Climate change needs a new kind of scientist

Jan 17 2014

BY Amy Duchelle

Scientific discoveries of recent decades have generated a wealth of knowledge on forests and climate change spanning many different sectors and disciplines. Sustainable development, poverty eradication, the rights of indigenous and local communities to land and resources, conservation of biodiversity, governance, water management, pollution (and all the policies and economic factors related to these sectors) are just some of the issues that scientists studying the relationship between forests climate change must consider.

Such knowledge generation has also laid the foundation for a broader mission to assist in developing integrated solutions. This is not something that we, as climate scientists, have been traditionally trained to do.

It’s clear that developing integrated solutions to such complex problems will require a new kind of climate scientist. A scientist who can think across biophysical and social disciplines. A scientist who can work across scales to engage all members of society in their research. A scientist who can understand the policy implications of their work.

One group that seems particularly enthusiastic to take on such a role is young researchers. In this article, I’ll go through a few examples where young researchers have led the “out of the box” thinking needed to tackle climate change problems.

Interdisciplinary science is at the heart of CIFOR’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+, which aims to inform policy makers, practitioners and donors about what works in reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and enhancement of forest carbon stocks (REDD+) in tropical countries.

In this study, a diverse group of foresters, biologists, sociologists, economists, political scientists, and anthropologists works together to understand how REDD+ can be implemented effectively, efficiently, equitably, and promote both social and environmental co-benefits.

I help coordinate a component of the study that focuses on measuring the impacts of subnational REDD+ initiatives. Through this part of the study, we have collected data in 170 villages with over 4,000 families in 6 countries: Brazil, Peru, Cameroon, Tanzania, Vietnam and Indonesia.
From 2010 to 2012, we hired nearly 80 undergraduate, Masters and PhD students in Latin America to collect baseline data on livelihoods and land-use at multiple sites across the Amazon. These young scientists have been critical in helping us share project knowledge in different ways.

KNOWLEDGE SHARING
As I was finishing my PhD six years ago, I joined forces with bunch of graduate students who were thinking about how, within our confined academic research environment, we could share knowledge in different ways.

The “knowledge exchange pyramid” (Fig 1) outlines how graduate students can exchange knowledge with local stakeholders during research.

There are three levels of knowledge exchange: (1) information sharing; (2) skill building; and (3) knowledge generation. The black circle represents the researchers while the white circle represents local stakeholders — communities, practitioners, policymakers.

Duchelle, A.E, K. Biedenweg, C. Lucas, A. Virapongse, J. Radachowsky, D. Wojcik, M. Londres, W.L. Bartels, D. Alvira, K.A. Kainer. 2009. Graduate students and knowledge exchange with local stakeholders: Possibilities and preparation. Biotropica 41(5): 578-585.

At the base of the pyramid (the simplest form of knowledge exchange) is information sharing – a primarily one-way transmission of ideas to stakeholders using presentations, brochures and posters. Our experience showed that these tools are particularly appropriate when time is limited, specific facts need to be shared, and information is not controversial.

If your goal is to change attitudes, you need to ensure that stakeholders are given a more active role in interpreting information either through community forums, presentations allowing discussion time, and short workshops.

An example of information sharing is returning research results to local stakeholders. One year after the teams collected baseline data for the Global Comparative Study on REDD+, we went back to all of the research sites and shared the results with the local communities and with the organizations (NGOs and governments) that implement the REDD+ activities.

While many researchers do go back to the places where they collected their data to share results, it has bothered me for years when you go to communities where you know there have been multiple research groups and they say to you, ‘you guys are the first group that come back with the information’.

While many researchers do go back to the places where they collected their data to share results, it has bothered me for years when you go to communities where you know there have been multiple research groups and they say to you, ‘you guys are the first group that come back with the information’.

Sharing results with local stakeholders is an incredibly important learning process and it makes good scientific sense. It allows community members to interpret the information and verify survey data before final analysis. We have found that when a community says ‘that doesn’t make sense, why would it be that way?’, it helps us rethink our interpretation of the data. All it takes is some time, some creativity, and a bit of money.

