Sunday, May 09, 2010
Saturday, May 08, 2010
U.S. retirement benefits to be cut?
U.S. retirement benefits to be cut?
Peter Peterson and the campaign against Social Security and Medicare, Pt. 1
Axis of Awesome - 4 Four Chord Song (with song titles)
Australian comedy group 'Axis Of Awesome' perform a sketch from the 2009 Melbourne International Comedy Festival. Footage courtesy of Network Ten Australia.
See http://www.axisofawesome.net/ for more details of the comedy trio including Jordan Raskopoulos, Lee Naimo, & Benny Davis.
Friday, May 07, 2010
Lies, damned lies and statistics (about TEDTalks)
If you go on the TED website, you can currently find there over a full week of TED Talk videos, over 1.3 million words of transcripts and millions of user ratings. And that's a huge amount of data. And it got me wondering: If you took all this data and put it through statistical analysis, could you reverse engineer a TED Talk? Could you create the ultimate TED Talk? (Applause) And also, could you create the worst possible TED Talk that they would still let you get away with?
To find this out, I looked at three things. I looked at the topic that you should choose. I looked at how you should deliver it and the visuals onstage. Now, with the topic -- there's a whole range of topics you can choose, but you should choose wisely, because your topic strongly correlates with how users will react to your Talk. Now, to make this more concrete, let's look at a list of top ten words that statistically stick out in the most favorite TED Talks and in the least favorite TED Talks. So if you came here to talk about how French coffee will spread happiness in our brains, that's a go. (Applause) Whereas, if you wanted to talk about your project involving oxygen, girls, aircraft -- actually, I would like to hear that talk, but statistics say it's not so good. Oh, well. If you generalize this, the most favorite TED Talks are those that feature topics we can connect with, both easily and deeply, such as happiness, our own body, food, emotions. And the more technical topics, such as architecture, materials and, strangely enough, men, those are not good topics to talk about.
How should you deliver your Talk? TED is famous for keeping a very sharp eye on the clock, so they're going to hate me for revealing this, because, actually, you should talk as long as they will let you, because the most favorite TED Talks are, on average, over 50 percent longer than the least favorite ones. And this holds true for all ranking lists on TED.com except if you want to have a Talk that's beautiful, inspiring or funny. Then, you should be brief. But other than that, talk until they drag you off the stage.
(Laughter)
Now, while -- (Applause) While you're pushing the clock, there's a few rules to obey. I found these rules out by comparing the statistics of four-word phrases that appear more often in the most favorite TED Talks, as opposed to the least favorite TED Talks. I'll give you three examples. First of all, I must, as a speaker, provide a service to the audience and talk about what I will give you, instead of saying what I can't have. Secondly, it's imperative that you do not cite the New York Times. (Laughter) And finally, it's okay for the speaker -- that's the good news -- to fake intellectual capacity. If I don't understand something, I can just say, "et cetera, et cetera." You'll all stay with me. It's perfectly fine. (Applause)
Now, let's go to the visuals. The most obvious visual thing onstage is the speaker. And analysis shows, if you want to be among the most favorite TED speakers, you should let your hair grow a little bit longer than average, make sure you wear your glasses and be slightly more dressed-up than the average TED speaker. Slides are okay, though you might consider going for props. And now the most important thing, that is the mood onstage. Color plays plays a very important role. Color closely correlates with the ratings that Talks get on the website. (Applause) For example, fascinating Talks contain a statistically high amount of exactly this blue color, much more than the average TED Talk. Ingenious, much more this green color, et cetera, et cetera. (Applause) Now, personally, I think I'm not the first one who has done this analysis, but I'll leave this to your good judgment.
So, now it's time to put it all together and design the ultimate TED Talk. Now, since this is TED Active, and I learned from my analysis that I should actually give you something, I will not impose the ultimate or worst TED Talk on you, but rather give you a tool to create your own. And I call this tool the TED Pad. (Laughter) And the TED Pad is a matrix of 100 specifically selected, highly curated sentences that you can easily piece together to get your own TED Talk. You only have to make one decision and that is: Are you going to use the white version for very good TED Talks, about creativity, human genius? Or are you going to go with a black version, which will allow you to create really bad TED Talks, mostly about blogs, politics and stuff? So, download it, and have fun with it.
Now I hope you enjoy the session. I hope you enjoy designing your own ultimate and worst possible TED Talks. And I hope some of you will be inspired for next year to create this, which I really want to see.
Thank you very much.
(Applause)
Edith Widder: Glowing life in an underwater world
About this talk
Some 80 to 90 percent of undersea creatures make light -- and we know very little about how or why. Bioluminescence expert Edith Widder explores this glowing, sparkling, luminous world, sharing glorious images and insight into the unseen depths (and brights) of the ocean.
About Edith Widder
Edith Widder combines her expertise in research and technological innovation with a commitment to stopping and reversing the degradation of our marine environment
In the spirit of Jacques Cousteau, who said, "People protect what they love," I want to share with you today what I love most in the ocean, and that's the incredible number and variety of animals in it that make light.
My addiction began with this strange looking diving suit called Wasp. That's not an acronym -- just somebody thought it looked like the insect. It was actually developed for use by the offshore oil industry for diving on oil rigs down to a depth of 2,000 feet. Right after I completed my Ph.D., I was lucky enough to be included with a group of scientists that were using it for the first time as a tool for ocean exploration. We trained in a tank in Port Hueneme. And then my first open ocean dive was in Santa Barbara Channel. It was an evening dive. I went down to a depth of 880 feet and turned out the lights. And the reason I turned out the lights is because I knew I would see this phenomenon of animals making light called bioluminescence. But I was totally unprepared for how much there was and how spectacular it was. I saw chains of jellyfish called siphonophores that were longer than this room pumping out so much light that I could read the dials and gauges inside the suit without a flashlight, and puffs and billows of what looked like luminous blue smoke and explosions of sparks that would swirl up out of the thrusters just like when you throw a log on a campfire and the embers swirl up off the campfire, but these were icy, blue embers. It was breathtaking.
Now, usually if people are familiar with bioluminescence at all, it's these guys, it's fireflies. And there are a few other land-dwellers that can make light, some insects, earthworms, fungi. But in general, on land, it's really rare. In the ocean, it's the rule, rather than the exception. If I go out in the open ocean environment, virtually anywhere in the world, and I drag a net from 3,000 to the surface, most of the animals, in fact, in many places, 80 to 90 percent of the animals I bring up in that net, make light. This makes for some pretty spectacular light shows.
Now I want to share with you a little video that I shot from a submersible. I first developed this technique working from a little single-person submersible called Deep Rover and then adapted it for use on the Johnson Sea-Link, which you see here. So, mounted in front of the observation sphere there's a a three foot diameter hoop with a screen stretched across it. And inside the sphere with me is an intensified camera that's about as sensitive as a fully dark-adapted human eye, albeit a little fuzzy. So you turn on the camera, turn out the lights. That sparkle you're seeing is not luminescence; that's just electronic noise on these intensified cameras. You don't see luminescence until the submersible begins to move forward through the water, but as it does, animals bumping into the screen are stimulated to bioluminesc.
Now, when I was first doing this, all I was trying to do was count the number of sources. I knew my forward speed, I knew the area. So I could figure out how many hundreds of sources there were per cubic meter. But I started to realize that I could actually identify animals by the type of flashes they produced. And so, here in the Gulf of Maine at 740 feet, I can name pretty much everything you're seeing there to the species level, like those big explosions, sparks, are from a little comb-jelly. And there's krill and other kinds of crustaceans, and jellyfish. There was one of those comb-jellies. And so I've worked with computer image analysis engineers to develop automatic recognition systems that can identify these animals and then extract the X,Y,Z coordinate of the initial impact point And we can then do the kinds of things that ecologists do on land and do nearest neighbor distances.
But you don't always have to go down to the depths of the ocean to see a light show like this. You can actually see it in surface waters. This is a video shot by Doctor Mike Latz at Scripps Institution of a dolphin swimming through bioluminescent plankton. And this isn't someplace exotic like one of the bioluminescent bays in Puerto Rico, this was actually shot in San Diego Harbor. And sometimes you can see it even closer than that because the heads on ships -- that's toilets, for any land lovers that are listening -- are flushed with unfiltered seawater that often have bioluminescent plankton in it, so if you stagger into the head late at night, and you're so toilet-hugging sick that you forget to turn on the light, you may think that you're having a religious experience.
