Photos: Final Capitol tribute to late Sen. Inouye

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Thousands of mourners on Wednesday packed a Los Angeles theater to pay their final respects to Mexican-American singer Jenni Rivera more than a week after her death in a plane crash. Rivera, 43, best known for her work in the Mexican folk Nortena and Banda genres, died after the small jet she was traveling in crashed in northern Mexico on December 9. Rivera's family, dressed in white, led the memorial service eulogizing the singer. A bank of white roses was displayed in front of Rivera's bright red coffin and a brass band performed musical interludes. ...

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/photos/senator-daniel-inouye-dies-at-88-slideshow/

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Venture capitalists and CEOs of venture-backed startups offer ...

2012 has been a somewhat lackluster for venture capital investments.

So will 2013 be better?

Venture capitalists and chief executives of venture-backed companies are offering their predictions in a survey released Wednesday by the National Venture Capital Association and ?Dow Jones VentureSource. (The survey polled more than 600 VC professionals and CEOs between Nov. 26 and Dec. 7.)

Here are some of the survey?s highlights:

? VCs are bearish compared with chief executives of venture-backed companies when it comes to predicting increases in overall investments next year: 27 percent vs. 43 percent

? 61 percent of venture capitalists see investment increases in business IT, followed by healthcare IT (57 percent) and consumer IT (35 percent).

? VCs see decreases in clean technology investments (61 percent), medical devices (53 percent) and biopharmaceuticals (49 percent).

? 67 percent of CEOs plan to raise additional funding next year despite predictions of fewer available VC dollars.

? Latin America topped the areas of increased U.S. investments (55 percent), followed by China (40 percent) and India (37 percent).

?

This entry was posted in Entrepreneurship & small business, Venture capital and tagged Dow Jones VentureSource, National Venture Capital Association by Hanah Cho. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://bizbeatblog.dallasnews.com/2012/12/venture-capitalists-and-ceos-of-venture-backed-startups-offer-predictions-for-2013.html/

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New kind of magnetism discovered: Experiments demonstrate ?quantum spin liquid'

Dec. 20, 2012 ? Following up on earlier theoretical predictions, MIT researchers have now demonstrated experimentally the existence of a fundamentally new kind of magnetic behavior, adding to the two previously known states of magnetism.

Ferromagnetism -- the simple magnetism of a bar magnet or compass needle -- has been known for centuries. In a second type of magnetism, antiferromagnetism, the magnetic fields of the ions within a metal or alloy cancel each other out. In both cases, the materials become magnetic only when cooled below a certain critical temperature. The prediction and discovery of antiferromagnetism -- the basis for the read heads in today's computer hard disks -- won Nobel Prizes in physics for Louis Neel in 1970 and for MIT professor emeritus Clifford Shull in 1994.

"We're showing that there is a third fundamental state for magnetism," says MIT professor of physics Young Lee. The experimental work showing the existence of this new state, called a quantum spin liquid (QSL), is reported this week in the journal Nature, with Lee as the senior author and Tianheng Han, who earned his PhD in physics at MIT earlier this year, as lead author.

The QSL is a solid crystal, but its magnetic state is described as liquid: Unlike the other two kinds of magnetism, the magnetic orientations of the individual particles within it fluctuate constantly, resembling the constant motion of molecules within a true liquid.

Finding the evidence

There is no static order to the magnetic orientations, known as magnetic moments, within the material, Lee explains. "But there is a strong interaction between them, and due to quantum effects, they don't lock in place," he says.

Although it is extremely difficult to measure, or prove the existence, of this exotic state, Lee says, "this is one of the strongest experimental data sets out there that [does] this. What used to just be in theorists' models is a real physical system."

Philip Anderson, a leading theorist, first proposed the concept in 1987, saying that this state could be relevant to high-temperature superconductors, Lee says. "Ever since then, physicists have wanted to make such a state," he adds. "It's only in the past few years that we've made progress."

The material itself is a crystal of a mineral called herbertsmithite. Lee and his colleagues first succeeded in making a large, pure crystal of this material last year -- a process that took 10 months -- and have since been studying its properties in detail.

"This was a multidisciplinary collaboration, with physicists and chemists," Lee explains. "You need both ? to synthesize the material and study it with advanced physics techniques. Theorists were also crucial to this."