In the Global Comparative Study on REDD+, I envisaged us returning the results in a pretty conventional way. What blew me away was the innovation of our young researchers – they used art, games and even theatre to make the science interesting and relevant to local communities.
In the second part of the pyramid (slightly more complex knowledge exchange) is skill building, which encourages stakeholders to use knowledge to develop new skills. This is often a response to local demands for skills such as data collection and analysis, grant writing, or manuscript preparation.
While conducting research in Ucayali, Peru forest communities requested training in Global Positioning Systems (GPS) to help them locate and record specific trees in timber harvest areas required by their forest management plans. They also wanted to learn how to measure timber so they could determine a reasonable purchase price (and ensure they weren’t being swindled when it came time to sell the tree trunks or boards).

Skill building activities require more time, resources, and preparation than information sharing but can be incredibly important for building trust with communities. They can also be fun (friendly soccer games are a common feature of fieldwork in Latin America!)
At the highest level of the pyramid is knowledge generation, which includes communities, practitioners or policy makers as partners in different aspects of the research process (one example is “action research”). Together with the graduate researcher, they can create the research questions, implement the research, and analyze and disseminate the results.
While this is the most innovative type of knowledge exchange, it is also the hardest for young researchers to get involved in. Graduate students and their research partners will need to invest a lot of time and energy as well as obtain institutional support.

I know a Brazilian researcher who, before and during her Masters in The University of Florida’s Tropical Conservation and Development Program, developed long-term action research on the ecology of locally important tree species with one remote community in the Amazon estuary. She involved community members in all steps of the research process from setting research priorities, collecting data and training.

After assessing the research findings, community members took several actions. They more than doubled the number of local volunteers collecting data (and diversified to include youth, women, and community leaders), they presented research findings at community meetings and they shared those findings with nearby communities struggling to improve their livelihoods in a sustainable way.
Engaging local stakeholders in research is possible at any level. Young researchers are the ones who can help us think of new and innovative ways to do this.

MAKE USE OF THIS INFORMATION
If you are in academia, encourage your students to embark on this kind of knowledge exchange in their research. Plug them into your networks and create courses to help broaden their skill sets.
If you are a practitioner, welcome students and young researchers into your work. Be willing to develop research with them, be willing to learn from students and help them become better professionals.

If you are a donor, support the research that shows real and genuine knowledge exchange with relevant stakeholders.

If you are a student or young researcher, recognize the very unique moment that you are in right now in your career and expand your skill set. Some of the conventional academic pressures are less placed on you at early stages of your career, so use the opportunity you have now to engage and innovate.

This article was first published on ForestsClimateChange.org

What Happens When You Can't Get an Abortion?

—By Kevin Drum

| Thu Jun. 13, 2013 7:59 AM GMT

What happens to women who want abortions but can't get them? Abortion clinics all have "gestational deadlines" and will turn away women who are further into pregnancy than their rules allow, and this gave Diane Greene Foster, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at UC San Francisco, an idea for a study. Instead of comparing women who have abortions to women who elect to carry their pregnancy to term, she compared a group of women who all wanted to have an abortion but didn't all get one:



When she looked at more objective measures of mental health over time — rates of depression and anxiety — she also found no correlation between having an abortion and increased symptoms....Turnaways did [] suffer from higher levels of anxiety, but six months out, there were no appreciable differences between the two groups.
Where the turnaways had more significant negative outcomes was in their physical health and economic stability....Women in the turnaway group suffered more ill effects, including higher rates of hypertension and chronic pelvic pain....Even “later abortions are significantly safer than childbirth,” she says.
....Economically, the results are even more striking. Adjusting for any previous differences between the two groups, women denied abortion were three times as likely to end up below the federal poverty line two years later. Having a child is expensive, and many mothers have trouble holding down a job while caring for an infant. Had the turnaways not had access to public assistance for women with newborns, Foster says, they would have experienced greater hardship.

The whole story is worth a read. In the long run, women who want abortions but don't get them adjust to their new lives. They aren't unhappy at becoming mothers. But there's not much question that their lives suffer, and as more and more states put more and more roadblocks in the way of abortion providers, that suffering will increase—with no mitigation from increased social services, since the red states that oppose abortion also generally don't think highly of providing much in the way of services to mothers in poverty.

Future solar cells may be made of wood

Future solar cells may be made of wood

Jan 23, 2014 by Lisa Zyga

       

(a) A schematic of the hierarchical structure of a tree in which each structure is broken down to the level of the elementary fibrils. (b) Regular paper with microfibers has a microporous structure that causes light scattering. (c) The new …more

(Phys.org) —A new kind of paper that is made of wood fibers yet is 96% transparent could be a revolutionary material for next-generation solar cells. Coming from plants, the paper is inexpensive and more environmentally friendly than the plastic substrates often used in solar cells. However, its most important advantage is that it overcomes the tradeoff between optical transparency and optical haze that burdens most materials.

