Ardipithecus

Seed Magazine has a nice summary of the most important discovery in human paleontology for quite some time. The 4.5 million-year-old Ardipithecus stands at the very initial stage of human evolution, where humans began bipedal walking in earnest. From the article:

What makes Ardipithecus singular is the skeleton: To anatomists, Ardi is not a mere point on a map. It is the map. As paleoanthropologist C. Owen Lovejoy describes it, Ardi gives us a view of a previously unknown “adaptive plateau” among early hominins—a suite of anatomical and behavioral characteristics that lasted for a long, stable period in the early Pliocene environment. The Ardipithecus form might account for the bulk of the whole story of human evolution—a kind of hominin that was different from anything that came before or after. [...] So how close is Ardipithecus to the last common ancestor? In the current issue of Genetics, yet another study of the human and chimpanzee genomes places the divergence between them at only 4.3 million years—a shade younger than Ardipithecus.[1]

Ardipithecus is like humans in that "she had small, human-like canine teeth. Her molars were smaller, but stout—not at all like those of chimpanzees or gorillas." Also her skull "was carried above her spine most of the time, an indication that she saw the world from a vertical, upright posture." The reason that this find is so important to Anthropology is because "the real 'missing link' —the common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees—may have been a lot like Ardi."[1]


REFERENCES

[image] Seed Magazine

[1]John Hawks "Uncovering Ardi: What We Know" Seed Magazine October 5, 2009 (Accessed November 1, 2009)

[*] The article mentions where the real research was presented--in Science magazine. I have happened to have that edition, but there is an excellent online version available of all those materials found at their site: Online Extras: Ardipithecus ramidus. There is also an informativesummary video to be found there.

O.

Mobile Phones as Leap-Tech for Developing Nations

It's hardly news that adding technology to a developing country's infra-structure boosts its economy, but stating an exact boost for a particular items is informative. From The Economist:

"An extra ten mobile phones per 100 people in a typical developing country boosts GDP growth by 0.8 percentage points, according to the World Bank, by helping small entrepreneurs flourish."[1]

The importance of the mobile phone as a communication device is well known, but as mobile computing and mobile phone technologies fully merge, I believe that the GDP growth by countries which leverage such "leap tech" will become even more amplified. Imagine if mobile phone users in such countries were instead issued iPhones. Even if such countries don't (yet) have the bandwidth to use all of the internet features efficiently, just the presence of a mobile computing device that allows its users to download very cheap applications would have broad impact on individual entrepreneurs, and hence on the economy overall.

Also, developing nations sometimes lack a reliable or fully expanded power-grid infrastructure. Power is often generated by fuel, which supply can be iffy due to such common contingencies as localized wars and weather disasters. But the low-power requirements of devices like mobile phones and mobile computers gets around this problem, since they can be recharged by fairly cheap, reasonably efficient solar charging devices.

Finally, it is possible to determine and analyze how people move around by examining mobile phone usage. Different social groups within a country interact in different ways. Traffic and disease patterns could also be easily tracked, since governments can note such usage and report on it much more efficiently, where before the presence of these devices such information would have been practically impossible to collect. Properly data-mined, the millions of mobile phones in developing nations can function as ad hoc sensors for national data-collection networks.

Mobile devices quickly come down in price and are easily introduced into developing nations. Thus, these nations will have a much shorter path to development than would have been otherwise expected just a few years ago.


REFERENCES

[1] "Fish Out of Water" The Economist Oct. 29, 2009

[*] The trend is their friend, and ours, since commerce most benefits when everyone can participate:


O.

Are you safe, stupid, or selfish by wearing a motorcycle helmet?

I ran across an interesting study titled, "Donorcycles: Do Motorcycle Helmet Laws Reduce Organ Donations?"[1] which argues that organ donations due to motor vehicle fatalities increase by 10 percent when states repeal helmet laws, and that every death of a helmetless motorcyclist prevents or delays as many as 0.33 deaths among individuals on organ transplant waiting lists.

The article also contains many interesting facts about motorcycling and the reasoning behind mandated helmet laws -- at least where they exit, for not many states have such laws: "Currently, 20 states and the District of Columbia require all motorcycle riders to wear helmets, and 27 states have partial coverage laws that typically mandate coverage for all riders age 17 and younger.6 Illinois, Iowa, and New Hampshire do not require any riders to wear a helmet."