Through its experiments, the team made a significant discovery, Lee says: They found a state with fractionalized excitations, which had been predicted by some theorists but was a highly controversial idea. While most matter has discrete quantum states whose changes are expressed as whole numbers, this QSL material exhibits fractional quantum states. In fact, the researchers found that these excited states, called spinons, form a continuum. This observation, they say in their Nature paper, is "a remarkable first."

Scattering neutrons

To measure this state, the team used a technique called neutron scattering, which is Lee's specialty. To actually carry out the measurements, they used a neutron spectrometer at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Gaithersburg, Md.

The results, Lee says, are "really strong evidence of this fractionalization" of the spin states. "That's a fundamental theoretical prediction for spin liquids that we are seeing in a clear and detailed way for the first time."

It may take a long time to translate this "very fundamental research" into practical applications, Lee says. The work could possibly lead to advances in data storage or communications, he says -- perhaps using an exotic quantum phenomenon called long-range entanglement, in which two widely separated particles can instantaneously influence each other's states. The findings could also bear on research into high-temperature superconductors, and could ultimately lead to new developments in that field, he says.

"We have to get a more comprehensive understanding of the big picture," Lee says. "There is no theory that describes everything that we're seeing."

Subir Sachdev, a professor of physics at Harvard University who was not connected with this work, says that these findings, which have been anticipated for decades, "are very significant and open a new chapter in the study of quantum entanglement in many-body systems." The detection of such states, he says, was an "exceptionally difficult task. Young Lee and his group brilliantly overcame these challenges in their beautiful experiment."

In addition to Lee and Han, the work was carried out by J.S. Helton of NIST, research scientist Shaoyan Chu of MIT's Center for Materials Science and Engineering, MIT chemistry professor Daniel Nocera, Jose Rodriguez-Rivera of NIST and the University of Maryland, and Colin Broholm of Johns Hopkins University. The work was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Science Foundation.

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Journal Reference:

  1. Tian-Heng Han, Joel S. Helton, Shaoyan Chu, Daniel G. Nocera, Jose A. Rodriguez-Rivera, Collin Broholm, Young S. Lee. Fractionalized excitations in the spin-liquid state of a kagome-lattice antiferromagnet. Nature, 2012; 492 (7429): 406 DOI: 10.1038/nature11659

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/-4JLQ0sfVck/121220143745.htm

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Warning: Mayan Calendar Is No Defense for End-of-World Stupidity ...

If you believe the Mayan calendar, then December 21, 2012, may just be the end of the world.

Of course, not everyone agrees that existence will end or that a new "cosmic dawn" will rise. Even the Mayans don't think the end of days is coming this year, according to CNN. But there are a fair number of people who are bracing for the end, or at least thinking about the things they'd want to do before existence as we know it is snuffed out.

Sure it's a great excuse to take some chances and have a good time. But there are some things you probably don't want to do just in case the world is still there on December 22. For example:

Source: http://blogs.findlaw.com/legalgrounds/2012/12/warning-mayan-calendar-is-no-defense-for-end-of-world-stupidity.html

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Opening Anthropology: An interview with Keith Hart (Part 3 of 3 ...

This interview is part of an ongoing series about open access (OA), publishing, communication, and anthropology. ?The first interview in this series was with Jason Baird Jackson (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3). ?The second interview, with Tom Boellstorff, is here.? The third installment of this OA series is with Keith Hart.*?(See Part 1? here, Part 2 here)

Ryan Anderson: Let?s bring things back to the issue of OA and the academy.? You have said that many OA activists are inhibited from fighting against the privatization of the intellectual commons because they have already ?bought into the premises of an academic career?.? Why do you mean by this?

Keith Hart: Intellectual life is intrinsically individualistic. We may like to think of ourselves as social creatures, but unfortunately they only hand out brains one at a time. Collaboration is particularly developed in the hard sciences and the academy has always depended on an informal cultural commons: teaching, seminars, conferences, free sharing of ideas, equal access to libraries and so on. Everyone wants personal recognition, but up to the 1950s, this aspect of academic life took a back seat to the university as a community of scholars, teachers and their students.

The Cold War and the drive to restore home food supplies after the Second World War boosted research on armaments and agriculture. The post-war boom saw lots of public money being directed to universities for research. Private companies also poured money into research on chemicals. Student enrolments took off in the 1960s, so that universities now became big business. We think of them as medieval institutions, but the late twentieth-century university was something unique, a mass production line for workers in bureaucracies and the main research arm of the state. The academics had always ruled their own institutions, but this expansion gave power to administrators. Research came to dominate other academic activities. The humanities and social sciences didn?t have much to offer, but they too jumped onto the research bandwagon.

