Tag Archives: field

A Criminologist Takes On the Lead-Crime Hypothesis

by HildegaVigil Posted on April 21, 2014

Mother Jones

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Dominic Casciani of the BBC has a good piece up today about the hypothesis linking lead exposure in small children to violent crime rates later in life. Here’s my favorite part:

So why isn’t this theory universally accepted?

Well, it remains a theory because nobody could ever deliberately poison thousands of children to see whether they became criminals later in life. Lead theorists says that doesn’t matter because the big problem is mainstream criminologists and policymakers who can’t think outside the box.

But Roger Matthews, professor of criminology at the University of Kent, rejects that. He says biological criminologists completely miss the point. “I don’t see the link,” he says. “If this causes some sort of effect, why should those effects be criminal?

“The things that push people into crime are very different kinds of phenomena, not in the nature of their brain tissue. The problem about the theory is that a lot of these researchers are not remotely interested or cued into the kinds of things in the mainstream.

“There has been a long history of people trying to link biology to crime — that some people have their eyes too close together, or an extra chromosome, or whatever. This stuff gets disproved and disproved. But it keeps popping up. It’s like a bad penny.”

If Matthews didn’t exist, someone would have to invent him. He plays the role of closed-minded scientist to perfection here. He obviously hasn’t read any of the literature about lead and crime; doesn’t care about the evidence; and is interested only in sociological explanations of crime because he’s ideologically committed to a particular sociological school of criminology. Beyond that, he apparently figures that because phrenology got debunked a century ago, there’s no real point in reading up on anything more recent in the field of neuroscience. All this despite the fact that mainstream criminology is famously unable to reasonably account for either the epic crime wave of the 60s through the 80s or the equally epic decline since then.

In any case, if anyone really wants to know why the lead theory isn’t universally accepted, the answer is easy: it’s not universally accepted because it’s new and unproven. Nor does it pretend to be a monocausal explanation for all crime. However, there’s pretty good reason to think that neurology might indeed mediate violent behavior, and there’s pretty good reason to think that massive postwar exposure to lead may have been a very particular neurological agent mediating a large rise in violent crime starting in the mid-60s. The evidence isn’t bulletproof, but it’s pretty strong. It deserves more than cavalier dismissal.

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A Criminologist Takes On the Lead-Crime Hypothesis

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Here’s Who the Money Men Are Backing So Far in the Republican Field

by fuirpycf Posted on February 28, 2014

Mother Jones

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Wesley Lowery takes a look today at who all of Mitt Romney’s donors are supporting these days. As Lowery says, this shouldn’t really be taken as a look at “Romney money.” It’s more a look at who’s getting some love from wealthy mainstream Republicans. The answer, it turns out, is unsurprising:

Jeb Bush

Scott Walker

Paul Ryan

This makes sense to me. If I had to pick a top three, this would be it, with the order depending a lot on who decides to get serious about running. I think Paul Ryan would be very formidable, with strong appeal to both tea party types and mainstream types, but it’s unclear if he has any interest in 2016. Jeb Bush is a classic candidate who, again, has some appeal in both camps, but has to decide if he thinks he can overcome the obvious baggage of being a Bush. Scott Walker has to win reelection this year—and show that he can do it handily—before he takes any further steps.

As for the rest of the field, I continue to think that (a) Chris Christie is toast, (b) Rand Paul is a vanity candidate, and (c) the rest of them are going to tear each other limb from limb fighting for the title of king of the wingnuts. Naturally I reserve the right to change my mind later and pretend that I never wrote this.

STANDARD CAVEAT: Yes, it’s ridiculous to be talking about this so far ahead of the election. I apologize. But my excuse is that this is invisible primary stuff, and that really does matter this far out. Besides, talking about the “invisible primary” marks you as a sophisticate, and I wanted an opportunity to do that.

Here’s Who the Money Men Are Backing So Far in the Republican Field

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3 Badass Olympic Athletes Go for the Gold

by Cindy Holman Posted on February 1, 2014

Mother Jones

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As the world gears up for the Sochi Games, we reached out to these three amazing women to talk about everything from their first runs to high-speed crashes to race and gender politics. The opening ceremonies take place on Friday, February 7. Here’s the complete schedule of events.

