May have been solved. From the Economist, the link is here. If this works as well as advertised, it could play a major role world-wide because increasingly, fresh water supplies drive politics.
Author: jlolds
Native Angeleno, professor of Neuroscience and Public Policy at George Mason University
Marc Hauser and Harvard agree to go separate ways….
In this morning’s Chronicle of Higher Education on-line, here.
Money quote:
As for those who doubt Harvard’s findings, the former research assistant said “I know what I saw,” and “I agree with a lot of other people who looked at it and saw the same thing,” adding that it was “beyond the scope of some innocent kind of action.”
DOD budget, the macro picture: steep descent
Thomas Ricks at Foreign Policy here. Hat tip Andrew Sullivan’s Daily Beast blog.
This is important for several reasons:
1) My guess is that in any prioritization, support for basic research (what’s termed 6-1 in DOD parlance) will be cut the earliest and the most…
2) With the US still involved in Iraq and Afghanistan, it’s easy to imagine that the USN carrier groups would be cut back, which has enormous implications for the protection of global trade (there is no comparable blue water navy).
3) I can’t see how the US would be willing to project boots on the ground, under pretty much any scenario short of complete mobilization. That will be part of the geopolitical calculus of every other nation and non-state actor around the globe.
Back from vacation
Yes, even this blog takes time off occasionally. For me, that involved a quick trip to the Eastern Shore. The image is just another sunset off a cove near St. Michaels. That water is crawling with lots of blue crabs and oysters–so it all fits with the theme of marine biology (meep meep).
But now we’re back, and just in time for DC’s muggiest and hottest days. We get through these, with the AC running, and it’s all down hill.
The FT calls it "American Roulette"….
That’s the headline in the paper edition. The on-line article is here. Behind the firewall, the Chronicle of Higher Education weighs in with what a default would mean for colleges here.
For public universities like Mason, the problem is likely to be in what happens with on-going sponsored research, Pell grants and to a lesser extent the George Mason University Foundation portfolio.
On August 2 (D-Day as default), I’ll be on my way to the MBL in Woods Hole for my annual stint. Sometimes the best way to get perspective on what goes on here in Washington is to get away from it.
Computational Social Scientists in Demand
From Politico, the link is here. I’m sure, likewise, the GOP is hiring.
Stuxnet: The long version
For my computer science colleagues, Kim Zetter’s excellent long piece in Wired is here. Fascinating story of reverse engineering code to figure out the target.
Access to space for grad students and postdoc teams
The article from Scientific American is here. Naturally, in the best traditions of open-source and new types of scientific collaborations, I support it.
Ken Auletta’s New Yorker piece on Sheryl Sandberg
At once both insightful into Silicon Valley culture and the human dynamo named Sheryl Sandberg. It’s here.
Long-form journalism at its very best.
My question: why doesn’t she insist on being a Facebook Board member?
Social Network Research gets Complicated
The link from today’s Chronicle on-line is here. The problem in a nutshell is making use of social network data (like Facebook) in a way that truly anonymizes the data. In the case of data that appears to come from Harvard University, that proved impossible.
Clearly, at Krasnow, we are interested in this kind of data. What can we do to use it in a responsible manner?
Discoverers and Discoveries 