So, how does a living creature make light? Well, that was the question, 19th century, French physiologist Raphael Dubois asked about this bioluminescent clam. He ground it up and he managed to get out a couple of chemicals, one, the enzyme he called luciferase, the substrate, he called luciferin after Lucifer the Light Bearer. That terminology has stuck, but it doesn't actually refer to specific chemicals because these chemicals come in a lot of different shapes and forms. In fact, most of the people studying bioluminescence today are focused on the chemistry because these chemicals have proved so incredibly valuable for developing antibacterial agents, cancer fighting drugs, testing for presence of life on Mars, detecting pollutants in our waters, which is how we use it at ORCA. In 2008, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for work done on a molecule called green florescent protein, that was isolated from the bioluminescent chemistry of a jellyfish, and it's been equated to the invention of the microscope, in terms of the impact that it has had on cell biology and genetic engineering.
Another thing all these molecules are telling us is, apparently, bioluminescence has evolved at least, 40 times, maybe as many as 50 separate times in evolutionary history, which is a clear indication of how spectacularly important this trait is for survival. So, what is it about bioluminescence that's so important to so many animals? Well, for animals that are trying to avoid predators by staying in the darkness, light can still be very useful for the three basic things animals have to do to survive, and that's find food, attract a mate and avoid being eaten. So, for example, this fish has a built-in headlight behind its eye that it can use for finding food or attracting a mate. And then when it's not using it, it actually can roll it down in its head just like the headlights on your Lamborghini. This fish actually has high-beams.
And this fish, which is one of my favorites, has three headlights on each side of its head. Now, this one is blue, and that's the color of most bioluminescence in the ocean because evolution has selected for the color that travels farthest through seawater in order to optimize communication. So, most animals make blue light, and most animals can only see blue light, but this fish is a really fascinating exception because it has two red light organs. And I have no idea why there's two, and that's something I want to solve some day. So, not only can it see blue light, but it can see red light. So it uses its red bioluminescence like a sniper's scope to be able to sneak up on animals that are blind to red light and will be able to see them without being seen. It's also got a little chin barble here with a blue luminescent lure on it that it can use to attract prey from a long way off. And a lot of animals will use their bioluminescence as a lure.
This is another one of my favorite fish. This is a viperfish, and it's got a lure on the end of a long fishing rod that it arches in front of the toothy jaw that gives the viperfish its name. The teeth on this fish are so long that if they closed inside the mouth of the fish, it would actually impale its own brain. So instead, it slides in grooves on the outside of the head. This is a Christmas tree of a fish. everything on this fish lights up. It's not just that lure; it's got built in flashlight. It's got these jewel-like light organs on its belly that it uses for a type of camouflage that obliterates its shadow, so, when it's swimming around and there's a predator looking up from below, it makes itself disappear. It's got light organs in the mouth. It's got light organs in every single scale, in the fins, in a mucus layer on the back and in the belly, all used for different things, some of which we know about, some of which we don't.
And we know a little bit more about bioluminescence thanks to Pixar, and I'm very grateful to Pixar for sharing my favorite topic with so many people. I do wish, with their budget, that they might have spent just a tiny bit more money to pay a consulting fee to some poor, starving graduate student, who could have told them that those are the eyes of a fish that's been preserved in formalin. These are the eyes of a living angler fish. So, she's got a lure that she sticks out in front of this living mousetrap of needle-sharp teeth, in order to attract in some unsuspecting prey. And this one has a lure with all kinds of interesting threads coming off it.
Now we used to think that the different shape of the lure was to attract different types of prey, but then stomach content analysis on these fish done by scientists, or more likely their graduate students, have revealed that they all eat pretty much the same thing. So, now we believe that the different shape of the lure is how the male recognizes the female in the angler fish world, because many of these males are what are known as dwarf males. This little guy has no visible means of self-support. He has no lure for attracting food and no teeth for eating it when it gets there. His only hope for existence on this planet is as a gigolo. He's got to find himself a babe and then he's got to latch on for life. So this little guy has found himself this babe, and you will note, that he's had the good sense to attach himself in a way that he doesn't actually have to look at her. (Laughter) But her still knows a good thing when he sees it, and so he seals the relationship with an eternal kiss. His flesh fuses with her flesh, her bloodstream grows into his body, and he becomes nothing more than a little sperm sac. (Laughter) Well, this is a deep-sea version of women's lib. She always knows where he is, and she doesn't have to be monogamous, because some of these females come up with multiple males attached.
So they can use it for finding food, for attracting mates. They use it a lot for defense, many different ways. A lot of them can release their luciferin, their luferase in the water just like a squid or an octopus will release an ink cloud. This shrimp is actually spewing light out of its mouth like a fire breathing dragon in order to blind or distract this viperfish so that the shrimp can swim away into the darkness. And there's a lot of different animals that can do this. There's jellyfish, there's squid, there's a whole lot of different crustaceans.
There's even fish that can do this. This fish is called the shining tubeshoulder because it actually has a tube on its shoulder that can squirt out light. And I was luck enough to capture one of these when we were on a trawling expedition off the northwest coast of Africa for "Blue Planet," for the deep portion of "Blue Planet." And we were using a special trawling net that we were able to bring these animals up alive. So we captured one of these, and I brought it into the lab. So I'm holding it, and I'm about to touch that tube on its shoulder, and when I do, you'll see bioluminescence coming out. But to me, what's shocking is not just the amount of light, but the fact that it's not just luciferin and luciferates. For this fish, it's actually whole cells with nuclei and membranes. It's, energetically, very costly for this fish to do this, and we have no idea why it does it. Another one of these great mysteries that needs to be solved.
Now, another form of defense is something called a burglar alarm. Same reason you have a burglar alarm on your car. The honking horn and flashing lights are meant to attract the attention of, hopefully the police that will come and take the burglar away. When an animal's caught in the clutches of a predator, its only hope for escape may be to attract the attention of something bigger and nastier, that will attack their attacker, thereby affording them a chance for escape. This jellyfish, for example, has a spectacular bioluminescent display. This is us chasing it in the submersible. That's not luminescence, that's reflected light from the gonads. We capture it in a very special device on the front of the submersible that allows us to bring it up in really pristine condition, bring it into the lab on the ship. And then to generate the display your about to see all I did was touch it once per second on its nerve ring with a sharp pick that's like the sharp tooth of a fish. And once this display gets going, I'm not touching it anymore. This is an unbelievably light show. It's this pinwheel of light. And I've done calculations that show that this could be see from as much as 300 feet away by a predator. And I thought, you know, that might actually make a pretty good lure. Because, one of the things that's frustrated me as a deep-sea explorer is how many animals there probably are in the ocean that we know nothing about because of the way we explore the ocean.
The primary way that we know about what lives in the ocean, is we go out and drag nets behind ships. And I defy you to name any other branch of science that still depends on hundreds of year-old technology. The other primary way is we go down with submersibles and remote-operated vehicles. I've made hundreds of dives in submersibles. When I'm sitting in a submersible though, I know that I'm not unobtrusive at all. I've got bright lights and noisy thrusters. Any animal with any sense is going to be long gone. So, I've wanted for a long time to figure out a different way to explore.
And so, sometime ago, I got this idea for a camera system. It's not exactly rocket science. We call this thing Eye-in-the-Sea. And, scientists have done this on land for years, we just use a color that the animals can't see, and then a camera that can see that color. You can't use infrared in the sea. We used far-red light, but even that's a problem because it gets absorbed so quickly. Made an intensified camera, wanted to make this electronic jellyfish. Thing is, in science, you have to tell the funding agencies what you're going to discover before they'll give you the money. And I didn't know what I was going to discover, so I couldn't get the funding for this. So I kluged this together, I got the Harvey Mudd Engineering Clinic to actually do it as an undergraduate student project initially, and then I kluged funding from a whole bunch of different sources.
Monterey Bay Aquarium and Research Institute gave me time with their R.O.V. so that I could test it and we could figure out, you know, for example, which colors of red light we had to use so that we could see the animals, but they couldn't see us, get the electronic jellyfish working. And you can see just what a shoestring operation this really was because, when I cast these 16 blue LEDs in epoxy -- and you can see in the epoxy mold we used the word Ziploc is still visible. Needless to say, when it's kluged together like this, there were a lot of trials and tribulations getting this working. But there came a moment when it all came together, and everything worked, and, remarkably, that moment got caught on film by photographer Mark Richards, who happened to be there at the precise moment that we discovered that it all came together. That's me on the left, my graduate student at the time, Erica Raymond, and Lee Fry, who was the engineer on the project. And we this photograph posted in our lab in a place of honor with the caption: "Engineer satisfying two women at once." And we were very, very happy.
