected by more than one instrument.
The biggest experiment, with arms up to four kilometres (about two and a half miles) long, is called the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, or LIGO. It has been collecting data for the past seven months. It has three machines, one near Livingston, Louisiana, and two at Hanford in Washington state. A smaller, German-British experiment called GEO600 (because the interferometer arms are 600 metres long) started taking scientifically useful data in Hanover last month. These will be joined by Virgo, a collaboration between Italian and French researchers with three-kilometre arms, which is being built near Pisa. Another interferometer with arms of the same length is under construction at Kamioka in Japan.
Unfortunately, a passing gravitational wave will make only a tiny change in the distance the laser beams have to travel. Even if experimenters bounce the beams to and fro to increase the effective length of an interferometer's arms to more than 100 kilometres, the expected difference in length between the two beams' paths still amounts to less than a hundred-millionth of the diameter of a hydrogen atom.
Scientists are trying ever more clever ways to sense this change: new materials have allowed GEO600's mirrors to be better isolated from the world outside, making it as sensitive as the longer-armed LIGO. The interferometer in Japan is being built underground and will be kept at extremely low temperatures to minimise stray vibrations. There are also plans to refine existing experiments.
Ultimately, however, the answer may be to conduct the experiments in space. There, the length of the arms could be truly enormous. In fact, they would not even have to be built; the devices at their ends are all that would be needed. The American space agency, NASA, and the European Space Agency are collaborating on plans for an experiment in space in which the contraptions that would be used instead of mirrors would be 5m kilometres apart. At a meeting at the Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland this week, scientists outlined what this could achieve.
The putative device—called the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna, or LISA—would not merely detect gravitational waves; it could identify their sources precisely, in the same way that an optical telescope identifies pricks of light as stars. Any object of sufficient mass, no matter how exotic, could be studied in detail.
For example, neutron stars—the extraordinarily dense remnants of stars that have exploded as supernovae—often have nearby partners that orbit one another. Strong gravitational waves are thought to be produced by the collision of two neutron stars. Indeed, in 1974 Russell Hulse and Joseph Taylor recorded an indirect sighting when they showed that a pair of stars spiralling towards each other was radiating energy in the form of gravitational waves at exactly the rate predicted by Einstein. That won them a Nobel prize. However, LISA would be able to see gravitational waves directly, and from them identify the prevalence and whereabouts of pairs of neutron stars in the universe.
The coalescence of two black holes would create even stronger gravitational waves, but physicists believe that there are fewer black holes than neutron stars, so such events would be rarer. With LISA, they would be able to find out whether all this is true. Other envisaged sources are supernovae and rapidly rotating isolated neutron stars. The early universe is also thought to have produced a background of gravitational waves from quantum fluctuations. Again, LISA would be able to examine such phenomena.
Fundamental tests
Indeed, LISA could do more. It could allow scientists to examine the validity of string theory, which says that there are more than four dimensions to space-time and that the extra dimensions are hidden. String theory has come under fire because its predictions have so far proved untestable. The normal version has it that these dimensions are curled up in strings that are smaller than the known elementary particles. However, in some versions strings form very long “superstrings” that stretch across the universe. These superstrings form loops and vibrate, radiating gravitational waves; they can also crack like whips, sending bursts of gravitational waves towards Earth. “Seeing direct evidence of strings would be as important as discovering that the world is made of atoms,” claims Craig Hogan, an astronomer at the University of Washington, who is a member of the international science team for LISA.
Whether gravitational wave scientists will have to stay tight-lipped for long remains to be seen. Back in August 2004, Ladbrokes, a British bookmaker, offered odds of 500 to one against gravitational waves being detected by 2010. After taking a flurry of bets, it slashed the odds to 100 to one and then two to one in just a few weeks before closing the book. The bookies must be hoping that gravitational-wave scientists find no reason to end the reticence of the past four decades.

Has String Theory
Tied Up Better Ideas
In Field of Physics?
June 23, 2006; Page B1

Nobel physicist Wolfgang Pauli didn't suffer fools gladly. Fond of calling colleagues' work "wrong" or "completely wrong," he saved his worst epithet for work so sloppy and speculative it is "not even wrong."

That's how mathematician Peter Woit of Columbia University describes string theory. In his book, "Not Even Wrong," published in the U.K. this month and due in the U.S. in September, he calls the theory "a disaster for physics."

A year or two ago, that would have been a fringe opinion, motivated by sour grapes over not sitting at physics' equivalent of the cool kids' table. But now, after two decades in which string theory has been the doyenne of best-seller lists and the dominant paradigm in particle physics, Mr. Woit has company.

"When it comes to extending our knowledge of the laws of nature, we have made no real headway" in 30 years, writes physicist Lee Smolin of the Perimeter Institute in Waterloo, Canada, in his book, "The Trouble with Physics," also due in September. "It's called hitting the wall."

