tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-38643642009-11-27T17:07:54.319-05:00Thoughts About K4DKnowledge and knowledge systems, especially knowledge applied to economic development, plus random thoughts.John Dalynoreply@blogger.comBlogger4447125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-61782583410593413182009-11-27T16:59:00.002-05:002009-11-27T17:07:54.333-05:00Foreign Students in the United StatesSource: "University students abroad: And is there honey still for tea?" The Economist, November 19th 2009 America leads the world in attracting foreign students to its campuses, Britain and Australia are not far behind. Almost 672,000 foreigners were enrolled in American universities in the autumn of 2008, compared with 183,000 in Australian universities and 342,000 in British ones in 2007 (the John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-69422176529467434132009-11-27T16:08:00.003-05:002009-11-27T16:39:32.860-05:00R&D spendingSource: The Economist"Worldwide R&D investment increased by 6.9% in 2008, having grown by 9% in 2007."Lets compare these figures with those of some developing nations, based on a recent UNESCO Institute for Statistics survey:Brazil in 2006 was estimated to spend $17.4 billion, more than Toyota and Microsoft combined, but less than the top three firms in the graph.Colombia spent $532 thousand, John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-15573512700369808562009-11-25T14:33:00.003-05:002009-11-25T15:04:34.774-05:00On TerrorismKnowledge depends on classification. Unless one can define terms accurately, how can one analyze situations or convey information? The horrible event at Fort Hood Texas seems to be raising a debate as to whether it was terrorism. Lets think a bit about that classification.Wikipedia informs me that:Terrorism is the systematic use of terror especially as a means of coercion. At present, there is noJohn Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-90001310392477978192009-11-25T14:12:00.004-05:002009-11-25T14:33:11.192-05:00Thinking about interest ratesInterest rates on credit cards seem very high, and apparently are increasing during this period of economic hardship. Other unregulated sources of short term credit, such as bank overdraft charges and streetfront check cashing services which provide advances on paychecks have even higher rates. It occurs to me to think a little in public about interest rates.Interest has to cover:Transaction John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-37020680461855035802009-11-25T14:07:00.003-05:002009-11-25T14:11:55.150-05:00International Day to Eliminate Violence Against WomenIn December 1999, the General Assembly of the United Nations declared that the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women would be celebrated on November 25th each year. The date was chosen to commemorate the lives of the Mirabal sisters. It originally marked the day that the three Mirabal sisters from the Dominican Republic were violently assassinated in 1960 during the John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-89450928685191683072009-11-24T14:59:00.001-05:002009-11-24T15:02:49.053-05:00Increase in R&D in Developing NationsThe number of researchers in developing countries jumped from 1.8 million to 2.7 million in five years (2002-2007), according to the new data release from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS). The rise in numbers of researchers equates to a 45% increase, from 344 to 499 researchers per million inhabitants in developing countries. During the same period, the number of researchers in John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-9950476189019947352009-11-17T13:01:00.004-05:002009-11-17T13:18:03.339-05:00Potential Future Impact as an Input to Selective Dissemination of InformationMy friend Julianne brought this article to my attention:Neylon C, Wu S (2009) Article-Level Metrics and the Evolution of Scientific Impact. PLoS Biol 7(11): e1000242. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.1000242It is useful, but it seems to confound indices of impact with indices that would be useful for the selective dissemination of information.An index of impact by definition seeks to measure the impact John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-4766124974515067932009-11-16T16:33:00.003-05:002009-11-16T17:57:16.871-05:00Total Factor Productivity is a Key Measurement, But How Do You Increase it?Source: The Economist"The OECD publishes figures for its rich-country members. These show that since 1990, average TFP growth has been remarkably similar in America, Japan, Germany, Britain and France, at around 1% a year. A recent report by Andrew Cates, an economist at UBS, attempts to estimate TFP growth in emerging economies over the past two decades (see chart). He calculates that China has John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-26726300511351809362009-11-16T14:15:00.001-05:002009-11-16T14:17:41.200-05:00Hans Rosling at the State Department in September John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-85010617900750263792009-11-16T11:44:00.002-05:002009-11-16T11:50:37.552-05:00Energy Future UseSource: The EconomistIf you focus on the left hand side of this graph you can see how disproportionate is the use of energy by the less than 5 percent of people who live in the United States (who use most of the energy in North America). If you look at the right hand side of the graph you can see that the problem of greenhouse gas emissions is going to come primarily from other regions in the John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-1426223933418632952009-11-16T10:45:00.004-05:002009-11-16T10:48:56.598-05:00Skytopia Unravels the 3D Mandelbrot FractileJohn Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-67851859333990809462009-11-15T17:02:00.003-05:002009-11-15T17:09:58.724-05:00Source: The New York TimesI quote:lobbyists, employed by Genentech and by two Washington law firms, were remarkably successful in getting the statements printed in the Congressional Record under the names of different members of Congress.Genentech, a subsidiary of the Swiss drug giant Roche, estimates that 42 House members picked up some of its talking points — 22 Republicans and 20 