The Wombat’s Blog

The Need for Lists - the Power of Junk0

Interesting article by a college president questioning the usefulness of the US News and World report College Rankings.

There are a few threads to follow: Sarah Lawrence decides to stop using SAT scores, without affects on the students applying. However US News will calculate an arbitrary average SAT score for that school without regards to reality. So the school decides to consider dropping out, i.e. supplying even fewer statistics to US News which will then fill in again for them. So if they decide not to participate, they will be participated by a news organization highly dependent on the success of those rankings.

So lies are being uses as statistics. A national ranking system turns out to be anything but. A national news magazine ends up losing all integrity. And a college is being under the gun to stand up to principle, or to be broadly misrepresented by those with the power. Who ends up good coming out of this?
Thank you for writing this article. I hope that we get some sort of retraction from US News & World Report, but if there isn’t - shame on you.

Too bad we’re all so dependent on lists - that we need rankings to make informed choices.

(Original article posted here.)

The Cost of Bucking College Rankings
By Michele Tolela Myers
Sunday, March 11, 2007

Like most college presidents, I have seen many prospective students and their parents show up on campus in recent months, clutching their well-worn copies of U.S. News & World Report’s rankings issue. U.S. News has smartly tapped into students’ need to sort out colleges and universities in a rational way. Parents, who face increasing college costs, understandably want to know where best to make that expensive investment.

U.S. News benefits from our appetite for shortcuts, sound bites and top-10 lists. The magazine has parlayed the appearance of unbiased measurements into a profitable bottom line.

The problem is that the U.S. News college rankings are far from reliable.

Turns out that some of their numbers are made up. I know that firsthand. Two years ago, we at Sarah Lawrence College decided to stop using SAT scores in our admission process. We didn’t make them optional, as some schools do. We simply told our prospective students not to bother sending them. We determined that the best predictors of success at Sarah Lawrence are high school grades in rigorous college-prep courses, teachers’ recommendations and extensive writing samples. We are a writing-intensive school, and the information produced by SAT scores added little to our ability to predict how a student would do at our college; it did, however, do much to bias admission in favor of those who could afford expensive coaching sessions.

Since we dropped the SAT altogether, we no longer provide SAT information to U.S. News & World Report. Our two years’ experience with this practice has been very good. Faculty members report that our students continue to be terrific. Their average high school grades, high school ranks and grades in Advanced Placement courses have not changed.

But this principled decision has put us in jeopardy. I was recently informed by the director of data research at U.S. News, the person at the magazine who has a lot to say about how the rankings are computed, that absent students’ SAT scores, the magazine will calculate the college’s ranking by assuming an arbitrary average SAT score of one standard deviation (roughly 200 points) below the average score of our peer group.

In other words, in the absence of real data, they will make up a number. He made clear to me that he believes that schools that do not use SAT scores in their admission process are admitting less capable students and therefore should lose points on their selectivity index. Our experience, of course, tells us otherwise.

But the story does not stop here. When I reported this conversation at Sarah Lawrence, several faculty members and deans suggested that perhaps it was time to stop playing ranking roulette and opt out of the survey. A few colleges explore this option each year, but most don’t follow through (Reed College is one of the few exceptions I know of), because, like unilateral disarmament, unilateral withdrawal from the U.S. News ranking system is dangerous.

We discovered how dangerous it can be through a presentation U.S. News made at the 2006 meeting of the North East Association for Institutional Research. There, the magazine indicated that if a school stops sending data, the default assumption will be that it performs one standard deviation below the mean on numerous factors for which U.S. News can’t find published data. Again, making up the numbers it can’t get.

The message is clear. Unless we are willing to be badly misrepresented, we had better send the information the magazine wants. We haven’t yet decided what we will do. But if we don’t go along, we understand we will be harmed because many students will assume that Sarah Lawrence is much less selective than it actually is.

The reality is that the magazine’s rankings issue has a large circulation and that parents and students rely on these rankings to make a college choice that has enormous educational and financial implications. This gives the magazine the power to keep colleges playing the game it sets and controls.

Why should we care if we lose our place in their rankings? Because ultimately, so many people take these rankings seriously. I would at least like to let them know how misleading the whole affair is.

The writer is president of Sarah Lawrence College.

Posted: media, science, education

We Have to Proliferate Nuclearly0

This is an article detailing how the Federal government is proceeding with a new nuclear weapons design.

So two oppositions:

1. Instead of eliminating the stockpile, lets expand Nuclear Production
2. While we’re asking others to curtail their Nuclear Production (see Iran, North Korea), we go ahead and do what WE want

We have to keep in mind that the weapons development is a large, ongoing part of our economy, and just how other products go into obsolescence, weapons will to, so it’s counter-business to not let them keep developing new weapons systems. It’s counter-business to not keep expanding the defense budget, whether there’s a need for it or not. Plus there’s the safety scare (or whatever other scare you may come up with to justify it this time).
Globally people may be able to support that if we have been maintaining the moral high ground, but this way we’re just hypocritic.