Erich Schlegel/Zuma

Jazmine Fenlator, 28, bobsled

A lot of people think I’m on the Jamaican bobsled team. It’s a question every black bobsledder gets, even if you’re wearing a USA shirt. My dad used to love watching Cool Runnings with me. When I told him I got an invite to try out for the US bobsled team, his first words were: “Sanka! You dead, mon? Let me kiss your lucky egg!” Growing up biracial, I never really thought about things: I mean, you have some acceptance issues, but I grew up in a predominately white town. The side of my family I’m closest with is all white, so it’s not necessarily a topic of conversation. You get a lot of naive questions, but I welcome those. The more people I can teach and tell about bobsled, the more cheers we’ll have in Sochi. Not many people can relate to bobsled, and it’s hard to spectate. It’s a grueling, blue-collar sport. To support my bobsled habit, I’ve sometimes worked three jobs in the offseason. We do all the work on our sleds. We carry our sleds. There’s no caddy, there’s no pit crew. We handle all those things on top of trying to be the best athletes within our sport in the world.

Click here to read our extended interview with Fenlator. Women’s “bobsleigh” heats begin on February 18.

Erich Schlegel/Zuma

Katie Uhlaender, 29, skeleton

I always challenged men in foot races or whatever as a kid growing up, because it was a way of challenging myself—but you have to accept that men are born with testosterone. You can beat them for so long, but eventually they’re gonna catch up. There is a double standard: My father was a major league baseball player, and I grew up thinking I could have the same attitude on the field that he did. When I did that in real life, people thought I was a total bi-atch. Laughs. Women are held to a different standard, but there’s a reason. Because we are mothers, we have a different role in society. There are certain benefits we get being women—and we deserve them! But don’t take advantage of them. You have to walk the line and show that you have self-worth. If you lose yourself, then no one’s going to respect you. Miley Cyrus, the girl crossed the line! You can be sexy without licking a hammer.

Click here to read our extended interview with Uhlaender. Women’s skeleton commences on February 13.

Mitchell Haaseth/NBC

Maddie Bowman, 20, halfpipe freeskiing

Some people don’t understand that you can ski in the halfpipe. They think it’s cool and kinda crazy. It’s like a polar bear-grizzly bear mix—a pizzly. It’s a new species and it’s super badass! I was a racer before, but it felt a little too serious. My parents were a little resistant, but then they skied with us and realized we think about things before we jump off of stuff. They definitely get nervous. You can’t have my mom video a run at all because it’s so shaky—she always misses it! The first time I ever did a “left nine”—it’s two and a half spins, and I’m spinning down the wall, rotating to the left—I was so excited I completely forgot the rest of my run; I just sort of made it up. Most skiers, we can think pretty quickly on our feet—or off our feet if we’re falling. We like to push the limits, but when the limits push back, it’s always a rude awakening. Concussions and injuries are something everyone worries about. But you can’t be out there worrying about getting hurt, or else you’re more likely to get hurt. If I got hurt, knock on wood, I don’t know what I would do. Maybe I’d actually be a real college student.

Click here to read more about Bowman. The women’s halfpipe competition is on February 20.

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3 Badass Olympic Athletes Go for the Gold

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Bees exposed to neonic pesticides suck at gathering pollen

by Hermine73K Posted on January 31, 2014

Bees exposed to neonic pesticides suck at gathering pollen

By John Upton

Johan J.Ingles-Le Nobel

First plant STDs, and now this? Bees these days just can’t catch a break: New research shows that bumblebees that have been exposed to neonic pesticides are hopeless when it comes to gathering food.

British scientists reared commercial bumblebees for two weeks on sugar and pollen laced with imidacloprid, which is one of the world’s most commonly used insecticides. The pesticide concentration mimicked that found in farmed oil seed rape, which is grown for biofuel, vegetable oil, and animal feed. Similar colonies were fed pesticide-free sugar and pollen.

