ScienceInsider has the interview with Christian Drosten here. It’s interesting that there appears to be some evidence of a “mild” infection and also that the real danger of spread seems to be in overloaded hospital wards.
Q&A on China overtaking the US economy (this year)….
Really excellent information on the latest news, that China will overtake the US economy in size this year. The charts alone are worth the read…
Nicholas Lemann’s vision for the American Research University….
He is the dean of journalism at Columbia and his important long piece is here, from the Chronicle of Higher Education.
There are many excellent points in the article, not the least of which is that very few academic leaders focus on actually making the case for the research to the stakeholders of US research universities. The other interesting insight is that tenured faculty self-identify on the basis of their discipline rather than their employer (e.g. I am a neuroscientist, not I work for George Mason University). I believe this, and I’m guessing that it creates an ersatz dialectic between the talent (the faculty) and their employer which works against making the larger case.
So I would say this is an excellent read. I hope it’s read by many college presidents.
Britain goes big on a new oceanographic research vessel…
ScienceInsider story and image here. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) is getting its own new vessel, the RV Neil Armstrong, story here.
Many of our authors at The Biological Bulletin rely on these ships for their field work, so this is excellent news.
And speaking of Singapore….
Billionaire John Paulson sees Puerto Rico as convergent…story here. So maybe that’s why New Yorkers flock to purchase their muni-bonds….or perhaps it’s just the prospect of a tax deal.
More reaction to the Alberts et al. article in PNAS….
Michael White in Pacific Standard here. I guess I would simply add that the fortunes of life scientists are not globally correlated. If things continue to deteriorate here, then Singapore, Seoul and even Beijing begin to look potentially pretty attractive for the young, bright and ambitious.
The Future? It’s all good….
New Pew survey result here.
Money quote:
- 81% expect that within the next 50 years, people needing new organs will have them custom grown in a lab.
- 51% expect that computers will be able to create art that is indistinguishable from that produced by humans.
- 39% expect that scientists will have developed the technology to teleport objects.
- 33% expect that humans will have colonized planets other than Earth.
- 19% expect that humans will be able to control the weather in the foreseeable future.
I’n really dubious about teleportation. And I’ll be happily surprised if we’ll have colonized other planets or fixed the weather issue.
Space Solar and Elon Musk
Loyal readers know that I’m interested in space-based solar power as a solution to many of our planetary problems. Here’s an interesting tid-bit from Japan that ties up nicely with Space-X’s partially successful experiment with reusable launch vehicles last week.
N.B. As of April 26, it now appears that the test was completely successful.
Why do economics majors make the big bucks?
Hat tip Tyler Cowen, link here.
It strikes me that the simple answer is: it’s the math. Having quantitative skills is a crucial differentiator for the part of the labor force that goes on to join the one percent. I think that those skills can also be found in other majors (e.g. engineering, computer science) and in fact, those folks do very well also.
What about the natural sciences? Here the story is a bit murkier: some of the natural science majors go very light on the quantitative skills. If you are a neuroscience major, but don’t have a good understanding of calculus, differential equations and perhaps linear algebra then at some level, you’re in the same boat as the political science major…
Tenure denied….Nature magazine’s advice:
Interesting piece is here. All in all, good advice in my opinion….
Discoverers and Discoveries 