He blames string theory for this "crisis in particle physics," the branch of physics that tries to explain the most fundamental forces and building blocks of the world.

String theory, which took off in 1984, posits that elementary particles such as electrons are not points, as standard physics had it. They are, instead, vibrations of one-dimensional strings 1/100 billion billionth the size of an atomic nucleus. Different vibrations supposedly produce all the subatomic particles from quarks to gluons. Oh, and strings exist in a space of 10, or maybe 11, dimensions. No one knows exactly what or where the extra dimensions are, but assuming their existence makes the math work.

String theory, proponents said, could reconcile quantum mechanics (the physics of subatomic particles) and gravity, the longest-distance force in the universe. That impressed particle physicists to no end. In the 1980s, most jumped on the string bandwagon and since then, stringsters have written thousands of papers.

But one thing they haven't done is coax a single prediction from their theory. In fact, "theory" is a misnomer, since unlike general relativity theory or quantum theory, string theory is not a concise set of solvable equations describing the behavior of the physical world. It's more of an idea or a framework.

Partly as a result, string theory "makes no new predictions that are testable by current -- or even currently conceivable -- experiments," writes Prof. Smolin. "The few clean predictions it does make have already been made by other" theories.

Worse, the equations of string theory have myriad solutions, an extreme version of how the algebraic equation X squared equals four has two solutions (2 and -2). The solutions arise from the fact that there are so many ways to "compactify" its extra dimensions -- to roll them up so you get the three spatial dimensions of the real world. With more than 10 raised to 500th power (1 followed by 500 zeros) ways to compactify, there are that many possible universes.

"There is no good insight into which is more likely," concedes physicist Michael Peskin of the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center.

If string theory made a prediction that didn't accord with physical reality, stringsters could say it's correct in one of these other universes. As a result, writes Prof. Smolin, "string theory cannot be disproved." By the usual standards, that would rule it out as science.

String theory isn't any more wrong than preons, twistor theory, dynamical triangulations, or other physics fads. But in those cases, physicists saw the writing on the wall and moved on. Not so in string theory.

"What is strange is that string theory has survived past the point where it should have been clear that it wouldn't work," says Mr. Woit. Not merely survived, but thrived. Virtually every young mathematically inclined particle theorist must sign on to the string agenda to get an academic job. By his count, of 22 recently tenured professors in particle theory at the six top U.S. departments, 20 are string theorists.

One physicist commented on Mr. Woit's blog that Ph.D. students who choose mathematical theory topics that "are non-string are seriously harming their career prospects."

To be fair, string theory can claim some success. A 1985 paper showed that if you compactify extra dimensions in a certain way, the number of quarks and leptons you get is exactly the number found in nature. "This is the only idea out there for why the number of quarks and leptons is what it is," says Prof. Peskin. Still, that is less a prediction of string theory than a consequence.

If fewer physicists were tied to strings might some of the enduring mysteries of the universe be solved? Might we know why there is more matter than antimatter? Why the proton's mass is 1,836 times the electron's? Why the 18 key numbers in the standard model of fundamental particles have the values they do?

"With smart people pursuing these questions, more might have been answered," says Mr. Woit. "Too few really good people have been working on anything other than string theory."

That string theory abandoned testable predictions may be its ultimate betrayal of science.

You can email Sharon Begley at sciencejournal@wsj.com.

There Is No 'Consensus'
On Global Warming

By RICHARD S. LINDZEN
June 26, 2006; Page A14

According to Al Gore's new film "An Inconvenient Truth," we're in for "a planetary emergency": melting ice sheets, huge increases in sea levels, more and stronger hurricanes and invasions of tropical disease, among other cataclysms -- unless we change the way we live now.

Bill Clinton has become the latest evangelist for Mr. Gore's gospel, proclaiming that current weather events show that he and Mr. Gore were right about global warming, and we are all suffering the consequences of President Bush's obtuseness on the matter. And why not? Mr. Gore assures us that "the debate in the scientific community is over."

That statement, which Mr. Gore made in an interview with George Stephanopoulos on ABC, ought to have been followed by an asterisk. What exactly is this debate that Mr. Gore is referring to? Is there really a scientific community that is debating all these issues and then somehow agreeing in unison? Far from such a thing being over, it has never been clear to me what this "debate" actually is in the first place.

The media rarely help, of course. When Newsweek featured global warming in a 1988 issue, it was claimed that all scientists agreed. Periodically thereafter it was revealed that although there had been lingering doubts beforehand, now all scientists did indeed agree. Even Mr. Gore qualified his statement on ABC only a few minutes after he made it, clarifying things in an important way. When Mr. Stephanopoulos confronted Mr. Gore with the fact that the best estimates of rising sea levels are far less dire than he suggests in his movie, Mr. Gore defended his claims by noting that scientists "don't have any models that give them a high level of confidence" one way or the other and went on to claim -- in his defense -- that scientists "don't know… They just don't know."