After the colonies were released into Scottish gardens to forage for their own food, the scientists monitored how much pollen and nectar the bees gathered and brought back to their hives. When it came to pollen, which is the main part of the bees’ diet, the differences between the pesticide-fed bees and those from control hives was striking. From the paper, published this month in the journal Ecotoxicology:

Whilst the nectar foraging efficiency of bees treated with imidacloprid was not significantly different than that of control bees, treated bees brought back pollen less often than control bees (40 % of trips vs 63 % trips, respectively) and, where pollen was collected, treated bees brought back 31 % less pollen per hour than controls.

This study demonstrates that field-realistic doses of these pesticides substantially impacts on foraging ability of bumblebee workers when collecting pollen. …

Pollen is the main protein source for bumblebees and is particularly important for the rearing of young to replace older workers. It has been suggested that foraging for pollen is more challenging than foraging for nectar, and it is usually restricted to dry, sunny weather, whereas nectar can be collected in most conditions except heavy rain, so that pollen rather than nectar shortages are more likely to limit colony success

The research was conducted on buff-tailed bumblebees — not on the more familiar honeybees. It’s “quite likely” that neonics have similar effects on the pollen-gathering ability of honeybees, researcher Dave Goulson told Grist. “But, obviously, we can’t say for sure.”

Previous research has shown that honeybee behavior is also affected by neonics — and scientists fear that those behavioral changes could be linked to the growing problem of colony collapse disorder. “Nonlethal exposure of honey bees to thiamethoxam (neonicotinoid systemic pesticide) causes high mortality due to homing failure at levels that could put a colony at risk of collapse,” French scientists wrote in a paper published in the journal Science.

Source
Field realistic doses of pesticide imidacloprid reduce bumblebee pollen foraging efficiency, Exotoxicology
A Common Pesticide Decreases Foraging Success and Survival in Honey Bees, Science

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Bees exposed to neonic pesticides suck at gathering pollen

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 4, 2013

by ClarenceWiederm Posted on December 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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Pfc. Christina Fuentes Montenegro and other Marines from Delta Company, Infantry Training Battalion, School of Infantry-East, receive final instructions prior to assaulting an objective during the Infantry Integrated Field Training Exercise aboard Camp Geiger, N.C., Nov 15, 2013. Montenegro is one of three female Marines to be the first women to graduate infantry training with the battalion. Delta Company is the first company at ITB with female students as part of a measured, deliberate and responsible collection of data on the performance of female Marines when executing existing infantry tasks and training events, the Marine Corps is soliciting entry-level female Marine volunteers to attend the eight week basic infantryman and infantry rifleman training courses at ITB. U. S. Marine Corps photo by Chief Warrant Officer 2 Paul S. Mancuso/Released.

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We’re Still at War: Photo of the Day for December 4, 2013

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Why Some Meteorologists Still Deny Global Warming

by NestorHPOM Posted on December 4, 2013

Mother Jones

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Just before Thanksgiving, many conservatives seized on a new study examining the climate views of members of the American Meteorological Society. It’s no secret that there’s a schism between climate scientists and weather forecasters over climate change, and the study captured this, to skeptics’ delight. The fact that a sizable percentage of AMS members disagree with mainstream climate science represented “the latest in a long line of evidence indicating the often asserted global warming consensus does not exist,” according to Forbes blogger and Heartland Institute fellow James Taylor.

Yet a closer look at the study—conducted by researchers at George Mason University, Yale, and the AMS itself—shows that its main punch line is quite different. The research was chiefly focused on trying to understand why the meteorological community as a whole (the AMS includes climate scientists, academic meteorologists, forecast meteorologists, and general atmospheric scientists, among others) features such disparate views on global warming. And one of its principal findings is that AMS members who publish less peer-reviewed climate research, or less peer-reviewed research in general, are more likely to be climate skeptics.

Far from undermining the scientific consensus on climate change, then, the new study could be said to strengthen it, by defining who’s a relevant expert in the first place. “You listen to the scientists who really know the field in question,” says George Mason’s Neil Stenhouse, a Ph.D. student and the study’s lead author. “And previous studies show that if you ask the scientists who really know climate change, there is high consensus on human causation.”

Similarly, after sorting AMS members by their climate expertise as well as their scientific publishing record, Stenhouse’s study found that this seemed to have a big impact on their views about climate change. “93% of actively publishing climate scientists indicated they are convinced that humans have contributed to global warming,” noted the study’s authors. By contrast, among “nonpublishing” climate scientists, only 65 percent believed that humans have contributed to global warming.