I have discussed what happened next, at least for Britain, in ?How my generation let down our students?. The watershed of the 1970s culminated in the neoliberal counter-revolution that saw Reagan and Thatcher come to power. Competitive pseudo-markets based academic assessment on so-called ?objective? indicators, especially research publications. Bureaucracies became more interventionist along with the wholesale corporatization of university culture. What was left of academic community was destroyed by the growing gap between a few established professors who took leave often and a reserve army of precarious young teachers. The publishing oligopoly exhausted library budgets with their over-priced journals, while the academics competed for the status of getting published in them. Everyone agrees that the contents are worthless and are not read. Faced with the challenge of the internet, most academics did their utmost to maintain the system of feudal private property that has now overwhelmed the universities.

Yet we are living through a genuine revolution in the production and dissemination of knowledge; and the vast army of graduate students queuing up for admission is well aware of the freedom and opportunities afforded by a digital commons. The ?bourgeois skeptic? accepts in principle the system of private property and competitive markets, but maintains a critical attitude. He complains about one isolated aspect of the system and then rests content when a minor concession is made. The AAA is an endless source for such skepticism, not least when it comes to OA. Yet most of its critics are tied to the labor market it serves. At least the AAA knows that it is 100% for the private property system.

Academics have been on the losing end of a class war for almost half a century. We are extremely unself-conscious about how we got into this situation and have no idea how to get out of it. This makes us easy pickings. Wedded to bourgeois ideology and ignorant of Mauss?s actual teaching, we failed to recognize the social conditions that preserved our individuality and sold our commons for the illusion of personal advancement. The mass of young researchers who are now desperate to gain a toehold in the academy did not bring about this situation. We did ? those of us who got in while the going was good and then acquiesced in the destruction of what we had.

RA: So what?s stopping us from making changes, from going OA, and building a strong digital commons?

KH: Don?t underestimate the power of the academy to shape its inmates even when they are out of school. Most of us have been in school all our lives after all. But yes, one strategy must be to make the most of the social and technical possibilities afforded by the digital revolution. This requires some other means of economic support, of course. It doesn?t make sense these days to bank on an academic job for life. But I can say that every online initiative I have been in was compromised by attitudes and habits formed in the academy. The main clients for any forum concerned with anthropology are graduate students. These inevitably wish to conserve the status quo they hope to join, even as they like to think of themselves as critical.

Our experience with the Open Anthropology Cooperative has been that there are many complications when trying to build an open network. We were surprised by the flood of enrolments and found ourselves struggling to catch up without ever really solving tough problems of organization and navigation. We discovered that we had to moderate admissions in order to control spammers and trolls. Any member could open up a discussion group, but many that did so soon neglected it. The result was a proliferation of pages without a clearly recognizable shape. We allowed too many decisions to be debated openly and that sapped our spirits and energies. We opted for Ning as a platform which allowed newcomers to get started without any preparation. But it had a Facebook feel that put some people off; it was tackily commercial; and above all we conceded significant control of our data to them. People only turn to the OAC when they have dealt with their email, Facebook account and existing favorite sites.

In our drive to establish an egalitarian community, we didn?t pay enough attention to the leadership needed and fell back on a muted managerial style whose demands diverted us from developing the site?s potential. We mixed an academic network with social media and the resulting ambivalence inhibited our members? participation. The administrative team consisted mostly of graduate students whose other priorities drained their energies. As we know, anthropologists already have a problem with making their public presence felt; and this reticence surely affected the quality of life on the network. The fact that anything you write there is stored forever by Google must be yet another source of inhibition. Most newcomers are at first astonished by the vitality and diversity of the site, only to discover that it is hard to find your way around and much of what is there appears to be dead.

There is an upside to all this, of course. The OAC has attracted a large and genuinely global membership. At one stage we hosted discussion groups in some ten languages. We have stayed true to our founding mission to keep participation as open as possible.? Professionals, students and outsiders interact with remarkable freedom and without central direction. Apart from the many blogs, groups and forum discussions, we have accumulated a remarkable archive of spontaneous commentary, visual and literary artifacts, plus thousands of personal pages. We initially aimed at accumulating a repository of materials that would be valuable in research and teaching, but lack the manpower to see this through. The OAC Press publishes working papers, classical texts and book reviews online and we hold interdisciplinary seminars lasting two weeks that have been a marked success. These succeed perhaps because they replicate what is already familiar within the academy. In sum, there is still plenty of potential for development here, but we face complications that strain our part-time energies and don?t diminish over time.

