During spring break, the boys visited Chicago’s Garfield Conservatory with their mother and grandmother. There they discovered that renowned scientist Jane Goodall was being interviewed by the Chicago Tribune. Patiently they “stalked” Mrs. Goodall through the jungle of the conservatory, finally being rewarded by an opportunity to speak with her. Here she is with Arjun.
Here are excerpts from the article in the Tribune published on April 1, 2008:
Goodall went on to change how humans regard primate behavior through her life's work with the chimpanzees of Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park. In Chicago last week to promote her Roots & Shoots environmental youth group, Goodall strolled through the conservatory and reflected on her life's journey, present challenges and the legacy she hopes to leave a planet she sees as mired in a survival crisis.
Q: Closer to home, what do you make of U.S. environmental policy at this point?
A: It's been stinking! Honestly. Most of the legislation put in place by the Clinton administration to protect the environment has been overturned. A lot of it was done very quietly soon after 9/11. Nobody really paid attention. The disturbing thing to me is that in the U.K., they just did a survey and found that, yes, people really are aware of the dangers of climate change, but it hasn't led to a change in behavior. That's what we've got to trigger. I think a main reason people don't change is that they think, "I'm just one person." They look at industry and think, "If I turn the tap off when I'm brushing my teeth, what difference is that going to make?"
Q: Your youth program Roots & Shoots is now in 97 countries. What's at the heart of it?
A: They decide what to do, and the only constraint is that they choose from three kinds of projects: one for animals, one for people, one for the environment. I don't know a group of children where you won't find some passionate for animals, or some wanting to do community service - clean up garbage, clean streams and so forth. And so they take ownership. They're proud of it.
Q: What do you look forward to humankind discovering in the next 50 years?
A: There are things that we have to do. We have to use environmentally friendly energy sources. We have to find a way of using the wind without killing birds and bats. ... Britain's got this huge successful new energy plant, which uses the tides and the currents of the ocean. They say that will be providing one-fifth of the U.K.'s energy requirements.
Q: What's the legacy you hope to leave behind?
A: I hope that people, thanks to the chimps, will understand more about the nature of animals: that they have personalities, minds and, above all, feelings. And that they are individuals. Secondly, I hope to leave a legacy of helping people to realize that they can make a difference. Kids get it. And kids work on their parents.
Thomas Friedman:“We don’t just need the first black president. We need the first green president. We don’t just need the first woman president. We need the first environmental president. We don’t just need a president who has been toughened by years as a prisoner of war but a president who is tough enough to level with the American people about the profound economic, geopolitical and climate threats posed by our addiction to oil — and to offer a real plan to reduce our dependence on fossil fuels.”
“Equally important, presidential candidates need to help Americans understand that green is not about cutting back. It’s about creating a new cornucopia of abundance for the next generation by inventing a whole new industry. It’s about getting our best brains out of hedge funds and into innovations that will not only give us the clean-power industrial assets to preserve our American dream but also give us the technologies that billions of others need to realize their own dreams without destroying the planet.”
In what sounds like a dream for millions of tired coffee drinkers, Darpa-funded scientists might have found a drug that will eliminate sleepiness.
A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.
Psychologist Barry Schwartz (“The Paradox of Choice”) takes aim at a central belief of western societies: that freedom of choice leads to personal happiness. In Schwartz's estimation, all that choice is making us miserable. We set unreasonably high expectations, question our choices before we even make them, and blame our failures entirely on ourselves. His relatable examples, from consumer products (jeans, TVs, salad dressings) to lifestyle choices (where to live, what job to take, whom and when to marry), underscore this central point: Too many choices undermine happiness.
Modern affluent societies: The “Official Dogma” is that we maximize welfare through freedom which is equated with choice… However, this is not true.
Some choice is better than none but after that point, more choice is not better.
Barbara O’Keefe, Dean of the School of Communication at Northwestern University, addressed the Class of 2009 in the MSC Strategy program. We really enjoyed her welcome and perspective on the program and university.
Click to download: MP3 of her speech (32 MB large) Playing time: 17 minutes
Randy Pausch, age 47, died on July 25, 2008 after inspiring millions. More on NY Times>>
From Article in Information Week Randy Pausch is a world-renowned computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon and cofounder of the school's Entertainment Technology Center, and in a matter of months he will be dead from the ravages of pancreatic cancer. In his last lecture to the CMU community, the charismatic 46-year-old shared his thoughts on the unshakeable power of imagination, will, and childhood dreams.
The lecture is a series of personal reflections and stories, deeply personal without being morbid in the least---Pausch has the audience howling with laughter frequently throughout his 90-minute talk.
From the 1970’s, researchers have documented many ‘cognitive biases’ shown to be universal across cultures.These biases provide ‘heuristics’ or shortcuts for making decisions or arriving at conclusions.Sometimes they are correct but often they are misleading or wrong.