(Original found here.)

Looking for this article online, I found multiple versions of it, all attributed to the same author. How does that happen? And in our paper, the article was strangely cut short (I’m breaking it where it stopped). It sounded somewhat incomplete.

Govt. picks design for nuclear warhead
By H. JOSEF HEBERT
ASSOCIATED PRESS WRITER

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration took a major step Friday toward building a new generation of nuclear warheads, selecting a design that is being touted as safer, more secure and more easily maintained than today’s arsenal.

A team of scientists from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory will proceed with the weapons design with an anticipation that the first warheads may be ready by 2012 as a replacement for Trident missiles on submarines.

The new weapons program, which has received cautious support from Congress, was immediately criticized by some nuclear nonproliferation groups as evidence the government wants to expand nuclear weapons production - not move toward eliminating the stockpile.

Critics also maintain that it sends the wrong signal around the world by pushing a new warhead - although characterized as a replacement for existing ones- at a time the United States is trying to curtail nuclear weapons development in North Korea and Iran.

Some lawmakers agreed.

“The minute you begin to put more sophisticated warheads on the existing fleet, you are essentially creating a new nuclear weapon. And it’s just a matter of time before other nation’s do the same,” said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif. “This could serve to encourage the very proliferation we are trying to prevent.”

Rep. Ellen Tauscher, D-Calif., chair of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, expressed cautious support, but promised “a long evaluation process” in Congress to assure the warhead will do what is promised without future underground testing.

Nuclear underground tests have not been done since a ban in 1992.

and, what was not included

“This is not about starting a new nuclear arms race,” countered Thomas P. D’Agostino, acting head of the DOE’s National Nuclear Security Administration, which oversees the nuclear weapons programs.

Steve Henry, deputy assistant to the secretary of defense for nuclear matters, said the new design is hoped to lead to fewer warheads being needed. He said it has not changed administration determination to reduce the number of deployed warheads to fewer than 2,000 - the lowest number since the 1950s.

There are believed to be about 6,000 warheads deployed and another 4,000 in reserve.

D’Agostino, briefing reporter on the design decision, said the intent is to develop a safer, more secure warhead to assure increased reliability without the need for underground nuclear tests.

He cautioned that the program remains in the early stages and that in coming months the Livermore team will expand on its design work to give a better estimate on overall costs, the scope of the program and a schedule toward full-scale engineering and production.

The administration is asking for $119 million for the next fiscal year for design work. The officials said they could not say how much the program eventually will cost.

The so-called “reliable replacement warhead” has been the focus of a yearlong, intense design competition between Livermore in California and nuclear scientists at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico - the government’s two premier nuclear weapons labs.

Both of the labs developed proposals and at one point there was discussion to combine the designs into a single program. But that was rejected and D’Agostino made clear Friday the program would be Livermore’s to develop.

The Livermore design was based on an existing warhead that reportedly had been exploded in an underground test in the 1980s, although never actually put into the stockpile. The Los Alamos design was based on a totally fresh approach but without a history of actual testing.

It was this “very robust test pedigree” - as D’Agostino put it - that gave Livermore the upper hand.

“It … gave us the confidence … to certify and go forward without underground testing,” he said, adding that without that assurance “we were not going to go forward.”

Congress authorized design work on the new warhead in 2005, but with a stipulation that its primary goal be to assure the reliability of the nuclear arsenal without resumption of bomb testing, and that it will help in the consolidation of the Energy Department’s nuclear weapons complex.

Some lawmakers have also questioned whether the new warhead is needed, especially in light of a recent finding that the plutonium in the current warheads will last nearly 100 years, twice as long as previously thought.

Some nuclear weapons critics warned the warhead could lead to an increased likelihood of future testing, calling it a ploy to rebuild - not dismantle - the nuclear weapons infrastructure.

“This is a first installment on a plan to develop and produce warheads on an ongoing cyclical basis … similar to what we had during the Cold War,” said Lisbeth Gronlund, a scientist at the Union of Concerned Scientists, a nuclear nonproliferation advocacy group.

John Isaacs, executive director of the Center for Arms Control and Nonproliferation, said there’s no need for a new warhead when “the U.S. nuclear stockpile, based on 50 years of research and over 1,000 underground nuclear tests, has been confirmed safe and reliable for at least another half-century.”

“The bottom line is we’re returning to what we used to do in the Cold War years. That’s the message to the world,” said Hans Kristensen, director of the nuclear information project of the Federation of American Scientists.