Democrats, anJohn Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-23447367074489920692009-11-15T15:07:00.000-05:002009-11-15T15:09:46.725-05:00300,000 birdsJohn Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-51208455832274527792009-11-14T14:46:00.004-05:002009-11-14T21:48:35.465-05:00Science helps overcome habits of mindElizabeth Culotta has an article titled "On the Origin of Religion" in a recent Science magazine (Science, 6 November 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5954, pp. 784 - 787). I quote extensively from one portion of the article:According to the emerging cognitive model of religion, we are so keenly attuned to the designs and desires of other people that we are hypersensitive to signs of "agents": thinking minds John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-7819729314415489302009-11-14T14:02:00.002-05:002009-11-14T14:23:15.923-05:00"Development and Climate Change": Without CommentSource: Rosina M. Bierbaum and Robert B. Zoellick, Science, 6 November 2009: Vol. 326. no. 5954, p. 771 "No country is immune to climate change, but the developing world will bear the brunt of the effects, including some 75 to 80% of the costs of anticipated damages.* Millions in densely populated coastal areas and in island nations will lose their homes as the sea level rises, while poor people John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-86571639656274769882009-11-12T14:15:00.005-05:002009-11-14T13:55:11.049-05:00What to do about the UNESCO science programI was invited to sit in this week on a portion of the Board on International Scientific Organizations (BISO) meeting at the National Academy of Sciences during the BISO discussion of UNESCO. As I pointed out in a previous posting, the UNESCO natural science program is to receive only about $30 million per year from the regular budge for tthe next couple of years . There is another $15 million John Dalynoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-71940363990257182462009-11-11T14:07:00.002-05:002009-11-11T14:16:34.938-05:00Interesting graph from Global Higher EducationThe applications for graduate study in the United States were way down after 9/11, and apparently did not recover during the Bush administration. Since there had been a long term trend of increasing applications and increasing enrollments, the Bush administration succeeded in creating an inflection point. The foreign graduate students play an important role in improving appreciation for the John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-75415366111418473392009-11-11T13:14:00.002-05:002009-11-11T13:21:45.926-05:00SciDev.Net has a doeier on remote sensing and disastersNumber of victims of natural disasters per 100,000 inhabitants 1976-2005 Source: EM-DAT via SciDev.NetJust last year (2008), natural disasters affected 214 million people, killed more than 235,000 and cost more than US$190 billion.John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-88468770961408266482009-11-11T11:25:00.002-05:002009-11-11T11:47:58.870-05:00Rajiv Shah named Administrator of USAIDPresident Obama on Tuesday named Rajiv Shah, a 36-year-old doctor and agriculture expert, to head the U.S. Agency for International Development, filling what lawmakers and aid experts had called a glaring vacancy on a key foreign-policy front.Read more:Mary Beth Sheridan in The Washington PostNomination by Secretary ClintonAnnouncement by the White HouseAssociated Press coverageRajiv Shah's John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-26833076104948679742009-11-10T16:54:00.001-05:002009-11-10T16:55:58.257-05:00Getting people to climb rather than stand!John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-72491733263648425732009-11-09T07:53:00.002-05:002009-11-09T07:59:52.770-05:00More wired people are more connected!Zunia pointed me to a new study by the Pew Internet and American Life Project. The key conclusions: Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported. We find that the extent of social isolation has hardly changed since 1985, contrary to concerns that the prevalence of severe isolation has tripled since then. Only 6% of the adult population has no one with whom they can discuss John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-67174590497113325522009-11-08T14:53:00.004-05:002009-11-08T15:02:09.893-05:00Global Soil Map Could Transform AgricultureImage source: Soil Maps of AfricaCIAT last August published this article, which began:An ambitious new project to digitally map soils all over the world could transform agriculture. An article in the journal Science, describes how the GlobalSoilMap.net (GSM) initiative could help tackle pressing problems such as food insecurity, climate change and environmental degradation worldwide.The John Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-48757923947859422952009-11-07T17:38:00.002-05:002009-11-07T17:41:48.961-05:00More on Net NeutralityFrom Media Reform Daily: Net Neutrality Required to Spur InnovationThe Internet's amazing success has been based on its openness, ubiquity and nondiscrimination. The fact that no one ever had to ask permission from the network to innovate has led to one of the greatest periods of economic growth in history. So, when the global communications network grows by leaps and bounds and spurs tremendousJohn Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-31856932352972292122009-11-07T17:27:00.002-05:002009-11-07T17:35:32.682-05:00The Story of Math Part ICheck out the website for the series.Comment: The trick is to find math that corresponds (as closely as possible) to reality, and the trap is to assume that reality must correspond to what you perceive as mathematical beauty. JADJohn Dalynoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3864364.post-34958546962549221292009-11-07T16:05:00.002-05:002009-11-07T16:18:39.374-05:00Science Envoys to the Middle EastFormer NAS President Bruce Alberts, former NIH Director Elias Zerhouni, and Nobel prize-winning chemist Ahmed Zewail have been appointed by U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to serve as science envoys to Muslim majority countries. The envoys will travel to North Africa, the Middle East, and South and Southeast Asia "to fulfill President Obama’s mandate to foster scientific and technologicalJohn Dalynoreply@blogger.com0