So, presumably, those scientists do not belong to the "consensus." Yet their research is forced, whether the evidence supports it or not, into Mr. Gore's preferred global-warming template -- namely, shrill alarmism. To believe it requires that one ignore the truly inconvenient facts. To take the issue of rising sea levels, these include: that the Arctic was as warm or warmer in 1940; that icebergs have been known since time immemorial; that the evidence so far suggests that the Greenland ice sheet is actually growing on average. A likely result of all this is increased pressure pushing ice off the coastal perimeter of that country, which is depicted so ominously in Mr. Gore's movie. In the absence of factual context, these images are perhaps dire or alarming.

They are less so otherwise. Alpine glaciers have been retreating since the early 19th century, and were advancing for several centuries before that. Since about 1970, many of the glaciers have stopped retreating and some are now advancing again. And, frankly, we don't know why.

* * *
The other elements of the global-warming scare scenario are predicated on similar oversights. Malaria, claimed as a byproduct of warming, was once common in Michigan and Siberia and remains common in Siberia -- mosquitoes don't require tropical warmth. Hurricanes, too, vary on multidecadal time scales; sea-surface temperature is likely to be an important factor. This temperature, itself, varies on multidecadal time scales. However, questions concerning the origin of the relevant sea-surface temperatures and the nature of trends in hurricane intensity are being hotly argued within the profession.

Even among those arguing, there is general agreement that we can't attribute any particular hurricane to global warming. To be sure, there is one exception, Greg Holland of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., who argues that it must be global warming because he can't think of anything else. While arguments like these, based on lassitude, are becoming rather common in climate assessments, such claims, given the primitive state of weather and climate science, are hardly compelling.

A general characteristic of Mr. Gore's approach is to assiduously ignore the fact that the earth and its climate are dynamic; they are always changing even without any external forcing. To treat all change as something to fear is bad enough; to do so in order to exploit that fear is much worse. Regardless, these items are clearly not issues over which debate is ended -- at least not in terms of the actual science.

A clearer claim as to what debate has ended is provided by the environmental journalist Gregg Easterbrook. He concludes that the scientific community now agrees that significant warming is occurring, and that there is clear evidence of human influences on the climate system. This is still a most peculiar claim. At some level, it has never been widely contested. Most of the climate community has agreed since 1988 that global mean temperatures have increased on the order of one degree Fahrenheit over the past century, having risen significantly from about 1919 to 1940, decreased between 1940 and the early '70s, increased again until the '90s, and remaining essentially flat since 1998.

There is also little disagreement that levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have risen from about 280 ppmv (parts per million by volume) in the 19th century to about 387 ppmv today. Finally, there has been no question whatsoever that carbon dioxide is an infrared absorber (i.e., a greenhouse gas -- albeit a minor one), and its increase should theoretically contribute to warming. Indeed, if all else were kept equal, the increase in carbon dioxide should have led to somewhat more warming than has been observed, assuming that the small observed increase was in fact due to increasing carbon dioxide rather than a natural fluctuation in the climate system. Although no cause for alarm rests on this issue, there has been an intense effort to claim that the theoretically expected contribution from additional carbon dioxide has actually been detected.

Given that we do not understand the natural internal variability of climate change, this task is currently impossible. Nevertheless there has been a persistent effort to suggest otherwise, and with surprising impact. Thus, although the conflicted state of the affair was accurately presented in the 1996 text of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the infamous "summary for policy makers" reported ambiguously that "The balance of evidence suggests a discernible human influence on global climate." This sufficed as the smoking gun for Kyoto.

The next IPCC report again described the problems surrounding what has become known as the attribution issue: that is, to explain what mechanisms are responsible for observed changes in climate. Some deployed the lassitude argument -- e.g., we can't think of an alternative -- to support human attribution. But the "summary for policy makers" claimed in a manner largely unrelated to the actual text of the report that "In the light of new evidence and taking into account the remaining uncertainties, most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations."

In a similar vein, the National Academy of Sciences issued a brief (15-page) report responding to questions from the White House. It again enumerated the difficulties with attribution, but again the report was preceded by a front end that ambiguously claimed that "The changes observed over the last several decades are likely mostly due to human activities, but we cannot rule out that some significant part of these changes is also a reflection of natural variability." This was sufficient for CNN's Michelle Mitchell to presciently declare that the report represented a "unanimous decision that global warming is real, is getting worse and is due to man. There is no wiggle room." Well, no.

