Posts Tagged ‘Climate’
Obstacle to discovery: Illusion of knowing
Posted by: adonis49 on: October 5, 2009
The illusion of knowing is the major obstacle to discovery; (October 4, 2009)
Even a century ago, a scientist would publish a single manuscript after a life time of research and toiling.
Transmission of opinions and suggestions among scientists were sent via long erudite letters by peers.
Translators of these remarkable books didn’t go unnoticed as today, but they were rewarded academically. Nowadays, any “respectable” scientist works for several institutions, private and public, and at various nations.
Even two centuries ago, scientists did not need to refer to Pythagoras or Archimedes. Modern scientists have no time or need to refer to more recent scientists such as Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, Laplace, Lavoisier, or Kelvin. Soon Einstein and Heisenberg will be outmoded.
The team of the geeks in “Sciences and Future” met in August for brainstorming in “pause mode” to deliberate on the unique question confronting the team:
“In the last few decades, what discoveries were true breakthroughs?” The team reached an understanding on 5 scientific fields: climatology, neuroscience, astronomy, cellular biology, and Internet.
Consequently, I will answer a few of the questions that you might think you know in these fields so that our knowledge is no longer an illusion.
The internet shifts from the virtual to the real
There are 3 generations of internet or Web.
The first generation or Web1.0 was created from 2003 to 2005 and is represented by MySpace, Facebook, and YouTube that gathers people on common interest social aspects or making “friends”.
The second generation or Web 2.0 is represented by Twitter or the microblogging platform for messages restricted to 140 characters. Thus, these micro messages can be regrouped and analyze to constitute a story contributed by many Twitter bloggers.
The third generation of Web 3.0 is ready technologically; this generation is already labeled object oriented intelligence sources. For example, you record a message on your cell phone and then stick a yellow sticker on a wall or an object. The next visitor will pass his cell phone over the sticker and copy your message of whatever you have seen or appreciated. This generation can zip all kinds of products and gather intelligence and compare with other resources.
Personally, I think that even the Twitter is already a perfect source of information by intelligence agencies; these centers can hire thousands of Twitter users and direct them on specific topic of interests in many countries.
Cells can be rejuvenated to its embryo stage
The lab technician would take samples of your skin. The skin cells can be treated to reach its first born state.
Whatever genetic diseases that cell inherited it will take another 30 years for the disease to emerge. All the while you are thirty years younger. Better, skin cells can be treated to isolate a specific cell for any body member like liver, heart, brain, or whatever.
The sick tissue in any part of your body can be rejuvenated within a month. This biomedical technique of treating adult cells into embryo state was made possible because many laws prohibited using fetus embryo on the ground that the cell belonged to another person.
Is man’s activity altering nature more than geophysics?
Man feared the return of the ice age; it turned out that the climate is getting hotter and the poles are melting.
The emergence of urban and industrial societies as a geophysical force is altering the environment power for rejuvenation according to human threshold for survival.
Since 1824, Joseph Fourier theorized that gases in the atmosphere have the potential to increase surface temperature.
Even in 1896, John Tyndall predicted that the concentration of CO2 will increase temperature to 5 degrees by the end of the 20th century. Now, this is a fact and each year the casualties in man and nature are increasing by the violence of climatic changes. People are waiting anxiously the international summit on the environment in Copenhagen this December.
Awareness of man effective participation in climatic changes was proven when the ozone layer of O3 in the stratosphere was depleting. Seas level is increasing 3 mm a year since 1993. So far, only Danemark produces the fourth of its power using eoliens or wind turbines.
Ex-President Bush Junior said in 1992: “The American way of life is not negotiable.”
The philosopher Michelle Serres said in 1990: “This world that we treated as an object is returning as a subject; capable of vengeance.”
The humorist Coluche said: “For an ecologist to be elected as President, trees should be allowed to vote.”