Associated Press writer Scott Lindlaw in San Francisco contributed to this story. 

Posted: design, politics, science

Protecting Consumers or Corporations - the School Lunchbox0

This article talks about government testing on lead-levels in vinyl school lunchboxes and how it was determined that the lead levels are acceptable to young children.

It comes across that they tried to look at the situation with a scientific mind, by testing what children may really be exposed to. But can the government really predict how the products will be used. Is it really wise to err on the side they did. But then there is always risk analysis to help you make economic decisions.

(Original found here.)

Did Government Hide Lunch-Box Lead Levels?
By MARTHA MENDOZA
The Associated Press

In 2005, when government scientists tested 60 soft, vinyl lunch boxes, they found that one in five contained amounts of lead that medical experts consider unsafe — and several had more than 10 times hazardous levels.

But that’s not what they told the public.

Instead, the Consumer Product Safety Commission released a statement that it found “no instances of hazardous levels.” And it refused to release its actual test results, citing regulations that protect manufacturers from having their information released to the public.

Those data were not made public until The Associated Press received a box of about 1,500 pages of lab reports, in-house e-mails and other records in response to a Freedom of Information Act request filed a year ago.

The documents describe two types of tests:

• The first involves cutting a chunk of vinyl off the bag, dissolving it and then analyzing how much lead is in the solution.
• The second involves swiping the surface of a bag and then determining how much lead has rubbed off.

The results of the first type of test, looking for the actual lead content of the vinyl, showed that 20 percent of the bags had more than 600 parts per million of lead, the federal safe level for paint and other products. The highest level was 9,600 ppm, more than 16 times the federal standard.

But the CPSC did not use those results.

“When it comes to a lunch box, it’s carried. The food that you put in the lunch box may have an outer wrapping, a baggie, so there isn’t direct exposure. The direct exposure would be if kids were putting their lunch boxes in their mouth, which isn’t a common way for children to interact with their lunch box,” said CPSC spokeswoman Julie Vallese.

Thus the CPSC focused exclusively on how much lead came off the surface of a lunch box when lab workers swiped them.

For the swipe tests, the results were lower, especially after the researchers changed their testing protocol. After a handful of tests, they increased the number of times they swiped each bag, again and again on the same spot, resulting in lower average results.

An in-house e-mail from the director of the CPSC’s chemistry division explained that they had been retesting with the new protocol “which gave a lower average result than the prior report … ,” he wrote. “This shows … that the overall risk is lower than our original testing would have showed, as the amount of lead dislodgeable is mostly taken out with the first wipe and goes down with subsequent wipes.”

Vallese explained it this way: “The more you wipe, the less lead you actually find. With fewer wipes, we got a higher detection of lead presence. We thought more wipes was closer to reflecting how you would interact with your lunch box. It was more realistic.”

The test results also show that many lunch boxes were tested only on the outside, which is unlikely to be in contact with food. Vallese said this was because children handle their lunch boxes from the outside.

As a result of their tests, the CPSC issued a public statement last year reassuring consumers that they had nothing to worry about: “Based on the extremely low levels of lead found in our tests, in most cases, children would have to rub their lunch box and then lick their hands more than 600 times every day, for about 15-30 days, in order for the lunch box to present a health hazard.”

Vallese said the commission stands by those statements.

But the results were disconcerting to outside experts who reviewed them.

“They found levels that we consider very high,” said Alexa Engelman, a researcher at the Oakland, Calif.-based Center for Environmental Health, which has filed a series of legal complaints about lead in lunch boxes.

“They knew this all along and they didn’t take action on it,” Engelman said. “It’s upsetting to me. Why are we, as a country, protecting the companies? We should be protecting the kids. I don’t think in this instance they did their job.”

Although these test results are only now being aired publicly, the CPSC did provide them to the Food and Drug Administration last summer.

The FDA’s reaction was completely different from the CPSC’s. In July 2006, after receiving the test results, the FDA sent a letter to lunch-box manufacturers warning them that their lead levels might be dangerously high and advising them that the FDA might take action against them because the lead would be considered a food additive if it rubbed off onto kids’ lunches.

In response to the FDA warning, Wal-Mart stopped selling soft lunch boxes with vinyl liners, and offered refunds to customers who wanted to return the ones they already had.

Some manufacturers revamped their manufacturing processes to eliminate lead, or stopped making the lunch boxes altogether. Those changes have been prompted in large part by pressure from the Center for Environmental Health and several other nonprofit advocacy groups in New York and Washington state that have been testing lunch boxes and publicly airing the results for several years.

Lead is a stabilizing agent in vinyl, but there are other chemicals that can be used instead of lead. Almost every lunch box found with lead in the vinyl lining was made in China.