Suppose you live in a state that had helmet laws and repealed them. Would you continue wearing the helmet? Well, a betting man would have trouble making money off you either way, since "several papers using single-state data find consistent evidence that the percentage of riders wearing helmets decreases from nearly 100 percent under universal helmet laws to roughly 50 percent when helmet laws are repealed." If you do wreck, the data on helmet protection is pretty convincing: "

Using [a] within-vehicle approach, [it was] found that helmets reduce fatality risk by 34 percent. Similarly, a recent meta-analysis found that helmets reduce the risk of death by 42 percent and the risk of head injury by 69 percent. A related literature estimates the effects of helmet laws on state-level fatality rates. Estimates based on within-state variation in fatalities and helmet laws over time suggest that universal helmet laws reduce per capita fatalities by 27 to 29 percent relative to states with no laws and by over 20 percent relative to states with partial laws"

I suspect the reason most riders forego a helmet is they just don't think they will have a wreck. Actually, I think there is something to this excuse. For example, there are well over 4 million register motorcycles in the U.S., and only around 5-6 thousand people will die in a crash in a given year. On average, only 12-13 motorcyclists die a day.[2] So, of all the millions of motorcycle trips happening per day, only a dozen or so of them are going to die on that day? Actually, those are extraordinarily good odds in favor of the person not wearing a helmet, at least that they won't die.

But what about injuries? I didn't immediately find statistics for this, but in Calif. it looks like the deaths to injury ratio is 1:22. So a reasonable per day injury rate would be around 270 or so. Again, extraordinarily good odds on any given day that a helmet-less rider climbs on a motorcycle. (Interestingly, while I consider this a statistically rational defense for not wearing a helmet, I myself am so irrationally risk averse that I wear one anyway.)

There are also "substantial differences across gender as regards donors and death rates. In every year, men account for roughly 90 percent of all motorcycle fatalities but only two-thirds of deaths in other types of vehicles," which is not too surprising, given even a casual glance at riders out the car window, or at a local bike showroom on Saturday mornings. Yes, there are more men riders, and men are far more prone to taking risks; but still, the study notes, "helmet laws decrease motorcycle fatalities roughly proportionately for men and women."

With four million registered bikes, there certainly are lot of motorcycle riders out there[3] But what if there were absolutely no mandated helmet laws? Among the conclusions of the study: "Estimates imply that nationwide elimination of helmet laws would increase annual organ donations by less than one percent." I found that surprising. Of course, if all states had opt-out organ donation laws, instead of opt-in laws, I'm sure there would be a much larger effect, but then donations via motorcycle casualties still probably wouldn't be significant in that case, since there would be many more organs available for transplant anyway.

O.

REFERENCES

[image] "This was worn by Dave Swisher who, at last count, has north of 1 million miles under his belt." melm00se democraticunderground.com July 31, 2009 (Accessed October 18, 2009)

[1] Stacy Dickert-Conlin, Todd Elder and Brian Moore "Donorcycles: Do Motorcycle Helmet Laws Reduce Organ Donations?" (.PDF) Michigan State University June 10, 2009 (Accessed October 18, 2009)

[2] L.A. Motorcycle Lawyers - Detailed Motorcycle Injury Statistics (Accessed, October 18, 2009)

[3] There are some interesting, if unsettling trends in motorcycle fatalities: "Motorcycle crash-related fatalities have been increasing since 1997, while injuries have been increasing since 1999. More than 100,000 motorcyclists have died in traffic crashes since the enactment of the Highway Safety Act and the National Traffic and Motor Vehicle Safety Act of 1966. " (source: National Highway Traffic Safety Administration: Motorcycle Safety Program.) As the NHTSA graph shows, people apparently born to be wild again after 1997:

Self-checkout lines: the future of education?

As do many millions of people in the U.S., I am now regularly forced to use the self-checkout apparati at such national chain stores as Home Depot (shown above) and Walmart (shown here, in case you live under a rock.) I must admit, I don't like them; but, I also admit they make personnel and commercial sense for the companies that use them. Afterall, a manager doesn't have to hire or fire a machine, and machines don't need insurance, or moral talk, or discipline, or that host of a zillion other interactions required for human resource management. My guess is that they also breakdown at a much more (quantifiably) predictable rate, and probably are easier to price and plan for installation than are employees.

