Future Positive — Thomas Jefferson wrote: “Whenever the people are well-informed, they can be trusted with their own government.”

Science now affects every aspect of life and is an increasingly important topic in national policymaking.  ScienceDebate.org invited thousands of scientists, engineers and concerned citizens to submit what they felt were the the most important science questions facing the nation that the candidates for president should be debating on the campaign trail.

ScienceDebate then worked with a number of  the leading US science and engineering organizations to refine the questions and arrive at a universal consensus on what the most important science policy questions facing the United States are in 2012. Here is their answer:

1. Innovation and the Economy.  Science and technology have been responsible for over half of the growth of the U.S. economy since WWII, when the federal government first prioritized peacetime science mobilization. But several recent reports question America’s continued leadership in these vital areas. What policies will best ensure that America remains a world leader in innovation?

2. Climate Change.  The Earth’s climate is changing and there is concern about the potentially adverse effects of these changes on life on the planet. What is your position on cap-and-trade, carbon taxes, and other policies proposed to address global climate change—and what steps can we take to improve our ability to tackle challenges like climate change that cross national boundaries?

3. Research and the Future.  Federally funded research has helped to produce America’s major postwar economies and to ensure our national security, but today the UK, Singapore, China, and Korea are making competitive investments in research.  Given that the next Congress will face spending constraints, what priority would you give to investment in research in your upcoming budgets?

4. Pandemics and Biosecurity.  Recent experiments show how Avian flu may become transmissible among mammals. In an era of constant and rapid international travel, what steps should the United States take to protect our population from emerging diseases, global pandemics and/or deliberate biological attacks?

5. Education.  Increasingly, the global economy is driven by science, technology, engineering and math, but a recent comparison of 15-year-olds in 65 countries found that average science scores among U.S. students ranked 23rd, while average U.S. math scores ranked 31st.  In your view, why have American students fallen behind over the last three decades, and what role should the federal government play to better prepare students of all ages for the science and technology-driven global economy? (07/23/12)

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The Huffington Post — Lori Weiss reports: Somewhere in West Tennessee, not far from Graceland, nine women — or “The 9 Nanas,” as they prefer to be called — gather in the darkness of night. At 4am they begin their daily routine — a ritual that no one, not even their husbands, knew about for 30 years. They have one mission and one mission only: to create happiness. And it all begins with baked goods.

“One of us starts sifting the flour and another washing the eggs,” explained Nana Mary Ellen, the appointed spokesperson for their secret society. “And someone else makes sure the pans are all ready. We switch off, depending on what we feel like doing that day.

“But you make sure to say Nana Pearl is in charge, because she’s the oldest!” she added with a wink and a smile.

Over the next three hours, The 9 Nanas (who all consider themselves sisters, despite what some of their birth certificates say) will whip up hundreds of pound cakes, as part of a grand scheme to help those in need. And then, before anyone gets as much as a glimpse of them, they’ll disappear back into their daily lives. The only hint that may remain is the heavenly scent of vanilla, lemon and lime, lingering in the air.

Even the UPS driver, who picks up hundreds of packages at a time, has no clue what these women, who range in age from 54 to 72, are doing. He’s just happy to get a hug and a bag filled with special treats. What he doesn’t know is that he’s part of their master plan. A plan that began 35 years ago. (07/23/12)

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CommUnity of Minds — Ellen Brown writes: At one time, calling the large multinational banks a “cartel” branded you as a conspiracy theorist.   Today the banking giants are being called that and worse, not just in the major media but in court documents intended to prove the allegations as facts.  Charges include racketeering (organized crime under the U.S. Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act or RICO), antitrust violations, wire fraud, bid-rigging, and price-fixing.  Damning charges have already been proven, and major damages and penalties assessed.  Conspiracy theory has become established fact.

In an article in the July 3^rd Guardian titled “Private Banks Have Failed – We Need a Public Solution”, Seumas Milne writes of the LIBOR rate-rigging scandal admitted to by Barclays Bank:

It’s already clear that the rate rigging, which depends on collusion, goes far beyond Barclays, and indeed the City of London. This is one of multiple scams that have become endemic in a disastrously deregulated system with inbuilt incentives for cartels to manipulate the core price of finance.

. . . It could of course have happened only in a private-dominated financial sector, and makes a nonsense of the bankrupt free-market ideology that still holds sway in public life.

. . . A crucial part of the explanation is the unmuzzled political and economic power of the City. . . . Finance has usurped democracy. …

If the last quarter century of U.S. banking history proves anything, it is that our private banking system turns malignant and feeds off the public when it is deregulated.  It also shows that a parasitic private banking system will NOT be tamed by regulation, as the banks’ control over the money power always allows them to circumvent the rules.  We the People must transparently own and run the nation’s central and regional banks for the good of the nation, or the system will be abused and run for private power and profit as it so clearly is today, bringing our nation to crisis again and again while enriching the few. (07/23/12)

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CommUnity of Minds Archives – Arthur Noll writing in 2004: Money and markets are not the only illusionary way of looking at the world that has destroyed civilizations, the more basic cause of the trouble is human nature, which grabs hold of these illusionary ways of thought because it feels good to them.  There are many ways to see the world wrong, money and markets is one of the most insidious, because it looks rational on the surface.  No one on the surface of things is expecting mystical beliefs to come true to satisfy the sustainable working of markets, what is mystical about trading this bit of paper for that product?  It is tangible, involves real things.  But when you look a little deeper, magical expectations are exactly what you find.  Markets inherently drive towards infinite growth, infinite substitutions, the expectation of this coming true requires magic.