Allen Blakey, a spokesman for the Vinyl Institute, a trade association representing manufacturers of vinyl, said his organization defers to the regulatory agencies.

“The CPSC was pretty clear that they did not see a danger in these lunch boxes. The FDA had a slightly different take on it. But basically, we have not seen any indication of actual harm from the lunch boxes,” he said.

Public-health experts consider elevated levels of lead in blood a significant health hazard for U.S. children. Studies have repeatedly shown that childhood exposure to lead can lead to learning problems, reduced intelligence, hyperactivity and attention-deficit disorder. There is no lead level that is considered safe in blood, and recent studies have shown adverse health effects even at very low levels.

“I don’t think the Consumer Product Safety Commission has lived up to its role to protect kids from lead,” said Dr. Bruce Lamphear, a lead-poisoning specialist at the Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati, Ohio. “As a public agency, their work should be transparent. And if one is to err on the side of protecting children rather than protecting lunch-box makers, then certainly you would want to lower the levels.”

Posted: politics, environment, science, education

Science for Sale0

If Science shows that your approach to Global Warming is not the ideal approach, fight fire with fire and get yourself some Science to support that you are correct. I mean, it must be way worse admitting “oops, made a mistake, ok let me change course.”
At this point nobody disputes that there is Global Warming. But we’re still not doing anything because it may hurt our business (though probably will hurt less than doing nothing). Also, we are still not sure that we’re causing it (yeah right), so not sure that we can actually do anything.

By now the evidence becomes overwhelming, so we need to fire back. The American Enterprise Institute is now offtering $10,000 to scientists to criticize what everybody knows to be true. And I’m sure there will be people taking up that offer, because $10,000 is not small cash.

And that’s how you find out that Science is no more objective than any other field. You have to be careful who you listen to.
(Original found here.)

Science for Sale
St. Louis Post Dispatch
Wednesday, Feb. 07 2007

Global warming threatens our planet and our species, in particular the human
subspecies of professional obfuscators in the Hot Air Industry.

We refer to the handful of far-right think tanks fronting for American
corporate interests, such as the American Enterprise Institute and the
Competitive Enterprise Institute. They’ve spent years — and millions of dollars
in energy company contributions — trying to manufacture doubt about the reality
of global warming.

Now comes the latest report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
It was prepared by 600 international climate experts. The report, released
last week, lays out in sobering detail how global warming already has begun,
how effects such as rising sea levels and acidity and warmer temperatures will
continue over the next century or more with disastrous ecological and economic
consequences, and how continued inaction will exacerbate the problems. There is
at least a 90-percent certainty human activity is the cause.

Sheesh. How do you spin news like that? That’s where amateurs who wish upon a
star are separated from true masters of the dark arts.

The spirit of enterprise is working overtime at the American Enterprise
Institute. Before the ink was dry on the latest global warming consensus
statement, the institute was soliciting scientists willing to contribute to a
book-length critique pooh-poohing the report and its conclusions on the perils
of global warming in return for a $10,000 “honorarium” (perhaps we should call
it a “dishonorarium.”)

Scientists on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change aren’t paid.
That’s to protect against conflicts of interest. But that’s apparently not a
concern at the American Enterprise Institute. It’s searching not for the best
science that money can buy, but the most plausible-sounding way to forestall
action on global warming.

Don’t think of those $10,000 payments as bribes. They’re “campaign
contributions” in the Hot Air Industry’s never-ending war on inconvenient
truths.

Posted: politics, science

Human Intelligence … Not0

Wombat tried to get a flight home from here to Australia. This is what Orbitz offered as the low cost option:

15:
Northwest Airlines 222
Honolulu-San Francisco - 23:00 - 05:58 (16th) - 3 stops
British Airways 286
San Francisco-London - 19:50 - 14:00 (17th)
Quantas Airways 2
London-Bangkok - 21:45 - 15:55 (18th)
Qantas Airways 2
Bangkok-Sydney - 17:25 - 06:25 (19th)
Total: 58 hrs 25 min
27:
British Airways 10
Sydney-Bangkok - 17:30 - 22:45 (27th) - 3 stops
British Airways 10
Bangkok-London - 00:10 - 05:50 (28th)
British Airways 49
London-Seattle - 14:05 - 15:50 (28th)
Northwest Airlines 807
Seattle-Honolulu - 17:20 - 21:24 (28th)
Total: 48 hrs 54 min
Price: $2,355 + $488 taxes = $2,843 per person

Usually this is a 10 hour flight, for at least half that price.

Posted: science

Maintaining Space Superiority0

This is an ongoing, low-level, story about China shooting down one of its weather satellites. Apparently that’s a big, big problem, because we can’t just have random countries developing technology that could challenge us. The implicit assumption is that they don’t have the right to do this, because it’ll start an escalation. It sounds like the same argument going “it’s ok for us to have nuclear weapons, but dang if we’re going to let you develop them.”