So now we had a system that we could actually take to some place that was kind of like an oasis on the bottom off the ocean that might be patrolled by large predators. And so, the place that we took it to was this place called a brine pool which is in the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico. It's a magical place. And I know this footage isn't going to look like anything to you -- we had a crummy camera at the time -- but I was ecstatic. We're at the edge of the brine pool. there's a fish that's swimming towards the camera. It's clearly undisturbed by us. And I had my window into the deep see. I, for the first time, could see what animals were doing down there when we weren't down there disturbing them in some way. Four hours into the deployment, we had programmed the electronic jellyfish to come on for the first time. 86 seconds after it went into its pinwheel display, we recorded this. This is a squid, over six feet long, that is so new to science, it cannot be placed in any known scientific family. I could not have asked for a better proof-of-concept.
And based on this, I went back to the National Science Foundation and said, "This is what we will discover." And they gave me enough money to do it right, which has involved developing the world's first deep-sea webcam, which has been installed in the Monterey Canyon for the past year. And now, more recently, a modular form of this system, a much more mobile form, that's a lot easier to launch and recover, that I hope can be used on Sylvia's "hope spots" to help explore and protect these areas, and, for me, learn more about the bioluminescence in these "hope spots."
So one of these take-home messages here is there is still a lot to explore in the oceans, and Sylvia has said that we are destroying the oceans before we even know what's in them, and she's right. So if you ever, ever get an opportunity to take a dive in a submersible, say yes, a thousand times, yes, and please turn out the lights. I promise, you'll love it.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Some 80 to 90 percent of undersea creatures make light -- and we know very little about how or why. Bioluminescence expert Edith Widder explores this glowing, sparkling, luminous world, sharing glorious images and insight into the unseen depths (and brights) of the ocean.
About Edith Widder
Edith Widder combines her expertise in research and technological innovation with a commitment to stopping and reversing the degradation of our marine environment
In the spirit of Jacques Cousteau, who said, "People protect what they love," I want to share with you today what I love most in the ocean, and that's the incredible number and variety of animals in it that make light.
My addiction began with this strange looking diving suit called Wasp. That's not an acronym -- just somebody thought it looked like the insect. It was actually developed for use by the offshore oil industry for diving on oil rigs down to a depth of 2,000 feet. Right after I completed my Ph.D., I was lucky enough to be included with a group of scientists that were using it for the first time as a tool for ocean exploration. We trained in a tank in Port Hueneme. And then my first open ocean dive was in Santa Barbara Channel. It was an evening dive. I went down to a depth of 880 feet and turned out the lights. And the reason I turned out the lights is because I knew I would see this phenomenon of animals making light called bioluminescence. But I was totally unprepared for how much there was and how spectacular it was. I saw chains of jellyfish called siphonophores that were longer than this room pumping out so much light that I could read the dials and gauges inside the suit without a flashlight, and puffs and billows of what looked like luminous blue smoke and explosions of sparks that would swirl up out of the thrusters just like when you throw a log on a campfire and the embers swirl up off the campfire, but these were icy, blue embers. It was breathtaking.
Now, usually if people are familiar with bioluminescence at all, it's these guys, it's fireflies. And there are a few other land-dwellers that can make light, some insects, earthworms, fungi. But in general, on land, it's really rare. In the ocean, it's the rule, rather than the exception. If I go out in the open ocean environment, virtually anywhere in the world, and I drag a net from 3,000 to the surface, most of the animals, in fact, in many places, 80 to 90 percent of the animals I bring up in that net, make light. This makes for some pretty spectacular light shows.
Now I want to share with you a little video that I shot from a submersible. I first developed this technique working from a little single-person submersible called Deep Rover and then adapted it for use on the Johnson Sea-Link, which you see here. So, mounted in front of the observation sphere there's a a three foot diameter hoop with a screen stretched across it. And inside the sphere with me is an intensified camera that's about as sensitive as a fully dark-adapted human eye, albeit a little fuzzy. So you turn on the camera, turn out the lights. That sparkle you're seeing is not luminescence; that's just electronic noise on these intensified cameras. You don't see luminescence until the submersible begins to move forward through the water, but as it does, animals bumping into the screen are stimulated to bioluminesc.
Now, when I was first doing this, all I was trying to do was count the number of sources. I knew my forward speed, I knew the area. So I could figure out how many hundreds of sources there were per cubic meter. But I started to realize that I could actually identify animals by the type of flashes they produced. And so, here in the Gulf of Maine at 740 feet, I can name pretty much everything you're seeing there to the species level, like those big explosions, sparks, are from a little comb-jelly. And there's krill and other kinds of crustaceans, and jellyfish. There was one of those comb-jellies. And so I've worked with computer image analysis engineers to develop automatic recognition systems that can identify these animals and then extract the X,Y,Z coordinate of the initial impact point And we can then do the kinds of things that ecologists do on land and do nearest neighbor distances.
But you don't always have to go down to the depths of the ocean to see a light show like this. You can actually see it in surface waters. This is a video shot by Doctor Mike Latz at Scripps Institution of a dolphin swimming through bioluminescent plankton. And this isn't someplace exotic like one of the bioluminescent bays in Puerto Rico, this was actually shot in San Diego Harbor. And sometimes you can see it even closer than that because the heads on ships -- that's toilets, for any land lovers that are listening -- are flushed with unfiltered seawater that often have bioluminescent plankton in it, so if you stagger into the head late at night, and you're so toilet-hugging sick that you forget to turn on the light, you may think that you're having a religious experience.
So, how does a living creature make light? Well, that was the question, 19th century, French physiologist Raphael Dubois asked about this bioluminescent clam. He ground it up and he managed to get out a couple of chemicals, one, the enzyme he called luciferase, the substrate, he called luciferin after Lucifer the Light Bearer. That terminology has stuck, but it doesn't actually refer to specific chemicals because these chemicals come in a lot of different shapes and forms. In fact, most of the people studying bioluminescence today are focused on the chemistry because these chemicals have proved so incredibly valuable for developing antibacterial agents, cancer fighting drugs, testing for presence of life on Mars, detecting pollutants in our waters, which is how we use it at ORCA. In 2008, the Nobel Prize in Chemistry was awarded for work done on a molecule called green florescent protein, that was isolated from the bioluminescent chemistry of a jellyfish, and it's been equated to the invention of the microscope, in terms of the impact that it has had on cell biology and genetic engineering.
Another thing all these molecules are telling us is, apparently, bioluminescence has evolved at least, 40 times, maybe as many as 50 separate times in evolutionary history, which is a clear indication of how spectacularly important this trait is for survival. So, what is it about bioluminescence that's so important to so many animals? Well, for animals that are trying to avoid predators by staying in the darkness, light can still be very useful for the three basic things animals have to do to survive, and that's find food, attract a mate and avoid being eaten. So, for example, this fish has a built-in headlight behind its eye that it can use for finding food or attracting a mate. And then when it's not using it, it actually can roll it down in its head just like the headlights on your Lamborghini. This fish actually has high-beams.
And this fish, which is one of my favorites, has three headlights on each side of its head. Now, this one is blue, and that's the color of most bioluminescence in the ocean because evolution has selected for the color that travels farthest through seawater in order to optimize communication. So, most animals make blue light, and most animals can only see blue light, but this fish is a really fascinating exception because it has two red light organs. And I have no idea why there's two, and that's something I want to solve some day. So, not only can it see blue light, but it can see red light. So it uses its red bioluminescence like a sniper's scope to be able to sneak up on animals that are blind to red light and will be able to see them without being seen. It's also got a little chin barble here with a blue luminescent lure on it that it can use to attract prey from a long way off. And a lot of animals will use their bioluminescence as a lure.
This is another one of my favorite fish. This is a viperfish, and it's got a lure on the end of a long fishing rod that it arches in front of the toothy jaw that gives the viperfish its name. The teeth on this fish are so long that if they closed inside the mouth of the fish, it would actually impale its own brain. So instead, it slides in grooves on the outside of the head. This is a Christmas tree of a fish. everything on this fish lights up. It's not just that lure; it's got built in flashlight. It's got these jewel-like light organs on its belly that it uses for a type of camouflage that obliterates its shadow, so, when it's swimming around and there's a predator looking up from below, it makes itself disappear. It's got light organs in the mouth. It's got light organs in every single scale, in the fins, in a mucus layer on the back and in the belly, all used for different things, some of which we know about, some of which we don't.