A team of researchers from the University of Maryland, the South China University of Technology, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, have published a paper on the new material in a recent issue of Nano Letters.

As the researchers explain, solar cell performance benefits when materials possess both a high optical transparency (to allow for good light transmission) and a high optical haze (to increase the scattering and therefore the absorption of the transmitted light within the material). But so far, materials with high transparency values (of about 90%) have very low optical haze values (of less than 20%).

The new wood-based paper has an ultrahigh transparency of 96% and ultrahigh optical haze of 60%, which is the highest optical haze value reported among transparent substrates.
The main reason for this good performance in both areas is that the paper has a nanoporous rather than microporous structure. Regular paper is made of wood fibers and has low optical transparency due to the microcavities that exist within the porous structure that cause light scattering. In the new paper, these micropores are eliminated in order to improve the optical transparency. To do this, the researchers used a treatment called TEMPO to weaken the hydrogen bonds between the microfibers that make up the wood fibers, which causes the wood fibers to swell up and collapse into a dense, tightly packed structure containing nanopores rather than micropores.

        

Optical transmission haze versus transmittance for different substrates at 550 nm. Glass and PET are in the green area, which are suitable for displays due to their low haze and high transparency; the transparent paper developed in this work …more

"The papers are made of ribbon-like materials that can stack well without microsize cavities for high transmittance, but with nanopores for high optical haze," coauthor Liangbing Hu, Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Maryland, told Phys.org.
To test the paper for solar cell applications, the researchers coated the wood fiber paper onto the surface of a silicon slab. Experiments showed that the light-harvesting device can collect light with a 10% increase in efficiency. Due to the simplicity of this laminating process, solar cells that have already been installed and are in use could benefit similarly from the additional paper layer.

Although there are other papers made of nanofibers, this paper demonstrates a much higher optical transmittance while using much less energy and time for processing. With these advantages, the highly transparent, high-haze paper could offer an inexpensive way to enhance the efficiency of solar panels, solar roofs, and solar windows.

"We would like to work with solar cell and display companies to evaluate the applications," Hu said. "We are also interested in the manufacturing of such paper."

Explore further: Small-molecule solar cells get 50% increase in efficiency with optical spacer

More information: Zhiqiang Fang, et al. "Novel Nanostructured Paper with Ultrahigh Transparency and Ultrahigh Haze for Solar Cells." Nano Letters. DOI: 10.1021/nl404101p

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-future-solar-cells-wood.html#jCp

 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-future-solar-cells-wood.html#jCp

 Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-future-solar-cells-wood.html#jCp

Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2014-01-future-solar-cells-wood.html#jCp

Origins of Massive Star Explosions May Be Found

by Miriam Kramer, SPACE.com Staff Writer   |   March 07, 2013 02:01pm ET
http://www.space.com/20110-supernova-star-explosions-origins.html?cmpid=514639_20140125_17554014

              






















The key to a supernova's future is in its past, scientists say.

A new study, unveiled today (March 7), may help astronomers turn back the clock on supernovas to understand how some of these massive cosmic explosions, which signal the death of stars, can occur.
By reviewing observations of 188 supernova remnants, study leader Xiaofeng Wang, an astronomer at Tsinghua University in Beijing, and his team discovered a seemingly simple way to understand what the "progenitor" star of a stellar explosion may have looked like before the white dwarf went supernova.
 

 

Wang and his team focused specifically on a kind of star explosion known as a Type 1a supernova, which astronomers use as cosmic mile-markers to measure vast distances across galaxies. Astronomers know that Type 1a supernovas can form in one of two different scenarios, both of which include a small, dying star known as a white dwarf that is about the size of Earth, but as massive as the sun.

The team analyzed the general galactic locations of the supernovas in their survey in order to understand what the area could have looked like at the time of the actual explosion. They found the stars that went supernova in more metal-rich, and possibly younger, star systems exploded more violently than supernovas born in less metal-rich areas of a galaxy.