More recently, a study in the journal Science by the social scientist Nancy Oreskes claimed that a search of the ISI Web of Knowledge Database for the years 1993 to 2003 under the key words "global climate change" produced 928 articles, all of whose abstracts supported what she referred to as the consensus view. A British social scientist, Benny Peiser, checked her procedure and found that only 913 of the 928 articles had abstracts at all, and that only 13 of the remaining 913 explicitly endorsed the so-called consensus view. Several actually opposed it.

Even more recently, the Climate Change Science Program, the Bush administration's coordinating agency for global-warming research, declared it had found "clear evidence of human influences on the climate system." This, for Mr. Easterbrook, meant: "Case closed." What exactly was this evidence? The models imply that greenhouse warming should impact atmospheric temperatures more than surface temperatures, and yet satellite data showed no warming in the atmosphere since 1979. The report showed that selective corrections to the atmospheric data could lead to some warming, thus reducing the conflict between observations and models descriptions of what greenhouse warming should look like. That, to me, means the case is still very much open.

* * *
So what, then, is one to make of this alleged debate? I would suggest at least three points.

First, nonscientists generally do not want to bother with understanding the science. Claims of consensus relieve policy types, environmental advocates and politicians of any need to do so. Such claims also serve to intimidate the public and even scientists -- especially those outside the area of climate dynamics. Secondly, given that the question of human attribution largely cannot be resolved, its use in promoting visions of disaster constitutes nothing so much as a bait-and-switch scam. That is an inauspicious beginning to what Mr. Gore claims is not a political issue but a "moral" crusade.

Lastly, there is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition. An earlier attempt at this was accompanied by tragedy. Perhaps Marx was right. This time around we may have farce -- if we're lucky.

Mr. Lindzen is the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Science at MIT.

MIT research may spell end for the battery
Supercapacitor could make electric car viable
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | June 26, 2006

Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology think they're on the verge of making traditional batteries obsolete.

The researchers are working on a new device that uses carbon nanotubes to store and release electrical energy in a system that could carry as much power as today's lead or lithium batteries.

But unlike the rechargeable batteries used on today's cellphones and laptop computers, these devices could be recharged hundreds of thousands of times before wearing out.

And instead of taking hours to recharge, they could be powered up in about the same time it takes to fill up a gas tank.

Electronics professor Joel Schindall drives a Toyota hybrid car, which uses an electric battery to reduce gasoline consumption. But Schindall would prefer an all-electric car, and he thinks his team's research could finally make such vehicles practical.

In a basement laboratory at MIT, Schindall and his colleagues are using acetylene gas to deposit carbon nanotubes on pieces of silicon. Schindall says that the technology isn't much different from the kind used to produce microchips, and so mass production shouldn't be too difficult. Still, he said, ``It's one thing to postulate it, but that's a long way from being commercially viable and competitive in price." Schindall says he hopes to have a finished example by the fall.

The device being developed at MIT's Laboratory for Electromagnetic and Electronic Systems isn't a battery, but a capacitor -- a device that's already used in nearly every electronic product on the planet. When plugged into an electrical circuit, a capacitor briefly stores incoming electricity, they releases it at a predictable rate. Capacitors can't store very much power, compared to traditional batteries. But while it takes hours to recharge a battery, capacitors charge almost instantly. And while most batteries can only be recharged a few hundred or thousand times before wearing out, capacitors can be recharged hundreds of thousands of times.

During the 1960s, scientists discovered that they could make more powerful capacitors by coating their electrodes with finely ground charcoal -- a form of carbon. The charcoal crystals greatly increased the surface area of each electrode, allowing it to collect a greater electrical charge.

Since then, scientists have learned how to grow carbon nanotubes -- extremely thin fibers of pure carbon. Schindall and his colleagues realized that millions of tiny nanotubes would do a much better job than ground charcoal in expanding an electrode's surface area. And if the nanotube-coated electrodes were made large enough, you could build a capacitor that could work like a battery with enough power to drive a device for hours.

Not everybody is convinced that Schindall's super capacitors will deliver as much power as he claims.

Andrew Burke, research engineer at the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California at Davis, said that the new capacitors would have to be many times more powerful than any previously created. ``I have a lot of respect for those guys, but I have not seen any data," Burke said. ``Until I see the data, I'm inclined to be skeptical."

Even if Schindall's capacitors work, he doubts they'll transform the electronics industry overnight. Companies have too much invested in today's battery systems, and it would take years before carbon nanotube capacitors could be mass-produced.

``I think that in five years, you could see limited use," Schindall said. ``Then in 10 years, you begin to see the cost crossover point," when capacitors become as cheap as standard rechargeable batteries.

Hiawatha Bray can be reached at bray@globe.com.