Our discipline seems to have little to offer when it comes to thinking through these problems theoretically and practically. Anthropologists, it seems, suffer from an inability to catch up with a changing world at the same time as we meticulously document it. It was never anthropology?s priority to change the world and that leaves us rather helpless to solve issues that we ought to be expert in. The fastest-growing sector of world trade is in cultural commodities ? entertainment, education, media, information services ? increasingly online. The universities are doing at best a flawed job of providing people with the education they want when they want it and at an affordable price. Everywhere sclerotic corporate hierarchies are outsourcing to smaller flexible units or being replaced by them. This is particularly true of research today. There are massive opportunities out there to address the demand for lifetime self-learning and anthropology should be admirably suited to that. With imagination and less dependence on the universities, anthropology could enter a new golden age. Yet discussion of OA by anthropologists today focuses on a minor liberalization of research publications conceived of in the traditional way. We are too tied to existing academic expectations (scholarship more than education) and don?t ask not enough what the people want and how to give it to them.

RA: That?s a good point?a lot of the OA discussions just focus on freeing up traditional academic research publications.? That?s a pretty limiting way of looking at the possibilities we have right in front of us.? So what would happen if we dropped the attachment to all of those academic expectations?? What do people want, and how can anthropologists, in particular, find ways to ?give it to them??

KH: I don?t disparage academic work. I have devoted my life to it. But anthropology was born as part of a democratic project and the academy has become enmeshed in a particularly coercive kind of bureaucracy. I have a pseudo-Maoist slogan: Walk on two legs (it?s better than standing on one foot and falling over). By all means keep one foot in the academy, if you can, but don?t settle for the status quo and keep the other foot out there, in the market, moving forward while shifting your balance as circumstances permit.

?What the people want? is the mainspring of a genuine democracy; it is not something we give to them, but rather what we have to find out in order to be socially useful. I have said already that anthropology was an Enlightenment project to discover what all humanity has in common as the basis for a democratic revolution against the arbitrary inequality of agrarian civilization. Kant?s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798) was the culmination of that project and yet modern anthropologists never refer to it in their histories of the discipline. It is my inspiration. He elsewhere summarized ?philosophy in the cosmopolitan sense of the word? as four questions:

What can I know?

What should I do?

What may I hope for?

What is a human being?

The first question is answered in metaphysics, the second in morals, the third in religion and the fourth in anthropology.

But the first three questions ?relate to anthropology?, he said, and might be subsumed under it. Kant conceived of anthropology as an empirical discipline, but also as a means of moral and cultural improvement. It was thus both an investigation into human nature and, more especially, into how to modify it, as a way of providing his students with practical guidance and knowledge of the world.

He intended his lectures to be ?popular? and of value in later life. Above all, the Anthropology was to contribute to the progressive political task of uniting world citizens by identifying the source of their ?cosmopolitan bonds?. The book thus moves between vivid anecdotes and Kant?s most sublime vision as a bridge from the everyday to horizon thinking. Anthropology is the practical arm of moral philosophy. It does not explain the metaphysics of morals which are categorical and transcendent; but it is indispensable to any interaction involving human agents. It is thus ?pragmatic? in a number of senses: it is ?everything that pertains to the practical?, popular (as opposed to academic) and moral in that it is concerned with what people should do, with their motives for action.

The Anthropology was a best seller for its day. It sold 2,000 copies in two years. The rapid development of global communications today contains within its movement a far-reaching transformation of world society. ?Anthropology? in some form is one of the intellectual traditions best suited to make sense of it. The academic seclusion of the discipline, its passive acquiescence to bureaucracy, is the chief obstacle preventing us from grasping this historical opportunity. We cling to our revolutionary commitment to joining the people, but have forgotten what ethnography was for or what else is needed, if humanity is to succeed in building a universal society. The internet is a wonderful chance to open up the flow of knowledge and information. Rather than obsessing over how we can control access to what we write, which means cutting off the mass of humanity almost completely from our efforts, we need to figure out new interactive forms of engagement that span the globe and to make the results of our work available to everyone.