Now it would not have an issue with this approach, if the power was concentrated in the mind of a beneficent global power, say Switzerland. But U.S. is often abusing its power, and they don’t play nice with others, so why shouldn’t others progress to counteract that? Because China is so much bigger? But what’s the implication if the US invades Grenada? Because the US supports democracy? Like in Chile, or Nicaragua, or say Iraq?

So the reaction is “you have no right to challenge our space dominance.” The reaction should be to focus on science and technology to maintain that dominance. But technology in this county is already falling behind those of other countries. Unless we do something in society, we will continue to shout at people to not challenge our dominance, instead of defending it.

U.S. Criticizes Chinese Anti-Satellite Weapons

The United States criticized China on Thursday for conducting an anti-satellite weapons test in which an old Chinese weather satellite was destroyed by a missile.

The Bush administration has kept a lid on the test for a week as it weighs its significance. Analysts said China’s weather satellites would travel at about the same altitude as U.S. spy satellites, so the test represented an indirect threat to U.S. defense systems.

Since the mid-1980s, the United States has had the ability to take down satellites, but the Chinese don’t have satellites worth attacking, Pike said. The United States may have to develop alternatives to its current spy satellites - perhaps stelathy satellites or unmanned aerial vehicles, which are harded to detec tthan the current well-established U.S. satellite network.

Reconnainsance satellites in low-Earth orbit - “eyes in the sky” - are essential to how the United States fights wars.

U.S., Allies Protest China’s Anti-Satellite Test

U.S. allies joined the United States on Friday in voicing concern about the rising militarization of space after China successfully carried out a test of an anti-satellite weapon.

Deputy White House press secretary Dana Perino said Chinese officials had not yet responded to the concerns expressed by the United States.

officials in Japan, Britain, Australia and South Korea demanded China explain its actions.

They also related their concern that debris from the test would strike other satellites orbiting Earth.

Posted: politics, science

The Future of the Procrasti-Nation0

Procrastination makes people poorer, fatter and unhappier.

As we’re getting more adept at killing time we’re getting to procrastinate more. As we procrastinate more we get sicker. As life is made more comfortable, we become more uncomfortable.

Boingboing yesterday had an article by the same guy about the Science of Procrastination here. It links to a Scientific American. And lists an equation. Oh boy.

(Original found here, listed in our paper as “Study shows many Americans say they procrastinate”. Duh.)

Put off reading this until tax time
By SETH BORENSTEIN, AP Science Writer
Thu Jan 11, 10:39 PM ET

Procrastination in society is getting worse and scientists are finally getting around to figuring out how and why. Too many tempting diversions are to blame, but more on that later.

After 10 years of research on a project that was only supposed to take five years, a Canadian industrial psychologist found in a giant study that not only is procrastination on the rise, it makes people poorer, fatter and unhappier.

Something has to be done about it, sooner rather than later, University of Calgary professor Piers Steel concludes. His 30-page study is in this month’s peer-reviewed Psychological Bulletin, published by the American Psychological Association.

In 1978, only about 5 percent of the American public thought of themselves as chronic procrastinators. Now it’s 26 percent, Steel said.

And why not? There are so many fun ways to kill time — TVs in every room, online video, Web-surfing, cell phones, video games, iPods and Blackberries.

At work, e-mail, the Internet and games are just a click away, making procrastination effortless, Steel said.

“That stupid game Minesweeper — that probably has cost billions of dollars for the whole society,” he said.

The U.S. gross national product would probably rise by $50 billion if the icon and sound that notifies people of new e-mail suddenly disappear, he added.

And there’s good reason to worry right now about the problem of procrastination.

“People who procrastinate tend to be less healthy, less wealthy and less happy,” Steel said Wednesday. “You can reduce it, but I don’t think you can eliminate it.”

Psychologist William Knaus, who has written several self-help books on fighting procrastination since 1977’s “Overcoming Procrastination,” said Steel is “absolutely right.”

He said he found it harder to wean chronic procrastinators from the habit of delaying than to wean alcoholics from booze. Knaus mentioned one businessman who spent 40 hours of delay time to avoid five minutes of work.

“It’s a huge problem,” Knaus said. “I think the majority of mental disabilities people have — anxiety, panic — they can be defined as a special case of procrastination.”

There is personal financial fallout from procrastination, too. Delay in filing taxes on average costs a person $400 a year and last-minute Christmas shopping with credit cards was five times higher in 1999 than in 1991, Steel found in a review of more than 500 economic and psychological studies about putting off unpleasant chores.