Só um comentário sobre o

Has String Theory Tied Up Better Ideas

O cara que escreveu um livro é um blogger famoso (sim, nos EUA os caras levam isso a sério hahahahah), que tem um blog que há muito tempo ataca a teoria de supercordas :-), o "Not Even Wrong"

http://www.math.columbia.edu/~woit/wordpress/

A discussão em torno desse livro esta´tomando grandes proporções, pois uns físicos MUITO famosos o defendem (veja o caso de Sean Carroll http://cosmicvariance.com/2006/06/19/the-string-theory-backlash/ ), e String theorists descendo o cacete http://motls.blogspot.com/2006/06/sean-carroll-joins-peter-woit.html, cartas por WSJ, e por ai´ vai... Pra alguém de fora como eu, divertido de ver

Memory formation

The big sleep
Jul 6th 2006 | FLORENCE
From The Economist print edition

There may be a link between the way memories are formed and the adverse effects of sleep deprivation


SLEEP deprivation is an uncomfortable experience. In drivers and workers it can lead to fatal accidents. In those under interrogation it can lead to confession. But why it does what it does is mysterious—as, indeed, is the purpose of sleep itself.

Many theories have been proposed to explain why the pressure to sleep builds up until it becomes irresistible. The latest, presented at the recent annual meeting of the Organisation for Human Brain Mapping, in Florence, Italy, starts from the obvious proposition that the longer you stay awake, the more you learn. Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin proposes that this extra learning makes the brain more and more expensive to maintain. Sleep prunes back the grey matter so that, come the morning, the brain is once again economical to run. If this pruning cannot take place, the organ becomes less and less efficient, and dire consequences result.

Even at rest, the brain is costly to run, consuming 20% of the body's energy production. Most of this energy goes towards maintaining synapses, the junctions across which impulses jump from nerve cell to nerve cell, keeping the brain alert even when it is not doing anything. When a person learns something new, certain synapses are strengthened relative to others. Over the course of the day, there is a net increase in the strength and number of the brain's synapses. And, as Dr Tononi observes, stronger synapses consume more energy. In addition, making them requires more protein and fats and they take up more space. Given that an organism has limited supplies of all of these things, something must happen to prevent the cost of having a brain from gradually spiralling out of control. That something, Dr Tononi believes, is non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) or slow-wave sleep.

Knitting up the ravel'd sleeve of care
Until recently, most sleep research focused on REM sleep. This is the time when people dream, and dreams have had a grip on the scientific imagination since the days of Freud, and on the popular imagination at least since biblical times. Lately, though, researchers have started to wonder whether they have been looking in the wrong place for the significance of sleep, for REMming occupies only about a fifth of the night.

During the other 80% of sleep—the part that is non-REM—the firing pattern of the brain's nerve cells sets up slow electrical waves that start at different points in the cerebral cortex and travel across it. These travelling waves occur hundreds of times a night, and most commonly at a frequency, 1 cycle per second, which has been shown to depress the activity of synapses.

Within an hour of a person falling asleep, slow waves will have covered his entire cortex, affecting every nerve cell in it. At first, these waves are big and powerful, but their size decreases through the night. Dr Tononi believes that the function of these slow waves is to “downscale” synapses, reducing their size, chemical activity and electrical activity—and thus the strength with which they connect their nerve cells together—all over the brain.

The trick, he thinks, is that this downscaling is done in proportion to the existing strength of each synapse. When a sleeper awakens, the strength of each synapse is thus the same relative to all the others, but all synapses are weaker than they were when he went to sleep. Indeed, the weakest of them may vanish completely, taking part of the previous day's memory with them.

In earlier experiments, designed to replicate normal learning, Dr Tononi found that the part of the brain showing most slow-wave activity during sleep was the same as the part that had been activated during the experiment. This fitted the prediction that the downscaling slow-waves would be strongest in those parts of the brain where the most changes had taken place during the day.

The team's latest work draws not on human subjects, but on fruit flies. Flies, too, sleep. Their genetics—including the genetics of sleep—have been studied for almost a century, and many of the genes that play a role in human sleep resemble those that control sleep in fruit flies. Best of all, experiments on fruit flies are not subject to vetting by ethics committees.

With the help of Chiara Cirelli, who also works at the University of Wisconsin, Dr Tononi has created a mutant fruit fly that sleeps only two or three hours a night. (A normal fly sleeps between eight and 14 hours.) The mutation itself is in a gene for a nerve-cell protein of a type known as an ion channel.

Ion channels sit in a cell's outer membrane and let electrically charged atoms (ions, as they are known in chemical jargon) in and out of the cell. In this case, the ion is potassium. It is the movement of potassium (and also sodium) ions that causes the electrical impulses that nerve cells carry—including the impulses found in slow-wave sleep. Moreover, the particular protein that the flies lack is most concentrated in brain areas involved in learning and memory. To nobody's surprise, therefore, though the mutant fly is capable of learning things, it forgets them within minutes. Healthy flies retain learned information for hours or even days.