Availability heuristic — focusing on the most memorable or emotionally-charged association
Framing effect – different reactions to the same thing based on how it is introduced
Fundamental attribution error – credit ourselves for our success but blame the situation for our failures; and the opposite for others: blame others for their failures and assume their successes are ‘just good luck’
Mere exposure effect —tendency for people to express undue liking for things simply because they are familiar with them.
Confirmation bias – seeking out opinions and facts that support our own beliefs and hypotheses
Sean Carroll (University of Wisconsin) provides a captivating and enlightening account of the latest findings in evolutionary developmental biology ("evo devo"). It explains how genetics really works to turn DNA into the visible traits and physical forms of living things. The book is a must-read for anyone who is "interested in the origins of complexity". Have you have ever wondered why there are so many similarities between us and other animals or why in the midst of multitudes, there are so few, common patterns (e.g. two eyes, five fingers, etc.)? This is the place to start.
Here is a bit of what I grasped from his richly exampled book.
All creatures begin as a single cell that divides and differentiates. As this embryonic development gets underway, chemical markers identify the location of the cell in 3 dimensions much like a globe: longitude, latitude, and altitude. Each cell knows where it is relative to the others--its global position.
There are regulatory genes that, based on the cell's position, trigger a cascading series of cell development. These regulatory genes are ancient and nearly identical in all animals. At the very onset, the embryo divides into a "head" and "tail", and into "topside" and "bottomside", and "left and right". Within the "tail" section, cells further subdivide into segments. The future site of arms and legs are marked very early, when the embryo just looks like a blob. Later these marked cells trigger growth of limbs, which involve their own cascading sequence of genetic triggers.
The key things to note: The foundational genes that organize the body pattern is the same or similar in almost all animals, especially vertebrates. These body patterns begin forming in the first few hours of embryo formation. Therefore these common basic genes are shared across an incredibly vast variety of creatures large and small. Thus it is no coincidence that we have so much in common with even a fruit fly.
In fact, the same proteins involved in the production of a fruit fly's eyes are used in the formation of our eyes; the same proteins, if disrupted, cause birth defects in humans. The underlying chemical system is the same in all living things. This is to be expected given that we know that DNA is shared by all living things. But what this means is that not only is nature using the same "paper and pencil" but is using the same drawings as a starting point, and "simply" embellishing the drawings with more and more layers and details, or sometimes stretching or repeating patterns to suit a different need.
In a recent speech to justify his veto of life-saving research in stem cells, the President had this moment of moral clarity:
"Destroying human life in the hopes of saving human life is not ethical. And it is not the only option before us."
This from the author of the 'pre-emptive war' that has destroyed the lives of no less than 50,000 civilians and over 3,500 American soldiers so far. Would be funny if it weren't obscene.
When atoms were first proved to exist (a mere century ago), they were thought to be made only of electrons and protons. That explained a lot, but it did not quite square with other observations. Then, in 1932, James Chadwick discovered the neutron. Suddenly everything made sense-so much sense that it took only another 13 years to build an atomic bomb.
It is probably no exaggeration to say that biology is now undergoing its "neutron moment". For more than half a century the fundamental story of living things has been a tale of the interplay between genes, in the form of DNA, and proteins, which the genes encode and which do the donkey work of keeping living organisms living. The past couple of years, however, have seen the rise and rise of a third type of molecule, called RNA.
Philosophers of science love this sort of thing. They refer to it as a paradigm shift. Living through such a shift is confusing for the scientists involved, and this one is no exception. But when it is over, it is likely to have changed people's views about how cells regulate themselves, how life becomes more complex, how certain mysterious diseases develop and even how the process of evolution operates.
Another consequence of RNA's rise to prominence is that researchers have a new source of ideas about how diseases might one day be treated. The main hunt for new drugs centres on a technology called RNA interference, or RNAi.
“It’s hard to appreciate the Earth when you’re down right upon it because it’s so huge. It gives you in an instant, just at a position 240,000 miles away from it, (an idea of) how insignificant we are, how fragile we are, and how fortunate we are to have a body that will allow us to enjoy the sky and the trees and the water ... It’s something that many people take for granted when they’re born and they grow up within the environment. But they don’t realize what they have. And I didn’t till I left it.” —Jim Lovell, Apollo 8 and 13.
“...From up there, it looks finite and it looks fragile and it really looks like just a tiny little place on which we live in a vast expanse of space.” —Winston Scott, two-time shuttle astronaut
“I left Earth three times. I found no place else to go. Please take care of Spaceship Earth.” —Wally Schirra, who flew around Earth on Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions in the 1960s.
Dr. Gawande said surgery appealed to him, in part, because he does not have the typical surgeon’s personality. “When I got in the O.R. as a resident, I found that I really liked it,” he said. “No. 1, I was attracted by the blood and guts. No. 2 was the sense of decision-making: there is uncertainty, but you have to make choices. I’ve always had a tendency to indecision. In the rest of my life I’m sort of a ditherer.”