The brain is in perpetual re-structuring
There are specialized neurons that can be activated when an action is executed or when an action is also observed (mirror neurons). These mirror neurons are the biological basis for empathy, imitation, and training; almost every decision is influenced by our emotions.
Neurons have the potential to flow or transfer from one brain to another when recycling cognitive aptitudes such as reading and writing are elevated. Neurons and connections are modified when training tasks are memorized.
We have 8 varieties of intelligence; mainly the visual, spatial, naturalist, logic-mathematics, corporal, musical, inter-personal, and intra-personal intelligences.
The new battery of experiments for testing cognitive and movements capabilities are designed to account for our eight kinds of intelligences. It is the quantity of synapses (connections) and not the weight of the brain that differentiate among the various intelligences.
There are phases in our sleep when brain activities are most intense while muscular activities are extremely inhibited; this phase is called “paradox sleep”. We produce new neurons at every stage of growth, especially in the hippocampus and the smell brains.
Almost 10% of our synapses are established when we are born and they increase with our activities and cognitive demands (efforts, mental and physical, mean increase in fresh synapses and neurons).
Hormones or chemical messengers for the brains
Serotonin is a chemical messenger to the brains; it is implicated in sleep, feeding and sexual habits. A decrease in its production is associated to depressive moods. Anti-depressant drugs increase the concentration of serotonin in the blood.
Dopamine is a chemical hormone that controls movements, moods, addiction, and the circuit of pleasure; its deficiency generates rigidity in the muscles which is the symptoms of Parkinson disease.
Adrenaline is a chemical hormone that is secreted at moments of stress and is attached on large numbers of receptors to re-enforce cardiac functions, accelerate the heart beats, elevate arterial pressure, inhibit digestion and increase the level of glycemy.
Cortisol is secreted in moments of stress to increase the rate of glucose in the blood stream and liberating energy to counter dangers.
Insulin enhances the stock of glucose in the tissues and thus decreases glycemy.
Acetylcholine is a neuro-transmitter that excites the targeted brain when acquiring new training and for enhancing memory; its deficiency is the origin of Alzheimer disease.
Erythropoietin stimulates the synthesis of red blood cells; its deficiency results in anemia. The word “doping” is related to sport competitors abusing of this hormone.
The Bible of Global Problems
Posted by: adonis49 on: June 24, 2009
The Bible of Global Problems: Global Resolutions; (June 23, 2009)
Note: This essay was inspired by the manuscript “A World Adrift” by Amine Maalouf. I added and developed on more global problems. The style is Levantine; Bible style because the problems are established and need urgent global resolutions. I will mentions the facts separately and then undertake the analyses of the interactions of the global problems before considering viable global resolutions. This post wil focus on the problem. The follow up post will consider viable global resolutions.
Fact one: Climate and environment quickly deteriorating.
Fact two: Birth control is not efficient in the mostly under-developed States
Fact three: Potable water and water for irrigation are dwindling fast.
Fact four: The middle classes in China and India are expanding alarmingly.
Fact five: The world economy is experiencing serious deflationary period.
Fact six: The world is going through deep financial crisis and recession.
Fact seven: Effective military spending should decrease but it didn’t.
Fact eight: The identity crisis around the world is destabilizing order and security.
Fact One: Climate and environment are quickly deteriorating. The ten signs of alert are proven in the following evidences.
Oceans are turning more acid. At 8 kilometers of the Californian coasts shells and corals are being dissolved. In the Pacific Ocean, 30% of mussel has disappeared. Planktons, the basic food chain for fishes, small and large, are no longer abundant; 30% has depleted since the industrial age.
The Arctic is changing drastically. Ice field has melted by 27% in the last two decades. Temperature increased by 3 degrees in the last 5 years. Thus, the more ice melt the larger the surface is exposed to direct sun rays and consequently the more the rate of ice melting increases. The level of oceans is increasing and covering more dry lands.