In the 80s, I was a part of a (educationally profitable) band. One day, a few bandmembers and myself were standing around, killing time, and the drummer made a good-natured joke at one of the instrumentalist's expense. The bemused object of the joke retorted, "Hey, buddy, you can be replaced by a machine!" Back then it was quite funny, as the drum machines of the day sounded like a cross between tin foil being crinkled and wine-glasses being dropped. However, with today's technology any such retort would be quite accurate, and maybe also in bad taste. Still, even back then, a short conversation broke out on the matter about machines and drummers, with the eventual conclusion being that "you can 'hang out' with a drummer, but you can't with a machine." That was true at the time and is probably still true for a couple of more decades, though the general drift of how we'll first have A.I. buddies is now clear.

So, as has been well attested since the industrial revolution, people are being replaced by machines. Well, not completely, of course. At checkout kiosks, there is one employee who keeps watch over a half a dozen or so of the devices. The same thing happened in the yarn industry in the late 1700s, where one (lucky) employee could watch over eight or more Spinning Jenny machines. The difference, I suppose, is that now such replacements are occurring in the service industry, not just in the manufacturing industry. It used to be said that this wasn't so bad, since somebody had to be trained to fix the machines. An optimistic view, but not true to the employment threat, since the number of people displaced is far more than the number of technicians required to maintain the displacing technology, as is seen by the automobile industry's usage of robots (video).

The sudden rise of the internet was not at first a problem for the education industry, per se, but the super-addition of broadband tools which make the posting of audio and video almost effortless is. Add to this the ever more-powerful, free and open-source cloud-based software, and one begins to think that education would not require institutions like colleges and universities to deliver an adequate degree. However, at this point, it is way too early to make such a claim, since having access to information and learning a subject are two different things, as anyone who has bought a calculus or foreign language textbook knows.

From my observation, most of the educational success that occurs in formal institutional settings comes from peer motivation and personal coaching. People do best when operating in face-to-face social groups, whether in academics, sports, or even in casual exercise programs. World of Warcraft crack-heads not withstanding, the internet is not yet able to offer a significant substitute for this social activity. Granted, that it might offer this someday cannot be ruled out, but we do not have full immersive, three-dimensional displays (i.e., interfaces) nor even the internet infrastructure to deliver this. Furthermore, not all disciplines are skill-based, template-based, or procedural-based; or, put differently, education and Engineering are not the same kind of endeavor. Still, in the early stages of education, there is information that must be mastered, and often it is somewhat template-based--such as using a technical vocabulary, a fairly-standardized history of the discipline, and other lower-division kinds of overviews and introductions. And it is with these where educational institutions are being forced to change. By analogy, just because the checkout kiosk is tolerable for some retail activities does not mean I would want it for all of them. For instance, the case-by-case, situational complexities of medicine and chemistry means that pharmacists are still required to review and perhaps even discuss what products I get at the back of Walmart, even if the fruit and vegetable guy at the front of Walmart need not review me about my choice of onion.

Ultimately, universities will have to separate (1) content that can be delivered for impersonal learning from (2) discipline-specific knowledge that requires a certain amount of personal interviewing and coaching. Quite a bit of money has traditionally be generated by using instructors to teach the former, but it turns out the latter is the more difficult and important task of education. Acquiring data is one thing, analyzing it is quite another, as Astronomers, for example, well know. The internet will continue to be a fine (if financially disruptive) tool for content delivery, but as a student gets more content, there are subsequently more difficult issues in knowing what to do with such content, and that requires a mind-to-mind engagement.

O.

Is Higher Education Worth it?

Certainly here in the U.S., and across the world's developed nations, the answer is still a clear Yes.

The above image (duly lifted from The Economist) shows that in the U.S. there is an $100,000 dollar advantage to the state's coffers (even after student aid programs are taken into account) and around $165,000 dollar advantage to the individual him- or herself.