The researchers' discovery finds an intriguing echo in a human disease called Morvan's syndrome. This is a rare brain disorder that is caused by an autoimmune response which destroys the human equivalents of the ion channels that are affected in the mutant fruit fly. Patients with Morvan's syndrome suffer from severe insomnia and have been known to go for months without sleeping. Eventually, this extreme sleep deprivation kills them.

Dr Tononi's hypothesis is, it must be said, controversial. Many researchers hold almost precisely the opposite opinion—that sleep serves to re-activate synapses that were strengthened during the day, and thus reinforces their strength rather than diminishing it. There is, however, a certain logical sense to the Tononi view of the world. It is impossible to remember everything, so a process of winnowing must take place somehow. The idea that, after a period of expansion, the brain pares back its workforce to become leaner and meaner is somehow rather appealing.

MARCELO LEITE

Os mais mais


Osame Kinouchi, do blog SemCiência, já viu, assim como Ana Cláudia Lessinger, do ViaGene: o boletim news@nature.com publicou hoje uma lista dos cinco blogs mais populares de cientistas, alguns dos quais já estão linkados aqui faz tempo. Vale a pena conferir e experimentar:

TOP1 - Pharyngula
TOP2 - Panda's Thumb
TOP3 - RealClimate
TOP4 - Cosmic Variance
TOP5 - The Scientific Activist

Discordo só do critério de separar blogs de cientistas de outros blogs de ciência. Se fossem incluídos, os que são de autoria de jornalistas e escritores ocupariam segundo, terceiro e quarto lugares, inclusive o meu preferido, The Loom, de Carl Zimmer, que ganha de lavada em relevância, estilo, qualidade e precisão da maioria dos blogs de biólogos com carteirinha de pesquisador. Não vejo sentido em fazer esse gênero de distinção corporativa na blogosfera, porque ela pressupõe que uns têm mais rigor que outros (já fui acusado aqui e alhures de não tê-lo, então você está livre para concluir que estou defendendo o meu peixe, sim).

Há também no ar uma lista mais extensa, com os 50 mais mais:

Pharyngula
The Panda’s thumb
RealClimate
Cosmic Variance
The Scientific Activist
Respectful Insolence
Aetiology
Cognitive Daily
Effect Measure
Adventures in Ethics and Science
Deltoid
Uncertain Principles
Thoughts from Kansas
John Hawks Anthropology Weblog
blog.bioethics.net
In the pipeline
Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology A Group Blog
Stranger Fruit
The Disgruntled Chemist
A Blog Around the Clock
Evolutionblog
Gene Expression
Mike the Mad Biologist
Mixing Memory
Archives of The Cheerful Oncologist Volume 2
The Questionable Authority Archive
Biosingularity
Evolgen
bootstrap analysis
Evolving Thoughts
Terra Sigillata
Prometheus (Roger Pielke Jnr)
A Few Things Ill Considered
75 Degrees South
Discovering biology in a digital world
A Concerned Scientist
Invasive Species Weblog
Developing Intelligence
The Daily Transcript
Biopeer
Stayin' Alive
On being a scientist and a woman
Flags and Lollipops - Bioinformatics Blog
The Quantum Pontiff
Good Math, Bad Math
nodalpoint.org - A bioinformatics weblog
Climate Science
The Lancelet
Afarensis
Three-Toed Slot

Está atrasado, já tinha escrito sobre isso... no blog, o que não deixa de ser uma ironia