Steel’s study found that in the past quarter century, the average self-score for procrastination (using a 1-to-5 scale with 1 being no delaying) has increased by 39 percent.

Overall, more than a quarter of Americans say they procrastinate. Men are worse than women (about 54 out of 100 chronic procrastinators are men) and the young are more like to procrastinate than the old, Steel said. Three out of four college students consider themselves procrastinators.

Early studies looking at U.S. and Canadian cultures didn’t find any differences in the two countries’ procrastination problem, but Steel said when he has more time he’ll get around to more cross-cultural studies.

The causes of procrastination combine temptation, sense of immediacy, the value of doing the job, and whether you believe you can get the work done, Steel found. He even created a complicated mathematical formula, complete with Greek letters, to figure out when a person is likely to procrastinate.

Temptation is the biggest factor. And it’s why procrastination is getting worse, Steel said, citing technology.

“It’s easier to procrastinate now than ever before. We have so many more temptations,” he said. “It’s never been harder to be self-disciplined in all of history than it is now.”

But procrastination goes back thousands of years, before technology. Ancient literature harps on the problem, Steel said. Knaus mentioned a book from 1852: “Thoughtless Little Fanny: The Unhappy Results of Procrastination.” The author is just called “a friend of children.”

While many self-help books say perfectionists procrastinate because they don’t want to get things wrong, Steel found just the opposite. Perfectionists procrastinate less and do better because they avoid delaying. However they do worry more about putting stuff off, he said.

Studying procrastination as a field has a benefit, said the professor. The more he knows about the problem and the causes, the less he procrastinates — even though he sheepishly acknowledges his study was completed five years late.

The good thing about studying procrastination, he said: “If you take a day off from it, you can always say it’s field research.”
Ways to procrastinate on the Net:
Steel’s Web site, including two online tests: http://www.procrastinus.com
Procrastination Research Group at Carleton University in Ottawa:
http://http-server.carleton.ca/tpychyl/
Overcoming Procrastination tips from the State University of New York at Buffalo:
http://ub-counseling.buffalo.edu/stressprocrast.shtml

and here is the Boingboing quick article

Science of procrastination
Industrial psychologist Piers Steel has spent a decade studying procrastination. One result of his fascination with motivation (or lack thereof) is a formula to map your procrastination response in a particular situation: Desire to Complete Task (U) = Expectation of Success (E) x Value of Completion (V) / Immediacy of Task (I) x Personal Sensitivity to Delay (D), or U=ExV/IxD. From Scientific American:

So, for example, my desire to finish this article is influenced by my relative confidence in writing it well and the prospect of a paycheck as well as a looming deadline and my inherent desire to go home at the end of the day. “You’re more likely to put something off if you’re a very impulsive individual,” Steel says. But, “if you only work at the last minute, time on task tells…”

But the problem of procrastination, which Steel came to by suffering from a particularly acute case of it in his own schooling, may have broader applications. The equation to describe it, dubbed temporal motivational theory, may be applicable to the entire field of human motivation. “You can use it to predict stock prices and other theories of motivation, such as goalsetting, can be derived from it,” Steel notes. “Even the behavior of nations and groups can be better described by using this theory.”

Link to SciAm article, Link to Steel’s Procrastination Central site

Posted: social/culture, science

Making the Scores Meaningful0

Today I’m busy on the blog catching up on old clippings. Here is a science and technology article of big interest to people working in the car industry. Also of interest to people that want to know the story behind the numbers.

So we score cars by their performance on the mileage ratings, and we score them more so when gasoline is expensive. Because the EPA is now making the testing more realistic, scores will drop across the board, with the most environmentally beneficial cars being hit the hardest. Oops.

Now the little interesting snippet in this to me was

Federally regularted Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards won’t be affected because they use different figures

What figures? So we are picking from one set of numbers and the companies are submitting (and being held to by federal regulation) to a different set of numbers. Hmmm.

(Original found here.)

Gas mileage ratings get real; so should lawmakers, buyers
Beware activists’ interests in pushing for radical change
The Detroit News

The Environmental Protection Agency finally has figured out that most people don’t drive like grandma going to church. Most have a heavier foot, use air conditioning in the summer and live in places that occasionally drop below freezing, all factors that affect gas mileage.

Those things have largely been ignored for the past 22 years by the EPA, which tested vehicles at an average speed of 48 miles per hour in temperatures of 75 degrees. Posted fuel economy ratings on new cars and trucks no longer will be based on such narrow factors.

Beginning with 2008 models, consumers will get a more realistic reporting of the mileage their cars and trucks get because the EPA has changed its reporting formula, though “actual mileage will vary” still applies.

New testing methods take into account aggressive driving habits, cold weather and the use of air conditioning, among other factors. Fuel economy ratings for the Big Three automakers will drop an average of 11 percent for city driving and about 10.5 percent for highway driving.