Both his parents are physicians, he added — his father a urologist and his mother a pediatrician — and growing up in Athens, Ohio, he tried hard not to follow in their footsteps. “This idea that a bright Indian kid is supposed to be a doctor — I resisted that,” he said. “I wanted to be a rock star. I played guitar and wrote songs and even had a couple of club shows. I was just terrible.”
At Oxford he toyed with the idea of becoming a philosopher until he realized he didn’t have the knack for asking the right sort of philosophical questions, and so he wound up in medical school after all. “It turns out you can be a doctor and be almost anything,” he said. “Even a writer.”
“I now feel like writing is the most important thing I do. In some ways, it’s harder than surgery. But I do think I’ve found a theme in trying to understand failure and what it means in the world we live in, and how we can improve at what we do.”
A recent study shows that philanthropy, while inherently satisfying, taps a uniquely human faculty to make difficult moral choices.
Excerpt from The Economist:
The Joy of Giving (October 12, 2006)
Researchers at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland, wanted to find the neural basis for unselfish acts. They used a standard technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging, which can map the activity of the various parts of the brain.
The subjects of the study were each given $128 and told that they could donate anonymously to any of a range of potentially controversial charities. These embraced a wide range of causes, including support for abortion, euthanasia and sex equality, and opposition to the death penalty, nuclear power and war.
They found that the part of the brain that was active when a person donated happened to be the brain's reward centre—the mesolimbic pathway, responsible for doling out the dopamine-mediated euphoria associated with sex, money, food and drugs. Thus the warm glow that accompanies charitable giving has a physiological basis.
Donating also engaged the part of the brain that plays a role in the bonding behaviour between mother and child, and in romantic love. This involves oxytocin, a hormone that increases trust and co-operation.
A third part of the brain, which lies just behind the forehead and thought to be unique to humans, was involved in the complex, costly decisions when self-interest and moral beliefs were in conflict. Giving may make all sorts of animals feel good, but grappling with this particular sort of dilemma would appear to rely on a uniquely human part of the brain.
Professor Gilbert of Harvard says that there are two ways to be happy– 1) by getting what you want, and 2) by choosing to be happy with what you’ve got. They are both about equally likely to work for you; the second may actually be more enduring.
Adam Smith: The great source of both the misery and disorders of human life, seems to arise from over-rating the difference between one permanent situation and another. Avarice over-rates the difference between poverty and riches: ambition, that between a private and a public station: vain-glory, that between obscurity and extensive reputation. The person under the influence of any of those extravagant passions, is not only miserable in his actual situation, but is often disposed to disturb the peace of society, in order to arrive at that which he so foolishly admires. The slightest observation, however, might satisfy him, that, in all the ordinary situations of human life, a well-disposed mind may be equally calm, equally cheerful, and equally contented. Some of those situations may, no doubt, deserve to be preferred to others: but none of them can deserve to be pursued with that passionate ardour which drives us to violate the rules either of prudence or of justice; or to corrupt the future tranquillity of our minds, either by shame from the remembrance of our own folly, or by remorse from the horror of our own injustice.
My neighbor, upon hearing of my recent interest in Indian cooking, said that jeera (cumin seed) is very good for you— it prevents Alzheimer’s. Intrigued, I did some research on the web. The first article I found says a healthful compound “curcumin” is contained in turmeric, haldya or holud.
India has one of the lowest rates of Alzheimer's disease in the world. A diet rich in curcumin, a spice used in yellow curry, may offer a potential explanation and a new therapy for the brain disorder, according to a new study (2001).
A relative of ginger, turmeric is a powder ground from the root of a large-leafed Asian plant. Researchers believe the curcumin it contains fights disease partly by shutting down a powerful protein that promotes an abnormal inflammatory response in the body.
A nasal spray containing a naturally occurring brain hormone called orexin A reversed the effects of sleep deprivation in monkeys, allowing them to perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.
Barbara O’Keefe, Dean of the 
When atoms were first proved to exist (a mere century ago), they were thought to be made only of electrons and protons. That explained a lot, but it did not quite square with other observations. Then, in 1932, James Chadwick discovered the neutron. Suddenly everything made sense-so much sense that it took only another 13 years to build an atomic bomb.
The subjects of the study were each given $128 and told that they could donate anonymously to any of a range of potentially controversial charities. These embraced a wide range of causes, including support for abortion, euthanasia and sex equality, and opposition to the death penalty, nuclear power and war.
My neighbor, upon hearing of my recent interest in Indian cooking, said that jeera (cumin seed) is very good for you— it prevents Alzheimer’s. Intrigued, I did some research on the web. The first article I found says a healthful compound “curcumin” is contained in turmeric, haldya or holud.