Bjorn Lomborg
Get Your Priorities Right
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
July 8, 2006; Page A10
NEW YORK -- Bjorn Lomborg is a political scientist by training, but the
charismatic, golden-haired Dane is offering me a history lesson. Two
hundred years ago, he explains, sitting forward in his chair in this
newspaper's Manhattan offices, the left was an "incredibly rational
movement." It believed in "encyclopedias," in hard facts, and in the idea
that mastery of these basics would help "make a better society." Since
then, the world's do-gooders have succumbed to "romanticism; they've become
more dreamy." This is a problem in his view, and so this "self-avowed
slight lefty" is determined to nudge the whole world back toward
"rationalism."
Well, if not the whole world, at least the people who matter. In Mr.
Lomborg's universe that means the lawmakers and bureaucrats who are charged
with solving the world's most pressing problems -- HIV/AIDS, malaria,
malnutrition, dirty water, trade barriers. This once-obscure Dane has in
recent years risen to the status of international celebrity as the chief
advocate of getting leaders to realize the world has limited resources to
fix its problems, and that it therefore needs to prioritize.
Prioritization, cost-effectiveness, efficiency -- these are the ultimate in
rational thinking. (It strikes me they are the ultimate in "free markets,"
though Mr. Lomborg studiously avoids that term.) They are also nearly
unheard-of concepts among the governments, international bodies and aid
groups that oversee good works.
Mr. Lomborg's approach has been to organize events around the globe in
which leaders are forced to think in new ways. His task is certainly
timely, with groups like the U.N. engaged in debate over "reform," and
philanthropists such as Warren Buffett throwing billions at charitable
foundations. But, I ask, can the world really become more rational? "It's
no use just talking about all the great things you'd like to accomplish --
we've got to get there," says Mr. Lomborg.
* * *
Bjorn Lomborg busted -- and that is the only word for it -- onto the world
scene in 2001 with the publication of his book "The Skeptical
Environmentalist." A one-time Greenpeace enthusiast, he'd originally
planned to disprove those who said the environment was getting better. He
failed. And to his credit, his book said so, supplying a damning critique
of today's environmental pessimism. Carefully researched, it offered
endless statistics -- from official sources such as the U.N. -- showing
that from biodiversity to global warming, there simply were no apocalypses
in the offing. "Our history shows that we solve more problems than we
create," he tells me. For his efforts, Mr. Lomborg was labeled a heretic by
environmental groups -- whose fundraising depends on scaring the jeepers
out of the public -- and became more hated by these alarmists than even (if
possible) President Bush.
Yet the experience left Mr. Lomborg with a taste for challenging
conventional wisdom. In 2004, he invited eight of the world's top
economists -- including four Nobel Laureates -- to Copenhagen, where they
were asked to evaluate the world's problems, think of the costs and
efficiencies attached to solving each, and then produce a prioritized list
of those most deserving of money. The well-publicized results (and let it
be said here that Mr. Lomborg is no slouch when it comes to promoting
himself and his work) were stunning. While the economists were from varying
political stripes, they largely agreed. The numbers were just so
compelling: $1 spent preventing HIV/AIDS would result in about $40 of
social benefits, so the economists put it at the top of the list (followed
by malnutrition, free trade and malaria). In contrast, $1 spent to abate
global warming would result in only about two cents to 25 cents worth of
good; so that project dropped to the bottom.
"Most people, average people, when faced with these clear choices, would
pick the $40-of-good project over others -- that's rational," says Mr.
Lomborg. "The problem is that most people are simply presented with a menu
of projects, with no prices and no quantities. What the Copenhagen
Consensus was trying to do was put the slices and prices on a menu. And
then require people to make choices."
Easier said than done. As Mr. Lomborg explains, "It's fine to ask
economists to prioritize, but economists don't run the world." (This sounds
unfortunate to me, although Mr. Lomborg, the "slight lefty," quickly adds
"Thank God.") "We now need to get the policy makers on board, the ones who
are dealing with the world's problems." And therein lies the rub. Political
figures don't like to make choices; they don't like to reward some groups
and not others; they don't like to admit that they can't do it all. They
are political. Not rational.
So all the more credit to Mr. Lomborg, who several weeks ago got his first
big shot at reprogramming world leaders. His organization, the Copenhagen
Consensus Center, held a new version of the exercise in Georgetown. In
attendance were eight U.N. ambassadors, including John Bolton. (China and
India signed on, though no Europeans.) They were presented with global
projects, the merits of each of which were passionately argued by experts
in those fields. Then they were asked: If you had an extra $50 billion, how
would you prioritize your spending?
Mr. Lomborg grins and says that before the event he briefed the
ambassadors: "Several of them looked down the list and said 'Wait, I want
to put a No. 1 by each of these projects, they are all so important.' And I
had to say, 'Yeah, uh, that's exactly the point of this exercise -- to make
you not do that.'" So rank they did. And perhaps no surprise, their final
list looked very similar to that of the wise economists. At the top were
better health care, cleaner water, more schools and improved nutrition. At
the bottom was . . . global warming.
Wondering how all this might go over with Al Gore, I ask Mr. Lomborg if
he'd seen the former vice president's new film that warns of a
climate-change disaster. He's planning to, but notes he wasn't impressed by