Industrywide numbers will drop an estimated 12 percent in city driving and 8 percent in highway mileage.

Hybrids will take the biggest hit; they will have adjusted fuel economy ratings as much as 30 percent lower because tests eliminate the all-electric driving from the fuel economy standards, among other things. It also takes a lot of battery power to run air conditioners and get the gasoline-electric cars and trucks going in the winter, which affects fuel efficiency.

This won’t come as much of a surprise to hybrid owners, who knew they rarely get the promised 60 miles per gallon. Instead, hybrid ratings will be posted in the 40 miles per gallon range, which provides a better standard and more realistic gauge of how much faith should be placed in hybrids as the technology to reduce America’s addiction to oil.

Diesel mileage estimates will drop an average of 7 percent and bolsters their place in the market. Cleaner diesel fuel that was introduced nationwide in October provides for a national standard and automakers all are ramping up production of these engines to meet expected increased consumer demand.

Automakers are in support of the changes because they better represent reality, but they need to remain vigilant against environmental activists who spearheaded the campaign to set new rules and see this change as an opening for further fuel economy adjustments.

That would be unwise because for each increase in fuel economy, consumers have responded by buying bigger cars and trucks and driving them farther. And, it should be remembered that the EPA numbers are a guide for consumers and carry no regulatory weight.

Federally regulated Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards won’t be affected because they use different figures, says Charles Territo of the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, which represents the Big Three and others.

Consumers should take the more accurate data to heart, but not as gospel because everyone drives differently, giving some better fuel economy than others. But it’s good to see that now the base measure is better.

Posted: politics, environment, science

Working for the Public Sector - Tempting Ethics0

A quick reference about people in the public sector working as private consultants along the side. NIH is working on rules that

end such relationships that enrich its scientists.

Why stop with scientists? People in the public sector earn less than people in the private sector. That’s known. That doesn’t mean it’s accepted. Should teachers be private teachers to rich students? Should firefighters start off-the-side rescues for pay? What’s wrong with that? What’s not? How would you avoid that? There was a letter to the editor recently writing in that EMT personnel is early $18 an hour after 12 years on the job. And these are the people in charge with potentially being in charge of saving your life. It makes me wonder about the private-public split in society. If there is no equality between the two, you trade of one for the other. If they were equal, it wouldn’t matter. But since they’re not, when you cross between the two, like the scientist in the article below, trouble happens.

Would we be better served establishing equality for those functions critical to society? But then, which of the above aren’t critical: education, rescue, government watchdog organisations? I guess you get what you pay for.

(Original found here).

Government Scientist Faces Ethics Charge
Government scientist charged with conflict for consulting with drug company
Dec. 5, 2006
By RITA BEAMISH
Associated Press Writer

(AP) With a rare criminal case against a senior federal researcher, prosecutors are sending a message to scientists on the government payroll: Making money from companies on the side can land you in big trouble.

Dr. Trey Sunderland, a leading expert on Alzheimer’s disease at the National Institutes of Health, found that there was no wiggle room in his outside work for a pharmaceutical company, even in a time when rules were far more lax than today.

The U.S. attorney in Baltimore charged Sunderland with misdemeanor conflict of interest Monday for his private consulting with Pfizer Inc., that earned him $285,000 and improperly overlapped his official duties.

Sunderland was researching early indicators of Alzheimer’s both as an NIH collaborator with Pfizer and a paid Pfizer consultant on work “directly related” to his government job, according to the court papers filed with U.S. District Court in Baltimore.

The scientist failed to obtain the proper approvals from his supervisors or disclose the work to NIH as was required, the prosecutors said.

Last year, NIH banned such outside work for drug and biotechnology companies following its own internal probe that was prompted by congressional investigations and disclosures in the Los Angeles Times. The probes revealed some researchers took advantage of a permissive environment which was designed to encourage public-private collaborations that might speed disease cures.

Lucrative moonlighting was still allowed during Sunderland’s 1998-2003 deal with Pfizer, but the prosecutors allege his consulting gave him a financial interest in the work he did at taxpayer expense.

“This should put other federal officials on notice that you can’t disregard the rules,” said Vera Sharav, president of the nonprofit Alliance for Human Research Protection.

She and other critics contend that weak enforcement feeds conflicts even when ethics rules are in place.

After NIH’s internal investigation, most of the 44 researchers found to have breached ethics rules got written or verbal reprimands or were permitted to retire. An agency survey found that many scientists consider the new rules so restrictive that they are considering leaving NIH.

The charge against Sunderland, with a maximum sentence of one year in prison and a $100,000 fine, was contained in a criminal information rather than indictment, a route that often precedes a plea deal. The U.S. attorney’s press office characterized it on Monday as a felony count but corrected that Tuesday, stating it is a misdemeanor charge.