Ever since the internet went public and the World Wide Web was invented, I have made online self-publishing and interaction the core of my anthropological practice. It matters less that an academic guild should retain its monopoly of access to knowledge than that ?anthropology? should be taken up by a broad intellectual coalition for whom the realization of a new human universal ? a world society fit for humanity as a whole ? is a matter of urgent personal concern.

RA: That?s a good thought to end on.? Thanks, Keith, for taking the time to do this.? If anyone has comments or questions, please feel free to share and join the conversation.

?

*Keith Hart lives in Paris with his family and co-directs the Human Economy research program at the University of Pretoria, South Africa (web.up.ac.za/humaneconomy). He is Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at Goldsmiths, University of London and has taught in a dozen universities on both sides of the Atlantic, for the longest time at Cambridge where he was Director of the African Studies Centre. He has published widely in economic anthropology, especially about money. Website: www.thememorybank.co.uk. Email: johnkeithhart {at} gmail(.)com. Facebook and Twitter: johnkeithhart.

Ryan Anderson is a graduate student in anthropology at the University of Kentucky. His dissertation research focuses on the politics of tourism development in Baja California Sur. He is the editor of the collaborative online project anthropologies, and also blogs at ethnografix. You can contact him at ethnografix at gmail dot com.

Source: http://savageminds.org/2012/12/19/opening-anthropology-an-interview-with-keith-hart-part-3-of-3/

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Environmental performance affected by ethnicity and religion

[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 19-Dec-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Cat Bartman
c.bartman@uea.ac.uk
44-016-035-93007
University of East Anglia

Ethnically or religiously diverse countries underinvest in measures to improve their environmental performance, according to new research by an academic at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Dr Elissaios Papyrakis also found that religious diversity has a more detrimental impact on environmental performance than ethnic differences. These social differences, if they cannot be overcome, may lower collective action and reduce public spending on environmental protection and performance.

The study, Environmental Performance in Socially Fragmented Countries, is published online today in the journal Environmental and Resource Economics.

Dr Papyrakis assembled data on environmental performance, ethnicity, religion, industry, income and population density, as well as conflict and control of corruption, for 127 developed and developing countries. He then analysed what influences a country's environmental performance and investment in protection measures and whether this is associated with social diversity. It is believed to be the first study to explore the link between ethnic and religious diversity and a country's environmental performance.

Dr Papyrakis, a senior lecturer in UEA's School of International Development and a senior researcher at Vrije Universiteit, in Holland, said: "Social fragmentation has a negative effect on environmental performance. Countries that are either ethnically or religiously diverse tend to underinvest in environmental protection, even when one controls for differences in income and industrial activity, for example.

"This might be because of differences in preferences across the various, and often geographically concentrated, ethnic or religious groups about which environmental measures should be introduced and when and where. For example, public spending for waste treatment facilities or reforestation can become particularly contentious issues when different ethnic or religious groups do no benefit equally. Even when preferences over what should be done do not differ much, differences in language and culture may hamper communication and collective action. If these differences cannot be bridged, investment will not be made and positive action will not be taken."

The data analysed related to the period between 1960 and 2006, the most recent available. Environmental performance was measured using data on the monetary damage (as a share of GDP) attributed to a country's carbon dioxide emissions and the dependence of energy consumption on 'clean', or renewable, sources such as hydropower, geothermal, nuclear and solar power. Dr Papyrakis also took into account the country's adjusted net savings a measure of sustainable development that looks at the true rate of saving in an economy after taking into account investments in human capital, depletion of natural resources and damages caused by pollution.

Although several factors influence environmental performance simultaneously, ethnic and religious diversity alone can explain a substantial part of the differences observed in environmental performance across countries. For example, an ethnically fragmented country such as Tanzania invests 11 per cent less for the future (adjusted net savings) compared to other Sub-Saharan African countries, such as Madagascar, that are ethnically similar.

Some of the worst environmental performers, given their level of economic development, have been either ethnically or religiously fragmented nations such as China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and the United Arab Emirates. The more ethnically diverse United States and UK also score much lower in terms of adjusted net savings (US 2.92 per cent of GDP, UK 13.88 per cent (2005 figures)), while higher in terms of damage attributed to CO2 emissions (US 0.344 per cent of GDP, UK 0.178 per cent (2005 figures)) compared to less diverse Scandinavian economies such as Denmark (adjusted net savings 13.88 per cent, CO2 damage 0.13 per cent (2005 figures)).