"The typical mass of a white dwarf is not large enough to trigger an explosion; it is suggested that either merging of two white dwarfs in a binary system or continuous accretion of mass from a companion by a white dwarf is required to reach that limit," Wang said. "But the evidence from observations are not strong enough to support one scenario and refute another one." [Amazing Photos of Supernova Explosions]

These results are one more step toward solving a mystery that has beleaguered scientists researching supernovas since the 1960s.It is likely that the more explosive supernovas are caused by a white dwarf extracting mass from a companion star like the sun or a red giant, but not another white dwarf, Wang said. The less violent supernovas are probably caused by the merging of two white dwarfs.
"The basic idea is that we use these supernovae to measure distances," Ryan Foley, an astronomer at Harvard who was not involved with the study, said. "It's how we know the universe is expanding. That's great, that we measure distances with them, but it's embarrassing that we don't yet know what stellar systems produce them."

While Wang's work is consistent with other findings, by using a broad overview of survey data, the results are not as detailed as some supernova research published in recent years, added Foley.

An earlier study led by Foley used a comprehensive examination of a group of Type 1a supernovas to see that the violently exploding stars were found in gassy environments within their area of the galaxy.

"The previous way that we've found the differences is telescope time-intensive; this new way has the potential to use very little telescope time," Foley said of Wang's work. "Overall, it's a nice result, but it's one of these things that the interpretation of the results is going to take a little time to flush out."
The research was detailed online March 7 in the journal Science.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Robotics and automation, employment, and aging Baby Boomers

By Kenneth Anderson  

January 23 at 10:18 am

 

Advances over the last couple of years in automation and robotics are drawing attention on account of their implications for the economy and especially employment.  It’s not clear whether this is owed so much to an actual acceleration of technological advances as to the public noticing that the giants of information technologies – Google, for example – have decided to start placing big bets on robotics.  These include self-driving cars, the “Internet of Things,” assistive care robots for the elderly and disabled, commercial drone aircraft, and many other emerging, but also potentially disruptive, automation and robotic technologies.

Tech companies likely would have done much of this anyway.  There’s a convergence of interest in these technologies from many different directions.  Still, the aging of the Baby Boomer population bears noting as an indirect economic driver for new machines, to make aging Baby Boomer care and maintenance more possible and affordable. 

Mobile, connected, supplied, and independent within one’s own home for as long possible. Well, here you have all four: Google’s self-driving cars, Apple’s evolving iPhones as personal controller of your assistive devices,  Amazon’s home delivery, and the in-home assistive robots many companies are trying to design. 

The tech companies, it’s only partly an exaggeration to say, are firms whose business plans are based on old people.  It’s the services they want and need as they (“we,” let me be honest) grow older, striving to maintain autonomy and independence for as long as possible.  I might think (I do think) it’s unbelievably cool and not-old at all if one day I were to get a delivery by Amazon drone.  But actually, after the (thrilling) first time, it’s just because I’m old, don’t really feel like leaving the house, and anyway am too infirm to do so.  At least, not without a neuro-robotic “weak-limb support suit” for my legs, so I don’t lose my balance in the street and fall, and a Google car to get me to … the doctor’s office.

“Indirect” economic driver, however, because the Baby Boomers would not be paying out of their own pockets directly for many of the technologies that might be most important to them in retirement; government would wind up paying.  The concomitant uncertainties, political and otherwise, that would affect what amount to “procurement” decisions within Medicare and such programs, make decisions to go into expensive and technologically thus far unproven research and development (particularly with respect to the most ambitious artificial intelligence robotics) economically uncertain, contingent propositions.

But now a familiar debate has broken out – around the employment effects that are likely to come from these new technologies. (The Economist magazine summarizes the debate and comments in this week’s edition.)  On the one hand, innovative, disruptive technological change is nothing new.  The result has always been short-to-medium term creative destruction, sometimes including the destruction of whole occupational categories – followed by longer term job growth enabled by the new technologies or the increased wealth they create. 

In any case, over the long run, increases in the standard of living can only come through innovation and technological advance that allows greater economic output to be extracted from the same or smaller labor input.  In a world of many elderly, retired Baby Boomers and historically smaller worker base bearing much of the cost of the elderly living and health care costs, that has to matter a great deal.  Ben Miller and Robert D. Atkinson make the positive case for automation and robotics along these lines in a September 2013 report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, Are Robots Taking Our Jobs, or Making Them?  