Something similar occurred with a different set of experts within AMS: meteorologists and atmospheric scientists. Those who published a lot on climate change, or a lot on other aspects of meteorological science, generally showed much higher conviction that humans are contributing to global warming (79 percent and 78 percent, respectively) than the “nonpublishing” experts (59 percent).

And there’s more bad news for skeptics who want to cite this AMS survey to bolster their case. You see, the study also showed that conservative political ideology is a big factor behind the denial of climate science by some meteorologists—ideology was a consistently bigger influence on meteorologists’ views, in fact, than their level of scientific expertise. This finding of a major role for ideology, write the researchers, “goes against the idea of scientists’ opinions being entirely based on objective analysis of the evidence.”

The irony, then, is considerable. Even as climate skeptics cite the new AMS survey to claim there’s no scientific consensus on climate change, the survey itself calls into question whether disagreement among meteorologists has much to do with purely scientific considerations in the first place.

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Why Some Meteorologists Still Deny Global Warming

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How one small community is going big on solar

by JoellenPr Posted on November 21, 2013

How one small community is going big on solar

By John Upton

Shutterstock

A rural cooperative is about to cook up Iowa’s biggest solar array — in the aptly named community of Frytown.

The local board of supervisors recently rezoned nine acres of land owned by the Farmers Electric Co-op, which is planning to build a 500-kilowatt array at the site. Co-op officials say construction could be finished by March, meeting 15 percent of the power needs of its 600 members in eastern Iowa.

“It keeps our money local,” said Warren McKenna, the co-op’s general manager, according to The Daily Iowan. “We’re not sending our money up to the larger companies. [It] saves everybody money.” Johnson County planning and zoning official RJ Moore said the solar farm would be the only one of its kind in the state.

Pushing the renewables envelope isn’t new for the co-op, as The Iowa City Press-Citizen reports:

Founded in 1916, Farmers Electric Co-op has been investing in solar power since 2008 when the cooperative installed solar arrays at Township Elementary and Iowa Mennonite School for renewable energy and educational opportunities. A third array is planned for Pathway Christian School near Kalona as well.

Next came the solar garden, which allows residents to purchase solar panels — at a reduced cost — in the cooperative’s growing solar array behind the company’s main building. The value of power generated on the panels is then deducted from the customer’s electric bill.

Maria Urice, a consultant who helps coordinate and market the cooperative’s renewable and energy efficiency efforts, said the solar garden was an immediate success.

“We offered 20 (panels) and they were sold out in less than a week,” she said. “We ended up tripling the offer.”

Another initiative allows residents to purchase and install site arrays near their businesses, farms or homes. Again, the power generated replaces electricity used on the property.

This isn’t the only happy energy news in the area. Facebook recently announced that a data center being built in Altoona, Iowa, 100 miles west of Frytown, will be powered entirely with wind energy.

Source
Johnson County’s Field of Beams, Iowa City Press-Citizen
Planned solar farm moves forward with sustainability plans, Daily Iowan

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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How one small community is going big on solar

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The Star Tau Boo Flips Its Magnetic Field, Too

by Christopherd3o Posted on August 28, 2013

The Sun does a lot of crazy things: it spawns roiling loops of superheated plasma that stretch for thousands of miles, it blows huge chunks of itself off into space and, every 11 years or so, its insides do a little flip. The solar magnetic field turns on its head, and the north pole becomes the south, and the south, the north. The sun is actually gearing up for one of these flips, says NASA, and it should take place any time now.

It’s nice to see, every now and again, some of these behaviors elsewhere in the universe—to know that the sun might be strange, but not too strange. For the first time, says the American Museum of Natural History, scientists reported seeing another start go through a similar magnetic field flip.

As described in a new study, scientists have been watching as a star, known as Tau Boötis (and nicknamed Tau Boo), flipped its magnetic field back and forth. The behavior isn’t exactly the same as the Sun’s, though. Where the Sun takes 22 years to go through a full cycle, flipping and flipping back, Tau Boötis does it in just two.