Dr Papyrakis said the findings have significant policy implications: "Policy-makers need to promote collective action and communication among different groups, acknowledging that investment for the public benefit often requires broad social consensus and solidarity.

"The question of what makes some countries more successful than others in managing their environment is certainly one of the most fascinating environmental economists can ask, but also one that is difficult to answer due to the interaction between several factors. This analysis is a first step in exploring the intriguing relationship between ethnic and religious diversity and the environment."

###


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?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] Public release date: 19-Dec-2012
[ | E-mail | Share Share ]

Contact: Cat Bartman
c.bartman@uea.ac.uk
44-016-035-93007
University of East Anglia

Ethnically or religiously diverse countries underinvest in measures to improve their environmental performance, according to new research by an academic at the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Dr Elissaios Papyrakis also found that religious diversity has a more detrimental impact on environmental performance than ethnic differences. These social differences, if they cannot be overcome, may lower collective action and reduce public spending on environmental protection and performance.

The study, Environmental Performance in Socially Fragmented Countries, is published online today in the journal Environmental and Resource Economics.

Dr Papyrakis assembled data on environmental performance, ethnicity, religion, industry, income and population density, as well as conflict and control of corruption, for 127 developed and developing countries. He then analysed what influences a country's environmental performance and investment in protection measures and whether this is associated with social diversity. It is believed to be the first study to explore the link between ethnic and religious diversity and a country's environmental performance.

Dr Papyrakis, a senior lecturer in UEA's School of International Development and a senior researcher at Vrije Universiteit, in Holland, said: "Social fragmentation has a negative effect on environmental performance. Countries that are either ethnically or religiously diverse tend to underinvest in environmental protection, even when one controls for differences in income and industrial activity, for example.

"This might be because of differences in preferences across the various, and often geographically concentrated, ethnic or religious groups about which environmental measures should be introduced and when and where. For example, public spending for waste treatment facilities or reforestation can become particularly contentious issues when different ethnic or religious groups do no benefit equally. Even when preferences over what should be done do not differ much, differences in language and culture may hamper communication and collective action. If these differences cannot be bridged, investment will not be made and positive action will not be taken."

The data analysed related to the period between 1960 and 2006, the most recent available. Environmental performance was measured using data on the monetary damage (as a share of GDP) attributed to a country's carbon dioxide emissions and the dependence of energy consumption on 'clean', or renewable, sources such as hydropower, geothermal, nuclear and solar power. Dr Papyrakis also took into account the country's adjusted net savings a measure of sustainable development that looks at the true rate of saving in an economy after taking into account investments in human capital, depletion of natural resources and damages caused by pollution.

Although several factors influence environmental performance simultaneously, ethnic and religious diversity alone can explain a substantial part of the differences observed in environmental performance across countries. For example, an ethnically fragmented country such as Tanzania invests 11 per cent less for the future (adjusted net savings) compared to other Sub-Saharan African countries, such as Madagascar, that are ethnically similar.

Some of the worst environmental performers, given their level of economic development, have been either ethnically or religiously fragmented nations such as China, Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola and the United Arab Emirates. The more ethnically diverse United States and UK also score much lower in terms of adjusted net savings (US 2.92 per cent of GDP, UK 13.88 per cent (2005 figures)), while higher in terms of damage attributed to CO2 emissions (US 0.344 per cent of GDP, UK 0.178 per cent (2005 figures)) compared to less diverse Scandinavian economies such as Denmark (adjusted net savings 13.88 per cent, CO2 damage 0.13 per cent (2005 figures)).

Dr Papyrakis said the findings have significant policy implications: "Policy-makers need to promote collective action and communication among different groups, acknowledging that investment for the public benefit often requires broad social consensus and solidarity.

"The question of what makes some countries more successful than others in managing their environment is certainly one of the most fascinating environmental economists can ask, but also one that is difficult to answer due to the interaction between several factors. This analysis is a first step in exploring the intriguing relationship between ethnic and religious diversity and the environment."

###


[ Back to EurekAlert! ] [ | E-mail | Share Share ]

?


AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.


Source: http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2012-12/uoea-epa121812.php

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Plot to sterilize Muslims? Polio rumors spark killings

After receiving threatening telephone calls warning they would regret helping the "infidel" campaign against polio, a group of woman, working on a UN-backed polio vaccination campaign, were shot and killed by gunmen a day after a similar slaying in Karachi. Ch4 Europe's Lindsey Hilsum reports. Warning: Some images maybe disturbing.