On the other hand, maybe this time is different.  That’s what  MIT professors Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee argued in their 2012 book, Race Against the Machine, and reprise in a more nuanced way in their new book, released last week, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Machines.   Maybe “brilliant machines” will replace many workers – permanently.  Even without making sci-fi leaps of imagination for the capabilities of the short-to-medium term “artificial intelligence,” the emerging machines (as their designers intend them) aim to be not just “disembodied” AI computers, but instead genuine “robots,” possessed of mechanical capabilities for movement and mobility, and sensors, both of which are advancing rapidly technologies – not just AI computational abilities.  Perhaps this combination – the AI robot able to enter and interact in ordinary human social spaces – does signify a break from our past experiences of innovation as (eventual) producer of net new jobs over time.  Maybe significant new categories of work don’t emerge this time around – because as soon as one does, someone (or some thing) breaks it down into an algorithm, and then comes up with mechanical devices and sensors capable of executing the task – intelligently.  As a Babbage column in the Economist put it several years ago, in this scenario, capital becomes labor.  

What makes these machines special, then, is not just AI but, instead, AI embedded in a machine that can sense, decide, and then act, with mechanical movement and mobility, in the physical world – in the human social world.  In that case, economically, changes could be unprecedented, with implications for both manual labor and even for the “knowledge workers” previously insulated from both industrial automation and global outsourcing.  Unlike past technological revolutions, the result might not be whole new job categories gradually emerging (or at least ones that employ large numbers of workers). 

It’s striking, however, that the argument over employment doesn’t quite directly concern the elderly.  It doesn’t rationally engage aging Baby Boomers as consumers wanting these technologies and their services, or at least not Baby Boomers as both consumers and workers, with an interested foot in each camp.  They’ll already be retired and so their own employment won’t be their issue.  The employment issue in which, however, they will indirectly have an interest is the cost of human labor to care for them as elderly and infirm; that care is strongly labor intensive, in both unskilled and highly skilled (nursing) labor.  The difficulties of machine interactions in ordinary human environments – versus, say, the highly controlled factory or assembly line floor – has meant that this sector has not so far been widely automated.  But that is liable to significant change, if these technologies move forward – and if they are successful, they will have to become part of the calculation of the cost of care of the elderly, given that the technological shifts are not going to cheap, but the cost of both skilled and unskilled elder-care labor is only going to rise under current scenarios.  

Which is to say, no matter where you stand on the automation-robotics-employment debate, if tech’s business plan is significantly about the growing ranks of the elderly as the target market, then to that extent, the employment debate is less important to the elderly as regards their own employment, but (at least if the technologies are successful) squarely in the cross-hairs of public policy on the costs of care for the elderly.   It’s much more complicated than that, of course, and this is not to suggest that these are the only or even most significant factors.  The business model for robotics is not simply about retirees; the market for self-driving cars, for example, if they come to work as hoped by Google and others, will be far wider than that; eventually it becomes about everyone.   The point for now is only that the elderly form an important, though far from dominant, part of the markets for automation and robotics.

My own view is that Miller and Atkinson are mostly right about long-run job generation.  The “this time is different” view seems to me overstated – as so often the case with AI, as Gary Marcus has noted.    One should never rule out paradigm shifting advances, but so far as I can tell, the conceptual pathways as laid down for AI today are not going to lead – even over the long-run – to what sci-fi has already given us in imagination.  Siri is not “Her” – as even Siri herself noted in a recent Tweet.  For the future we can foresee, in the short-to-medium term, we’ll be more likely to have machines that (as ever) extend, but do not replace, human capabilities; in other cases, human capabilities will extend the machines.  The foreseeable future, I suspect, remains the process (long underway) of tag-teaming humans and machines.  Which is to say (mostly), same as it ever was.    

The significant new job categories (I speculate) run toward skilled manual labor of a new kind. The “maker movement”; new US manufacturing trends toward highly automated, but still human-run and staffed factories; new high technology, but still human-controlled, energy exploitation such as fracking; complex and crucial robotic machines under the supervision of nurses whose whole new skill sets put them in a new job category we might call nursing technologist – these are the areas of work that point the way forward.

Quasi-manual labor – but highly skilled, highly value-added, and value-added because it services the machines.  Or as economist Tyler Cowen put it in his 2013 Average Is Over, the next generation of workers will be defined by their relationships with the machine:  You can do very well if you are able to use technology to leverage your own productivity.  You can also do very well if you are able to use your human skills to leverage the productivity of the machine.  If you can’t do either, though, you might gradually fall into a welfare-supported underclass – because the world of work, even apparently merely “manual” labor, is largely out of your reach. 