The Amazone and tropical forests regions are drying up and liberating higher quantites of carbon dioxide. This equatorial forest is liberating more CO2 than absorbing; absorbing CO2 was their primary function. More trees are dying and thus liberating more CO2 by decomposition. The higher the concentration of CO2 the lesser trees “perspire” and the more reduced are rains in quantity and frequency.
The climate in Antarctica, the main source of future potable water, is milder; temperature has increased by one degree since the fifties. Salinity of sea water in the southern globe is decreasing. The Antarctic must be melting faster than observed.
Seasons are in advance of schedule and migratory birds are suffering. Spring is one week earlier in Europe: 75% of birds studied in Europe have declined in number and migrating further north and seek higher altitudes.
Dry seasons are extending. Monsoons are rarefied; precipitations are decreasing and the desert in North Africa is expanding southward western Africa. Deforestration might still be the main culprit but the warming up of the environment is catching up fast as the main factor.
Methane gas, present as methane hydrate in maritime sediment, is escaping from oceans. The under layer of pergelisol used to act as a lid but more abundant hot water is being ejected in the Arctic seas; the concentration along the Russian coast is 200 times superior to normal. Methane gas is far worse than CO2 (20 times more powerful in retaining heat) for the warming up of the environment.
Glaciers such as the Himalaya and the Quelccaya (Perou) are losing 0.85 meters in their thickness every year. Around 40 frozen lakes in Nepal and Bhoutan are breaking up.
Sea levels are climing 3 mm every year on average; the levels in the Pacific Ocean and Mediterranean Sea are reaching the alarming climb of 20 mm a year.
The warming up of the climate is accelerating dangerously. Temperature increased 0.6 degrees just in the last 30 years while it took a century to increase 0.2 degrees before then. The concentration in CO2 has increased to about 400 molecules per million; it was just 270 before the industrial age.
The liberation of methane gas and the drought of tropical forests are the two major factors that show evidence in the acceleration of environmental degradation. The fast degradation has overtaken current research data that are no longer suitable for predicting the approaching calamity.
Fact Two: Birth control is not efficient in the mostly under-developed States.
China and India are supposed to have gotten birth rate under control but it is not because of higher educational level and better standards of living. There are evidence of massive euthanasia practices on females and minorities camouflaged within laws interpreted very loosely and selectively. In the under-developed States political instability, poor security for law and order, unsustainable social institutions, and lack of financial and technical supports are exacerbating an already dangerous trend. The UN is short on money and manpower in its specialized sections to counter this scourge. Over 50% of the population in Indonesia, Egypt, Nigeria, Pakistan, Sudan, and Iran for example are under 15 years of age. (Global viable and alternative resolutions wil be developed in a follow up article)
In Japan and many European States the trend is reversed; over 30% of the population are elderly (above 65 years) and draing the health budgets.
Fact Three: Potable water and water for irrigation are dwindling fast.
Climatic changes, heavy river pollution, accelerated urban centers, high rate of birth, and the early melting of mountain tops are depleting potable resources faster than expected. Many States rich in rivers, especially those witnessing drough seven months per year, have not be aided in erecting dams for emergency seasons. More States conflicts are centering on equitable potable water sharing. The criticality of water supply is one of the main problems facing people in the coming decade.
Fact Four: The middle classes in China and India are at least three times larger than the combined numbers in the USA and Europe and growing quickly.
China and India are experience much better increases in their GNP than the USA and Europe during this downturn. Consequently, China and India will focus on their internal markets to grow their economies in the same manner as the USA has been benefiting for over three centuries. Middle classes demand to have consumer goods available since they have the money to purchase them. They certainly have this right. The problem is that purchasing cars is the first priority for middle class citizens with investment in infrastructures and facilities to abuse of these vehicles. China has already surpassed the USA in the number of purchased car this year. India is making available unexpensive cars marketed at $2,000 in India. The kinds of energy sources that will drive these cars will have great consequences. Consumerism can drive economies but depletion of natural resources requires a cultural change to accommodate a sustainable earth.