And we know a little bit more about bioluminescence thanks to Pixar, and I'm very grateful to Pixar for sharing my favorite topic with so many people. I do wish, with their budget, that they might have spent just a tiny bit more money to pay a consulting fee to some poor, starving graduate student, who could have told them that those are the eyes of a fish that's been preserved in formalin. These are the eyes of a living angler fish. So, she's got a lure that she sticks out in front of this living mousetrap of needle-sharp teeth, in order to attract in some unsuspecting prey. And this one has a lure with all kinds of interesting threads coming off it.
Now we used to think that the different shape of the lure was to attract different types of prey, but then stomach content analysis on these fish done by scientists, or more likely their graduate students, have revealed that they all eat pretty much the same thing. So, now we believe that the different shape of the lure is how the male recognizes the female in the angler fish world, because many of these males are what are known as dwarf males. This little guy has no visible means of self-support. He has no lure for attracting food and no teeth for eating it when it gets there. His only hope for existence on this planet is as a gigolo. He's got to find himself a babe and then he's got to latch on for life. So this little guy has found himself this babe, and you will note, that he's had the good sense to attach himself in a way that he doesn't actually have to look at her. (Laughter) But her still knows a good thing when he sees it, and so he seals the relationship with an eternal kiss. His flesh fuses with her flesh, her bloodstream grows into his body, and he becomes nothing more than a little sperm sac. (Laughter) Well, this is a deep-sea version of women's lib. She always knows where he is, and she doesn't have to be monogamous, because some of these females come up with multiple males attached.
So they can use it for finding food, for attracting mates. They use it a lot for defense, many different ways. A lot of them can release their luciferin, their luferase in the water just like a squid or an octopus will release an ink cloud. This shrimp is actually spewing light out of its mouth like a fire breathing dragon in order to blind or distract this viperfish so that the shrimp can swim away into the darkness. And there's a lot of different animals that can do this. There's jellyfish, there's squid, there's a whole lot of different crustaceans.
There's even fish that can do this. This fish is called the shining tubeshoulder because it actually has a tube on its shoulder that can squirt out light. And I was luck enough to capture one of these when we were on a trawling expedition off the northwest coast of Africa for "Blue Planet," for the deep portion of "Blue Planet." And we were using a special trawling net that we were able to bring these animals up alive. So we captured one of these, and I brought it into the lab. So I'm holding it, and I'm about to touch that tube on its shoulder, and when I do, you'll see bioluminescence coming out. But to me, what's shocking is not just the amount of light, but the fact that it's not just luciferin and luciferates. For this fish, it's actually whole cells with nuclei and membranes. It's, energetically, very costly for this fish to do this, and we have no idea why it does it. Another one of these great mysteries that needs to be solved.
Now, another form of defense is something called a burglar alarm. Same reason you have a burglar alarm on your car. The honking horn and flashing lights are meant to attract the attention of, hopefully the police that will come and take the burglar away. When an animal's caught in the clutches of a predator, its only hope for escape may be to attract the attention of something bigger and nastier, that will attack their attacker, thereby affording them a chance for escape. This jellyfish, for example, has a spectacular bioluminescent display. This is us chasing it in the submersible. That's not luminescence, that's reflected light from the gonads. We capture it in a very special device on the front of the submersible that allows us to bring it up in really pristine condition, bring it into the lab on the ship. And then to generate the display your about to see all I did was touch it once per second on its nerve ring with a sharp pick that's like the sharp tooth of a fish. And once this display gets going, I'm not touching it anymore. This is an unbelievably light show. It's this pinwheel of light. And I've done calculations that show that this could be see from as much as 300 feet away by a predator. And I thought, you know, that might actually make a pretty good lure. Because, one of the things that's frustrated me as a deep-sea explorer is how many animals there probably are in the ocean that we know nothing about because of the way we explore the ocean.
The primary way that we know about what lives in the ocean, is we go out and drag nets behind ships. And I defy you to name any other branch of science that still depends on hundreds of year-old technology. The other primary way is we go down with submersibles and remote-operated vehicles. I've made hundreds of dives in submersibles. When I'm sitting in a submersible though, I know that I'm not unobtrusive at all. I've got bright lights and noisy thrusters. Any animal with any sense is going to be long gone. So, I've wanted for a long time to figure out a different way to explore.
And so, sometime ago, I got this idea for a camera system. It's not exactly rocket science. We call this thing Eye-in-the-Sea. And, scientists have done this on land for years, we just use a color that the animals can't see, and then a camera that can see that color. You can't use infrared in the sea. We used far-red light, but even that's a problem because it gets absorbed so quickly. Made an intensified camera, wanted to make this electronic jellyfish. Thing is, in science, you have to tell the funding agencies what you're going to discover before they'll give you the money. And I didn't know what I was going to discover, so I couldn't get the funding for this. So I kluged this together, I got the Harvey Mudd Engineering Clinic to actually do it as an undergraduate student project initially, and then I kluged funding from a whole bunch of different sources.
Monterey Bay Aquarium and Research Institute gave me time with their R.O.V. so that I could test it and we could figure out, you know, for example, which colors of red light we had to use so that we could see the animals, but they couldn't see us, get the electronic jellyfish working. And you can see just what a shoestring operation this really was because, when I cast these 16 blue LEDs in epoxy -- and you can see in the epoxy mold we used the word Ziploc is still visible. Needless to say, when it's kluged together like this, there were a lot of trials and tribulations getting this working. But there came a moment when it all came together, and everything worked, and, remarkably, that moment got caught on film by photographer Mark Richards, who happened to be there at the precise moment that we discovered that it all came together. That's me on the left, my graduate student at the time, Erica Raymond, and Lee Fry, who was the engineer on the project. And we this photograph posted in our lab in a place of honor with the caption: "Engineer satisfying two women at once." And we were very, very happy.
So now we had a system that we could actually take to some place that was kind of like an oasis on the bottom off the ocean that might be patrolled by large predators. And so, the place that we took it to was this place called a brine pool which is in the northern part of the Gulf of Mexico. It's a magical place. And I know this footage isn't going to look like anything to you -- we had a crummy camera at the time -- but I was ecstatic. We're at the edge of the brine pool. there's a fish that's swimming towards the camera. It's clearly undisturbed by us. And I had my window into the deep see. I, for the first time, could see what animals were doing down there when we weren't down there disturbing them in some way. Four hours into the deployment, we had programmed the electronic jellyfish to come on for the first time. 86 seconds after it went into its pinwheel display, we recorded this. This is a squid, over six feet long, that is so new to science, it cannot be placed in any known scientific family. I could not have asked for a better proof-of-concept.
And based on this, I went back to the National Science Foundation and said, "This is what we will discover." And they gave me enough money to do it right, which has involved developing the world's first deep-sea webcam, which has been installed in the Monterey Canyon for the past year. And now, more recently, a modular form of this system, a much more mobile form, that's a lot easier to launch and recover, that I hope can be used on Sylvia's "hope spots" to help explore and protect these areas, and, for me, learn more about the bioluminescence in these "hope spots."
So one of these take-home messages here is there is still a lot to explore in the oceans, and Sylvia has said that we are destroying the oceans before we even know what's in them, and she's right. So if you ever, ever get an opportunity to take a dive in a submersible, say yes, a thousand times, yes, and please turn out the lights. I promise, you'll love it.
Thank you.
(Applause)
Thursday, May 06, 2010
5/1 全球搶人才！台灣學生壁上觀？
人力銀行最新調查，因應兩岸三地交流頻繁，高達4成7的台灣企業表示未來願意僱用大陸或香港的大學畢業生，這是否意味著台灣人才將被大陸人才取代？
讀者文摘一月份調查，有兩成一台生願意去大陸唸書，但只有百分之五的陸生願意來台。在兩黨混戰當中，關係陸生來台的「大學法」及「專科學校法」初審過關，但未來仍以「三限六不」為限制條件，你覺得實際嗎？
訪談來賓:
教育部高教司副司長 楊玉惠
104人力銀行公關經理 方光瑋
淡江大學陸研所副教授 楊景堯
東吳大學EMBA主任 翁望回
北市高中學生家長會聯合會總會長 洪迪光
Wednesday, May 05, 2010
Ron Paul on MSNBC: ‘Audit the Fed!’ (VIDEO)
Ron Paul on MSNBC: ‘Audit the Fed!’ (VIDEO)
I love how MSNBC accredits Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, with the Audit the Fed bill — if it were for Sanders the only bank in America would be the Federal Reserve.
Read more: http://www.jackliberty.com/ron-paul-on-msnbc-audit-the-fed-video/#ixzz0n7cspy2j
I love how MSNBC accredits Bernie Sanders, a self-described socialist, with the Audit the Fed bill — if it were for Sanders the only bank in America would be the Federal Reserve.