Kenneth Anderson Kenneth Anderson teaches law at Washington College of Law, American University; he is also a non-resident senior fellow of the Brookings Institution, a visiting fellow of the Hoover Institution and member of its Task Force on National Security and Law, and a senior fellow of the Rift Valley Institute. He serves as Book Reviews editor of the national security law website, Lawfare. His most recent book, "Speaking the Law: The Obama Administration's Addresses on National Security Law," co-authored with Benjamin Wittes, is appearing in serial chapters online at Hoover Institution Press, and his previous book, "Living With the UN: American Responsibilities and International Order," was published in 2012.

Annals of the Presidency

On and off the road with Barack Obama.

by David Remnick January 27, 2014

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2014/01/27/140127fa_fact_remnick?utm_source=tny&utm_campaign=generalsocial&utm_medium=twitter

Obama’s Presidency is on the clock. Hard as it has been to pass legislation, the coming year is a marker, the final interval before the fight for succession becomes politically all-consuming. Photograph by Pari Dukovic.

                                         

On the Sunday afternoon before Thanksgiving, Barack Obama sat in the office cabin of Air Force One wearing a look of heavy-lidded annoyance. The Affordable Care Act, his signature domestic achievement and, for all its limitations, the most ambitious social legislation since the Great Society, half a century ago, was in jeopardy. His approval rating was down to forty per cent—lower than George W. Bush’s in December of 2005, when Bush admitted that the decision to invade Iraq had been based on intelligence that “turned out to be wrong.” Also, Obama said thickly, “I’ve got a fat lip.”

That morning, while playing basketball at F.B.I. headquarters, Obama went up for a rebound and came down empty-handed; he got, instead, the sort of humbling reserved for middle-aged men who stubbornly refuse the transition to the elliptical machine and Gentle Healing Yoga. This had happened before. In 2010, after taking a self-described “shellacking” in the midterm elections, Obama caught an elbow in the mouth while playing ball at Fort McNair. He wound up with a dozen stitches. The culprit then was one Reynaldo Decerega, a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute. Decerega wasn’t invited to play again, though Obama sent him a photograph inscribed “For Rey, the only guy that ever hit the President and didn’t get arrested. Barack.”

This time, the injury was slighter and no assailant was named—“I think it was the ball,” Obama said—but the President needed little assistance in divining the metaphor in this latest insult to his person. The pundits were declaring 2013 the worst year of his Presidency. The Republicans had been sniping at Obamacare since its passage, nearly four years earlier, and HealthCare.gov, a Web site that was undertested and overmatched, was a gift to them. There were other beribboned boxes under the tree: Edward Snowden’s revelations about the National Security Agency; the failure to get anything passed on gun control or immigration reform; the unseemly waffling over whether the Egyptian coup was a coup; the solidifying wisdom in Washington that the President was “disengaged,” allergic to the forensic and seductive arts of political persuasion. The congressional Republicans quashed nearly all legislation as a matter of principle and shut down the government for sixteen days, before relenting out of sheer tactical confusion and embarrassment—and yet it was the President’s miseries that dominated the year-end summations.

Obama worried his lip with his tongue and the tip of his index finger. He sighed, slumping in his chair. The night before, Iran had agreed to freeze its nuclear program for six months. A final pact, if one could be arrived at, would end the prospect of a military strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities and the hell that could follow: terror attacks, proxy battles, regional war—take your pick. An agreement could even help normalize relations between the United States and Iran for the first time since the Islamic Revolution, in 1979. Obama put the odds of a final accord at less than even, but, still, how was this not good news?

The answer had arrived with breakfast. The Saudis, the Israelis, and the Republican leadership made their opposition known on the Sunday-morning shows and through diplomatic channels. Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli Prime Minister, called the agreement a “historic mistake.” Even a putative ally like New York Senator Chuck Schumer could go on “Meet the Press” and, fearing no retribution from the White House, hint that he might help bollix up the deal. Obama hadn’t tuned in. “I don’t watch Sunday-morning shows,” he said. “That’s been a well-established rule.” Instead, he went out to play ball.

Usually, Obama spends Sundays with his family. Now he was headed for a three-day fund-raising trip to Seattle, San Francisco, and Los Angeles, rattling the cup in one preposterous mansion after another. The prospect was dispiriting. Obama had already run his last race, and the chances that the Democratic Party will win back the House of Representatives in the 2014 midterm elections are slight. The Democrats could, in fact, lose the Senate.