Fact Five: The world economy is experiencing serious deflationary period.
The world economy is struggling and the downturn is expected to last for at least 5 years. This might be the best excellent news for a sustainable world production. There is the need for drastic diminishing of redundant and irrelevant consumer goods that can be substituted easily for human survival. Globalization created economic blocks with objective of exercising political pressures on the established developed nations. The economic or trade blocks such as South-East Asian States, the Southern Latin American States, the Gulf Arab/Iranian States, and soon a few African States are struggling to stay above water and keep up with the fast moving globalization trend.
The International Monetary Fund extended three quarter of its resources on the already industrialized states since its inception in 1944. The G20 decided to triple the IMF fund to $750 billions. The G20 will extended 44% of the funds, the other developed State a third and the over 55 poorer States will cover 17%. It was hoped the restrictions and conditions for funding projects will be reduced from 17 conditions to 5 but nothing has been materializing so far.
Fact Six: The world is going through deep financial crisis.
Millions of workers and employees lost their jobs in a few months and that trend is increasing faster than expected. The infusion of trillions of dollars into banks in order to facilitate the flow of trade transactions did not save banks from declaring bankruptcy. The meeting of the biggest 20 financial markets that produce over 85% of the world economical transactions has not reached any consensus as to the financial basket reference for money fluctuation or the control of paper money issuing rights of individual power States. Consequently, the financial crisis is opened to dangerous more frequent reversals on a downward trend. The USA is heavily relying on China for covering its increasing debt by purchasing US Treasury Bills. China will be facing enormous capital investment inside because of the consequences of rapid economical strategies. The rivers in China are over polluted, drough seasons are more frequent, and over 30 millions working in urban centers have been forced to relocate to rural areas where no job opportunities are available. The moment China decides to cut down on financing US debt the the dollars will be devalued (for printing more paper money than the economy can support) and another financial crisis will loom on the horizon.
Fact Seven: Effective military spending at the increase.
People expected a rational decision by States in this economic and financial troubled times; people were hopeful that military budgets should decrease to balance other more needy budgets such as health, the environment, creating productive jobs, and education. The reverse happened: every major State that exported military hardware increased its military budget and it skyrocketed. The USA expenditure is more than double China and Russia combined and the fields of military operations expanding around the world. Societies are far more unstable and experiencing high unemployment rates and lower quality jobs for the qualified graduates.
Fact Eight: The identity crisis around the world is destabilizing order and security.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Europe had to face up to the identity and ethnic crisis in East Europe such as ethnic and religious “cleansing” and the drive for independence of tiny States within the disintegrating Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. The European Union (EU) is the best representative for projects of unification among States with identity crisis. The EU is clearly the most advanced union in matter of forging ahead with ethical issues.
Gorbachev has declared recently that Europe squandered 20 years of potential opportunities for stabilizing the European continent after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the defeat of communist Soviet Union. If we revisit the problems that Europe had to deal with in priority then Europe had plenty of excuses. First, West Germany had to absorb the cost of the re-unification of the crumbling economy of East Germany; then the EU had to battle the consequences of the disaster of 9/11 of 2001 and the frantic pressures of the Bush Jr. Administration to rally Europe to the invasion of Iraq; then the pronouncement of the Christian Conservatives alliance of the US administration of the binary dicta “either you are with us or against us”; then the declaration of an old senile Defense Minister Rumsfield lambasting “old and senile Europe” and getting hold of the European oil investments in Iraq. The EU has now to come with a plan for the increased illegal immigration as the ideal destination location. It must be that Europe was in a rejuvenation phase to have forged ahead in short time to a successful unification program.
A follow up article will attempt to ofer viable global resolution and will tackle the troubles with religious extremism and state ideologies.
Adonis Diaries 