Read more: http://www.jackliberty.com/ron-paul-on-msnbc-audit-the-fed-video/#ixzz0n7cspy2j
致富!最重要的一句話/朱成志第八集
影音簡介／
【天下講堂】哪一句話可以讓你賺錢？哪一句話會讓你身敗名裂、負債累累？理財專家朱成志與你分享投資理財最重要的一句話！不管你是學生還是上班族，只要你慎選座右銘，就可以累積財富喔！
影音簡介／
【天下講堂】比原子彈威力更強大的投資概念，究竟是什麼？什麼樣的股票適合長期投資？什麼樣的股票適合短線操作？投資專家朱成志教你翻倍獲利的秘密。
影音簡介／
【天下講堂】關心地球也能致富？太陽能、風力發電、水資源都是你可以投資致富的關鍵。但是投資人必須小心，打著能源名號的基金也常隱藏著危機喔！
影音簡介／
【天下講堂】你的藝術投資眼光到底準不準？你會不會從藝術投資中獲利，還是輸到傾家當產？「藝術投資小測驗」馬上分析出你的投資個性。
影音簡介／
【天下講堂】世界首富巴菲特擁有620億美元的身價，少年時期的巴菲特，究竟有何特質與行動，才成就今天的巴菲特？朱成志帶您向巴菲特學習致富絕招。
影音簡介／
【天下講堂】巴菲特因為愛喝可樂而投資飲料賺大錢？愛喝飲料的年輕人們，是否也可以向巴菲特學習，將消費觀察轉成投資，並且產生財富效應？
影音簡介／
【天下講堂】一個月收入只有三萬的上班族，應該如何投資房地產呢？投資房地產有哪些重要的技巧呢？投資房地產又有哪些盲點應該要避免呢？理財大師朱成志為什麼說，買房子好處多多？租房子不如買房子？
影音簡介／
【天下講堂】做一個邊上班、邊投資的上班族，應該學會哪些投資技巧呢？投資理財要達到20%的年報酬率，最重要的三個原則是什麼呢？投資大師朱成志，立刻告訴你「年報酬率20%的投資致富法」。
科特勒行銷新論（英文版）
影音簡介／
科特勒在台灣首度提出4P的行銷模式應該轉化為「CCDVTP」新行銷模式。他認為該新模式建立後再經由創新溝通來傳遞商品價值，針對目標市場才能獲利。除此，他還提出品牌建立三步驟。但究竟是哪些呢？
影音簡介／
品牌一定要花大錢砸廣告嗎？代工到底能不能經營品牌？科特勒認為，善用事件行銷及口碑行銷，品牌自然會流行。他舉例維珍集團的創辦人自身也是品牌，究竟這些企業如何運用不同行銷活動，成功打造品牌呢？
影音簡介／
如何才能做好B2B行銷呢？台灣是否能做到B2B2C呢？當行銷大師科特勒遇到品牌先生智融集團董事長施振榮，他們精采對話要告訴你，B2B品牌第一步是什麼？台灣企業究竟如何利用B2B2C成功建立品牌優勢。
安藤忠雄演講精華：夢想的追尋
安藤忠雄
影音簡介／
安藤忠雄，不曾受過正統建築教育，卻創造出許多世界級的建築作品。成名後的安藤忠雄，不愛名與利。他將書籍版稅所得，全數捐給保護環境的綠色組織。這位與眾不同的建築哲學家，用自己的言行舉止，影響人，感動人。他的夢想與堅持，仍在一點一滴改變這個世界。
http://video.cw.com.tw/pages/public/movie/player/tv_player.jspx?id=40288ae71a56a6eb011a77275c0a2517
影音簡介／
安藤忠雄，不曾受過正統建築教育，卻創造出許多世界級的建築作品。成名後的安藤忠雄，不愛名與利。他將書籍版稅所得，全數捐給保護環境的綠色組織。這位與眾不同的建築哲學家，用自己的言行舉止，影響人，感動人。他的夢想與堅持，仍在一點一滴改變這個世界。
http://video.cw.com.tw/pages/public/movie/player/tv_player.jspx?id=40288ae71a56a6eb011a77275c0a2517
Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom
Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom
In this video presented by Mobile Learning Institute, Alan tours his hometown of Marblehead, MA and comments on the historical global vision of his community.
Alan challenges us to think about the emerging role of “student as contributor” and to globalize our curriculum by linking students with authentic audiences from around the world. (For more on this topic read Alan’s article, Students as Contributors: The Digital Learning Farm.
Find more videos like this on NL Connect
He also discusses three myths regarding the impact of technology on student learning:
Myth #1: Technology is going to be the great equalizer of society.
In reality, technology is actually polarizing society.
Myth #2: The Internet is going to provide a diversity of opinion. We will have an input of ideas from around the world and generally have a better educated society.
In reality, people are going to the web to get their “version” of the truth.
Myth #3 Technology is going to make kids smarter.
In reality, it’s a distraction. Overall we are missing out on critical thinking.
In this video presented by Mobile Learning Institute, Alan tours his hometown of Marblehead, MA and comments on the historical global vision of his community.
Alan challenges us to think about the emerging role of “student as contributor” and to globalize our curriculum by linking students with authentic audiences from around the world. (For more on this topic read Alan’s article, Students as Contributors: The Digital Learning Farm.
Find more videos like this on NL Connect
He also discusses three myths regarding the impact of technology on student learning:
Myth #1: Technology is going to be the great equalizer of society.
In reality, technology is actually polarizing society.
Myth #2: The Internet is going to provide a diversity of opinion. We will have an input of ideas from around the world and generally have a better educated society.
In reality, people are going to the web to get their “version” of the truth.
Myth #3 Technology is going to make kids smarter.
In reality, it’s a distraction. Overall we are missing out on critical thinking.
Tutorial – Using Overlays with Google Maps
Tutorial – Using Overlays with Google Maps
We recently received an email request from Fran Stromsland of Watchung Hills Regional HS in NJ requesting information about a particular Google Maps overlay. This overlay demonstrates the effect of sea level rise anywhere in the world.
The tutorial below explains how to get a Google Maps account, find the Google Map overlays and add one of these overlays to your own map.
To view this video, I highly recommend that you click on the full screen icon at the bottom right hand corner of the video window. You will see it when the video plays and you hover your mouse over the video window
More from Channel 4 News - US questions oil production as disaster looms
More from Channel 4 News
- US questions oil production as disaster looms
Ecological disaster looms as oil from damaged BP well head reaches US shoreline
Ecological disaster looms as oil from damaged BP well head reaches US shoreline
By Kris Jepson Updated on 30 April 2010
The prospect of an ecological disaster looms along America’s vulnerable Gulf of Mexico coastline as oil from a damaged BP well head begins to wash ashore. But BP’s head of group media tells Channel 4 News that the cause of the accident is still not known.
It is BP’s fourth major incident in the United States in as many years.
The rig exploded last Friday, killing 11 men. One week on, oil is still belching out of the open well hole, 5,000 feet below sea level, at the rate of 5,000 barrels a day.
Desperate efforts have been launched to try to protect the wildlife habitats along the coast.
President Obama has ordered a complete halt on oil exploration in the area.
The White House has suspended any new exploration in the Gulf pending the review of last week's explosion on the Deepwater Horizon oil rig.
Interview: Andrew Gowers, BP head of group media
The head of group media for BP, Andrew Gowers, told Jon Snow that the rig involved in the incident was operated by Transocean, an American company.
He said it was BP's responsibililty to cope with the consequences of the incident. BP was now staging a massive clean-up operation, both below the surface in efforts to cap the well, and on the surface with the largest maritime clean-up the world had ever seen.
Mr Gowers said huge volumes of dispersants were being sprayed on the leak.
More from Channel 4 News
- US questions oil production as disaster looms
He conceded that the oil spilling into the Gulf of Mexico was BP's – "and that's why we have primary responsibility for cleaning up the consequences and stopping it."
He stressed that "the issue of fault and responsibility between various operators is not actually an issue for now". And he stated that the rig involved "was owned and operated and regulated separately, under Transocean".
Mr Gowers admitted that the cause of the accident was not known. BP, Transocean and the US government had all launched investigations, and that it would take some time to determine the cause, he said.
He continued: "What we know as a consequence of that accident was that the piece of kit – the vital, failsafe piece of safety machinery that is supposed to stop wells tight when trouble happens – failed to work. That's a piece of kit on the Transocean rig."
BP was focused on "helping them (Transocean) (…) by making the blowout preventer (…) work and, failing that, doing other things to cap off the spill."