Some people have worried that there are too many college graduates, and that high supply will mean a lower demand for them from employers, but this has not been the case, so the time and money investments by a person seeking a college degree still pays off.

Also why people chose college at all is not clearly based on the calculation of these financial advantages:

Alison Wolf of King’s College London, the author of a book provocatively entitled “Does Education Matter?” says a big reason why school-leavers go to university is peer pressure. With many graduates to choose from, employers increasing turn up their noses at anyone who does not sport a degree, no matter what the job’s requirements. The result is more akin to an arms race, with everyone running to stand still, than a recipe for increasing prosperity.[1]

Finally, higher education is always a good way to ride-out times of unemployment and recession, because when the economy returns, graduates are best placed to enter the marketplace with the appropriately acquired technical skills. Of course, as a college professor, it is both prudent and enjoyable for me to purport such analysis.


O.

REFERENCES

[image] The Economist (from article below)

[1] "It still pays to study" The Economist Sept. 12, 2009.

The ethics of getting tested for Alzheimer's

The New York Times is reporting that European researchers have discovered two genetic variants for Alzheimer's which "account for about 20 percent of the genetic risk of the disease." A second research team has also found one of the variants, as well as an additional one of their own.[1]

Not surprisingly, this brings up the old question--would you want to get tested for having a disease for which there is no cure? As in all Ethical issues, I imagine that people's intuitions would differ on this matter. For example, a young, single person might think that the knowledge of an event which is very far off could only lower the quality of life in the here and now. But an older person with lots of family members reliant on his income or status might consider it a prudent way of managing an otherwise uncontrollable end.

A relevant consideration is Alzheimer's cost:

"In a 1994 report from the American Journal of Public Health on the economical and social costs of Alzheimer’s, it was the third most expensive disease in the United States after heart disease and cancer. They reported that the average lifetime cost of care for an Alzheimer’s patient is $174,000 with a two to twenty year life expectancy after diagnosis. This figure does not include the loss of wages both for the Alzheimer’s sufferer or the caregiver."[2]

Given this, some might argue that there is an ethical imperative to get tested early, no matter what your age. Health care costs go up as the symptoms of Alzheimer's worsen. The earlier somebody is diagnosed, the better position they will be in to financially prepare for when it occurs. Therefore, in a medical system which is partially reliant on taxpayers (i.e. in Medicare), one owes it to the financially supporting community to put all information on the table.

Consider a somewhat parallel case where one owes the community an acknowledgment of any blood disease when donating blood, since tainted blood would immediately harm those in the community. Alzheimer's also harms the community, though its peculiar harm is merely financial. Does that make a difference in the imperative to get tested?

O.

REFERENCES

[image] Jim Baen's Universe Blog

[1] Nicholas Wade "Scientists Connect Gene Variations to Alzheimer’s" New York Times Sept. 6, 2009.


[2] Carolyn Dean, MD "The High Cost of Alzheimer’s" everything.com (Accessed Sept. 6, 2009)

Afghanistan: The Sequel to Vietnam?

From today's The Washington Post:

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates said any recommendation for more forces would have to address his concerns that the foreign military presence in Afghanistan could become too large and be seen by Afghans as a hostile occupying force. "Clearly, I want to address those issues and we will have to look at the availability of forces, we'll have to look at costs. There are a lot of different things that we'll have to look at," he told reporters.[1]

I'm starting to get a bad feeling about how this operation is going. It appears the current administration is too politically chicken to put it on the line and dump more troops in. Of course we are occupying the country, but since it's so politically fragmented to not do so would be an increasing danger to us.

This is actually the real instance of what was a bullkrap theory back in the 60s about Vietnam--that the communists would take over and we'd be in danger. Well, as the 9/11 plane crashes have shown, this time there really are clear and present dangers to the U.S. by well-financed terrorist organizations operating out of Afghanistan. (Just where is their money coming from, anyway?) Yet the secretary of defense is worried about costs? Perhaps he should wonder what the cost of another strike on U.S. soil would be.

Here, Secretary Gates, I'll tip you this Afghanistan Taliban banknote. Maybe that will help with the costs.

REFERENCES

[1] Peter Graff and Andrew Gray "U.S., NATO must change to win Afghan war says commander" The Washington Post Aug. 31, 2009.