For an important trip abroad, Air Force One is crowded with advisers, military aides, Secret Service people, support staff, the press pool. This trip was smaller, and I was along for the ride, sitting in a guest cabin with a couple of aides and a staffer who was tasked with keeping watch over a dark suit bag with a tag reading “The President.”

Obama spent his flight time in the private quarters in the nose of the plane, in his office compartment, or in a conference room. At one point on the trip from Andrews Air Force Base to Seattle, I was invited up front for a conversation. Obama was sitting at his desk watching the Miami Dolphins–Carolina Panthers game. Slender as a switch, he wore a white shirt and dark slacks; a flight jacket was slung over his high-backed leather chair. As we talked, mainly about the Middle East, his eyes wandered to the game. Reports of multiple concussions and retired players with early-onset dementia had been in the news all year, and so, before I left, I asked if he didn’t feel at all ambivalent about following the sport. He didn’t.

“I would not let my son play pro football,” he conceded. “But, I mean, you wrote a lot about boxing, right? We’re sort of in the same realm.”

The Miami defense was taking on a Keystone Kops quality, and Obama, who had lost hope on a Bears contest, was starting to lose interest in the Dolphins. “At this point, there’s a little bit of caveat emptor,” he went on. “These guys, they know what they’re doing. They know what they’re buying into. It is no longer a secret. It’s sort of the feeling I have about smokers, you know?”

Note: this is only one of eighteen pages.

Musings of Neil deGrasse Tyson

Posted on January 24, 2014 at 1:00 pm
By Lucas Anthony
                

Neil deGrasse Tyson giving the Vulcan salute. Photo Credit: Business Insider.

“For me, I am driven by two main philosophies: know more today about the world than I knew yesterday and lessen the suffering of others. You’d be surprised how far that gets you.”

If you don’t know who Neil deGrasse Tyson is, I would have to guess you have been living under a rock for the past ten years or so. For those of you that do know of him, how much do you really know about the man who is sometimes referred to as the Carl Sagan of the 21st century?

HUMBLE BEGINNINGS:

After seeing the stars during a visit to Pennsylvania, Tyson became entranced with astronomy at the tender age of nine, he continued to study astronomy throughout his teens. He even earned a foothold and slight fame in the astronomy community by giving lectures on the subject at the young age of fifteen.  Unfortunately for Carl Sagan, who wished to recruit Tyson to study at Cornell University, Tyson decided instead to attend Harvard University, where he eventually earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in physics in 1980.  Three years later, In 1983, he went on to receive his ‘Master of Arts’ degree in astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. In the following years, while under the supervision of Professor Michael Rich at Columbia University, he received both a Master and Doctor of Philosophy degree in astrophysics.

EARLY CAREER:

NASA Distinguished Public Service Medal awarded to Tyson in 2004. Photo Credit: NASA

Tyson started writing science books early in his career, his first book, from 1989, was titled ‘Merlin’s Tour of the Universe.’ It is a science fiction book in which the main character, Merlin – a fictional character from the Andromeda Galaxy – befriends many of Earth’s most famous scientists. This was only the start for Tyson, from 1989 to 2012 he has managed to write 12 separate science books; mostly revolving around the subjects of astronomy and astrophysics, in 1998 he even wrote a companion novel to Merlin’s Tour of the Universe which was titled ‘Just Visiting This Planet: Merlin Answers More Questions about Everything under the Sun, Moon, and Stars.’  In 1995, Tyson began writing a column for the Natural History magazine, merely called “Universe” (many of the archived articles can still be viewed here).  While working on his thesis, Tyson observed at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory, a ground based optical telescope in the Coquimbo Region of Chile, during that time he collaborated with Calán/Tololo Survey astronomers with their work on Type Ia supernovae.

It was these papers that comprised a portion of the discovery papers that related the use of Type Ia supernovae to measure distances, which in turn, led to the improvement of the Hubble constant, and the discovery of dark energy later on. Because of this, in 2001, President George W. Bush Jr. appointed Tyson (along with the second man on the moon, Buzz Aldrin) to serve on the ‘Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry’ committee. Eventually, in 2004, he was subsequently appointed by the president to serve on the ‘President’s Commission on Implementation of United States Space Exploration Policy‘ board, shortly afterwards, he was awarded with NASA’s ‘Distinguished Public Service Medal,’ the highest honors given to a civilian by NASA.