By Mushtaq Yusufzai and Waj S. Khan, NBC News

Updated at 9:09 a.m. ET: PESHAWAR, Pakistan -?Pakistan may be one of the world's three remaining polio-stricken countries but Sartaj Khan has decided that the government-sponsored vaccination campaign is much more sinister than it appears.

?These vaccines are meant to destroy our nation,? said Khan, a 42-year-old lawyer in the city of Peshawar. ?The [polio] drops make men less manly, and make women more excited and less bashful. Our enemies want to wipe us out.?

Khan is not alone in the belief, propagated by extremist groups, that is gaining currency in the Pashtun belt of northwestern Pakistan: The government?s anti-polio campaign is a ruse by the Americans to sterilize or spy on Muslims.

Many also believe that much like the Pakistani physician, Dr. Shakeel Afridi, who helped the CIA run a fake vaccination program to establish the presence of Osama bin Laden, the army of health workers employed to vaccinate the country?s children are also on the United States? payroll.

The belief has turned deadly:? Nine anti-polio workers have been killed by gunmen on motorcycles this week. Some of those killed were teenage girls. Following the violence, the United Nations pulled back all staff involved in the vaccination campaign and officials suspended it in some parts of the country.

Muhammed Muheisen / AP

Images of daily life, political pursuits, religious rites and deadly violence.

There are ranks of parents whose awareness is low and suspicions high when it comes to the deadly virus: A November World Health Organization study found that 41 percent of those polled had never heard of polio ?? and 11 percent refused to vaccinate their children.?

The reality is that polio can paralyze or kill within hours of infection. It is transmitted person-to-person, meaning that as long as one child is infected, the disease can be passed to others.?

Photos: Vaccination workers gunned down in Pakistan

Nuclear-armed and militancy-struck Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria are the only countries still struggling with polio. According to the World Health Organization, there were?213 new cases of polio worldwide in 2012, including 56 in Pakistan.

Mohsin Raza / Reuters

A female polio worker gives polio vaccine drops to a child in Lahore, Pakistan, on Thursday.

Polio also disproportionately affects members of the Pashtun population in Pakistan, who largely live in the country's northwest and border region. They account for roughly 15 percent of the population, but 75 percent of all polio cases.

Shamim Bibi, a 25-year-old mother of two who has been working in Peshawar?s suburbs as an anti-polio campaign worker for the last nine years, said she had never before faced hostility in her line of work.

?For years, we were welcomed into homes by families,? she said. ?In 2012, attitudes changed. Now, they look at us with a sort of suspicion. Some people have even said it to my face: that I?m an American spy.?

More Pakistan coverage from NBC News

Suspicion of the United States does indeed run deep.? Unknown gunmen may have assassinated 14-year-old anti-polio worker Farzana Rehman in her hometown of Peshawar but her grieving father is placing the blame for her death further afield.

?My daughter was too young to leave this world,? an obviously distraught Said Rehman told NBC News. ?Polio didn?t take her. This American war did. So what?s the bigger danger, huh??

The American war refers to the post-Sept. 11, 2001, violence that has swept Pakistan and Afghanistan, in particular U.S. drone strikes that enrage many.? In parts of Pakistan, the war is also called the Kharji, or ?white person's? war.

In Pakistan's largest city, 'Old Glory' is flammable and profitable?

As experts cite the latest violence as a new form of ?low tech, high concept? attacks by Pakistan?s militants, Rehman can only wonder if those trying to stop the disease are missing the point.

?Disease didn?t take my child. A bullet did,? he said.?

Reuters contributed to this report.

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/20/16039942-western-plot-to-sterilize-muslims-polio-vaccine-rumors-spark-killings-in-pakistan?lite

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Feds Tighten Up Child Privacy Protection Rules

The Federal Trade Commission on Wednesday announced final amendments to the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act Rule, which governs the online collection of personal information under the age of 13. This is the culmination of a review that began in 2010 to ensure that the COPPA Rule keeps pace with changes in technology and the way kids use and access the Internet.

Source: http://ectnews.com.feedsportal.com/c/34520/f/632000/s/26c5c37e/l/0L0Stechnewsworld0N0Crsstory0C7690A10Bhtml/story01.htm

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