State of emergency in Louisiana
President Barack Obama pledged to "use every single available resource" and the US military is mobilizing to help contain the spreading spill from the deepwater leak in the Gulf of Mexico.
Crude oil is spewing out of the well, following the explosion which sank the BP rig Deepwater Horizon, at a rate of up to 5,000 barrels a day, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
That is five times the original estimate.
Local residents in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida have expressed concerned the slick will damage fisheries, wildlife refuges and tourism.
The governor of Louisiana Bobby Jindal has been heading up the ongoing recovery from the devastating damage caused by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.
Declaring a state of emergency, he has warned that the slick "threatens the state's natural resources." He also asked the Defence Department for funds to deploy up to 6,000 National Guard troops to help with the expected clean-up.
Experts have warned that the ecology of the Mississippi Delta area is under threat as the huge 3 mile oil slick spreads to marshland.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Neopolitano declared it "a spill of national significance", which essentially means funds and federal resources could be used from other states to help in the clean-up.
Napolitano, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lisa Jackson are travelling to the Gulf coast today to assess the situation.
Drilling permits
For Barack Obama, he says the London based BP PLs shoulders most responsibility for the clean-up, but his current proposals to offer new offshore drilling permits, which are before Congress, may be an incentive for the US to do whatever it can to help.
However, opponents of Obama's plan for more drilling permits are moving to block the legislation.
Democratic Senator from Florida, Bill Nelson, said he was filing a bill to temporarily prohibit the administration from expanding offshore drilling, citing the risk of a potential "environmental and economic disaster" from the spill.
The Obama administration did not rule out imposing a pause in new deepwater drilling until oil companies can show they can control any spills that may happen.
Resources deployed so far
· 174,060 feet of boom (barrier) to contain the spill. An additional 243,260 feet is available and 265,460 feet has been ordered.
· Recovered 18,180 barrels (763,560 gallons) of an oil-water mix.
· Deployed 98,361 gallons of dispersant. An additional 75,000 gallons are available and 184,748 have been ordered.
· Deployed 76 response vessels, including skimmers, tugs, barges, and recovery vessels to assist in containment and cleanup efforts-in addition to six fixed-wing aircraft, 11 helicopters, 10 remotely operated vehicles, and two mobile offshore drilling units.
· Five staging areas (Biloxi, Miss., Pensacola, Fla. Venice, La., Pascagoula, Miss. and Theodore, Ala.) are in place and ready to protect sensitive shorelines.
Containment
The navy has supplied inflatable booms and seven skimming systems to the coastguard to contain the oil.
US coastguard Captain Steve Poulin in Alabama said: "We have a booming strategy for coastal Mississippi, Alabama and the Florida Panhandle."
Poulin added that some 500,000 protection and containment booms were stockpiled along the coastline for deployment.
BP and the coastguard are working together in what the company says is the biggest oil spill containment operation in history.
The oil giant confirmed that it is struggling to control the spill. It has asked the Pentagon for access to military imaging machinery and remotely operated vehicles to help plug the leak in the well which lies 5,000 feet under the sea.
Eleven workers are missing and presumed dead after the rig exploded and caught fire 11 days ago.
Underwater robots failed to activate a cutoff valve on the ocean floor and now BP is relying on a plan to cover the well with a steel cap. However, this will take at least four weeks to put in place, by which stage over 150,000 barrels could have been spilled.
If that plan fails, BP has no alternative other than drilling a relief well, which would take two to three months. If it takes that long, there is a strong chance that over 300,000 barrels could be leaked - that is more than the US's worst oil spill in 1989 by the Exxon Valdez in Alaska.
Obama has been briefed over any disruption to the shipping channels of the Gulf, which is crucial for the delivery petroleum to the US market. But no disruption has been reported as yet.
Channel 4 News Science Correspondent Julian Rush reports:
With the winds forecast to shift to the south-east, oil engineers are in a race against time to prevent the growing oil slick from hitting the Louisiana shore near New Orleans.
At its closest, the slick is only 16 miles from the coast, and it is forecast to come ashore by Friday. The outflow of water from the huge river may push some of it back but no-one's pretending the environmental impact won't be immense - the fragile ecosystem of the Mississippi River delta is very delicate.
NASA satellite imagery shows the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.
There's the long term solution. A second drilling rig is now on site and will "spud" this weekend (start drilling). The aim is to drill down to meet the existing well in the seabed beneath the well head, to divert the flow and cap it again.
It's been done often enough before, but it's difficult - they have to drill down and sideways for several thousand feet to hit a target that is two feet wide, several hundred feet underground. And it will take at least a month.
Lawsuit
BP's shares took a massive hit yesterday, falling by six per cent, as investors realised the consequences of the potential cost to stop the leak.
BP has seen its shares plummet by 10 per cent since the explosion, and Transocean Ltd's, the firm which owns the rig, has fallen by 14 per cent.
Oilfield services companies Cameron International Corp and Halliburton Co have also seen their shares tumble on fears about their ties to the Deepwater Horizon rig.
Cameron, which supplied the blowout preventer for the rig, says it is insured for $500 million of liability, if needed. Halliburton says it did a variety of work on the rig and is assisting with the investigation.
Shrimp fishermen in Louisiana filed a class-action lawsuit against BP, Transocean, Halliburton and Cameron, accusing them of negligence. None of the companies would comment on the lawsuit.
大前研一：台灣，東亞的超級矽谷
http://video.cw.com.tw/pages/public/movie/player/tv_player.jspx?id=40288ae71b6cc87b011b7403bab73714
影音簡介／
台灣可以成為東亞的「超級矽谷」？趨勢大師大前研一，接受天下雜誌邀請來台，為三千名企業中高階主管演講。在這個詭譎莫測的世界裡，台灣應站在什麼位置上，大前研一提出了讓人耳目一新的觀點。
大前研一：2020年，世界經濟大預測！
影音簡介／
(採訪整理/莊素玉)2008年春天，日本知名趨勢專家大前研一，接受天下雜誌獨家專訪。他認為世界即將出現巨大的經濟霸權轉移，這段會撼動世界的大洗牌中，2020年將是最關鍵的一年。而誰將是世界的第一霸權，答案恐怕你不一定想得到。
大前研一：台灣要打造成「生活者大國」
影音簡介／
【採訪：狄英、莊素玉】面對21世紀的金融海嘯，台灣學習20年前的日本經驗是否恰當？天下雜誌獨家專訪日本趨勢專家大前研一，他日本人拼命儲蓄、不捨得花錢，是經濟無法成長的主因，台灣必須打造成「生活者大國」，才能避免步上日本後塵！
BP oil spill poses 'logistical nightmare'
May 5, 2010
BP oil spill poses 'logistical nightmare'
Channel4: BP admits operation to keep spill away from the Louisiana coast could take three months
As BP admits the operation to keep its oil spill away from the Louisiana coast could take three months, one expert tells Alex Thomson it is "a logistical nightmare".
The race to keep the oil offshore, as BP admits it could be three months before the leak is fully sealed.
Today saw a further fall in BP’s share price mid the unfolding disaster in the Gulf of Mexico. How long will it take to tame the gushing well 5,000 feet below sea level?
The company hopes to drop a dome over it before siphoning the oil flow away - but that will take a week. And to stem the leak altogether could take at least three months.
Tony Hayward, the head of BP, promised today that the company would pay for the leak, as he outlined plans to try to contain the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico . President Obama has called the leak a “massive and potentially unprecedented environmental disaster”.
Mr Hayward admitted it could be three months before the flow of oil from the ruptured well is capped. For now, the company is trying to drop giant metal hoods directly over the leaking pipe.
The spill has been growing steadily since an explosion sank the Deepwater Horizon rig eleven days ago. Scientists think it may have tripled in size and could threaten coastlines further east - towards Alabama.
Channel 4 News Chief Correspondent Alex Thomson, reporting live from the Louisiana coast, told Jon Snow the rain and wind which have swept the region for several days are now dying down.
But nobody in the area is under any illusions about the mammoth nature of the clean-up task ahead. And local fishermen are demanding action, not words.
The effects of the vast slick are being felt on a variety of species. The booms are not working in the high winds and heavy seas.
From the air, the main slick is still visible – bigger than Hampshire, nine miles out. Nobody knows how much is leaking into the sea.
BP Tony Hayward boss finally accepted today that the clean-up could cost £8bn and that the responsibility was with his company.
Kerry O’Neill, a fisherman from Venice, told Channel 4 News: "Hurricane Katrina was bad, but we were able to kind of go back to work afterwards. This here, there ain’t no telling how long we'd be shut down."