the trailers: "It appears to be so overblown that it isn't helpful to the
discussion." Not that Mr. Lomborg doesn't think global warming is a problem
-- he does. But he lays out the facts. "The proposed way of fixing this --
to drastically reduce carbon emissions now and to solve a 100-year problem
in a 10-year time frame, is just a bad idea. You do fairly little good at a
fairly high price. It makes more sense to solve the 100-year problem in a
50-year time frame, and solve the 10-year problems, like HIV-AIDS, in a
five-year time frame. That makes sense, and is the smart way to spend
money."
Slipping into his environmentalist's shoes, he also says people need to get
some perspective. "The U.N. tells us global warming will result in a
sea-level change of one to two feet. It is not going to be the 30 feet Al
Gore is scaring us with. Is this one to two feet going to be a problem?
Sure," he says. "But remember that this past century sea levels rose
between one-third and a full foot. And if you ask old people today what the
most important things were that happened in the 20th century, do you think
they are going to say: 'Two world wars, the internal combustion engine, the
IT revolution . . . and sea levels rose'? It's not to say it isn't a
problem. But we fix these problems."
* * *
Perhaps Mr. Lomborg's greatest coup at the recent Copenhagen Consensus
event was getting the attention of John Bolton, a foe of U.N. inefficiency
and bureaucratic wheel-turning. "I called Bolton's secretary and we finally
got them to agree and she said 'Okay, you can have him for one hour.' And I
said 'No, we need him for two days.' And she laughed her heart out and said
'That's never going to happen.'" But happen it did, and Mr. Bolton was an
enthusiastic supporter, appearing with Mr. Lomborg to announce the results
of the exercise and lamenting that too often at the U.N. "everything is a
priority." There is already talk of a bigger U.N. event in the fall.
Still, it strikes me that simply getting the top folks to prioritize (which
itself would be a minor miracle) is only a start. How does Mr. Lomborg
intend to deal with a compartmentalized bureaucracy, where every unit
claims it is sacred and each one is petrified of losing funding? Here, Mr.
Lomborg himself turns a little less rational and a little more political.
It's no accident that the consensus organizers tell its participants to
consider what they'd do with an "extra" $50 billion. "Most of these guys,
the day-to-day guys at the U.N., went into their business to 'do good.' And
we need to appeal to that bigger sense of virtue. The best way to do that
is talk about 'extra' money, so that they aren't worried about losing their
own job."
Mr. Lomborg hopes that prioritization up top will inspire "competition"
down below. "Most people work in their own circles -- malaria guys talk to
malaria guys, malnutrition guys to malnutrition guys. But if they
understand that there are other projects out there, and that they also have
price tags, and that the ones with the best performance are the ones that
will get the extra money -- you start to have an Olympics for best
projects. And that means smarter ideas for how to solve problems." In fact,
Mr. Lomborg wishes there were more Al Gores. "It's good we have someone
educating about global warming. But we need Al Gores for HIV/AIDS, Al Gores
for malnutrition, Al Gores for free trade, Al Gores for clean drinking
water. We need all these Al Gores passionately roaming the earth with
power-point presentations, making the case for their project. Because at
that point, the real Al Gore would be slightly sidelined, since he's
arguing for the most expensive cure that would do the least good."
Mr. Lomborg is smart enough to realize that what really bothers political
leaders with this approach is that "it would be launching a ship and it's
unknown where it will land. That makes people uncomfortable." A Copenhagen
Consensus exercise for the Inter-American Development Bank in Latin America
or for the Environmental Protection Agency in the U.S. (both of which Mr.
Lomborg is working to organize) could result in findings that suggest the
leaders of these organizations have been throwing good money after bad for
years.
"Right now, politicians know that in public they have to say they support
all things, and suggest there is an infinite amount of money to give to an
infinite amount of good causes. Semiprivately, they know that if they have
10 good causes, the easiest thing is to give one-tenth of the funds to each
-- so there are no complaints. But privately they know there isn't enough
money for everything and that they probably should have given most of it to
the one or two groups that would do the most good."
At the very least, the Copenhagen Consensus might make it harder for public
figures to defend bad decisions. "If you have a rational list that tells
you that you do a lot more good preventing HIV/AIDS, then those in favor of
such projects have slightly better arguments. Those arguing for climate
change have slightly worse arguments." And while this may not change the
world, it could be a start. "The Consensus isn't about getting it perfectly
right," says Mr. Lomborg. "It's about getting it slightly less wrong."
Ms. Strassel is a member of The Wall Street Journal's editorial board.

professor jr, ixprica aí:

Teoria explica crescimento acelerado de buracos negros
DA REDAÇÃO

Uma teoria divulgada ontem pelo astrônomo real do Reino Unido, Martin Rees, propõe solução para um mistério de anos: por que buracos negros conseguem crescer tão rápido? Em estudo ainda inédito, o cientista mostra como esses objetos cósmicos engolidores de matéria são capazes de romper uma barreira antes considerada intransponível.
Em entrevista dada à revista New Scientist (http://www.newscientist.com), Rees diz ter provado que buracos negros podem romper um valor conhecido como "limite de Eddington", a taxa pela qual a gravidade é capaz de agregar matéria.

por que buracos negros conseguem crescer tão rápido?

Eu nem sabia que isso era um mistério... , de modo que não posso falar nada... Se eu vir o artigo, conto o que entendi... Mas deve ser algo bom, o Rees é "Sir"