THE HAYDEN PLANETARIUM:

Hayden Planetarium as seen at night time. Photo Credit: Wiki Commons user Alfred Gracombe.

Neil deGrasse Tyson started working at the Hayden Planetarium in 1996, not long after receiving his doctorate, unfortunately I can not find anything that specifies exactly when he was appointed as the first Frederick P. Rose Director at the planetarium, a position that Tyson still holds today.

THE PLUTO FILES:

As director of the planetarium, Tyson decided to toss out traditional thinking in order to keep Pluto from being referred to as the ninth planet.  Tyson explained that he wanted to get away from simply counting the planet in the solar system. Instead, he wanted to look at similarities between the terrestrial planets, the similarities between gas giants and the similarities of Pluto with other objects found in the Kuiper belt.  Tyson has stated on many television shows, such as The Colbert Report and The Daily Show that his decision to stand against the traditional definition of a planet resulted in countless amounts of hate mail, most of it being from children.  In 2006 the International Astronomical Union confirmed Tyson’s assessment by changing the classification of Pluto from a fully-fledged planet, to a dwarf-planet.

THE PLANETARY SOCIETY:

We’re soul mates, Bill! Photo Credit: StarTalk Radio.

I was hoping to highlight Tyson’s tenure with The Planetary Society; however, after spending a few days scouring the internet for information, I haven’t honestly found a lot of useful info, I couldn’t even find a date when he joined; however I imagine it was fairly early.  The Planetary Society, which was founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman, abides by its objective to advance the exploration of space and to continue the search for extraterrestrial life.  Tyson was the Vice President of the Planetary Society for three years, until in 2005, when he passed the torch to his friend and confidant, Bill Nye. Still yet,  Tyson has continued to use his prominence with The Planetary Society, in conjunction with his ability to describe scientific processes in a fairly easy to understand manner, to help educate the public on certain science-related issues.

 PENNY4NASA ADVOCATE:

Take a penny, Leave a penny, Give NASA a damn penny! Photo Credit: PENNY4NASA.

Similarly, it should be no surprised to anyone that Neil is an outspoken advocate of the Penny4NASA campaign, which aims to increase the budget of NASA, thereby expanding its operations.  Currently, a lot of people believe that NASA’s budget is something like 5 to 10 cents on the dollar; however this is horribly incorrect, as Tyson frequently points out.  Currently, the budget for NASA is half a penny on the dollar, a far cry from what people thought it was (this figure has currently changed as the budget was increased by 800 million dollars for 2014).  In March 2012, Tyson testified before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation, that; “Right now, NASA’s annual budget is half a penny on your tax dollar. For twice that—a penny on a dollar—we can transform the country from a sullen, dispirited nation, weary of economic struggle, to one where it has reclaimed its 20th century birthright to dream of tomorrow.” A full written transcription of the testimony can be read, here.

OTHER TASTY TIDBITS:

Credit: U.S. Air Force photo/Denise Gould

Most people don’t know this, but Tyson, a New Yorker, was an eye witness to the September 11th terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center. Living near what would come to be known world-wide as Ground Zero, Tyson watched the devastation as if unfolded.  His footage was included in a 2008 documentary, entitled ‘102 Minutes That Changed America’, Tyson also wrote a widely circulated letter in response to the tragedy.

•  Tyson has also collaborated with PETA to create a public service announcement, stating “You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that kindness is a virtue.” At the same time, he did an interview with PETA that discussed the concept of intelligence in both humans and other animals, the failure of humans to communicate meaningfully with other animals, and the need for empathy in humanity.

• Tyson is a wine aficionado to the extent that his wine collection has been featured in two different magazines, the first time was in May 2000 in Wine Spectator, and again in 2005, in The World of Fine Wine.

• Despite the insistence of some individuals (namely Wikipedia editors), Tyson does not consider himself an atheist, but an agnostic. Above all else, he considers himself a scientist. (He does have a fanpage devoted to a religion that centers on NDT’s teachings, called ‘Tysonism.’)

In March, the much beloved book and television series, Carl Sagan’s ‘Cosmos,’ will see a continuance on Fox. Neil deGrasse Tyson will narrate the reboot. Seth MacFarlane (the brains behind ‘Family Guy’) and Ann Druyan (Carl Sagan’s widow) are also intimately involved in the production of the series. Stay tuned!