Is there no better system than money?  I thought about this for years and came up with nothing.  All the advantages you talk about, yes, I’ve gone over them repeatedly and came up with nothing better, yet the flaws of the system drove me back to keep looking.  And I found it, found it right in front of my eyes and yet had not seen it. I’ve written of it before, I’ll repeat it again.  We can organize and work as a single body works. Does your stomach demand payment before it sends it’s work to the small intestine?  Does the small intestine hold out for cash or credit before nutrients go into the bloodstream? No, a thousand times no.  Stuff is simply freely passed around.  The brain must make calculations of Energy Returned On Energy Invested (EROEI), considering the problems of the whole body, coordinating it’s movements, to get the stuff in the first place. If the brain is smart, it may also consider whether that EROEI is sustainable.  Society can operate the same way.  We figure the EROEI of the actions of that society, and the sustainability of that EROEI, and within those limits, resources are as freely passed around within the group as they are passed around in the body.  If a part of your body doesn’t work right anymore, has a negative EROEI, you may consider very seriously cutting it off.  The same can happen to people in this society.

Done in this way, the disadvantages of barter are gone, and the advantages of money are also gone. You do not worry about getting what you need for what you have made on a specific exchange, the problem with barter. You simply take what you need from where it is made, and give what you made to whoever wants it. Even without considering the long term problems of the market, money is a far more cumbersome system compared to this, think again of my example of the various organs demanding payment. Your body would work like a herky jerk puppet if it worked at all, on such a system. And I think current society has that same herky jerky quality to it.  There has not been a better system in human consciousness before, but now I give you one. The “body society” should be able to grow to be much smoother in it’s immediate actions as well as having advantages for making plans for the long term. Evaluation of resources and the actions of people making up the body of society can be done without the distortions of and problems of barter, money or mysticism, they can be done on the basis of EROEI for the whole group and the sustainability of that EROEI.

I see no problem to having such a system grow to many higher levels of complexity, just as living organisms have many layers of complexity, yet this basic principle applies across the board. (07/23/12)

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BBC Future Science – Physiatrist and engineer Todd Kuiken is building a prosthetic arm that connects with the human nervous system — improving motion, control and even feeling. Onstage, patient Amanda Kitts helps demonstrate this next-gen robotic arm.

“We talk with our hands, we greet with our hands, and we interact with the physical world with our hands. When they’re missing, it’s a barrier.”

BBC Biological Science — Scientists in the US have created a free swimming artificial jellyfish. The team members built the replica using silicone as a base on which to grow heart muscle cells that were harvested from rats. They used an electric current to shock the Medusoid into swimming with synchronised contractions that mimic those of real jellyfish.

The advance, by researchers at Caltech and Harvard University, is reported in the journal Nature Biotechnology.

The finding serves as a proof of concept for reverse engineering a variety of muscular organs and simple life forms. Because jellyfish use a muscle to pump their way through the water, the way they function – on a very basic level – is similar to that of a human heart.

“I started looking at marine organisms that pump to survive,” said Kevin Kit Parker, a professor of bioengineering and applied physics at Harvard. “Then I saw a jellyfish at the New England Aquarium, and I immediately noted both similarities and differences between how the jellyfish pumps and the human heart. The similarities help reveal what you need to do to design a bio-inspired pump.”

The work also points to a broader definition of “synthetic life” in an emerging field of science that has until now focused on replicating life’s building blocks, say the researchers. (07/23/12)

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Peter Higgs joined three of the six theoreticians who first predicted the Higgs at the conference.

BBC Physics — Cern scientists reporting from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) have claimed the discovery of a new particle consistent with the Higgs boson. The particle has been the subject of a 45-year hunt to explain how matter attains its mass. Both of the Higgs boson-hunting experiments at the LHC see a level of certainty in their data worthy of a “discovery”. More work will be needed to be certain that what they see is a Higgs, however.

The results announced at Cern (European Organization for Nuclear Research), home of the LHC in Geneva, were met with loud applause and cheering. Prof Peter Higgs, after whom the particle is named, wiped a tear from his eye as the teams finished their presentations in the Cern auditorium. “I would like to add my congratulations to everyone involved in this achievement,” he added later. “It’s really an incredible thing that it’s happened in my lifetime.”

Prof Stephen Hawking joined in with an opinion on a topic often discussed in hushed tones. “This is an important result and should earn Peter Higgs the Nobel Prize,” he told BBC News. “But it is a pity in a way because the great advances in physics have come from experiments that gave results we didn’t expect.” …

A confirmation that this is the Higgs boson would be one of the biggest scientific discoveries of the century; the hunt for the Higgs has been compared by some physicists to the Apollo programme that reached the Moon in the 1960s. Scientists would then have to assess whether the particle they see behaves like the version of the Higgs particle predicted by the Standard Model, the current best theory to explain how the Universe works. (07/09/12)

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