It’s still mostly a bunch of conjecture, but the scientists in their study have already suggested a way that they think Tau Boötis’ flip is different than the Sun’s, other than the rapid clip. Tau Boötis has a huge planet orbiting right up close. The scientists think that this huge planet, much like Jupiter but with an orbit that takes just 3.3 days, may be affecting the star’s magnetic field. Astronomy explains:

For Tau Boo, tidal interactions between the star and the planet might be an important factor in accelerating the cycle, but we can’t be sure of the cause,” said Fares.

Tau Boo spins on its axis once every 3.3 days — the same amount of time as it takes the hot Jupiter to complete one orbit. One hypothesis for Tau Boo’s rapid cycle is that the planet makes it rotate faster than usual, and this is affecting the generation of the magnetic field.

“There are still some big questions about what’s causing Tau Boo’s rapid magnetic cycle,” said Fares. “From our survey, we can say that each planetary system is particular, that interactions affect stars and planets differently, and that they depend on the masses, distance, and other properties.”

We still don’t really know why the Sun’s magnetic field flips like this in the first place. So, having a second example of stellar magnetic field flipping to compare the sun’s behavior against should be extremely helpful to scientists working to understand this phenomenon.

E-Squared – Pam Grout

by Myrna Posted on June 22, 2013

READ GREEN WITH E-BOOKS

E-Squared

Nine Do-It-Yourself Energy Experiments That Prove Your Thoughts Create Your Reality

Pam Grout

Genre: Self-Improvement

Price: $3.99

Publish Date: January 28, 2013

Publisher: Hay House

Seller: Hay House, Inc.

E-Squared could best be described as a lab manual with simple experiments that prove reality is malleable, consciousness trumps matter, and you shape your life with your mind. Yes, you read that right. It says prove. The nine experiments, each of which can be conducted with absolutely no money and very little time expenditure, demonstrate that spiritual principles are as dependable as gravity, as consistent as Newton’s laws of motion. Rather than take it on faith, E-Squared invites you to prove the following principles: There is an invisible energy force or field of infinite possibilities. You impact the field and draw from it according to your beliefs and expectations. Your connection to the field provides accurate and unlimited guidance. The universe is limitless, abundant, and strangely accommodating.

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E-Squared – Pam Grout

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What exactly is DDGS?

by Posted on June 12, 2013

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What exactly is DDGS?

Posted 12 June 2013 in

National

Last week, US Department of Agriculture Secretary Vilsack spoke at the National Press Club calling for farmers to respond to the impacts of climate change and start adapting now. Across the country rising temperatures, crippling droughts and severe storms are changing American agriculture. Farmers are experiencing shortened growing seasons and prohibitive environmental factors. Without a strategy to both mitigate this disaster and adapt to ever changing conditions, the American agriculture industry will suffer.

Luckily, America’s farmers are on the case. As we’ve documented previously, the ingenuity and innovation of our agriculture industry has produced impressive results when it comes to sustainability. According to a report by Field to Market, over the course of 30 years corn production has doubled while land use has actually decreased by a third and water use by one-half.

The Renewable Fuel Standard has encouraged another kind of efficiency. Dried distiller grains or DDGS, is a co-product of ethanol production that serves as a nutritious, low-cost feed for livestock. In fact, over one-third of the corn used in ethanol production returns to the food system in the form of DDGS. Last year more than 39 million metric tons of animal feed was produced at ethanol plants and more than half of that feed was used in the beef industry, bringing down the cost to both the farmer and consumer.

The impact of extreme weather on the nation’s agricultural industry could be catastrophic without significant effort from the community. The Renewable Fuel Standard is the one policy in the United States that encourages domestically-produced alternatives to oil to help mitigate the disasters of fossil fueled climate change. It also benefits the agricultural community by promoting sustainable practices and lowering costs.

The American farmer is resilient, but Secretary Vilsack is right; we need to be ahead of the game, armed with policies like the RFS to allow for continued mitigation, adaptation and sustainable farming practices.

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What exactly is DDGS?

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A Criminologist Takes On the Lead-Crime Hypothesis

Here’s Who the Money Men Are Backing So Far in the Republican Field