President Obama flew in to the area yesterday, and he underlined BP’s responsibilities. But this morning in Venice, the fishermen were not easily moved. "Talk is cheap," Kerry O’Neill told Alex Thomson.
Booms are being laid down out to sea, but many of them have already been swept to shore.
Venice lives and dies by oil and fishing. BP is saying a well funnel under construction could be placed over the leak in six to eight days, allowing safe pumping and storage of the crude. But the technology is untried at this depth.
But BP also says the well could spew its crude for up to three months – what BP calls a "worst-case scenario".
'Logistically a nightmare, technologically pushing the limits'
Dr Simon Boxall, of the National Oceanography Centre, told Channel 4 News that on land it was easy to put a funnel over a leaking oil well.
"But we're dealing here with a hole that is 1,500 metres, over one mile, deep. And at those depths the pressure is phenomenal," he said.
In addition, the work was remote and in the dark. And the oil pumping out through the sea floor "is like a fog".
"So you're dealing with robots, though a fog, a mile away, with phenomenal pressures (…) It's pushing the boundaries of technology."
Dr Boxall explained: "At these sorts of depths, low tech is the best option… At this stage what they need is a quick fix to at least stem the oil flow."
Those involved in sealing the leak needed to wait for a "calm weather window" to complete the operation. "They've got to get this thing down through a mile of water. They've then got to use robots to position it.
"And another thing we're not used to is dealing with mini-robots under the sea at the same time (…) If you've got two or three things dangling over the side of a ship, or different ships, the chance of them getting tangled up is also very high.
"So logistically it's a nightmare, technologically it's pushing the limits."
Dr Boxall likened the situation in the Gulf of Mexico to a succession of stopcocks controlling the water supply to a house.
"You have a mains stopcock from the mains supply," he told Alex Thomson, "and you've got lots of stopcocks along the line – under your sink, in the shower, whatever.
"If the mains stopcock itself goes, then at the end of the day you have a problem. You can’t turn that safety valve off.
"And that's what’s happened here. You've got a situation where, if you like, it's broken right at the beginning of the line. And when that happens, there’s a limit to what you can put in in terms of safety measures."
Alex Thomson writes from Louisiana
We are way down the Bayou. And when it comes to being way down the Bayou, Venice is about as way down it as you can get.
The thick, driving tropical rain smashed down all the way last night, as I drove from a massive concrete freeway of central New Orleans, down, down and down into the dark night of the Mississippi Delta.
By night you see nothing – and then the vast, sudden light-show of a refinery or flare stack. By day the light has gone, but the thick tropical rain remains.
With the possible exception of water, Venice Louisiana doesn’t share much with the place of gondoliers. You simply drive down Highway-23 till the swamps and waters finally close in, and the only way back by land is reverse.
This morning, sheltering from the rainy onslaught, groups of burly men, all high-vis and hard hat, stand around – and they wait. This whole town – well, "town" isn’t the right word – this whole weird collection of docks, service vessels, oil yards and fishing boats, is in suspended animation.
There are yards full of clear-up equipment, oil booms, even catering. But till the weather clears, little is happening. And for the fishermen too, of course, their ground’s now closed.
And as for the perpetrators, well, BP have admitted responsibility for the oil and for cleaning it up. Potus, visiting Venice yesterday, said so. Venice fishermen and oil men say so. And now Tony Hayward – BP boss – says so.
The BP chief executive said the oil giant was "absolutely responsible" for cleaning up the oil spill caused by a ruptured offshore well in the Gulf of Mexico.
Speaking on NBC's Today Show, Tony Hayward also said the company was preparing for a "worst case scenario" that it would need to contain the spill for two to three months.
His comments came a day after President Barack Obama said BP was responsible for footing the bill for $4.6bn of damages caused by the massive oil slick heading towards the wetlands of the Gulf Coast.
BP is responsible for this leak. BP will be paying the bill", Obama said, as the race to save wildlife from gallons of crude oil continues.
BP has more than 2,500 people working to clean up the slick, which the oil giant says is costing it at least £6.5m a day.
However, BP's bill looks set to soar as new evidence suggests the slick has tripled in size over the past two days and could cost the US more than $14bn.
Satellite images analysed by the University of Miami show the growing spread of the spill – and indicate the well may now be leaking at a greater rate.
US officials have banned fishing for at least 10 days in the affected area, which provides the nation with around 20 per cent of its seafood.
Mr Hayward said: "We've made it clear that where legitimate claims are made, we will be good for them."
"We have the claims process set up, small claims today that are being paid instantly ... bigger claims we clearly have a process to run through," he added.
The President vowed to spare no effort in responding to the crisis, which he said threatened one of the "richest and most beautiful eco systems on the planet".
Meanwhile, there are fears of a worst-case scenario that would see the spillage infiltrating the Gulf Stream where it could be carried to Florida’s beaches.
"It is also the heartbeat of the region's economic life and we're going to do everything in our power to protect our national resources and compensate those who have been harmed, rebuild what has been damaged and help this region preserve like it has done so many times before," he said in Louisiana yesterday.
The stricken waters in the Gulf of Mexico span the coastlines of four states, with the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana and Florida's Pensacola Bay the worst affected, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
NOAA officials are working to keep oiled seafood off the market – which is well-known for its shrimp and oyster supply as well as being a rich source of crabs and fish.
"There should be no health risk in seafood currently in the marketplace," Ewell Smith, executive director of the Louisiana Seafood Board said in a statement.
More than a billion pounds of fish and shellfish were harvested by fishermen in the region in 2008, according to government figures.
Eleven BP workers were killed after an explosion on April 20 that sank the Deepwater Horizon oil rig and lead to the massive oil spill.
Tuesday, May 04, 2010
史上最嚴打房措施！？能讓經濟軟著陸？
史上最嚴打房措施！？能讓經濟軟著陸？
防泡沫破裂！中國祭10條抑制房價！救命藥有副作用？
張貼者： 公視有話好說-新聞論壇 於 星期五, 四月 30, 2010
來賓：
政大房地產研究中心主任 張金鶚
政大金融系教授 殷乃平
房地產市場分析師 陳韻如
視訊 八九民運領袖 王丹
CALL OUT 北京理工科技大學經濟系教授胡星斗
走過金融風暴，近來兩岸房價連翻漲。房價為何驚驚漲？為了遏制部分城市房價上漲過快，中國國務院17號下達新的「國十條」措施，包括對房價過高地區的銀行，暫停發放新屋貸款等政策。炒房的不貸款？控制貸款不能遏制炒房？
被喚作史上最嚴打房措施，中國政府4/17國十條，打房政策內容分析！房產新政觸動哪些敏感神經？
中央祭鐵腕，這次真打房？
一星期內，兩千四百億人民幣房市熱錢走避，一線城市房產成交量下跌，但二線城市依舊居高。大.中城市房價漲跌情況，越打越漲？還是有效抑制？短期效果？
中國中央祭出鐵腕打房，是否能夠達成預期效果？市場需求源源不斷？大城市房子再多也有人要，價高不愁賣？房產新政還有哪些政策未出手？物業税還是兩面刃？
中央祭鐵腕，地方的執行面如何？
中央力推保障房供應！範圍多大？城市自己找答案？一國多制？中國打房！國十條要地方負起抑制房價責任，地方如何應對？為什麼限制的時候，地方政府不願意超出中央範圍，鼓勵的時候，地方措施卻紛紛超出中央政策範圍呢？中央力推國十條 二、三線城市在觀望？雙方的爾虞我詐！關鍵不在細則？在執行？
土地成地方最主要稅收來源時，政策能順利推動？(北京版新“國十條”延期 房市調控中央地方各懷鬼胎？)
打房如何下手才不會誤傷？
保障性住房概念混亂，商品房定義不明！擾亂政策執行和民眾觀念？保障性住房有哪些？商品房又有哪些？購房成本大幅上升？一般民眾更無力買房？誰來買房？除了投機客之外，還有誰在賺差價？保障性住房和商品房的拉扯！
開發商口袋深不怕調控？挫咧等？投機客降價求售沒人要？房價下跌！重傷是誰？誤傷了誰？
高房價考驗政府、考驗人民？
一部描寫上海小市民為買樓，淪為房奴的電視連續劇-蝸居，推出後，不但在網路熱烈迴響，連三月的政協人大開會期間，官員都拿來討論。溫家寶說：「我也知道蝸居的滋味！」知道真的辦得到？高房價考驗百姓的忍受能力？！考驗政府的執政能力？！
混亂房市造成哪些社會問題，抑制房價真能解決？
打房的顧慮：影響整體經濟？
如何避免房價過熱、擴大貧富差距，在打房後又要如何確保中國整體經濟穩定發展，打壓房價和經濟成長，兩方力道又該怎麼拿捏！
住宅房地產投資是增長的主要推動力，政治敏感，政府大力收緊住宅房產？
當前中國經濟特性解析：高增長和低通脹同時並存？經濟過熱？抑制房價有效？經濟是否過熱？靠抑制房價能讓經濟順利著陸？ 打房措施，打到要害？效果有限？還需要更果斷的緊縮政策？
中國央行是否已對貨幣供應和通脹預期失去了控制？不敢加息？中國抑制通膨要付出的代價(未來5年四大銀行要用4800億元填補資本短缺？)
Monday, May 03, 2010
2010-05-02公視晚間新聞(放牛吃草! 老牛之家安養老耕牛)
"台灣早期農村、常能看到水牛或黃牛在田裡幫忙耕作，不過這樣的景象現在已經逐漸消失了，為了讓民眾了解認識農村文化，台南縣成立了全國第一座老牛的家，這很像牛的安養院，免費幫農民照顧老耕牛。
20歲的老水牛，一看到小泥坑就忍不住躺下去打滾，看起來非常快活，也把來參觀的遊客逗得笑哈哈。
不管水牛還是黃牛，耕牛在農村已經很罕見，即使是以農立縣的台南縣，目前只有161戶農民養牛，耕牛也只剩218隻，比台南的水雉數量還少，這座佔地三公頃的牧場，就專門收養被人綁了大半輩子的老牛，讓牠們重新回到「放牛吃草」的悠閒生活。
雖然是第一個政府公辦的老牛之家，但從跟農民買老牛，到飼養管理，都不使用納稅人的錢，經費倚賴募款，還好地方上不少民眾很認同，出錢出力回報曾經為農民辛苦付出的老耕牛。
老牛的家希望號召更多農民捐牛，這裡除了會照顧老耕牛，未來也要成立犁田體驗區，以及展示牛耕文化的相關農具，讓早期的農村文化不會消失。
記者 王介村 蔡明孝 台南報導"
Sunday, May 02, 2010
Besotted Bread Lovers Treat Starters Like Pet
Besotted Bread Lovers Treat Starters Like Pets 5/2/2010 7:00:00 PM
Vintage sourdough starter -- a bubbly mix of flour, yeast and bacteria used to make crusty loaves of bread -- is all the rage in culinary circles. . WSJ's food writer Katy McLaughlin ordered one online and tried it out.