Sunderland did not return a telephone message and his attorney, Robert Muse, declined comment Monday.

He remains on the government payroll although he asked to retire after House investigators began unraveling his Pfizer financial ties two years ago.

Members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee which launched the probe called Monday for Sunderland’s dismissal from his post at the NIH’s National Institute of Mental Health. Otherwise, Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Mich., said in a statement, “We can only conclude that no one is being held accountable, the system is broken and the public trust has been violated.”

“Will a criminal conviction for conflict of interest be enough to get someone fired from NIH?” said Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich.

NIH officials declined to comment.

The court documents allege Sunderland participated as a government employee “in a particular matter in which, to the defendant’s knowledge, he had a financial interest.”

The conflict began in 1998 when Sunderland was making arrangements for NIH to work with Pfizer on Alzheimer’s research. At the same time, he began negotiations to be a paid consultant on the same project, prosecutors allege.

Sunderland, 55, is to appear Friday for arraignment.

The case is believed to be the first conflict prosecution against a federal scientist since 1992 when NIH researcher Prem Sarin was convicted of embezzling a drug company payment to NIH that was intended to help with AIDS research.

Posted: social/culture, science

Public Service Education Announcement0

(Original found here).

One smart approach to dispell local misinformation.  Unlike public relations this seems to be genuine, not a cover your ass kind of article. This is rare.

Water supply
Salt assertions wrong
Saturday, November 25, 2006 9:17 AM HST

This letter is in response to inaccurate information being released to the public by certain individuals in West Hawaii. The erroneous ad states “Kailua-Kona’s water is 300-600 ppm of salt. Medically safe water is less than 30 ppm.”

First of all, please be assured that we are very concerned about the water quality in Kona, as well as all the other areas of the island that we serve. We are in fact very proud of the level of quality of water that we do provide our customers. We do, however, understand there may be concerns regarding the water quality in a few of the Kona water sources. But at the same time, we want to address and clarify some of the inaccurate information that is being released to the public by outside parties.

What is salt and where does it come from?

“Salt” is a compound that consists of the elements of sodium (Na) and chloride (Cl). It is a common mistake to use the term “salt” when intending to refer only to sodium. Sodium and chloride are common elements found in practically every water supply.

The primary source of sodium and chloride in drinking water is sea water via intrusion. A drinking water source that taps the basal aquifer is extracting fresh water which “floats” over sea water.

How high is the salt concentration in Kailua-Kona’s water?

The highest concentration of sodium on record at the Department is 166 parts per million (ppm; also equal to mg/L) from the primary source feeding the Kailua-Kona area, the Kahaluu Shaft. Chloride levels from the Kahaluu Shaft have averaged 259 ppm over the past five years, ranging from a low of 110 ppm to a high of 450 ppm.

Is the water in Kailua-Kona safe to drink?

Absolutely, the water in Kailua-Kona meets all of the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) health standards for drinking water. If you are an individual on a physician prescribed “no salt” diet, then you should verify your intake of our water with your other dietary intakes. For comparison purposes, regular milk has a sodium concentration of approximately 500 ppm.

At present, EPA has no health standards for sodium and chloride in drinking water. They are considered secondary contaminants for their aesthetic impact to drinking water.

It is important to note that sodium is an essential nutrient for most of us. The Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommends that most healthy adults need to consume at least 500 mg of sodium per day, and that sodium intake be limited to 2,400 mg per day. Therefore, if water contained 166 mg/- of sodium, a person would need to drink 14.46 liters of water per day to reach the 2,400 mg level. This translates to drinking approximately 3.8 gallons of water per day, or 61 eight ounce glasses of water per day.

Is the Department of Water Supply doing anything to improve the water quality in Kailua-Kona?

We are implementing as well as planning various projects to improve the water quality, specifically sodium and chloride levels in the area. One project underway is the replacement of the pump components at the Kahaluu Shaft. This is expected to extract water nearer to the surface which should have lower sodium and chloride levels. The department is also working on projects to allow water from wells mauka of Mamalahoa Highway to reach makai are as.

The department is also pursuing the development of additional wells in the mauka area. These wells tap high-level water that is perched above the basal lens and thus not affected by salt water intrusion.

We also have included sodium and chloride levels in our annual Water Quality Reports that we send to all of our customers. Should anyone want a copy, please contact us at the number listed below, or visit our web page: http://www.hawaiidws.org.

Again, we assure you that we are always concerned about the water quality that we provide, from source to tap. If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact our Water Quality Assurance and Control Branch at 961-8670.

Milton D. Pavao, P.E.
Manager
Dept. Water Supply

Posted: local, environment, science