Made in NY: Anna Hu's Handmade Jewelry 4/30/2010 8:00:00 PM
Made in NY: Anna Hu's Handmade Jewelry 4/30/2010 8:00:00 PM
Anna Hu, who's become known in luxury circles for creating one-of-a-kind baubles that blend Eastern design and European craftsmanship, shows how she creates the jewels that end up adorning celebrities such as Drew Barrymore and Oprah Winfrey.
AM Report: Criminal Probe Eyes Goldman 4/30/2010 9:34:40 AM
AM Report: Criminal Probe Eyes Goldman 4/30/2010 9:34:40 AM
Federal prosecutors are conducting a criminal investigation into whether Goldman Sachs or its employees committed securities fraud with its mortgage trading. Jamie Heller, Peter Landers and Evan Newmark discuss. Also, David Wessel and Evan Newmark discuss the announcement of 1st Quarter GDP. And, Warren Buffett says that he expects to "give extensive and complete replies" to Goldman-related questions at this weekend's Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting.
News Hub: Buffett - Expect Frank Goldman Answers 4/30/2010 9:46:50 AM
Warren Buffett says he expects to "give extensive and complete replies" to Goldman Sachs-related questions at this weekend's Berkshire Hathaway shareholders meeting. Berkshire is a major investor in Goldman. Jamie Heller and Evan Newmark discuss.
PM Report: Eco-Disaster Feared 4/30/2010 4:00:00 PM
News Hub: Oil Spill Sparks Washington Debate 4/29/2010 5:03:33 PM
WSJ's Stephen Power joins the News Hub from Washington with the latest on the political fallout of the growing oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico.
Concept 3: Delay of Gratification
Delay of Gratification is the ability of a person to wait for what he/she really wants in life.
A study performed by Walter Mischel in Stanford University involved 4-year-old kids and their ability to get what they really really want: marshmallows.
So basically, each kid was put in a room, with 1 marshmallow. They can eat it right away, or if they wait for 20 minutes, they would be given another one. Here’s the clip:
The university keep track on these kids later on in life and found out that
- Kids who ate the marshmallow look at short term orientation, often moody, envious & jealous, indecisive and more likely to use drugs.
- Kids who waited for the second one turned out to be long term oriented, works well under pressure, scored 250 points higher on SAT, success in school, self reliant and confident.
The ones who has the ability to delay gratification are the ones who can manage self discipline well.
Delay of Gratification is the ability of a person to wait for what he/she really wants in life.
A study performed by Walter Mischel in Stanford University involved 4-year-old kids and their ability to get what they really really want: marshmallows.
So basically, each kid was put in a room, with 1 marshmallow. They can eat it right away, or if they wait for 20 minutes, they would be given another one. Here’s the clip:
The university keep track on these kids later on in life and found out that
- Kids who ate the marshmallow look at short term orientation, often moody, envious & jealous, indecisive and more likely to use drugs.
- Kids who waited for the second one turned out to be long term oriented, works well under pressure, scored 250 points higher on SAT, success in school, self reliant and confident.
The ones who has the ability to delay gratification are the ones who can manage self discipline well.
2010-04-16公視晚間新聞(下水道接管率低 污水直接入河川)
看不到的地方，環境最容易受到忽略，尤其是在地底下的水溝和下水道，容易孳生蚊蟲和老鼠。其實，要解決這些問題，最好的方式就是興建汙水下水道，不過目前台灣的接管率只有兩成三，而且還有一半以上的家庭汙水，是沒有經過符合環保規定的方式來處理，就放流出去。雨水、汙水；乾淨的水、骯髒的水，通通水往低處流，流到水溝裡。環保聯盟問卷調查上千名民眾，其中，近六成三的民眾認為，應該改善水溝下水道孳生的蚊蟲、蟑螂和老鼠問題，五成一的人認為該解決惡臭問題。台灣的水溝這麼髒，主要來是跟我們湯湯水水的飲食文化有關係。台灣的水溝之所以要承載這麼多汙水，主要還是因為汙水沒有分流，流入衛生下水道，營建署統計，有超過一半的家庭汙水，是沒有經過現代環保設備處理過，直接就流入河川。而全台衛生下水道的接管率，平均只有兩成三。全台衛生下水道的建設，從八十一年開始到現在，已經投入一千五百二十多億元的經費，接管率還有很大的進步空間。環保團體呼籲，下水道是基礎公共建設，不只關乎環境乾不乾淨，也牽涉到公共衛生，政治人物不要把它當成看不見的政績，而忽視它的重要性。
自然期刊專訪 林政鞍台灣第一人(影音)
國際頂尖科學期刊「自然」(NATURE)雜誌，首度專訪了台灣青年科學家，這位台灣本土栽培，中原大學生物醫學工程系的林政鞍教授，他研發出可以發出螢光的奈米金材料，受到國際的肯定，他說，他從小立志當一位土產的博士，果真證明了台灣出產的科學研究、也是可以掛保證。這四瓶材料，在紫外燈照射下，各自發出不同顏色的螢光，主要的材料是黃金，將黃金奈米化後產生的發光特性，紅色光是1.5奈米、綠色光是1.1奈米，藍色光最小，只有0.8個奈米，這些獨特的螢光材質，將照亮未來的醫學研究。研發出這些材料的是今年才34歲的年輕科學家林政鞍，林政鞍從小在台灣土生土長，一路上都不是念明星的學校，不過他從小立志要當個本土的博士，如今他的研究成果，備受國際肯定，還在美國的奈米生醫光電學術會議，得到青年研究學者獎，成為國際知名科學期刊自然NATURE首度專訪的台灣科學家。
林政鞍的指導教授說，他的成績一向中等，但活躍於社團，培養了優異的組織能力，對從事研究很有幫助。
雖然林政鞍在念博士班時，才第一次出國，在教授的帶領下到加拿大參加國際會議，之後他參加國科會的德國交流計畫，他說，這些國外交流的經驗讓他開了眼界，雖然是台灣本土博士但也能與國際接軌，林政鞍的表現，可以說是台灣的科學之光。
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